So as the title of this blog so subtly hints at, we lost our first water polo game in the liga yesterday. Up by 4 at the end of the first, and with a 2 goal lead most of the game we let up and got beat in the last 3 minutes of the game...very disappointing as this team was the second placed team and a win over them would be huge. I however am not all that upset as I think that losing every once-in-awhile is good for a team and will hopefully motivate my teamates and coaches a bit more. Still not really happy with practice as we can go 2 - 3 days a week without touching a ball, which I think is ridiculous, and the extent of our "Strategic" practices are scrimmages against other teams. Learn by doing is great, but sometimes you need to take baby steps in that direction.
This was my first game in almost a month as I had to sit 1 out due to my pinched nerve, and we had 2 weekends off. I felt pretty shitty but played really well scoring 2, and stopping their primary offensive player, the 2 meter man, from scoring any goals...
Anywho, had a good college friend Debbie visiting this weekend with 4 of her friends from LSE. They had a lot of fun and while I didnt get to hang out with Debbie as much as I liked, due to the polo game as well as not wanting to go do the same touristy thing's ive already done twice or three times now, I think they had a lot of fun.
I've found a new website to download movies and tv shows. Which is good and bad. Good cause its almost free and my itunes bill was getting LARGE. Bad cause now I have tons of access to shit that I dont need to watch as I should be doing something else during....eh such is life.
Had my HBS interview this week in Madrid, dominated, so everyone cross your fingers for me
aight just that quick update...happy holidays and new years to everyone. I'm looking forward to spending a few days in manchester with the rents, hope everyone has a good crisis free holiday season.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Sunday, November 30, 2008
...the groove.....
So I apologize to all my avid blog readers, all 9 of you, for not having posted in such a long time....
Don’t really have any excuses or reasons for such I just never got around to it.
Lots happened since I last got on. Here are some highlights:
- we've played like 4 or 5 games and won them all. We are currently "top o' the table" and hopefully will stay there for the rest of the year.
- Visited the rents in Manchester for a few days, and watched 2 soccer games...that was good
- Started teaching English every week two a sibling pair, brother and sister. The boy is truly amazing as he speaks fluent French, Spanish, Catalan, and takes english in school and asks to take private lessons from myself and a Chinese teacher....
i've limited the hours that I teach as I dont really like doing it...not exactly sure why but I always feel like i'm unprepared (probably because I am) and I dont enjoy trying to figure out lesson plans on the fly...
- I've also been taking 2 hours of spanish class a day for the last 2 weeks. The class isnt exactly what I need, I'd be better off studying on my own, but know that I wont do it...
-I've also been going to a nearby gym 4 days a week and lifting which is great, as the facilities at our pool kinda suck...
-News on the MBA front. I finished my 3rd application to columbia and also got an interview request from HBS!!!!! This is great as they interview almost all the candidates they take, and supposedly only 20% of the people that apply get interviews. My interview is in Madrid on Dec 11th...im a bit nervous as I dont speak very complex English here, and I wanna be able to use my full English capabilities to convince the interviewer why i am...well why I am "the shit"....so if anyone wants to jump on skype and quiz me, that would be dope...
-Each weekday morning i head to the same bar/cafe called Nakayupenda ("love" in Swahili) and have breakfast, croissant with a cafe con leche...I really enjoy this as all the people who work there, are sweet dutch younger people with great outlooks on life. I frequently hang out there and just chat with them, and I have become good friends with a few of them (3 of them attended my thanksgiving bash...). Sweet peeps and they let me make my own cafe every morning which is sweet!
-We had a game in Bilbao which is in Basque territory where they dont speak catalan but they do speak basque, and would rather speak that than spanish. Its a really small and beautiful town thats done an amazing job with blending modern and old school architecture. They have a pretty beautiful Guggenheim museum there, and I liked the building which was created by Frank Ghery, the dude that designed Princeton's new science library...I like the museum in bilbao more to say the least.
Don’t really have any excuses or reasons for such I just never got around to it.
Lots happened since I last got on. Here are some highlights:
- we've played like 4 or 5 games and won them all. We are currently "top o' the table" and hopefully will stay there for the rest of the year.
- Visited the rents in Manchester for a few days, and watched 2 soccer games...that was good
- Started teaching English every week two a sibling pair, brother and sister. The boy is truly amazing as he speaks fluent French, Spanish, Catalan, and takes english in school and asks to take private lessons from myself and a Chinese teacher....
i've limited the hours that I teach as I dont really like doing it...not exactly sure why but I always feel like i'm unprepared (probably because I am) and I dont enjoy trying to figure out lesson plans on the fly...
