football

The story of my life consists of an infinate, and I mean infinate collection of dispiriting moments. As a culmination of the first day of the week, I’m taking a moment to reflect on this series of unfortunate events, but first before delving into details, a definition. I would define a dispiriting moment as the following:

An exertion of as much effort as possible, and still obtaining nothing.

Sounds simple enough, at least by my standards. And what you may ask is so dispiriting, and of course it’s a fair question. When I sign up for an intramural team, in order to play a sport that I may, or may not enjoy, it’s a commitment on my part to show up on scheduled games. Having a schedule put forth at the beginning eleviates scheduling problems and no-shows.

How is it that a team can play six games, and never, not even once, have a full team to play on a footie field? I just comprehend it at all; and it’s so sad for us that we have to have people from the opposing team play for us. To further compound this, some of the people that show up have absolutely no desire, or exert no effort.

Taking a moment and thinking non-selfishly for everyone this moment. How is that fair to a team, especially when a team sport is based on team spirit and a comittment. I have no patience for people who show up and then opt out, especially when we are short players, and then some people need rest. Not everyone is athletic; totally understandable. But I can say that not only was I at every single game, rain or shine, even when someone defaulted on us, and after exerting the highest level of effort; I still get nothing out of it due to lack of team involvement.

Granted there are some decent players on the team, and I’m by no means the best, or even in the middle of the group; but I’m growing more and more dispirited in life, in general, at the age of twenty-one. How pathetic is that?

Logically you can think of it as the following: weigh the pros and cons for outcomes, and base judgement upon that. So let’s weigh the pros… exercise, team spirt, fresh air, possibility of fun. And now the cons… loosing, lack of effort, defaulting, no fun, lost work time, lost study time, general time comittment.

And thus just after halftime of our game tonight it really hit me, that why am I even doing this, or anything for that matter, when I can’t accomplish anything that I set forth of myself. I don’t set the bar too high, I don’t aim for things that are un-obtainable. And thus even still having low expectations of some things, I still can’t achieve that which I set forward to myself.

Does anyone understand how dispiriting this is? To constantly put one hundred percent effort into something and never make an achievement. It’s my tennis career in a nutshell; the investing of infinate hours, money, and time; and like everything after awhile of being discouraged from every possible angle, it’s just not worth it anymore. And that’s painful, mentally, and emotioanlly.There’s nothing “cool” or “fun” about having a cheer “gracious in defeat” when you loose 1-11, 0-8, 0-7, 1-5, 0-3, 1-5, 0-10 constantly. Granted team improves as they go, and I did as well, but no matter how much I try, in all aspects of my life it’s never quite enough.

Riddle me that; and piss off if you’re offended, because I’m sick of doing my part and having others fall short. Live my life, and if you think that you can do better than I’ve achieved (or not), then you’re completely deluded. I hope you feel just as dispirited as I do, in reading this.

So this weekend was Homecoming, and for all those who are European, Asian, African, South American, or Oceanic, that means that american “football” team plays at home and it’s a lot of spirit stuff. In other words, with the history that our football team has had, it means they loose and everyone gets drunk anyways. The upshot of all this is, that last year whilst I was in France the team actually won a few games, one of which was against St Francis Xavier University X-Men, and guess who the Mounties were playing this year for homecoming? (/rethorical question)

The long story short is that this weekend was crazy and with Homecoming, the Fall Fair, Fundraisers up the ying-yang, and Klezatory of the Performing Arts Series; I haven’t had time to do anything. On Friday night I headed down to the fall fair here in Sackville, and got harrassed by teenagers (damnit) and carnival folk in which people call “carnies” with admiration. The rides were sketchy, so I spent my money on fries and coton candy which was totally worth it. Met up there with Molly and Co., which was nice to see them all, even though they live a block away. So I walked home and did some reading and such since I had poop-loads.

Saturday came, and I knew that it would be a gong show, because of the football. Everyone was actually taking Homecoming really seriously this year because it’s the 10th Anniversary of them winning the title, so there were tons of alumni around and floating. Not to mention there were people face painted, and half naked, and with tons of loud cheering that made the game the best I’ve been to. Now, myself not understand the premise of football, nor how it works, and whilst sitting with a Canadian who had no idea what was going on, a Bahamian girl named Ayla who thought the sport was ridiculus, and a Bermudan girl who was on her mobile getting the rules explained to her so we would know what was going on. All in all, we don’t understand but the upshot (again with this saying) is that we won!!

I vowed to not graduate university before I saw the Mounties win a football game, and by golly it’s a sign. I’m graduating this year, they won homecoming, and I watched it from minute 0 to god only knows how long it lasted. I cheered them on, and heckled the other team a bit, and we were all on our feet for the final minute (which actually took like 5) cheering them on. Positive moments on the field after, were a result of me walking with the other international students around and talking with the players. A few of them actaully awknowldged my existance, and I congratulated them half-heartedly and got the impression that I was going to be harrassed sexually at the Pub later in the evening. Then I went to mean hall (wtf) and then home to get ready for the Hunton BBQ.

