Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Tay Tay and football

I never thought that Taylor Swift and American football would crossover, but here we are. Because Taylor’s new beau (in an illustrious line of many) is Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce, we now cannot watch a game of football, or any sports show about football, without hearing about America’s favorite pop star. I think it’s fantastic she went to the game in Kansas City to cheer on her boyfriend. We should all be so lucky to have such supportive partners.

That said, I really just want to watch football. I don’t care about Taylor being at the game, nor do I care that Kelce’s jersey sales have increased 400 fold since they started dating (hope he gets a cut of that). Why the heck Taylor Swift on the front page of ESPN dot com? Worse of all are the puns using the titles of Taylor’s multiple hit songs during commentary. Ha-ha, Kelce found a blank space in the end zone and scored. Hilarious.

Taylor Swift need to tread carefully. I remember back when Tony Romo - then quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys - was dating music star Jessica Simpson. When the Cowboys - some would say inevitably - lost in the playoffs, some fans blamed Jessica for cursing the team. If this Taylor-Kelce relationship have legs, then the Chiefs had better win the Super Bowl! Otherwise, it might be the start of the Taylor curse (see: Kardashian curse) - should she continues to date sports stars.

Is it even happening?

The World Cup is in apparent full swing over in Qatar, and honestly I sometimes forget it’s even going on. The unusual November start time for a usually summer event surely has something to do with it. Who in the heck thought it was a good idea to play football in the middle of the dessert - in open air stadiums? I’ve read those stadiums are air-conditioned, which is crazy because it’s not that efficient is it, if the cool air has a way to escape through a giant gaping hole?

I guess that doesn’t matter when energy - read: oil - is dirt cheap in the country.

Also hampering the World Cup spirit is the fact we all have jobs now. The problem with the tournament being played on the other side of the world is that there aren’t any “prime time” games for us to watch in the evening. The day’s games are essentially over by the time lunch hour is done. Even kids can’t watch the games because there’s school. Not so if the games were held during the traditional summer months. I fondly remember watching every single World Cup match back in my school days. That was my summer break life for a month. I’d never get out of bed.

As an American it’s good to see team USA making it back into the tournament for the first time since 2014. As of this writing they have advanced into the round-of-16 stage, with a match this Saturday against the Netherlands. Not sure I’ll be watching that one as that match starts bright and early at 7:00 AM my time. The weather’s been cold lately and it’s so easy to slumber on deep into the morning.

The World Cup is coming to North America the next time round, with Canada, Mexico, and the United States cohosting. San Francisco is one of the selected cities to have a match, so hopefully I will get to tick that box on the bucket list. It’ll be nice to bring my dad as well, a life-long football fan.

Are you not entertained?

What a wonderful weekend of football. All four games going down to the very last play. It’s great to see the San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers in the frozen tundra to advance to the championship round. I didn’t think the team would be in this position when the season started, but here they are. And how crazy was that ending to the Bills versus Chiefs game? The final two minutes of regulation and overtime was absolutely insane. What a treat for us that we get to see quarterbacks Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes duke it out for many many years to come.

I’m just glad that both of them are in the AFC instead of the NFC, where the 49ers are.

Having bought a 4K television recently, I really notice how poor the broadcast quality of free over-the-air local channels are. I don’t think any of them (FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC) are even doing 1080p quality, much less 4K. The result is that the football games of this past weekend don't look quite as good and sharp as they really should be. Worse, even when I use the broadcaster’s own streaming app to watch (in this case, NBC’s Peacock app), the maximum quality is still only 1080P. Why on earth is America’s favorite game not in 4K already?

The Super Bowl - the most watched event in this country by a huge margin - will not be in 4K! That’s unacceptable.

Of course this is indeed a first world problem. Remember how stunning 1080P looked compared to the 480i signals we’ve been seeing for decades? Such is the progression of technology that 1080P have become the sort of baseline. I would say the ideal signal for the televisions you can buy these days is 4K HDR. Movies in Dolby Vision quality on Disney Plus look incredible (I rather enjoyed Eternals). Honestly if something is only 1080P at the maximum, I rather watch it on the smaller display of my computer.

Brady the GOAT

Tom Brady is now the undisputed greatest NFL quarterback of all time. 21 seasons, 10 Super Bowl appearances, and seven wins. All of them “and counting”, because Brady at age 43 still isn’t done playing the game. He is a special, once-in-a-lifetime mix of talent, skill, luck, and longevity. On the same weekend that Peyton Manning - Brady’s biggest rival QB - is elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Tom puts yet another ring to his finger.

Surely it’s the middle one.

With last night’s Tampa Bay victory, even 49ers fans have to give respect to Brady, and recognize that our great Joe Montana is not longer at the top of the mountain. Montana is still on Rushmore, but Brady is the unqualified number one.

He left New England and took a new team to Super Bowl on the very first season. It goes to show just how important an elite, franchise quarterback is in football. It’s not everything, but a great quarterback can take an otherwise solid team over the hump very quickly. Brady proved it last night.

