And the FIFA World Cup 2014 begins...

I used to play soccer. No kidding! I had to stop, however, when the ball hit my face and broke my eyeglasses in high school (as you can see, I'm used to having my face get hit by hard surfaces while playing sports). Since then, I watch soccer matches from the relative safety of bleachers and on the telly... I am not watching the matches as closely this time around as compared to many years back when I'd drive all the way from Los Banos to Makati on school nights to watch the live midnight games with my cousins and nephews!

Anyway, the FIFA World Cup 2014 has started on June 13 and I've watched the first two games so far (Brazil vs Croatia and Mexico vs Cameroon). The nice thing about this World Cup, is that there are more ways to see the games... other than going to sports bars, or actually flying to the venue. The game times are still off for people living in my time zone this year but at least the replays can be seen during more reasonable hours over cable tv. If the live telecast is not available, blow-by-blow reports and real-time photos can be followed through Twitter or the other social media sites (the online equivalent of following the games via radio, methinks). Someone has even developed a means of monitoring the origins of World Cup tweets at real time! I particularly like the FIFA app for iOS and the website designed and implemented by Franck Ernewein because each tweet lights up its geographical origin:


Now that the biggest game in the planet is being played in the fifth biggest nation in the world, I wonder what the atmosphere in the fictional Quidditch World Cup is like. 

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