- I've also been taking 2 hours of spanish class a day for the last 2 weeks. The class isnt exactly what I need, I'd be better off studying on my own, but know that I wont do it...
-I've also been going to a nearby gym 4 days a week and lifting which is great, as the facilities at our pool kinda suck...
-News on the MBA front. I finished my 3rd application to columbia and also got an interview request from HBS!!!!! This is great as they interview almost all the candidates they take, and supposedly only 20% of the people that apply get interviews. My interview is in Madrid on Dec 11th...im a bit nervous as I dont speak very complex English here, and I wanna be able to use my full English capabilities to convince the interviewer why i am...well why I am "the shit"....so if anyone wants to jump on skype and quiz me, that would be dope...
-Each weekday morning i head to the same bar/cafe called Nakayupenda ("love" in Swahili) and have breakfast, croissant with a cafe con leche...I really enjoy this as all the people who work there, are sweet dutch younger people with great outlooks on life. I frequently hang out there and just chat with them, and I have become good friends with a few of them (3 of them attended my thanksgiving bash...). Sweet peeps and they let me make my own cafe every morning which is sweet!
-We had a game in Bilbao which is in Basque territory where they dont speak catalan but they do speak basque, and would rather speak that than spanish. Its a really small and beautiful town thats done an amazing job with blending modern and old school architecture. They have a pretty beautiful Guggenheim museum there, and I liked the building which was created by Frank Ghery, the dude that designed Princeton's new science library...I like the museum in bilbao more to say the least.-This week I had a friend from High School, buzon, come visit for thanksgiving. We made a pretty sweet as meal. I bought "Pablo the Pavo", at 5.3kilos at a polleria around the corner. I marinated it with spices the day before and then the day of thanksgiving we made stuffing and ish and prayed that my small/shitty ass orno=oven would cook the thing. I also had 10 friends over, some American, some Dutch and my roommate and a few brough some stuff for us to eat and we basically had a huge fest.
Direct quotes: "first time I ever enjoyed thanksgiving food" (crazy but ill take it as a compliment) and "best turkey i've ever had"...I would have had more rave reviews but 4 of our attendees were first time thanksgiving goers. Buzon also made us all go around the table and say thanks which was really nice.....
-As for this weekend. Well this weekend was long and interesting. I pinched a nerve in my leg while lifting. Half my cafe and the top of my left foot lacks a degree of sensitivity and kinda feels like its asleep....because of this I didnt practice a few days this week and my coaches wouldnt let me suit up to play. I was not happy about this, but at the same time maybe the break would be good for me...i wish it was as my foot is about the same. I'm going to try some acupuncture and maybe some chiropractor visits... I also went out with Buzon to a club on friday and yesterday my teammates had a dinner in a nearby town, Sabadell, and we went out till 5am....was fun but hanging out in super packed places and trying to speak spanish with loud ass music going on is difficult...id rather have it less crowded and be able to move around and dance and what not...
-today was nice and relaxing, i woke up LATE...made french toast with Panatone bread...interesting but difficult as the bread is hard to manage, and cut, as it comes in round dome shaped pieces...then I went and met up with the manager from Nakayupenda and we went and watched 007...not the best, but entertaining enough....
basically things have settled down for me and I've got a groove going between the cafe, lifting, class and practice....its not the best groove ever, but a groove, at least for a while, is stabilizing and nice...
dats about it....when you peeps coming to visit me?
I am NOT coming home for xmas as people killing each other in Walmart's scare me and my parents are coming out to Manchester and i'll meet them there and hang out for half a week....
Peace....
Direct quotes: "first time I ever enjoyed thanksgiving food" (crazy but ill take it as a compliment) and "best turkey i've ever had"...I would have had more rave reviews but 4 of our attendees were first time thanksgiving goers. Buzon also made us all go around the table and say thanks which was really nice.....
-As for this weekend. Well this weekend was long and interesting. I pinched a nerve in my leg while lifting. Half my cafe and the top of my left foot lacks a degree of sensitivity and kinda feels like its asleep....because of this I didnt practice a few days this week and my coaches wouldnt let me suit up to play. I was not happy about this, but at the same time maybe the break would be good for me...i wish it was as my foot is about the same. I'm going to try some acupuncture and maybe some chiropractor visits... I also went out with Buzon to a club on friday and yesterday my teammates had a dinner in a nearby town, Sabadell, and we went out till 5am....was fun but hanging out in super packed places and trying to speak spanish with loud ass music going on is difficult...id rather have it less crowded and be able to move around and dance and what not...
