Random assorted variousness
• Stanford's women's basketball team made it to their fifth straight Final Four, and Stanford's men's team is in the NIT final. I would trade both of those for even one more Michigan State win, but hey, Go Cardinal! And luckily I won't have easy access to the women's games this year, so I won't be tempted to watch Stanford and then do my annual "Oh no, I'm never watching this again" swearing-off of women's basketball.
• I'd like to see the NIT final though. The last time Stanford won the NIT was in my sophomore year. The next year they made it back to the NCAA Tournament, then after a brutal season my senior year and an NIT first-round loss in my fifth year, they started an unprecedented (for Stanford) 11-year run of NCAA Tournament appearances - most of them ending in the second round, but with an amazing Final Four run in 1998 and two other 30-win seasons. Truly the golden age of Stanford basketball. It hasn't been the same since Mike Montgomery left*, but maybe this year's NIT is a sign that Johnny Dawkins has the program turned around. Most of our players are freshmen and sophomores. It would be great to have both of my favorite college basketball teams be relevant again.
* Mike Montgomery - that guy was freakin' awesome. I know we all love Tom Izzo and he's had phenomenal on-court success with a 99% clean and scandal/embarrassment-free program, but let's see how Izzo would do if he also was limited to recruiting players with 3.5 GPAs and 1200 SAT scores (or whatever the equivalent is in the new system). He'd still be a great coach, of course, but I'm pretty sure there'd be fewer banners hanging at the Breslin.
• I'm in Saigon for one more day (Wednesday) because the office is having professional pictures taken and they wanted me included. I will have to borrow a jacket and a tie from someone, because naturally I don't travel with such things (and don't even have a suit or jacket in Vietnam). Then I'll take a taxi to the airport right after work.
• That means I did not ride my motorbike to work this morning. Instead, I took a "xe ôm" (motorbike taxi). There is usually a xe ôm hanging out right in front of our gate. He lives next-door and I think driving is his profession.* He wasn't there this morning, but there were two women and a man sitting in plastic chairs drinking coffee. They asked if I could wait a few minutes for the driver to come back, but then the women just volunteered (forced) the other guy to drive for me. I'm pretty sure he was not a xe ôm driver, but just a guy with a motorbike who had stopped for coffee. (Evidence: He only had one helmet, so I had to grab mine from home. Also he smelled clean.) But he agreed to take me with little protest, made $2, and (I hope!) returned my helmet to our house. Sorry for interrupting your morning coffee, guy!
* Funny story about this guy, I've probably told it here before: I don't usually take xe ôms because I have my own motorbike and Cousin TA is usually willing to pick me up/drop me off at the airport or the bus station. So I only take a xe ôm when Cousin TA isn't available, and I usually go with this driver because, like I said, he's right in front of our house. One time, maybe in 2008, I was heading to the airport to fly somewhere. Cousin TA was tied up at work and it was getting perilously close to the time when they don't let you get on the airplane, so I had to leave. I agreed on a fare with this driver, he got his bike out, mounted it, waited a few seconds, and then TOOK OFF. Before I had even gotten on. My aunt and I were a bit dumbfounded. Was he going to get gas? Did he have to run an errand first? It soon dawned on us: "I don't think he's coming back." By this time I was in a big hurry and couldn't wait for him any longer, so we had to roust up another driver from farther down the alley. I guess what happened is he THOUGHT for some reason that I had got on the bike, but never turned around to check. I don't know how far he made it before he realized he didn't have a passenger.
• Hard to believe it's already baseball season. There's a real live, yes-it-counts game in Japan this evening (Vietnam time) between the Mariners and the A's, though the season doesn't start in earnest for another week. I'm debating spending the $100+ for MLB streaming video. It's not that much money over an entire season, and I really would like to watch the Tigers, but I should probably think about the logistics, and how many games I would actually watch. Most of their games will start at 6 a.m. here and will finish after 9 a.m., so I guess I can watch a few innings before work and then covertly watch the last inning or two while I pretend to go through my morning email.
