Sleeplessness, Soccer, and South African Police Studying Korean

It's after 2am and I need to be at work by 8am.

I can't fall asleep. Not sure what the reason is but I'm a little "excited," it would seem. My pulse which usually beats at around 60-something is now beating at 80 beats a minute, which I find peculiar as I'm not doing anything. In fact I was lying in bed when I decided to take my pulse to see if there is any irregularity, since I cannot fall asleep.It might because I'm stressed about my full day tomorrow.

So I got up again and thought I'd read my emails. 

My brother sent me a link to this interesting video from CNN about how the broadcasting will work during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in a couple of weeks. Since my brother is in this line of work (TV-production, video editing, etc.), he always keeps me updated with this sort of stuff.



I haven't had time to look at the line up of games so I'm not sure which games I'm planning to see. I do have one date which is set for Saturday, June 12th. That evening I've booked a ticket to go to the Olympic Park Hall here in Seoul to watch the game between South Korea and Greece (they are in Group B). The game kicks off in the evening here in Korea, but before the actual soccer match there is a live performance by the entertaining and energetic singer Mika. To be honest, if it wasn't for Mika's performance I would not have bought the rather expensive ticket and would probably have only watched an occasional match online. However, now that I will see a match together with a thousand Koreans all cheering in the way that only a group-oriented culture knows how, I might get into the spirit of things and watch a couple more. I just haven't had the time to get into any kind of spirit recently.

Speaking of the Korean Soccer Team, here is some nitbit that might be interesting.The university in South Africa where I worked prior to coming here to Korea has been teaching Korean to the police force of Rustenburg. Rustenburg is a town in South Africa, about an hour or so from the capital Pretoria, and I guess about two hours from Johannesburg. Why would Rustenburg's local police need to learn Korean? Well, as it turns out, Rustenburg is hosting the Korean Soccer Team. I don't know who is teaching the police Korean, but it may actually be one of the Koreans that I on occassion tutored in English while still working there. Now isn't that an interesting circle of events? We live in a small world. (I always enjoys saying that! "Dis nou vir jou 'n klein wêreld, is dit nie?!")