Earlier this week, the New York Times discussed the upcoming Olympic games and mentioned that these games could be the most dangerous we’ve seen yet, with athletes trying even more difficult snowboarding tricks or with the addition of ski cross. Athletes are going faster than ever before with the help of new equipment and engineering, such as the Whistler Sliding Center.
Only a few days later, the 2010 Olympics claimed its first victim: Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was killed in a horrific accident in Whistler. To make matters worse, the IOC has conveniently blamed his death on his own inability rather than a flaw with the track.
Reading the articles that have come out before and after the accident, it seems that many professionals were worried about the state of the track and the high speeds athletes clocked (6 mph faster than anywhere else in the world). Yet it takes the loss of a young life for anyone to show any kind of restraint. Many are now thinking how fast is too fast? And are the speeds that are higher than ever before really necessary?
How the IOC can insist that the rider is at fault is disgusting. Think about it: numerous skilled riders have stated their concern in advance and there have been many accidents already on the track since it opened in 2008. Shouldn’t that be reason enough for concern before died?
Sure Kumaritashvili is at fault. This is a dangerous sport, but was it Kumaritashvili that built poles right next to the outside of the track? What is Kumaritashvili that made the wall coming out of turn 16 so low, even when riders are still traveling at high speeds at the end of the course? That’s doubtful. I don’t understand how engineers couldn’t have a.) listened to rider complaints, and b.) couldn’t have possibly foreseen come kind of freak accidents that would come with such high speeds. According to the designer, who has worked on six Olympic tracks, no one has ever flown out of the track before. Then again, riders haven’t traveled at speeds like that before either.
This is the best part: while blaming only the rider, the Vancouver committee has made a change to the curve 16 in preparation for Saturday’s events. Now let’s get this straight: it’s the rider’s fault that he died and nothing is wrong with the track… but you are making adjustments to it? How stupid does their PR machine think people really are? When the IOC president is saying things like, “This is a time for mourning, not for wandering why this happened,” there seems to be a complete lack of commitment to total athlete safety.
But maybe that’s the point. Spilled blood, or the promise of it, is good for ratings, right? Don’t we instinctively love to see injury as much as we love to see athletes on the podium? Should the motto of this year’s Olympics be: “Vancouver 2010: now with more blood!”? Since the Olympics have been about sponsorships and money and less about the art and beauty of sport, maybe this a very extreme extension of what the IOC was hoping for when they ignored athlete’s concerns and left Whistler’s track as it was. They were hoping for high speed and the high drama that comes with potential injury, but what they got instead was the death of a young athlete.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Haiti
As the bad news continues to pour out of Haiti, I’m compelled to write as my thoughts drift to the people that are suffering so much now and the toll that disasters take.
Many of you probably don’t know, but over the last two weeks there was serious flooding here north of Tirana. The problem was caused by heavy rains and ineptitude at a large hydroelectric dam. Engineers didn’t release the side gates to regulate the water level, and by the time they did it, there was a significant fear that the built up pressure would be so great that the entire dam would collapse. Luckily that didn’t happen, but it did leave large parts of the Lezha and Shkoder regions covered in a meter of water. Had the dam gone completely, it would have flooded Tirana as well. The four volunteers living in those regions were evacuated following Peace Corps safety procedures and spent a week in Tirana before returning home. Aid came from a few other countries, but the cleanup process will take some time and money. What could have been a huge disaster has become only a small one.
Haiti, on the other hand, has consumed every newspaper (or should I say “internet news site,” since who reads newspapers?) this week. We thought we had seen the worst of it with the tsunami, or Katrina, or the earthquake in China, and then this. The accounts are unbelievable. I read that one man who worked for the United Nations said he had been thrown around the room during the earthquake. Something about that stuck into my mind. I thought about the kind of force that would be required to knock someone from their feet like that.
It’s hard to even look at the statistics and logistics of the disaster. The 50,000 estimated dead may end up at 200,000. One and a half million people are homeless. Thirty some aftershocks at 4.5. Aid can’t even be properly distributed because of the bad roads. Disease will soon set in amongst all the bodies. Where do aid workers and locals even start?
This article talks about what I imagine is the hardest part: the bodies. Unfortunately, there is no way to even process the bodies. They are placed in mass graves, without being identified, and are even burned in some cities. In all of the chaos, how will people ever get the closure of being able to identify their loved ones? What about having a burial ceremony? And what about the loneliness of bodies that aren’t ever going to be claimed, because there is no one to claim them? After the disaster has been cleaned up and the building process begins but people’s family members don’t return home, are they just supposed to assume that their relatives died? A friend and I were discussing these points and she mentioned the people killed during September 11th, which is a similar situation in terms of bodies.
