Saturday, 29 September 2007
My legs are still sore from the soccer game I played 2 nights ago. It was my first ever game wearing the flat-soled soccer boots commonly used in Turkey and my first semi-organised game since Gaziantep in 2001. Stuff the soccer for a moment.
The real football begins tomorrow morning, 07:30 am Turkish time, when underdogs
Port Adelaide (my team) takes on the overwhelming favourites
Geelong in the
2007 AFL Grand Final.
In
2004 I watched Port Adelaide win their first AFL premiership here in Mersin at a local cafe.
Last year I saw the grand final at Peter's place on
Fox Sports Turkey. This year I doubt I will have the opportunity to view the game and will have to make do with listening to it over the internet.
According to the AFL
official website (pdf warning),
Eurosport (a channel available in Turkey through
Digiturk) will show the grand final on delay. It is not on tomorrow's schedule so I don't know when the game will be shown. Hopefully, it will be worth watching wherever you are with Port getting up in a classic encounter... I will also accept Port winning in a less than classic game :-)
UPDATE (2007-09-29): Tonight's Galatasaray-Besiktas match looks interesting doesn't it? Did I ever tell you how much I loved soccer? ;-)
Thank goodness I couldn't watch the AFL final. The song title that comes to mind is
Pure Massacre by
Silverchair. Geelong beat Port by a grand final record
119 points (1 point less than 20 goals). At least I can ignore aftermath until I return to Australia in two weeks.
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Labels: sport
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Mersin is competing against
Volos, Greece and Rijeka, Croatia to host the
2013 Mediterranean Games ('Akdeniz Oynalari'). The Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly has a
write-up of each city's presentations.
The
Mediterranean Games are a multi-sport event held every 4 years in the Olympic tradition. Unlike the Olympics (and as its name suggests), participation in the Mediterranean Games is restricted to countries in the vicinity of the Mediterranean Sea. All countries bordering the Med take part except for Israel.
The final decision on who hosts the 2013 games will be made by the International Mediterranean Games Committee (
CIJM) in November 2007. Turkey hosted the Mediterranean Games once previously: the
1971 games in Izmir.
The 2009 games will be held in
Pescara, Italy.
Mersin has changed its candidature logo. The following fish logo is the original design. I took this photo at the
2006 Mersin Motor Show. I guess the bubbles coming out of its mouth are meant to represent the 3 CIJM rings.
Recently, a more conservative and informative logo has replace the fish:
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Labels: sport, turkey - mersin - events
The 8th stage of the
European Open Water Swimming Cup will be held at Kizkalesi on the weekend of 1 and 2 September. Men and women will compete in separate 5 kilometre races. Swimmers swimming around the castle would make a good spectacle.
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Labels: sport, turkey - mersin province - kizkalesi
Monday, 11 June 2007
"At Mersin Rollhouse we have our hands on our balls"In the first game of bowling today I almost knocked every pin down. If my last ball was a strike I would have a) not left a single pin standing and b) cracked the 200 barrier. All but the final frame ending up as either strikes or spares. My cumulative tally was 196, 30 more than my previous
personal best. Both scoreboards are below:
Today's new personal best score scoreboardMy previous personal best score scoreboardAn interesting statistic is my previous personal best included 4 more strikes yet was still 30 points lower than today's game. The difference is today I made 7/8 spares as opposed to 0/5 last time.
I still have a long way to improve as I'm currently bowling in a straight line and have not mastered the more effective hooking style used by the professionals and serious amateurs.
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Labels: sport
Saturday, 9 June 2007
At this moment the qualification stage of the third round in the
Turkey Offshore Racing Championships should be happening off the Mersin suburb of Pozcu.
Earlier today I walked there and saw a few of the boats on dry land.
Unsurprisingly, the Adana boat was sponsored by a kebab restaurant:
The main race will be held tomorrow afternoon.
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Labels: sport, turkey - mersin - events
Sunday, 20 May 2007
Offshore powerboat racing is
coming to Turkey, including races in Mersin and Adana (I don't know if the article refers to the cities or provinces - Turks have an annoying habit of not differentiating between the two).
