Welcome to the Jungle (Part 1)

A couple of weeks ago, The Boss (for those who were not paying attention, that's my girlfriend's name) and I went to the Amazon for the weekend. For the weekend! The Amazon is not exactly around the corner, even if you are already in Brazil - nor a particularly small venue, for that matter - so people usually don't bother hopping on a plane to spend 40-something hours there. But that's exactly what we did.

Of course I tried to reason with The Boss. I argued that we would spend more time on transit than actually there. I even went on Google maps to show her how freaking huge and far away the Amazon was, but to no avail.

The woman loves to travel and was on a mission. She might be leaving the country for good soon, so lately she added a sense of urgency to her tourism, as if she needs to see whatever is left in Brazil before moving on. And, because she is on the road more often than that George Clooney character from Up in the Air and practically lives in hotels, she racks up miles like crazy, meaning the trip would cost about $3.99 for both of us - breakfast included.

There was one catch, though: the Amazon had actually been my idea all along and I wanted to spend a full week there, maybe even two. I wanted to take a cruise down those rivers, see the wildlife, breath some fresh air and get bitten by prehistoric bugs - you know, the full experience. But The Boss couldn't take that kind of time off work, so, as hard as it is to argue against dirt cheap trips to exotic locations, I had been putting up a fight and negotiations had been stalled for a few months.

Still, The Boss is not one to dishonor her own title and wouldn't let my pretentious veto spoil her "weekend on the jungle" for much longer. Thus, in a rather cunning fashion, she booked the trip behind my back and waited until we were out and I was drunk to break the news. It was genius, really. In my intoxicated state I totally forgot to get mad and, by failing to object in a timely manner, I also forfeited my right to keep blocking the proposal. We were going to Manaus and there was nothing I could do about it (and, after discovering my flight back included a 5-hour stopover in São Paulo, it's not like I didn't try).

Since I was deliberately kept out of the loop during preparations, I would be once again travelling in the dark. The only instructions I received were to take a shot for yellow fever and to buy a gallon of insect repellent; then to meet The Boss at the airport on Friday night at 0700 hours. I was also informed that we would be returning on separate flights on Sunday afternoon, so I would suffer the 10-hour journey back alone. And that was it, end of briefing.

Furthermore, because I had also forgotten to do my pre-travel research (i.e. check maps, distances and things to do at our destination), all I knew about Manaus was what they taught me in school, which only added to my overall sense of blindness.

That's not to say I didn't know anything. I knew, for instance, that Manaus is the capital city of the state of Amazonas, smacked in the middle of the rain forest, right where the rivers Negro and Solimões merge to form the Amazon river (well, technically the Solimões is the Amazon, but it only gets that name after absorbing the Negro). I knew that, late in the XIX century, the boom of the latex extraction industry brought about a golden age for the city, of which the Teatro Amazonas is the most impressive reminder. I also knew that, later on, at some point during the XX century, the national government, trying to foster development in northern Brazil, turned the area into a tax-free industrial zone. Last but not least, I remember my grandma telling me that there were no mosquitoes in Manaus, which had something to do with the water in the Rio Negro.

Nevertheless, despite what was clearly an in-depth previous knowledge of the city, I was totally surprised by what I saw - and in a good way.

First and foremost, Manaus is massive. It has a population of about 2 million people, a figure truly remarkable, considering that the city is mostly unreachable by land. It is also staggering large, spreading out, towards the jungle, for miles and miles and miles. But then again, I suppose they don't really have problems with lack of space around those parts, something that can be inferred from the fact that there are not many buildings that go over 4 stories.

It is also a relatively modern city, not at all what you would expect of a town isolated by the world's largest forest. The streets are wide and, by and large, pretty well-kept. McDonald's is there, as are most luxury hotel chains and roughly one quarter of the total Japanese population (more on that below). Due to its strategic location and the development policies in place, and being the river the most obvious choice for transportation, Manaus also boasts a pretty relevant and well-equipped port, able to handle a considerable traffic that includes full-sized tankers. On a sad note, however, grandma was dead wrong about the mosquitoes in there. Whatever beef they had with the dark waters of the river seems to be in the past and I'd say they are quite comfortable in Manaus these days.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Evidently, we didn't get to see any of that on Friday night. In fact, when we arrived in Manaus it was almost midnight and there wasn't much to do besides taking a ridiculously overpriced cab ride to the hotel.

The hotel, in this case, was the Novotel Manaus, which was located at the industrial district. Industrial. Anyone who has ever gone anywhere, ever, knows that this is never a good sign, but we were confident that the fine folks of Novotel wouldn't have randomly set camp in a dodgy part of town. And we were right, or at least partially right. I couldn't see anything industrial or fishy about our surroundings and there were a lot of hotels in the immediate vicinity. We were, however, pretty fucking far away from the city center (thus adding the ridiculously to our overpriced taxi fare), and other hotels were all I could see in the immediate vicinity.

