Stuff Over Here

If my last month's schedule was busy like Obama's, this month's is more like that of the president of Switzerland. Do they even have a president? Who knows, for all we know they may just be, you know, nobody making any trouble and generating news as interesting as drying paint. You know what I mean right? In case you don't; I'm having a quiet and quite sedated couple of weeks now. Not much work, already long weekend extended to 4 days by taking Friday off and all. Things are cool, so to speak, though not literally as it looks like this summer is going to be as hot as the last which was the hottest summer ever recorded in Japan. But then again, I'd take a hot as an oven summer day any day over shitty, gloomy and cold days of winter.

During the weekend I along with my teammates went to play our second game of cricket of the season. It was about an hour's drive away from Tokyo, actually it is in the now famous Ibaraki prefecture, a place nobody outside Japan would ever know if not for that earthquake. As is the custom with Sri Lankans we yet again got late about an hour but the opposition being Indians did help; we were quite early in their eyes. So after our good old skipper - actually he's quite younger than me - winning the toss and electing to bat (pretty much the default decision I must say) I went out there to open the batting, though of course not alone. However, as it is the custom with our team we were yet again in trouble with 4 down for 13 only few overs into the innings. Crisis alright. However I dug in with our next guy JT and started building a partnership mainly taking singles and twos. Unfortunately it was probably the hottest day of this summer so far, and I quickly realized how unlucky I was not to get out. To hell with ones and twos; running is a bitch when it drains you out like that. Anyway yours truly did not do a Mahanama but got the score up to 73 with good support from JT. But then a vicious in swinger - at about 12 noon on a hot-like-hell day - did me in and I was gone for a quick 39 off 35. Sad I couldn't stay longer but the others who batted after me too dug in, with a 60 n.o. from JT and an unprecedented double figure from Solomon, our usual last man, to get the score up to 201/9 after allocated 35 overs. Very good score but that was as good as it was going to get for us that day. Our fielding display that followed could give serious competition to eleven drunkards fielding on one leg with one hand tied to their backs. I don't think I need say more.

Secondly, I CAN'T wait for the Tri-Nations to start. Only months away from the Rugby World Cup 2011 in New Zealand, this is the last chance for three of the biggest competitors to get a measure of their strengths and fine tune the last bits of their machinery, so to speak. Wallabies already suffered a stunning defeat at the hands of Samoa last week which is NOT what they would have wanted going into the Tri-Nations to face the mighty Blacks. Bocks may not be the number one side in the world, but you never know what they can do. And All Blacks probably has one of their greatest teams in history with a set of backs as awesome as they come. Usually Tri-Nations offer much more competitive rugby than the RWC so the coming two months will be, well, I'll have something to look forward to. Go the Blacks!

Finally, though I have rugby to look forward to there's only one game per week. And I'm in a serious slump when it comes to watching TV series as all the regulars won't start till this fall. So can somebody please suggest a couple of good ones? And no I DO NOT want to watch The Big Bang Theory or Two And a Half Men. Why is it that EVERYONE suggest those two when you ask for a TV series? Beats me.