Events

In the early 1950s, English football team Wolverhampton Wanderers did a tour of Europe playing “friendly” matches. A friendly is a game played between two sides that doesn’t have any league or title consequences. These games are often played in the off season so teams can stay sharp. The Wolverhampton team (“The Wolves”), one of the best teams in England at the time, beat a number of the top European clubs. The British Press started calling the Wolves “the Champions of the World” due to this success across the channel on the continent.

This didn’t go down too well with teams and fans over in Europe, so in 1955 the European Champion Clubs’ Cup tournament was started. At first only one team from each country was invited in (the winner of the national league competition), but in 1990s, the format was extended to include teams who are runners up, depending on how “good” the league they come from is deemed. At present, the England’s top four teams from the Premier League enter the Champions League (or more properly the UEFA Champions League), the most from any country (tied with Italy and Spain, who also send 4 teams).

The 32 teams are divided into 8 groups of 4 teams each. The teams then play each other twice, one home game and one away game. The top two teams from the group stages move on to the knock-out stage. For the round-of-16, quarter finals and semi-finals, the teams play two games (one home and one away), and the winner is the one with the highest aggregate score. If there is a tie in the scores, away goals count more than home goals.

The final two standing teams play one game at a pre-determined site to declare the winner. Last tournament in May of 2009, the final was played in Rome. This tournament, Madrid hosts the final on the 22nd of May, 2010.

Right now, the UEFA Champions League is in the group stages. One of the four English teams playing in the Champions league this year is The Arsenal.

Arsenal’s history dates back to the 1886, when a group of coworkers at the Dial Square workshop of the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich decided to form a football club. Calling themselves the Dial Square football club, the boys played their first match against The Eastern Wanderers on December 11, 1886 on the Isle of Dogs (where I used to live). It was a 6 - 0 win, over a club which I can find no more information about other than they lost one game to a team that would become one of the top teams in England. Despite the similarity in name Wanderers, they were not the same club that kicked off the Champions league back in the 1950s.

The Dial Square football club changed their name soon after to be known as Royal Arsenal. The club remained an amateur side for the workers at the Arsenal until 1891, when they turned professional and changed their name again, this time to Woolwich Arsenal. They joined the Football League, a collection of mostly northern based professional teams in 1893. However, the Woolwich team didn’t do well against the more established northern teams, and soon found themselves floundering both competitively and financially. In 1913 the team moved from Southern London up to Islington (where I currently live), to a grounds in Highbury. They dropped the “Woolwich” from the name (for obvious reasons), and have since been known simply as The Arsenal, or The Gunners.

Famous Arsenal fans (who are called Gooners, as a play on the Gunner nickname) include Nick Hornby, who wrote a book Fever Pitch about his love for the club. The book has been made into two movies, though admittedly one was about baseball. Other fans include The Queen, F1 racer Lewis Hamilton and singer Dido. As an aside, if Dido ever reads this... “Hey, how you doing? Drop me a line. Maybe we can go out and grab a drink. We can talk about whatever - Arsenal, your music, my blog, the fact I often still have sand in my shoes...” (I think Dido is foxy...)

As for me, I think I may becoming a fan of them as well. I wrote about the need to pick a football team to cheer for back before I moved over to England. I had talked about maybe Chelsea or Tottenham - both London based teams, but never committed to either. I flirted with the idea of cheering for West Ham or Millwall back when I lived on the Isle of Dogs due to their geographic proximity, but never connected. Arsenal though, I think is a team I can get behind. They have a fancy stadium (which happens to have a travel related sponsor even), are close to home and are one of the top teams in the league. I like that in team, after years of living in Toronto where we had the definitely not top of the league Toronto Maple Leafs.

Plus, I’ve already bought a shirt.

The Arsenal played at the ground at Highbury until 2006, when they moved to new, flasher digs just down the road. The new stadium was initially called Ashburton Grove, until a deal to sell the naming rights was secured with a middle-Eastern based airline. The stadium is now known as The Emirates.

The Emirates is just up the street from my flat, a 30 minute walk or a 2 stop tube ride. The stadium holds over 60,000 fans for football matches (including over 7,000 seats in the high priced “club level”), and is often sold out. On the outside, the stadium has a number of large glass covered areas which reflect the blue sky during day games and show off the fancy club level restaurants and bars at night.

