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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more