Footy (AFL), Footbal (or soccer) and some random times
Oh spectator sports. Isn't piling a bunch of people together to watch other people doing physical exercise wonderful. I read a piece about the concept of spectator sports a long time ago, forgive me for not citing the source, as I forgot but, it said spectator sports can be compared to going to a restaurant for the soul purpose of watching other people eat. Never the less, every single day, hundreds of thousands of people attend a sporting event and even more watch them on TV.
Now don't take this as any insult to anyone who happens to fall into that group. I am far from qualified or even willing to make any kind of comment that holds actual value, instead of a mere personal opinion.
Last time I took you to the Melbourne Aquarium, this time I think I'll kick us off with a footy match. When I say Footy I am of course referring to a game of Football played Aussie rules. In my first week I've been watching some Footy matches on the TV but, could not exactly grasp what the hell was going on. With answers to all the "what are they doing now?", "what's going on?", "why does he get the ball?" and "who was playing, again?"-questions, given to us during an actual Footy match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), things started to make much more sense. All questions were lovingly answered by Greenhouse's knowledge bank, of all things that really matter in Melbourne, Ebony. Although mentioning her name might get me smacked in the head, I think I also mentioned her in a video, so the damage is already done.
The Footy matched turned out to be far more interesting once I actually understood it. We were present during a game of Richmond v. West Coast Eagles where Richmond took the victory with 126 against 77. Which may appear to be an impressive achievement but, every successful kick between the two center posts is worth 6 points so, that adds up quite rapidly. There's also the minor points, when the ball either hits one of the posts or is kicked between one of the outer posts, 1 point is awarded. Feel free to correct me if that's complete bullshit. The pigeons were of course the best part of the game. They stay on the field the entire time, where ever a patch of grass remains open between the players, they'll land and lay back, only to get the scare of their life 10 seconds later when 10 people are storming in their direction. The pigeons will fly away and land somewhere else and, just repeat the process.
Between the Footy match and the next activity I was mostly on level 6 (Which is the common area of Greenhouse) playing with cards and bottle caps. Fortunately the next activity was only a little later that same day. So, later that day...
A big group of people from Greenhouse joined forces and we attended an outdoor screening of the Germany v. Australia game in the World Cup. Of course, being quite Dutch, I could never cheer on the Germans and I'm in Australia too, so... cheering for the Socceroos it was. (In case you didn't know 'Socceroos' is the official name of the Australian soccer [real football] team). Along with hundreds of other Socceroos fans we stood by the big screen and watched Germany kick the shit out of Australia and ending the match with a 0 against 4 score. Where the "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi!" and "Go Aussies!" was yelled at a consistency frequency during the first minutes of the match, the crowd quitted down quite severely after the second goal for Germany and even more during the third. Good things the Germans were polite sports about everything (yeah right) and started playing with emergency flares (the pretty red things that shoot fire and smoke) in the middle of a crowd of people.
All that remains now is a hope that Australia kicks Ghana's ass and of course that Germany will keep on losing everything. That and a Socceroos scarf that I bought in a spur of excitement, which now decorates my bed. I won't bother you with any more World Cup details other than: it is absolutely impossible to buy anything orange colored (in the clothing department) in Melbourne.
For the embarrassment that you never expect to actually follow through, a week or so ago I was minding my own business on Federation Square when I was approached by someone doing a short survey. After a few questions he asked if he could take my picture, to which I had no objection, up till this week. When my picture appeared in the free local paper 'MX' with 'Unemployed' as my job title. Answering the question "What do you do?" I said: "I'm traveling around Australia and not working currently." I would think it's worth at least the rank of 'Backpacker'. The guy in the picture next to me was titled 'Student', if he can be a student instead of unemployed, I can be a backpacker! The unemployed thing has such a lovely negative vibe to it. Let's not even mention the terrible picture, I was facing into the sun! Couldn't help it!
Okay... enough of that. It's not too bad. A wonderful, all be it kinda lame, anecdote for later.
Love ya!