Arsenal, after finishing fourth in the Premiership, qualified to be in the Champions League tournament. They are in group H along with Olympiacos from Greece, Standard Liège from Belgium and AZ Alkmaar from the Netherlands. After three games, Arsenal are atop the group with two wins and a draw. Their last game was against AZ Alkmaar in The Netherlands, where they drew 1-1.

The match on the fourth of November, 2009 at the Emirates was a chance for Arsenal to get revenge on AZ after the draw, which Arsenal thought they should have won. A win would also keep them comfortably atop Group H.

For Champions League games there are a few changes at the Emirates. Firstly, it’s not called The Emirates. Due to conflicting sponsorship between the clubs and UEFA, stadiums are not referred to by their “naming rights” names. Arsenal’s ground is called “Arsenal Stadium” on Champions League game nights. Also, they don’t sell beer. You can bet, though.

I had nice seats in the upper tier behind the north end goal. Despite being in the upper deck, the view of the field was still very good, and it wasn’t a problem to follow the action at all.

The fans were on fine form, chanting and singing throughout the match. “We love you Arsenal” was sung every four minutes or so. After the first goal, the faithful started singing “One-nil to The Arsenal” to the tune of “Go West” by the Village People. After the third goal, putting Arsenal up 3-0, the fans started a chant of “Are you Tottenham in disguise,” referencing Arsenal’s 3-0 win last weekend over hated cross-town rival Tottenham Hot Spur. One of the best chants was in honour of The Arsenal’s coach Arsène Wenger, where the fans sing “There’s only one Arsene Wenger” to the tune of Guantanamera.

Arsenal ended up winning handily, with a final score of 4-1. The game was great to watch as a fledging Arsenal fan, as it featured an almost endless offensive push by Arsenal and not much life from AZ Alkmaar. Probably not so good if you were an AZ fan, though. I bet all the visiting Dutch fans off in the south-east corner of the stadium were sitting there and looking at each other saying, “Waatsch haappening, guysch? We aare getting schlaaughtered!”

Now I have a footie team to cheer on. All I have to do is start learning some of those chants...

One-nil to The Arsenal... one-nil to The Arsenal...

At least I already have the jersey.

I've been cocooning recently. Working from home and a spat of cooler weather has meant that staying in has been quite an attractive option. So for the past few weeks, other than the one day a week when I head down to my office, my life has pretty much taken place in a small radius of my flat, the outer limit of the radius being the N1 centre, which has a Sainsbury's, pharmacist and movie theatre. With the N1 centre, I want for nothing.

The other day I was re-reading some of the notes I had made after reading about Existential Migration, which I wrote about in my entry I'm not a Traveller, I'm a Migrant. Reading my notes at the time reminded me that I should be taking advantage of the opportunity I have created for myself by moving to England, and getting out and enjoying life in the city.

To that end, I have (for the past 4 days at least) made an effort to get out and see London. On Wednesday I walked up Caledonian Road and checked out Pentonville Prison, which I will admit isn't very high on the tourist trail, but it is a mile from my house and thought I should check it out, in the event there is ever an escape. On Thursday, after taking the train back from my office in Egham, I walked from Victoria Station to my house (about 4 miles), taking in Buckingham Palace, Piccadilly Circus and Soho along the way. Friday I walked around Camden for an hour.

Yesterday, I headed over to Liverpool Street station and the nearby Old Spitalfields Market.

Spitalfields used to be a wholesale fruit and vegetable market, but that was moved in 1991 to the new Spitalfields Market out near the Olympic site in Stratford. Today, the old Spitalfields Market is used as a space for restaurants, shops, bars and the occasional small festival.

Yesterday, there was a Japanese festival called Matsuri.

I quite liked Japan when I was there in 2006. I found it an interesting mix of the familiar and the strange. It is a very modern country (at least the bits I saw of it), and other than a proliferation of neon that you wouldn't see anywhere in the west, the cities seem pretty similar to those of Europe or North America. On the other hand, some of the customs are very strange to Western eyes, and I always had a strong feeling that I was an outsider in Japan. I've read accounts of those who spent more time there, and they all point to this - no matter how long you spend in Japan or how well you speak the language, you are always an outsider.

