Yeah, I used the word Soccer. Call me blasphemous if you will, but it's just a much better word than Football. Why bother having to always distinguish between the different codes of football when you can just use the one word to refer to the one true sport. It's bad enough you have to draw distinctions between the different siblings in hockey and tennis. Strangely enough though, whenever I use the word soccer, I feel compelled to "correct" myself and throw in the word football. Like the word soccer needs some obfuscation thrown in.

It's been a little over a week now since the world cup started, and I'm feeling the effects. I've seen at least one match per day, gone to see two of them live, and had at least one beer at each of them (with some games like the Mexico vs Angola game where I had many many more). My venue of choice for watching the soccer is a place called Marstallhof, which is basically the uni canteen. They've got a screen set up outside, and you can sit around in the sun to watch the games. You get some pretty good crowds turning up - especially for the German games.

Let's start with the boring match review - France vs Switzerland. The majority of the stadium were out in support of the Swiss that day, while the French group around us were pretty damn vocal. So with support like that, the teams themselves didn't fail to disappoint. We were treated to a 0-0 draw, punctuated by lackluster efforts at the goalmouth. Admittedly, the Swiss had a few good chances - and were royally robbed by the woodwork a few times, but it's the goals that really get the stadium going. In fact, the crowd were so bored, that a large section decided to start chanting in support of Germany. That was pretty weird.

Sorry Ben, I won't harp on about the Swiss any more. Instead I'll harp on about the Australians. That was such an amazing game. I won't go on about the actual match, because I'm sure everyone will be buying the collectors special edition DVD from SBS. The stadium was amazing though, with mass euphoria breaking out at the pointy end of the match. Singing, dancing, cheering - everything. I'm glad I was there to see history being made, and I now have a deeper understanding about what the world cup is about, and the feelings it inspires in supporters. A couple of highlights though would be seeing George Negus and Peter Wilkins roaming around outside the stadium, making fun of the Japanese player with pink shoes, the chant of "Bullshit" going round the stadium for dodgy calls and the brilliant move by someone (couldn't see exactly who) who lifted up one of the Japanese players from inside the Australian penalty area because he was being too big a pansy.

After the game, we roamed the streets of Kaiserslautern for god knows how long, just randomly talking to other Australians (with me talking to some random Germans too - brushing up on my waffling skills). There was a lot of hi-fives being thrown around, some hugging and lots of cheering. On the train back, we just happened to be standing next to a guy and his son, who funnily enough came from Eastwood too - just near Rutledge street. It's a small world.

We arrived in Heidelberg and grabbed some food at a local Indian imbiss (which I may have to go to more often), and then walked down the main street. Now, here was the best bit - walking down the street, wearing my Australian jerseys proudly, people were coming up and congratulating us for the win. We were vicariously sharing in the victory that Australia had worked so hard to get, and even though I knew I did sweet bugger all to help the team, I was loving every single moment of it.

Wow, 11 months here. It sort of goes really quickly when you think about it. I'm getting ahead of myself here - you'll get a one year review at the start of July. I'm just a bit too busy to go all retrospective again. Incidentally, two years of this current incarnation of Penguinsdotmoohdotorg passed on 06/06/06. There's a date which the Americans aren't going to get wrong with their wonky date format.

Let's get some housekeeping out of the way - I've signed myself up to Flickr with a pro account, so I've been working on getting all my photo pages hosted on Flickr now so that I can take advantage of their really cool slideshow thingie. You can see it in action at my party page where the pictures are now up. Eventually, I'd like to write a purely browser-based display of the pictures, but I don't think I'll have time any time soon.

As expected - the last part of May, and this first week of June has been ludicrously busy. Yun and Henry are intermittently staying over at my place - when they're not running around scoffing down food from every single restaurant they can find. I'd like to think that the guys were just here for my birthday party, but they're actually around for this little festival which a few of you may have heard of - The World Cup.

Are you happy Di? I'm talking about it now. The official matches in the tournament start tomorrow, and hopefully with a bit of decent weather, I'll be able to sit outside and watch the matches. A lot of people have been asking me what the atmosphere is like in the country. To be honest, it's not much different from any other time, except with a fair few more English accents heard around the place. Certain things have changed however - my regular pub trivia has been shelved to make way for every single game to be shown. The decorations are up like Christmas decorations. You'd be hard pressed to miss the games here.

I've got a horrible feeling I'll be spending a lot of my evenings in the pub now, watching Australia fight it's way to the Quarter-finals (is there anything that Sir Guus can't do?), where they will valiantly go down in a match which we will unjustly lose. It's always the case. The friendlies so far have been encouraging, with good results against Greece, the Netherlands and Liechtenstein.

I have all the gear ready for supporting the team. Jerseys, Cork hat, face paint, tickets to the games. For those of you back home who want to get into the action, I'd like to announce my special way for you to support the team - just click this link (which will only work for those of you reading this in a browser), and transport yourself to a world where you're the number one Australian team supporter. I do offer this advice to other Australian supporters however - If the unspeakable should happen, and Australia is knocked out prematurely, don't despair. You can always just try to pass yourself off as a Brazilian supporter.