Besides the spread of disease, the biggest problem is social unrest. The longer it takes to get proper aid, the more unstable the situation will get. Already there are reports of men armed with machetes roaming the street and the federal government has relocated its headquarters to the airport. Figure in an estimated 6,000 inmates that have been given spontaneous freedom with the collapse of jails. How will the government be able to enforce order and law in such a devastated area?
Many of you probably don’t know, but over the last two weeks there was serious flooding here north of Tirana. The problem was caused by heavy rains and ineptitude at a large hydroelectric dam. Engineers didn’t release the side gates to regulate the water level, and by the time they did it, there was a significant fear that the built up pressure would be so great that the entire dam would collapse. Luckily that didn’t happen, but it did leave large parts of the Lezha and Shkoder regions covered in a meter of water. Had the dam gone completely, it would have flooded Tirana as well. The four volunteers living in those regions were evacuated following Peace Corps safety procedures and spent a week in Tirana before returning home. Aid came from a few other countries, but the cleanup process will take some time and money. What could have been a huge disaster has become only a small one.
Haiti, on the other hand, has consumed every newspaper (or should I say “internet news site,” since who reads newspapers?) this week. We thought we had seen the worst of it with the tsunami, or Katrina, or the earthquake in China, and then this. The accounts are unbelievable. I read that one man who worked for the United Nations said he had been thrown around the room during the earthquake. Something about that stuck into my mind. I thought about the kind of force that would be required to knock someone from their feet like that.
It’s hard to even look at the statistics and logistics of the disaster. The 50,000 estimated dead may end up at 200,000. One and a half million people are homeless. Thirty some aftershocks at 4.5. Aid can’t even be properly distributed because of the bad roads. Disease will soon set in amongst all the bodies. Where do aid workers and locals even start?
This article talks about what I imagine is the hardest part: the bodies. Unfortunately, there is no way to even process the bodies. They are placed in mass graves, without being identified, and are even burned in some cities. In all of the chaos, how will people ever get the closure of being able to identify their loved ones? What about having a burial ceremony? And what about the loneliness of bodies that aren’t ever going to be claimed, because there is no one to claim them? After the disaster has been cleaned up and the building process begins but people’s family members don’t return home, are they just supposed to assume that their relatives died? A friend and I were discussing these points and she mentioned the people killed during September 11th, which is a similar situation in terms of bodies.
Besides the spread of disease, the biggest problem is social unrest. The longer it takes to get proper aid, the more unstable the situation will get. Already there are reports of men armed with machetes roaming the street and the federal government has relocated its headquarters to the airport. Figure in an estimated 6,000 inmates that have been given spontaneous freedom with the collapse of jails. How will the government be able to enforce order and law in such a devastated area?
A Normal Day
I go to school every day but have written surprisingly little information about what it is like.
School is a bit different over here. First off, we have lessons from 8:30 – 1:30. There is no break for lunch but students have fifteen or twenty minutes to run out to the line of snack carts that reminds me of what I used to call “Tin Can Alley” on Drexel’s campus.
With few clocks throughout the building and no centralized bell, a student runs up and down the four flights of stairs ringing and actual bell when it’s time for teachers to rotate classes. There are about five minutes for teachers to stop off in the teacher’s room and pick up the class registers (a sacred book with the class roster and student grades for all subjects) before going to class. When they enter the classroom, wearing white smocks that look like lab coats, the students stand up. Students in my school also wear uniforms during the warmer months. When a student is called to answer a question, they may also choose to stand up to give the answer.
My favorite thing that students do is wiping the desks. When I go in for a lesson I usually sit in the back at an empty desk (if there is one, since sometimes three students have to share a single desk). But before I can sit down, students order me to stand while they clean the desk because it is “dirty,” or rather, dusty. At the mere sight of me getting ready to set my books down, an army of students rushes to the desk, tells me forcefully “NO NO” and, armed with tissues from individual packets, cleans the desk for me.
Albanian students are masters of rote learning, which means that their critical thinking and reading skills need a lot of improvement. Ask a student what they have read about Bill Clinton, a popular figure here largely because of Kosovo, and they can give you an entire string of information, perfectly memorized. Ask a student why Clinton is popular here and they have difficulty answering. Trying to break students of the memorization habit is something I will be working on for the rest of my time here. Memorization certainly has its place, but there are far more important skills to work on (like converting information students read to other areas).
