Blogs and the World Cup

I was at REI during the final moments of the World Cup game yesterday, so I didn't know who won until I was biking home and I saw an SUV driving down Comm Ave with a giant Italian flag waving in the wind and heard the two guys in the car yelling something unintelligible (to me) in Italian. Later that night as I was walking down Newbury St, I heard a car down the street honking his horn in a sort of rhythmic way, not just the familiar 'hooooooooooooooooooooonk!" of a Bostonian who's mad at a tourist that can't navigate the city streets and traffic lights. Anyway, as the car got closer, I could see a guy hanging out the window, dressed in the Italian flag, screaming, "It-al-ia! It-al-ia!" along with the "honk-honk-honk" of the car horn. Not quite as crazy as this, but it was still entertaining.

Earlier that night, I was watching bits of Dateline as I waited for my laundry to dry, and they had a short story about how people in the U.S. haven't been watching the World Cup and aren't really that interested in soccer. I suppose the World Cup hasn't really reached the status of the Superbowl, but I read in the New York Times that World Cup viewership in the U.S. was up 126% on ABC and 70-something% on ESPN over the previous World Cup. Dateline, however, said that even with those increases included, U.S. viewership didn't amount to a large percentage of the total population. From my limited vantage point though, people have gotten into it a lot here - everyone's been coming to talk to my office neighbor (the resident Italian) about what's been happening in the World Cup over the past few weeks. My roommate went down to Fanueil Hall yesterday to watch the final game, and she said that after the game ended, the entire area turned into a crazy mosh pit. I suppose I'm not really a good counter-example to Dateline because I haven't been watching many of the games, but I don't really watch much football either. I only watch the Superbowl for the parties and snacks, and so that I don't look like an idiot when I come to work the next day and people ask, "Can you believe what happened in The Game yesterday??"

In other news, my friend Angela is currently in South Africa, spending a few weeks there sight-seeing and doing some animal conservation-type stuff. I think it's really cool that she's taken the plunge to go there without knowing anyone in her tour group, and it sounds like she's having a really good time. She's been keeping a travel blog here, if you're interested in reading about her adventures with cheap wine and elephants.


I stumbled across another interesting blog while reading a New York Times article about travel writers. The article focuses on how many people think of travel writing as a glamorous way to get paid to go on vacation continuously, but the reality is usually starkly different. It was interesting for me to read, considering that I'm one of those people who thinks travel writing would be one of the coolest jobs ever. The article mentions Leif Petterson, a travel writer currently in Romania, who blogs about his adventures here. I haven't read much of his site, but from what I have seen, it's pretty entertaining. My favorite quote so far: "I will do my best to not suck and provide insight into this low paying, exhausting, yet bizarrely fulfilling journey."