Every day I travel from my house to work along 33rd and obviously I must be doing this driving in a zombie-like state every morning AND every afternoon because I had not noted that at the corner of Victoria street sits the Vancouver Alpen Club or the Deutsches Haus Restaurant. Now you will ask, why did you notice today? Well ................. because of THE WORLD CUP!!!
At first it just looked like there was an excess of parked cars but then I saw that most of them had German flags on them. Now my first thought was well there must be a German family that is hosting a party (this at 8 am you should know) but then I saw a long line of people that extended around the corner and saw the BIG Deutches sign - AHHHHHH that is why!! These super dedicated soccer fans had gotten up to go line up at the German bar at 8am!! Good. For. Them.
One of the coolest things about experiencing the World Cup in Canada is that EVERYBODY is from somewhere else and multiculturalism makes for a GREAT atmosphere. One of our psychologist, let's call her Dr. L is a soccer FAN, yes with caps - FAN! For the last two World Cups Dr. L has run the work World Cup "pool" or "assigned teams".
Here I use her first World Cup update (which she writes under the pseudonym of Claudio Lilincha) e-mail explaining the process. First she writes a disclaimer: "expect exaggeration, mild bad taste and mildly offensive national stereotypes. This was not written on work time. No animals were harmed in the makingof this update". Then the welcome: "Good morning sports fans and welcome to the 2014 Psychology World Cup Pool. There is no money in this pool, only mockery and bragging rights. Team assignments were completed semi-randomly as follows: last year’s winner picked first, then people with actual national affiliations were assigned their teams (thus Mexico is MINE), then remaining psychologists picked (yeah suuuuuure, of course, we have no idea how the organizer ended up with the host and most promising team - BRAZIL! but we will let that one go). Other invited guests picked after. Staff who joined the program after the draw were added in a completely arbitrary way. Other than psychologists, inclusion was based mostly on who was hanging around in the hallway on the day we picked."
So now every day we rouse, go to work and rumble. So far it has been fairly civilized except for the unintended colleague "tripping" in the hall or the hiding of their favorite chair or the cryptic I-have-no-idea-where-that-chart-you-are-looking-for-is look or again the totally unintended and totally accidental locking them out of their office multiple times. Totally. Unintended.
Tomorrow Mexico plays Brazil, ie. Me AGAINST. Dr. L. So today I had every intention to get her to eat some bad shrimp that way she would spend the night experiencing intestinal distress and perhaps kill Brazil's luck but I got busy with patients and she was in meetings all day. I was also thinking of pinning a "kick me" sign to her back but that is just plain juvenile right? Tonight I plan to park outside her house and play the car radio loudly so that she can't sleep. This WILL ENSURE Brazil's abysmal performance on the field tomorrow. Wish me luck!