As for the schools themselves, they do not have many amenities. I haven’t seen any heated classrooms and usually wear my coat every day, all day. The steps are treacherous because they are crumbling. I’m waiting for the day when I bite it and always make a point to be extra cautious. My school does have the internet, a computer lab, and two libraries (one for Albanian books and another foreign language library that I’m working on). These are resources that not every school has and are a good starting point for our students. By writing to an American organization called Darien Book Aid, I was able to add about 25 new books to our little English library and I hope to expand it in the future. There isn’t an overwhelming appreciation of libraries here, but it provides our students with authentic materials as opposed to inaccurate and outdated text books and is often the only source of English materials that they have.
The textbooks are another thing. Never in my life have I really paid any particular attention to the role of a textbook, not even as we (my parents and I) regularly shelled out $80 a book during university. A good text is everything; it’s the source of your lessons, information and discussions. There are two distinct types of books here: ones produced for the international market by English publishers and books produced by Albanians, for Albanians. There is a marked difference in price and quality between the two books. It’s safe to say that on almost every page of an Albanian text book, you can find a simple mistake that would have been noticed had it been spell checked. There are also other factual errors and omissions. I have been teaching a lesson on Hamlet this whole week. According to the Albanian-produced text, Hamlet was a “king” of Denmark (if that were true, then there really wouldn’t be much of a plot). After an elaborate and confusing summary of the play’s plot, it makes no mention of Hamlet’s death. On the bright side, the lesson did teach me the Albanian words for revenge and indecision as we talked about the play’s themes. It’s disappointing to see so many errors in an educational book, especially considering that many of them could be easily corrected if anyone bothered to edit anything.
Looking back on my public education, I’d say that discipline also played a big part. Kids continue to get surlier and surlier, but even when I was in school you could have a certain fear about the repercussions of your actions. Mouthing off would get you sent to the principal’s office, and the possibility of detention was very real for any number of offenses. Not to mention that I could also count on getting it at home for any indiscretions. We don’t have a distinguishable, clearly defined discipline system here. Sometimes kids will get kicked out of the lesson, but I haven’t seen anyone being sent to the principal’s. As a result, class is often chaotic, with students talking at regular volume over fellow students and teachers. That is, when they aren’t busy with their phones or causing other forms of general disruption. It is a difficult environment to teach in, combined with the sub-par textbooks, and I really have to tip my cap to the teachers that I’ve seen in action. They are people who somehow overcome the normal wear and tear on one’s nerves and do the best they can—because they believe in what they do. It definitely shows in their work and I look forward to our future working collaborations.
At the beginning of this entry, I wrote that school ends at 1:30. Thanks to a new initiative from the Ministry of Education, lessons in my school will now finish at 2:15 with the addition of a seventh instructional hour. It’s kind of a mixed bag, where a few teachers every day will run supplementary courses. Out of a staff of almost thirty, five or so teachers will teach an extra lesson each day a week. During this time, I will hopefully work with gifted students four times a week. My other colleagues in the English department have done the best they can with these students—and I’m lucky enough to reap the rewards of their previous work by stepping in as a native speaker to teach them. The students don’t know it yet, but I have got so many things lined up for them and I have some high hopes about what we can all achieve in working together.
School is a bit different over here. First off, we have lessons from 8:30 – 1:30. There is no break for lunch but students have fifteen or twenty minutes to run out to the line of snack carts that reminds me of what I used to call “Tin Can Alley” on Drexel’s campus.
With few clocks throughout the building and no centralized bell, a student runs up and down the four flights of stairs ringing and actual bell when it’s time for teachers to rotate classes. There are about five minutes for teachers to stop off in the teacher’s room and pick up the class registers (a sacred book with the class roster and student grades for all subjects) before going to class. When they enter the classroom, wearing white smocks that look like lab coats, the students stand up. Students in my school also wear uniforms during the warmer months. When a student is called to answer a question, they may also choose to stand up to give the answer.
My favorite thing that students do is wiping the desks. When I go in for a lesson I usually sit in the back at an empty desk (if there is one, since sometimes three students have to share a single desk). But before I can sit down, students order me to stand while they clean the desk because it is “dirty,” or rather, dusty. At the mere sight of me getting ready to set my books down, an army of students rushes to the desk, tells me forcefully “NO NO” and, armed with tissues from individual packets, cleans the desk for me.
