Tuesday Morning Football

I apologize that this post is almost a week old, but I wanuted to make sure the link to the pictures got plenty of exposure, as well as my thank you, so I waited to post this one.

Last Tuesday morning (Monday evening in the states) we woke up at 7 to get to a pretty trendy coffee shop in an international district to watch the packers/vikings game. You have to understand that the NBA is huge over here and MLB is not far behind. Mention NFL and they draw blanks. However, if you are lucky, you can sometimes catch a game on an American network like ESPN. However, ESPN Asia gives Asian sports preference (imagine that) so instead of seeing one of the biggest NFL games of the season, it was Kyoto University women's rowing finals. On ESPN.

Not cool.

So we were frantically trying to find a way to watch the game online because the NFL option is ridiculously expensive (like 270 US dollars for a season pass) and we ended up finding a live feed from some US TV station that was broadcasting online "ESPN en Espanol." So for about 15 minutes we had things like:

"Brett Farve lleva el balón y evita la defensa. Él mira hacia el campo. Coger! Corre! El bloques! Anoto! ¡Touchdown! No lo puedo creer! Celebración! Undelay, undelay, Él es el ratón más rápido de todo México!"

Then that site went down. It said there was a server overload, which makes me think that every other NFL fan in China was having to listen to Brett Farve slice up his old team in Spanish as well. The only other thing we could do was go to nfl.com and watch the game represented in animated arrows and lines on a green rectangle. We did this for over two hours, wildly cheering or shouting when a line moved a fraction of an inch. I'm sure the staff there thought we were crazy. I can imagine how the conversation among two waiters went...

Ping: "You should have been here earlier today. Six foreigners came in around 730 this morning and wanted to make sure we had that American sports station on TV."
Li: "That's not unusual. Anything good on?"
Ping: "Kyoto University rowing. Ladies' team."
Li: "Oooh, I heard they're really good this year. Can't wait till they compete against the Chinese universities. That's going to be interesting."
Ping: "Yeah, it will be. But boy, you should have seen the Americans. They were not happy.”
Li: "Hmm. Can’t please everyone. So what did they end up doing?"
Ping: "Well after ordering a LOT of coffee. They all squished in one booth and tried to get as close as possible to this laptop on the table. Didn’t care about anything else. Just sitting there watching what looked like very slow, choppy TV.”
Li: “Huh. That’s stupid. Why watch TV on a computer when we have our big screen?”
Ping: “Yeah, well they really got into this one I tell you. I watched a bit of it when I dropped off yet another espresso and it looked odd. This man was all dressed up wearing purple, he got this squished ball from this other guy wearing purple, but it didn’t look like a ball, you see, and then a lot of guys wearing yellow came running after him. I figured they wanted the ball too, and he panicked, so he got rid of it and threw it.”
Li: “Wow really?”
Ping: “Yeah, only the yellow guys were a LOT bigger than the first purple guy. And as soon as he threw the ball, the yellow guys hit him hard and knocked him down. Some other random guy, apparently didn’t learn the lesson from the last guy that in this game ball equals pain, caught the thing in the air and he too got knocked flat, but at least he held on to it longer than the little purple guy. Even looked like he might get away from them for a few seconds.”
Li: “The guy that caught it…was he wearing yellow or purple?”
Ping: “Purple. It looked like a yellow guy was going to catch it after the purple guy threw it away one time, and boy the Americans were UPSET. Awful vocal they were about that one.”
Li: “So they stayed there the whole day watching this sport?”
Ping: “No. Weirdest thing. After about 20 minutes or so, there was no more purple or yellow guys anymore, and the same image was stuck on the screen and all six of them were talking at once faster and faster. Finally, they had a rectangle on the screen. Green with white lines and there was orange arrows and lines everywhere. Lots and lots of numbers too. When this came up, I tell you….they DID NOT MOVE. Not an inch. It was like time stood still for them, as they were glued to that laptop.
Li: “Weird. What do you think was going on?”
Ping: “No idea. Every few minutes, the little arrow would go forth half an inch or two and then they would just jump and shout like they did earlier for a second and then go right back to staring at it. They did this for over an hour, man!”
Li: “over an hour? You’ve got to be kidding me! It must have been another type of game. Maybe a shape game or math game or something. But I can’t believe that could hold anyone’s attention for over an hour”
Ping: “I’m telling you it did. Maybe even two. One time the little arrow shot ahead in two big bursts and then after a pause started going the other way. Boy, they were happy then. After a while, when the arrows stopped moving altogether, the one with the laptop shut it down and they all left, pretty happy.”
Li: “With the possible exception of basketball, I will never understand American sports! But they sure take it passionately!”

Fuqing coming in to backroom: “Hey guys, anyone know if ESPN’s gonna air the West Ham – Millwall soccer match? Some British guys are out front and want to know.”