World Cup

Okay, this is a bit of an old story, but it is just too funny to pass up. So during the world cup, I made a bunch of new friends, oh the magic of soccer. Anyway, a bunch of them were grad students at the Slavic center here at the university, which is actually a famous research center I guess. Inside the center, there is a bit of a lounge room, that has a tv. Tv=soccer during the world cup, so naturally my friends who studied at the center would invite me to watch the games.

Now due to the time difference, there were 3 time slots that the games appeared on. 8:00, 11:00 and 3:00, the evening and early morning basically. So come friday or saturday night, because we are all students and have no money, we would go to the center to watch the games. Seems like a pretty good idea doesn't it? Apparently not to some people. So we are talking about Friday and Saturday nights, from 8-1 in the morning is when we would use this room, apparently one of the Japanese grad students, did not approve of this. Now of course if we would have been partying hard, making a mess of the place, and not cleaning up it would be natural to think there is a problem. But this guy's reasoning for being upset at was, was that, some people use that room to sleep at night AT the research center, so they don't have to go home and can continue their work.

As an example, one night I met my 2 friends (both of whom belong to the research center) at 10:30 on a Saturday night to watch the game at the center. On our way up we saw the light in the grad student office on, and there were maybe 15-20 grad students, in the office, working, on a Saturday night at 10:30. We watched the game that came on at 11, ended at 1, and then on our way out, we looked in again, and saw that there were still a handful of grad students in there. 1:00 in the morning on a Saturday night (Sunday morning if you will) and these grad students were still in this room doing work.

Now you may think that they have to defend their thesis in a month, or have an important report due, but this was at a time when the semester was only around halfway through, and due to the academic year at the University, most due dates for things like that aren't until the second semester in the academic year, which is from September to February, according to my friends. So these guys really have nothing to be working that hard on, and if you go there any night of the week at 10:00, you will see them in there. Honestly ridiculous.

To add the icing on top of the cake, the guy that was making a fuss about it all is actually a huge soccer fan, but in his 'strike' he couldn't come up to watch the game with us, even the Japan games, because that would have made his argument null. Ridiculous....

Finals

Sorry for not posting in a long time guys, final presentations, research, all that jazz (including the world cup) has been eating my time away. I've got a bunch of great things to write about, hopefully over the next week I can get some time in to share them with you guys now that the world cup is over. Boo I wanted Germany to win of course, but hopefully the Netherlands can pull through.

I do have one really quick story, called the smilin' guy. Sometimes when I go to the gym, there is this guy, on one of the stationary bikes, peddling away. Now normally this wouldn't be the heart of any story, but it's how he goes about his biking routine that just cracks me up. He must be his own fan or something, because the entire time he is biking, he is smiling. And I don't mean like you know a subtle smile, I mean he is really cheesin.

Maybe that is actually how his face looks when he is grimacing or something, but it cracks me up so much. I have to hand it to him though, a lot of the times I go he is there before me, and still there when I leave, so hes obviously in great shape, but just the fact that he is honestly smiling sooooo much while biking is just too funny.

But I think there is a lesson we can learn from this, maybe smiling while we do something will make us better at what we do. So next time you feel yourself not being productive, try smiling! :)