Bolton 2 Newcastle 0

Final Score from Reebok Stadium:

English Premier League

Bolton Wanderers 2

El-Hadji Diouf (37)

Stelios Giannakopoulos (50)

Newcastle United 0

Why am I not surprised the season seems to be starting off so badly? Because this is the case every season. And I don't mind, it puts more pressure on Souness and honestly, I don't really like him being the manager. It's great that Michael Owen is more or less set on joining Newcastle, but I'm doubtful whether it's going to make a big difference in the long run, since Shearer's going to retire. If those two plays with eachother for a long time, maybe, just maybe it may be a fabulous thing.

I was really pissed off with Souness' decision against West Ham. Sure, I understand that Emre and Dyer were out with injuries. But under no circumstances should you play 5 defenders on a home game, let alone against a promoted side (no disrespect to West Ham, they're my second favouite English team). Even if a giant like Arsenal or Manchester United should you play 5 defenders.

I'm pretty confident he will be sacked soon. This is the reason why.

1998.

Manager: Kenny Dalglish

Preseason: Won at Bray Wanderers

First Home Game: Draw against Charlton (then a newly promoted side)

Referee Dermot Gallagher sends off one of theirs (Richard Rufus).

The game after that was against Chelsea, by which Dalglish was fired.

2005.

Manager: Graeme Souness

Preseason: Won at Bray Wanderers

First Home Game: Draw against West Ham (again, a promoted team)

West Ham gets Paul Konchesky sent off, who else but by the same referee Dermot Gallagher (that has now been ruled a fair tackle, and as a result, the red card now does not stand, like Jenas' against Arsenal)

So... Who plays against us next week?

Manchester United.

Coincidence? Let's see.

Start of Fall Semester '05

It's weird, but school starts tomorrow and I'm excited! It must be
the break that I had from school while working that re-energized my
desire to study in school. I'm planning on taking a full load, and I
have yet to get the EAS course that I applied the overload for, but
I'm going to start attending the class anyway, as I won't know about
the status of the overload request until the end of this week. By
then, they would have taught some stuff and I wouldn't want to miss
the intro part. So it's gonna be hectic, I'm basically going to
attend for 24 credit hours worth of classes as I have yet to drop
Psychology until I get my EAS. Maybe I should just drop Psyc since
I'm taking that as an online class in the spring while I work.

In any case, I can't wait to get things started.

Newcastle 0 West Ham 0

Final Score from St. James' Park:

English Premier League

Newcastle United 0

West Ham United 0

Georgia Tech: Nerd Nirvana

An article from US News about Georgia Tech

U.S. News America's Best Colleges 2006

And now our ranking is tied along with NYU at 37th.

Considering how Tech's College of Management soared in the Graduate
Rankings, I expected our Undergrad rankings to jump. But then I
always forget, we don't have that much variety in majors, so it's
impossible to climb to the top.

I don't really care, Engineering is still top class at Tech (though
it dropped to 6th) and the ranking for my major is still No. 1 in the
country. That's all that matters to me.

Taking a break

Today's more or less a break day from the training (which finished on
Sunday) and the moving in duty that's going to be taking place
throughout this week and the weekend.

The last few days of the staff training consisted mainly of round
robins sessions, which were alright. I just couldn't wait to get the
training over and done with. I can't wait for the semester to start
and get back to studying. (as funny as that may sound)

But I'm not complaining, it wasn't as arduous, so I had some time to
watch a number of films. Well, I've done a little too much of movie
watching to be honest. Let's see what I caught... I finally got to
see Luc Besson's 'Nikita,' and a Sundance winner that Sandesh
recommended, 'Personal Velocity: Three Portraits' which was really
good. And then another Luc Besson, a film I wanted to catch at the
theatre but never got to, 'Danny The Dog' (or more commonly known as
'Unleashed.' Luc's films are often given another titles when marketed
in the US). I've kind of realized that Luc's films have a very subtle
theme of basic human emotions being rediscovered by the main
character. I watched 'Closer' yet again, and I don't care how many of
you think that movie's awful, I personally think it's a pretty
accurate portrayal of relationships in the modern era. Plus the
acting! Then it was another Sundance winner, 'The Believer.' After
that was Wong Kar Wai's highly acclaimed '2046' which was very
interesting. I kind of got confused and lost somewhere along the way,
but I managed to pick it up again later on. It's my first Wong Kar
Kai film (except for the short he did for BMW) and I was really
impressed, I wonder why I haven't caught many of his other films.
Will be giving his famed 'In a Mood for Love' later on in the week.
Clive Owen's 'I'll Sleep When I'm Dead' was a dark tale of revenge
and brotherhood, a typical Brit styled movie. Last night, I caught
Russell Crowe's 'Romper Stomper,' another tale of neo-Nazi's trying
to make their mark and eventually faltering.

