You may remember back in this post I mentioned that I had purchased a 무궁화.  Well the damned thing has finally bloomed (a good month after everything else).  Here is a picture of the first bloom.

 

I had a very proud moment this weekend as my son kicked a football over our fence and into the neighbours' garden for the very first time.   By my calculations he will be making his debut for either Korea or England at the 2022 World Cup in 16 years time!

A post England : Portugal update......

I went to watch the match on Southampton Common with my brother (and about 10,000 pikies) at the radio 5 big screen.  This morning my wife informed me that while watching the gme at home my 18 month daughter had seen a close up of Gary Neville and called out "Daddy!".   Oh dear!

You may have noticed that I've not blogged since the start of the world cup.  This is because my rather sparse free time has been taken up with watching as many matches as possible.  This is the first World Cup where it hasn't been my choice whether or not I watch all the matches and to be honest it sucks having to work during this time.  TO be honest I was going to take two weeks off work to watch the world cup but my wife was having none of it and insisted I save my holiday for our annual pilgrimmage to Korea.

Anyhow, for what it's worth my quick summary:

Korea:  disappointing for 45mins against Togo, 80 mins against France and 90 mins against Switzerland.  Missed a great chance to become legends especially when you see the poor performances from Ukraine in the knockout stage.  I know there has been all the controversy over the second Swiss goal but it's kind of irrelevant as Korea didn't even manage one goal never mind the two/three they would have needed.

Generally, I was disappointed with the level of upsets.  I thought that a lot of countries were a lot more competitve than usual but ultimately the usual countries have won through.

England:  Despite all their pre-tournament hype (we're fitter, better prepared, better squad etc.) they totally failed to convince.  It is an absolute disgrace to lose to that Portugal side and it is noticeable that they actually did a lot worse on penalties having practiced so much. 

From a personal point of view,  my birthday always falls during the latter stages of the World Cup and European Championship.  This means that every two years I get to celebrate my birthday watching England screw up their latest opportunity to win something.  The worst was France 98 when they actually got knocked out on my birthday.   Korea 02 was looking pretty hairy too as the final was on my birthday, luckily england rolled over and died before that.  I'll forgive them this time becasue it was only a minor milestone but in ten years time for my 40th I expect a trophy!!!