Losing is rough

I made another Proline wager. This one was a whopping two dollars. It was only two dollars because I was not as confident about this set of predictions, but I decided to have a flutter just for fun anyway.

I picked Barcelona and AC milan to draw (it finished 0-0), West Ham United to lose to Liverpool (it finished 1-2) and Middlesbrough to beat Steaua Bucharest.

I'm watching the Boro-Bucharest game right now on a live internet feed (which is pretty cool actually - the Chinese commentary is the best part!) and Bucharest are winning 2-1 with 50 minutes remaining in the game. But Boro are just starting to hit their stride, so I'm not giving up hope yet - I could yet get $16 out of my $2 wager!

Proline is fun - just don't wager much, or take it seriously at all.

Winning twenty bucks

So in case you were wondering, I won! I got the Arsenal-Tottenham match corrent, as you know, and then Newcastle United beat West Bromwich Albion 3-0, so I got that corrent as well. Then the Sevilla - Barcelona game got postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. In Pro-line rules, if a game is postponed your odds revert to 1:1, and your prediction is counted as "Correct". So with odds of 1.5:1 on the Newcastle match, and odds of 3.3:1 on the North London Derby, I can go to the shop tomorrow and collect about twenty dollars on my 4 dollar bet ! That might not seem like a lot of money. It's not. That's not the reason I bet on football. I do it to test my "soccer smarts". I'm always predicting the outcome of games, and I'm always saying after the fact that I knew that would happen. Well, it's a different ball game when you put your money where your mouth is, isn't it? I like to put a few bucks on some outcomes as a sort of reality check; to see if I really am as clever as I make myself out to be.

So far, my pro-line record is 1-1. Basically, after two wagers I'm thirteen dollars ahead of the game. The lesson is that even though I get most of my predictions right (I've only gotten one game wrong, out of the six I've wagered on), I'd better not quit my day job.

Sports Sports Sports

Last night the Ottawa Senators came from behind to beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-1, while the Edmonton Oilers lost a heartbreaker in overtime in Detroit to the Redwings. The real heartbreak is how useless my fantasy hockey team is. I was in a hurry when I created it, and I ended up picking a bunch (read two) of players who aren't even in the playoffs! How silly is that?

So I'm 7th of 8 teams in my fantasy hockey playoff league. But Pro-line is a different story! I picked results for three football (soccer, for all you troglodites) matches (games, for all you neanderthals). One match was contested this morning, and I got my Arsenal v Tottenham prediction correct! I picked a draw (tie, for all you slow learners), and the final score was 1-1!
Teams in the Champion's League always tend to under-perform in the domestic league the weekend after playing a midweek European match, so that is why I picked a draw even though Arsenal were the home team and clear favourites.

The two games I am waiting on are Newcastle United v West Bromwich Albion, which is in progress, and tomorrow's clash between Sevilla and Barcelona. The Newcastle match is half an hour old already, and still no score, but I picked Newcastle to win. Even though they are playing without Alan Shearer, it is the first match back for Michael Owen since New Year's.

NEWSFLASH, NEWCASTLE JUST SCORED! NOLBERTO SOLANO IN THE 30TH MINUTE!!
---While I was typing this, the Peruvian Nobby Solano continued his brilliant form for Newcastle this season with a go-ahead goal, Newcastle are in front and West Brom are surely looking relegation in the face if they cannot come back here!---

So if that result stays as it is I only have one more match to worry about, and that is tomorrow's Spanish one. Even though Sevilla is good and Barcelona are the visiting team, Barcelona are the best in the world right now and it would be foolish to bet against them.

I could be on course for my first Pro-line win ever (though in fairness, this is only my second time ever playing Pro-Line)! Watch this space . . .

Loyalty

Probably the most important value for me in a friendship is loyalty. Not a reciprocal "I'll scratch your back you scratch mine" sort of loyalty where you get paid back for your loyalty, but loyalty for its own sake. There is just something about a friend who, years on, will still count you a mate even when you've done nothing in particular to merit their friendship.

I mentioned a few posts back about how I have amazing friends. As I am coming to the end of my time here at Queen's University I am looking back and just becoming amazed at the brilliant number and quality of friends God has blessed me with. From the Castle cohort in 1st year, to the Campus Crusade for Christ crew in Kingston, to the AIA bunch I got to get to know this year, God has put incredible people in my path and the fact they I have been lucky enough to be counted as a friend to them is, to me, incredible.

Ok, well that's enough sentimentality for one evening I think! Goodnight world wide web, I'll see you again tomorrow.

d:?

Well, as you know I went to a delirious? concert in Toronto on Saturday. I went with my friends Jobin and Steven, and we met Daniel, Mark and Mike there. Now I used to write long and detailed reviews of every concert I went to, but that soon became too tiresome given the number of concerts I went to! It was especially burdensome if went to a conference or festival and saw many bands in the same day, so for a while I only wrote reviews of delirious? concerts I went to, but then I lost even my penchant for that, and I haven't written one of these things in years. So before I run out of steam, here goes:

Date: 15 April 2006
band: delirious?
Venue: Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, Toronto
Crowd: about 1500-2000 (I never really got a good look at the crowd to be honest)
Interesting facts: My 9th time seeing my favourite band, this was part of a weekend conference at a controversially charismatic church where we had concert-only tickets, so most of the kids there had already seen a few delirious? sets that weekend, while were only privy to the Saturday night performance.

