Per ESPN:

FIFA's steadfast refusal to contemplate using the mass of gadgetry available to broadcasters is, rightly, under more fire than ever before after the events of Sunday.

…

The justifications of the FIFA cabal for doing nothing are out of the stone ages — Sepp Blatter's ludicrous explanation that the public likes nothing more than to debate “incidents” confirming, were it needed, he is as far out of touch with the bulk of fans as it is possible to be.

What “debate” is Blatter talking about? There was nothing to debate. Everyone saw that England was robbed! (And Mexico too!)

FIFA claims the cost [of implementing instant replay and other technology] is prohibitive; the delays would be excessive; and it would undermine the authority of the referee and linesmen.

FIFA is expected to make something like $2 billion from this World Cup alone. There's no way it costs more than $2 billion to give referees and linesmen access to instant replay technology.

And what excessive delays? Instant replays are available … almost instantly! Like within seconds. I believe most soccer fans would rather wait a couple of seconds to ensure fair play.

Bad calls that go uncorrected undermine the authority of the referee and linesmen more than anything else, especially when everyone else in the world knows they screwed up. Furthermore, those bad calls cheapen the competition.

So FIFA, please join the twenty-first century!

Usually I thank writers individually and privately. However, recently I've received some significant above-the-call-of-duty advice from a few people on a variety of important topics, so I want to thank them publicly.

So here are the awesome writers (in alphabetical order):

Joely Sue Burkhart
Crystal Jordan
Emily Mystery
Kate Pearce
Charlene Teglia

Thank you so much ladies!

Hero Material and I are going on our eight day-long honeymoon at the end of the month to Thailand. He's been there once or twice, but this is my first time in South Asia, so I'm very excited.

We booked our trip for less than $1,000 (USD), including all our flights (business class), shinkansen, resorts / hotels and taxi fare. The key here isn't just looking for the best deal, but having credit cards and so on that earned us miles and points on Star Alliance Airlines and Starwood Hotels. If you put everything on your credit card, you'll eventually have enough to book a nice getaway after about two years or so, although it really depends on how much you spend each year. (I do not recommend putting all your points and miles in domestic low-cost airlines because you can't use them for international trips. Of course, if you have zero desire to travel outside the U.S. feel free to disregard my advice. :) )

Also we almost always fly on Star Alliance Airlines — thankfully it's very easy to do — and we usually stay at Starwood Hotels. This gives us even more points / miles. Basically it's an exploitation of airline and hotel loyalty programs. I know that it can be a bit unnerving at times because so many airlines cry “Woe is us!” and talk about their impending financial doom, blah blah blah. What if you have all your miles with an airline and the airline goes under?

In my experience and observations, it's highly unlikely that your miles will disappear. Big international airlines, such as United, Continental, ANA, BA, etc., have millions of customers on their mileage programs, and many of those customers are very loyal to the brand. When I was a management consultant, United was the most convenient airline for me, and I always flew on United or other airlines that had code-sharing and/or alliance partnerships with United so I could pool all the miles in one place (United Mileage Plus). It was the same for my colleagues even though their airline of choice was often something other than United.

All big airlines know that a mileage reward program is a valuable loyalty- and consequently revenue-generating asset, so long as its rules and so on remain intact. If your airline becomes liquidated (god forbid), others will buy up the reward program and give you incentives to maintain your brand loyalty.

Anyway, that's it for my tips on how to book a nice honeymoon for very little money. Feel free to share your own experiences / tips and ask questions if you'd like.

