European Dominance in the World Cup 2006

Woah! What a twist of events! Two of the most popular soccer teams–Argentina and Brazil–have been knocked out of the World Cup 2006! Brazil was the defending world champions in this game, but they were valiantly beaten by the French team, 0-1! Brazil is now officially out of the World Cup!

Germany defeated Argentina in an excrutiatingly tense penalty shoot out. The same with England and Portugal, where after an exciting and nerve-racking game, England collapsed under the Portuguese, 1-3, in penalty shoot outs.

So, now, all semi-finalists for the Fifa World Cup 2006 are from Europe–an obvious sign of Europe’s dominance in this sport:

Portugal vs France
Italy vs Germany 

They have defeated the popular favorites from Latin America, and now the rest of the world will watch as the Europeans battle it out in the last and final match of Soccer World Cup 2006!

Things I’ve been doing

I've been quite busy lately, with work and all. I haven't had the time to blog at all! And also, World Cup Football Fever is still going on, which I have been watching staying up late late into the nights. Infact, the game yesterday between Argentina and Mexico was incredibly exciting! It started out with overwhelming excitement as in the first 5 mins of the game Mexico shot a goal against Argentina! In my excitement (I was rooting for Mexico, btw) I was trying to text message my friend Sean who was also watching the match at the same time… but before I could complete the few lines of my text msg, Argentian blasted back into the game with a goal–two goals in the first 10 mins of the game! It was incredible!

Anyway, in the end however, after prolonging the game with a 1-1 score into extra-time, Mexico conceded a goal to Argentina, and thei World Cup dreams crumbled almost viscerally right there. It was quite disheartening to see Mexico defeated after such a valiant battle they put forward.

Well, actually the previous evening, Sean, his brother, and myself had a nice time out at Pop Tate's, a local "Unrestaurant"–as they call themselves. With 2 pitchers of screw drivers and some meaty appetizers, we had plenty of silly conversations and fun. Oh, and we also concocted preliminary plans of starting up a business together! So, we'll see how that goes. It's still in its cooking stages… it might take months or years for it to come to fruition, if at all.

Besides all that, work has been interesting. I have reading works on James Joyce's Dubliner's, the Miko dance of the Japanese Buddhists, Florence Nightingale's Notes on Nursing and its influence in shaping the British imperialist identity, etc. I cannot complain much about my work; except, I get only alternate Saturday's off–which makes my alternate long weeks simply exhausting! I've realized that a tired brain is much worse than a tired body. And surely, my brain is exhausted from all that intellectual exercise it gets all day all week. Whew!

And finally, now, I am in the process of finalizing my application for a job with the UN in Rome. I'm strategizing my ways of getting out of the drudgery of life in India. Hopefully, this application will work out, and I might be able to experience lovely Italy–and its HOT HOT Italian men! Roma, Roma! Mucho bienne!

Football Fever!

India, like the rest of the world, is hot with Football Fever! It's the 2006 Fifa World Cup games currently being held in Germany, and that's pretty much been the only topic of water-cooler (or coffee-maker) conversation around here. And doing something utterly unlike myself, I sat up and watched two games so far: England vs Paraguay, where I thought England put on a dismal performance by winning only by a 1-0 score, and the only goal scored was by a member of the Paraguaian team as a self-goal. Certainly, England is way better than that! Though, I must say, the England team is best know for their line-up of pretty boys than their athletic abilities (see pic for evidence).

The second match I watched was tonight between the United States and the Czech Republic. Again, I was utterly disappointed by the US game. They played so lazily and were utterly overwhelmed by the formidable Czech team. Ofcourse, I was rooting for the US team, but by the second half, after being down by 2 goals to nothing, the Czech forward attacker (I'm not sure if that's the technical term) sealed their comfortable victory with another damning 3rd goal. However, it didn't seem to matter the US team - they still seemed quite complacent and nonchalant about the whole thing… like they cared only little.

Oh well. It's sucks to be disappointed by sports just when you just barely started paying some attention to it. I believe, in among the more than 300 posts that I have written so far, this is my first and only post on sports! Good god! How wierd is that? I don't even have a category for this yet! I guess I'll create one right now, and this shall be my first, lonely post in that category. Maybe more shall turn out later. I'll wait and see for myself!