acaramba.com

The title is so original it will earn me writing accolades. But I have the supporting photos, I would have you know.

My little family hols started with as little an incident as would be expected with my mom around-- which is to say that she had a completely unwarranted response to NAIA security personnel; she misunderstood what was said by the hapless man and infliicted on him quite an earful.

Our beloved metropolis, right after taking off, was a picture of... uncontrolled particulate pollution. Lovely, nonetheless.

This reminded me of my favorite football player, i.e.; skies and sole star (squint and there's one smack dab in the top center) and splendor and all that.

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And then Incheon International Airport, which is an accomplishment in megalomania and airport planning for dummies. I have no, absolutely no head for directions but I skipped from drop-off point to a walkalator and down flights of escalators, waltzed through immigration, boarded a train to the exit, and hopped on a bus to the hotel. The airport awards are smashingly deserved.

Coat and scarf (and flip flops) weather,

A warm welcome from my home away from home,

And midnight dinner, although the acronym for the resto, Fried Chicken Baengi, called to mind a football club which drubbed (in convincing fashion, yes) Arsenal FC in the Champions League...

Starters were popcorn and pickled radish, which is a blinkingly odd combination, if ever there was one...

Instead, FCB came up with two... One of the chicken platters was as head-scratching... kimchi (surprisingly amazing), a blob of boiled noodles (cold, unseasoned, made me ask "why?"), canned peaches (fancily called "Imperial Peach"), and fried chicken. In the odd pairings charts, that's a combo that can't be beat.

It's hard to go wrong with chicken, almost impossible to go wrong when the same is fried; but FCB got everything right.

We wanted a steaming soup bowl to counter the cold, so the most exotic one on the menu, the gigglingly intriguing "A Fish A Cake" it was. It had sea cucumber, fishcake and rice cake (aaahh, that's why), and shrimp.

The blur of hands only prove the hunger.

Seeing as I get carried away with pretty much everything I write, I have decided to narrow this post down to my Fave Five in Seoul (I was striving for alliteration but unless I change the name of the city...)

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I am emotionally spent so this will be short. Several Fridays ago, the Champions League quarterfinal draw was held in Nyon, Switzerland; clearly, the cosmos had much too much alcohol and handed Club of My Life the most difficult tie:

They say a blink banishes a ghost, but a dozen blinks after, forty winks later, a hundred years it felt like, the spectre of the third draw above continued to haunt me. What to do but grit my teeth and bear it? The game between Barcelona and Arsenal, the two primary advocates of playing the Beautiful Game beautifully, was hyped to such heights that it could only have disappointed. It didn't.

How could it, when the story was limned with subplots of the Prodigal Sons: Thierry Henry returning to Arsenal in Barcelona colors and Cesc Fabregas captaining The Arsenal against the Catalan club where he learned his craft and cunning; Barcelona golden boy, Lionel Messi, the world's best footballer at present; Arsene Wenger who has won all coaching accolades except the elusive Champions League; Pep Guardiola, former Barca captain, who on his maiden coaching year won all the competitions to be won with his stunning Barca squad; oh and the little matter of the 2006 CL Finals, which Barca nicked (just!) from under Arsenal's nose? (This loss is on equal tragic footing with the World Cup 06 debacle.)

This was a game played atop a gunpowder keg. And were there ever explosions!

The fluidity with which Barcelona demonstrated the passing game, the Tiki Taka, at Arsenal's home, The Emirates, in the first half, particularly, the first painful twenty minutes, and the dispiriting Arsenal response, whose Tippy-Tappy football was nowhere to be seen, would have been enough to send the faint-of-heart crawling back to bed with a bottle of vodka, a mat of sleeping pills, a hastily scribbled holographic will (remember to date it), and a tear-stained No more, Cruel World! No more! valediction...

But I am masochistic some ways, and I got through what was the most humbling forty-five minutes of many a game night reelingly delighted at how Beloved Team had weathered the Barca onslaught with the halftime scoreline at eggs. Yes, a most mystifying 0-0 when the Blaugrana had dominated the Gunners so completely, no one would have begrudged Barca had they led by five goals.

