Man's curse!!

Man has 2 curses and us Chindians are very the norm when it comes to this. And I don't mean the swear words. That we have few hundreds from multiple languages...sometimes even from not heard of. Man's curse is women (don't tell me this surprised you!!!) and sports. I wrote about this a little bit sometime back so here is a refresher.

The reason why this came to my mind was because of the recently concluded world's more popular and watched event. I don't mean American Idol!! I mean the most spectacular sporting event in the world (No, not "Dancing with the Stars" either). I am talking about the FIFA World Cup. That is the Football World Cup. Now this is really "Football" and really the "World Cup", unlike what the Americans think.

Soccer was actually the abbreviation of the Football Association (assoc). So the Americans wanting to be different from the English used this word to greater effect and decided that they cannot change to follow the world. Look at the 2 games, football as the rest of the planet knows it and the American Football where as the name suggest only the Americans know it. Which games reflects more accurately on the word "football"???

Another things is, look at the American games, Basketball, American Football, Baseball, Ice Hockey. Their annual final games are always called World Series and the champions are World Champions! How many countries participate in the NBA or NFL or MLB finals? All of 1!! And they are "World" champions! Talk about being insecure and over compensating!!

Anyway, I digress.

The FIFA World Cup happens once in 4 years and reported to be even more lucrative and watched sporting event that the Olympics! I love the World Cup! I started watching when I was 12 in 1982 when it was held in Spain and a very lucky Italy won it enroute beating my favourite team Brazil. This year, Brazil lost again, this time to the Dutch and it was won by traditional under-achievers Spain.

As usual I was rooting for Brazil, 5-time winners. My next favourite team was Germany. Both came so close. I watched most of the matches and very luckily with my good friends. My childhood friends got together after 4 years to root for our teams. When our teams lost, we feel this heavy sinking feeling that drags us to the bottom of depressing abyss that no female would understand. When they won, feelings of utter joy erupts like volcano of ecstasy, with the lava of happiness flowing into the sea of tranquility. (I am a professional blogger. Don't try this at home).

Women will never understand and when we go out watching the game which comes once in 4-years, we see them rolling their eyes into the next state (something the do very well and if the Olympics had an eye-rolling event, guys will be decimated....except maybe some gay men) and giving you the guilt trip.

When we come back sad, they will chastise us, saying insensitive things like, "So what?", "Who cares?", "Your son is down with the measles", or "We have run out of food!". Trivial things like that.

When we are home happy our team has won, more snipes like "You know they don't know you!", "I don't see you that happy when I am telling about our son's measles breaking".

So for this World Cup, I got our HD Cable version and got my friends to come over to watch at my house. That actually worked as Melissa bought snacks for us, junk food, carbonated drinks, ice while some of us got beer. So, it was all-in-all a very enjoyable 1 month footballing feast. I was happy France, Portugal and Italy got knocked out early. A bit disappointed Korea didn't progress further. Sad that Brazil and Germany lost and really bored with the final game where current European Champions Spain beat Holland 1-0 to be World Champions 2010.

I didn't bet this time simply because I was growing up and I was broke....so decided to leave it to the octopus. This time around, we had a crustacean celebrity in the form on an oracle octopus. Paul the octopus was able to correctly predict the winners of 10 consecutive games (or something like that). I wonder if he could predict what my wife would have said if I proposed that we go watch the next World Cup match in Brazil. If we can't get tickets, we can just say at the beaches of Rio. I don't care how far those eyes roll!!!