A little Self-Reflection, If You don't mind?

As I sit here, I try to reflect about who am I exactly. It's difficult in trying to find a meaning of yourself because if you are a humble person, you sell yourself shorter than you actually are. Then again, if you're cocky, then you make yourself larger than life and unless you're Obama or Oprah, then that's just not the case.

Trying to find that medium. Being humble sometimes and then not being humble at other times. Most of us want to be liked by everyone. We want to do everything in our power to make sure people like us. It is the same with the humble and the cocky. Those that are humble usually concede to those and be nice to everyone around them just to be accepted. The cocky ones try in a different matter. They try to show how much they are better than others at certain things and hopefully others will become impressed with their abilities.

I bring this up because I read a facebook note in my "distant" past that I wrote talking about these two extremes. I've experienced both of them. Most of you know me as the humble, quiet type now, but I did have a cocky side that has been put to the shelf hopefully for a while. Or should I say confident side? Cockiness and Confidence can go hand and hand. Most of the time I was perceived as cocky and they were right to think that. I've done some embarrassingly stupid things due to my cockiness. And I've let pride get the best of me at certain times at my life. Not proud of it but I've learned from it.

I continue to try and find a medium. In this world that I live in I need to be self-confident in myself to succeed in this life. There are times where I go somewhere and the first thing I think about how is: how much better than me this person is? I shouldn't think about that. Nor should I think automatically: Oh I'm way better than this person already, I can just see it in him that I'm better than him. My thinking should be more of. Okay. I don't know this person's ability, but I'm going to try in my power to out-work him and out-play him and put myself in an advantage. Someone can be a better person than you in certain things, however if you put in the work and try to master the things that you aren't as good in, then you can be on par or be better than that person.

I'm still often apologizing for things that aren't in my control sometimes. I'm learning that apologizing isn't always necessary (sometimes it is) and just because you apologize it doesn't make it right or you liked more. '

I'm just going to go out and do things the best way I can and if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Shit happens. I'm going to continue to grow and be a better person whether I fail at certain things or I succeed at others. I can't just give up because things aren't working out.





I wanted to do a little self-reflecting since I've got lots of time to do so. I think that you can handle my thoughts and I don't think that these thoughts are extra-personal for you to hear them from me. Some of you might have these thoughts of yourself and I feel that if you've had these same thoughts and you aren't necessarily ranting all over the post then it is fair game to put on here. I'm not ashame of what I put on here. It is just an extra outlet of my life during this current time. As of now, I am empty of thoughts for current blog topics so any suggestions would be nice or you can catch me on my twitter site (twitter.com/aht4005). I often say thought-provoking things on there (LOL uhh not really though).

If there's anything of interesting, I would put it on. Otherwise, keep thinking, don't let your mind rest for one second or something will pass you by.

"Your priorities can change, even when you don't think they will."
-AS

What Should I Eat?

So the nights were long this weekend due to my stomach pains that I was having. I was watching the Tour de France and the All Blacks (New Zealand) go up against the Springboks (South Africa) in rugby and I was just a thinking. What should I eat when I go home and back to the land of the free.



I've been recently craving pancakes and waffles. I literally have been dreaming of maple syrup covered all over my waffles. Remembering the late night episodes at the Waffle Houses getting the All-Star Special. Having bacon, waffles, hash browns, and eggs only for about $6. Especially with an expensive night of buying drinks, it would be golden to go and get a relatively cheap breakfast meal, that stays open 24 hours and you get to see some odd balls while you are out there.

Then again, I've been missing the perfect burger. A large burger with ketchup, bacon, onions, etc. Steak fries and a milk shake. If that is the case, Five Guys and Cook-Out are the meals for me. I'm sure that I have a Five Guys and Cook-Out in Greenville. I know for a fact that there is a Cook-Out there but Five Guys, I'm not certain. Well that might be a trip that I have to do. Burgers from Burger King or McDonalds won't do at this particular time.

Or just go to Carolina's finest chicken and biscuit place, Bojangles. Ordering a juicy chicken biscuit combo with the seasoned fries and ice tea. Or my favorite the steak and egg biscuit combo. I change it up from time to time and get a chicken supreme dinner. A supreme is boneless chicken and you can order 6 to 12 of them and just go to town. They open at 5am. So if I get into Charlotte early in the morning, I'm definitely going to ask whoever's driving can they slide by the Bo so I can get my fix.

