Trip Report: Indianapolis 3/17-3/20

I spent the last few days on vacation, in Indianapolis. For those of you who have no clue what was going on in Indianapolis this weekend, you are probably wondering why in the world would anyone go there, of all places, on vacation. And after this trip, I would have to agree with that sentiment. It's not a horrible place, but there's really no good reason for anybody to choose to vacation in a place like Indy under normal conditions.

Of course, this was not just any other weekend, and in fact this trip was in my plans for weeks in advance. The reason for the trip? None other than our beloved Illinois Fighting Illini Basketball team, and their quest for the Sweet Sixteen in the opening rounds of the NCAA tournament.

Though the point of this trip was to watch the Illini play, this blog wil not really focus on the team itself. I don't think I will write any more in depth thoughts on this team until after the season is officially over (which hopefully won't be for another few weeks). I figure I've already written plenty about them this year, and it would give me a chance to write a better and more comprehensive reflection on the season if I were able to see how it concluded.

The games were scheduled for Thursday and Saturday, so I took off a couple days of work and we (me, Andy, Tom, Ryan) left for Indianapolis on Wednesday night. We stayed with one of their old Lambda bros (plus his fiance) who lives in the area, and they were really great hosts. I'm positive that they won't be reading my blog so there's no point in thanking them here.

Their dog, Bullet, is one of the cutest dogs I have ever seen:





Not only cute, but also ridiculously hyper. Whenever he was let out of his cage, all he wanted to do was play. And by play, I mean either tug of war with a little Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal, or fetch with the same stuffed animal. It was kind of sad when he was watching us pack up to leave, he seemed to know that we were leaving because that was the only time he wasn't harrassing everyone with his mini Pooh Bear. I must say that as annoying as he was after only 3-4 days or so, I kinda miss having that little sucker around. But that's enough about Bullet for now.

Thursday's schedule had 4 games: Kentucky vs. Eastern Kentucky and Cincinnati vs. Iowa in the first session, Texas vs. Nevada and Illinois vs. Fairleigh Dickinson in the second session. We decided to buy a grill and food from the local hardware store and supermarket, and tailgate out the back of our rented SUV in the parking lot of the RCA dome.

It was a very, very long and tiring day, but fun. They didn't serve beer in the stadium, but we drank plenty before the first session and then again between sessions, and by the end of the last game (IL vs FDU), we were all dead tired. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera that day and thus have no pictures from Thursday at all.

Out of the 8 teams seeded at Indy, I would say that either Illinois or Kentucky had the most fans there, followed by Cincy, Iowa, Nevada, Texas, EKU, and Fairleigh Dickinson in that order. As for the games, the most exciting Thursday game by far was the Nevada vs. Texas matchup, where Nevada came back from down 4 with a minute left or so by scoring the last 8 points of the game. Not only that, but the Texas cheerleaders were extremely impressive. There was this middle-aged guy one row down from us that was blatantly staring at the cheerleaders through binoculars throughout the whole game, with his wife next to him and everything. A little creepy, but funny nonetheless.

Another thing I thought was funny was the Fairleigh Dickinson mascot. Basically it was just a guy wearing a plastic horse head. Looked so cheap like it was a 4th grader's Halloween costume. Also they didn't have their own band, so during the game the Illinois band played during all breaks, and sometimes you could see the FDU mascot grooving to the Illinois band's music. I felt bad for them at first, but then they were so pesky and made the game close, so then I felt mad at myself for feeling bad.

On Friday, there were no games, so we just took the time to wander around the city for a bit. The "official" Illini bar was the Ram brewery, which we visited first:



It was pretty full there, so we didn't stay for long. Then we decided that we should try to do things that we couldn't do back in Chicago, like eat at Hooters and play video games at Gameworks:





Dinner that night was at a local steakhouse, St. Elmo's, which was very good. Then we hit up a local Irish pub for a couple drinks before going to some place called Tiki Bar and then calling it a night. There were noticeably very few Asians around town, Indy was a lot more hillbillyish than I expected. A joke told during the Cincy-Kentucky game:

Ryan: "Where's Hicks?" (referring to Eric Hicks, Bearcat player)
Andy: "All around the stadium."
(laughter)

Saturday's games were in the evening, so we stayed home, grilled some more, and watched the other games around the country in HDTV on their 50" plasma. This was actually the first time I have watched a game in High Definition, I must say it was very very impressive. After a couple hours watching HD, it was almost painful to switch back to normal TV.

