if you had caught some of the world cup matches in the past 2 weeks, you would have felt like i do, that 22 men and a bag of air can bring you very exciting 90 minutes! china got into the world cup finals the first time in 46 years, and the whole of china is roaring with the world cup fever. streets are less crowded, except for areas with big and small tv screens. walk into any eatery with a tv and we'll be asked, "do you want seats facing the tv?" although the chinese themselves know that chances of them beating experienced teams like brazil and costa rica are near to impossible, everyone still cheer on their national team. afterall, it feels real proud to hear your national anthem being played in the stadium, and to show support for the 11 heros selected from the 600 million males to represent the country. these men are winners already! most of my evenings now are hence spent in front of the google box. i might as well, since i've sort of ran out of places to visit, and my fast dwindling bank account plus fat lugguage are strong signals that i should stop pumping money into the shanghai economy. after knocking off at 1730, it's off to a quick dinner before getting home in time for the 1930 game. if the eatery we go to for dinner has tv, we could even catch some bits of the 1700 game. by "we", i mean MW and me. ES doen't enjoy soccer at all, and i think he's getting rather pissed how we try to schedule things such that we get to watch the games. we do try to pacify him by treating him to beer. a bottle of beer here costs roughly the same as one bar of kit kat (!!), and the three of us would share a bottle some nights. we had wanted to watch the china vs brazil match at huai hai road, where there was a giant screen broadcasting the matches outside lane crawford (think a gigantic screen outside takashimaya). the whole idea was to squeeze with the crowd and cheer the chinese team together! but on saturday, there was a notice from the local government stating there will be no broadcast of all china matches, for fear of chaos. sigh! our next best alternative was the clubhouse at the service apartment where ying soon and chung eng stayed. there was a beer bar and 2 big tv screens and we joined the dozen or so people cheering for the chinese national team. the brazilians were clearly a better team, but i thought the chinese guys put up a good fight too. 4-0 was an acceptable score, i guess, although we were all rooting for the chinese to put in at least a goal. the japan vs russia match yesterday was definitely one of the most enjoyable matches for me, because of… eye-candy! hidetoshi nakata is definitely THE MAN! woohoo!! i was rooting for the jap team and the ultra-cool looking jap guys all the way, while MW was rooting for russia because “china and russia are good friends, and i cannot forgive japan for the wwII brutality.” did i tell you our frequencies seldom cross paths?! urgh! anyway, i was jumping around the house, looking rather silly, when junichi inamoto scored the only goal of the game. i hope japan can get into the final 16, because i really enjoy oogling at the japanese! *wink* do enjoy the soccer games (and players) too! and korea must beat usa later!