After such a tough loss, I always feel horrible. The feeling doesn’t go away until the next game and there’s a W. Otherwise, the feeling just gets even worse. Thankfully the game is tomorrow, so it doesn’t have time to really sink in and make me really mad. Nonetheless, you really have to credit the other team. They played out of their minds last night, and they only won by 4. Kobe was not very clutch at the end of the game, and our defense was incredibly spotty. Funny thing was, Kobe was playing fairly well in the first quarter, then something happened in the second, and his shots weren’t going in. The trend continued well until the end of the game. It was very upsetting. Plus, Lamar and Andrew did not show up. Pau had brain farts all over the place. For such tall, skilled players, that sort of performance is not acceptable in any way at all.
Yesterday, I was really nervous about finally starting lab work. I was scared that the Masters’ students would be a bit scary, and that the Summer Bridge students would be fantastic and I would look like an idiot. I was pleasantly surprised. The Bridge students were very nice, although two of them seemed rather bored, and just wanted to get out of there, as they were checking their cell phones rather frequently. The other one seemed more interested, and from what I saw, didn’t check his cell phone, thankfully. The other undergrad, Emily, seemed really nice and sweet. I think she’s a lot younger than I am, maybe a sophomore? Not sure. The Master student teaching us seemed really nice and a bit dorky, reminded me of a girl I knew in high school- a bit homely looking, a bit of a geek, but really nice. The process of making things wasn’t that difficult. Nonetheless, there’s a weird feeling about how there’s not a whole lot of supervision. Pretty much, the Master’s student is the one you look to for stuff. I’m coming by again on Thursday, and I’m pretty excited. I’ve gotten over the first sort of initial anxiety, and I’m really willing to learn more. I’ve already signed a form to get a key to the building, so I feel pretty legit right now. I just hope that the Masters’ student teaches me how to do things in time for the Lakers game. Wow do I have my priorities in order.
On an unrelated note, I was listening this morning on ESPN radio. I didn’t really feel like listening to music, and I like to hear what other people think about the Lakers. I sometimes listen to the station the games are broadcast on, but they were talking about baseball, and frankly, I don’t care. The announcer guy, I dunno who he was, but had a kind of annoying voice, was talking about ratings of the NBA versus the NHL. It’s pretty obvious, in America, football reigns supreme, with baseball as a very close second. To me though, I was always a really big fan of basketball, and football’s ok, and baseball’s boring. I never really thought much about hockey at all. I always put it in the same category as soccer and rugby. Fun, but not very popular in America. I figured hockey was really popular in cold places, like Canada and Russia, where ice is everywhere, though with global warming, who knows. Similarly with soccer and rugby, sure in England and pretty much everywhere else in the world where futbol reigns supreme. To me, it just is really dumb to even compare basketball versus hockey. Of course basketball gets more ratings! So when the radio guy said that the NBA gets about 4x the amount of viewers the NHL does, it didn’t surprise me at all. But it’s interesting, when I consider that both sports are in their championship phase. The NHL has the Stanley Cup going on right now, and it’s game 6, so it has to be a pretty big deal, especially with the series going that far. The NBA has the Finals going on right now, but it’s only game 3, with the home team in a must-win situation. One guy called in and said that looking at ratings for the NHL wasn’t accurate at all, as the game is only exciting when you’re at the game. That may be true, but the sport gets LOTS of money from TV. If it’s not exciting on TV, then what?
I do have lots to say about the basketball issue, but I feel rather uninspired to talk about it at length. My broski is graduating from high school today, so congratulations to everyone in the Class of ’09!
Cheers!