P.S. I'll be posting some pictures from our trip in April. :)

1. The Georgian athlete's death was extremely regrettable and sad. To come this far to achieve one's dream and have it taken away so fatally is cruel. I blame the Olympic organizers for his death as they've done nothing despite repeated warnings that the track was too fast and dangerous. Of course, the cruelest thing out of all this is that no amount of “I'm sorry” and “It's very sad and regrettable” from the Vancouver officials and IOC can resurrect Nodar Kumaritashvili. Jerks. May he rest in peace.
2. I didn't really get the Opening Ceremony's theme, if there was in fact one unifying arc somewhere in the mishmash. Some parts were very interesting and entertaining, but some were just dull. (Example of dullness: the boy flying around over a fake wheat field while some music played in the background.) BTW — I'd never heard k.d.lang sing before the Opening Ceremony, and she was awesome.
3. The cauldron failure during the Opening Ceremony was inexplicable and puzzling. Hadn't anyone tested the thing, especially given the global TV rating and the huge budget Vancouver must've given to the planners? If one more column had failed to rise, the entire thing would have had to be scrapped, not that it was a scrappable part of the ceremony. It'd be like having a romance novel with an aborted happily-ever-after.
4. Congratulations, Canada, on your first gold medal on home soil. :-) How exciting! I was hopping like mad because I really really wanted Canada to get a gold medal (or two or three). It's just frustrating to not win any gold as a host.
5. A double wow for the Korean 500m speed skaters. They're very young (21 years old) and did fantastic under the heavy pressure. May they have a great competitive career ahead of them.
6. Shaun White is not mortal. Neither gravity nor any other Newtonian Law applies to him. Just amazing.
7. I've been watching several curling competitions, and I find them strangely absorbing. RCC did a half-hour segment on the science behind curling, which I found fascinating. Do you know that when athletes scrub the ice, it makes the surface slightly warmer, which makes the stone travel farther? Also when you want the stone to curve, you put a little spin on it as you release it. And the number of spins the stone makes as it travels across the ice determines the final curve. I didn't know it was that precise. Now I have a new-found respect for curlers.
8. I was in tears at the end of Shen and Zhao's long program (figure skating pairs competition). They're my sentimental favorite the way Michelle Kwan was in ladies, and for them to make such an amazing come back and achieve their 18-year-long dream was not only incredible but just so emotional. (And of course their marriage and the obvious love they have for each other totally got my romantic side going too.) It's even more astounding given that Shen and Zhao are the octogenarians of figure skating — 31 and 36, respectively.
9. The men's competition (figure skating) judging was a disgrace. I've noticed a very obvious overscoring of Canadian pairs, but I didn't mind too much since I agreed with the results for the top five finishers. But in the men's competition, it was even more blatant and offensive. In the short program, Evan and Patrick were overmarked, while Evgeni (Plushenko a.k.a. Plushy), Johnny, Nobunari and Michal were undermarked. It's no wonder Michal imploded during the long because it was obvious his heart just wasn't in it as he was going to be screwed no matter how he did. Also the technical panel was very strict on lips but not so on flutzes. Again, it's obvious a certain someone wants a certain someone else to win — or at least score well regardless of the actual performance.

   This leads me to my biggest complaint about the figure skating competition so far: Plushy, Daisuke and Johnny were robbed. If it were up to me, I would've ranked the male skaters in the following order: Plushy, Daisuke and possibly Johnny or someone else who skated cleanly with great artistry for the bronze. I still don't understand how a skater who skates the exact same program with the exact same arm flappings and the exact same black costumes regardless of the music (Yes, I'm looking at you, Evan!) can win for being more “technically sound” than Plushy, who's never fallen on his competition jumps since Salt Lake City (if I remember correctly). To add insult to injury, Plushy used to land three quadruple jumps in competitions until his retirement three years ago; this season he did “only” two per competition.

   Evan and Plushy received the same PCS (program component score), which means their choreography, transitions / connecting steps, execution, timing, etc. were on par. But for whatever reason the judges gave Evan a higher TES (technical elements score), even though Evan cannot even attempt a single quadruple jump, much less land it. To make the matter even more distasteful, the judging panel propped up Stephane (Lambiel) by giving him a ridiculously high TES despite numerous falls and stumbles. I adore Stephane, but if he gets such a high TES for his performance, Plushy definitely should've crushed Evan with his TES, unless the judges were trying to communicate that they love rewarding technical mediocrity. (Plushy landed two quads during the short and long programs, while Evan none, and Stephane had…very poor quads.)

