etcetra

garage sales are interesting at times. you get to see what some families are trying to sell off, and you get great deals and such cheap prices. one place was selling bunch of cups for only a dollar. since we were in shortage of cups (the ones we had seemed to break oh so easily) i think we got ourselves 10 or 12 cups for just a dollar. and i found two novels, which were selling for 25 cents per book. obviously i got them. a pity i didnt get one by james patterson earlier on. now i have a robin cook thriller to read during the flight.

and i think i bought a CD after a long long time. i cant recall the last time i bought a CD? probably the last one was a chill out compilation that was on clear out sale, which happened to be a pretty good buy. the store, Best Buy, gives you 100 points for every dollar we spend, and every 12500 pts, we get a 5 dollars voucher. since we bought a lot of electrical good since we moved in, like the computer, TV and such, we racked up quite a bit of points to earn ourselves 135 bucks of vouchers. mom used bit of that for an iron, but the rest i got to spend it since the expiration date passes while we're away in singapore. since i wont be able to download music from P2P softwares once i get into tech, i thought it would be a perfect opportunity to get compilations or greatest hits. im v choosy of the CDs i buy now, since most albums only include at most 5 really gd ones. so obviously i resorted ot greatest hits. but i had such a hard time choosing which ones to get. in the end, i picked up greatest hits for enigma, sheryl crow, red hot chilli peppers, a tribe called quest. i also got coldplay's sophomore album as well as lauryn hill's unplugged. im not sure if lauryn's one was a gd buy, but its one of the best live acoustic albums out there, so im gonna give it a chance. i was pretty impressed when i saw the same one on MTV, so it should b ok. besides, i should be able to return it if i dont like it. only after i left i realized that i had forgotten to get tori amos' greatest hits. but hey, technically, i got those CDs for free. so no biggie. those CDs will keep me busy while i have free time in tech, im gonna be listening to CDs like never before.

tech baseball.. so they're through to the regional finals for atlanta by beating jacksonville state on friday and then texas tech today. texas tech won mississippi state so we'll face them again for the atlanta regionals tomorrow. NCAA baseball is funny. i think u can emerge as the national champions even if u were to lose 2 or three times. its a funny system i got to know only in the ACC championships. okay, so NCAA regionals, there are four teams, seeded, of course. first match between no.1 seed and no.4 seed and the other match between no.2 and no.3. even if u lose the first match, you will play the loser of the other match, and the winner of one match plays the winner of the other match. so the two losers play, to play against the loser between the winners match. and then the winner of that match plays against the winner of the winners match. and if the final match happens to be a no.1 seed who hasnt lost until the last match and loses, that team gets another shot at winning. so everyone is allowed one mistake, to cut it short. confused? lemme give you example of the atlanta regionals.

in the atlanta regionals, the seeds are no.1 georgia tech, no.2 texas tech, no.3 mississippi state and no.4 jacksonville state. first match are between no.1 and no.4, so georgia tech vs jacksonville st and no.2 vs no.3 so texas tech vs mississippi state. both techs win, so they play against eachother, whereas the two states lose, so they play against eachother. now, georgia tech wins texas tech, so they proceed to the regional finals. the two losers play, and mississippi state wins. so now the loser of the winners match, which is texas tech, plays the winner of the losers match, which is mississippi state to play against georgia tech in the finals. texas tech wins against mississippi state, so texas tech will play georgia tech for the finals tomorrrow. now, georgia tech is the no.1 seed in this regionals, so if they are to lose against texas tech tomorrow (god forbid) then georgia tech gets another shot at winning the regionals because they are no.1 seed and were unbeaten so far. so that means texas tech will have to beat georgia tech twice in the same day if they are to win the regionals.

so there's good and bad about being the no.1 seed. there's not much pressure since u can lose, but u get another try, but once you lose, your morale goes down and its psychological disadvantage coz the opponents will be on a high and they might b likely to continue that to win the second match. lets just hope that doesnt happen, coz that happened for the ACC championship for georgia tech.

im not sure if thats for just the regionals or it actually continues that way for the second round of regionals, which is called the super regionals too. coz i remember some commetator saying that rice univ., last year's champions, lost 4 matches, but they still ended up being the champions.

i dont like the format, obviously. a real champion should be the one which doesnt lose. but then again, in a game like baseball, it could really go either way. not like soccer, where in cups, you rarely get a second chance. group stages of the world cup or european championships does allow you to lose, but then it makes progressing harder because you will be meeting stronger teams for the knockout round. but i dont think we've seen any team progress after losing twice or something.

its good in a sense that you are allowed something to fall back on, but this system strongly favours the teams that play well pretty consistently. its like giving stronger teams a second chance should something happen. thats not the case for NFL or NBA, even NCAA basketball for that matter.

i think playing by series, though it may take more time, is the best answer to the problem. i think even soccer should be two legged match for every round. south american football works like that and i think its a very good measure to see whether a team wins by luck, or really deserve to progress to the next round.

anyway....

im pretty much done with packing. not much things to bring to singapore, but a lot of things will nned to be brought on my return trip here, since i hav no idea whens the next time i'll go to singapore. i think i'll be too caught up with things in the university. marc called me last night and it seems even he wont get to go to singapore for another 2 or 3 years. once i return from this, i dont think i'll be back for 2 or 3 years too. but you never know. i just hope it wont be another 10 years until i make the next visit or something.

k its quite late now, and my eyes are burning. i better go get myself some sleep. if i can get plenty, that is.