-today was nice and relaxing, i woke up LATE...made french toast with Panatone bread...interesting but difficult as the bread is hard to manage, and cut, as it comes in round dome shaped pieces...then I went and met up with the manager from Nakayupenda and we went and watched 007...not the best, but entertaining enough....
basically things have settled down for me and I've got a groove going between the cafe, lifting, class and practice....its not the best groove ever, but a groove, at least for a while, is stabilizing and nice...
dats about it....when you peeps coming to visit me?
I am NOT coming home for xmas as people killing each other in Walmart's scare me and my parents are coming out to Manchester and i'll meet them there and hang out for half a week....
Peace....
Sunday, October 19, 2008
"to reach heaven you must first go through hell"
Those awe-inspiring words were delivered to me by an awe-inspiring 9th and 12th grade English Lit teacher Mr. Bud Mayfield (see sarcasm).
But if they do hold true, as he frequently showed us in chosen title after chosen title, regarding the journey that any good protagonist must take before reaching the promised land, I sure hope it works in my favor as well..
Ps. Sorry about the length of this post….
So after the sad departure of Abby I had a few days to work on some bschool apps. As most of you know I’m applying to bschool for the fall of 2009. I’ve been working on my GMATs forever, and while they haven’t gone as well as I hoped I still have a great story and great skills to get me into the school. So firs app up, Harvard. So by this point im probably half way through the essays, in the middle of editing most of them when the motherboard on my computer just dies…..GREAT! I think it had something to do with power conversion, which is BS since lap tops come with built in converters…
So while I had my homeboy Kumar Walia go to my storage unit in the BK and pick up an old lap top of mine I still had to bang out the rest of this application. That saw me sitting in ghetto call center/internet (I don’t wanna say Café cause there was nothing café about them and they didn’t serve any caffeinated drinks..) spots paying at least a euro an hour to use the net. It also saw me in numerous moments of total frustration and aggravation whilst I tried to sum up my being, weaknesses and accomplishments while 10 little kids, with no idea of what personal space is or just being quite, yelling, screaming and kicking me while playing video games all day….didnt these kids have anything better to do? Like go to school????
The internet cafes also closed really early so I couldn’t hit them up after practice, so all work had to be done during the day (which meant waking up early…lame) and I couldn’t do stuff when I’m usually most productive….So with tons of time wasted in the cafes I really didn’t have time to study…for my GMATS. Yes in some sort of weirdly organized way I had allowed myself to be able to take 3 gmat tests before the Harvard application was due (you can only take it once every 31 days, so I had to space them out perfectly). However Barcelona and other Spanish cities unfortunately did not have them on the day that I needed them, either before or on the 15th of October. Thus after finding a cheap flight with easy jet I flew to Lyon for a 2 day trip, basically to take the GMAT. After getting to lyon and spending the better part of one day in an inetnet café, struggling with a French keyboard, which is similar enough to make u think its regular but a few key keys are switched around, like A, M and W I didn’t get to see much of France. The next day all psyched for the test I got to the testing station a bit early, with my proctor not showing up until at least 30 min after I was supposed to start the test. The good news, I would be testing alone, so no annoying outside noises, and with a us keyboard, the bad news, I did worse than I did when I took the test the second time….AWESOME! So not only did I pay all this money to fly out to Lyon, and spend a night in a hotel and pay for the test, and TAXES, YES TAXES, on the test I did worse….Oh on top of all of that after the test was done I was still freaking out cause my last recommender still hadn’t finished, AND I had no where to stay the night…my hotel that I booked was only for 1 night.
So after spending another 2 hours at an internet café, this one was actually a café in France, I waited until my recommender got it done, thanks MIKE! Had me sweat a bit but last minute is the way I like to do things (obviously) …then I spent the rest of my time trying to find a hotel…which turns out in a Lyon there only about 70 hotels….