I was mulling this over while wandering around with my first cold Asahi beer, and realized that may be why I liked it so much. The research on existential migration focused my attention on a potential driver for wanting to live abroad being that I often felt like a bit of an outsider at home. I was popular and had lots of friends and good relationship with my family, but there was a nagging little bit inside me that always seemed to indicate that perhaps I didn't quite belong. In moving abroad, I haven't changed that opinion - I still feel like I don't quite belong. But that doesn't bother me now because I actually don't belong. I am a foreigner, so it is fine to feel foreign. In effect, I have changed my external circumstances to make them match my internal feelings. If you feel like you don't quite belong, move somewhere where you don't actually belong. Then everything is fine.

Anyway, I'll come back to the idea of existential migration in more detail in a future entry. For now, let's just wander around the Matsuri festival and enjoy it...

There was a lot of Japanese goods for sale.

I was mostly there for the food, though. I enjoyed a couple of Asahi beers, had a nice plate of sushi and some yakitori.

There was Japanese entertainment. The drummers were good, and I liked the children's martial-arts-cum-dancing display. There was a Shamisen player from Brazil. The shamisen is a 3-stringed lute. I found it a little too plinky-plunky.

Lots of people got into the spirit of the day and dressed in traditional Japanese dress...

...and taking pleasure from the Japanese activities and art.

It looks like love at first sight!

All and all, a good day. I got out and got some exercise walking back and forth from my place and Liverpool Street Station (which I needed after the Japanese food and beer), I got to remind myself of the great time I had in Japan, and I got to ruminate a little more on why I undertook this adventure to live abroad in the first place. To experience a culture other than my own. Which I did at the Matsuri Festival, even if it wasn't quite the culture of the country I am living in.

It was good to get out the house and look at other lands.

Oh, and because I am a great flatmate, I bought my flatmates some presents. I present them to you now in haiku.

White cartoon feline
Hello Kitty Candy box
a gift for flatmates

Dewa mata atode!

I spent the better part of 2006 working in Rutherford, New Jersey, just the other side of Lincoln Tunnel from New York City. Right outside the hotel I was staying at was NJ Transit bus route that, in only 40 minutes, would whisk me to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in central Manhattan. As you might imagine, I spent a few nights and many weekends catching the NJ Transit 192 into Manhattan to see the sights.

At some point during that year, when I was back in Toronto, I was out with my sister. “So, how you are enjoying New York City?” she asked.

“It’s good. Really cool,” I replied. It is a curse of mine that while I can come up with stuff like…

“I hung out in Times Square, wandered around Rockefeller Center, Marvelled at the Chrysler Building, went up the Empire State Building, got choked up at the World Trade Center site, worshipped and prayed to the gods of money at the New York Stock Exchange and wandered across the Brooklyn Bridge in the rain. I ate hot dogs from dirty water and mile high sandwiches at the Carengie Deli. I stared at subway maps, more than a little overwhelmed at the options. I started to talk about places as intersections, not addresses, hoping that the locals didn't catch on I didn't belong.”

…when I write my blog,, but when people ask me in person what I think of a place, I can never think of anything interesting to say. “How was Tanzania?” you might ask me one day, and I would likely reply, “Yeah, neat. Grassy.”

Despite my verbose and encompassing declaration that New York City was “cool,” my sister felt the need to probe to get more information.

“What have you seen?” she asked.

“Ummm. I saw the Empire State Building and Rockerfeller Centre and Ground Zero,” I offered.

My sister frowned. Obviously I was missing the gist of what she was asking. “When someone in the theatre asks you what you have seen, they mean what have you seen at the theatre, Greg,” she offered by way of an explanation. My sister is an actress and singer, and thus was interested in how I was taking advantage at being in New York City, the home of Broadway and theatre that is “usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.” (At least, according to a completely unsourced statement on Wikipedia).

“Oh, right. Well, I stayed at Times Square once, and SAW theatres from the outside,” I offered as an olive branch.

My sister frowned again. Obviously seeing the outside of buildings which probably contain stages is not quite the artistic experience she was hoping I would have had. “Greg, you are in New York City, you have to go and see something,” she pleaded.

And I did… but I am not sure it really counts. I went and saw Spamalot, which I will admit I only really went and saw because I like Monty Python and people said it was funny. I am not sure I can really consider myself much of a serious theatre goer if the play ends with a sing-along of “Always Look On the Bright Side of Life.”

Times Square, Heart of New York City's Broadway Theatre District

I am afraid that when it comes to making me a cultured theatre goer, my sister is probably fighting an uphill battle. After all, I am almost into my fourth decade of life and haven’t really taken to the habit yet. I am creeping towards being a gray haired dog, and you know what they say about old dogs. They fart a lot, and you can’t teach them to sit.

