victory!

Yaaaay another win! Tomis downed PhonyAsse 3-1 on Wednesday night in an exciting game. Well, much of the excitement (all of it?) happened in the first set; like I've said, they only needed to win one set to clinch a spot in the next round of Euro Cup and it was in the first set that it was going to happen. In their last series against I don't remember who, they were in the same situation and went down 2-0 before saving themselves by winning set number three. Anyways, set one was an on the edge of your seat set, and thankfully they won it 26-24... phew. So they play a team from Belarus in a few weeks and that's that. I've been sick sick sick - I blame the smoke for opening the doors for the gross raspy cough that's invaded my lungs... bleeech. I finally went to get some antibiotics, and when I was about to pay for them realized that I barely had any cash... no problem. Two boxes - two weeks worth of antibiotics - cost all of 10 lei - less than $4 Canadian. So anyways, I've been a sick useless blob all week, but have been reading a lot and spending too much time on the computer - and no time at the gym. Strange, as at least one or two hours of my day is spent there... the gym void. So, I finished Three Cups of Tea and really liked it. It's a story about Greg Mortenson, a mountaineer turned miracle worker who builds schools for children (mostly girls) in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, and what a story. What I find so admirable is that he just did what he wanted to do... it sounds so simple, but that's about it. He didn't really know what he was doing, but he knew what he wanted to do... and in the process figured things out - something and someone to learn from. Especially since most of the aid promised to Afghanistan hasn't ever made it there, and whatever has, rarely makes it out of Kabul, or the coffers of government officials. I finally finished October's Economist and started one I bought over Christmas and read this in The World This Year section: "The first protons were circulated around the Large Hadron Collider. Designed to help physicists explain the existence of mass, some feared the experiment would create a gigantic black hole. Wall Street's collapse just a few days after the LHC was switched on was deemed a coincidence." Hmm... are they sure?

So, according to Steve (and his entire team, no doubt), Wizz airlines is also a black hole. They were delayed by more than 5 hours on their way to Brussels, and 6 hours on their way home. He has decided that if the team flies with this low-cost, low-quality, time-sucker airline he won't be going on the trip. Well... at least he had time to buy stuff in Duty Free: Gouda, chocolate and siropwaffles, and at least he didn't eat it all. We had some cheese for lunch and it was daaaaarn good. a. So the other night Tammy and Sherisa and I went for dinner at Champs, a sports bar with good food and a non-smoking section. After last Saturday night I need a serious break from the smoke and while I know that it will have to be short lived (otherwise I may never eat out or drink out or go out), for now, I need it. Anyways, the non-smoking section of this place is literally a glass box with a booth and a table in it... a little odd but no smoke! We watched the inauguration while we listened to blasting techno (didn't hear any of the speeches) and had a pretty decent meal... albeit an hour after our waiter took our order. Romanian citizens voiced their opinions on the news, but Romanian lip-reading is a task I cannot perform. By that point a few girls from the team had joined us to watch a volleyball game, and their opinions mirrored ours. They thought that it was great, but that there were still lots of hard-to-solve problems, with more hard work and less celebrating in the very near future. The headline of a Bucharest English language newspaper, The Bucharest Herald was this: "First black Earth leader to launch an era of peace and American leadership." While Obama is not the first black Earth leader, I do like the part about peace and leadership. Let's hope...