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June 18, 2006
Electricity Lost, Futbol Tie
I watched the absolutely thrilling Ghana - Czech World Cup Match yesterday while cooking / eating breakfast. There is absolutely nothing better than the underdog romping a heavily favored team. Ghana scored its first goal within the first two minutes of the game - a World Cup record. They went on to win 2-0, and the announcers said if they'd played smarter it could've been a 4-0 win.
The only weird part was that a Ghanan player - Paintsil - kept waving an Israeli flag. The US commentators said Absolutely Nothing. Turns out Paintsil plays for an Israeli club. As a UK observer pointed out, this would be like Beckham raising the Spanish flag during a UK win in the World Cup. According to Reuters, Paintsil wanted to honor his Israeli fans. I suppose it makes sense: his professional life seems to be based in Israel, and there are many Ghanan workers in Israel, but still...it could be used as an example of the lowering levels of nationalism in the world; which to me is an excellent thing. Alternatively, since it was a form of nationalism, just for his chosen country instead of his home country, it could be seen as an example of the importance of nationalism both as a civic philosophy and useful for personal economic security. (Apparently, the Tel Avic club Paintsil plays for was looking to axe him before yesterday's game.)
The announcers also kept promoting the US game at 3pm. Turns out that was the EDT start of the damn game. In reality it started at 2pm CDT, a fact I only caught onto much later in the day.
See, at about 2:20, the power was cut to my building. I had been doing other things on my puter and hadn't realized the game had already started. Sitting in my top floor flat in 90 degree heat without fans wasn't appealing, so I took a shower, got dressed, and started walkin to a pub. By the time I got there, the pub was dealing w its own circuit-breaker problems and I ended up only seeing the last ten minutes of the US game. Doh! Oh well, it didn't stop me from getting drunk with some random futbol fans...
Now I'm wondering if I should attempt to make breakfast with my food that sat unrefrigerated for 5 to 7 hours...
Posted by cj at June 18, 2006 08:56 AM