aryanhwy | (no subject)

Yesterday I got to experience the highs and lows of World Cup Football. I joined the Italian exodus from the office around 3:30 and watched the game at the house of a friend of theirs, so there were 6 Italians, all quite literally on the edge of their seats. It was an exciting game to watch, though pretty depressing towards the end. After it ended, we all continued to sit on the couch and stare at the black TV in despondency. Then a few of them decided the only way to deal with such a situation was to go out and get ice so they could make spritzes, which are a combination of prosecco and an herb liqueur whose name starts with 'a' and is this weird reddish-orangish color. That occupied some more time as we hung around deciding whether we wanted to also watch the Dutch-Cameroon match later in the evening. Eventually Daniele, Umberto, and I went back to Umberto's place where he made dinner (I really love how a quick throw-together dinner for an Italian involves appetizers, pasta, salad, cheese for dessert, and a bottle of wine). We were then going to go out to a pub on Middenweg to watch the game amongst Dutch people, but the aforesaid four courses and bottle of wine meant that we ended up sitting out on Umberto's porch discussing American literature, Italian literature, politics, and philosophy well into the first half of the game (besides, you don't really need to watch a Dutch football match to keep track with the score, esp. if you're sitting outside. You just listen to the roars of the entire city whenever we score, and the groans whenever the other team scores). We did eventually head out, and arrived at a pub which had a TV set up outdoors (because yesterday was a gorgeously wonderful sunny summer day), just in time for Cameroon to score, leveling the match; we figured it was the Italians bringing their bad luck with them. But we eventually won the match, and it was fun to sit there in a crowd of orange and to be apart of the celebrations afterwards. As people drifted away and we got a place to sit we continued talking about literature and stuff, and eventually we got onto the topic of science fiction at which point Daniele and I went off into our own little world and Umberto decided to go home since he didn't want to stay out too late as he's giving a talk in a seminar today. Daniele and I stayed and talked until the bar started closing up, he's now got a list of recommended reading from me and I've got a list of recommended reading from him. Some of it he's not sure has been translated out of Italian, so that is yet another reason for me to learn Italian, at least to read. It was great -- I haven't had a good geek-out about sci fi and fantasy TV and books in a long time, and I'm sure if the bar didn't close at midnight we would've continued talking for much longer.

As it was, it's probably good I wasn't out too much later as I had two paper revisions due today (both sent off) as well as having to run errands and pack for my next trip. In about an hour or so I'll head out to the airport for a weekend in Ireland, then I go to Lisbon for a few days, then to the Azores for Computability in Europe, and then to Toulouse for Logic and the Foundations of Game and Decision Theory. I'll get back a week from Wed.