Italians out of World Cup!!!

Can you believe it, the ex-World Cup champions, Italy, is out of the World Cup now! The once magnificent blue boys can kiss their Cup goodbye! I’ve always supported underdogs, so pardon if there are any Italian fans out there. The Italians played well, but its too little too late, and just down on luck perhaps. This is soccer, just face up to it. The Italians can be winners last, but losers first now. Am sure Rachel would have loved to tell the big men in blue her now favourite phrase “Baby no cry, no cry.” Latest reports here.

no cry no cry

facing up to reality

Shanghai Expo Day 2 – Japan Pavilion

Did you watch the Argentina vs Nigeria game? Oh, Argentina is just brilliant! Everybody’s gotta love Messi. Tim was just trying to educate Rachel today about Messi, when she suddenly turned to him and said “Maisy? Drive bus!” Hahaa,… She’s referring to the famous children’s book series about a mouse called Maisy, and she happened to be reading about Maisy driving a bus recently, so can’t blame her for the confusion. I’m quite certain though that Messi will be too busy to be driving a bus in Argentina or Barcelona.

Sorry for the digression above… World Cup is quite an event for our family.

Anyway, back on Shanghai Expo (which now seem so boring in comparison). Part of the excitement about the Expo is people watching, especially the long queues that form outside highly popular pavilions such as Japan, USA, Italy, Germany etc. Even though the Chinese has had a bad history with the Japanese, when it comes to the Expo, it seems they are willing to put all the bad blood behind them, temporarily. The Chinese are so eager to go into the Japan pavilion that I was told the queue was about 8 hours (Yes, I kid you not!) long when the Expo started initially. The other night when we went, the queue time was down to  3.5 hours. No, we weren’t crazy enough to queue up there, but what caught my attention is the way the security guards were trying to keep the queue crowd in control, and preventing queue cutters from creating havoc there. (As was the case at Germany’s pavilion where a fight broke out between the Germans and Chinese when frustrated Chinese queuers called them Nazis. Ouch!)

You can see here first of all, the crowd is just simply HUGGGEEEE. IT stretches as far out as the eye can see. People bring their portable stools and lots of snacks – totally well prepared for the long wait.

The guards are equally well prepared, complete with poles that acts like make shift gates, much like gates that keep bulls from charging forward in a Spanish bull fighting game. It can only temporarily hold them back, for the moment the gates are thrown open, the crowd charge forward with a pent up vengeance.  Young and old, they all queued up, and waited and waited…. All day long, the guards held their pole, up and down it went, bored to tears.

No, I didn’t queue up, so I can’t really show you what these people will see when they go into the pavilion. It looks pretty ordinary to me from the outside though. I’ll rather go Japan to see for myself what Japan is really about. But for thousands of these Expo goers, many of whom are retired and never left the country, the Expo is the next best thing to traveling round the world. In today’s Internet age, it’s not difficult for us to Google just about anything we want, or book a cheap ticket to go tour some fancy place. But for the majority of Chinese peasants, most never left their village, a small minority left for bigger cities like Beijing or Shanghai, and an even smaller population actually left China to tour other countries. For them, the Expo is a BIG deal. I finally see now why Gary Karwoski find the Expo so compelling that he has never missed one since 1958! That’s 52 years!!!!

Gary is someone we happened to share a table with when we were having our dinner just outside Pakistan’s pavilion. We started chatting and he told us many amazing stories about the past World Expos he has attended. He is working for United Airlines as a steward and thus had the opportunity to come to China regularly. As a small boy, his father brought him to a World Expo in Brussels and thus started his love affair with the event. Gary said the Shanghai World Expo is one  of the best he has attended in recent years. Seeing all the folks here full of energy and passion for the Expo reminded him of the times when he was young and Internet hasn’t yet changed the way people learn about different cultures/countries. I admire him for his passion. To follow an event for 52 long years takes a lot of enthusiasm, energy and planning. All the way Gary!!! Hope to see you again in Shanghai Expo.

World Cup Mania

Unless you’ve been staying in caves, you probably know that the World Cup has started today. It is host country, South Africa up against Mexico for tonight’s first match. RSA put up a really good show of counter attacks and splendid saves from the goal keeper, but the Mexicans won’t take it lying down after that first goal they scored was called off by the linesman. Final score of 1:1 wasn’t surprising, but definitely an entertaining match.

No, am not a soccer maniac, but being the wife of one, it kinda has been imbued in me that I’m expected to follow the World Cup too. Strangely, its me blogging about it, while my soccer maniac husband is already fast asleep on the couch. Go figure! In case you think this female, family oriented blog has started to look like a soccer fan blog, sorry guys, tough luck. I guess I’ll still go back to blogging about food, kids and photography after the World Cup – ya know, the gu niang stuff.

I’ve always liked the Brasil team, and the Dutch too. The UK team is getting too disappointing, so I won’t even consider them in the game anymore. So who’s your favourite winning team? Whoever predicted correctly gets a prize – free Expo tix from the Choon family! So place your bets now – put your fave team name in the comments here.