If powerboat racing is coming to Adana city, the race would be held in the dammed Lake Seyhan. I wonder where the Mersin race will be - something to look out for.
The Turkish Offshore Championship series will have 12 races. Two points caught my eye in the Turkish Daily News
article announcing the series:
1) The Istanbul Offshore Club (another IOC) chairman Ugur Isik "
notes that the engines of the boats are environment-friendly". This is not logical for such an event and in contrast to the Wikipedia
description of of the 'sport':
Offshore powerboat racing is racing by large, ocean-going powerboats, typically point-to-point racing.
Probably the largest, most powerful racing machines of all, the extreme expense of the boats and the fuel required to participate make it an expensive and elite sport.2) Z-grade celebrity
Kiera Chaplin, the granddaughter of
Charlie Chaplin, is promoting the event. I wonder a) how much she is getting paid and b) what she knows about the sport. At least she will attract the Turkish media!:
UPDATE: according to the Istanbul Offshore Club's
website, Adana's race is on Lake Seyhan next weekend (26th-27th) and Mersin's race will be held at Mersin city 2 weeks later.
Here is a photo of Kiera Chaplin in all her Turkish powerboating goodness:
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Labels: sport, turkey - adana - events, turkey - mersin - events
Monday, 7 May 2007
This afternoon Orhan ('Demir'), Levent and I escaped the newly-arrived summer heat for a few hours at the
Rollhouse ten pin bowling centre.
Some days are diamonds and others are stones. Today was a big fat diamond. It all started with my first frame of the first game - I knocked down 8 pins but the system recorded it as a strike! That game I bowled 163, a new personal best (PB).
For 4 of the first 5 frames of the second game I scored strikes. My run went downhill from then on until the final frame, frame 10. Strike, strike, strike! My first ever
turkey and a new PB score of 166. It may be a while before I hit 7 strikes in a single frame again. For scoring the turkey the bowling centre rewarded me with a free beer.
my final game was not as good as the previous two although I did make a strike in the first frame, making it 4 strikes in a row. I still scored 138, giving me a 3 game total of 467 and an average score of 155&2/3, higher than my old single game PB
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Labels: sport
Sunday, 29 April 2007
Last night I walked to Peter's place to watch Australia play Sri Lanka in the
Cricket World Cup final live from Bridgetown, Barbados. Also watching, and learning the sport's rules at the same time, was Darryl from Canada, another expat resident of Mersin.
Despite a delayed start due to rain, the game made good watching, with Adam Gilchrist smashing the cricket ball all around the place and the Sri Lankans giving the run chase their best shot. I left once the Aussies were close to victory. This meant I missed the
farcical finish.
Peter loves his
meat pies so last night wife Cansin made the closest Turkish equivalent, a delicious "
kiymali borek" (mince meat pastry).
The traditional accompaniment to an Australian meat pie is tomato sauce/ketchup. Peter didn't just squirt the ketchup on top but carefully crafted a work of art:
Note for Turkish readers: the "OZ" on the artwork above is short for Australia and not the Turkish word of similar spelling.
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Labels: food, sport
Monday, 29 January 2007
Pakistan IS a cricketing nation. In fact,
Cricket is one of the main uniting factors in the country. There were many visible signs of the game - from boys playing in the street to credit card endorsements and television programmes fronted by former players (Rameez Raja).
Cricket was a very safe topic of conversation with just about everyone there and I received several comments on the then current
Ashes series between Australia and England.
Unfortunately, I didn't manage to have a game whilst I was there.
The Ashes could be viewed in Pakistan via the Indian ESPN television channel. I only saw 10 or 15 minutes of coverage, although that was 10 or 15 minutes more than the total shown in Turkey.In the Lahore park across the road there are several games of cricket going on at the same time. I don't think the eagle is taking any notice, though.Following is one of my favourite set of photos:
Another random game of street cricket in LahoreHe and 3 of his mates are playing cricket......next to the huge and ancient Badshahi Mosque. What a cool place to have a hit! Is it 6 and out when the ball goes over the wall? Could they even hit it over?-------------------
Labels: sport