Full day of activity. First we went to pick up tickets, then to the FIFA Fan Zone, old Recife (where the oldest synagogue in South America is), lunch at a nice seafood restaurant across the bay, more FIFA Fan Fest, and finally the town of Olinda. I didn’t catch a photo of the amazing tapioca crepe things with the iPhone so those photos will need to wait until we get back and I can download then from the grown up camera.
We had to leave Natal at 6 AM in order to arrive in Recife on time for the match (Costa Rica vs Italy).
We met out hosts Grazi and Fernando, and fellow World Cup travelers Arturito and Nathan.
Recife is huge, the bus to/from the airport was great. And even though I wore an Italy jersey, I’m happy Costa Rica won (note: Ticos always want Mexico to lose).
Some photos:
We flew to Natal (a short one) just to see the city and the Greece vs Japan match. Nice stadium, underwhelming soccer.
During the day we took a ride on a dune buggy.
We arrived to Natal a few minutes ago. It was quite the adventure. It hasn’t stopped raining since Mexico played Cameroon here. Bit we are safe and sound and have decent internet in the hotel lobby.
Some random stuff from my phone:
Trash can with forbidden items outside of the stadium. VUVUZELAS!
During the layover at Manaus on the way to Fortaleza.
This is not Memo. This is me outside the stadium before the game.
We go to the same hair stylist.
Nice match today. Incredible vibe. I was hoping for a win so that I can tell my children, and their children, and their children that I was there. Alas, not this time.
We Mexicans were vastly outnumbered but could definitely be heard. An interesting thing happened: the “cheer” Mexicans do when the opposing goalkeeper is about to do a goal kick was promptly learned and imitated by the Brazilians. Is this going to be another “Mexican wave”?
Here’s a cool panorama of the stadium:
First stop: Miami
Packing went well:
People kept staring at me at the airport. Rudeness? Racism?
Never mind that it was IMPOSSIBLE for me to find tickets for this match, the stadium is half empty (I’m a pessimist). Screw FIFA.
Half time in, the referee already screwed us three times – he must have bet Cameroon wins in the polla.
In any case, here’s the half time picture, from Austin TX.
Many Bothans died to bring us this information. A The MKX® exclusive, “The iBeats”:
The World Cup fever keeps increasing, and I’m about to make it better:
Announcing Polla Brasileira 2014. I have run other successful pollas (note: under definition #5) before. What made them so much fun is that instead of using some manual management tool such as paper, email, or Excel spreadsheets, I went through the trouble of developing a full online system from scratch which made everything very real-time and interactive. Back then I wrote the system using PHP and stored all the data in plain text files – no database. It was simple and limited, but it worked.
They were a huge success:
It wasn’t all fun and games though. The Polla is known to cause health issues on some of the participants:
When I decided to cancel the Europolla 2008, soccer fans were disappointed:
This time, Polla Brasileira is back with a vengeance and it is better than ever. I’ve been making some massive improvements to the system, working through nights (as I said, the Polla is known to cause health issues). Amongst them:
Doing the polla is a lot of work for me, but it would not be possible without the support of my friends helping out:
You can register now!