Another one bites the dust #worldcup

I’d follow all the #worldcup action at http://soccernet.espn.go.com. I found it better than fifa.com. And that’s where I found the photo.

The FIFA #worldcup of 2010 has ended.

The first few days were awesome! #ESP lost. #GER lost. #GHA did well. #ENG and #POR sucked. #BRA weren’t at their best. #ARG too. Nevertheless. It panned out well. #ENG were denied a goal. A kick from Lampard had made it through but the referees thought otherwise. It would have made it 2-2, giving #ENG a chance rise from the dead. Not to be though.:

I discovered Mumbai Times Café in Bandra. We’d been there to watch #BRA draw with #POR and #NED trash #BRA. Good times gr8 beer! A lot of beer. Wesley Schneider did good. #NED made it to the finals. I’m glad they did but I’d think they were the weakest of the semi-finalists: #URU #GER and #ESP being the others.

#BRA, #POR and #ENG had a terrible #worldcup. #GER buggered off #ARG in the quarter finals. And people started their match-fixing talks, “Messi and Maradona are in this together! They’ve fixed games!” And the talks went deep into the tournament. I watched this game at Arvind’s house along with Chandan and Vinay. “Is Maradona a good coach? Or is he like Singh who just says, ‘CLEAR THE BALL…CHA’”, we wondered.  We’d been frying sausages and drinking rum too. Bad hangover the next day. And the day after that.

Anyway. The biggest hero(s) of FIFA 2010 were Larissa Riquelme and Paul the octopus.:

She’d been paid, they’d said. The mobile phone manufacturer paid her to shuvv the damn thing there. I don’t know.

Paul.:

Larissa Riquelme said she’d run the streets of #PAR nude if they won the cup. In a matter of 12 hours, she got the whole world to cheer for #PAR.  None can pronounce her name, but all wanted #PAR to win!

And Paul, at the end of FIFA 2010, each and every one of his predictions were correct. The Spanish love Paul. They refer to him as Pablo.

Twitter. I’d tweet a lot about the #worldcup and @Wimbledon. I’ll miss tweeting about the #worldcup until it dawns again in 2014. Also during this time, I’d RT a lot about the Oil Spill, #climategate etc. Good times. Twitter rocks.

I watched the closing ceremony at Chembur Gymkhana along with Sajit, Irfan and Sajit’s chic. It’d be the first time that we met Sajit’s chic. It’d go down in history. What also went down in history was Shakira’s WAKA WAKA performance. Everybody loves a good Shakira:

I thought #GER were the best team in #fifaworldcup 2010. It overlapped @Wimbledon, ODI between #ENG and Australia and #ENG and Bangladesh.

Mick Jagger did trend a lot on twitter- day in and day out. All for the wrong reasons- the teams that he’d support lost! And the Vuvuzela bugged him! A lot. The Vuvuzela made headlines all over the world.

I watched the rest of the game at home. Midnight to 2:30 AM. Here I shall mention Suraj. “Spain. Spain will win the #worldcup”, he said on 22 May 2010. Well done!

FIN

In Mapusa there is a bar with a big plate on the celing

Nice, no?

But what to do. The only loo they have. Happy World Toilet Day!

And you enter the loo. And it is small. And the light is dim. Most of the flow finds it way into the hole in the ground, rather than the porcelain cavity.

Elections

Never have I missed the opportunity to cast my vote. General Education Academy plays host on election day, be it central or state. And dry days begin a couple of days prior. Oft, I’ve run into neighbors at the polls. I met Dr. Akshay in 1999, the first time ever that I’d voted. “Hello, Geoffery, have you come to vote?”

Yesterday, I met the Gautam mother and daughter, strong supporters of the RSS. And Mr. Jay; a Congressman.

“Tomorrow is a dry day. Please do the needful.”

On certain festivals etc. the sale of liquor is prohibited. Such a phenomenon is slated in as a ‘Dry Day’. In India at least. I’m not sure if such an injustice is bestowed upon the citizens of other countries.

Ross is our assigned stockist. Or at least, he has taken this responsibility upon himself. So be it a popular Indian festival or Independence Day or Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, trust Ross to have enough beer for everybody. Alcohol starts pouring in from afternoon over board games and X-box.

Alcohol prices in Alibaug

I found this, the only bar close to the bus station at Alibaug. A good four minutes walk from it, in fact. And one other close to the bypass, some ten minutes away, by foot. It is interesting to compare liquor prices with Mumbai.

The West coast of India, the Konkan region, and fish

It is unfortunate that land is divided politically. Into countries, states, districts etc. It is unfortunate, that, there are all these different languages in this world. And castes. And sub-castes.
Nevertheless.

Beer and the City

And this is as recent as 1998. A 650 ml bottle of beer’d cost 55 rupees. 2.50 rupees for a cigarette. It’d then be 3. Soon, 4. Now, 4.50. All due to government taxes. Bloody government.

London Pilsner and Haywards were the only others, Kingfisher being the preferred beer. San Miguel and Hack Beck (not sure if that’s how it is spelt quickly appeared, but disappeared. Just like that. I don’t recall the taste.

I remember the day, Fosters launched. But we never took to it. Kingfisher still rocked. Its cost, still, 55 rupees. Soon it’d be 60. One fine day, 75. 80. Now, a KF costs 105. But we have choices. Budweiser sucks. Carlsberg and Tuborg rock. But that doesn’t mean they charge us 105 rupees. In fact, they charge 130 rupees for Carlsberg at some bars.

Bloody government.

Cobra came and went, Tiger is available, at some bars, I think. I haven’t given Cobra a decent go, but Tiger sucks, if I remember right. I’d had it once, I think. Yes.

I am a beer drinking citizen of this country. I kindly request honorable MLA, kind sir, bloody chewteaya, please raise my issue in the house of parliament. Screw sessions on development, farmers, terrorism etc. Instead, fight for the rights of a beer drinker. I must be issued a pass. Just like the government’d announced, only a few days ago, rice for the poor at three rupees a kilo, I must get, a liter of beer, at three rupees.

But today’s news papers say that the cost of beer, digital cameras and some other shit’ll rise, in a day, or two.

Bloody government.

FIN

“Geoffery, and Rohit have, both, gone mad!”

“Rohit! How are things, and where is everybody?”

“The boys’ve not come to college today. I had to come. I had journals to submit. But you, you never come to college on Saturdays, what’s with you today?”

“I don’t know. I was bored! I didn’t know what to do! I was hoping two or three of the boys’d show up. I guess I’ll head back home.”

“The force is unusually strong today, I feel like a drink, or maybe four! But I have no money today! Do you have any money on you? I’ll square you off on Monday!”

I wasted Chivas Regal

I drink beer. Mild beer. Kingfisher, Carlsberg. I don’t like Budweiser, Fosters. Thursday, last, for the first time in Bombay, Tuborg, the beer I’d heard about aplenty, this, one from my first buy, of four: