I spent most of the day without any power. It went off late last night at some point, was on briefly this morning, but other than that left me alone. Which in one sense turned out to be good since my freezer badly needed to be defrosted and is now currently free of ice. Around 6:00pm the sky began to darken and I was a little afraid that soon I would have to give up studying since I would have no more light. But then I stepped outside for a minute and when I came back the power was back on, praise the Lord.
On a totally different note what I really wanted to mention today was the latest issue of Time Magazine. The June 30 – July 7th issue has a large section on games played aroud the world. They take a number of popular international sports and briefly talk about how these sports affect the lives and cultures of people in different areas of the world. I found some of these articles extremely interesting. For example one article speaks of how families in Cameroon will often sell everything they have including their business and only means of livilihood just to pay for a son to go to Europe to train in football (soccer). Many of the young men end up penniless in Europe with no way to get home. Meanwhile their families have enormous debts (to them anyway) with little chance of ever paying them back. Often these situations are intiated by hucksters who make big promises take the money and abadon the boys once they get to Europe. Another article informed me that Polo was not originally a British game but had its roots over here in Tibet as an exercise for Calvary. Or how South Korea has turned computer gaming, I’m sorry e-games, into a national past time to the extent that the top players are treated in much the same way we revere Brett Favre or Michael Jordan. The articles are short only a page or two and yet give a good deal of insight into understanding both the sport and the lives and culture of some of the people that play them. I thought I would mention them in case anyone else was interested in reading them.
– Matt