Lu Dat!!

Whatever "Lu Dat" means, regardless, everyone in Taiwan is cheering for Lu right now. Andy Roddick was just defeated by Lu Yen-Hsun of Taiwan (not TPE (Taipei)) who will now move onto the quarterfinals. Great day for Taiwanese tennis, as Lu was not shy to promote Taiwan before this match as well as in the post-match interview. Here's a snippet of what he said last week:

The result wrote Lu's name in the Asian tennis history books and he expressed his pride about putting Taiwanese tennis on the map.

He added: "There is probably a lot of news coming out right now in Taiwan. I am happy to have done it for my country, for my family, for my friends and for all the people that have supported me.

"But I don't want them to call me the Pride of Taiwan or anything - I am the same as I was before."

Recaps are just starting to come out, but for the most part I have not seen any refer to him as from Chinese Taipei or some ridiculous name like that. Edit: Just saw one out of the LA Times that states "Lu of Taipei." Oh well... as long as international sports organizations keep allowing China to dictate what Taiwan can be called, you can't really expect much from the media.

ECFA News: With the ECFA likely to be signed within the next 24 hours (one of the saddest moments in Taiwan history), I remain quite bearish on the TAIEX. Take a look at the leading indicator for the TAIEX that I have been using (the Shanghai Composite) and tell me that is not a negative divergence showing on the TAIEX. But of course there is the possibility that the indices are decoupling from this previous correlation.