Today I was reading stories about the FIFA games, where the expectation of winners and losers can get intense. In particular, South Korean fans are reportedly furious over their team’s loss. The backlash has been extreme the head coach is receiving death threats, and some businesses are refusing to serve people associated with the team.
Today, the FIFA celebrations continued as Canada officially beat South Africa, so we’re moving on in the tournament. Even though the game wasn’t hosted here locally, there were plenty of spots around the city where fans could watch on big screens. One thing that stood out to me was the screening at Granville Island —
Today I was walking around downtown Vancouver and noticed that FIFA events were still scattered around the city, though the energy was obviously lower without any home games at BC Place. One of the main attractions happening was the Vancouver Jazz Festival. As someone just passing through, I found it surprisingly unclear what was free,
Today I read an interesting story about Sony’s digital store for the PlayStation platform. People buy movies there, thinking they own them just like a physical copy. But recently, Sony announced it’s ending its license agreements with some distributors. As a result, many customers are about to lose access to the movies they paid for.
Today, I read several articles about tourists visiting other countries, including Europeans going to the US for the FIFA games. One topic that kept coming up was how shocked people were that restaurants in the US expect tips. In many cultures, tipping is truly optional — it’s extra you give only if the service was
There was another FIFA event here in Vancouver today: Canada versus Switzerland. It was supposed to be a tough battle, as Switzerland has apparently been playing very well. While it would have been great for our team to win, you can’t win them all, I suppose. Sure enough, we weren’t able to pull it off.