I'll try to catch 'Igby Goes Down' and 'American Splendor' as well as
'Primer' in the coming days, three films I've been waiting to catch
but never managed to get the file. Plus now that I've found a site
that allows the downloading of documentaries by BitTorrent, so I
might start to get into that as well. I need to watch 'Enron.' 'The
Corporation' and other major ones that has surfaced recently.

Arsenal 2 Newcastle 0

Final Score from Highbury:

English Premier League

Arsenal 2

Thierry Henry (81, pen)

Robin van Persie (87)

Newcastle United 0

Wanted: B&W poster of Natalie Portman from the movie 'Closer'

If anyone know if and how I can obtain a poster of that photo that
Anna takes of Alice in the movie 'Closer,' please do let me know. I
think the B&W photo is absolutely beautiful, and it's so fine, it
looks like an art piece I'd love to put up in my room.

At the housing staff training

It's 3 days into the housing staff training, and I'm going through it
with mixed emotions. I felt a little out of place as the training
started off as if I joined the training 3 days late. I'm a new staff
and every activity we have is as if we're assumed to be familiar with
the things that they talk about. On the other hand, its not intensive
at all, and when I think about the student council training I went
through in high school, this is a breeze. But I don't exactly feel
like I'm going through a 'training' per se. But it's good to be
talking and getting to know the staff that I'll be working with for
at least the next year. Some are really nice people, and hopefully,
that's how the relationship will remain from now on.

It sucks to be here, I could be working at RubberNetwork instead. The
training's pace is pretty slow, but I can't really complain, since
it's part of the requirement, and it was me who signed up and
accepted the job. I sometimes feel like we could take out certain
elements and compress the training into just a few days, like how I
learned to focus on the 'value-adding process' of the system in 'The
Toyota Way,' but everything has its own reasons. Having 270 students
going through training is a massive thing, but I feel that, once I go
through one of these trainings, I really shouldn't have to go through
another one again.

I didn't expect that I'll be missing weekends for training until
school starts. That was shocking, as this means I will not have a
break to recover from the summer before fall semester. I'm afraid I
might burn out midway through in the semester, and that's not good as
I'm going to be taking a lot of classes. The worst thing about
missing the weekend was that I was really excited about going to this
football (soccer) pub that Sandesh found nearby in Atlanta, and I was
all set to catch the opening week of the English Premiership with a
match of Arsenal versus Newcastle, but it now seems I can't go. I've
told Scott about it, but it's a small price to pay, as we'll
definitely be hanging in the pub as many weekends as we can from now
on. It's just perfect, finally, a place we can hang around watching
soccer, and Scott getting drunk.

The job of being a community advisor is not going to be as
straightforward as I thought. But then, I'm willing to put my effort
into it. I know I had a great Freshman year, all thanks to Scott, and
I think everyone who comes in should have a good time, not a horrid
time. And it's me who wanted to be a housing staff, and I accepted
the offer, I can't bitch about what I have to do. Well, at least it's
not intensive that drains you out.

My new room looks great. I've attached the posters of Leon,
Motorcycle Diaries, City of God and Snatch on my wall, and I'm
waiting for the Audrey Hepburn one. And maybe I'll get another movie
poster to complete the setup. I've bunked the two beds, so that even
if I have guests, they can sleep over, and the desks put together
like the letter L, so when you step into my room, it looks like an
office. It's neat, a lot of space to work with, and it feels pretty
big. I can blast the music whenever I want and just close to door if
it annoys people.

I finally caught 'Me and You and Everyone We Know' over the weekend,
and I really liked the film. There was something very natural about
the film and I always like it, especially when it portrays lives that
people go through as accurately as possible. I think the 'poop back
and forth' (really, don't ask) is probably the funniest line ever
coming out of any independent films I've seen. That really brightened
up the movie.

Over the course of the last few days, I've also managed to watch
'Mysterious Skin' and 'The United States of Leland.' Both were
provocative films, but I loved it. 'Skin' was somewhat similar to
'Bad Education' and 'Leland' asked many interesting questions in the
end that still keeps spinning in my mind. We tried watching 'La Femme
Nikita' but it was a Russian (if not, definitely Eastern European)
dub and the subtitles were not matching, so we decided to give it up
and try to download another version.

I guess I'm ending it here for now, got some paperwork I should take
care of before it all starts piling up.

Freedom!

Aye, 'Braveheart' ranks up there with 'Gladiator' for me. I liked the movie very much despite its length, but unlike the other films I've been watching, it didn't feel long at all. Looking forward to watching 'The Corporation' tonight.