So what did I do next? Freak out? Nah, went and smoked a habana and chilled on some steps watching French people pre party in the streets….i actually like the idea a lot…wish we could do that in the US, would save us on bar costs for sure as well as the issues with driving places back and forth all the time….just do it in the street outside the bar area then go to the bars….After hanging out in a bar or two at around 1ish I decided to take a walk around town and also a good time to check out and walk into hotels to see if they have any space. After about 2 hours, with a stop at Mcy D’s which I was trying to parlay into a short term spot to stay at (which I guess that late it was only for take out) I wound up going to over 15 hotels all of them being full….so at around 3am I made my way to the bus station, which was of course closed and finally resigned myself to how I was going to be spending the rest of the night…
…since I was tired from the test and walking I couldn’t stay up all night, so I tried the first hour on a concrete bench in a park. The park was kinda shitty as it was all under construction but wasn’t to big and not to much foot traffic so I got a bit of sleep…but concrete is COLD, and doesn’t warm up, and I had or thought I had little bugs biting my ankles making it impossible to sleep!!! So after struggling to get any quality sleep for about 2 hours I walked around till I found a wood bench which kept my body warmth…
Things I learned: find a hotel earlier than a few days before especially in smaller French towns where no one speaks English
2) concrete is cold
3) the cardboard that homeless people use is for this cold
4) sleeping outside in a park in a country that uve been in for 20 hours is NOT FUN
5) the gmat sucks, and I suck at it…as well as all general standardized testing…
So I then got back to Barca and my perfect week ended with being told by UPS that in addition to the 360$ that I needed to pay nitin back for to send my computer over night, which didn’t get here until a week later, I had to pay 200$ in customs fees…what an awesomely expensive shitty back up computer…but its better than the internet spots so I cant complain that much…
…sorry about the gripe session or for lack of a better term “bitch session” but it feels good to get that all out…but back to my earlier quote, I hope that this was my week of “hell” in this case and that “heaven” will be getting into HBS…lets hope, pray, or whatever it is we may do…
Now onto waterpolo…
So since I last reported we’ve had our first 2 actual league games. The first one we won by 1, with me picking up a trash goal as the game winner with less than 2 minutes left. It was great to start our first official game….The second game which was yesterday was a mess. The refs kicked me out, and both our 2 meter men, thus we were left with no real 2 meter defense or offense….Despite being down 3 goals we came back and my teammate scored the game tier with about 20 seconds left….
Our league is kinda like Premiership football where you can have ties, and the winner is not decided by a tournament but rather by accumulative points. Win-3 Tie-1 loss-0. So right now we have 4 points…
Still having some issues with how we are spending our practice time, but I’m hoping that will improve this week….we Play Olot another Barcelona team this weekend, then have a weekend off which I’m going to spend in England visiting my parents…
Just got back from a bar meet up with some Americans that I met trying to find work as a teacher through the Spanish version of Craigslist and got some dinner and watch the barca game…cool to meet some other people in a similar situation as me and see what they were doing and how they were handling it ext….
Hope all is well with everyone in the us, I’m going to be sending out a short update email soon with my schedule on it so if anyone wants to come visit they can feel free to do it around and during my games in Barcelona….
Sorry about the length again.
J$ out…
But if they do hold true, as he frequently showed us in chosen title after chosen title, regarding the journey that any good protagonist must take before reaching the promised land, I sure hope it works in my favor as well..
Ps. Sorry about the length of this post….
So after the sad departure of Abby I had a few days to work on some bschool apps. As most of you know I’m applying to bschool for the fall of 2009. I’ve been working on my GMATs forever, and while they haven’t gone as well as I hoped I still have a great story and great skills to get me into the school. So firs app up, Harvard. So by this point im probably half way through the essays, in the middle of editing most of them when the motherboard on my computer just dies…..GREAT! I think it had something to do with power conversion, which is BS since lap tops come with built in converters…
So while I had my homeboy Kumar Walia go to my storage unit in the BK and pick up an old lap top of mine I still had to bang out the rest of this application. That saw me sitting in ghetto call center/internet (I don’t wanna say Café cause there was nothing café about them and they didn’t serve any caffeinated drinks..) spots paying at least a euro an hour to use the net. It also saw me in numerous moments of total frustration and aggravation whilst I tried to sum up my being, weaknesses and accomplishments while 10 little kids, with no idea of what personal space is or just being quite, yelling, screaming and kicking me while playing video games all day….didnt these kids have anything better to do? Like go to school????
The internet cafes also closed really early so I couldn’t hit them up after practice, so all work had to be done during the day (which meant waking up early…lame) and I couldn’t do stuff when I’m usually most productive….So with tons of time wasted in the cafes I really didn’t have time to study…for my GMATS. Yes in some sort of weirdly organized way I had allowed myself to be able to take 3 gmat tests before the Harvard application was due (you can only take it once every 31 days, so I had to space them out perfectly). However Barcelona and other Spanish cities unfortunately did not have them on the day that I needed them, either before or on the 15th of October. Thus after finding a cheap flight with easy jet I flew to Lyon for a 2 day trip, basically to take the GMAT. After getting to lyon and spending the better part of one day in an inetnet café, struggling with a French keyboard, which is similar enough to make u think its regular but a few key keys are switched around, like A, M and W I didn’t get to see much of France. The next day all psyched for the test I got to the testing station a bit early, with my proctor not showing up until at least 30 min after I was supposed to start the test. The good news, I would be testing alone, so no annoying outside noises, and with a us keyboard, the bad news, I did worse than I did when I took the test the second time….AWESOME! So not only did I pay all this money to fly out to Lyon, and spend a night in a hotel and pay for the test, and TAXES, YES TAXES, on the test I did worse….Oh on top of all of that after the test was done I was still freaking out cause my last recommender still hadn’t finished, AND I had no where to stay the night…my hotel that I booked was only for 1 night.
