Tennis

Having a lots of time on my hand I became an avid sport event watcher, and observer of facts. I intensely watched the Australian Open, the French Open and now the Wimbledon tennis tournaments, and I came up with some conclusions.

When I was at the age of selecting something to do with my future, the choices were technical, health related, general academia and whatever else looked promising.

Now, it seems to me that at least for Eastern Europeans and for former members of the Soviet Union tennis is the primary goal. The names of the majority of the men's and women's players end with ...ova, ...vich, ...enko or similar, indicating that they all are of slavic origin even if they are swiss, german, austrian or any other wester european country's citizens.

When I had to choose a future nobody asked me if I wanted to be a tennis player. Maybe I did, and then I could have become a wealthy person. I have nothing against this. I just find it interesting how certain nationalities can excel in certain sports.

Hubgary used to be like that in soccer, but that was eons ago and now they are nowhere in the world. Now that professional sports rule the world, Hungary also has some players who play for clubs in other countries but when they try to put a national team together they can not perform.

Those were the good old days, and they are now just vague memories. 

Off

This is the long holiday weekend, when people enjoy peace and quiet. Because of that I will take this one day off and try to get ready for a "busy" week ahead.

The Fourth

Today is the middle of the Fourth of July weekend. Since the Fourth falls on Sunday, Monday is an official holiday. The government does not want to shortchange the poor workers so it was declared that if a holiday falls on Sunday the next day is also a holiday.

When I still worked I used to love these long weekends. Now it doesn't make any difference. My life is nothing but a long weekend. That is what's called the ultimate retirement. Yesterday it was cool, in the 60s and raining the better part of the day. Today, Sunday it is dry so far but not summery hot. Typically, tomorrow, the last day of the weekend promises to be the best of them all. Tough luck for the working class.

We don't have any special plans for this event. Life goes on as usual. Abigail is in constant studying mode and the results are showing with very good grades. She is studying chemistry and calculus 1. 90% of what she is studying I have no clues about. Fortunately, she is not asking for any help because that would be very embarrassing (for me). We are very proud of her.

Happiness

Yesterday I had a very good day. My wife and I had a lots of things to take care of and were kind of busy outside our home. Abigail was home studying the better part of eevery day now. So, totally out of character we decided to eat out.

I have to admit that since this pandemic nonsense started I don't think I ate out more than a half a dozen times. So this was big event for me.

We decided to go to a nearby barbecue restaurant were we visited several times in the past. The girls had chicken wings while I had a half rack baby back ribs. I love these ribs and I always order them without any smear, sauce on them. They always taste very good.

Since we were in a happy mood, my wife ordered two Texas size frozen raspberry margueritas. We like this drink. Actually we like any kind of margueritas, frozen or not. The drinks true to the name came in  humongeous glasses. I drank mine before my dinner was finished. My wife was only able to finish half of hers, and I as a good husband helped her out.

From then on my happiness knew no limits. I giggled, said stupid things and plainly just acted like an idiot. It was good thing that I was not driving because if I did this blog would have not been written. I never realized this drink was so strong. But it tasted oh good!

When we got home after stumbling left and right I sat down and immediately fell asleep. It turned out that I slept for over three hours. According to Abigail and my wife I smelt alcohol. I didn't think I was drunk I was just happy. Everybody is entitled ro a little happiness, right?

Longevity

 I had a haircut the other day. Thank God I still have hair and it seems to grow very well. They say that reflects good health. I hope so!

My barber is an older russian gentleman who does pretty good work. His work matches the american styles.

Anyway he told me that the other day he had a costumer who was born in 1916. Can you believe this? My first (obnoxious) question was did he have hair? He said the man was healthy, wears no glasses, walks without aid and also walks fast. He was a doctor and only retired about five years ago.

I inquired about his nationality and was told he is american. According to my math this guy was 106 years old. Unbelievable!

I am convinced that I can not live to that age because my wife forbade it. I am not sure I can drag it out to 100 because my better half is convinced that if I live that long (or longer) I will certainly ruin her life.

I will let you know at 105 how things turned out. I hope Social Security will still be around. 

Non-metric

This country has the most confusing and unique one of a kind measuring sytem in the world. The inches, feet, yards, ounce, pound, Fahrenheit, pint, gallon, etc. are so complicated that people who come to this country have real difficulties to grasp it. 

Years ago the Federal Government decided to go with the flow and introduce the metric system. Well, that did not receive a warm welcome from the populous. This is interesting because this country is filled with immigrants and they are the ones who have to familiarize themselves with these idiotic measuring systems.

One would expect that at least they would have welcomed such change, but no. Everybody's urge is to become as american as apple pie and baseball so even the metric conversion met with cold shoulders.Years ago the federal government requested that contractors use dual measuring systems on plans, on designating material sizes. They also wanted road signs to show distances in kilometers. Automobiles had to have the odometers in miles and kilometers. Weather reports showed temperatures in Celsius instead of. Fahrenheit.

Confusion ruled the day. In my line of work, engineering, we didn't which way to turn. But once they realized that this was not a good idea everything quetly stopped and we all went back to the good, old , confusing american system.

This was not the only stupid idea the government ever had. But at least this was not political, I hope.

 

Coca Cola

On June 15 of this year Hungary played against Portugal in the soccer European championship. The game was played in Budapest front of a full house of fans. That alone was a very refreshing site in these pandemic times. I think this was one of the first such event held fronf of a huge audience.

Even though Hungary lost still, it was a good game. 

What was very interesting to me was a small event that happened afterwards. As usual at such events there was a press conference where the potuguese coach and Cristiano Ronaldo the world famous soccer player (who kicked the third goal) were present.

Sitting on the dais there was the coach and Ronaldo. Front of these two people there were two bottles of Coca Cola, I guess since they are major sponsors. Ronaldo took the two bottles and pushed them aside, out of camera angle from front of him, and raised his water bottle indicating that water is preferred and not Coke.

According to business reports the next day Coca Cola values world wide dropped about 3 billion dollars just because of this move. The business world is very peculiar. I don't understand the significance of such a move has on the value of a merchandise. Is Rolando a merchandising god who can alter values with one swipe of a hand?

He is worth over $500 million which makes him pretty rich, and I am sure he does know something about business or he is just plain lucky. But still, with a swipe of hand to change the financial picture of a major company is very interesting.