I've got some time before I head home so I can debate with myself to what food I'm going to eat. There are some places at Chapel Hill that I frequently go to but I don't know if that will be the first place I head to when I get home. I'm quite tired of eating healthy at this time. I've hardly gotten sick while eating my beloved Bojangles or Cook-Out so I think I should stick with eating that huh?


Well....working out also helps too. Yeah that kind of helps...

The Random Thoughts in Action

"I think she got something that I like."

"Ooh I cannot wait until January 8,you know why because I'm going to get some birthday sex." (I would put my birthday but it doesn't really rhyme now does it??)

It's hard to force something out. So I will just write what I'm thinking at this time. I wonder since the "Birthday Sex" song came out that guys were just trying to use that as an excuse not to buy anything for their women.

"Come On, I'm all you need as a gift baby."

Normally I wouldn't defend this but I'm feeling a bit bold today and I'm going to. Women, you do ask a lot from us though. You want us to probably cook breakfast, buy you dinner, possibly a movie, and more than likely buy you an expensive gift. Why don't we skip all this nonsense and get down to business??? During recession times, everyone should sacrifice from the crazy spending that we've been doing. Even the ladies need to sacrifice something, that dress is still going to be around, maybe at TJ Maxx or something but it'll still be there. So how about we do this; I'll cook you dinner, we get a dvd watch a movie and wine in your honor and just go to the bedroom. Because I don't care who you are, if you have a companion and it's your birthday, you'd want just have some birthday sex at the end of the night right ??? So let's just cut out all this spending and waste of money and get to point.

I'm in need of a haircut and a shave. Unfortunately my trimmers blew out on me so I got a hairy face, a really hairy face. And my hair is growing out. I have my comb so I can at least comb it out and not have too much of a nappy head. I can't go get a haircut because I don't know any barbers that would cut my hair. There aren't a lot of me around here in Auckland. Plus the haircuts here are expensive as. So since it is the winter time and I need a blanket for my head, I'll grow out the afro. The face is going to become a problem soon. Even though I can't really grow a beard or anything, it'll really be irritating scratching my face because it gets real itchy.

I try to get into the writing mood but like always my attention span is low during this point of time that once I start writing I can't really finish my thought. So just random rumblings in my mind would just do fine. I think I may do this a lot. However keep the super-extra personal thoughts to myself because people don't need to know about it. Well sooner or later one or two might need to know but that'll be at a different time, you know when we're in the same hemisphere ;)

I have a decision to make..

This has to be the biggest decision that I'm going to have to make. I have until Sunday (Monday in NZ) to make it. I have to think long and hard about this decision. It's been since nine years since I had to test my loyalty to a club but now they are beginning to let top players go and bringing in players with average resumes. My good friend has gave me an olive branch to become a supporter of his club.

His club has made some intriguing signings that has made the side one of the top teams in their league. Meanwhile we bought a guy name Bruno, (no not the gay character from the self-titled movie), Angel Dealbert, and Jeremy Mathieu. The only thing I know about these guys are that two of them are defenders and the other is a midfielder. Other than that they can be as good as I am on the soccer field and in the standards of the La Liga, you do not want anyone as good as I am.

I have a couple of days to make this decision and I'm trying to make this as secretive as possible. I don't want to show my hand to anyone. Obviously FIFA 2010 and seeing how good each team will be on that will influence my decision. As of now I sit here and I think.

I'm sure there are more important decisions that I need to be making with my life other than this one aye???

Splashing in a Mud Puddle

That seem to be the theme for this week. From start to begin, I was just walking around in mud. I've already talked about my holiday program experiences that I don't really want to discuss again. And I worked one day of manual labor taking wooden boarding out from underneath a bridge....in the mud. And on Saturday, we had a league match in which by the end of the game the pitch would have been unplayable. Now I know why they didn't want us to warm-up on the pitch before the game.

We went to Waiuku on Saturday. This was my first time getting out of the city limits of Auckland. That being said, I was off to the middle of nowhere. It looked like a rural area in the United States almost. There wasn't really much differences between the two. And the pitch was off in the middle of nowhere also. Fortunately, the club made sure that we were comfortable, they had better changing rooms and those that lock instead of being in fear of getting everything stolen. Also they fed us after the game even though the chips were lacking. It's alright. Food is food right?

