I Love Chile - February Edition

I wrote the cover edition of the February edition of I Love Chile. It was an interview I did with Marlen Olivari, who is in a musical, which is also called "I Love Chile".

You can now read the digital version for free here

This woman, she shot to fame by hosting one of those TV shows where a woman reads the weather whilst taking her clothes off. She has also been the centre of various incidents, many of which resembled the Janet Jackson "closet malfunction" at the Superbowl a few years back.

She has a kid now so it's all about a "changed life" of something along those lines.

Here's a couple of clips from the show.

I will try to post up some more stuff about what I've been up to writing wise. Yesterday I interviewed a guy, Miguel. He is holding a comic expo, this guy has some stories. He began his writing career with the guy that started Condorito (before Condorito started) and went on to work for Pixar and Disney.

I also mentioned a while back that I was looking to do an interview with these guys that skated through the Atacama. I got my answers back from them. I'm going to write a story for the paper, but I might just put up the questions and some pictures on here, that sounded like a cool trip.

In more personal news, I went and picked up the keys to our new apartment today. We are going to start living our own lives, in a much more central area. Over the next couple of days we're getting a bed, washing machine and fridge delivered, so things are starting to come together in that regard.

I am back in action with my Masters, I just have two subjects remaining and to be honest it looks fairly daunting. That could be a good attitude to have. If you think you're going to come in barnstorming, you will probably come out the other side with your tail between your legs.

For a great example of this see: Canberra Raiders, 2011.

Speaking of Canberra, there have been floods lately.

This is at the Cotter Dam. Well I think the new part which was hoping to save things because of the drought.

That's how it works I guess...

I am about to head off and play a Pichanga (pick up soccer match). I played one on Monday as well, that was good fun. There were a bunch of guys from Singapore playing, and that day I happened to be wearing a Tiger beer shirt.

This match is going to be "Latin America vs Rest of the World". I guess when you think immediately, you would jump to the conclusion that LatAm would be winners straight away. However, fútbol is the world game after all. So it will be interesting to see how that goes.

I finally got myself a pair of boots, so hopefully I can put in a better showing than previous matches. It has been a long drought of goals for me.

Chile played against Ghana last night, and that sure was a weird game. As the commentators said at half time (which went for 35 minutes), "everything about the organisation of this game has been a disaster".

The final score was a 1-1 game, with Matías Fernández scoring the equaliser from a penalty kick. I might do some player rankings on the I Love Chile site. Then again, I also might not. You can read this article about the change of the venue from New York to Philadelphia a few weeks back.

I may have mentioned we went to see Morrissey the other day. That was the first gig I'd been to all year, and we hadn't seen anything since Parkway Drive, back in November. That's something that will have to change.

Opeth are going to be hear at the end of the month, I will definitely head along to that one. I'm not sure if they're still on their "easy listening" run of shows. Even still, they're a great band. I had an excellent time seeing them with Ben many years ago in Sydney.

So I found out that a Pichanga is a term for a game of pick up soccer. Some are much more organised than others, but anyhow in my browsing one day I came across the website Jogabo, which I have mentioned before.


The basic premise is a social network for players to find games or other players, anywhere in the world. It's a pretty awesome idea really, particularly for, eg, someone who has just arrived in town and doesn't have all that many mates yet (ie: me).

So anyhow- I thought it would be good to arrive a bit early and have a kick around, a good chance to meet some of the other people etc. Little did I know, some guys from the canchas invited me to join into their game.

So by the time I finished up, which was some hours later...you could say I was completely and utterly stuffed. My game where I was a late addition was ok- though it's always hard not knowing anybody, alongside struggling with the language- all you can really do is try and get in a good position and yell SIIIIII, ACA ACA, SIIIIIIIIII. Then wonder why the ball doesn't come to you.

The say "the beautiful game" transcends languages, and to an extent it does, however all the processes are smoother and easier if you have complete grasp of the language. I guess it's just like every other part of the game. If you can kick really well, you'll get a goal most times. If you can't kick that well, you can still play- but you might find yourself frustrated.

So that game was up and then some people arrived for the Jogabo games. It was a charity match, so they went in what's known as the Dutch style, changing teams every 10 minutes or so.

Now before arriving I had dreams of filling the boots of Eduardo Vargas now that he signed a $19 million contract with Napoli, but I think those will have to be put on hold, I never really even game close to scoring a goal. I had a couple of opportunities in the earlier match, including one I belted into the post, but of course as the games went on (and I got more tired), I got more lazy, and found myself using a number of my regular bad habits, which is one of the main reasons my freestyle skills don't transfer that well onto a match situation.