I do think though she was hopeful when she heard I was moving to London, which contains the “West End Theatre” district, and is “usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking world.” (At least, according to a completely unsourced statement on Wikipedia.).

When I was home recently, my sister and I had a similar repeat of the 2006 conversation. “So, what have you seen,” she asked.

This time, however, I knew what the question meant, so I didn’t answer with what tourist sights I had seen, but rather with a list of all the theatre I had been to. “I’ve seen nothing,” I replied.

Unfortunately, understanding the question and having a satisfying answer are two different things. My sister frowned again. “Greg, you are in the middle of the greatest theatre town in the world!” (Obviously, she hadn’t read the Wikipedia entry on Broadway Theatre, otherwise she would have said “one of the two greatest theatre towns in the world.”) “You have to go and see something,” she pleaded again.

“I once saw a homeless man yelling at pigeons on Shaftesbury Avenue,” I suggested.

“Something inside a theatre, with actors,” she clarified.

“I was thinking of seeing Avenue Q,” I offered up by way of an apology, though again that’s mostly because it has puppets and lots of people have said it was funny. I am not positive that seeing a play whose cast includes Gary “What you Talkin’ About, Willis” Coleman really counts as serious theatre.

Piccadilly Circus, in London's West End Theatre District

I haven’t yet seen Avenue Q, but I did something this last weekend that allows me to at least answer the question “what have you seen?” with a more satisfying answer to the theatre types in the world. I have now seen an opera.

Actually, it is even better than that, I’ve seen two opera. For the price of one! Though, admittedly at one act each, they were pretty short operas.

This past weekend I and some friends went to the Peacock Theatre and saw the British Youth Opera perform Rossini’s Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta. As you might expect, this wasn’t my choice for activity, but rather a birthday treat for a friend. I simply ponied up fifteen pounds for a ticket and tagged along.

The Peacock Theatre is a thousand seat (less one) theatre near The Strand in London. It is, in actuality, a lecture hall for the London School of Economics (LSE), who lease it out to the Sadler’s Wells Theatre to put on shows.

The LSE teaches economics and politics and is quite influential. It’s most famous attendee is probably Sir Michael Phillip Jagger, better known as Mick, though you probably know him because of his work with The Rolling Stones rather than his work on anti-inflationary policies and their impact international trade relations. Could you imagine though if Mick had stuck with the LSE and become a professor of Economics? That first day in the class room and the prof comes strutting in like a peacock, singing “You can’t always get what you want, but with some quantitative easing, you just might find, conditions are in place for green shoots of recovery!”

I did notice that the seats provided very little leg room. I suppose that if you are attending an economics lecture, you probably wouldn’t notice, as the torture of having to listen to someone drone on in a monotone for an hour about supply and demand curves would cause enough discomfort to overwhelm any feelings of pain in your legs. If you are at the opera for three hours, though, it sure would be nice now and again to shuffle the feet around a bit.

Both operas were in Italian, but they had subtitles on an LED illuminated reader board, so I could follow the gist of what was happening. The two comedies were both one-act farces, pretty close to the typical British sex farce, but with a lot more singing in Italian than your usual Carry On film. The singers were all good (to my untuned ear), and they did a good job of having the right level of camp for the comedic material.

The set design for the second play (La Scala di Seta, which is Italian for the Silken Ladder) was interesting. Instead of furniture on stage, they had people wearing black clothing and white masks to act as closets, coat racks and tables. Whenever anyone hid, they just held up a frame in front of their face, which quickly became the short-hand for hiding during the play. There is a lot of hiding in La Scala di Seta. I’m thinking of carrying around a picture frame to hide at work. “We need a volunteer to organise the birthday lunch for Sandra,” someone might say in a meeting. I’ll just hold up my picture frame, and poof, I’ll have disappeared.

I think for the untrained opera neophyte, one act comedies are probably a good place to start. Not so serious, you get to laugh and they are shorter than something a little more serious like Wagner's Ring Cycle. The Ring Cycle is 18 hours long, and despite not being prime comic fodder, I would probably start laughing anyway, as the music would most likely recall to my mind Elmer Fudd singing “kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!”

So there you go. I’ve actually seen something now in London. Maybe… I’m not sure that going to the opera counts as seeing something.

