gambitch - now available in blue

Thursday, August 11, 2005

It's strange, really, how sometimes you spend weeks, months, maybe years not running into any old friends or acquaintances, and all of a sudden, you run into two of them within ten minutes of each other.

What actually happened was that, while taking the tube home after another field observation tour, I kinda got too tired and napped on the train. Not altogether surprisingly, I overslept, which necessitated me jumping off at the station where I woke up and crossing over to take a return train. It just so happened that an acquaintance (whose name I honestly cannot remember) was just done with what looks like a game of tennis, and was going home in the company of two female companions - neither of whom I knew, which is not at all strange. The point is I bumped into him and waved hello. Turns out he was taking the same train as I was, but because I wasn't really looking to interrupt, I walked away to enter a different carriage.

By nothing but sheer chance, I saw another acquaintance on the same train carriage which I boarded. I doubt he saw me in the crowd, and I didn't bother to say hi to him, mostly because I was more concerned about staying vaguely awake so as not to miss my stop again. But it's a little uncanny. And it isn't quite as if I was friends with half the world or something like that. I have quite few acquaintances, so the chances of meeting two on the trot on the way home was rather small. But there it is.

Oh, and can somebody explain to me why, for the same weight and meat type, shaved ham costs about 30% more than regular slices of ham? I'm thinking of getting some shaved ham for my pasta salad. I'd shave them myself to save money - but I don't know how!

gambitch [ 11:29 PM]

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

I'm not quite sure why, but my body is still feeling the negative effects of the Sunday exertions. Among other things, I'm still on the tired side, which might help explain why I slept most of the evening off yesterday. I could do that in part because I had no work to do yesterday, or at least no work that required urgent action.

Not that I mind - I didn't miss anything on the picture box yesterday.

So I got up this morning and ran through the sports news. As you might already know, the football season is getting started again, and tonight there was a whole bunch of action across Europe. Mixed news for British teams - Glasgow Rangers won in Cyprus while United were triumphant once again in Old Trafford. Of course, there's the obligatory anti-Glazer protest at the start of the match, not that it will do anything in practical terms, sadly. But it's not all good over in Merseyside, where Phil's Everton debut ended in a 2-1 reverse to Villarreal, who are tough to beat back in Spain.

Of course, there's tomorrow to think about as well, when Liverpool go to Sofia, Udinese visit Lisbon to play Sporting, and Shakhtar Donetsk entertain Luis Figo, Santiago Solari and their new team-mates from Inter. There's a whole bunch of other games too, but these are the ones I'm paying more attention to.

Speaking of football, I spent the last week experiencing life in the stands, something which some of you readers out there may claim that you simply won't deign to do. I'd say you're missing out on plenty of opportunities to observe your local community, which brings me on to what I want to sum up regarding my observations.

To be sure, the standards of play over here aren't high at all, compared against the European and American leagues. There's plenty of room for improvement on that front. But I'm more concerned about things like profiling the crowd and how they measure up against the national demographics. And that can get a little bit surprising, or not.

As part of the football league organizers' and clubs' efforts to artificially create a certain amount of atmosphere in the stands, I saw things like cheerleader girl groups, all of whom look like they are in their early to mid-teens. And then there were people beating drums and organized chanting. Problem is, they appeared to be the only people who did any amount of chanting. Everyone else was just sitting back and keeping quiet, and only on rare occasions did I hear people shouting things about how the referee was bloody stupid, or visually impaired, or both. In other words, there was no spontaneous response to the singing section resulting in chants being echoed from everywhere else in the ground. None of that was happening. It was very sterile, quite unlike what I've seen in Europe.

Second, in terms of racial distribution within the cheerleaders, there was an extremely clear skew... towards the minorities. This should not have been much of a surprise, as the minorities over here have often been more heavily represented in football squads, where they are in the majority. But when the racial profile more than reverses the population ratio, something is a bit off. And the weird part is, the racial profile among the spectators happens to vaguely approximate the national racial distribution. So why aren't there more girls from the majority race in cheerleading squads? Could they be more interested in modelling or spending their weeknights at home? Questions worth posing, surely.

I could write much more, but I'm hungry and I need to find some food.

Until next time, then.

gambitch [ 5:28 AM]

Sunday, August 07, 2005

A rather mixed game today. Some decent saves here and there, but then there were also a couple of clangers. Throw in a few kicks on the shin (none intentional) and it's pretty much business as usual.

Oh, and Cassano managed a triple cramp on his left leg. That's how hard he (and actually all of us) played before he flies off to Iowa later this week.

gambitch [ 10:31 PM]