I had bigger problems, though. First, my dinner had been some foul-tasting airline cracker and a tiny glass of warm soda, so I was starving. Second, it was almost 1am and The Boss had ambitious plans for the next day: I just knew that, given the extremely short nature of our trip, she would try to do as much as humanly possible on Saturday, even if it cost me my feet. So it was important that I hit the sheets a.s.a.p. in order get as much sleep as I could, but I was too hungry. And the longer it took me sleep, the hungrier I got, which, in turn, made it even harder to sleep. I was doomed, trapped in a misery loop.

It wasn't easy waking up the following morning. In addition to my late-night struggles, it was pouring down outside and my religion does not allow me to get up on weekends before noon when it's raining. But breakfast was included in the price and we needed a decent meal before heading out, so The Boss kicked me out of bed at 6:45am.

When I finally managed to get dressed and drag myself to the lobby, we found the strangest breakfast buffet ever waiting for us. Sure, they had the traditional choices: juices, fruits, cake and bread; two or three types of cereal; coffee, milk and hot chocolate; scrambled eggs and sausages; and even a few exotic Amazon fruits for those who woke up feeling a little more adventurous. But then they had stuff like Piranha soup, rice, cup noodles and chopped beef, as well an entire table filled with Japanese food (no sushi, though).

While we attempted to make sense of this weird, brunch-like menu, we noticed that we were the only two non-Asian people in the entire restaurant. It was mind boggling, I felt for a moment like I was in another country. Granted, we were at a hotel and I half-expected to see more foreigners than Brazilians visiting the Amazon anyway (not really our first choice for tourism), but I wasn't ready for anything like that.

Later on I recalled some alarmist e-mails I received, the kind everybody gets once in a while, claiming that international forces were plotting to take the Amazon away from Brazil. At the time I dismissed those as internet nonsense, but now I'm not so sure. I know that there's much interest in the bio-potential of the rain forest. I even recall a real case of foreigners getting cute with its natural resources, when a Japanese - them again! - corporation decided to register Cupuaçu as a trademark. (Now, Cupuaçu is the name of a fucking fruit and has been used for as long as there have been people in the Amazon, you can't just come from across the planet have dibs on that. Sorry.) We sent those fools packing, but still. First they went after the fruit, now they are messing with breakfast, while their numbers keep growing. What comes next? Lunch? Dinner? Or, God forbid, our deep-fried snacks? Is nothing else sacred?

In any case, as politically engaged as I may sound now, nothing even remotely close to that crossed my mind during our meal. In my half-awake condition, I was infinitely more concerned with our upcoming activities than with the geopolitical ramifications of breakfast. We had booked a boat trip to the famous Meeting of the Waters, the spot down the river where the Solimões and the Negro converge, but still had a few minutes to kill before our transfer arrived, so I decided to find a comfortable couch in the lobby and sleep some more.

The Boss, on the other hand, was a little more anxious, bordering on cranky. The grand appeal of this tour is that the rivers have very distinct colors and run side-to-side, on the same riverbed, for nearly 16 kilometers without mixing. But, with the torrential downpour outside, she feared the whole thing would get stirred up and the only meeting of waters we would get to see was the one between the rain and the river.

Her anxiety increased as time passed and we could see no signs our ride, so she decided we should call and confirm the pick-up. However, since I was the one who made the reservation (my one task other than buying insect repellent) and I had forgotten to write the number down, I would have find a computer and access my e-mail in order to get it... all of it seemed like a lot of work and I really really wanted the extra 5 minutes of shuteye. By then, The Boss was fed up with my laziness and had definitely crossed the border on to Crankytown, meaning I was headed for trouble.

I knew I was on thin ice, so I did the only thing I could to prevent the worst: I furiously pretended to be asleep. Deep down I think I knew how unlikely it was that she would get bored and leave, or that she would even believe I was really sleeping, but perhaps I was hoping my own tranquility would sooth her somehow. Well, it didn't. But thankfully, a thoughtful hotel clerk saw the gathering storm from the main desk and intervened, saying he had the number and offering to make the call.

Much to our (my) surprise, the good man was promptly informed that there was no pick-up scheduled to pass by our hotel that day, at least not from that agency. I actually thought about suggesting we retreat to our room, finish sleeping and then find something else to do, but I could see the foam forming on the corner of The Boss' mouth and realized that it would be a bad idea (she had crazy eyes, man, and they were pointed right at me!). So, instead, I kept quiet and began wondering about my fate: even though I could swear on my life that I really made the damn reservation (Patricia! I spoke to a woman named Patricia!) and it wasn't my fault at all, I knew it would be my head and my ass nonetheless.

