wow! not even a day passes since the amazing ice sledge-hockey experience when i get a myseterious e-mail sent from a blackberry: "hi, if you want two ice sledge-hockey semi final tickets, call me. piotr". piotr is a friend of mine whom i acquaintened in the most interesting way i have ever acquaintened anybody and i believe i described it in my blog back in 2006 (if you're interested you can dig into that). so i was sitting at school, studying in between classes and i get an email like that. of course, i replied immediately to see what's going on. it turned out that somebody his daughter knew worked for the paralympics box office and gave her two ice sledge-hockey tickets, but she couldn't go cause the game was at 12pm (a semi final at noon! what a great timing..) and she was working around that time. so i call her and she says: "no probs, you can have the tickets. just pick them up downtown tonight". sweet! now i just needed to find somebody to go with. i called couple of people but they all had classes and couldn't decide to skip them. finally i called jacob, my danish first year from uwc and he says: "of course, i am going to come. fuck class tomorrow!"
so after training, around 23.00 i get the most sketchy crossing of the town (hastings @ main) to pick up the tickets from my friend's daughter who is chilling in the bar nearby. it's quite an interesting place at night i have to say. a lot of weirdos and bizzaros making sounds and doing strange things. some of them bothered me for a ciggie, some bothered me for change, but none were intrusive. bums are so polite in vancouver!! but that's another story. let's go back to the tickets: so i get to the bar, have a brief chat with her and get two paralympic semi final tickets for another ice sledge-hockey game!! canada playing japan! the moral of this story that connections and friendships in town are crucial, perhaps not to your survival, but certainly to seizing great opportunities.. thank you piotr and gabi!!
next day jacob and i go to ubc thunderbird arena to watch the game. a reminder: canada is playing japan. the entire stadium (approx. 7,000 people) is showing maple leaves, but we are sitted right behind the japanese crazy fans dressed in kimonos and bandanas with their national symbols. cool.. :-)
it is a tight game straight from the start, japan is putting a lot of pressure and has many good opportunities to score, but it is canada who's taking the lead in the first period. coming too confident into the second period, japan's endo equalizes and the game gets heated as the players storm into one another and crash themselves into the ice and the bands. what an intense competition! in the last, third period, canada has their chances, but one and only mistake in the second last minute causes them to loose a goal on the counter attack from japan. in a desperate attempt to come back into the game, in the last minute canada pulls out the goalie, but japan defends strong and scores their third goal on an empty net with 15 seconds to go. this blow breaks canada and the japanese fans we were surrounded with explode in happiness. what a suprise score though..! who would have bet on it?
