In addition to trying to manage my own portfolio-it has been a rough ride since May-travelling to Germany/Poland and sort of "dream walking" through history I have been an avid follower of the World Cup.
My family gets very excited around football championships and the World Cup is essentially the pinnacle so in the background of political and financial analysis we had two bets, a Pool- blind draw 4 teams each, and a Hearts and Minds competition.
The Pool was a conglomerate of family and friends in London, Belgium, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. It was interesting because you suddenly found yourself taking an interest in a team to which you had no affinity, indeed sometimes even a dislike!
The Hearts and Minds allowed everyone, and here we broadened our net to include, Binghamton, Leipzig, Hannover and Berlin and, although not officially, St. Gastien de Bois. Here everyone chose the team of their "heart", and then the team that they actually thought would win.
After the final games of the group stage, and in some instances before, we had a ritual of crossing out the teams that fell by the wayside. It was always interesting when a Heart or Mind team played a "draw" team, as well as when your own Heart played your Mind.
We tended to watch the games in German as the commentators are more objective and because there were quite a few German Hearts, and one German Mind.
Last night my daughter had her Heart,Germany, lose to her Mind, Spain. It was interesting to watch as her dislike of Spain increased with every foul they committed, or worse, when they let themselves fall as if there were a sniper in the stadium.
Two members of the betting syndicate were travelling, and so we got desperate texts from Vietnam-power cut at 02:30! and the same from Moscow where in the Bavarian Restaurant the power first went out, and then came on just in time for Spain's winner!
To be fair, Spain was the better team on the day. Germany lacked the confidence they had demonstrated against England and Argentina, and so the Germany-Holland Final we were all hoping for wasn't to be.
My Mind team is Holland, so I have a horse in the final. The fairy tale of Germany has ended-but look out for this young team in the next European (2012) and World (2014) Cup.
As luck would have it, our Hearts and Mind competition has a twist: Heart trumps Mind and wouldn't you know it someone has Holland as their Heart!
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