Albanian students are masters of rote learning, which means that their critical thinking and reading skills need a lot of improvement. Ask a student what they have read about Bill Clinton, a popular figure here largely because of Kosovo, and they can give you an entire string of information, perfectly memorized. Ask a student why Clinton is popular here and they have difficulty answering. Trying to break students of the memorization habit is something I will be working on for the rest of my time here. Memorization certainly has its place, but there are far more important skills to work on (like converting information students read to other areas).
As for the schools themselves, they do not have many amenities. I haven’t seen any heated classrooms and usually wear my coat every day, all day. The steps are treacherous because they are crumbling. I’m waiting for the day when I bite it and always make a point to be extra cautious. My school does have the internet, a computer lab, and two libraries (one for Albanian books and another foreign language library that I’m working on). These are resources that not every school has and are a good starting point for our students. By writing to an American organization called Darien Book Aid, I was able to add about 25 new books to our little English library and I hope to expand it in the future. There isn’t an overwhelming appreciation of libraries here, but it provides our students with authentic materials as opposed to inaccurate and outdated text books and is often the only source of English materials that they have.
The textbooks are another thing. Never in my life have I really paid any particular attention to the role of a textbook, not even as we (my parents and I) regularly shelled out $80 a book during university. A good text is everything; it’s the source of your lessons, information and discussions. There are two distinct types of books here: ones produced for the international market by English publishers and books produced by Albanians, for Albanians. There is a marked difference in price and quality between the two books. It’s safe to say that on almost every page of an Albanian text book, you can find a simple mistake that would have been noticed had it been spell checked. There are also other factual errors and omissions. I have been teaching a lesson on Hamlet this whole week. According to the Albanian-produced text, Hamlet was a “king” of Denmark (if that were true, then there really wouldn’t be much of a plot). After an elaborate and confusing summary of the play’s plot, it makes no mention of Hamlet’s death. On the bright side, the lesson did teach me the Albanian words for revenge and indecision as we talked about the play’s themes. It’s disappointing to see so many errors in an educational book, especially considering that many of them could be easily corrected if anyone bothered to edit anything.
Looking back on my public education, I’d say that discipline also played a big part. Kids continue to get surlier and surlier, but even when I was in school you could have a certain fear about the repercussions of your actions. Mouthing off would get you sent to the principal’s office, and the possibility of detention was very real for any number of offenses. Not to mention that I could also count on getting it at home for any indiscretions. We don’t have a distinguishable, clearly defined discipline system here. Sometimes kids will get kicked out of the lesson, but I haven’t seen anyone being sent to the principal’s. As a result, class is often chaotic, with students talking at regular volume over fellow students and teachers. That is, when they aren’t busy with their phones or causing other forms of general disruption. It is a difficult environment to teach in, combined with the sub-par textbooks, and I really have to tip my cap to the teachers that I’ve seen in action. They are people who somehow overcome the normal wear and tear on one’s nerves and do the best they can—because they believe in what they do. It definitely shows in their work and I look forward to our future working collaborations.
At the beginning of this entry, I wrote that school ends at 1:30. Thanks to a new initiative from the Ministry of Education, lessons in my school will now finish at 2:15 with the addition of a seventh instructional hour. It’s kind of a mixed bag, where a few teachers every day will run supplementary courses. Out of a staff of almost thirty, five or so teachers will teach an extra lesson each day a week. During this time, I will hopefully work with gifted students four times a week. My other colleagues in the English department have done the best they can with these students—and I’m lucky enough to reap the rewards of their previous work by stepping in as a native speaker to teach them. The students don’t know it yet, but I have got so many things lined up for them and I have some high hopes about what we can all achieve in working together.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
New Years
We arrived back in Albania in the middle of a warm spell. On New Year's Day, the temperatures were up to 70 degrees. In Bulgaria, my friend Nik told us that we had arrived during a warm spell as well and that the week before it had been in the minuses.
Overall, we were very lucky with the weather on our trip through Macedonia and Bulgaria. There were other problems, however, but nothing that we couldn't handle. I’m going to post individual entries for each day of our trip along with photos. My friend Kristine and I went, and you can read more about our trip from her perspective over at her blog.
I didn’t buy anything of significance for myself on the trip except a nice fountain pen and a ton of spices at a "real" supermarket. For my family, I bought peanut butter, soap, coffee and chocolates. They really enjoyed their gifts and I was the first out of the three volunteers that have stayed with them to bring something back. Again, courtesy and consideration are things that my parents have taught me and that I’m glad to have learned. I didn’t have much money to spend but my host sister told me that wasn’t at all the point… it was just the thought.
