The word on the street

There was a time...Life has been hectic as of late folks. Spring break came and went with me going to hilton head for a weekend. I played a few rounds of golf-almost made an ace and stuck a cut 5 iron on the green from about 175 from the rough in a torrential downpour. I also found a great sport called flounder gigging. You go out on the water at night with special under water lights and gigs aka tridents and you attempt to catch fish with by stabbing them. It's pretty awesome. I didn't do much spring break except for work on a paper, go to a clemson v. uncc baseball game, and apply for summer jobs. I got a conditional job offer as a life guard given that I get certified. So that was good. School has been insane since I got back. I have an econometrics test tomorrow and a juvenile delinquency exam. Tuesday, my Medellin project is due, and wednesday I have to turn in a paper on the development and effects of westward expansion in relation to property rights and economic policy. I also have to meet with a professor to discuss the prospects of writing a senior thesis on some aspect of sports economics on Wednesday. I haven't been doing much outside of school, but I did play whiffle ball on bowman last Friday which was fun. Bo dow has its second softball game of the year tomorrow night at 6. Hopefully I will be able to replicate my 3-3 performance from a few weeks ago. Well I'm off to bed so that I can conquer my world this week. Adios.

Photo Recap of the Soccer Championship

So Flexible

LLFC: Bottom Row (left to right): Lizzy, Margaret, Nick, Rebecca, Jake, Evan

Top Row: (Left to right) Sarah, Liz, Stephen, Drew, Brendan, Me

Absolutely tossed this kid

They called a hand ball on me, even though this kid had me in a headlock

One of the coolest pictures of all-time

Making things happen

Update as of Late

Life Update

School-

Things I'm currently working on include: a project on Pablo Escobar and the Colombian Cartels. Analyzing a paper that defines a baseball player's impact on a game-the goal is to figure out whether the pride of Greenville, SC, Shoeless Joe Jackson, actually threw the 1919 World Series. Econometric says No by the way. These guys developed a rating system that calculates how every play affects the team's probability of winning at that given moment. Its Aggregation for each players called a Player Game Percentage or PGP. Shoeless Joe had the third highest PGP on the white socks. I am also learning about dummy variables in multiple linear regressions. This may sound dumb, but its actually really important. My econometrics professor went to a conference with the Head of Freddy Mac, and apparently a misuse of econometric regressions led to the mortgage crisis. Careless mortgage firms omitted income as an independent variable in mortgage risk analysis regressions because income is difficult to quickly measure and incorrect measures of income led to a lot of statistical variance which drove down its regressionary coefficient (low coefficients imply that a variable doesn't have an affect on the dependent variable). The "dummy" variable was the decision to approve or disapprove the mortgage. So a bunch of idiots with MBAs thought that income didn't affect the risk of someone defaulting on a mortgage. Who knows? I am also learning about how economic property rights affect an individual's decision to get married and divorced. In summary, I'm learning about drugs, sports, how to save the economy, and the benefits of divorce. Gotta Love College.

Sports

Bo Dow IM softball is back. We opened up the first game of the year last night with a 12-2 victory-the game was called due to the mercy rule after three innings. As the lead-off man, I went 3-3 with an rbi. I also had a nice studs up slide into second to break up a double play. The second baseman has a nice cleat mark in his leg for a keepsake-just kidding. I also played racquetball last night for the first time in forever. Note to the world, I don't suck at that game.

Other Things

I think I want to be an investment banker nowadays. I am going to Hilton Head for a couple of days for spring break. Hopefully, I'll get some fishing and relaxation in...the probability of this seems very likely. Recently, Tim, Joel, and I have been challenging all-you-can-eat BBQ establishments across the upstate area. We actually drove an hour to go to this place called huntin' camp bbq. It was amazing, but I'm pretty sure my heart stopped about 5 times during the meal. I can't wait to consume something healthy. I spend a lot of time in the library these days. I'm kinda tired. One out of every three people on the Clemson Bus Line looks exactly like Salim from slumdog millionaire. I have yet to see a single jamal. Latika doesn't exist. We'll I gotta get back to school work. Be Easy.

