World Cup in the Philippines

You can actually catch the World Cup here. But the atmosphere is not the same. Its kind of reminded me of the days in US when you can't even catch it on cable TV. But its a little better, there are a couple of places you can catch the games but no one is watching the games. I look like a freak watching the game at a bar here.

However, the live games are all at night which means I am usually at home already. I only catch the first game live except on the weekend when I can catch the later games.

There is a growing group of kids who play soccer here like in the US. But it will never match basketball or boxing in popularity. Maybe it can grow to a decent size like badminton here which actually have a sizeable folllowing with organised competitions. After all in the US, the popularity is growing and the US team looks pretty good although they got knocked out by Ghana. People don't remember how bad US teams used to be - they could not even qualify for the longest time.

I tried to describe what its like to Pinoys here about watching the games in SG or Malaysia. Remember S.Korea? So many people played hookie and watched it a bars and restaurant in the middle of the day, people did not even lie to their bosses about it and the bosses gave up enforcing any kind of discipline. I say imagine a Manny Pacqiao fight in the middle of a work day - that last for a month.