That was when the super concierge saved my life for the second time in as many minutes. Since we didn't pay anything up front for our so-called reservation, he suggested we simply join a different group, as there were several of them doing the exact same tour that morning. In fact, he said, there was one of those that had just left the hotel and could still be reached, and he could check if there was room for us, if we were interested. That we were and, within minutes, the kind soul put us on our way to the Manaus port. Whew!

So, against all odds, everything just fine again. The Boss was happy and smiling, my head was still firmly attached to my body - thanks to the adrenaline rush, wide awake too - and even the rain was finally clearing. Things were definitely looking up.

Someone should save football from the IFAB

The International FA Board, the (decrepit) body that has the final saying on the rules of football, met last week to, among other things, decide on the use of goal-line technology. The proposed idea was to put sensors on the ball and on the goalposts in order to determine whether or not the ball actually crossed the line, a rather simple measure that doesn't even require cutting-edge technology and that, if adopted, could potentially spare football fans everywhere from a world of controversy. It was a no-brainer, but still those stubborn old farts in Zurich decided to continue their private jihad against novelty and the XXI century.

I never really understood why it was so difficult to modernize football until I learned, a few days ago, how the process works. Apparently, the International Board is composed of eight members: one representative from each of the Football Associations in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales) and another four from FIFA, who supposedly are representing everybody else. Once a year they meet to discuss possible changes in the laws of the game and to vote on the proposals, which need 3/4 of the votes to pass.

In other words, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales together have the power to veto any change in the rules of football.

Let that sink in for a minute.

I can understand the English having a vote, after all they invented modern football and their Premier League remains one the most prominent club championships in the world. But what are the other three doing there? Wales and Northern Ireland haven't been to a World Cup in ages and have mediocre "national" leagues (I can't even name a team from either association), while Scotland doesn't fare much better. Hell, just look at the amount of time they spend sliding in the mud, beating the shit out of their opponents, instead of scoring. I really don't think they should be telling anyone how the game is supposed to be played.

So is there a reason - other than "things have always been that way" - why those three pseudo-countries should have that kind of power? You have the most popular sport on the planet being held hostage by a bunch of people who can't even play it right. It's like the UN Security Council, but with completely irrelevant permanent members. What the fuck, really. Perhaps they could ask the Falklands to be an alternate, just in case one of those football powerhouses has a cricket or a rugby appointment on the same day.

The saddest part is that the sport desperately needed this breath of fresh air, especially at its higher levels. Modern broadcasting has irrevocably changed the way we watch football and a global audience now can, within seconds, see any play from several different angles in super slow-motion HD. We get see everything that happens on the pitch and, yet, the one guy who is not allowed to take advantage of all that technology is the dude with the whistle. Referees are expected to reach, in a split-second and with very little help, the same level of awareness provided to everyone else by a dozen cameras and, when they inevitably fail, they are crucified by the fans and suspended by their federations. It's brutal and it's not working.

However, in addition to being a geographically unbalanced forum, the International Board is also a particularly conservative entity that looks determined to resist innovations until the bitter end. This trait probably has something to do with the fact that most of its members were alive when football was invented in the 1800's, but can also be linked to the belief that the popularity of the game resides in the simplicity of its rules. All you need is a ball and an open space, and people like it that way - no extra equipment, no unnecessary complications.

While I agree with them that it would be a mistake to mess with such a perfect formula, in this case the proposal didn't involve a change in the rules. They would be exactly the same, still as simple and straightforward as it gets: a goal is scored when the ball crosses the line. Besides, the rule in question is written in absolute terms, so there's no judgment call to be made: either the ball went in or it didn't. The technology would be there just to help determine which one was it. Nothing would be taken away from the referee, the human element of the sport would be left untouched.

But none of that mattered. The dinosaurs of the International Board, ever the guardians of the so-called purity of the game, only really needed an excuse and, in an awful display of biased nitpicking, rejected the idea on the grounds that the sensor wasn't reliable enough. Simply put, they claimed this new technology didn't work on those really really really really close calls, that it wasn't 100% fail-proof, so they decided to scratch it. But here's the thing: would a human being - any human being - be able to do a better job under the same circumstances? Wouldn't the computer's educated guess be, at the very least, every bit as good and accurate as the referee's?

Moreover, even if the technology is somehow flawed, couldn't they still use it as another advisory tool? Wouldn't that solve the problem? Just explain to the referee that there is a margin of error and give him the power to overrule the computer if he thinks he saw something different, like they already do with the linesmen. Or better yet, give the man a moment to look at a replays or something, so he can make up his mind. Football fans love the fact that the game is not filled with interruptions and time-outs, but I'm sure nobody would mind waiting 30 seconds while the referee checks if the goal was in fact a goal.