I got back to my site just in time for New Years, lucky for me. My host dad personally selected meat from an animal slaughter that he witnessed. Our New Year's Eve dinner started with a traditional mixed plate of egg, tomato, cucumber, salami and salce kosi, a yogurt sauce with a very strong garlic taste. After that, we had a beef roulade filled with diced carrots and potatoes. Then beef steak, but not the kind Americans are used to. This steak is thin, pan-fried, seasoned with pepper, oregano, garlic and salt and with little marbling. So it's a little chewier but still very good. We had a turkey stuffed with vegetables and walnuts that my host mom killed. My dad served me a huge piece of breast meat and I was content. To finish, the famed baklava.
We sat around watching special editions of television shows. Tired from my travels, I went to bed around 11:00 but asked them to wake me up in an hour. Even if they hadn't come to get me, there's no possible way I could have slept through all the insanity that was about to come. Watching from my balcony, I was overwhelmed by an amount of fireworks that I had never, ever seen before in my life. Maybe that's because everything would have been illegal back home. A full moon wasn’t the only thing that lit up the sky as literally hundreds of fireworks went off in every direction. Pretty ones, incredibly loud ones... a whole cornucopia. And when it was all over, the smoke enveloped our little village and just laid there.
The next two days were spent visiting and receiving guests, as well as continuing to stuff ourselves with food. What a nice welcoming back home after my trip.
Overall, we were very lucky with the weather on our trip through Macedonia and Bulgaria. There were other problems, however, but nothing that we couldn't handle. I’m going to post individual entries for each day of our trip along with photos. My friend Kristine and I went, and you can read more about our trip from her perspective over at her blog.
I didn’t buy anything of significance for myself on the trip except a nice fountain pen and a ton of spices at a "real" supermarket. For my family, I bought peanut butter, soap, coffee and chocolates. They really enjoyed their gifts and I was the first out of the three volunteers that have stayed with them to bring something back. Again, courtesy and consideration are things that my parents have taught me and that I’m glad to have learned. I didn’t have much money to spend but my host sister told me that wasn’t at all the point… it was just the thought.
I got back to my site just in time for New Years, lucky for me. My host dad personally selected meat from an animal slaughter that he witnessed. Our New Year's Eve dinner started with a traditional mixed plate of egg, tomato, cucumber, salami and salce kosi, a yogurt sauce with a very strong garlic taste. After that, we had a beef roulade filled with diced carrots and potatoes. Then beef steak, but not the kind Americans are used to. This steak is thin, pan-fried, seasoned with pepper, oregano, garlic and salt and with little marbling. So it's a little chewier but still very good. We had a turkey stuffed with vegetables and walnuts that my host mom killed. My dad served me a huge piece of breast meat and I was content. To finish, the famed baklava.
We sat around watching special editions of television shows. Tired from my travels, I went to bed around 11:00 but asked them to wake me up in an hour. Even if they hadn't come to get me, there's no possible way I could have slept through all the insanity that was about to come. Watching from my balcony, I was overwhelmed by an amount of fireworks that I had never, ever seen before in my life. Maybe that's because everything would have been illegal back home. A full moon wasn’t the only thing that lit up the sky as literally hundreds of fireworks went off in every direction. Pretty ones, incredibly loud ones... a whole cornucopia. And when it was all over, the smoke enveloped our little village and just laid there.
The next two days were spent visiting and receiving guests, as well as continuing to stuff ourselves with food. What a nice welcoming back home after my trip.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Sports Predictions Made Easy / NHL 09-10 so far
I’m always frustrated at the lack of creativity when it comes to how annual yearbooks predict potential champions. I’m fairly certain they just use this formula, in three easy steps*:
1. Look up the finalists from last season
2. Say they will meet again*
3. Say the team that won last season will repeat.
*If you are The Sporting News, pick the most tired option in assuming that San Jose will make it to the Western Conference finals even though they’ve been at the top of the league or lead it in points but can’t manage to string any playoff wins together. Of course the Penguins could very well win again, but many predicted Detroit to repeat last year… so you see where this is headed.
We’re already to the Christmas break in the NHL and the Olympics are just around the corner. It kills me to think that I won’t get to see much of them, but I’m secretly hoping to download some of the games afterwards. Although it’s hard to really gauge since I can only follow from box scores, standings and statistics, but I feel like this has been one of the oddest years in recent history.
