Wimbledon and Break from Blogging

I am hardly a prolific blogger, and don't appear to have any readers either, but in case I do, just wanted to let them know that I'm insanely busy with moving apartments and a paper deadline, so won't be blogging till September. Haven't gotten around to saying much about the Wimbledon final, so I'll just say one word: WOW. And I really mean the caps. I was exhausted and near-tears just watching: Rog and Nadal are quite the modern day Hercules. Here's to hoping that the Fed Express gets back on track for the Olympics and the U.S. Open.

Euro 2008 Wrap-Up

*All* the predictions I made for the quarter finals in my last blog were wrong. My bad: I had stuck to the cliches. Never have I been so happy to be wrong, though. Euro 2008 was a scintillating tournament - perhaps the highest-quality international tournament ever. In Europe at least, there is very little to pick between the top teams. Only Austria, Switzerland, and Greece made no mark. Oh, and England are probably hoping Don Fabio can get their house in order: give the quality of football played in Euro 2008, qualification for the 2010 world cup will be a non-trivial undertaking.

--Spain: I can't stop oooh-ing and ahhh-ing. The whole team played the beautiful game. Torres' goal in the final was astounding. I have to wonder if Liverpool are a good enough club for him, and how many more seasons Rafa will be able to keep him before the really big boys come knocking. The argument in the media has been that Marcos Senna, rather than Xavi, should be the player of the tournament. It is heartening to see midfielders, rather than strikers, get credit for once. 

--Germany: Massively over-achieved, as usual. Although they are hard to like, all credit to them. Craft vs. graft the commentators called the final. Nothing captured the German spirit more than the bleeding Ballack's reluctance to leave the field to get cleaned-up. 

--Turkey: Great value for money. The way they played in the semi-final when missing as many as 9 players due to injury or suspension really shames Italy, who chose to go negative when missing only two players due to suspensions. I'm an Italy fan, so, please, Lippi, help the Azzurri get their act together. 

--Portugal can't hide behind the excuse that the Germans were too tall: the same was true for Spain, and they won anyway. C. Ronaldo still needs to prove himself on the international stage.

--Italy: If you play for penalties, (a) practice them, and (b) have men, not boys like di Natale, take them. Donadoni, as a player, himself missed in 1990 against Argentina. He should have known, and prepared, better. He paid for the fiasco with his job. 'Nuff said. 

--Mauro Camoranesi: In my opinion, the only Italian who had a good tournament. He ran his socks off, and his crosses were inch-perfect. (Pity Toni was in couldn't-score-in-a-brothel form. I wonder if playing in the Bundesliga instead of Serie A / Premiership / La Liga has anything to do with it. ) I'm not sure why Donadoni doesn't play him for the whole 90 min. His confident/arrogant penalty in the quarterfinal was reminiscent of Romario's in the 1994 World Cup final shoot-out. For that one act, Mauro will have a place in my heart for ever and ever, just like Romario does. Yup, we're on first-name basis now :)

Finally, a word about Wimbledon. Everyone's going on about how Rafa has closed the gap with Federer and how this will be his year. I'm going to commit myself now and say Federer will win in four sets.  

What I will write about

After the why comes the what.

There will be rants about the state of international cricket. Post-1996, I became anti-one-day-cricket. 20/20 has really pushed me over the edge. Stop pimping and bring back test cricket is my battle cry.

I will talk a lot about football, the kind played with feet. I grew up in Pakistan, and have been in the U.S. since I was nineteen. Neither place is much of a football enclave. I am absolutely starved for friends who like watching football as much as I do. I have no one to really share this particular interest with, so I'll share it with the ether that is the blogsphere. 

I will write about the books I read. These won't be literary critiques, but rather discussions of my reaction to the books, whether I liked or disliked them, do I recommend them, how I can related to Harry Potter, etc. 

I will express my opinions about politics and world affairs. These will be decidedly more humble than my opinions about cricket and football. At some point I'll get into gory detail about my ambivalence towards Benazir Bhutto, why I want Imran Khan to be supreme commander of the universe, why the media's response to Hillary Clinton's presidential run awoke the very, very angry female inside me, why certain partnerships in coalition governments make no sense and the fact that no one points out that they make no sense makes even less sense. I am constantly astounded by how short public memories are when it comes to political leaders' peccadilloes (or felonies), and I seem to have quite a good memory for them, so I will express my outrage here. 