The two Indy second round games were Illinois vs. Nevada, and Kentucky vs. Cincy. Both were great games, although the crowd was a lot more energetic during the Wildcat-Bearcat game because there were more fans from both sides, and the game was closer. For Illini fans, it was a much better experience than Thursday because the team played better and the fans didn't have to sit through 3 other games beforehand.

A few pics from Saturday:







In the second picture, if you look in the middle you can see two guys in orange shirts, that would be Dee Brown and Jack Ingram. Our seats were pretty good, lower level behind the floor seats. By the way, I decided to nickname Jack Ingram "Jack-Jack" after we watched the Incredibles during the car ride to Indy.

We had planned on going out afterwards, but ended up being too tired so just came home, watched Sportscenter, and went to sleep. Woke up this morning, packed our stuff, and drove back to the good old Land of Lincoln. We stopped by the casino for a couple hours too, but I didn't play. Just watching other people play blackjack isn't very fun, especially compared to watching poker on TV.

As I typically do on this blog, I would like to try and record some more thoughts on the experience in addition to just listing the things I did.

Taking a roadtrip with the boys is a great experience. It's very draining and tiring, so it's not something you can do all the time. Also we are all getting older and our bodies clearly can't handle the beating as much these days. But still, there are few experiences I can think of that are more fun and provide better male bonding than taking a good road trip somewhere. There were quite a few memorable stories (which I might share later), and hilarious conversations about some pretty random topics.

For me personally, my life was definitely getting very routine lately and I think I really needed to take this vacation when I did. Getting away from work for a while is always nice. But it also seems like I've been spending almost all my weekends and free time with the girl lately, and then watching so many people around me getting engaged, I felt more and more like the days of being young and irresponsible were passing me by too quickly. It was such a breath of fresh air to just have some time with just guys for once, and flash back to being college kids, even if it was only for a few days.

One more thing I just thought of: We did not see everyone's favorite Kentucky fan, Ashley Judd. But we did see the most well known Cincy fan, Nick Lachey. He was in the front row for the first round game and the cameras kept showing him throughout the game. Even from across the court we could see him in his cutoffs, his tattoos and diamond earring. Also, at Tiki Bar we met a girl who claimed to be Jason Gardner's ex-girlfriend.

What do I think about the Illini draw for the tourney? Hmmm.... I'd say I feel fairleigh dickinson about it.

Why does Snoop Dogg carry an umbrella around? For drizzle.

Something that drives me nuts - when people ask me "hey can I ask you for a HUGE favor", when all they want is to borrow your pen or something. I know they're trying to be polite, but man.... confuses me.

Illini 29-1

Well, the streak finally came to an end yesterday. It was a painful loss no doubt (is there any other kind), and one that won't be quickly forgotten. How could we not defend the 3 on that final possession? You know they are going for the win, this is a team with absolutely nothing to gain from sending the game to overtime! And of all people to leave open, you let their one hot shooter get off a clear shot. Obviously not our finest moment this season.

However, after having a day to get over this stunning loss to OSU, I would like to put it all in perspective here. Losing sucks, but it's no time to sit here licking our wounds. There's still plenty to feel good about right now if you're an Illini fan:

- Our 3 guards each had probably their worst game of the season yesterday. That Matt Sylvester kid had the best game of his career. We were on the road and had at least a couple critical calls (or no-calls) go against us in the final minutes. We were up in the score for 39:55 out of a total 40 minutes in the game. Yet despite all those things, in the end we still lost by only one point.

- The Illini had the Big Ten Championship clinched outright for more than a week before this game even started. We've had a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament pretty much locked down for about a month now, and even with yesterday's loss, we will probably still get the best #1 seed overall, in the Midwest region. Meanwhile, Ohio State had no chance at making the NCAA tournament or winning anything meaningful this season. This was also their Senior Night (Day), if I'm not mistaken. So if anybody was going to play with a higher level of emotion, it was going to be the Buckeyes, especially with them being at home and all. They could afford to go for the 3 at the end of the game because if they missed, who cares?

- Before this season started, who could have predicted that this team would be 29-1 right now? And before the conference schedule started, I thought we would lose at least 2 games in the season. This was after we already beat Gonzaga, Wake, and Cincinnati impressively during the non-conference schedule. A 15-1 record in the Big Ten and 29-1 record overall is nothing to cry about. No it doesn't have the ring of 30-0 and undefeated in the Big Ten, but in the recent history of college basketball, not a whole lot of teams can say that they've even had a chance to go 30-0. In all of Division I college basketball this year, for example, the only other team with as few as even 2 losses is Pacific (who plays in the Big West conference, by the way).