I have to say also, it's 3 days later and I woke up this morning still feeling pretty sore. So I guess I'll have to get in some more match fitness by playing more games!

Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le, Universidad de Chile

"La U" won the Copa Sudamericana last night. Whilst I went to one of the earlier games, the quarter final with Arsenal from Argentina, I thought tickets would be at a high premium, so settled to watch the game in a bar.

I went to the Charleston in the Suecia district. We had to fight for our table, but ended up with a great spot. We didn't have to wait too long for action, with the regular cry throughout the tournament of GOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, GOAL VARGAS coming through just 3 minutes after kick off.

We watched the game with Jeremy and Yousef from Jogabo. That was the first time meeting them and they were nice guys. Midway through the second half the bar was having some transmission problems so we went to the California bar where a couple of other people we knew were.

The atmosphere there was a lot louder, but I think maybe the whole scene was a bit "put on". I'm not so sure about that. Anyhow, in our walking we missed a goal, but just before full time there was yet another GOOOOOOLLL, GOAL VARGAS, meaning Eduardo Vargas became the record holder for the Copa Sudamericana. Universidad de Chile 3- LDU Quito 0. "La Liga" really never even looked like scoring.

I wrote an article about it on the I Love Chile website- http://ilovechile.cl/2011/12/15/la-road-victory/42188

Thousands of people gathered in Plaza Italia after the game. I'm not really one for huge crowds, so we gave that a miss and walked home. You could hear honking horns all through the streets, to the sound of CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE- UNIVERSIDAD DE CHILE


This brings "La U" to 32 games without a loss this year.

Universidad de Chile 2- Vasco de Gamma 0

Last night I went and met up with a French guy, Julien. I met him at the hostel last year in Canberra. I'm pretty sure he was wearing a Ruiner shirt or something, so we got talking. I can't remember exactly but I think we went to see I Exist play, maybe with The Abandonment. I think Antti, one of the Finnish guys I made good friends with also came that day.

Anyway, Julien is travelling in South America now, he's been in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and now in Chile. We met up and got some dinner first. Of course it was some kind of sandwich variety. I tried to mix it up a bit, and should have learned from the last time, to just go for one of the usual options. This one wasn't too bad- but the previous time, I ordered what was basically a gherkin sandwich, I bit into, thinking it was covered in melted cheese- but that was actually artichoke- I hate artichoke.

This time around in was something like ham, Camembert cheese and a couple of other things. I also thought it would be a hot sandwich, but wrong again. No big deal though, it was cool to hang out and talk about our respective travels. He went to the World Cup last year in South Africa. I am going to try and go for sure in Brazil, maybe even try and get some kind of job on it.

So I told him there was The Match on last night- La U were playing with Vasco de Gamma from Brazil. We walked around a while, and I was actually surprised not to come across more places. We ended up going to the area around the street Suecia, which is mainly for gringos- we went to a place around the corner a bit, but there were actually no gringos to be fan, just abajos, the fans of La U- the underdogs.

This was the semi final, second leg of the Copa Sudamericana. The first leg in Brazil was 1-1. We were talking earlier about how teams, national teams, like Brazil and Argentina are on their way down- it's becoming much more even through South America, and it seems to be similar for clubs. I think normally you would think "team from Brazil vs team from Chile, Brazil will win. Not the case this time.

I thought Vasco de Gamma looked pretty solid to begin with, they had some good long passes that went straight to the blokes down the front- but then they took a free kick which practically went out of the stadium, and the fortunes changed from there.

La U went in with a 1-0 lead in the first half, the first goal was greeted with a mild celebration, but with one of the Vasco players receiving a red card for an elbow to the face, which looked more like it belonged in UFC, rather than on the field, it was time for azul to put the finishing touches on. I had remarked earlier that our UFC fighter, number 23, had looked like he had packed it in earlier in the game. The ball went out, he didn't chase it at all- and the TV zoomed in on his scowl on the face, which said "I hate losing, I want to go home". So he took the early exit, and La U scored practically immediately afterwards, capitalising on his absence down the left wing.

One noticable difference to the TV coverage was that when the goals were scored, there was no GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLL. The commentators just stayed silent, probably knowing the crowds around the TV would be celebrating.

