NFL Fantasy and the availability heuristic

I’d heard A. rave about the NFL Fantasy over the last few years, so I thought I’d give it a shot this year. I nearly missed the start, but one Sunday afternoon I read somewhere that the first game of the season had happened on Thursday. I checked the website – there was about an…

Skiing season 2008/9

In the attempt to get things here up-to-date, here’s a quick look at the winter season 2008/9. Nothing much happened, except work and skiing week-ends. I re-visited some places I’d been before, and tried out some new ones. In short chronological order: I ended 2008 with a trip to Zermatt, to see the Matterhorn, a…

Summer night wakeup call

Euro2008 is over for the Romanian soccer team. After a brilliantly executed tactical (albeit sinfully boring) goalless draw against world championship runner-up France and a sensational 1-1 against world champion Italy, after one of the most thrilling games in the competition, they lamentably failed to beat a relaxed Dutch squad to qualify to the quarterfinals.…

EuRoMania

Euro2008 (soccer, for the ones who don’t know on what world they live in :P) is in full swing this month. Romania has survived a hard-fought game against World Champion runners-up France, 0-0. For a neutral person, quite a boring game, but from an “involved” perspective it was amazing, especially for the ones in the…

snowboarding

finally i realized what snowboarding is approximately about. i thought i knew from the first day, but i was wrong. in the first days all i did was brrrreak, turn, brrrreak, or slide laterally out of control, brrreak, turn, brrreak. this weekend i went with L&C to Flims, for half a day. it is unbelievable…

Big boxing night

Last night, the Romanian Lucian Bute, IBF world champion boxing for Interbox in Canada, had to defend his world title against a former world champion, William Joppy. Here is Joppy’s preview of the fight and here is the outcome

snowboarding

i finally tried it this week-end, after much postponing. it is, like a friend told me, “inspiring”. i recommend: 1) read this tutorial 2) reserve a lesson with an instructor 3) go 2 hours or so BEFORE the lesson, pick a (VERY) small hill and get used to the board, doing the exercises in the…

Dijon

Dijon’s great touristic attraction for me on Sunday was the game between Romania and Hungary, at the women’s handball world cup. So I drove the 3 hours to the place, managed to get the ticket i had reserved via the internet (collection centers were all closed.. sundays.. so i got it finally from the sports…

first ski trip of the season

i had a day. what to do with it? it snowed earlier this week, so i thought to check out a ski resort close to “base”. there was one at ~90km which sounded vaguely known, so i went there. it was closed, though, however apparently there was one open closeby. so i ended up in…

romanian football 2 – this is how we do it

another shockingly refreshing surprise during the game i watched last night (on the internet). again, it was steaua bucharest, and again on the receiving end. this time, at the delivering end senegal’s gueye mansour from F.C. Politehnica 1921 Timisoara.

romanian football

here’s the context: Steaua Bucharest, the best romanian team all-time, played against Universitatea Cluj, somewhere in Transylvania, a team ranked LAST, without a victory. Steaua was leading 1-0, when this happened: At the end “U” Cluj won 2-1.This is why some people like football.

euro2008!!

and last but not least, due to a win in Luxemburg and Albania tying Bulgaria (respect Tirana!), Romania qualified to the Football Euro 2008 championships! Yipeee!!

euro2008

important game today, romania-netherlands 1:0 in the euro 2008 qualifying. with this important and surprising result romania is, amazingly, almost qualified! am keeping fingers crossed for the last 3 games. more about boston later. takes a bit of time to let things sink in. for now just to mention how awesome it was to meet…

UEFA

On the way back from zurich to the village on the other side of Confederatio Helvetica where I am still located for this project, I stopped briefly in Fribourg, a nice old town in shades of grey, with an impressive cathedral (like most towns here). Pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/explorish/fribourg. i live close to Lausanne, but i…

piste du diable

Sunday, March 25, 2007, 23:45 Taking advantage of the big sales going on, and inspired by the late winter, I bought meself ski equipment on Saturday. Skis and boots and everything. Doing that (plus a haircut) took a while, coz the cheapest skis were sinfully ugly, not even cool-ugly, just plain ugly, not pleasant to…

cars & ski

Those were highlights of this week-end. Yesterday, the Geneva autoshow – HUGE, many cars, crowded.. was ok, nothing mindboggling, maybe car-fans would have had more of a “mekka” feeling, for me it was just interesting. Was more excited today, went for half-a-day skiing in Verbier. Uh, skis you don’t see you forget. After the first…