Network error? Delete netiquette and escape

I8217;VE done it sitting, I8217;ve done it with a very pretty young lady beside me, I8217;ve done with a man behind me, with 20 people lo...

I8217;VE done it sitting, I8217;ve done it with a very pretty young lady beside me, I8217;ve done with a man behind me, with 20 people looking on; I8217;ve done it standing, I8217;ve even tried doing it on the phone. But gave up on the last, the effort was too much. I8217;m referring, of course of course! to how stories are filed at the press centres here.

For two countries that are so wired, one would assume that net connections at the media centres would be a dime a dozen. They8217;re not; at Busan and Ulsan, there were three terminals for those of us without laptops. Even at Seoul stadium, there were just five. At least those had seats.

In Japan, you file your stories standing up, one way of deterring people from spending too much time at the terminal. Initially there were polite notices to journalists, not the most subtle breed of people. Then came official time limits; 20 minutes and, after the England-Argentina match, 10 minutes per session. Most aggressive are the Americans, who time the people in front of them and start making loud noises when just half your time is up. Most computer-unfriendly are the Brazilians, especially two journalists from O8217; Globo whom I8217;ve had the misfortune to stand behind; the computers seem to crash only when they are working!

Cold War comic opera

MORE on the World Cup bringing people together. North Korea, which treats events taking place outside8212; especially in the South8212;as if they don8217;t exist, has started capturing TV feed of some matches and broadcasting it publicly. FIFA, the world8217;s most rapacious sporting organisation, has decided to look the other way and let the broadcast continue.

Kirch, the TV rights distributors, have also decided not to press for payment. It8217;s a better situation than 10 days ago, when North Korea declined to attend the tournament8217;s opening ceremony despite a personal invitation from Sepp Blatter.

Ticket off

BUT that8217;s about the only good news for FIFA, which is taking heavy flak from all sides for the complete disaster in ticket sales and allocation. Simply put, there are plenty of empty seats at most matches but no tickets available for the paying public. FIFA had handed over the distribution rights to Byrom, a UK-based company, which was supposed to give back to the host countries any unsolds. That hasn8217;t happened, and fans who try to log on the ticketing website usually find it8217;s crashed. Pictures of empty seats are bad PR for the hosts 8211; here were 10,000 unsolds for Thursday8217;s match between Senegal and Denmark 8212; so Korea, for one, is taking matters in hand: it is officially employing rent a crowd tactics, handing out tickets to schoolchildren and the like.

English Channel

NO problem of empty seats when England play, however; the 12,000-odd English fans make sure the stadiums have been packed. There8217;ve been many complaints by the English fans over the way they8217;ve been treated. several have told me they felt insulted and, writing in The Independent, Andrew Lloyd-Parr has lashed out at Japanese officials for singling out the English for special treatment at airports and stations. If this happened with Blacks of Muslims or any other community, he says, there would be an international outcry.

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He acknowledges, though, that this has been one in collusion with the British government, who want to avoid the scenes that occurred at Euro 2000 and the previous World Cup when fans went open the rampage.

The curry trap

I8217;ve fallen into the curry trap again. The curry trap is when you eat at small budget restaurants where menus are only in Japanese. So you say, 8220;Lunch?8221;. They say, 8220;Ah, lunch. Curry.8221; You: 8220;No want curry. Anything else? Noodles?8221; They bowing: 8220; Ah, chicken curry. Good.8221; They then hold up their fingers to show how many hundred yen. You by now ravenous and willing to settle for anything: 8220;Okay. One plate.8221; And walk away knowing this isn8217;t really what you wanted.

It happened again today at this pretty ocean side Vietnamese cafe. I wanted Vietnamese, they were convinced I was homesick and needed my curry. I gave up and gave in. The irony was that I8217;d had the real thing, cooked by a true-blue Nepali, at a friend8217;s house the night before. It was, to put it mildly, different.