Beyond the Individualism

Ichiro Suzuki is definitely one of my most favorite baseball player.
What he had accomplished so far is simply astonishing.
He is goal-oriented, and he works really hard to accomplish many feat.
He shows us the significance of continuous work
Even though he is just playing baseball, nontheless his influence is far-reaching.
How many "I'm not a baseball fan" guys show respect (or disrespect) on Ichiro?
He is in steady declining, but I believe that he still can play at competitive level.

By the way, I'm not a Yankee fan. I'm on SF and Oakland.
From SF's recent success and the failure of Bonds' era, I believe that an outstanding team chemistry prevails simple arithmetic sums of outstanding players.
I see Ichiro as one of the most skilled player and he can inspire many people; however at the same time, I see him as highly self oriented player who lacks the ability to cheer up his teammates.
Ichiro's join to SF was going to destroy the positive atmosphere in SF's bench.
That's why I'm very happy to hear that he signed Yankees for 2 years.
Will he recognize the importance of team chemistry and the upper limit of contribution by a single player? I'm looking forward to see Ichiro's evolution while he is in NY.

Which brand of Bottle of Water Tastes the Best?

Sampling 10 students of statistics class, I tried to figure out which brand of bottle of water tastes the best.

I asked them to rate each (label masked) between 1 and 5 for the following 8 brand.

Aquafina
Dasani
Evian
Fiji
Poland Spring Water (the most inexpensive among them)
Smart Water
Volvic
Voss  (the most expensive)


The result of this simple test was Fiji and Smart Water taste the best, Evian the worst.

I tasted them by myself separetely (except Fiji), and I found

Volvic and Smart Water tastes better than the others.
Didn't find any difference between Aquafina, Dasani, PSW, and Voss.
I didn't like Evian.

I should buy Fiji to taste it because I've never tried it before.
But tap water, 1000 times cheaper than PSW, is replaceable for my dull tongue.
I probably can't recognize much difference anyway...

A Happy News...for me.

Another MLB related story.

I'm so happy to see Marco Scutaro returning to SF. $20 mil in 3 years.
Pagan's speed with Scutaro's ability to advance runners will be a great weapon for SF.
More chance to score in the 1st inning, more chance to win the game!

But I didn't expect a 3 year deal. I hope he will stay in good shape for 3 years and won't be traded away like he was when he was in Redsox.



http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20121204&content_id=40514076&vkey=news_sf&c_id=sf#disqus_thread

The Parity, Even and Odd.

I just heard that MLB's Huston Astros is going to transfer from NL Central to AL West in 2013 season.  Now five ball clubs will be belonged in each division in each league.
That seems fair. I always felt strange that there were only 4 teams in AL West.
But I couldn't expect this to happen at all for one reason, the parity.

There are 30 MLB teams, currently 16 in NL and 14 in AL.
Because both leagues have even number of clubs, they can play against each other everyday.
But from 2013,  there will be 15 NL teams and 15 AL teams.
Then, one team in each league have no opponents in its own league.
So I couldn't see this become a reality.

It seems that an interleague game will be played somewhere everyday.
The next season's schudule intrigues me!

First of all, I expect that the "interleague period" in May and June will be discontinued.
There are 15 teams in AL x 5 teams in one division of NL x 6 games/series = 450 interleague games.
There are about 162 days in the regular season.
So roughly 450/162 = 3 interleague games will be required each day.
If there are 3 interleague games each day, the remaining 24, 12 in each league, can face each other.

Calender

I'm not skilled at utilizing a calender.

For year 2013, I plan to buy  calenders and do my best to use it for better life.

1. Look at the calender, make plans (like trip plans) before the school ask me to do some task on the weekend!
2. Insert the weather of the day into the calender. I would be fun.
3. Insert the deadlines for my tasks. For example, "finish reading '~' by 1/31" or "be able to play "fur elise" by 1/31". 
4. Use it as my notebook. Unlike scratch papers, calender won't be discarded or be lost.

I think if I use it wisely, I can improve my time management.

This month is the trial period.

"None was started by one person."

"None was started by one person." by Ernesto Sirolli.

Recently I gain a bit of interest in the Africa.
I never had any curiosity in Africa.
After restudying some geography, I began to wonder how the life of typical Africans are like.
I've never been there and I'm not willing to visit there because of the safety issue.
But is there anything I can do to help improving their lifestyle....from the distance?
My current solution is that I can't do anything. I have no power to change it in significant way.

While watching Ernesto Sirolli's talk on TED, I realized that I'm lacking the concept of working as team.  I guess I'm still believing "I'm almightly" in some way.
I must learn how to get help where I can't do very well.
Stop trying to do everything by myself!



http://www.ted.com/speakers/ernesto_sirolli.html