When did you last think of your nose? and what does phallanx mean?

I've come down with a cold. It crept up on me very slowly over the past few days. I've been laughing at people who think having a cold is actually a disease and who think you need to take medicine to deal with it. I assure them that where I grew up, having a cold is something that is barely worth mentioning. Infact two beers-or some very strong coffee- often clears it up. Alternatively you could ignore it and this works as well. However when you find yourself sniffing all day clutching some toilet paper to blow your nose, you realize that a cold is more than a minor inconvenience. It is actually quite annoying. You never really pay much attention to your nose until breathing through it becomes a chore. Leo for example has had a cold literally from the first day I got to know him which was many months ago. I've always made fun of him and had little sympathy, but now I know. I'm not sure Leo really deserves some sympathy seeing the way he's bullied me over the course of the term. This is the thing with meal-time conversations- any sentence can and will be used against you. I recall telling Leo about a strange party I went to.
Leo: So if you didn't really like it, why were you there?
Me: Well life is an experience isnt it? Even if I didn't really like it, I just had to experience it to see what it was like.
Leo: Oh...'life is an experience' eh? What are you now, some kind of buddhist fount of wisdom? 'Life is an experience'...you didn't just say that did you? When did you develop this profound insight?
Me: Well it is a cliche, but it's true!
Leo: 'Life is an experience!' (chuckles)honestly Minega...
There have been a few other incidents, but those are all for another time.

Back to national anthems: I came across a wonderful one the other day. By 'wonderful' I mean 'absolutely incomprehensible'. Seriously, what is this about? It is the Andorra national anthem.

The great Charlemagne, my Father, liberated me from the Saracens,
And from heaven he gave me life of Meritxell, the great Mother.
She was born a Princess, a Maiden neutral between two nations.
I am the only remaining daughter of the Carolingian empire
Believing and free for eleven centuries, believing and free I will be.
The laws of the land be my tutors, and my defender Princes!
And Princes my defender!
Erm..right. I would love to see Andorra qualify for the world cup just to see their players sing this anthem at the beginning of the game. Odds are that they would go blue in the face trying to sing this with a straight face.
Is it wrong for me to make fun of other countries national anthems? Of course it is, but I'm going to carry on anyway. I've got another one- France. Much of it sounds like something from a horror film and how they teach kids an anthem with these words is honestly beyond me. Here is a snippet:

Do you hear in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers?
They are coming into your midst
To slit the throats of your sons and consorts

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our homes!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our proud warriors!
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
Yikes- its enough to give even full-grown adults nightmares at night. Surely they can tone this down a bit? Some 'peace and love' sentiments wouldn't go amiss. I love the outraged tones in this anthem. I can see them with their hands on their hips, wide-eyed and screaming with fury 'what! these mercenary...'. How confident do you have to be as a country to put a word like 'phalanxes' in your anthem?

Hearwarming world cup story: Some soccer fans who cycled- I repeat cycled- all the way from Uzbekistan just to get an autograph from Oliver Kahn. From what I've read about Uzbekistan, you don't really need any excuses to leave but I still thought this was sweet anyway.
The are-you-sure-you-should-do-that world cup story: I think it was Bangladesh where there were power cuts during some world cup games a few days ago. So what did the fans do? They attacked the power station. Now if you want electricity, do you think it's a good idea to smash up the place that actually provides it?
-Meanwhile how cool is Brazil? I don't mean the squad itself which is still playing in first gear (and does Ronaldo sprint a bit faster when he walks into a mcDonalds? just wondering.) I went down to London on Sunday with my brother to watch the Brazil-Australia game at a Brazilian bar. We couldnt get in for the game-it was too crowded-but we got in right after the game and I was in awe looking around. Everyone was having one hell of a party- there was dancing and drumming and just a general sense of genuine happiness that is impossible to describe. The women were gorgeous, the music was fantastic and the atmosphere was electric. Almost everyone there had a real laid-back cool- the kind of cool you can't force. The kind of cool that comes with being Brazilian.


England 2 Sweden 2
I hate the way England make everything so difficult. I watched the game at the students union bar and the atmosphere was great- flags everywhere, lots of chanting ('I'M ENGLAND TILL I DIE...ENGLAND TILL I DIE!' being a constant one)and people cheering every shot, tackle and corner. There was a guy who walked by draped in a giant English flag. Scrawled on it were the words: BRITISH BY BIRTH...ENGLISH BY THE GRACE OF GOD. I liked that.
Oh right, the game. The only memorable part of this game was Joe Cole's astonishing goal that put England ahead. Cole has probably been the only England player who's played well in all 3 games and although he wasn't at his dynamic best today, a goal like that will get you many free beers later in life. The goal was absolutely sublime. The bad news was seeing Michael Owen getting stretchered off in the first minute. I was so pissed off with Eriksson at that moment for not picking a fifth striker- how can you hope to win the world cup with two unfit strikers, one who has scored only 8 premiership goals all season and a 17 year old untested kid? To call this folly would be an understatement. How I wish Jermaine Defoe- or Darren Bent or even Dean Ashton- were on the bench. The only way England is going to win the world cup is if Stevie.G decides to do his one-man-playing-all-positions role. Gareth Southgate once said he had seen Gerrard actually head his own crosses when Liverpool played Boro- I'm not even sure he was joking.
Anyway back to the game- England looked great in the first half and even Owen Hargreaves was impressive. Rooney was playing like a man possessed- I swear I saw him chase a ball out of the stadium. Then come the second half and Sweden battered them. Why can't the same English team show up for both halves? It was no suprise when Sweden equalized. Then Stevie.G came on and did his superman impression- cleared a ball off the line, put a few Swedish players in his pocket and then headed England infront.
That really should have been it, but there was room for a bit more comedy at the end. The second Swedish goal took place in an environment of comical incompetence. To describe it would not give you a clear picture of how funny it was to see defenders treating a football as if it were a 3 meter king cobra. It was also the scrappiest, ugliest goal of the entire world cup.
Are England going to win the world cup? I don't think so. Of course the best teams don't always win the trophies- witness Greece somehow winning Euro 2004 despite often being quite awful. Also does anyone remember Germany reaching the 2002 world cup final despite being one of the worst teams in the entire tournament? Still, I fear for England. If they meet Argentina, the match might have to be played after 9 o'clock so that children dont watch the humiliation that would follow.