Well, that was a much longer grab-bag post than I expected to write this morning. Time to start working!
• I'd like to see the NIT final though. The last time Stanford won the NIT was in my sophomore year. The next year they made it back to the NCAA Tournament, then after a brutal season my senior year and an NIT first-round loss in my fifth year, they started an unprecedented (for Stanford) 11-year run of NCAA Tournament appearances - most of them ending in the second round, but with an amazing Final Four run in 1998 and two other 30-win seasons. Truly the golden age of Stanford basketball. It hasn't been the same since Mike Montgomery left*, but maybe this year's NIT is a sign that Johnny Dawkins has the program turned around. Most of our players are freshmen and sophomores. It would be great to have both of my favorite college basketball teams be relevant again.
* Mike Montgomery - that guy was freakin' awesome. I know we all love Tom Izzo and he's had phenomenal on-court success with a 99% clean and scandal/embarrassment-free program, but let's see how Izzo would do if he also was limited to recruiting players with 3.5 GPAs and 1200 SAT scores (or whatever the equivalent is in the new system). He'd still be a great coach, of course, but I'm pretty sure there'd be fewer banners hanging at the Breslin.
• I'm in Saigon for one more day (Wednesday) because the office is having professional pictures taken and they wanted me included. I will have to borrow a jacket and a tie from someone, because naturally I don't travel with such things (and don't even have a suit or jacket in Vietnam). Then I'll take a taxi to the airport right after work.
• That means I did not ride my motorbike to work this morning. Instead, I took a "xe ôm" (motorbike taxi). There is usually a xe ôm hanging out right in front of our gate. He lives next-door and I think driving is his profession.* He wasn't there this morning, but there were two women and a man sitting in plastic chairs drinking coffee. They asked if I could wait a few minutes for the driver to come back, but then the women just volunteered (forced) the other guy to drive for me. I'm pretty sure he was not a xe ôm driver, but just a guy with a motorbike who had stopped for coffee. (Evidence: He only had one helmet, so I had to grab mine from home. Also he smelled clean.) But he agreed to take me with little protest, made $2, and (I hope!) returned my helmet to our house. Sorry for interrupting your morning coffee, guy!
* Funny story about this guy, I've probably told it here before: I don't usually take xe ôms because I have my own motorbike and Cousin TA is usually willing to pick me up/drop me off at the airport or the bus station. So I only take a xe ôm when Cousin TA isn't available, and I usually go with this driver because, like I said, he's right in front of our house. One time, maybe in 2008, I was heading to the airport to fly somewhere. Cousin TA was tied up at work and it was getting perilously close to the time when they don't let you get on the airplane, so I had to leave. I agreed on a fare with this driver, he got his bike out, mounted it, waited a few seconds, and then TOOK OFF. Before I had even gotten on. My aunt and I were a bit dumbfounded. Was he going to get gas? Did he have to run an errand first? It soon dawned on us: "I don't think he's coming back." By this time I was in a big hurry and couldn't wait for him any longer, so we had to roust up another driver from farther down the alley. I guess what happened is he THOUGHT for some reason that I had got on the bike, but never turned around to check. I don't know how far he made it before he realized he didn't have a passenger.
• Hard to believe it's already baseball season. There's a real live, yes-it-counts game in Japan this evening (Vietnam time) between the Mariners and the A's, though the season doesn't start in earnest for another week. I'm debating spending the $100+ for MLB streaming video. It's not that much money over an entire season, and I really would like to watch the Tigers, but I should probably think about the logistics, and how many games I would actually watch. Most of their games will start at 6 a.m. here and will finish after 9 a.m., so I guess I can watch a few innings before work and then covertly watch the last inning or two while I pretend to go through my morning email.
Well, that was a much longer grab-bag post than I expected to write this morning. Time to start working!