FIFA World Cup and miscellanies

FIFA World Cup

Adopting a team
At first I thought I could display a German flag as I write this. Since there’s only THIRTY-TWO teams playing in each World Cup every four year, many of the world’s inhabitants are not lucky enough to have a team and unsurprisingly adopt a team. Although I weep at Germany’s loss, I am still happy that my adopted team could still get a humble third place unlike most of my friends’ adopted England which lost to Germany.  But I don’t 100%appreciate the decline of World Cup-related statuses since English team was defeated. That wasn’t too much of an unexpected thing as time is needed for those England fan friends of mine to recover.

Predictions
May I express my jealousy at the amazing predictions of Paul the octopus? The reasons should be obvious. The question is rhetorical – in case it is unnoticed. Lastly, if I hypothetically come to possess a octopus I wonder how I can convince others that it is NOT a pet.

Border Patrol

I am talking about the TV programme about how Australian Customs protect the airports and the territorial waters. Obviously Australia is a country without land borders and “land” element is always lacking.

So, I have come up with two ideas: (1) make the Tasmania independent and build a bridge across complete with toll gates manned by officers; (2) (this one is more exciting) buy a piece of China right next to North Korea and make it a State of Australia – it will come with bonuses such a demilitarised zone, barbed wires, visiting UN officials, defectors, nuke test,…. You name it. These should make the programme far more interesting than air travellers – smugglers and those who cannot fill a form – getting into trouble.

Local affairs comment on Arrowtown

Firstly, let’s see the Arrowtown’s geographic location, http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=arrowtown&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Arrowtown&gl=nz&ei=KEI4TLClGoLUtQPztIRT&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CB8Q8gEwAA , and what Wikipedia have to say about this tiny town,  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrowtown

If you are accessing the internet from New Zealand these days, you would find ads with that orange bogeyman-like creature reminding that local elections are around the corner. After stumbling across Arrowtown which I noticed to be like the Kingdom of Far Far Away (from Shrek movies), I felt compelled to put forward some suggestions to Arrowtownites:

(1) Call your mayor as Lord Farquhar (2) adopt a stylised ‘A’ as the town logo (3) ban motor vehicles and make people travel in horse-drawn carriages (4) replace the bitumen roads with cobbled stone roads and (5) build a castle (charging the tourists an appropriate amount should raise funds for this)