Heartbreak City

The intramural update: Wednesday night, we had the ultimate game. Playing with only 8 players we beat the number one seed 3-1 in a slugfest securing our spot in the final. The team we played wasn't that good, but playing down 3 was tough. We dug in defensively, and just never let up. I felt like one of the 300. Enter the Championship. Back with our full squad we came out firing, I flew down the field and found stephen with a great ball in the box for our first goal. The opposition equalized a few minutes later on a ridiculous header. The second half was a defensive struggle. It was a physical contest, and no one could break the tie. So we go to sudden death. Two five minute over time periods go by and still no goals. So we go to a shoot-out. Our first 5 kick takers are reba, brendan, lizzy, nick, and evan. You have to alternate guys and girls. Brendan and Nick both scored, reba hit the cross bar, lizzy shot over, and evan's shot was saved. Thankfully Drew was up to the task and saved all 3 girls. Stephen was next for us and he fired over the goal, and somehow Drew made a great save on their shooter. Next Liz miss-fired for us, and their girl couldn't beat Drew. Up steps yours truly. There was a pretty good crowd at the game and all I heard was one kid yell out, Here comes Abbott-He's got ice in his veins. I wanted to go down the middle so I approached the ball and stutter stepped to see what the keep was going to do, he stayed really still which made me think he was gonna guess middle (I was right) so I decided to fire for the upper right corner. I thought I hit it perfectly, but I was denied by the post. Just utter devastation. Thankfully, their next player missed, and the shootout continued. It went all the way down to the 11th shooters which are the keepers. Drew shot over, and their keep hit the mark to end it. So to recap it all we lost a double overtime 11 round shootout for the championship. Heartbreak.

Sportscenter

Intramural Co-Rec soccer has a new giant on the block, and that giant is Love Lockdown FC. Tonight was our first round playoff game against FC Blaze, and bad things happened. We brought the hammer and won 5-0. We have another game wednesday to see if we make the finals which I'm pretty sure is played in the actual Clemson Soccer Stadium aka Riggs Field. This is definitely my favorite intramural squad of all-time; probably because our team is so freaking good.

Onward bound

Even though I can no longer keep a captive audience by recounting trips to Macdonalds in Australia, I have decided to keep the blog going. Something about writing drives me forward and keeps me sharp. You can expect random thoughts, important event summaries, and the typical Andrew nonsense hopefully at least once a week from here on out.

• Let's talk shutter island. Greatest movie ever or worst movie ever. I still cannot decide, but I think it really pushed the border of innovative and ridiculous. While a restless South Carolina crowd didn't think much of it, I think I did. For now.
• Andrew Update: What's currently new on my iPod. John Mayer, Train, and Third Eye Blind. All three have new CDs out, I've never really liked John Mayer but he's bringing some noise, and you gotta like Train. Why can't you be-by third eye blind is getting it done also. School-I'm writing a paper about economic institutional development during the glorious revolution, and I'm conducting F-tests around the clock. I recently took a one week hiatus from facebook, and I'm thinking about deactivating my account-probably will never happen. I am now a huge Brandon Jennings fan. He's a flashy PG with a flat top what's not to love. MSU basketball is really, really, really pissing me off.
• Things I miss about Australia: The people, the ocean, the muffins from bond cafe, the weather, not having class on thursday, and having a gym in my building. Things I don't miss about Australia: My roommate, the food from bond cafe or the bra, Robert Wrathal's macro economics course.
• The Olympics are really making me want to play hockey. Team USA hockey is awesome, they are young and physical; they beat people and take names end of story. Chung Suang, the chinese aerialist, has the most swag out of any olympian I've ever seen. The fragmented thoughts continue...Great Olympic sports: Any skiing or snowboarding, men's hockey, biathlon, any sort of cross country skiing, and luge/bobsled. Terrible Olympic sports: Speed skating & Figure Skating (includes the super elton john game of ice dancing).
• The Charles Barkley 5 dollar box that rocks commercial is great, the nationwide I need a blue phone commercial is retarded.

Adios.

Homecoming

I am officially done with exams, and I went out on a stellar performance. It's been a long two weeks, but I came out on top. I am already packed, and all I have to do is go to the beach tomorrow, and stay up all night until my bus leaves for Brisbane at 7am on Sunday. Check out this for an itinerary:

Dec. 20th
-Depart Bond Uni at 7am
- Depart Brisbane a 1205 pm (13hr. flying time)
Dec. 20th- Arrive at Lax at 7am
-Arrive at Santa Ana Airport via shuttle around 11am
-Depart Santa Ana at 120pm
-Arrive Dallas, Texas 615pm
-Depart Dallas, Texas 735 pm
-Arrive Charlotte, NC 1055pm (Still Dec. 20th)
-Arrive Home around 1145pm

*Dec. 20th will be for 40hrs Long
**Phileas Fogg had a better travel itinerary

It's going to be tough to leave Australia. I really enjoy everything here from the people to the beaches, you couldn't ask for much more. I'm looking forward to the day when I can come back, and go to Cairns, the Outback, and New Zealand. Before I left for this trip, my mindset was really focused on challenging myself with a new situation. Clemson was becoming too familiar, and I wasn't taking the next step with my life. As my time in Australia went on, I realized that the situation wasn't really serving as the challenge I thought it would be, but it showed me that I have my life on a good track. So I leave Australia with great memories, optimism about my direction, and in search of my next challenge. Thanks for reading everyone. I hope you've enjoyed reading all this stuff as much as I've enjoyed living it. Later.