See, when I emailed my sister to tell her I was going to the opera, she replied, “does this mean that someday you may actually go to the London THEATRE?” I’m not sure what the difference between opera and theatre is, after all they both take place on a stage, but sounds like I still may not have seen anything in London.

Antony Gormley's Fourth Plinth art project is now running in London's Trafalgar Square. The One and Other project will see a different person standing on the plinth every hour for 24 hours a day for 100 days from 5 July to 14 October.

FYI, a plinth is the base or platform upon which a column, pedestal, statue, monument or structure rests. In Trafalgar Square there are four plinths on the corner of the square, though only three of them hold statues. The empty fourth plinth was meant to hold a statue of William IV, but due to lack of cash that statue was never built.

Nowadays it usually holds modern art. The most recent project is Antony Gormely's project, which sees regular people standing up there for an hour each. Some are doing actual arty stuff, while some are just up there for the heck of it.

I went down today and saw a woman standing on the plinth holding up a sign for the Citizen's Advise Bureau, an organisation that helps people with free advise on their rights.

People have to stand up there rain or shine, even in the middle of the night.

Man, is it bright out there!

On Sunday morning, a bunch of smelly hippies and modern-day neo-druids will be dancing and drumming around Stonehenge while the sun rises at a little before quarter to five in the morning. Stonehenge, the mysterious stone circle in the English countryside is usually surrounded by ropes to keep the hordes of shutter-bug Japanese and loud Italian bus tourists from approaching the stones. On the summer solstice, as well as the equinoxes, English Heritage allows visitors to approach and touch the stones. The summer solstice is one of the most popular times to visit the monument, as the stones are aligned in such a way as the sun rises and sets between pairs of the massive stones.

The hippies will have to get up very early to see the sunrise, and will have a spend a long, long day at the stones in the middle of the countryside if they want to see the sunset. Sunday is the day with the most daylight this year, and it is a long day here in the United Kingdom.

When I was down in the southern USA, I used to tell people about how long the days lasted in the summer in Toronto. I would say, “I remember when I was a kid staying out until 10 o’clock at night, being able to play in the late summer sun.”

As with many childhood memories, it wasn’t entirely accurate. By 10 o’clock at night the sun would have set close to an hour earlier, even on the longest day of the year. That day, the summer solstice, falls on June 21 this year, which is this Sunday. As the days have gotten longer and longer over the past month, I have been reminded how much longer the days are here in the UK.

I will be lying in bed when the sun rises on Sunday morning at 4:43 in the morning while the hippies are drumming. I’ll go about my day, doing whatever I choose to do on my Sunday off. Most likely I will have already be home and be watching TV by the time the sun dips below the horizon at 9:21 in the evening. The solstice in London will see a total of 16 hours, 38 minutes and 23 seconds of daylight.

Toronto will see the sunset less than 20 minutes earlier (adjusted, of course, for time zones) at 9:03 in the evening. Sunrise in Toronto, though, is much later than London at 5:36 in the morning, giving my old home 15 hours, 26 minutes and 45 seconds of daylight.

What many people fail to realise, and I will admit to being one of them before moving over here, is how much farther north Europe is than North America. New York City is at 40 degrees 45 minutes north. Toronto is a little further north at 43 degrees, 38 minutes north. The centre of Calgary, Alberta, Canada is 51 degrees, 03 minutes north.

The centre of London, near Westminster where Big Ben is, is further north than all of those at 51 degrees, 30 minutes north. Rome is further north than New York City, which shares a similar latitude to places like Naples, Italy; Madrid, Spain and Isola Asinara on the island of Sardinia. I was at a similar latitude to Toronto when I was down in Nice, Monaco and San Remo, Italy recently, all which are around 43 degrees, 40 minutes north.

Obviously Nice has much milder winters than Toronto, and New York City does not quite have as mild a winter as Naples. New York and Toronto, conversely, have more humid, hot summers than their European counterparts. The most widely accepted explanation of these differences is due to the moderating effect the gulf stream has on the European weather, though like most attempts to explain the climate of this strange rock floating through space, there is disagreement on with a number of competing theories.

The places that Europe really considers north are places like Oslo and Stockholm, both of which are almost at 60 degrees north. Oslo will be a really bright place this Sunday, when the sun rises at 3:54 in the morning and doesn’t set again until 10:44, giving 18 hours, 50 minutes and 35 seconds of daylight. Now that’s a long day!