   American commentators claimed that the “total package” matters, meaning you should have a well-developed artistic side to your skating. Well, in that case, Daisuke should've won the gold medal as he has the most artistically pleasing program out of the top three, and he's a fantastic jumper with superb step sequences. (BTW — his TES was ridiculously low, but his PCS actually was the highest out of the three.)

   It's a supreme hypocrisy for the American commentators to suddenly praise and defend COP (code of points; the new judging system implemented after SLC) after complaining bitterly about how it makes it harder for technically incompetent American skaters to win by looking “cute” or “balletic” (COP is much more strict about wrong edges [lips and flutzes] and under-rotations). Competitive figure skating is foremost a sport — or so the ISU claimed when it shoved it into the Olympic Games — so it should reward competitors with the most technically challenging programs that are correctly executed (meaning no falls or stumbles). All of Evan's jumps, including his triple lutz triple toeloop opening combination, — except for the triple axels — are executed by ladies with more artistry a.k.a. less arm flailing and absolute disregard of the music. So we have a champion who jumps like a girl. Great. A complete regression in sport. By two decades. As a diehard fan, it is very frustrating.

   Can you imagine Shaun White dumbing down technical difficulty of his runs because you know…he needs to look “artistic” while he's competing?

   P.S. I understand that many Americans liked Evan's performance, especially those who watch figure skating every four years for the Olympics. If I'd never seen him before, maybe I would've been impressed, but I've been subjected to his repetitive skating for years now, and I don't find him in any way, shape or form worthy of being an Olympic champion. I'd rather see Johnny Weir as the Olympic champ, even though I'm not a huge fan of his either, but at least he doesn't rehash the same boring programs year after year. (Yes, I'm one of those dorky fans who not only watches every major international competition, but reads the protocols afterward to see how each skater was scored.)

   P.P.S. No, I'm not a Plushy fan. I've always been a Yagudin fan. But I can respect what Plushy's done for the sport and how technically strong and athletic he is. If you think he's an arrogant jerk for no reason, watch his competitive skating programs since the Nagano Games. He's done the kind of things that can make the current top skaters cry — or worse, leave them broken. (Literally – many of the current top contenders have fallen on quads and injured their feet, ankles, etc.) And in all three Olympic Games he's gone to, he got no less than 2nd place: silver in SLC, gold in Turin, and silver in Vancouver. This is the kind of stuff that other top skaters wet-dream about.

10. Luckily for me, TSS and NHK are planning to show the ladies' figure skating competition live. I'm rooting for Yuna Kim to win the gold. I'll be happy if any two from the following get the silver and bronze: Mao Asada, Miki Ando, Akiko Sukuzi, and Alena Leonova (although her chances are very remote, but I love watching her skate). If Canadian top contender gets overscored yet again from PCS (which has morphed into the Promote Canadians Score in Vancouver), I'll be very annoyed. And I'll be looking at the protocols closely because I don't trust the technical panel for ladies' competition.

How about you? How are you enjoying the Games? Who are you rooting for and what's your favorite sport?

Somebody asked me to post a clip of my hamsters on Twitter. So here it is, the one I made right before Christmas madness, when Hero Material and I had to clean the entire apartment before our guests arrived.

FYI — Peanut is a winter white dwarf hamster aka Siberian hamster. He's the first son of Kuro and Shiro. The reason we named him Peanut is that peanuts are his favorite food in the world.

(Peanut says sorry his cage doesn't look very clean, but he blames Buttercup for it because she's a super messy hamster.)

I happened to see the poster below at a mall. It's actually an advertisement. Make sure to read the phrase on the woman's shirt before answering the question.

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