So after spending another 2 hours at an internet café, this one was actually a café in France, I waited until my recommender got it done, thanks MIKE! Had me sweat a bit but last minute is the way I like to do things (obviously) …then I spent the rest of my time trying to find a hotel…which turns out in a Lyon there only about 70 hotels….
So what did I do next? Freak out? Nah, went and smoked a habana and chilled on some steps watching French people pre party in the streets….i actually like the idea a lot…wish we could do that in the US, would save us on bar costs for sure as well as the issues with driving places back and forth all the time….just do it in the street outside the bar area then go to the bars….After hanging out in a bar or two at around 1ish I decided to take a walk around town and also a good time to check out and walk into hotels to see if they have any space. After about 2 hours, with a stop at Mcy D’s which I was trying to parlay into a short term spot to stay at (which I guess that late it was only for take out) I wound up going to over 15 hotels all of them being full….so at around 3am I made my way to the bus station, which was of course closed and finally resigned myself to how I was going to be spending the rest of the night…
…since I was tired from the test and walking I couldn’t stay up all night, so I tried the first hour on a concrete bench in a park. The park was kinda shitty as it was all under construction but wasn’t to big and not to much foot traffic so I got a bit of sleep…but concrete is COLD, and doesn’t warm up, and I had or thought I had little bugs biting my ankles making it impossible to sleep!!! So after struggling to get any quality sleep for about 2 hours I walked around till I found a wood bench which kept my body warmth…
Things I learned: find a hotel earlier than a few days before especially in smaller French towns where no one speaks English
2) concrete is cold
3) the cardboard that homeless people use is for this cold
4) sleeping outside in a park in a country that uve been in for 20 hours is NOT FUN
5) the gmat sucks, and I suck at it…as well as all general standardized testing…
So I then got back to Barca and my perfect week ended with being told by UPS that in addition to the 360$ that I needed to pay nitin back for to send my computer over night, which didn’t get here until a week later, I had to pay 200$ in customs fees…what an awesomely expensive shitty back up computer…but its better than the internet spots so I cant complain that much…
…sorry about the gripe session or for lack of a better term “bitch session” but it feels good to get that all out…but back to my earlier quote, I hope that this was my week of “hell” in this case and that “heaven” will be getting into HBS…lets hope, pray, or whatever it is we may do…
Now onto waterpolo…
So since I last reported we’ve had our first 2 actual league games. The first one we won by 1, with me picking up a trash goal as the game winner with less than 2 minutes left. It was great to start our first official game….The second game which was yesterday was a mess. The refs kicked me out, and both our 2 meter men, thus we were left with no real 2 meter defense or offense….Despite being down 3 goals we came back and my teammate scored the game tier with about 20 seconds left….
Our league is kinda like Premiership football where you can have ties, and the winner is not decided by a tournament but rather by accumulative points. Win-3 Tie-1 loss-0. So right now we have 4 points…
Still having some issues with how we are spending our practice time, but I’m hoping that will improve this week….we Play Olot another Barcelona team this weekend, then have a weekend off which I’m going to spend in England visiting my parents…
Just got back from a bar meet up with some Americans that I met trying to find work as a teacher through the Spanish version of Craigslist and got some dinner and watch the barca game…cool to meet some other people in a similar situation as me and see what they were doing and how they were handling it ext….
Hope all is well with everyone in the us, I’m going to be sending out a short update email soon with my schedule on it so if anyone wants to come visit they can feel free to do it around and during my games in Barcelona….
Sorry about the length again.
J$ out…
Saturday, October 18, 2008
2 weeks ago....
so wow, I have 5 blog followers, thats freaking nutz! Anywho I'm sorry to all of those that have missed my posts, Its been a while and I'll explain all now and later.
For now I'm going to write 1 post about 2 weeks ago and then write another one about the last week.
So lets see where I left off...ahh yes 2 weeks ago. So Mike "McLovin" Mclean and I had a pretty great time hitting it hard, and making new friends around the city. With the leaving of Mike came something even better (sorry mike), but Abby came and visit for four days!
We had a lot of fun, and despite an early wallet stealing incident (yea so the dude I ride home with everyday basically tells me each time to watch out for my shit) and 10 minutes after Abby gets here and we sit down for dinner her purse is stolen...Khoder (similar to fuck, but have seen it used for 'jesus' as well..)
