Beckham Fever - enlightening

My first professional soccer game - it was at the stadium that was created for the Olympics. Very cool night - went with work... Had some enlightening chats about this Beckham fever:
We know this David Beckham as he is married to one of the Spice girls which I assumed is where the majority of his fame came from. I did not know he was a global star because of his soccer skills. He is the Tiger Woods of soccer and almost Madonna status globally...being in the sport for like 20 years. This lead me to really realize the bubble that is what most Americans live in - I was chatting with another co worker who has been here for 5 years....it is interesting discussing the bubble and the little experiences that you learn along the way. Aside from the semantics and other little things that you learn, it is larger worldly view of life and perceptions.

One way to look at this is through scalability and the size of Australia. It is relatively small so this culture is very homogeneous - they are nationalistic and share similarities....not a lot of diversification with regards to larger fundamentals. When they view American most of which is through politics and some TV...reality TV. It is difficult for Aussies to understand the breadth of the US - the amount of difference between east and west, between city and the country, between the culture subsets, between Spokane and Seattle...they is just such a vast amount of variance. I think it is difficult for such a homogeneous community to be able to conceptualize Americans. They tend to make a lot of generalizations about us - I hear it all the time that they perceive us to be one way based on this or that but they have never met a bad American....that they like the ones they met but have always held a certain opinion....we have horrible PR. Even today this came up, the TV in the office had on MTV's Sweet 16 and the receptionist ask me if all Americans have parties like that and act that way... it was funny to think she would assume this and not just know that is a select number of people that have these kinds of parties...which is just a show created and driven by ratings for a reality show...not that I dont think that is molding kids to desire parties like that but it is not what all Americans act like...

Anyway that is some deeper culture insights into my experience...

Good live music afterwards - pretty tame group but I was ready to join in.... always :)

Video'd some of the game - check out the "hawks nest" - they are doing the Braves Tomahawk chant :)