The blog is called parrot chatter, so there will be lots of parrot stories: happy ones, sad ones, funny ones. Before I got my first parrot, and before I started volunteering at the parrot shelter, I was very emotionally immature. Emotions constituted of being stressed about a test at school, being happy at doing well, unhappy at doing poorly. Working with parrots has taught me about love, second chances, joy, heartbreak. The hardest thing has been to open my home and heart to a parrot I know is going to die in a matter of weeks or months, loving it like I have never before been hurt by the death of another parrot. But the parrot stories are not going to be all gloom and doom. There are happy ones, like those of my current babies Chingu and Beerbal, and funny ones, like those of Houdini, a Moluccan cockatoo at the shelter who earned his moniker based on his habit of letting himself, and all other birds, out of their cages at night, and who bats his eyelids, blows kisses and raspberries, and says "Hi, Baby" in a little girl voice to everyone.  

Croatia-Turkey, and Euro 2008 predictions

So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided that if there was one quarter-final I could afford to miss, it was Croatia-Turkey. Fortunately, I decided to come home from work early, and began watching around the 70th minute of regulation time. Both sides had chances; both keepers made some near mistakes, and some brilliant saves. The 119th and 120th minutes, though, will be forever remembered for Rustu's ascent from the ridiculous to the sublime, for Croatia thinking they had secured a semi-final berth only to lose it 30 seconds later. Poor Slaven Bilic could only complain, to no avail of course, that there had been too stoppage much time added on. The whole situation was reminiscent of Wiltord's 94th minute equalizer against the Italians in the 2000 final, titled "Cursed Minute" by Italian newspapers. It would be condescending to say that either Turkey's or Croatia's successful run is a surprise: Turkey were 3rd place winners in the 2002 World Cup; Croatia were World Cup quarter finalists in 1998. I'm hoping Turkey chew up the Germans in the semis, but with four first-team players suspended, and the kind of mistakes Rustu seems capable of making, it might not happen.

Another issue is the draw. What is it with the possibility of group-mates meeting again in semis, rather than in the final, and why is there no media outcry about this? It seems dead wrong that only one team from any group can make it to the final, specially in light of how tight the group stages have been.

Other thoughts/predictions:

Netherlands are playing total football / beautiful football, and should get past Russia, who have done Guus Hiddink proud. 

Italy-Spain will be a cracker, but based simply on international success pedigree, I would have to predict an Italian win, even though Italy have shown up without a defense, and Toni cannot hit a cow's arse with a banjo / score in a brothel / insert ineffectual striker cliche here. del Piero still in the national side, and Totti retired: who would have thunk? Also, what is it with Azzurri leading lights Toni and Grosso playing in Ligue 1 and the Bundasliga? Is Serie A in that much financial trouble? Buffon will make some unreal saves, Panucci will score a goal, and we will have a repeat of the 2000 semi-final in Italy v Netherlands. Hopefully this time there will be no sending offs, and del Piero won't have to play as the 10th defender.

Like everyone else, I am predicting a Germany-Italy final. Being an Italian fan, I'll have to predict an Italian win. It would be fun seeing this motley Italian crew achieve the same World Cup / Euro double success as France's golden generation: should ruffle quite a few well-groomed European feathers.

Oh, and was anyone else scandalized by Ruud Gullit's comments on ESPN? He told the male anchor to complement the female anchor on being so knowledgeable about the game. As if women aren't supposed to know about football. Such blatant sexism from a champion of racial non-discrimination made my angry female side still angrier. Next we'll have sexism from Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama. 

 

Why I'm starting a blog

1. All the cool people have one.
2. It is a socially acceptable alternative to talking to myself: less disturbing for my roommates.
3. I have an unusual combination of interests, so I rarely have no more than one thing in common with any of my friends. Instead of boring my friends with stories they are not interested in, I'll put my stories here as optional reading.
4. I have strong opinions on pretty much everything. 
5. At one point in my life, I really wanted to be a journalist. Journaling about myself seems deliciously self-indulgent. 
6. I want to watch less TV. 
7. I'm an avid consumer of online content: I more than occasionally pour over friends' and acquaintances' Facebook profiles and wall posts to put together their life stories to satisfy my idle curiosity. It seems fair that I give others an opportunity to satisfy their curiosity. 
8. I'm hoping that if I set aside time to spend online for blogging, I'll spend less time web surfing at work and hence be more productive.
9. I'm hoping someone somewhere will actually read my blog, which will be good for my ego. At the very least, the blog will be cached by google, giving my words permanence, even indestructibility.