First, we have to talk about my team. With a huge trade to bring in this year’s predicted “missing piece,” it’s apparent that it will take more than Chris Pronger to take the Flyers anywhere. Losing Knuble and Lupul have certainly hurt. As time passes by, it appears that Simon Gagne is no longer a durable player. Spending so much has left little room for goaltending and the Flyers might really be sunk with Ray Emery on the shelf. Rumors had Jaroslav Halak being offered on a deal, which means that maybe his agent can make Tweets about Ray Emery too in the near future. In my opinion, the Flyers should have thought about Halak and Pavelec last year when the price would have been cheaper both for trading and signing. But it doesn’t matter how good a goalie is if there is little being done offensively, which has certainly been the case. The good news is that, just like when I missed the season in 2006 when I was in Germany, if I’m not there to see them fail, it’s like it doesn’t happen. Call it “distance-induced sports denial,” if you will.
That the Wings have been bringing up the rear is surprising. But that’s not the only eye-popper about the Western Conference standings. The Kings? The Coyotes? Believe me when I say I couldn’t be more surprised or happier about that. Phoenix is not the hockey town it was in its early days when the franchise had a lot of early success. Given the financial situation with home values in Phoenix and the recent failure of the team, it’s not surprising that the situation has become so dire. But on ice success will hopefully help to right the wrongs of poorly thought out overexpansion into unstable and sometimes unnecessary markets.
I continue to be amazed at the length of contracts. Hockey has become so complex during the age of the salary cap. The times were simpler when teams like the Rangers, Wings and Flyers were the highest spenders. The cap has brought an understandably huge collection of numbers with it. Cap hit? Average salary? LTIR (Mike Rathje, where are you?) The amount teams pay for players daily as worked out by their annual salary and the number of days in the season?
But with any system, teams will eventually find a way to push it as far as they can, and the answer to this problem: long, long contracts that lead to “it seemed like a good idea at the time” regrets. Consider it hockey’s idea of a 2 at 10 and a 10 at 2. I want to stab myself when I think that Danny Briere will be a Flyer for a few more years, but at the time it was a necessary signing given the team’s then-status as worst in the league. But you have to wonder how signing players until their late thirties to contracts into what’s increasingly become a young man’s game will do. To that extent, it will be a brave new long-term contract world in about five years or so. The length and amount of contracts also limits the mobility of a player. If you sign someone to a long-term deal and they start underperforming in year two, there is no painless solution to this problem.
For teams like Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington, these deals are necessary because they overwhelmingly involve young players. Lest we forget, they are commodities in addition to being human beings. Their commitment to stay with the team means all kinds of profits: aside from the most obvious in ticket sales, merchandising accounts for a lot of money. Emerging teams stand to gain so much from locking up young players, even though it’s not without risk. Alex Ovechkin, at 24, has already missed a few games to injury so far this season. The thing that fans love about him might be what plagues him in the later years of his huge deal: his style of play. What happens when you sign young players and they either fizzle or become plagued with injury? In the game of long contracts, I’d still say it’s best to roll the dice on young players instead of signing veterans already on the downturn of their careers.
1. Look up the finalists from last season
2. Say they will meet again*
3. Say the team that won last season will repeat.
*If you are The Sporting News, pick the most tired option in assuming that San Jose will make it to the Western Conference finals even though they’ve been at the top of the league or lead it in points but can’t manage to string any playoff wins together. Of course the Penguins could very well win again, but many predicted Detroit to repeat last year… so you see where this is headed.
We’re already to the Christmas break in the NHL and the Olympics are just around the corner. It kills me to think that I won’t get to see much of them, but I’m secretly hoping to download some of the games afterwards. Although it’s hard to really gauge since I can only follow from box scores, standings and statistics, but I feel like this has been one of the oddest years in recent history.
First, we have to talk about my team. With a huge trade to bring in this year’s predicted “missing piece,” it’s apparent that it will take more than Chris Pronger to take the Flyers anywhere. Losing Knuble and Lupul have certainly hurt. As time passes by, it appears that Simon Gagne is no longer a durable player. Spending so much has left little room for goaltending and the Flyers might really be sunk with Ray Emery on the shelf. Rumors had Jaroslav Halak being offered on a deal, which means that maybe his agent can make Tweets about Ray Emery too in the near future. In my opinion, the Flyers should have thought about Halak and Pavelec last year when the price would have been cheaper both for trading and signing. But it doesn’t matter how good a goalie is if there is little being done offensively, which has certainly been the case. The good news is that, just like when I missed the season in 2006 when I was in Germany, if I’m not there to see them fail, it’s like it doesn’t happen. Call it “distance-induced sports denial,” if you will.
