Well I was looking into changing my flight home so I could get back and finish a project for school. I called the airline a couple days ago and they said all the flights were full and I couldn’t change. That would mean I get home the 13th at night and have a big presentation the 15th…..kinda bogus.

Well I called today and they said they had an opening the 7th, so I’m coming home early. I’m pretty stoked.

We play in the final on Sunday at 4, live on tvone. There was this huge controversy but in the end, the federation held a press conference today and announced they were wrong and we earned a spot in the final. BIG bonus is we win. I’ll try to post the results before I get back but who knows….later

Dan

Back in Bogor

Okay, so I just got back from the final four….what a weekend.

I got there, and that craziness happened with my paper, but that was just the start. Once I realized I had a week to do the paper I packed it in and just focused on volleyball. Here’s how the final four works here: the top four team is in the league all play each other and the best two records go to the final and the bottom two play for bronze….those matches happen the next weekend. So this weekend was 3 matches in 3 days.

We played the first match against Sanata, a pretty good team. We came out clicking and won in five sets. My ma sent me an email that said we read that I played bad which was erroneous. I played pretty sweet. So we won that match and looked good coming into the next night.

The next night was a live match against the team that lost in the other match the night before. So beat them, and their out and we are probably in. So before our match is the other mens match and it was crazy. Their was a bad call in the match and I could get into all the particulars, but the end result was that the team that was 1-0 on the weekend (had a win the night before) walked out on the match and refused to play. A forfeit is a loss 25-0 25-0 25-0. So the team should have scored no points. Instead of doing this, the federation gave them 99 points for the match. This will come into play later.

So we played our second match. We won in 4 sets in a pretty good match. We should have won in 3 sets but I biffed a ball out of bounds at 25-26 to give them the win. I got yanked in the 4th set for that one. Either way, we won 2 matches and thought we were good for the final.

We came back the next night to play the team that walked out the night before. They were 1-1, we were 2-0, and the other team (sanata) had just won their match to be 2-1. We needed to win the match or keep it close. I gotta say, it was a rough one. I felt like I had about 2 gallons of water in both my quads I was so sore. We won the first set then lost the next 3 in not that close of games. End result, we got booted from the final.

So then, our team is raising hell because the forfeited game should have consequently eliminated the team from playoffs. The tie break is points and for the match the team walked out, they gave them credit for losing 23-25, even though they never played.

It’s a really hard situation to explain but the owner of the team that walked out is high up in our federation so we got the shaft. Our management is in Jakarta right now protesting the final. They said if we don’t play in the final, our girls team and guys team wont play this coming weekend. Its and interesting situation. Either way, the weekend was awesome, it was some of the most fun I had playing volleyball ever, sucks we got the shaft but o well. Well im heading off to bed, see yas soon.

Dan

okay, so i wake up today and we are traveling to bandung for the final four....its not like the final four your accustomed to but ill get to that later. i get on the internet before we leave and check on of my classes. there is two weeks left in the class and i know the final report for this one im checking is a 20 page paper. i check it out....its due APRIL 25th!!!!!!

i'm like "are you kidding me right now?" so i freak out for about 5 seconds and go into survival mode. i grab all the books i need and luckily i had my computer charged for the bus ride. i get on the bus and its balls to the wall. im writing like there is not tomorrow, only i have no research done so its slow as molasses. how am i supposed to fake a 20 page paper about how the topics we discussed in class concerning supervisory management can relate to my intended research project or thesis.....I DONT EVEN HAVE A RESEARCH PROJECT OF THESIS!!!!!!!

we get to the hotel and have to train right away. on the bus i got the paper outlined and 4 doublespaced pages done.....well 2 single space, i double space at the end. so i get back to the hotel, eat, and start working on the paper again, but o wait, we have team relaxation. FAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

So i'm sitting in the lobby wondering how i am going to finish a 20 page paper in the next 48 hours and going a little nuts. i figure, i better look at the website again and see the exact minute i have to submit this impending piece of garbage. WTF!!!!!!!!! the sylabus was wrong and the paper is due may 5th. i wasn't even made that i had been frantically working on this paper all day for no reason.

