Took me a couple of months before remembering the existence of this blog but better late than never I guess. As I type, the final race of the Tour De France is playing in the background and Lando has just won the Hungary Grand Prix – first time for him and McLaren this season, and the first time in his no.1 racing number. Also, last week, Spain managed to secure their second World Cup trophy. That’s pretty much my life for the past 6 weeks or so, in addition to the collection of keys for my first (and perhaps only) house my life. I signed the deal last October and had to wait a really long time for the actual handover. There are a lot of hiccups through this process but I guess I should dedicate a full post on this when all the nightmares are over as the issues keep sprouting out bit by bit and it feels like the ‘adventure’ ain’t over.

Let me go back to the first sport – the World Cup. This World Cup was pretty much a joke to many as there was blatant corruption/favourism/gangster behaviour and at the same time, it also brought a lot of entertainment value to the general public who don’t watch football regularly. There were several stars from this World Cup – The Carpe Verde goalie (sorry I don’t recall his name), Haaland, Bellingham and Lamine Yamal are key personalities that rose to fame. I’ve always been a Spain supporter since discovering Fernando Torres back in 2006. Oops. Thankfully, the team remained kind of strong and could reclaim the glory (against all odds) 20 years later. As expected, the final match was pretty boring and it was almost going into extra time but thankfully Ferran Torres (the other Torres) scored and everyone could catch up on some sleep before Monday morning. The 6-4 England vs France match 3rd playoff match was also pretty crazy but yea, that’s entertainment for you. Countless VAR calls, even a red card reversal and a lot of controversial decisions on fouls. On one hand, I’m pretty glad that it is finally over because throughout the entire 4 weeks, my friends and I were just cursing and laughing over all the ridiculous moments of the World Cup through the wee hours of the night and morning. To be honest, I’m not sure how many years I can keep up with this awkward sleep timings but I’m gonna continue while it lasts. There’s something special about watching a sport ‘live’ in action rather than just waking up to the results. There’s even more atmosphere if you watch it with people but unfortunately I wasn’t willing to leave house during the wee hours so I pretty much watched the entire world cup alone in my room. I’m pretty excited for the Euros 2028 as I think that Spain’s team will grow even stronger and Norway might step up and start building their team around Haaland. Also, being host countries, I also hope that England can finally bring a trophy ‘home’ too? Many things to look forward to.

For F1, it has been mainly dominated by mercedes (as expected), but as time goes by we do see a little Ferrari coming in and out at times – both Charles and Lewis also secured a victory each and McLaren for the first time today. Max is not that yet, but I won’t be surprised if a win come his ways before the season ends. Also, they announced that the Bahrain GP (canceled earlier this year due to middle east conflict) would be held in the KL circuit the weekend before Singapore’s race. At this point in time, the odds of me going for it is rather low but let’s see. It is only a plane/bus ride away.

Also back in May, I went for my kind of annual trip to Korea again and this time round, we headed over to Gangneung again, cause it’s my traveling companion favourite place to visit. It was an enjoyable 1N stay with a lot of good food. Also, I managed to strike off one list off my list – Museum San in Wonju – which was a place that I have wanted to visit from a long time ago. Although I don’t speak about it often, I do enjoy visitng museums and looking at art pieces and design items though my brain might not be able to process the layers of understanding behind each piece of work. There was an exhibit by James Turrel which was experiential (though I was caught with the language barrier) but wow, it was kind of amazing to be feeling the piece of art. I hope to be able to visit his other exhibitions around the world. I’m heading over to Europe next month as well so I hope to be able to visit more museums – something I couldn’t appreciate when I was much younger. I wonder why.

As I type, the Tour De France is now at the final lap. Last year, this stage was super exciting as Wout van Art won Tadeg Pogacar. I kind of chosen to support Visma Leaseabike from last season so it was a delight when I saw Wout winning the final stage. Unfortunately, he had an injury and was out of the TDF this year. Jonas also had to withdraw from the race this year after a fall and yea TVL is gonna end this TDF with 0 stage wins. That’s the thing about sports, anything can happen and yea everything goes down the drain and you can only try again next year. At least he won the Veulta this year so.. at least there’s something.

I think that’s about it for my seasonal update. Let’s see if I’ll be back in ‘fall’ for a writeup and yep signing off cause I’m gonna concentrate on the last 10km.

Cheers ^^