| villageVoice |
Posted
on 22-Jun-02 11:22 AM
Never been Wrold Cup this lonely.
I get up in the middle of the night to watch the game and am the only person shouting "goal" in perhaps all my block. Since I don't have a cable connection, and good ole ESPN is all the time busy with baseball, I have taken to watching football, nay soccer, on Channel 10 - in Spanish.
The other day, my son, 6, awakened by the middle-of-the-night "goooooooooal", (that's about the only thing I follow in Spanish) looked aghast. "Buwa, you gotta do something about your Spanish." His was a genuine concern. Since the Cup started, he's become very possessive about the remote-control since I watch anything vaguely related to soccer. And he's not exactly a soccer fan.
Back to midnight stories. I just walk up and down the 7-story apartment building to keep myself awake, punch drunk on Cup gossips and news, and hardly anyone to share. Yesterday, I asked the Hispanic porter in the building, "Who is your favorite?" His English is as good as my Spanish. "USA," he shot back, barely lifting his head (he was mopping the lobby). USA had been edged out by Germany 1-0 in the morning.
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| rat-a-tat |
Posted
on 22-Jun-02 12:35 PM
You have to be in Nepal to see the World Cup frenzy completely taken over the Kathmandu streets. I was bizzy the whole day and couldn't catch up so much on the Spain Vs. South Korea and Senegal Vs. Turkey matches...But still, I could catch up on the latest scores from the taxi drivers I was travelling with. Even the streets looked empty for a while as most of the people must have been confined in front of their TV sets during the matches.
However, this time, it's mostly the craze for watching World Cup on big screens. The best place I must say are the Bakery Cafe outlets and Himalayan Java. I am a regular at Java since long time back and, I must say, I've never seen such a huge crowd gather there. I am sure the same crowd will keep on visiting Java again and again even after the World Cup matches are over. Good marketing strategy, I must say.
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