o yea, so the final four. it is 3 matches regardless. you play all the teams and two teams with the best record play the next week for the championship. there is a lot of money on the line for these wins so it is nice not to have to worry about that stupid paper. im on the biggest natural high ever right now without having to do that paper. either way, this weekend will be a blast, we play three matches in three nights and team is really clicking right now. ill post results when i get them. see yas

dan

okay so this random girl i know from nebraska had a camera cord so i posted photos of my trip so far....heres the link


http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2384683&l=288e7&id=12424824

enjoy

i just woke up from a long slumber and my body is running on fumes.....we played last night in jakarta against the top team in the league. we won the first set, got smoked in the second set, then i got pulled from the match. i cant really comprehend what the people were saying but it sounds like our management said something to my coach about resting my quad for playoffs, that what i took it as. so i packed it in and figured i was done for the night, nice and easy ya know. well i sit for about 3 games, then we go to a game five, and he puts back in me and another middle who starts. we were like, wtf? so we go back in and actually won the fifth set pretty easily to win the match and the second half of the season. we get a bonus for that, i think im going to buy a psp with my bonus, they are really sweet here.

there is this guy next to me in the lobby right now reading what i am typing and blowing smoke in my face, but im pretty sure he can't read english....if you can, you are really annoying and get away from me dude, seriously

sorry about that. he actually just got up right now tho, maybe he read that. well like i said, we won the second half of the season and are squared away for playoffs. they start next friday. after the match last night, wow, it got a little crazy. we went to some club that was so tight and the pitchers were free all night, the foreigners got their moneys worth lemme tell ya. as such, my body is telling me that it needs about 48 hours to recoop from last nights ordeal....and we have practice in 3 hours, prolly wont be my finest hour.

alright, im gonna go hit up an outlet to spend some of my bonus. i dont know if i can buy stuff when i get back to the states, its just too cheap here id feel like a chump paying more than 10 bucks for anything....

julie, i got aj the cutest pro leaga shirt (thats the league name here). hes gonna look like such a stud.

later

dan

the new pic is of me and another foreigner at our "team bonding" trip at some resort. it was so fun, i think i posted about it earlier. i found the pic from one of the other foreigners....i dont have a cord to hook up my camera to my computer so i have to wait till im back home to do all that junk.....

im about to head off to bed here on friday night in the luxerous pandrango 2 hotel in bogor indonesia. we play sunday night against the top team in the league. rumor has it that they tried to throw a match tonight so that the team we just beat had a chance to make the playoffs. its a wierd situation because one team is funded by the federation, and they are the team that won't make playoffs. for some reason, teams have been trying to change that. i dont think we will miss playoffs regardless, plus our owner already told me i got a free trip to bali for making the playoffs so i call that a verbal contract. like i said, we play sunday night....its in jakarta. should be a good one. ill post results as soon as i get back monday. see yas

dan

got my first paycheck today. our "owner" came to our hotel at like 11, we watched the league wrap up show and talked about my messed up quad. i was talking with julie the other day online about how indestrucable i was and i swear when i got up from my chair i messed up my quad. joke's on me. our owner also told me that people are worried about all the wieght i lost. she told me to eat more, easier said than done in indonesia. i didnt really notice that i lost that much wieght, and i was like, "come on, im just cut"

we have practice all this week twice a day then play on sunday. its a wierd situation. because of that one team that threw their match, we can win the league's second half with a win, and be eliminated from playoffs with a loss. pretty crazy. we should be fine though. I'm hoping that we get saturday night off because the other two american foriegners (dani mancuso and sandra...don't know her last name) are playing each other. i havent seen them play and niether team will make playoffs so it would be nice to see them play at least once. the matches are in jakarta (supposedly where are team is from) but it will take two hours for me to get there if i go. indonesia is nuts. the traffic is like nothing ive ever seen.

i kinda miss nebraska a bit. i dont know why, maybe cause i had a car. maybe cause i could eat anything i wanted. or maybe i dont miss it. i think id rather be here getting paid to play volleyball. i honestly felt a little wierd taking money to play. im like "your paying me to play this game, i guess ill take it" pay checks from work that you don't enjoy all that much seems so much more earned. if my body could take it, i do this stuff forever.

life is good, just miss my family

well im gonna get to bed....

dan

A twist on last weekend…

Well it ended up taking forever to get home from Jember. We left our hotel for the airport at 9 AM. On our way our flight got delayed until 830 instead of 6. We went to a mall and say a movie, Fools Gold. It’s the one where Matt McConehey is a treasure hunter….yea I had never heard of it either, so I slept. Well we get done with the movie and head to dinner then the airport. We get there at 630 for our flight but surprise, we’re delayed till 1130. If you are flying domestically in Indonesia, I highly advise against Malaya Airlines. So we finally get back to Bogor at 2 AM. Almost 20 hours of travel, what a mess.

