www.ndtv.com

And I embraced the green and gold for lunch today.  May I present my Socceroo salad.  It’s mainly green and gold and full of the healthy things the team must be eating round the clock in Brazil.  It’s more meat pie weather in Sydney right now but it was my patriotic duty to adopt the team diet for their first match of the cup.

It’s hard not to be dazzled by the star power of the elite players and their entourages but the stories that fascinate me most about this global game are those of the players who hail from countries in political turmoil.  Hearing their stories of what they overcame to even be able to play soccer and then to make it to the World Cup makes them the true winners in my eyes.  Soccer seems to be a universal language of hope and passion, it’s also a beautiful game (thank you, Pele for coining that immortal phrase) to watch at World Cup level.  Even if you don’t know the rules and can only gasp in admiration at the prowess of the teams.

Closer to home, the cup has brought communities together.  Despite soccer not being the biggest sport in our country, everyone here has plans for where they’ll be when their favoured team or teams will be playing.  Cultural centres are hosting events for their communities to come and watch games together.  Pubs have sold out of tickets to 2am events to watch teams like Italy play (to make sure everyone stays awake for the excitement, they’ve guaranteed good coffee at some venues).  The enthusiasm and goodwill is infectious.

The AGs are officially my favourite pair of black skinny jeans.

Brown bagged lunches everyday = more $$$ for fun things.

Priceline’s Pink Dot Sale is on now until the 18th of June and I stockpiled.  $10 for my favourite Maybelline mascaras, $4.25 for the eyeliner pencil that changed my life (Maybelline’s Line Express in brownish black) and $16.17 precisely for a new tube of Revlon’s CC cream.  Priceline, they’re dangerously close to US prices.

Guess what I found the last box of at Aldi?  Taylors of Harrogate’s Yorkshire Tea!!!!  And it was only $3.99 for a box of 100 bags.  Unforunately, I think Taylors was only in Aldi as part of a special buy promotion.  Actually, I know this for a fact because I personally stopped in at every Aldi on my way home in a vain attempt to find another box.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Enter this $10 pair from Coles.  We’ve been on many walks and bus trips together and not once have they fallen off my head.

We’ve even found a new radio station together – The Hits MIXX.  It’s a radio station based in Tampa, Florida and not only is the music great (pop, rock and r’n’b from all the decades I’ve lived through from high school until the present) and the bantering DJs almost non existent but it also has the most fascinating collection of adverts I’ve ever heard on a radio station.  From high court judges campaigning for the legalisation of marijuana in the US to Michael Douglas giving his voice to a campaign to promote the uptake of the pneumococcal vaccine, it’s all on the ad breaks on The Hits MIXX.  I don’t think I’ve ever listened to so many public awareness campaigns in a single ad break anywhere else in radio.

And on that note, I hope your weekend is going well.  I’m staying in tonight, got a DVD from my local DVD ATM – August: Osage County.  Killer cast, really looking forward to it.  Have you seen it?  I was this close to getting the Naomi Watts as Diana bio pic but I Wisely Walked Away.

cloudfront.net

Stay toasty.