South of England and Shanghai

Dear friends

How are you?

In your last posts I can already feel a slight scent of summer! Planning for (and enjoying!) vacations is always interesting, and that's what I also want to talk about in this post.

In the Easter weekend we (me, Lu and two Portuguese friends of mine) went for two days to the south coast of England. No very rigid plan, just one really defined objective, the Isle of Wight (just south of Southampton, by ferry boat), and the will to have a great time.

And I must tell you that the places we visited were quite interesting. I underline this because in many of the travels I and Lu made to different places in the UK, we had high expectations and when we got to those places we were quite disappointed. Examples are dreadful towns like Nottingham, Swindon or Cardiff - there's really nothing interesting there! Boring!!

But this time it was good. On the day of my birthday we checked out Poole and Bournemouth.

The best thing about both places is the coastline, the beaches seem like the nicest I ever visited in the UK and the towns themselves have nice houses and urban planning. In Poole it even seemed similar to the Cascais and Estoril areas near to Lisbon. Bournemouth is also a well known resort, with the natural attraction of a cliff running along the beach. I don't know about you but I always enjoyed beaches with cliffs, that's my thing :)

Then we got the ferry to Wight where we visited some picturesque sites conserved by the National Trust,

and a traditional wine farm with a funny reveration towards France :)

There the Portuguese have shown good skills on one of our favourite national sports, kicking defenseless animals!!

The last place we visited was the favourite vacation place for Queen Victoria and her Albert, the so called Osbourne House and respective estate, where I did some Zen meditation.

And that's it, at the end of the 2 days it's back to London and normal life!

Another matter is the plan me and Lu have for the near future. We'll both travel to Shanghai between the 24 April and the 8 May. Therefore we hope to meet at least Mikey and maybe Yasu also. Tell us something about your availability as soon as you can and we can plan a nice meet-again!!!!

Hugs for everybody

About Linda

Hey, I'm back again. Hello, hello, and hello!!!
Sorry I cannot contribute any comments on the games, but I'd like to report a bit of what I've been doing. ^^
Quit my job for a few days and am taking some rest now.
The PhD exam will come in the end of May, will need a lot of study, preparations for proposal and stuff this and next months.

About my trip, Yasu, I can give you the preliminarily agreed itinerary, will you join or we can meet somewhere in the middle of my trip?
(14 July) arrive in Rome -> travel all the way northward in Italy -> Vienna -> Switzerland -> Southern France -> Paris -> (6 Aug) arrive in London (meet Nuno?) -> travel all the way northward in UK -> Newcastle -> (24 Aug) back home
Pity that I cannot go to Lisbon in this trip, hope there'll be some other chances in the future....><

hugs from humid and bit-of-hot Taipei ^_____^y

yasu

Your English is very good.

What's up?

Hello everyone, what's up? Is anything new in your life?
The temperature is getting warmer here and days have been becoming pleasant. Any of you have a special plan in spring or the Easter? Do you have any travel plan? I am thinking of a possible getaway if I can get a reasonable ticket. Hopefully, Australia. Linda, tell me about your plan for your trip to Europe (where and when). Any of you have any exciting one, feel free to respond to me.

The other topic that I want to talk about, is football. Probably, Nuno is the only one who is enthusiastic about this topic. Watching how my country played, I am sure that Japanese players need to improve their performance in their tecnic and physical fittness. A large gap between Europeans and Asians. So, I am not sure that they can fulfill my expectation.

Ok, the latest match between Portugal and Slovakia is, in a way, impressive. Once again, Scolari proved himself is a great coach. Having one goal behind, he changed a forward player to draw the game. If I give marks on individual players, I will give the highest marks to Cristiano Ronaldo and Ricardo Carvalho. Ronaldo showed his great skills to beat defenders and run up in both side lines and make a few attempt to score a goal. Carvalho conducted their defense superbly. The poorest ones are Simon Sabrosa and Paolo Ferreira. Simon is simply too short and undynamic to beat tall Slovakian defenders. Ferreira again committed a big mistake to give a goal to the opponents.
For the next home game, Scolari must find a good substitute for a left winger. If you ask me, Figo is the only alternative. (Nuno, tell me about reviews and critics by Portuguese media). I do not know how much Scolari trust Ricardo Quaresma. An excellent player but who knows who he will pick for the next match. I believe the opponents put a tight mark on Deco again. So, Portugal need another excellent winger to destroy the defense system.

Another headache is to miss Costinha due to 2-yellowcard suspension. Who will be the substitute. Let me know your view, Nuno. To sum up, the result is OK as long as they can surely beat them hard in Lisbon.

Talking about other countries, France is over. Spain may suffer from an enormous pressure to win next few games. If they can not win, they are out, too. The Dutch coach is brave to test new and young players and so far, they are good. England will be qualified surely even though I myself do not hope so.

Sorry for other members. This can be boring topic.