Superbowl... Monday?

I took the day off yesterday, to watch the Superbowl. I'm not a huge Colts or Bears fan (but I'm very glad that the Colts won - good for Peyton, good for Dungy, and good that they recovered from a shaky start after Hester's return in the first 10 seconds) - but I decided I wanted to watch the game. It was televised live on Fox Sports and I mistakenly thought that meant I would also get to see the ads... but nope - the only ads I saw were for cricket and rugby. I guess that makes sense, why show US ads to an Aussie audience? However, it does make for a changed experience.

I watched the game at the Eastlake Football Club, which is about 5 minutes from my house. This is a club for 'members only' - I paid $2 to become a member - and they have numerous plasma TVs, a bar, gambling (machines and paper-based, like Lotto I think?) There was one other American couple there, in Canberra for another month finishing up an internship at a local winery. I didn't even get their names, despite having sat next to them and briefly chatting for 5 hours. Whatever.

Last Year:
1. Surrounded by friends
2. Great food - dips, Ash's white chili, bbq chicken, real chips (tortilla) and 7-layer dip
3. Volume!
4. Ads
5. Good conversation in the downtime
6. Winning some money for randomly picking the final digits of the first quarter score (or was it the halftime score? I can't remember).

This year:
1. Sitting in a club with 4 other people. 2 were American, 2 were Aussies, loudly wondering why you'd even watch a game like football. I didn't have enough energy to argue with them.
2. Lame fish and chips for lunch after half-time
3. For some reason the volume seemed really low on the TV we were watching. And there was construction going on, so half the game was drowned out by drilling. Again, I didn't have enough desire to request a volume increase.
4. No ads from home. Just the same ads for rugby and cricket and the same 2 car ads, for the Nissan (pronounced nisen over here) and the Jeep. I did get to see the half-time show, but it was pretty crappy if you ask me. Isn't there usually more than one artist that performs?
5. Okay conversation with the other Americans who were from New Orleans. You'd have thought there'd be more connection there, and I feel like I tried, but they didn't seem interested in anything more than idle game chit-chat.
6. Not winning any money.

I sort of wished I hadn't bothered to watch the game. It was definitely a let-down to see it over here, and I wished I could have found a place to watch it that had a few more people, but again, my desire to stretch out of my narrow comfort zone, which is pretty small right now, is about nil.