And straight after that goal, most of the people in the pub got up to the feet, raised their fists in the air and shouted-

CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE, UNIVERSIDAD DE CHILE!!!!

The game was as good as over by then, though Vasco had a couple of shots on goal, there was no comeback on the cards. U de Chile were through to the finals for the first time ever, everybody clapped at the television.

I walked home, which takes about 45 minutes. All through the city you could hear horns honking to the tune of (Chi Chi Chi, Le Le Le). Not just for the walk home, but of course, throughout the night.

Chile 2- Paraguay 0

So last night was my debut- my first time going to Estadio Nacional to see a game- or for that matter, to see any game live in Chile.

We went in to the ticket office the day before the game- a bit late of course, but Chile haven't been playing all that well lately (the last start was a 4-0 loss to Uruguay), so I thought attendances may have dropped. Well I was wrong, so we had to get tickets in the Andes section, which was a bit pricier than we were hoping for.

Ole, Ole, Ole, Chileeeeee, Chileeeee

It took us a bus, a ride on the metro, another bus and a bit of a walk to get over there. It's not actually all that far away, but it will definitely be good once there is a metro line directly there, a project which is currently underway.

Our seats were pretty close to the action, just a few rows back from the front, although the stadium has a big fence, and then an athletics track before you actually get to the field, so of course it's impossible to be right next to the action.

Chile started well, they were really dominating the possession in the early exchanges- they forced a number of corners, but really didn't capitalise on them. I haven't done my research much on the team, but I was very impressed with number 7, who plays for Barcelona.

The atmosphere of the stadium was pretty amazing to witness- the chants of CHI CHI CHI- LE LE LE-VIVA CHILE!!!! were practically continuous right the way through the game- along with another song that started VAMOS CHILENOS, and translated roughly to Let's go Chile, tonight we must win.



And really, that was true. I saw a liftout from the newspaper on the ground, and on reading it found that in World Cup qualifiers, Chile had only beaten Paraguay twice. Going into the game they were also equal last on the standings with Bolivia, so a win would lift them slightly on the table.

Win they did as well, they kicked a goal in either half, and Paraguay had no response, although there were a couple of close calls. The ref was very trigger happy with his cards, by my count there were at least 6 amarillos (yellows) given out.

Having a look it seems that was a very important win, as they are now in 5th place, though there are a couple of teams still to play below them on the ladder. It was interesting to see how many teams qualify from each region to see what makes the "world" of the cups. South America get 4.5 spots, half the teams that compete, while the Asia region gets the same amount of spots from over 40 teams, whilst the Europeans get 13 or so spots in the cup. It will be interesting to see if that changes over the upcoming years. Of course the quality of the different regions differs a lot, and of course there is a high, high level of quality here in South America.

I also noticed that there could be the possibility of Australia coming up against Chile for a place in the finals, as the 5th placed Asian nation goes against the 5th place South American...hopefully Australia will not need to be in that position though.

The difference in atmosphere, and quality of match between watching Australia thump Malaysia 5-0 in Canberra just before we left, and to watch another match with two quite strong teams, with a very vocal home crowd, you might call it a sea of red, that was very noticable. Drums, trumpets, singing, shouting, jumping, the works. A big difference from the slight hand claps from the Australian crowds.





So the first thing to remember the next time the National Selection plays at home, get the tickets early! The next qualifiers aren't until next year, so will have to check out a couple of them.

After the match we wandered down to our good friend Villa's house- just before midnight so we could say feliz cumpleaños right on time, we had some cake and a couple of beers there.

So a pretty good day in all- I was actually fairly ill the day before- so it was a pretty good way to bounce back.

segundo semana

This is Augustine, marrying into the family I also became an uncle, a tio to quite a few new amigos.

Augustine is the son of Pablo. He also has a sister, who is just 6 months old, Ascencion. I read something a long time ago, that babies can communicate by sticking out their tongue. Being new in the world of Chilean spanish, that's about all I can do....that's not true actually, but sometimes it feels that way!

I've never really believed that the tongue thing works, but it seems to have some relevance in this case. The picture is from last week when Pablo took us up into the mountains. This weekend is a long, long weekend, a four day weekend, so a lot of people have gone out of town.

We went down to Rancagua on Saturday, which is where we will have our second wedding, in just two weeks. There was a huge almuerzo (lunch), which is not uncommon on any day in Chile. Our first week in town we had Doug around to show around to some touristy places, but I am still definitely a newcomer. We haven't been as far and wide as last week, but we have met some more of Francisca's friends.

