The one about the beautiful game...

Are you ready for some football!!!

9th June, Friday - it was to be a busy day. I had quite a bit of work to finish off before the weekend while its Jo's day off as she was spending time with the girls for Sue Khoon's bachelorette day. Tonight we had Nazriah's birthday dinner and then later at midnight - the biggest event of the year - the start of the FIFA World Cup 2006!

Yes, it'll be football, football and more football for the next month or so. Its so amazing the number of companies jumping on the World Cup bandwagon. There are World Cup burgers, World Cup movies and World Cup computer pendrives; brands using football in their adverts include: Continental Tyres, Mercedes Benz, FujiFilm and many more. This time around, more so than in previous World Cups, we see technology and the internet bringing the world closer. News of the matches and related items are now available instantaneously, Live match coverage is phenomenal with ALL 64 matches covered - and I mean COVERED - with choice of camera angles, statistics, analyses and God knows what else.

Although watching the World Cup has been made so easy for us, its still an event that should be shared with a whole bunch of opiniated, loud and inebriated friends. Which is why we ended up at Spice & Rice past midnight to catch the second half of the first match - Germany vs. Costa Rica. It was a surprisingly exciting match with Germany ending up victors.

Before that, we had attended Nazriah's dinner till around 10.30 p.m. when I dropped Jo off at Bagan to meet her girlfriends for the final chapter of Sue Khoon's hen's night. I dashed off to a friend's place to catch the match and later picked Jo up after she was done. We headed back to Spice & Rice where the football watching was in full swing and we got late night supper of Nasi Minyak to boot (pardon the pun).

Saturday morning was a "sleep-in" affair for me, catching up on the lost sleep the night before. We spent the day with Ethan and that evening, after mass, we had dinner with Jinny, KH and Raphael at a new place - Xuan Xin Teppanyaki Steamboat. The food was ok, good variety and atmosphere was comfortable. However, the England vs. Paraguay match was on at 9.00 p.m. and the TV at that place (yes, there's a TV there - in fact nowaday, there's TV everywhere!) had problems. We finished with our meal in double quick time and dashed to Jinny & KH's place to catch the rest of the match. We were joined later by Mel, Stacy & Sue Khoon - all non big football fans might I add - as Jinny served up her usual coffee, tit-bits & cakes.

Sunday, we went back to routine but in between I managed to catch the repeat of the early morning match between Argentina & Ivory Coast. It was a good match too - seems the matches this time around has taken a step up in standard. There's a certain attacking flair in the teams which has increased viewing pleasure. Looks like its going to be a long, tiring month!

One last thing - watching the Argentina vs. Ivory Coast match, we were treated to a glimpse of Maradona in the crowd. Certainly a legend in his time, but now very much down to earth and just enjoying himself immensely.

Speaking of old legends - our country's former PM, Tun Mahathir has decided to speak out against his chosen successor, the present PM. That just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Some legends retire gracefully and become down-to-earth characters... and some legends...well...