But after which we had a great time, went and saw some of the cooler things in Barcelona, some I have seen and some I haven’t. Also rented a vespa for the day which was pretty awesome, and I'm trying to figure out how to get a permanent one without breaking the bank, or any laws. Abby also got to see our final match in the Catalunya cup (inter-barcelona cup) that we won. She also got yelled out by some crazy fans on the other team, I guess they werent happy with where she was sitting...
Then had a really sad and tearful goodbye as she left and started her adventure to France.... :(
Polo has gotten better. I see now how they structure the swimsets, and while it wouldn’t be my preferred way of doing it, Im sure by month 7 ill be tired of swimming and enjoy the easy sets. I'm still a bit frustrated though because we dont do much strategic work or even controlled scrimmages, which is how i'm used to learning. It gets even more difficult when our coach tells us to do something during a game that we havent before practiced, not the best way to go about things, but i'm sure it'll get better soon...I hope...
anyways thats the "q and d" or Quick and Dirty for now, i'll finish the rest of my tale tomorrow, for now its bed time.....
For now I'm going to write 1 post about 2 weeks ago and then write another one about the last week.
So lets see where I left off...ahh yes 2 weeks ago. So Mike "McLovin" Mclean and I had a pretty great time hitting it hard, and making new friends around the city. With the leaving of Mike came something even better (sorry mike), but Abby came and visit for four days!
We had a lot of fun, and despite an early wallet stealing incident (yea so the dude I ride home with everyday basically tells me each time to watch out for my shit) and 10 minutes after Abby gets here and we sit down for dinner her purse is stolen...Khoder (similar to fuck, but have seen it used for 'jesus' as well..)
But after which we had a great time, went and saw some of the cooler things in Barcelona, some I have seen and some I haven’t. Also rented a vespa for the day which was pretty awesome, and I'm trying to figure out how to get a permanent one without breaking the bank, or any laws. Abby also got to see our final match in the Catalunya cup (inter-barcelona cup) that we won. She also got yelled out by some crazy fans on the other team, I guess they werent happy with where she was sitting...
Then had a really sad and tearful goodbye as she left and started her adventure to France.... :(
Polo has gotten better. I see now how they structure the swimsets, and while it wouldn’t be my preferred way of doing it, Im sure by month 7 ill be tired of swimming and enjoy the easy sets. I'm still a bit frustrated though because we dont do much strategic work or even controlled scrimmages, which is how i'm used to learning. It gets even more difficult when our coach tells us to do something during a game that we havent before practiced, not the best way to go about things, but i'm sure it'll get better soon...I hope...
anyways thats the "q and d" or Quick and Dirty for now, i'll finish the rest of my tale tomorrow, for now its bed time.....
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
another day, another euro...
So lots been happening since I last wrote in el-blogo.
I've been riding a rollercoaster of emotions. From 1 minute I'll be somewhat depressed or sad, and the next I'll be very excited and hyphy...Ive talked to a lot of other friends that have lived abroad and it seems that the first month or two are the hardest, and that your emotions do change drastically. So i'll keep monitoring them and hopefully the blog can also be an outlet for any frustrations as well as joys that I may have.
On the polo front, we won our second game. I scored my first goal and also got 3 ejections with 5 min left in the 4th. The Refs call the game from a 2 meter defense angle a bit different here, so I'm trying to get used to that.
ALSO they changed my number to 2, wtf...right after I created this blog...but I like the irony, sarcasm, humor of keeping my blog Jugador Numero Cinco and not changing it (that and I dont know how...)
Practice has been a bit frustrating for a few reasons. 1, I'm seconds faster than anyone on the team (or they dont try), and swim sets are ANNOYINGLY slow for me, not to mention I need to go faster to get in better shape...I also got reprimanded yesterday for actually swimming TOO FAST, never had that happen before.
I feel like my teammates have no fire in practice, and dont put 100% effort into it...this is partly their fault and I think my coach could do a better job of motivating us to work harder
In other news, for those of you wondering, JB and Grace, my shoulders are so far ok, I actually have not taken any meds for them yet which is great (knock on wood...)
I just moved into my apartment, pretty sweet spot in an area called Born. I'm in the soho/west villageish spot with the Barcelona equivalent of "central park" 10 meters away from me....Where can be found some awesome hippie hang outs complete with tight rope walking, juggling, shirtless dudes and hacky sack...yea I love it. Also I was informed that people call the hippies here "kumbayas" as in like the song...I live with 2 other Spaniards and have a lofted double bed, which is sweet, accept I get almost no direct sunlight as my window faces an internal corridor shaft...
Mclean has been here for the past two days and we've been hitting all the clubs...found a few hip hop spots which are great, cause no local here knows how to dance to hip hop so I love just owning the dance floor...He leaves today and i'm going to transition right into Abby comming !!!!!!! Very excited about that.