The concert started with a local trance DJ, DJ Puddy. I don't like to criticise, but his 30 minute set was awful, so I'll just leave it at that.
As finished, a guy came up to introduce delirious? by rapping. Do you know who it was? For some of you this will be shocking, for others, obscure: Anthony McLean from CBC's The X! He rapped about his iPod: "Only one song left, you can't be serious - you know I'm gunna fill it up with . . . DELIRIOUS?!!!"

Delirious? took the stage, with Stu G wearing white floral print pants, a black shirt and a red tie. Tim Jupp sported a regular red shirt, and Martin had a black shirt, tres chic black jeans, a tie with thick red and black diagonal stripes, and a wicked little smoking jacket which sported four d:? buttons as though they were military medals. And Jon Thatcher wore that smashing pinstribe suit that the band had made their staple during the Audiolessonover/World Service days. Stew Smith wasn't on this tour, so substitute drummer Paul Evans took his place.

Delirious? walked onto stage and opened with "Here I am Send Me" from the new album. "How many people, put your hands up, how many people are here for just tonight?" asked Martin between songs. "Cool. This weekend has been great but tonight, tonight's gonna be great." And then they launched into "Rain Down" from World Service.
A stretched out version of my favourite song from The Mission Bell followed, as Stu G played a tight power chord and Martin asked "Are you ready to paint the town?" And they went into "Paint the Town Red." Then they did "Fires Burn" which was a lot better in concert than I expected it to be.

When they started "Solid Rock" I knew that something special was up. When they got to the bridge, the part that TobyMac signs on the album, Martin grabbed a megaphone that was plugged into the sound system and started singing through that! It did the coolest effect on his voice and he sang the bridge and the rest of the song through it! He held the thing above his head like the rockstar he is, and it looked really cool and Bono-ish.

Then they did "Inside Outside" and Martin opened his Bible and read from John 5 before they started singing "Miracle Maker". he concluded Miracle Maker with the lyric "And I'm standing with the faith of a History Maker," and then they went into that song. During the bridge of History Maker Martin spoke a short sermon about what it meant to be a history maker and they also sang a refrain of "Holy is the Lord".

Then they did some more Mission Bell stuff, with "Now is the Time" and a very moving and powerful version of "Take off My Shoes." After that I phoned my brother and let him listen in on a few minutes of "Majesty (Here I am)", and then the band sang "Our God Reigns", without singing the politically charged verses.

Then the conference speaker came up. He was an intense bloke. He did an alter call and some kids responded, then delirious? finished up their set.

They did "Investigate". I'm glad I got a four minute video of that, because Investigate is unquestionably delirious?'s best song in concert. "in . . . vestigate . . . my life . . . and make me clean"
They finished up, as they often do, with Martin holding a lit candle in front of the microphone and singing "There is a Light".

Notably absent from the set were the two most powerful songs from World Service. They didn't do either of "Mountains High" or "Every Little Thing".

After the concert, Jobin, Steve and I helped the roadies put the equipment away, and we got to meet Martin, Tim and Jon!!! I won't describe to you the feeling of meeting my favourite rockstar, because I just can't ! We got photos, it was so cool!

My day with delirious? What a night, what a band.

Onion pancakes

My wonderful friend Adrienne invited me over to her place for pancakes with her housemates and some of their friends after church today. I am very grateful for my awesome friends, but something particular strikes me about them.

They are very driven people! By noon we had enjoyed some pancakes (the choices were between potato-and-onion pancakes and chocolate chip pancakes. No need to tell you which ones I picked!), and then everyone thanked our gracious hosts and sped off to the library! Imagine that! A weekend social event FINISHING by noon!

But these people are driven. They inspire me. They live with a purpose, and they work hard to acheive that purpose. So while we all had an awesome time, and a very competitive Easter egg hunt, there was no question about priorities when push came to shove.

People like that deserve the things they work for in life. I guess the reason I find it so amazing is because I don't work hard like that. Given the choice between socialising and studying, socialising wins out every time. It seems I have a lot to learn from my friends who know what they want in life and work hard to acheive it.

And as an aside, I am still walking on cloud nine after my experience 24 hours ago!

How to meet a rockstar

So imagine who in the world you would most like to meet. Then imagine that you met him or her, and got a photograph of the two of you together so you could prove it to everyone. Then imagine how you would feel given such a situation.

If you've done all that, you have a pretty good idea of how I feel right now.
Finally, at the 9th time of asking, I got to meet Martin Smith, lead singer of delirious?. For years, if you had asked me "If you could meet anyone who would it be?", Martin Smith is the answer I would have given.

It's 0335 in the morning right now, so I won't continue. But just for future reference - the best way to meet a rockstar is to help their roadies load their equipment.

The return of ?

Do I dare do this again? Have I moved beyond the rash, self-absorbed, short-sighted character that was evident the last time I kept a blog? Well, only time will tell.

As it stands, I wanted a place that I could post some of my reflections at the end of the day. I think about life a lot, and sometimes that stuff in my head just wants to spill out in words. I don't care if anyone reads it or not. I just want to get it out there and give myself a chance to clarify exactly what it is I am thinking.

As for today's reflections: I arranged a sublet for the summer, so I will have a place to live for the next four months. Praise God for his providence.
Well, actually, that's pretty much it. Nothing else positive to reflect on today.
Oh yeah, that is a caveat I should warn you about. My new strict rule is that I can only reflect on things that are not negative. The tenor of this blog will hopefully be a positive one.

I'll be back tomorrow - see ya.