For more about me, please read this.
With a broken elbow, I find typing is a tiring task. Therefore, I will be on hiatus for about a month. Hopefully less.
In the mean time, I will try to find a few guest writers to keep this site running. Interested individual should leave a note here or e-mail me at mnoorsha[at]umich[dot]edu.
Until then, ciao.
p/s – Interestingly, even the Canadian and the French use ‘ciao’. I thought the expression was exclusively an Asian phenomena.
AFC Ajax Amsterdam 2 – 0 Club Brugge KV.
A job well done Ajax, a job well done. Hail to Sonck for scoring both goals. Kudos to Ibrahimovic for being the architect of the attacks. This resulted in Ajax securing the second spot, just below AC Milan who was held to a scoreless draw to Celta Vigo.
And, ehem…
Stuttgart 2 – 1 Manchester United. Two German goals in two minutes!
Other results:
Chelsea 0 – 2 Besiktas
FC Porto 1 – 3 Real Madrid
Lazio 2 – 2 Sparta Prague
Marseille 3 – 0 Partizan Belgrade
Panathinaikos 1 – 1 Rangers
Ajax striker Sonck’s double sinks Bruges
AMSTERDAM, Oct 1 (Reuters) – Wesley Sonck struck once in each half against his compatriots Club Bruges to give Ajax a 2-0 win in their Champions League Group H match on Wednesday.
The Belgium striker opened the scoring after 11 minutes when he received the ball just onside from Tomas Galasek and left Bruges goalkeeper Tomislav Butina with no chance.
Sonck doubled the lead nine minutes after the break when he picked up a defence-splitting cross from Wesley Sneijder in what looked like an offside position and again left Butina with no chance of making a save.
Ajax are second in the group with three points, one less than AC Milan, who drew 0-0 away to Celta Vigo in Spain.
Bruges almost equalised four minutes after the opening goal when Bengt Saeternes intercepted a sloppy pass from Petri Pasanen, but after he got past keeper Bogdan Lobont, French defender Julien Escude cleared his attempt off the line.
The Belgian Champions were missing two suspended and several injured players and were seldom able to threaten last season’s quarter-finalists seriously.
Ajax clean up with 2-0 win over Bruges
October 1, 2003
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AFP) – Ajax made up for their disappointing start to their Champions League campaign with a 2-0 win over close neighbours FC Bruges, both goals coming courtesy of Belgian Wesley Sonck.
In what was billed as a Champions League derby, Sonck claimed his first goal of the match in the 11th minute, and on the back of a spell of Ajax domination which almost saw them ahead as early as the fourth minute.
Shots by both Sonck and teammate Zlatan Ibrahimovic in the sixth minute gave keeper Tomislav Butina some early work – and an indication of what was to follow.
Ajax coninued to dominate and Ibrahimovic was again involved ahead of Sonck’s opener, the Swede picking up a solid pass from Czech midfielder Tomas Galasek before backheeling it through the Belgian defence to find Sonck, who rolled the ball past Butina.
Bruges reacted quickly however and were unlucky not to level after Bengt Saeternes found himself in alone on Ajax keeper Bogdan Lobont. Saeternes’ shot was goalbound until it was cleared off the line by Julien Escude.
That was one of the rare Bruges occasions in the first half however as Ronald Koeman’s side reasserted control and kept the pressure on Butina with shots from Tom Soetaers in the 26th minute and Hatem Trabelsi shortly before the interval.
Bruges came out fired up for the second half and midfielder Ivan Gvozdenovic could only watch as his shot, following a corner that was glanced on by an Ajax boot, was collected by Lobont.
The visitors’ bid to claim at least a point from the Amsterdam ArenA however was brought to an end moments later when Sonck claimed his second of the match.
Ajax midfielder Wesley Sneijder found Sonck in plenty of space behind the Bruges defence, with the Belgian given time to advance and send a left-footed shot past Butina.
Having gone down 1-0 to AC Milan last week, Koeman will be happier with a result that leaves his former Dutch masters second in group H, with Milan aclaiming just a point from their scoreless draw at Celta Vigo.
For the first time in my life, I was given a full dose of barbiturate and morphine within a time frame of 10 minutes. It felt so good. Later, I was given another 5 mg of hydrocodone bitartrate and 500 mg of acetaminophen as pain killers. It’s a strong morphine and it is *so* going to help me sleep.