So either way, we found out while we were traveling that before our second match was over, the team we beat the night before (who we assumed we eliminated from playoffs) made a deal with the team they would play next. I don’t know the particulars but the result was a thrown match and major upset in the standings. Now the team we beat has 2 wins, and we have 3 along with another team. Mathematically we aren’t in playoffs yet, so it gives us a lot more to play for this weekend. Well I just got done with breakfast so I need to get a move on the day. We had all yesterday off and morning practice off today. I’m trying to ahead with homework but it sucks. I’m half way around the world playing volleyball and I get a reality check every time I check my email and see something about leadership training, teaming, etc. I hate thinking about the hours it’s going to take to get my masters some day…..so I don’t think about it.

See yas.

Meske

Well I’m on the bus right now on the way home from Jember. We came into the week with one win on the season and needing at least one win to stay in the playoff hunt….we got two wins, no thanks to me.

We played the host team Friday night in one of the worst matches I have ever played in. Sometimes it is nice to know that you can be associated with absolute garbage, which is what I was on Friday, it keeps you grounded. The funny thing was that our coach didn’t know when to put down a suffering and dying horse. I started the first game, played horrible and got pulled. Started the second game, stunk it up again and got pulled. Same thing game three, same thing game four. If you can picture the old American Gladiators, with the Eliminator at the end, well I was like the out of shape guy who couldn’t get up that hill with the moving floor. And they just keep falling back down a million times. We ended up winning in 4 games pretty easily. It was lucky the team we were playing was horrible.

Then we came back the next night to play one of the top teams in the league. I was surprised that I wasn’t fired yet, instead I started the match and actually played alright (I played like an all-star compared to the showing 24 hours earlier). The match itself was amazing. We won the first 2 games easily and were in control of game three before giving up a run at the end and losing 23-25. Then we started game 4 down 9-2 but pushed it to 24-24 and lost 28-30. Then we went to game five. We were down 12-14 and ended up winning 22-20, it was one of the craziest game fives I have ever been a part of. Well we came away with two wins and we all get a bonus for the upset the second night.

So there is the weekend wrap up. For the most part I felt really out of it this weekend with all my graduate school stuff going on in the states…I’m getting pretty far behind. I’m sure it will work itself out, that’s what happened with my undergrad.

I’m sitting on this bus right now that we will take for 6 hours, to catch a one hour flight, then drive 2 hours to get home. Maybe now is a good time to talk about some of the guys on our team.

Fajar, this dude is so tight. He is 27 and only started playing volleyball at 23. Before that, he was a kick boxer and MMA fighter. He showed me some video and it was nuts. He has the most bad ass scars on both forearms from getting mugged in his hometown. A guy came up to him with a machete and took two swings which he blocked with his forearms. He jumps like crazy and is super laid back, my kinda dude.

E-pong, he is hilarious. He’s in his middle thirties and has the coolest accent when he tries to speak English. He smokes about two packs of Marlboro Reds a day and struts everywhere (like a pimp kinda walk, its sweet).

Then there is Loudry. He is our setter and is 39. He works for the bank that sponsors us and in his contract with the bank it says he has to play volleyball. He played national team for some 10 odd years but now he is just a normal guy that sets for a pro team. He is the only Indonesian Christian that I have met so far and I had the best talk with him about just living that life in a place where they claim 90 percent of the population is muslim. He said it is almost like secretive to be a Christian here, but that there are a lot of people that are converting and that it is probably more like 70 percent muslim but the government says its over 90. He speaks really great English and is awesome to be around, very funny.

We have a bunch more guys on the team and they are all really cool guys. I haven’t met any Indonesians that aren’t sweet, there just happy all the time, its contagious.

Well the weekend started off a little shitty (I was really stressed about school and having a job next year.......I don’t really ever get stressed but this weekend was an exception). But it ended up great.

I am absolutely addicted to Freecell (I’m gonna play it right after I’m done with this) and the movie Superbad. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and buy it right now…..it’s scrumtrulecent. Wish I were in Chicago for the cubbies man. I can’t wait to get my fukudome jersey. We got the day off tomorrow so ill try and post again. I love the emails you guys send, especially the ones about AJ WIlley...what a cool guy. I can’t wait to teach him all kinds of hilarious stuff.

See yas soon,

Dan Meske, BNI Jakarta taplus, #18 (might be able to change my number back to #1 for playoffs, that would be sweet)