Hingis arriving at China Open

This year Martina is skipping out on Sunfeast Open in Kalkata (of which she is the defending champ) and going to China instead. Playing Chinese players in their home country should be quite a test for her, but will hopefully have some positive results.

Good to see she has brought her mom along for support, been a while since Malanie has travelled with her daughter. Training with her mom again might prove very beneficial for her as well, guess we'll see that on Tuesday when she plays her first match. In the meantime enjoy some pics of Hingis arriving at the airport :).

Martina with mom Melanie Molitor, who as you can see has not stopped her habit of sporting weird hats lol

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The other golden statue

So, I checked out, well, ok skimmed lol The Emmy's tonight. One of the few award shows I even remotely bother to watch every year.

It was pretty good, some humor worked, some seemed really forced as it does every year lol. It's good to see more and more award shows moving with the times though and embracing the net.

Oh, and one other thing before I mention the awards themselves. Why exactly were the Emmy's on FOX this year?, what the heck happened to NBC and CBS and all the other networks? did they all just go "no thanks I'll pass"? LOL.

All in all it was a fairly enjoyable night. Not sure if I liked Ryan Seacrest as host, but since all I really cared about was the nominees I guess it doesn't matter.

And can I just say I am SO glad The Sopranos has finally come to an end, now maybe some other well deserving shows will actually win an Emmy.

Anyway, let's get to the good stuff, congratulations to Kathrine Heigl (yay!), America Ferrera, The Amazing Race, 30 Rock (yay Tina Fey!) and a whole bunch of others I am totally forgetting lol.

I was really disappointed Ronald D. More got snubbed again for BSG, but hopefully he'll get one next year. Give credit where credit is due (Emmy voters).

I'm going to end with my favourite quote of the night from the great Sally Field "If mother's ruled the world there would be no freaking war". Well said Ms. Field, well said :).

Catching up

So, I know that it's a week late due to my Internet issues, but who saw the conclusion of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships this year?. I decided to check out both the women's and the men's.

I usually don't follow the rest of the tournament after my favourite loses but I decided to make an exception this time and I am so glad I did, because it was definitely one exciting weekend!.

Justine Henin beat both Williams sisters (hell yes!) back to back to reach the final then she proceeded to trash Svetlana Kuznetsova in 2 easy sets winning her 7th grand slam title.

The most unsurprising thing about the Williams loss?, Serena Williams, less then gracious loser speech during her post match press conference:

"I just think she made a lot of lucky shots and I made a lot of errors," Williams said at her news conference".

"I really don't feel like talking about it. It's like I don't want to get fined. That's the only reason I came. I can't afford to pay the fines because I keep losing".

Source

These quotes just affirm my dislike of this player, granted she has never been known to lose in a graceful fashion, much less admit when she is outplayed but with these statements she reached a new low.

I always knew there was a reason I liked Venus better then Serena (though in general I could care less about both), but at least Venus still knows the meaning of the word class. Serena needs to go and look up the meaning of the word in a dictionary.

But enough about that let's talk about the invincible Roger Federer, seriously could this man be anymore classy and amazing?, and perhaps more importantly can he ever be beat? lol. It seems Nadal remains the only man who can still put a chink in Roger's armor.

Mr. Federer won his 4th consecutive U.S. Open by beating a Serbian hot shot and 3rd seed Novak Djokovich in 3 thrilling sets. After watching Novak play, he's definitely become a favourite of mine, I have no doubt that he's got a promising career ahead.

With this win Roger set another record ( I know what else is new right? lol), becoming only the second man in the open era to win the U.S. Open 4 times in a row.

The win give him his 12th grand slam title, bringing him that much closer to tying Pete Sampras's record of 14. Something tells me Roger is up to the challenge. Now to be fair this win certainly wasn't a cake walk.

Djokovic actually had ample chances to win the match (7 to be exact) and each time Roger pulled through denying his opponent the opportunity. I think for the first time in a while I actually enjoyed the men's final more then the women's.

And say what you will about Roger Federer, but there's honestly no denying that the man is the best in the sport. Especially after this win, I have no idea how he pulled it off, how he continues to pull off tough matches under intense pressure.