- Upsets happen in college basketball, that's a fact. Every other top team in the country has had a loss to a team they shouldn't have lost to. In this weekend's games alone, we saw 6 of the top 10 ranked teams lose (ok, this includes #6 Duke losing to #2, we can probably discount that one, but still, my point stands). #3 Wake Forest didn't lose, but they were taken to the final possession by NC State. That's just how basketball is, all it takes for a good team to lose to a lesser team is a few bounces of the ball this way and that, or a few calls that go one way or another. Even in the NBA, think about the best Bulls teams in the past. When we had Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, etc., we still would occasionally lose to the expansion Raptors. In our best year, we still lost 10 out of 82 games in the regular season. I'm not necessarily saying that the Illini are the Jordan era Bulls, all I'm saying is that even the best teams lose some games. No team is perfect, except maybe the original 1992 Dream Team (and even they had Christian Laettner).

- Which is why my "expectations" for this Illini team has never been an undefeated season or winning the National Championship. Those things would be nice, but you can't really expect them from any team. To get them you'll need a good amount of luck, not just skill. The more realistic goals have always been 1) to win the Big Ten outright, 2) Get a #1 seed in the NCAA tourney, and 3) to make the Final Four. From what I have heard in the coaches and player's interviews all season, those were their goals too. And so far, so good. We're 1 for 1, and, barring a massive screwing by the selection committee, should be 2 for 2 by the end of this week.

- As far as sports superstition goes, I have been hesitant so far to break out my Dee Brown jersey for fear of breaking the Illini mojo. I wouldn't want the first time I wear that thing to be the first/only time they lose this season. Now that they have lost, I don't have to worry about that anymore. Kind of dumb, I know, but hey, just trying to find any silver lining to the cloud here.

- By the way, I believe the latest Coaches poll is out and still lists Illinois as #1 with 21 of the 31 first place votes. Actually I kind of wish they would've moved UNC into the top spot to fire up our players, but that's ok. When was the last time you saw a team lose to an unranked opponent and keep its #1 ranking in the next poll? Not that polls really matter that much, but still, that's saying something.

College Do-Over

I was talking to a friend the other day about college, and what we would do differently if we could go back, knowing what we do now. Would we study more? Study less? Go out more and hit on more chicks? That kind of thing.

I've been thinking more about the subject and came up with the following list of "regrets" I have when I look back on my college experience. I say "regrets" with quotations because I guess I don't really consider them seriously as regrets. College was a great time for me, possibly the best years of my life, so it's hard for me to say I truly "regret" anything about it. And typically, I don't believe in living life with regrets about the past to begin wtih, I just try to take everything (good with the bad) as a learning experience and move forward.

Anyways, no matter what I choose to call it, here is my list of "Things I might have done differently if I were to re-live my college experience, 3 years after the fact". Who knows, maybe some high school senior or college freshman will stumble upon this and find it useful? If not, I guess it's still worthwhile to take some time and reflect a little. I haven't done that in a while, I think.

* These are in no particular order, I just started numbering them as I thought of them

1. Office hours - In 4 years of college, I think I went to office hours a total of 5 times or less. Part of it was pride in not thinking I needed to go, but a larger part was simply laziness. I guess up throughout high school, I never went to anybody for help on homework because I always understood everything or I could figure everything out myself. Now that I can look back objectively, I believe there were many times that I could have benefited from making that effort to go to office hours. Sometimes it was just not possible to learn from lecture, notes, or the book. But instead of asking for help and making sure I understood all the concepts, I usually decided to just slide by and be happy with making the grade with the bare minimum.

2. Study Abroad/Missions Trip - I had friends who went all sorts of places during college: Africa, South America, Europe, Asia, pretty much all the corners of the planet. For me, those trips always sounded so interesting, but I was afraid to step out of my comfort zone. Going to a foreign country where I knew nobody was just too scary. Plus with my family living in Taiwan it seemed like I was always spending my breaks on vacation with them, not saying that was a bad thing though. But after starting a full time job, it's become exponentially harder to commit to this kind of thing. I barely find opportunities to take even a couple days off here and there, and when I do, I don't think my body would agree to spending that time travelling to faraway lands.

3. Get to know some professors better - On the whole, there weren't a lot of ECE professors at U of I that I liked. But there were at least one or two that I thought were pretty cool. They were always offering opportunities for us to help out with their research projects and stuff, unfortunately I just never made enough effort to join. Now that I look back, I think it would be nice to have at least a professor or two that I could keep in touch with at the school. Not to mention I probably could have learned more about stuff beyond lectures and exams from being a part of those kinds of research projects.

