It seems that Real Madrid president Florentino Perez (who was just re-elected with 95% of the votes) was on to something. Now Besiktas have adopted this "buy big" mentality. After spending a season on loan at Roma, unwanted by Valencia, he wasn't exactly a Galatico at €3.5m. Nevertheless, he was received like Zidane, a media frenzy at the airport and a mass audience following his every move. He was just officially presented today and he'll be getting a whopping €1.6m/year.

The question is, of course, what did this reasonably talented player, whose repertoire is fairly limited, do to deserve this royal treatment? Well it seems that Besiktas is set on the new "galactic" policy. They wish to sell no less than 150,000 of these shirts, no doubt to cover his wage expenses and then some. But is it going to work?

This whole situation naturally begs the question: what exactly do they expect from Carew? Is he the new Maradona? I conceed I don't know much about Besiktas but Del Bosque must have spoken very warmly about Carew to the fans, in order to make them receive him this way. And hell, he knows how it's done at Real Madrid so why not... apparently Besiktas think they have themselves a new Air Jordan but so far only the shirt numbers match up. That black and white shirt *does* look pretty good on him though..

What is with people dialing the wrong number? I don't understand this phenomenon, how hard is it to dial a number, how hard is it to correctly key an 8 digit sequence? This baffles me because approximately once a month or once in two months, I get a wrong number caller. Once I had a new cellphone, 3 people knew about the number and I got a wrong number call from Denmark. How the hell does that happen? They just dial the wrong prefix by mistake?

What is wrong with these people? I have dialed the wrong number maybe 3 times in my life. And that's a high estimate just to be on the safe side. Meanwhile I get these calls and it's always the same routine, first of all they never introduce themselves. It's always

"Is John there?"

"No, there is no John here."

And damn it, half the time they don't hear that and ask the same question one more time. There is always that element of surprise, like they can't figure out how the universe conspired against them to end up in this situation. You would think that with cellphones, where you have the digits on the display, it shouldn't be too hard for people to check that they have the right number before they start the call. I swear there is no hope.

Even worse are the people who demand to know who they are talking to. Of course, these never introduce themselves either.

"Is Mike there?"

"No, there is no Mike here."

"Then who am I talking to?"

That's right, and when you ask them who they are, they won't tell you, they simply reiterate their demand. Well I'll tell you one thing, you call me and refuse to tell me who you are, I'm returning the favor.

I was at the supermarket the other day and I noticed they started selling medications right at the check out counter now. Which is funny, because that's also where the tobacco is being held. See, you can't buy tobacco products if you're underage, so they keep them in a shelf right above where the sales clerk sits when you check out. And the new thing is that they made room on the far side of the shelves for some pharmaceutical products. Aspirine, paracet, vitamins. And call me crazy but I think I saw cough medicine in that rack as well. Now this state of events could lead you to a number of conclusions...

1. These medications are now also sold exclusively to people of age. So if you got a headache and you go to the store but you don't have your id handy, no can do.

2. Someone decided it's time to heal the smokers. Well smoking has too many negative side effects, among others you have that nasty cough. Some Einstein decided it would be a good idea to get the smokers back on their feet quicker so they could come by the store to get more cigarettes. See how it goes full circle? First you get the poison, you consume that, then you come back for the medicine. And while you're there, why not just load up on the poison as well? So handy when it's all in one place!

And it's probably the tobacco companies that did it, they are now pushing tobacco remedies along with their tobacco. And this should make life all the more convenient for these low scale suicide bombers, now they can get the complete makeover all in one place. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find out that the profit from the drugs is higer than it from the tobacco. But if they cut the tobacco, who's gonna buy the medicine?

What is it with bikes that causes endless aggravation? I bought mine new a year ago and no matter if I use it a lot or very little, there's always something wrong with it. For one thing, the gears have never functioned properly in its entire existence. The breaks are great when new but then they get loose after a while and you have to mess with the string to tighten them. But when you go there, you notice that it's quite a challenge to fix it so that the brake pads will stay symmetric, more often than not, one of them is inching closer to the wheel than the other and you get the wonderful automatically breaking effect. Aside from that, you know that sooner or later you will puncture your tire. Do I ever hate fixing that, it's a pain in the ass to take it out, you have to dismount the wheel and break open the tire with a screwdriver. Then you patch the puncture, wait for it to dry (or you can replace it, either way it's still time and effort), then put it back in, again a pain in the ass to seal the tire with the screwdriver. Then put the wheel back on.

And unless you're some kind of bike enthusiast, the maintenance is just a pain in the ass.

Finally got around to watching the flick last night and I'm rather disappointed. Denzel was decent but Ray Allen wasn't very convincing, he should stick to basketball. The story wasn't all that interesting either, few strong points. It's basically about a total basketball fanatic who wants his son to be the player he could never be. So he pushes him very hard from a young age and the kid ends up hating his father. In a heated argument one night, the father pushes his wife out of the way, she hits her head on the sink and dies. So the father goes to jail for 15 years and leaves the boy with his sister without even a roof over their heads. But they make it and the kid goes on to become the #1 prospect in the country. At this point the father returns and wants to patch things up, ultimately so that the kid will sign for a college that is friendly to the mayor so that his sentence can be cut short.

4/10