To add to that, my doctor was really pretty. She is an angel in a doctor’s white coat. It’s so funny that even when my lungs were receiving aid from a breathing apparatus (not to forget, facing 1% chance of death due to a very strong morphine dose according to a paper that I signed before my operation), I had a crush on an angel.
Looking forward for my physiotherapy treatment next week. =)
A tribute to Sierra’s Homeworld and Homeworld 2. 1999 Best Game of the Year and hopefully, it will be the 2003 Best Game of the Year. Competition will be stiff with the upcoming release of Sierra’s Half-Life 2. Despite their success, Sierra should seriously reconsider their marketing strategyNothing can take us far enough
– Homeworld, end credits.
p/s – This is so cool.
While I was on the way back to Ann Arbor from a hockey match at Michigan State University in Lansing, Aaron asked my opinion on globalization. I said to her that I generally believe globalization is good but the only thing that is making it not work are the restrictions forced on trade. Taxes, tariffs, subsidies etc. are preventing globalization.
Though the restrictions are bad, I went on further and told Aaron, Louisa and Amy that I understand why there are restrictions to trade. Smaller economies, I used Malaysia as an example find it very hard to compete with the US and Europe on the global scale. Malaysia needs and wants to protect its local industries. When a small tiger spars against a fully grown lion, certainly the cub is nothing but a dead meat. The only way to help the cub is to protect it and only let the fight happens after the cub has grown into a mighty tiger.
As I continued to vomit my thoughts, I said though restrictions done by the developing countries are acceptable due to the analogy, the restrictions imposed by the developed nations are a bit unfair. If the US and the EU really want globalization, they should be fair to the developing countries, in particular the Asian tigers and the Latins, by abolishing the subsidies and tariffs that are enforced on industries and imports. While eliminating these restrictions, the US and EU shouldn’t expect the developing countries to do the same thing at the same time. The developing countries should be given extra time to adapt to free trade and let their local industries to gain sufficient capital to compete internationally. Until the developing countries have done that, globalization will never work the way it should have been.
And before the conversation topic moved on to the upcoming Aaron’s Rosh Hashanah celebration, I said both parties on each side of the fence, the advocates and the oppositions both have valid points and both are right. To decide which are you, you only need to see where you are. If you are rich, you possibly would be the advocates; if you are otherwise, most likely you will oppose it.
I said that in the Mercedes drove by Louisa with Aaron seemingly to agree. Amy was quietly thinking about it and the GPS kept on its mission to annoy us. Though I managed to convince them, the idea that I threw out had begun to hunt me down while I was trying to get some sleep after doing my statistics homework on correlation and regression later that night.
On the comfy bed, my mind raced to find a better way to explain why some people think globalization is bad and why I believe in a world without border. Thus, I tarried with a pillow under my head and a blanket covering my body for almost two hours. As the precious sleeping time slipped from my clumsy fingers, my thought brought fruit.
If I could rewind the time and be with those three girls of whom I am growing fond of, I would say globalization is like standing in the middle of the Diag during a warm day, naked with the surrounding strangers staring at you. (My apology to all non-Michigan readers. The Diag a huge students’ square with green grasses and trees around it. During a warm day, no doubt it is the densest place in the town of Ann Arbor.)
How do you feel?
The feeling certainly would be insecurity because there is nobody to help you out. There is nobody for you to call out for help. You are alone, naked.
Similarly, globalization describes the same thing, only that you are possibly wearing a tie with a black coat on. Similarly, it’s like a typical graduating undergraduate. After three, four or five years of college, finally you are facing the real world and you have no idea what you want or have to do. All you see is the sheer magnitude of reality bites. All you see is an omnipresent fierce competition to gain the ultimate objective of this world – money and power.
Nobody is saying hi, nobody is saying howdy; everybody is minding their own business.
But, between freedom and dependency, which would you choose?
I do not know about you but I prefer to be independent, free of all things, dependent on nobody. Therefore, I to a certain degree believe in globalization.
As a note, being a green certainly does not contradict with this belief. Damage to the environment is done by the irresponsible industrialists, not by globalization itself.
And oh, the Wolverines lost to the Spartan 4 – 1 and I think I was responsible for the first two goals scored passed Amy. I’d stopped the ball but the ball somehow went to a Spartan player. I stood there like a statue, not amused by my own mistake. Sigh…
The second goal happened simply because I was out of position but I guess I could shift the blame to Aaron since she was the one that asked me to support her. =)