We had control of the game for the most part. We kept the ball and tried to break them down as much as possible but they were a tight group and made life miserable for us on that front. It seemed like they weren't worried about winning the game rather than to make sure we didn't put four or five on them. They went into a 4-5-1 lineup and attacked with just him or relied on a long-shot hoping that we would mess up.

The referee was bordering on blatantly cheating for the other team. We had a couple of sure penalties not called and he called a foul on me at the end of the game where I didn't even touch the guy, but I think he wanted to make things interesting and have the other team lump it in the box for one last go. Normally after the game, you would shake the referees hand too. I honestly couldn't build up the strength to do it. I told myself eff that and walked away. I should have been an asshole and walked up to them and then walked away but whatever it's cool

At the end of the day, we came out 1-0 winners. Like I said before by the end of the game, the pitch was just in a total mess and grinding out a victory like this at a tough place helps build more confidence ahead of difficult games. I mean I was wearing soft ground cleats and I still couldn't keep my footing. I felt like I was in a ice-skating rink even though I can't skate worth a crap. I was just glad to get back to the locker room take a nice shower and put $50 in the bank.

Today (Sunday)

I went up to the summit of Mount Eden and just took pictures (as seen above). It was somewhat muddy going up there. And I didn't bring the right shoes for my expedition. I had indoor soccer shoes and if you know how indoor shoes look then you know that the bottom of the shoes have horrible grip if you are going into muddy terrain. I got up there just fine. It was more the getting down part that I had trouble with.

I got up to the summit and took pictures of the crater because it use to be (i don't know if it is active) a volcano. And then I went around the summit and took random pictures of all the parts of Auckland. You can see most of it from up there. Sky City, the port, the Harbour Bridge, everything. It was cool even though the weather was quite windy and overcast, it did help with the picture-taking though and being alone with this kind of weather did help my mood a little bit. So I got back down, of course took more random pictures and then went back to the hostel for a much needed nap.

Right now I'm in an internet cafe (what's new) just checking up on what's going on in the world and how are my friends holding up. I'm sure everybody's enjoying the hot weather and being able to go into a pool or the beach for a nice dip on the weekend. I'm still over here trying to get a tan any way possible. Of course I've been unsuccessful.. (those that are reading and don't know my sarcasm take it for what it is)

These Kids are Softies

Today was the last day that I had to do the holiday program for coaching kids. These programs don't really bring out the best footballers. More of the kids that the parents are tired of having around their house so they ship them out to us. I don't really get it though. I don't think I was that dumb when I was 7, 8, or 9. Shoot when I was eight I was playing on a u-10 team and when I was 9 I was playing on a select team. These kids are just plain idiots though.

Kid- "It wasn't a hand ball."

Me- "Where did it hit you."

Kid- "Right here (Pointing right to his hand)"

Me- "What part of your body is that?"

Kid- "My hand"

Me- "That answers your question."

I know all the boys will be upset with what I am about to say but I did not see one girl cry during the time I was there. Meanwhile the little boys were crying over little scratches or getting tackled to the ground. It's either this country's little boys or something I don't know. Somebody gets hit in the hand and they just start crying for a good 15 seconds. Maybe they haven't felt enough pain yet to know that this really isn't worth crying for.

Today, I almost had enough. Instead of "teaching" them the game, I decided to just throw up the ball in the air and let them play. I sat down on the ground and just watched them go. There was one kid who didn't belong playing with these kids. He was really good and kept on dribbling around the little babies. I should have sent him to the older group but if I would have done that then I would have to be chasing after the ball out of bounce because the kids were spraying it every which way.

Kids wanted desperately to splash around in the mud. During the breaks they were all over the park just rolling around in the mud and having a good time. I wanted to explain to them that they could do manual labor where they are underneath a bridge all day taking out heavy boarding in knee deep mud and taking them out of the bridge. That's what me and Greg did on Monday. He went back out there on Tuesday also, but that was hard work in itself and I was only out there for about three hours and I was pooped after that. I was getting cut up and scratches everywhere. Wait a minute, these kids can't handle scratches.

Alright my kid rant is over with. That's not the real depressing part of my days. I don't want to get into all the other nonsense of my time here because I'm going to take a page out of my friend Aaron's book and try not to get emotionally attached during my post.

By the way, Son, you need to get back writing something. Even though you out there getting free preds and going to all the regional tournaments for free!!! the world needs to see your wisdom again.

Okay I'm done.