The World Cup Is Near

Posted on by Roshan Leave a comment

I’m excited about the upcoming football World Cup which is being hosted in an African country for the very first time. First of all, I refuse to call it soccer! People, it’s football and not soccer. American football is not even played with a ball…it looks like a big viagra pill in a different colour. Football is a game played with 22 people, 11 per team on the field, outta which one is a goalie and they kick a round ball. A ball. It’s round. Not the American football. Call that soccer if you want to. I refuse to call my favourite sport soccer. Football. Case finito!

Ok, so back to the World Cup. I’ve watched most of the games in every world cup from 1990 in Italy to the last one in Germany 4 years ago. Actually, I couldn’t watch that many games of the 2006 WC as work kept coming in the way as a hindrance. But my first real experience of the World Cup was the Mexico 1986 cup in which Deigo Marradona captured the hearts & admiration of  millions across the world (except for England :P). This was such a colourful event which I as a 10 year old watched on tv back in Kuwait. Kuwaitis love football and being bo’rn there I imbibed the love of the people’s game and have followed this sport with similar passion. I remember the final when Argentina beat West Germany and how Maradona become a world icon. I got this book which was themed around the World Cup and you could get this stickers that featured the images of all the players from each country playing in Mexico. You had to complete the entire list  and send it in to the company that was behind this contest and they’d give you a prize if you had the whole lot.

This year I don”t think that I will be able to watch many games. The timing when the matches are being played will be mostly late night in India and I don’t want to stay watching the matches and then drag my sleepy ass to office the next day. During the 1998 World Cup (France) I was studying in NIIT – classes from 7 am till 12pm. The matches got over at 2am – I’d sleep for 3 hours, get up at 5 am and go to class at 7 am. I’d come back home for lunch and sleep till the late evening and get ready to watch the matches. That was fun, tiring but fun, at the age of  21-22. Not so much for a 33 year old! So it’s gonna be mostly online scores, watching highlights in the evening and maybe a few late night games on the weekend. If I am lucky.

How I Was Almost Paired Off….Kinda!

Posted on by Roshan 1 Comment

Sometimes I am reminded just how much my team likes me and care for my happiness. They know that I am close to them and that I like for them to be happy and they wish the same for me. So they do some crazy stuff. Like registering my name in a couple of matrimonial websites. Calling up a contact who works in one of them and telling him to send them the details of best looking girls! I have my own mini-pimp team! Lol!

Well I broke the news to them that I didn’t believe in arranged marriages and wasn’t all interested in going through that route even though I am almost 34 (in less than 3 months people) and am still single with no hope in sight. So they are going by an alternative route. Checking their friends circles to see if they can find a compatible girl / woman who has similar interests as mine. And what would that be like? A Scifi loving, atheist lesbian into hard rock & blues? Your guess is as good as mine. Which brings me to the next incident.

A colleague, who I have never met but spoken to on the phone asked me for my cell number via an email as she had lost it. So I sent it  to her.  She then sent another mail asking for my photo!!! Err why? Well she wanted to put together a ppt of all the people in the same profile across 7 states and do a profile of each. She then called me and asked me to send her my pic. I said ok. Standing right behind me two girls from my team, waiting to ask me something. I didn’t see them. They heard me talking over the phone, saw me smiling, read the couple of lines on the screen in front of me and put 2 an 2 together…..and got 22!

A few minutes later, I sent the colleague in question my pic and asked her for hers in return. She said that she would send one. I went to get coffee – my entire team is giggling and smiling at me. I asked “what’s up” and realized what had happened. “Who is she, what’s her age, what does she look like?” and many other questions followed while I stood like a deer in the headlights. They wanted to see her pic so I said that I would show it to them when I received it. I almost blushed.

A day later she sent me a pic. She was ok. Apprehensively I showed it to my team and they were fixing my wedding plans. This was crazy. Now I really started blushing. They are absolutely nuts and I had to calm things down and tell them that this was the first time I had had casual conversations with this woman. We were getting to know each other as friends and sent a few messages to each other. The honeymoon cannot be planned at this moment.

The disappointment was there to see and it was hilarious! Such fuss over a few innocent messages. But it melted my heart that they were genuinely excited and wanted me to settle down. I will, someday I guess, and I hope it’s someday soon when I find the girl for me. But guys, team…err…stop pairing me with colleagues, will ya?

And here is the crazy bunch!