Well, I guess that's what makes him a true champion. Ok, now that I got all of that off my chest lol, enjoy some pics of Roger in his stylish black outfit. You gotta love a Champion who knows how to dress.

Trials and tribulations of installing a new modem

Wow, it seems like forever since I've updated, well that's what happens when your ISP suddenly decides to change their modems. Any technological change for me always leads to frustration and this time was no exception.

It was suppose to be a simple swap, and instead turned into a 7 day nightmare. After hours of waiting and talking to tech support no one could figure out why my spiffy new DSL modem didn't want to connect to the Internet when the hardware seemed fine.

What was first perceived to be a major issue turned out to be a combination of pure simplicity, stupidity and miscommunication.

A simple misspelling of an account password (by one letter no less!). Another perfect example of why when it comes to technology you should always look at the obvious instead of the more complicated.

Good thing I took the initiative and called after a week of waiting 'cause something tells me I would have waited another week otherwise. If I never talk to another tech person again it'll be too soon.

Taking the initiative wasn't that hard really, if I had to wait another week I think I might have gone insane with boredom. In any case it's good to be back :).

Never forget....

All the lives lost and still being lost till this day.

Hingis out on a day of upsets at the U.S. Open

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The first day of September turned out to be a bad day for the seeded players with the biggest shocker being Maria Sharapova who lost to Agnieszka Radwanska of Poland in 3 sets of the 3rd round. The earliest exit for the #2 seed since 2004.

Now in all fairness Sharapova played absolutely terrible, committing a total of 12 double faults!. But a huge credit still goes to Radwanska for scoring one of the biggest wins of her young career, all the while keeping her cool and not being intimidated in the least throughout the match.

She actually did some intimidating of her own, which I'm sure surprised the hell out of Sharapova lol. This was actually a happy upset, made me proud to be from Poland.

Nadia Petrova and Patty Schnyder were the other seeds who lost yesterday leaving the bottom half of the draw wide open.

The most disappointing loss came in the late afternoon, when Martina Hingis lost to Victoria Azarenka in 3 sets 6/3 1/6 0/6. Hingis won the first set after battling from 2 breaks down, then lost the second winning only 1 game.

I'm still not sure what happened in the last set, but I would venture she just run out of gas, or at least I'm really hoping that's the reason and not her injury announcing itself again. Also perhaps playing singles and doubles took it's toll on her as well.

I think I'm still more upset at how easily she lost more then I am by the loss itself, because let's face it, it was not unexpected.

Though people who actually saw the match claim she put up some what of a fight. I was once again unable to see the match this time due to CBS's sexist coverage of men's matches. So I'm only going by what I've read.

I would really chuck this loss up to lack of match play, which as we all know equals lack of confidence and mental toughness. Anyway, it's another loss and another lost opportunity at what could have been a semi or final of a grand slam. At this point it's beyond sad.

Here's hoping she gets a chance at regaining some of that lost confidence in her doubles match with Daniela Hantuchova today. Winning the title in doubles isn't the same as singles, but it would certainly be a nice consolation price. Plus it would give her some much needed ranking points.

Ok, now that I've ranted about all things negative lol. Let's try looking at a more positive side. Yes, Hingis lost but at least she made it one round further then last year, and she's still in the doubles tournament.

To all those people complaining saying she should retire I say, chill. Seriously. The woman just came back from very serious injuries. She's still human, so as I've said many times before cut her some slack.

I've heard that she is working with a coach and a nutritionist, so that can only lead to good. But improvement can only come with time. It doesn't happen overnight.

Besides if she retired again, I guarantee after a year we'd all want her back. So I say let's just wait and see how things go for the rest of this year before completely writing her off.

He likes me, he really likes me!

Some of these are a little blurry due to Cuba moving around a lot lol

Snuggles :D

It has now been over 2 months entering into a third since we got our little feather head:D. After 2 whole months of feeding him and playing nice, my birdie is slowly but surely coming around and starting to accept me (yay!).

I can finally pet him and give him kisses, took me a while to gain his trust, but it was well worth it. He still has his moody days, but he's warmed up to me:).