4. Visit more churches - I remember in the first weeks as a freshman at school, I told myself that I would make it a point to check out at least a few different churches before joining one. But I never did. I'm not here to knock the church that I did join, because I really did gain a lot from being a part of it. I just wish I had taken more time to broaden my views by at least visiting other fellowships once in a while.

5. Join more organizations in general - Some people joined frats/sororities, business or engineering frats, AAA or PSA, intramural sports, res. hall associations, etc. I shot pool and played Starcraft for 4 years. Which was fun, but in the meantime I feel like I missed out on a big part of the college experience by not being more involved.

6. Take more "fun" classes - Out of all the classes I took in college, I can only remember a couple as being "fun". The one that sticks out in my mind right now was the Food Science course, when we got to taste food and write reports on it. The rest of my schedule was always stuff to fill graduation requirements, or just classes I heard were "easy A's". Maybe if I didn't focus so much on making my schedule easier, not having to wake up as early, or walk as far, I might have had many more memorable experiences, like I did with that Food Science class. In hindsight it seems pretty silly to think about how I approached registering for classes back then.

7. Internship/Co-Op - Finding an internship or co-op back in those days was tough, as the economy was in the dumps at the time. Also there were the family factors I mentioned in #2 above. So I guess I don't really blame myself that much for not doing one. Still, after working at this job for a few years, I have seen how valuable an internship or co-op can be, at least for the kids that come here. As a college student, it's purely an opportunity to learn things outside of class and see what a career in the industry is like. It's not a job where you work for a paycheck so you can save money and take care of bills. There's a big difference between the two. Also, if you choose to go on and take a full time position at the company, you're already months ahead of the other new hires who didn't have the same experience. So if I were a 2nd or 3rd year college student right now, I would definitely make it my priority to find a good internship for the summer.

So there it is, 7 things I could think of, not bad. There may be more I haven't thought of, but that probably covers the main ones.

I thought about also writing a "Things I wouldn't do differently" list, but realized that there were way too many to list. Like I said, college was a great experience and the positives I associate with it far outnumber the negatives. I have probably already written about all of the good stuff in this blog at some point or another anyways.

Follow-Up

First off, happy Kanye West Day to all my peeps.

Thanks for everyone who took the time to read my last blog and respond. I'm glad to hear what other people think of the subjects I write about. Even if you disagree with me (or maybe more so if you do). I don't think any of you are retards or anything.

As far as a follow up goes, I guess one thing I can start out by saying is that I'm sorry if the last entry came off as me knocking our country, our system of democracy, or capitalism. That was not my intention at all and I will try to explain myself better later on in this entry.

I will back away slightly from what I said about the DVD prices story (by the way if anyone is interested, here is a link to the original story I read: Warner to sell cut-rate DVD's in China). To say that we should base prices for products here on what is being charged in other places of the world was shortsighted I'll admit, and specifically I'd like to take back what I said about 99/100 people agreeing with me on that argument. I didn't think that part through very thoroughly but you guys brought up good points.

However, I still don't think the huge discrepancy in prices between China and the United States for DVDs is fully justified. I may have understated the standard of living factor, but again, I don't think we can write off a 600-700% price difference entirely to standard of living. Currency exchange rates may not be perfect in accounting for how a product's value varies from one place to another, but they are still generally determined by the open market and aren't completely meaningless (it so happens that China is one of those countries that doesn't allow its Yuan to be traded, but I'm going to try and keep this as simple as possible so I'll gloss over that fact for now).

Looking at it another way, consider that a Big Mac will cost you the equivalent of $1.25 in China, compared to about $2 (regular price) here. It's cheaper, but only 30-40% so. What I believe separates the McDonald's Big Mac from the Warner Bros. DVD is the fact that the price of food is much more heavily influenced by competition and the free market, whereas for a given DVD, Warner Bros. enjoys a monopoly. As we all know, a monopoly works against capitalism and severely limits the "invisible hand" of supply vs. demand.

I know what you're thinking: DVD's are intellectual property and we must protect their rights for creativity and innovation to prosper. A true statement, one that I won't argue, but it only justifies the story to some extent.

Here's a fact: 98% of the US movie industry is controlled by 8 major studios. 80% is controlled by 5 studios. I mentioned the word monopoly earlier, but more accurately, Hollywood is controlled by an oligopoly. When such a large industry can be controlled by only a handful of entities, Joe Schmo Moviewatcher loses. There's no way around it.

For starters, even though these giant corporations are in competition against each other, there are also times when they can get together behind the scenes and agree to keep prices inflated well beyond their true market value. Don't tell me that this kind of thing doesn't happen, because it has happened in the past and I strongly believe that it still happens today to at least some extent. We saw it in the music industry only a few years back, when it took a class action lawsuit to bring the story to everyone's attention.