That the Wings have been bringing up the rear is surprising. But that’s not the only eye-popper about the Western Conference standings. The Kings? The Coyotes? Believe me when I say I couldn’t be more surprised or happier about that. Phoenix is not the hockey town it was in its early days when the franchise had a lot of early success. Given the financial situation with home values in Phoenix and the recent failure of the team, it’s not surprising that the situation has become so dire. But on ice success will hopefully help to right the wrongs of poorly thought out overexpansion into unstable and sometimes unnecessary markets.
I continue to be amazed at the length of contracts. Hockey has become so complex during the age of the salary cap. The times were simpler when teams like the Rangers, Wings and Flyers were the highest spenders. The cap has brought an understandably huge collection of numbers with it. Cap hit? Average salary? LTIR (Mike Rathje, where are you?) The amount teams pay for players daily as worked out by their annual salary and the number of days in the season?
But with any system, teams will eventually find a way to push it as far as they can, and the answer to this problem: long, long contracts that lead to “it seemed like a good idea at the time” regrets. Consider it hockey’s idea of a 2 at 10 and a 10 at 2. I want to stab myself when I think that Danny Briere will be a Flyer for a few more years, but at the time it was a necessary signing given the team’s then-status as worst in the league. But you have to wonder how signing players until their late thirties to contracts into what’s increasingly become a young man’s game will do. To that extent, it will be a brave new long-term contract world in about five years or so. The length and amount of contracts also limits the mobility of a player. If you sign someone to a long-term deal and they start underperforming in year two, there is no painless solution to this problem.
For teams like Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington, these deals are necessary because they overwhelmingly involve young players. Lest we forget, they are commodities in addition to being human beings. Their commitment to stay with the team means all kinds of profits: aside from the most obvious in ticket sales, merchandising accounts for a lot of money. Emerging teams stand to gain so much from locking up young players, even though it’s not without risk. Alex Ovechkin, at 24, has already missed a few games to injury so far this season. The thing that fans love about him might be what plagues him in the later years of his huge deal: his style of play. What happens when you sign young players and they either fizzle or become plagued with injury? In the game of long contracts, I’d still say it’s best to roll the dice on young players instead of signing veterans already on the downturn of their careers.
The Shadow of the Wind
A few months ago, the latest addition to the Priscilla Obeada honorary bookshelf arrived. In the package: The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano (his book 2666 is already circulating the ranks of PC Albania and is now on its fifth volunteer even though it comes in at 1,000 pages and is really three books); Austerlitz by Sebald and finally, The Shadow of the Wind by Zafon.
I first read about Zafon by chance while browsing the NYT’s online literary section. Another volunteer who has crazily similar literature tastes as me, Raino, asked me later that week if I had read it. Once the book arrived and I started it, I couldn’t put it down.
A lot of comparisons between Zafon and Borges have been made. The elaborate and winding plot and biblio-theme are really the only Borgesian elements. Zafon’s book, as Stephen King describes it, is “full of cheesy splendor.” I’m certain that any comparisons can’t possibly be made to the quality of the writing.
Set amongst the backdrop of Franco’s Spain, the overall mood of the book is gloom and darkness. Barcelona is frequently covered in rain and fog. Nature creates the mood and Zafon uses it often. At the center of the novel is a mysterious library of lost books: books that have perhaps only one existing copy left in the world and are guarded from complete extinction. One day a father takes his son, Daniel, to this near-sacred place and allows him to pick his own book to read, love and protect. This singular moment starts of a series of events that stretches into the past and affects the future while bringing countless mysterious people into Daniel’s life as he searches for more information about the author. Who wrote this book? Why have other works by the author been destroyed by a masked man? And why is that same man now following Daniel? Zafon takes his time to tie and untie this knot of a mystery, which is the strongest point of the book: its elaborate and challenging plot is capped off with a flurry of events that finally puts all the puzzle pieces into place.
While he’s certainly no Borges, Zafon certainly creates the character depth and element of mystery that is required to sustain reader interest for the almost five hundred pages of the book. A prequel, The Angel’s Game is now available and I hope to read it soon.
Some of my favorite quotes:
“Those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.”
“…the eternal stupidity of loving those who hurt us the most.”
“It’s funny how we judge other and don’t realize the extent of our disdain until they are no longer there, until they are taken from us. They are taken from us because they’ve never been ours.”
“Memories are worse than bullets.”
“Most of us have the good fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”
I first read about Zafon by chance while browsing the NYT’s online literary section. Another volunteer who has crazily similar literature tastes as me, Raino, asked me later that week if I had read it. Once the book arrived and I started it, I couldn’t put it down.
