Losing skid

After a long day last Wednesday, May 27, i went home the next day just in time for the 3 am championship match of the UEFA Champions League featuring two of the world's most popular football clubs--Manchester United of England and FC Barcelona of Spain. The game is expected to be witnessed by 67,000 fans at the Olympico Stadium in the Eternal City of Rome, not to mention the anticipated 150 million (yes, you read it right, million) viewers from the world over according to MasterCard.

I only became a fan of football only this year after i purchased several apparels from the Manchester United Experience store at The Venetian-Macau during our honeymoon. Fortunately, it was the homestretch of the English Premier League in England, arguably the most popular and competetive football league in the planet.

As i was following the matches of ManUnited, i began to appreciate the sport in spite of its contradictions to basketball. Just weeks ago, ManUnited clinched the title in the English Premiere League, and at the same time, FC Barcelona (or Barca for short) likewise won the trophy in the Spanish Primera Liga, in what could be the best appetizer to the much-anticipated game of the year.

And after opening the tv as soon as i reached home, the score flashed before the screen that almost made me lose my footing: FC Barcelona 1 Manchester United 0. What the **ck! Samuel Eto'o of Cameroon already scored a goal in the 10th minute. I thought, hmm..., maybe the Red Devils were merely making the match more exciting by playing catch-up ballgame as they were picked by pundits to claim their second-straight Champions League hardware. Lionel Messi, the Argentinian scorer of Barca sealed the game for the Catalans by making a header past Edwin Van der Sar and the match was over before the final whistle...

There goes my first loss of the day... Quite early literally as the game ended at around 5:30 and my head already throbbing for apparently lack of sleep. I had to sleep as I had to watch another game, basketball this time, Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals of the NBA between the Lakers of Tinseltown and the Nuggets of Denver.

I got up at around 9:30 to catch the tail-end of the first quarter with my team (ehem, the Nuggets, not Lakers) down by two.

Lo and behold, after 48 minutes of action, i suffered my second loss of the day with the Lakers taking a 3-2 advantage in their Best-of-seven series.

Two of your teams in two different sports losing on the same day is definitely a skid if you ask me... but the worst has yet to come.

Just this morning, while i and red were on our way to the office, my chauffer decided to take the counter-flow lane as we were about less than a kilometer from office only to be hit by a U-turning cab. Wham! Next thing we knew, two doors of my car need to be replaced at a staggering amount of more than P83,000.00. Thank heavens for the animal called insurance policies.

And there goes my third-straight loss... and i can only hope and pray that the skid is all but over.