More pain for 49ers fans: during the last offseason, when Brady was a free-agent, he actually wanted to come to play for San Francisco! And the team declined his services! Hindsight being what it is, but when the greatest of all time wants to come play for your team, you don’t say no. One year later, Brady has another Super Bowl win, and the 49ers are on the prowl for a new QB to take them over the hump. Life is cruel like that.

Some guys really do have it all: the best at their job, supermodel-handsome, marry a supermodel, live in a giant mansion, and unfathomably rich. The closest parallel to Brady I can think of is Cristiano Ronaldo.

Boring Super Bowl was boring

Well, that was bit of snoozer, wasn’t it? I’ve been watching the Super Bowl since the ill-fated trashing the Oakland Raiders received at the hands of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers back in 2003, and I cannot think of another game that was less entertaining than the one played last night.

If I’d watch the game by my lonesome, I seriously would have wished to have those four hours back.

But of course I didn’t watch it alone; a huge joy of the Super Bowl is hanging out with friends and or family, and indeed that time spent together is worth its weight in gold, no matter how utterly disinteresting the game may be. Because the game comes secondary, especially when the two teams playing in the Super Bowl are not of your particular rooting interest.

So I had a splendid time chatting with friends, eating some fried chicken, and debating the sordid details of the many Super Bowl commercials (the Microsoft one was the absolute best). I was semi actively rooting against the Patriots because haters are going to hate the most excellent team of this century, but I’m not overtly disappointed at the end result.

If the game could have just been a bit more exciting, honestly.

Best quote of the night award goes to Rams offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth; after the surely displeasing lost in the Super Bowl, he threw out this particular golden nugget:

“At the end of the day, we’re all gonna die.”

Memento mori. Death is the greatest equalizer ever invented. No matter the volume of achievement or depths of downtrodden, it is absolutely guaranteed that we will all end up in the same place: dead. Neither you or I are superior or inferior in that regard. It’s not morbid thinking, but rather motivation to continue on living, no matter the circumstances, like losing the biggest game of your career.

Keep calm and carry on, as the British like to say.

No World Cup for China. Again.

World Cup 2018 is in full swing and as us Chinese are doing that once-every-four-years pondering on why China have once again failed to qualify for the tournament. In the entire World Cup history the Chinese national team have only qualified once, quite a while back in 2002. The team then had a dreadful go of it, failing to score a single goal in group play.

How can a country of 1.6 billion souls, in a football region that isn’t exactly competitive (you’ve got the twin titans of Japan and South Korea and that’s it), can’t ever seem to form a competitive team? One would think that simply by law of large numbers China would at least be able to scrap a group together and consistently qualify for the games.

It isn’t for the lack of money: god knows China is full of wealthy corporations and millionaires. My father tells me China’s football federation and the clubs are awash with capital, able to attract foreign players away from Europe to the Chinese leagues. On the contrary I think it’s because of the immense prevalence of money that's preventing China from playing football on the world stage.

I see a succinct lack of national pride in Chinese athletes. For footballers in other countries it is an absolute dream to represent their national flag. Just this past weekend the Mexican players was in tears of joy because they won the match against the defending German champions. I seldom see this sort of elation and emotion from Chinese athletes. Look at the Olympics games: where are the signature shots of Chinese athletes standing on the top podium step bawling their eyes out while the national anthem is playing?

In every Olympics China wins a ton of medals, but how many of those are for team sports?

My father says sports in China is too focused on the individual, not nearly enough on team and country, and it’s largely due to the corruption of money. Athletes are selfish towards their own achievements in order to maximize the amount of money they’ll receive - there’s no play for fun or for the love of the game. A player gets upset his teammate scored the goal rather than himself. The lack of unity and playing for the collective have hugely contributed to China’s futility in getting into the World Cup tournament.

I don’t know if the team China will ever get its act together and fight with some national spirit, but I constantly hope. I would love nothing more than to root for my birth country in future World Cups.

I dig awesome restroom tile-work, especially public ones where I can look like a creep taking my phone out to take a photograph.

World Cup fever

It's World Cup season once again and it's always a special time because I get to enjoy watching the games with my father. Every four years we'd spend the month of June in front of the television taking in all the matches - or at least endeavor to. The 2018 edition is held in mother Russia and the time-difference makes things difficult: the games are held during the day our timezone so we can only properly watch on the weekends.

On campus the games are shown at the Student Union which is great because none of us need to work during the Summer, right? (Wrong).

Attending a World Cup game is on the bucket list so I am happy about the announcement the the 2026 games will be cohosted by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. it's Great news for America because Team U.S.A won't have to worry about not qualifying because host countries receive automatic berths - a genius move by our soccer federation. Anyways, I look forward to going to a live match with my father in eight year's time.

Might even kill two birds with one stone and go to a game in Canada because I've yet to travel to our northern neighbor.

FiveThirtyEight has a quiz that will tell you which team you should root for in the World Cup. I got team Deutschland so I shall root for them since USA is not in the tournament. Sadly Germany's first match against Mexico didn't go so well (spectacular game, though) but it's still early days for the defending champions.

The next three weeks should be quite exciting.