High prices aren't the only thing that we have to worry about, in regards oligopolies. You can see in the case of today's box office lineup, where the vast majority of movies being released are these big-budget blockbusters. While I enjoy these mindless action movies or stupid formulaic comedies as much as the next guy, the fact is that many independent films that have more artistic merit and may be more deserving to be seen end up being elbowed out of the theaters before they even have a chance to be seen by the mass audiences. Occasionally you will see one of these smaller films succeed, but they are much more the exception than the rule. This by the way is one thing I alluded to in the last blog entry, only I was talking about music instead of movies.

Anyways, my original intent was not to debate the specific issue of DVD prices, though admittedly that is what started this discussion. My broader goal was to point out that I think a lot of things are going on that we often accept blindly as fact without thinking about it.

As far as democracy, freedom, and free-market capitalism goes, here is what I have to say. It may not have been clear from the way I organized the last blog, but I do greatly appreciate that our political and economic system have given me so many things in life that others don't have. I'll restate a paragraph here that may have been overlooked from my original entry, one which was buried amidst my negativity but still says things that I fully believe in:

"On the whole, it's hard to argue with [our political and economic system]. Compared to pretty much any other country in the world today (or in the history of mankind, for that matter), we enjoy a quality of life that is far above that of anybody else."

It is absolutely not a case of me taking our freedoms for granted; in fact, I would argue to the opposite of that statement. I value our freedom so much that I react extra sensitively when I believe my rights are being infringed upon in any way. I value capitalism so much that if I see that a monopoly or oligopoly is suffocating or nullifying the free market, flashing lights and loud alarms immediately go off in my head. I value democracy so much that when forces act to limit its efficacy, I feel the need to at least point it out.

By no means am I saying that democracy is bad, that capitalism is bad. I'm saying is that if we aren't careful, we may be letting a lot of things slip away from our control, and that's obviously not a good thing. I'm saying that if we don't pay attention, democracy and capitalism are fully capable of failing before we know it.

I know there is a point when maybe we should be satisfied with our current situation and just shut up. But the fact that we already have a better life that others do/did should not preclude us from pushing for more, asking for improvement. In the 1950's and 60's, blacks enjoyed a much better life than their ancestors did during the era of slavery. Does that mean it was wrong for Martin Luther King to march against segregation? And now that we have come a long way since those days, if a black employee notices today that he is being passed over for promotions because of his skin color, would we blame him for speaking out because of this?

Of course, the hard part is figuring out exactly what I, as an individual, can do about these things I'm talking about. As you may have figured by now, I don't have the answers or the universal solution to all the problems I observe. If you're looking for a panacea to all the world's ills here at http://dudo509.blogspot.com, I'm sorry to say you're in the wrong place.

It's hard sometimes, for one person to believe that he/she has the power to make a significant impact on the world. Though we've seen plenty of examples of individuals in history who have done exactly that, I have to admit that I feel relatively helpless many times when dealing with things I perceive to be injustices.

It would be great if I could drop everything I had in my life, plunge myself in debt to pursue a law degree, and sue these large corporations for abusing their power in the industry with unfair business practices. Or if I could dedicate my life to researching renewable energy sources as a replacement for fossil fuels. Maybe I could even work my way up as a local congressman up to the federal government level and make myself be heard on a much larger scale. But realistically, I just don't see any of those things happening in my life.

One little thing I did mention, though, is for each of us to stay informed and cognizant of what is going on around us. Now, awareness alone may not solve all of the world's problems, but in my opinion it's at least an important starting point. And this is partly what motivated me to write that entry to begin with, because I felt it might be worthwhile to share some of my observations with people reading my blog.

Beyond that, I guess I'm still figuring out exactly what I can do about the things I discussed. It's an ongoing effort but I do honestly and sincerely hope that someday I will, in fact, be able to make some difference in this world of ours.

Again, thanks for everyone who read through and/or participated in this discussion. If anyone has more thoughts to add, definitely feel free. I'll try to respond as much as I can, but can't guarantee that I'll have a whole lot of time to do so.

*****

Movie recommendation - City of God

I watched this movie over the weekend and I thought it was exceptional. It's a foreign film, subtitled, so keep that in mind. The plot was based on a real story, set in the ghettos of Brazil during the 60's-70's. Very intense movie, realistic acting, and cool cinematography. One of the best films I have seen in a long time. It took me and Olivia months before we found a copy available at Blockbuster for rental, though, that's the only bad thing I can think of.