Ok dats it for now..
J
I've been riding a rollercoaster of emotions. From 1 minute I'll be somewhat depressed or sad, and the next I'll be very excited and hyphy...Ive talked to a lot of other friends that have lived abroad and it seems that the first month or two are the hardest, and that your emotions do change drastically. So i'll keep monitoring them and hopefully the blog can also be an outlet for any frustrations as well as joys that I may have.
On the polo front, we won our second game. I scored my first goal and also got 3 ejections with 5 min left in the 4th. The Refs call the game from a 2 meter defense angle a bit different here, so I'm trying to get used to that.
ALSO they changed my number to 2, wtf...right after I created this blog...but I like the irony, sarcasm, humor of keeping my blog Jugador Numero Cinco and not changing it (that and I dont know how...)
Practice has been a bit frustrating for a few reasons. 1, I'm seconds faster than anyone on the team (or they dont try), and swim sets are ANNOYINGLY slow for me, not to mention I need to go faster to get in better shape...I also got reprimanded yesterday for actually swimming TOO FAST, never had that happen before.
I feel like my teammates have no fire in practice, and dont put 100% effort into it...this is partly their fault and I think my coach could do a better job of motivating us to work harder
In other news, for those of you wondering, JB and Grace, my shoulders are so far ok, I actually have not taken any meds for them yet which is great (knock on wood...)
I just moved into my apartment, pretty sweet spot in an area called Born. I'm in the soho/west villageish spot with the Barcelona equivalent of "central park" 10 meters away from me....Where can be found some awesome hippie hang outs complete with tight rope walking, juggling, shirtless dudes and hacky sack...yea I love it. Also I was informed that people call the hippies here "kumbayas" as in like the song...I live with 2 other Spaniards and have a lofted double bed, which is sweet, accept I get almost no direct sunlight as my window faces an internal corridor shaft...
Mclean has been here for the past two days and we've been hitting all the clubs...found a few hip hop spots which are great, cause no local here knows how to dance to hip hop so I love just owning the dance floor...He leaves today and i'm going to transition right into Abby comming !!!!!!! Very excited about that.
Ok dats it for now..
J
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
A new beginning...
Bienvenidos to my official blog, Jugador Numero Cinco, more on that later..
So this is my first attempt at a real sustained personal blog, I´m hoping to blog once a week, and I hope you guys keep on top of me for it...as many of you know me I like to write freely, similar to how I talk so sorry about the idioms and the rambling and the slang....(and the ellipses, I love those things!, which I just found out is officially ¨to be avoided or used extremely carefully¨)
So as most of you know, I decided to quit my awesome job in Ad Sales in Microsoft New York and pursue a personal dream and passion of mine....playing pro water polo in spain.
So a bit about my team. It´s name is CNMR or Club Nautica Molins de Rei, or just Molins Rei..coached by a friend of Elio´s (my goalkeeper at NYAC) who is a gold and silver medalist for Spain and a great coach. Most of my teammates are from the area of Molins Rei (a suburb of BarCHElona) and live/work/go to school in the area. This makes it a bit more difficult for me as I wanted and will be living in Barcelona proper, so not only do I have to commute 30ish minutes per day but also my teammates arent in the city for me to hang out with most nights. I was given the number 5 on our team yesterday, so thats why my blog is named Jugador Numero Cinco, or Player Number 5 in rough translation
So tonight is my 3rd night, currently I´m residing in Hostel Ramblas Home...but have been feverishly searching for an apartment so I can move out. I have found one that I like, and has room for people to come visit (!!!!) so hopefully tomorrow I will find out if I got it.
so a bit about what I have seen/experienced here...
...what´s the most awesome thing i have seen so far¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?Rat Tail/jedi padawan dread! Its true, a dude on my team has like a 5 inch piece of hair in the back that is dreaded...the rest of his head is about a quarter inch long, just that one piece sticks out....ahh if i was on the other team and i had the ballz to touch that thing i would pull the shit outa it. Saw it on another dude yesterday, he had full 10 inches of long hair and just 1 short 5 or 6 inch piece was dreaded and separate....crazy euros...next up...eating alone kinda sucks. i have a feeling i might be doing that a lot for a while....also finding an apartment here is harder than i thought, especially since i dont know the areas and why they are better for what reasons ext.also keyboards in foreign countries are ballz...i have to press like 4 buttons to get an @...see that was super annoying to do...you think the ´at´sign would be important enough to be just 2 buttons....but u can do cool shit like this ¿ Ñ Ç ¬ €(which the $ actually takes precedent over still....)finally, got my first bit of anit-Muslim racism yesterday. was trying to see a dudes apartment, and he kept asking me for a photo...like literally he´d be like, yes the apartment is free, send me a photo, thats it...so i thought wtf weirdo craigslist dude, see that we didnt leave you behind in new york, and finally asked ¨why¨and I quote ¨just because i dont wanna share my place with an old muslim man with beard who is praying 25 times per day¨...to which i responded ¨wow, well i´m a young muslim man with a beard so you probably dont want me to share the place with you either...¨ wanted to cuss him out more but was afraid he´d retaliate and try to send me the worlds most spam...you could really ruin someones email address like that...so thats about it, ganna hit the sack, hope i wake up for the free hostel breakfast and then try and buy a mobil (cell phone) today and figure out if I got a spot...
