Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Go Big Reds!

The first Korean World Cup match was Saturday night, Korean time. I dug deep in my closet and pulled out my special red tee-shirt, which first appeared on this blog during the last World Cup in 2006. I bought a couple of extra items this year, a cap and a big red "towel" to help cheer the team to victory:



Obviously it worked, since Korea won against Greece 2-0. A pretty exciting game, considering... my air conditioner (sorry, aircon) is broken and the one repairman servicing Seoul can't come until the next century. So I had all my windows open. Apparently everyone else in my neighborhood had their windows open, too. I could hear the cheering whenever Korean challenged the goal. However, everyone would cheer 4 seconds too early! I finally realized it was because I have satellite service. The link delay from the groud up and back to the geostationary satellite is about 1/4 of a second, so either Skylife radiowaves travel slower than normal, or they introduced some extra delay, intentionally or not. It also seemed to me that the video was not truly in HD. I know on any given night, I can tune into this same station (SBS) on the Skylife system, and see crystal clear HD programs. But the game just didn't seem very high quality. I'm going to try some other channels next game and see if I can figure it out.

Next game is Thursday against what I'm told is a very strong team, Argentina. I do want to go watch a game in a public venue like a restaurant or sports bar, but I'm just too tired this week. I think I'll just be lazy and watch it at home again - of course, with my big red towel cheering them onto a second victory.

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