Yesterday was El Superclasico, the match between the two big teams, Colo Colo and U. de Chile. We were actually outside kicking a ball when it was on, but from the streets you could hear the occasional cheer. The final score was 2-2, so in reality we didn't really miss much.

As we are having a second wedding ceremony, we have a whole bunch of family coming over. The Qantas strikes have not had too much effect on them which is good.

Anyway, back to the main point of the story, Augustine was telling his friends at school that his uncle was the Footbag Champion in Australia. None of them believed him! I will have to go along to the school someday and show them what's what.

In other good news, Pablo came around today and brought an old bike for me to have a spin on. He also fixed Francisca's bike, after two years in the shed there was a bit of work to do. So that will be good for getting around.

Tonight we are going to go see some punk bands, it's a tribute to The Clash. It's Halloween, but I don't think I will dress up at all.

Australia vs Malaysia, 5-0

We went to Bruce Stadium last night to watch the Socceroos take on Malaysia. Now it's been a long while since I saw a win there, Round 1 way back in March. We had got some tickets as a group, but instead of going to our allocated seats, we sat in the Malaysian supporter area.

We arrived a few minutes late, and Australia were already on the board by that time. The Malaysian team really didn't do a lot to trouble the attendants, but the fans were cheering right through til the very end.

It made the game a lot more fun to be amongst their chanting, drumming and singing, as opposed to the polite claps from the rest of the ground. I think the Malaysian fans were more excited than the Australian ones even when Australia scored a goal.

They sure scored plenty of them too, Australia were up 4-0 at half time, but only added one more to their tally in the second half, final score Australia 5- Malaysia 0.

More of London

Raiders fans wave money at the cheats from Melbourne

I will continue my tales about my trip I took recently. I better finish it off before I go on another trip, it's just over a month before I head to San Francisco for the World Footbag Championships. I'll set the scene, we're at the Walkabout, one of those "Aussie pubs", it's 10:30am and the Green Machine are on TV.

We got away in time, and walked in to the pub right on kick off. There was an AFL game on the big screen (Geelong v Brisbane) and the Reds were playing Super 14 on the next screen with the commentary on. We sat behind a bloke in a Raiders jersey watching the silent screen. I went up to the bar and asked if we could get the sound on but he told me it couldn't be done. Soon enough he realised no one was watching the Reds, and switched the Green Machine on to the TV with sound. That was more like it.

So the Raiders lost to a team one million dollars over the salary cap. They were cheated by the video ref on three occasions against a bunch of cheats. Normally these would leave me disgruntled, possibly a pathetic mess for the rest of the day, but I didn't care. It was nice to be able to see the game at all, and we had more important business at hand, the table tennis table was back out.

I was on a hot run, I think I won five in a row, to add to my victory from a couple of nights before. As the beer went down though, so did my skills. It seemed like everyone else was coming back into the games. Suddenly the run was over. We had some burgers for lunch, they were absolutely enormous, it was awesome. The last game of table tennis, I finally had another win over Matthew, our new Raiders mate.

Some of his friends were watching the AFL game, one Cats fan, one Brisbane. One happy, one sad. Brisbane were absolutely pumped. Funnily enough both girls were from Geelong. They invited us to a picnic in the park, it sounded good. I had planned on going to Cambridge that afternoon to visit Matt Bailey, but the more beer I drunk, the further away Cambridge seemed, and the more likely missing my plane early the next morning seemed.

There was a bit of sun out, it was a nice day to just be hanging out in a park with some new friends. Matthew bought a soccerball, so we started kicking that around, whilst drinking more beer. I though this was a perfect way to finish up my time in England. Eventually the picnic came to an end. In that time, Dan said to our fellow picnicers that I may be the most famous person to come from our year in high school. I have been thinking about this in my head since that day, and all it makes me do is worry about the other people who were in that year. Once they left, Dan told me one of the girls seemed to be making moves on me, inching closer all the time, hanging on to every word I said. I honestly had no idea, but found it quite humorous.

After the picnic, we met some young guys who were kicking a ball around, they were pretty good, made us look like fools really, drunk fools, which was exactly what we were, though I had a couple of tricky moves up my sleeve, which never fail to impress. No matter how drunk I am.

We kept drinking, until I caught the bus to the airport. That was at 3am. What a ridiculously big day.