looking forward to the visits of Mclean/Mclovin from work as well as Abby(!!!!), Lauren and + Hayley as well as a possible visit from the parents...
ill update you guys on my teams schedule, so you´ll know when to visit me as well as where I´m living ext...
ALSO, i´m using skype now so if you want to talk for free get on there and search for my name...also aim, gtalk and messenger will be in use frequently im sure.
Hasta
Jamal
So this is my first attempt at a real sustained personal blog, I´m hoping to blog once a week, and I hope you guys keep on top of me for it...as many of you know me I like to write freely, similar to how I talk so sorry about the idioms and the rambling and the slang....(and the ellipses, I love those things!, which I just found out is officially ¨to be avoided or used extremely carefully¨)
So as most of you know, I decided to quit my awesome job in Ad Sales in Microsoft New York and pursue a personal dream and passion of mine....playing pro water polo in spain.
So a bit about my team. It´s name is CNMR or Club Nautica Molins de Rei, or just Molins Rei..coached by a friend of Elio´s (my goalkeeper at NYAC) who is a gold and silver medalist for Spain and a great coach. Most of my teammates are from the area of Molins Rei (a suburb of BarCHElona) and live/work/go to school in the area. This makes it a bit more difficult for me as I wanted and will be living in Barcelona proper, so not only do I have to commute 30ish minutes per day but also my teammates arent in the city for me to hang out with most nights. I was given the number 5 on our team yesterday, so thats why my blog is named Jugador Numero Cinco, or Player Number 5 in rough translation
So tonight is my 3rd night, currently I´m residing in Hostel Ramblas Home...but have been feverishly searching for an apartment so I can move out. I have found one that I like, and has room for people to come visit (!!!!) so hopefully tomorrow I will find out if I got it.
so a bit about what I have seen/experienced here...
...what´s the most awesome thing i have seen so far¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?Rat Tail/jedi padawan dread! Its true, a dude on my team has like a 5 inch piece of hair in the back that is dreaded...the rest of his head is about a quarter inch long, just that one piece sticks out....ahh if i was on the other team and i had the ballz to touch that thing i would pull the shit outa it. Saw it on another dude yesterday, he had full 10 inches of long hair and just 1 short 5 or 6 inch piece was dreaded and separate....crazy euros...next up...eating alone kinda sucks. i have a feeling i might be doing that a lot for a while....also finding an apartment here is harder than i thought, especially since i dont know the areas and why they are better for what reasons ext.also keyboards in foreign countries are ballz...i have to press like 4 buttons to get an @...see that was super annoying to do...you think the ´at´sign would be important enough to be just 2 buttons....but u can do cool shit like this ¿ Ñ Ç ¬ €(which the $ actually takes precedent over still....)finally, got my first bit of anit-Muslim racism yesterday. was trying to see a dudes apartment, and he kept asking me for a photo...like literally he´d be like, yes the apartment is free, send me a photo, thats it...so i thought wtf weirdo craigslist dude, see that we didnt leave you behind in new york, and finally asked ¨why¨and I quote ¨just because i dont wanna share my place with an old muslim man with beard who is praying 25 times per day¨...to which i responded ¨wow, well i´m a young muslim man with a beard so you probably dont want me to share the place with you either...¨ wanted to cuss him out more but was afraid he´d retaliate and try to send me the worlds most spam...you could really ruin someones email address like that...so thats about it, ganna hit the sack, hope i wake up for the free hostel breakfast and then try and buy a mobil (cell phone) today and figure out if I got a spot...
looking forward to the visits of Mclean/Mclovin from work as well as Abby(!!!!), Lauren and + Hayley as well as a possible visit from the parents...
ill update you guys on my teams schedule, so you´ll know when to visit me as well as where I´m living ext...
ALSO, i´m using skype now so if you want to talk for free get on there and search for my name...also aim, gtalk and messenger will be in use frequently im sure.
Hasta
Jamal
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