 

I've gone ahead and downloaded several other movies from BitTorrent, or whatever films that I've not seen that are ranked in IMDb's Top 25. That's on top of downloading gigabytes after gigabytes of songs, and I actually have to delete quite a bit of stuff from my iPod to fit everything in. I'm going to keep only the songs that I like instead of the whole album from now onwards, then, I think I can have a variety of songs left that I can access whenever I feel like it. I'll keep the entire album for select artists, which shouldn't be a whole lot.

 

One thing I failed to say in my last entry was that through Scorsese's films, I think I've developed a greater appreciation for Rober DeNiro, as much as I admire Samuel L. Jackson, Denzel Washington and Nicholas Cage. DeNiro can truly convince his character to the audience.

 

Anyway...

 

The office's rather quiet. Most of the Supply Chain team is on a business trip, leaving me with wrapping up whatever that I have left to do and making sure everything can be taken care of for 2 weeks before my friend comes in as my replacement. So needless to say, I've had a lot of time to do a lot of reading and researching. I'm planning on taking one or two online classes the next time I'm on a work semester, so that I can complete the classes that are required, but ones I'm not entirely willing to take. If I am to take these classes like psychology, social science electives and database systems as a transfer credit from other universities, they would not count towards my GPA, so that's another incentive (I never liked those subjects and was worried they would hurt my GPA, rather than help). I thought of taking a distance learning class, but that presented limited options for classes and that would also bring about time constraints, coz I would actually have to go to class at a specified time. The only university that I could do that was with Georgia State University. I don't mind, they offer a lot of classes that I can transfer, but the thought of having to go to a 3 hour class after long day at work puts me off. Plus, there's the chances that my commute might be delayed unexpectedly and that might present problems on test days (and these things somehow always seems to happen on those important days). I've done some research and it seems like University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Indiana University at Bloomington, University of Washington and North Carolina State University at Raleigh seem to be the best options (and at a relatively cheap per credit hour rate). If I manage to pull this off, I think I'm on course to graduate just in time for Spring 2008, and won't need to take that extra summer that I initially thought I would have to take to fulfill graduation requirements. Plus, taking classes online would be flexible in terms of time commitment and whatnot. My estimation would say that if things go as I plan, I wouldn't have to take a 21 hour semester this coming Fall, and will only need to average 15 on the regular semester until I graduate. That seems very good. If I decide just to get a nanomaterials certificate and not a minor, that figure drops to 13, just barely full-time. So I guess I'll just need to make sure I can do this with the Registrar's Office once school starts, confirm the transferable classes, and I'm good to go.

 

I finished reading Jeffrey Liker's 'The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from The World's Greatest Manufacturer" last week and it was a very insightful book. Not only in terms of Industrial Engineering and Management, but also in terms of Manufacturing, Efficiency and general pointers as to how to make processes flow smoothly. Though the book concentrated mainly on manufacturing issues, I believe the principles can be applied in almost any way. Simple principles that can enhance business flow and improve the functions within a company, and beyond. As I discovered how Toyota rose from the brink of extinction to almost outnumbering Ford and GM, it also taught me how history, tradition and ethics can play a huge part. It was vital that I read a book, as I am interested in going to either manufacturing or supply chain/logistics industry, and it gave me a broader perspective than what I have picked up through my time with RubberNetwork.

 

Now, I'm reading a book on 401(k) (investment option that's provided by RubberNetwork - even for me, as an intern!) I knew that investing a sizeable amount from an early age would be greatly beneficial in the long run, but when I was first presented with the plan, I knew jack, so I didn't participate. Hopefully, after reading up and understanding how it works, I can put this to my advantage, even before I work as a full time employee. Some people I interviewed for major research told me that they wish they knew more about it, so that they could take full advantage, so it stuck with me to make sure I learnt it myself. Over the Fall semester, I'm planning on learning more about it, so by the time I come back to work in January, I'll be set to go. During the work terms, I'll enhance my knowledge of supply chain by reading about Six Sigma, RFID and Lean Thinking.

 

I bought way too many books, coz I just got so caught up in how much there is to know in the industry. But I honestly think it's better for me to know about all these things so that I'm prepared for work when I graduate, instead of having to juggle work and also to be learning completely new things when I start working. It's all for me to gain, and nothing will stop me. The plan for now is to graduate, get into a massive corporation, earn about 5-6 years of work experience, get an MBA, and take things from there, hopefully getting into the Global Supply Chain/Logistics industry. With globalization fully kicking in, and increased manufacturing throughout the world, this will present a lot of opportunities. And that may allow me to travel to a lot of places.

 

Time for me to leave for today. Tomorrow's my last day for this working semester. It'll be weird for me to be stepping back to school. But that's another 2 weeks to go.