Barbecue was fun to be at, and I chuged down my bottle of wine before going over to 40 Union to see the, dump, compared to our house. And then I ran home, got changed (quite literally) and then ran back in order to go to the Pub. The lineup was huge, and there were lots of people that knew me (who knew I was so popular YEAH!). I talked with a guy from New Zealand who continusly claimed to have met me before (never happend) but I went along with it. I got the impression that I was being stalked, and once inside the pub, not only did I see 17 and 18 year olds galore, but my stalker… Octapus guy. It freaked me out so I froliked around before getting bodychecked and elbowed about a million times. Needless to say with my injuries I looked like I was just in a wrestling match with someone 50kg heavier.

I came home at about three, and struggled around into bed, bitter and tired from the days events. A homecoming celebration to be happy about; and I didn’t have to walk far to get home thankfully. The girls went to Aulac to get some food, but I was too tired since about ten at night, since I’m an old fogie now.

The fair is winding down, the Mounties are on a won game win-streak, and my male PMS week is rounding out. I can feel the hormones already becoming more naturalised and equally distributed. Things to look out for: don’t find yourself in my warpath, as I’ll take you down and you’ll be sorry that you even tried.

On a happier note, we lost at the footie match today about 10-0, and I had a few shots on net. I got bodyslamed by the 100kg goalkeeper, Belinda tripped me, body checked me, and sent me flying into one of those athletic flying rolls (who knew eh!), and then the British guy said “Sorry mate” to me after kicking me in the thigh. I was bitter, but it made me laugh all the same. I put so much damned effort into hustling and trying to get exercise and help the team, but we are frankly awful and nothing can help us.

1 2 3 Gracious in defeat; a bit condescending attitude proposed by Mark, but what’s to be expected from him when everything he says is condescending and rude; specifically to me. I guess since I’m not in PolySci I can’t ever be as intelligent as him, but at least I’m not socially awkward.  

So what does Osky have to do with an afernoon off and nothing to do on a Friday evening? Well go out of course. Us Strasbourgeois people decided to get together and have some sangria last night, which was clearly a good idea because I missed that awesomly fruity stuff. In any case, I showed up at 22.00 thinking that I was late, but I was the first one so I was naturally a freak.

We went to Duckies after some heated conversations about Strasbourg and such so it was awesome. It’s a lot bigger of a bar than I thought but wanna know the best part? I walked out of it without smelling like shit for the first time ever! Even though I won’t cause that’s gross, I could potentially recycle those clothing from last night. Cool eh?

Anyways, went to meal hall this morning and binged and met some people. I finally met Guri from Norway and we talked quickly as I was leaving which was nice finally but much more time is needed to really see how she’s doing. I ran into that other guy from Sweden the other night too, Chako, but I didn’t have time to talk to him so it was just small talk.

I’m avoiding Makealia in the music department, because she’s from Jönköping and therefore I won’t understand a word she’s saying. Apart from that yay go everything. Just watching Youtube videos today about the Denmark vs. Sweden UEFA Qualifying match. Ps: Heja Sverige! Denmark is sketchy with their sketchy fan attack on 02/06/2007. Sketchy, McSketch

What is there to do on a better day like this nice sunny one while watching some footie to take a nice piture of my desk!? As you can see my laptop is widescreen, large, and annoying as hell with many windows doing stupid things at any given moment. My nice little laptop bag on the left which only holds my extra ethernet / dial-up cable and some papers, and then my webcam on the right.

The light above the desk is weird, because when you turn it on it’s like that neon type so it lights up everything and hurts my eyes. Unfortunately when I came home my IKEA light was in transit, and I didn’t have any light so I had to use this one for a little bit. It was annoying but I have my lamp back so it’s okej.

On a sadder note, Sweden’s football team didn’t fair too well today as they lost to Germany in quite a lopsided match. Ever since the redcard for Lučič it was 11 vs 10, and the Germans were just better at everything. The thing that bothered me was when the red-card was given, the referee was smiling and felt proud about doing such a thing when really it wasn’t that bad of a final and it did appear as the officals were favouring Germany. Even if they were, Sweden wasn’t playing well enough to do antyhing of vast importance.

Alas, noobody now to cheer for as Sweden seems to be the only Scandinavian team to make it to the world Cup, sadly. However, there is some silver lining: we didn’t loose to England, and therefore kept our winning / non-loosing record against them near perfect and therefore we are better 😉

I will just go back to my chat and brag about England not winning against us few day ago 😉