A lot of comparisons between Zafon and Borges have been made. The elaborate and winding plot and biblio-theme are really the only Borgesian elements. Zafon’s book, as Stephen King describes it, is “full of cheesy splendor.” I’m certain that any comparisons can’t possibly be made to the quality of the writing.
Set amongst the backdrop of Franco’s Spain, the overall mood of the book is gloom and darkness. Barcelona is frequently covered in rain and fog. Nature creates the mood and Zafon uses it often. At the center of the novel is a mysterious library of lost books: books that have perhaps only one existing copy left in the world and are guarded from complete extinction. One day a father takes his son, Daniel, to this near-sacred place and allows him to pick his own book to read, love and protect. This singular moment starts of a series of events that stretches into the past and affects the future while bringing countless mysterious people into Daniel’s life as he searches for more information about the author. Who wrote this book? Why have other works by the author been destroyed by a masked man? And why is that same man now following Daniel? Zafon takes his time to tie and untie this knot of a mystery, which is the strongest point of the book: its elaborate and challenging plot is capped off with a flurry of events that finally puts all the puzzle pieces into place.
While he’s certainly no Borges, Zafon certainly creates the character depth and element of mystery that is required to sustain reader interest for the almost five hundred pages of the book. A prequel, The Angel’s Game is now available and I hope to read it soon.
Some of my favorite quotes:
“Those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.”
“…the eternal stupidity of loving those who hurt us the most.”
“It’s funny how we judge other and don’t realize the extent of our disdain until they are no longer there, until they are taken from us. They are taken from us because they’ve never been ours.”
“Memories are worse than bullets.”
“Most of us have the good fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”
Here you will find many treasures
- Hearing Albanian rap music that is trying very hard to be American and is even laced with English-language profanity on a furgon
- A student having a USB drive called, “Gangsta XXX” (I blame that on American culture being omnipresent on TV and music around the world)
- The healing powers of being able to shop at EuroMax, a chain grocery store that has a huge selection of Western amenities. They are even decorated for Christmas just as intensely as American groceries stores are now
- If I haven’t mentioned it before, Albanians gently shake their heads from side to side to agree with you; if the answer to a question is “no,” they will usually make a clucking sound
- Seeing a scorpion inside a house
- Using bay leaves not only to cook with but also to make tea (it’s delicious)
- Home remedies: Albanians telling us to eat dairy products if our stomachs are upset; telling us our stomachs hurt because our feet aren’t being kept warm enough; and telling us not to drink cold water because it will hurt our tonsils
- The actual monetary system versus the colloquial monetary system: frequently in spoken Albanian, someone will say something costs 4,000Lek. What they really mean, however, is that something costs 400Lek, or a little over $4 instead of $40. “Old Lek” and “New Lek,” as they are called, have been causes for a lot of confusion no matter how long we’ve been here. You go to a store and see a price tag for 20Lek, but when you give it to the cashier, he will tell you to pay 200Lek, even though what he really means is the sticker price of 20Lek.
- In Albanian, a vacuum is called a “fshese me korent,” or a “broom with electric.” I’m still deciding whether or not I like that better than the German “Staubsauger,” which means “dust sucker.”
- A student having a USB drive called, “Gangsta XXX” (I blame that on American culture being omnipresent on TV and music around the world)
- The healing powers of being able to shop at EuroMax, a chain grocery store that has a huge selection of Western amenities. They are even decorated for Christmas just as intensely as American groceries stores are now
- If I haven’t mentioned it before, Albanians gently shake their heads from side to side to agree with you; if the answer to a question is “no,” they will usually make a clucking sound
- Seeing a scorpion inside a house
- Using bay leaves not only to cook with but also to make tea (it’s delicious)
- Home remedies: Albanians telling us to eat dairy products if our stomachs are upset; telling us our stomachs hurt because our feet aren’t being kept warm enough; and telling us not to drink cold water because it will hurt our tonsils
- The actual monetary system versus the colloquial monetary system: frequently in spoken Albanian, someone will say something costs 4,000Lek. What they really mean, however, is that something costs 400Lek, or a little over $4 instead of $40. “Old Lek” and “New Lek,” as they are called, have been causes for a lot of confusion no matter how long we’ve been here. You go to a store and see a price tag for 20Lek, but when you give it to the cashier, he will tell you to pay 200Lek, even though what he really means is the sticker price of 20Lek.
- In Albanian, a vacuum is called a “fshese me korent,” or a “broom with electric.” I’m still deciding whether or not I like that better than the German “Staubsauger,” which means “dust sucker.”
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