Sooo + World Cup

Howdy. Part of my delay recently has been the overwhelming fact that I want to write about everything that happened in the last 6 months, but don't want to actually write that much. I've toyed with the idea of just skipping those times out of laziness and staying current (as with the Madrid post below). But on second thought, some really fantastic things happened and it would make me really sad to not share them. Plus, this site is really becoming a journal that I'm already looking back on to remember stuff that happened when I first moved. (I can't believe we are coming up on two years since the London bombings).

So what I think I'll try to do is a splattering of events from the past 6 months that you might be interested in. Chances are I'll be very opinionated now that I have the benefit of hindsight. So.....let's get started, eh?

June 2006 - World Cup


The World Cup was a phenomenal event in England. The blind support is beyond what I could have imagined. I say blind because England has some serious history of messing things up in the World Cup. But every year the English come up with some crazy new theme song and they cheer their hearts out. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for this to be the year they win, but somehow the just never do.

And it's not just that they don't win, it's really that they get all they way to shoot-outs and THEN lose. Sooo many times. 3 out of the last 5 times!! That's truly painful. Check it out.

Despite all that, the English stop all socio-familial-religiosio-economicio commitments and go to the pub to cheer on their country. As close to the American-style flag waving that I've seen here. It's fantastic. And the amazing thing is there's not a particular pub to be in. You can be in ANY bar with a TV and it's rammed with England supporters. The ones that don't have the game on actually advertise that!

The other side of that, of course, is the good old USA.


There's no doubt we've been coming up in the world of the footie. But we still aren't there yet. I really did think this year we'd make our first great showing, but alas, no such luck. Many people point out that we were the only team to not lose to the eventual champion (tie, duh). And I'll admit that game the Americans did very well, but our performance in several of the other games was not quite the stuff of champions. I do think, however, that now we've got David Beckham showing our kids how to get things done, we might have a chance!

Cheers!
daN

London Slang -- Pete Tong

Pete Tong
adj.

Rhyming slang for 'wrong'.

Editor's Note: This is the first Cockney rhyming slang I've posted. I kinda shied away from it because it is sorta too easy and I wanted to put up stuff people actually used. Rarely does someone working in the City say, "Go up the apples and pairs and pick up the dog and bone." However, I do here Pete Tong sometimes and it makes me happy.

For those not in 'the scene,' Pete Tong is a very famous British DJ who works for the BBC radio station Radio 1. Apparently there was a movie that helped push this phrase into common usage -- "It's all gone Pete Tong."

Feliz 2007 from Madrid!

Last weekend Justin and I made the brave trip to Madrid for New Year's. Absolutely fantastic! It is such an incredible city and the people there have so much fun. It's interesting though because everyone says the rest of Spain overshadows Madrid, but I think that gives it some charm. My first time to Spain...and it was quite an experience.

After getting off the plane, the first thing we noticed was the smell. Not an ordinary smell, sort of a drilling into metal smell. I saw some construction looking tape and lots of bags lying around in a fairly organized fashion, so just assumed the brand new airport was getting more construction done. Oh was I wrong. The Basque separatist group ETA decided to end the nine-month cease-fire by exploding a huge car bomb in the parking garage of the terminal where I was going to land 9 hours later. Read about it here. I don't want to call this sort of thing a tradition for me. At least an unfortunate coincidence. Luckily, once again, I was pretty far away when it actually happened.

The strange thing was that they didn't tell us anything about it. So we carried on thinking it was construction until the next morning when we picked up the paper. I did have suspicions, though, when they put us on some random bus to another terminal and I could see smoke coming from our terminal. Crazy.

After that, we knew this trip would be an experience. It didn't let us down. The tapas style of going out basically resulted in five days of bar hopping for us. We'd have a little bite and a drink somewhere, and then head out to see what looked good down the street. And then stumble home between 4-6 in the morning!

So the night starts out like this:


And ends like this:


New Year's Eve was pretty crazy too. We bought tickets to a really cool club called Palacio de Gaviria which is right by Madrid's Time Square, Puerta Del Sol. So we thought we'd grab a bite to eat, head down to Sol, and then over to our club. Unfortunately, the tradition in Madrid is to eat dinner with your family till about 1am, and then go out to the clubs. So there was almost NO bars or restaurants open. Hard to imagine. In one of the most vibrant cities in the world, we walked around from 10-11:30 looking for a restaurant. We found a couple but they had been booked for ages. So what does any respectable 20-something in a suit do at a time like this? We went to the kabob shop, met a crazy french guy who promptly fell in love with Justin (much to his dismay), and then headed to Sol.

Last year we were near Time's Square so there were lots of comparisons. The most incredible difference was that there were almost NO police anywhere. People were generally cool and just happy, but some were climbing up and dancing on store signs and newspaper booths. No problem. So we bought 12 grapes each (one for each bell chime at midnight), a cheap bottle of champagne, and joined in the revelry.


The Palacio was magnificent! It is actually a former palace. Two main dance floors, one had huge ceilings and played techno and Spanish music. The other was mostly pop and American music, so we kinda went back and forth between trips to the side rooms to relax. Here's me ruining another good picture:


Did you notice I got glasses?!? How sad!! Ok well lots more to tell, but I'll save that for some other time. I wish everyone a wonderful and healthy 2007. Come visit this year if you haven't! And if you have, come again!!

Cheers,
Dan