What could be...

...more interesting than watching Holland and Portugal literally trading blows on the football field. I did not intend to watch the match, but then stayed up till 2 am to watch all of it. The best was Figo headbutting a Dutch player:-)
I did not see the England-Ecuador match, though did change the channel at the right time to see David Beckham's goal.

Yesterdays football...

...match between Holland and Argentina was not as exciting as I had expected. Maybe because a draw was suitable to both teams.
Before that the Brazil-Australia game was much better. I did not know that Australia had a good football team. The commentator was saying that many players on the Australian team are from ex-Yugoslavia, so maybe its due to the contribution of European immigrants.
Holland-Ivory Coast match was excellent. But one does have to admit that its not easy to beat the good European teams. Despite repeated attempts by the Ivory Coast team, Holland were able to hold on to their 1 goal lead.
Ghana winning against the Czeck team was surprising, since I remember that the Czeck team was really good in the European cup games 2 years ago. What I liked most was their coach, and elderly man who would mostly sit in a dignified manner on the bench, rather than jerking and jumping and shouting as many of the coaches normally do.
Today is Czeck-Italy match. Hopefully this would be interesting.

An article...

...in IEEE Computer, March 2006 issue, titled "The Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Schism", uses this phrase: "...we are becoming a country in which most PCs are used for playing games, watching movies, and pursuing other hedonistic gratification." Now this is nice:-)
Plus this: "...Joe likes to have fun, and he leaves the hard thinking to the young immigrants who win spelling bees, play chess, and use the Internet to find proofs of the 2,000-year-old Pythagorean theorem."

Its is pity...

...that the good matches in the football world cup are so late. 9 pm in Germany may not be late, but its midnight in Lahore, and unfortunately yesterday's Brazil-Croatia match was also at this time, which I could only watch for about 40 mins before I had started to doze in front of the TV, and today's Germany-Poland match is also at this time :-(

Though...

...I am not really aware of how Islamic banking/finance works, it does seem that options are available to Muslims, at least in Britian, as this article tells. Unfortunately in Pakistan all banking is still interest-based, which means that I have not been tempted to take up useful services such as car-financing. I do have a credit-card, but then I use it only as a means of not having to carry cash. I pay back the used credit within the time limit, so as not to accrue interest, effectively using the credit card as a debit card.
I do wonder naively how Islamic banking is supposed to earn something to the banks, if they are not going to charge interest on their services.

This is really...

...great. First you shoot someone, tell them to shut the f__k up, and then after a number of horrendous things, say sorry.