On the half hour mark, Andrey Arshavin, Arsenal midfielder, had to come off because of a strained calf muscle. By his self-diagnosis he classified said calf-muscle as torn, but Arsene Wenger quickly refuted our Russian tragedist's "I fear that I am out 'til the end of the season" claim by saying he should be good to play by the 24th. Smiles.

The gamble on the William Gallas' fitness seems to have backfired though. Everybody was surprised by his return to first team action-- against Barcelona, no less-- since he has not played for months. But Arsenal are desperately short on defenders, so he had to be called in. Unfortunately, he had to be stretchered off just before the first half ended. Arsene Wenger has since confirmed that Big Billy, unlike Arsha, would be out for the rest of Arsenal's games.

A fifteen-minute suspension of proceedings, a ciggie break, a phone call to Miko at 4 am-- hysterical, incoherent, dazed, a cup of hot chocolate, and a packet of cookies. Alien times and an alienated soul demand the comfort of the familiar.

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The goal flurry from Arsenal, 8 in the last two games (3 against Burnley and 5 against Porto) looked set to continue when Andrey Arshavin with his schoolboy haircut, made the most of a four-move play, smart and snappy and slick, nutmegged two Hull players and carved out space on 14', to open the scoring. To Fangirl, any Arsenal Goal is a Thing of Beauty, but this one really was. Our diminutive Russian playmaker was on target through a square ball set up by Nicklas Bendtner, and while Hull keeper Boaz Myhill went in the right direction, his outstretched hands were a good foot away from the strike.

A writer at third-gen illustrates the play as follows:

Read his article here.

By the by, it was Arsenal's 100th goal of the season in all competitions.

But Arsenal are not Arsenal, without any half-mishap/complete disaster and the game was level on the 28' when Hull's Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (he must have struggled writing that down as a kindergartener) set himself up to be fouled by Sol Campbell in the Arsenal box. He went down a little to softly for my liking, The Cheat!, but the referee, Andre Marriner, pointed to the spot, The Inept!, to think that Hassle-boy was offside by a mile anyway. Jimmy Bullard fresh from a strange but infinitely welcome fisticuffs with his own teammate, Nick Barmby, took the penalty and didn't miss. Arsenal goalie, Manuel Almunia, was a mess of flapping limbs.

It was a largely ill-tempered, push-pull, stop-start game, because Hull players aware of their limited talent, launched an astonishingly limitless weaponry of niggling little things: shirt tugs, body checks, overzealous shoulders, little kicks on ankles and shins and backs of legs. And as the ref and linesmen were doing their absolute best to be absolutely awful, the crowd was baying for blood. I mean myself, of course.

George Boateng, Hull captain and defensive midfielder, well done! It was at this point only five minutes to half time, but only a few hundred tick tocks after the ref brandished his little black book and raised two yellow cards for an off-the ball incident involving said Boateng and Bendtner, with the former wanting to gouge out one of the eyes of the latter; Boateng was sent off for a reckless, studs-up, knee-high tackle on Arsenal defender, Bacary Sagna.

The match commentator last night said that the ref "had no choice" but to give Boateng a yellow. Of course, he did! Last I remember, that sort of challenge is a proper red card offense. But Boateng walked the Walk of Shame, leaving Hull with ten men. Tackles are a particularly sore point with Arsenal right now-- Aaron Ramsey is why-- and I thought the Gunners did well to at least keep their tempers in check, since Hull had obviously gotten in their faces and under their skin.

When the two teams played the first of their fixtures in December, Samir Nasri stamped on a Hull player, and a twenty-two men free-for-all almost followed. Both teams were charged with, found guilty of, and fined for failing to control their players by the English FA. Arsenal won that game comfortably, 3-0, but this game was clearly not one that would allow Arsenal to mete out their preferred mode of execution: Opponents' Ugly Death By Arsenal's Pretty Passing.

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