Long Walks On Leafy Streets

6/17/2014 Peabody Street NW, Washington, DC
Since the world cup started last thursday I have been in the grip of soccer fever. Every four years I take a break from work and lose my mind completely during this one month. My mind is constantly in a state of excitement and I cannot even sleep properly. This time the fever is especially high because I have stopped watching all commercial sports. I used to watch a lot of football, basketball, tennis, you name it. For the past several months I have been watching non-commercial sports like college soccer and international cricket and soccer matches. Well, there is a bit of materialism in all of them but I feel like professional football, basketball etc., have lost their value and purpose as sporting events because of rampant greed, gluttony, drug abuse and exploitation of women. They only serve to fuel our basest instincts, namely violence, sex and bloodthirst.
Once upon a time I enjoyed them for the spirit of competition, courage and achievement that they fostered but I think those have been long overshadowed by the other things.
There are problems with the world cup soccer also, and perhaps one day I will stop watching it as well. For now it provides more benefit than harm, I think. I hope it serves to highlight the inequality and poverty in Brazilian society. While it creates tensions and rivalry between people of different countries I hope those are more of the friendly kind. In fact I hope that playing against each other helps people of different countries to get to know and understand each other better. I was heartened by the story of the Iranian-American soccer player who expressed the hope that the two countries would start talking to each other. It is great to see images of people in different corners of the world watching their teams with nervous anticipation. I had the good fortune to watch the USA-Ghana game with friends and family that I invited to my home. It was great to share the excitement and the exhilaration with others. Luckily we didn't need to share despair because the USA won, although my friend Manuel says he had mixed emotions because he might have some Ghanaian heritage.
Watching all these games, I feel like I am in heaven. It brings out the child in all of us, I think. I am also really enjoying the sights of Brazil. ESPN is doing a good job presenting the beauty of Brazil and its people. A few of the games take place in the city of Manaus that is in the middle of the Amazon jungle. I was glad to know that the Brazilian government has installed 4.4 MW worth of solar panels on the stadiums among other sustainability initiatives to make this the greenest world cup ever. I also heard that in the past decade Brazil has succeeded in reducing the deforestation of the Amazon.
Last week also marked a major milestone in my life. After more than ten years of not publishing a paper I finally finished typing and submitting a paper for publication. Now the anxious wait for the referee's report begins. But I am relieved that I finally did it, after spending so much time working on a problem during which so often I felt like a wanderer in the desert who worries if he is completely lost and whether he would ever make it out alive. I am still far from solving that problem but I feel like I have made sufficient progress. I enjoy thinking about mathematical problems and cherish the joy that comes from discovering new ideas and connections just as when you encounter a new tree or a bird. But I had been also feeling frustration in not fulfilling my own as well Howard University's expectations. I wanted to finish typing before the World Cup started because I knew that once it started I wouldn't be able to focus. So I worked really hard all of last week. Not only worked hard but also worked smarter and more effectively, I think, and finally managed to send it off just hours before the opening game of the world cup between Brazil and Croatia started.
I also managed to finish cutting all the grass and shrubbery around the house. Since a lot of the grass was of the stringy kind the push mower was not very useful so I did it all with shears, basically a giant pair of scissors. I am happy to report that even some of the chili pepper seedlings are showing signs of growth, while the zucchini seedlings are growing robustly. While I was cutting grass in the backyard one of my neighbors stopped by and asked me if I needed a lawnmower. This happens often and I always get a kick out of telling them that I am doing it for environmental reasons. They are great people and I hope that it will get them thinking about the environment instead of thinking I am crazy!

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