Just let the man in charge see what everyone else is seeing, how can that be a bad thing? Everybody wins... or do they? I'm not entirely convinced that this systematic and stubborn rejection of goal-line technology isn't part of some evil plot devised by the English, who are just not ready to shut the door on those non-goals in overtime that were so helpful in 1966 (sort of a fail-safe, just in case Rooney doesn't come through). After all, the Brits do control the International Board. Hmmmm... I think I might be onto something here.

Olympic Gold Rush

Even though it took a few days to get into a rhythm, Vancouver 2010 delivered the goods. A dozen different events, two weeks of non-stop competition, human drama, funny moments, athletes wearing their countries' colors (or, in a few cases, bizarre colorful patterns resembling a blind man's rendition of their flags): the atmosphere was definitely there and it was contagious.

It couldn't be any different. I mean, it's the Olympics, baby! For a sports fan, that's as big as it gets... well, sort of. The World Cup and the Summer Olympics are definitely bigger, but this winter stuff is pretty neat too. More importantly, it has that rare and special allure that draws people even if they have no real connection with the competitors; the kind of appeal that makes a guy from a tropical country that only sent a handful of people to British Columbia, none of whom with any chance whatsoever at a medal, watch women's Curling at 2 in the morning.

Still, as thrilling as the actual events might be, one of the most entertaining moments of the Games - winter or summer - takes place after the athletes step down from the podium. That's when they update the Medal Table - you know, the one in which countries are ranked according to the amount of gold, silver and bronze hardware their respective athletes bring home. The table is just a great idea: it's exciting to follow and it ties all the events together in one big contest.

However, despite being an Olympic tradition by now, these rankings are not official. The brains behind the International Olympic Committee, claiming that each each event is independent and an end on its own, refuse to acknowledge the very existence of a medals table. In a way, it's much like those annoying PC parents who pretend not to know the score on their kids' soccer games, even though everybody knows exactly who's winning.

The downside of this stupid policy is that, well, the rankings are not official. Supposedly, by playing dumb, the IOC was hoping to squash the idea of a medals table altogether - which just won't happen. So, instead, what they create is room for controversy in what would otherwise be a great way to measure Olympic success.

I first spotted signs of trouble in 2008, during the Beijing games. A good part of the North-American media, defying what had always been one of those unspoken international rules, decided to base its table on the total amount of medals of each country, as opposed to the traditional gold-over-silver-over-bronze system everybody else was using.

A more cynical person could say that this newfound love for silver and bronze was somehow related to the fact that the US, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, were losing the first place in the rankings. China beat them in the gold column, 51 to 36, but the Americans still had the upper hand in total medals (110 against only 100 of the Chinese), so their new criteria would suddenly put them back on top.

Whether or not these conspiracy theories are justified is of no consequence, mostly because nobody else bought this nonsense. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, it wasn't even an issue: the Chinese had more gold, they were first and that was it.

But then Vancouver 2010 came and the plot thickened. This time the US finished third, behind Canada and Germany. Oh, Canada! Americans would rather die than admitting they finished behind their neighbors from the north at anything, so everybody just knew, even before it happened, that they would hang on to that same lame system like a starving man hangs on to a piece of moldy bread.

Sadly, even though anyone can immediately see that their table is inherently unfair and that their motives are questionable at best, those bastards have enough pull to eventually sway people their way. Thus, before this schism turns into yet another metric-system-type debacle that annoys the hell out of everybody, it is time to standardize the Olympics Medals Table.

It goes without saying that the starting point should be that gold is worth more than silver, and silver is worth more than bronze. None of this total of medals crap. Of course it must be thrilling to score some silver or some bronze at the Olympics, but nobody on their right mind would ever agree that it is the same as winning the gold. Not even a biased American journalist.

I would agree, however, that stepping on that podium is a great achievement no matter what, so we can't really dismiss its importance either. And, even though I'm a big fan of the simplicity of the traditional table, it can be occasionally unfair. Take, for instance, Cuba at the 2008 Beijing games: it won 24 medals (2-11-11) and yet, because it had one less gold, it finished behind Georgia, which had only 6 (3-0-3). One gold medal against 11 silver and 8 bronze ones seems a bit too much.

Just like with the bullshit in the American table, anyone can instinctively see the superiority of Cuba's results there, and it would be hard to argue against a criterion that would account for this type of situation. So colors should matter, but perhaps this "gold trumps all" thing isn't such a great idea after all.

The solution could be some sort of points system, where each medal is worth x amount of points. The main complication in that case would be deciding how many points should be attributed to each medal, something that would undoubtedly unravel into one of those heated and never-ending sport debates, but I suppose that's when that IOC authority would come in handy.

In any case, it doesn't really matter exactly where the line is drawn, as long as the scale reflects the true importance of a first place (something the traditional table does quite well). It needs to be a really skewed ratio, like 15 points for gold, 3 for silver and only 1 for bronze. I mean, imagine you won some Olympic gold: would you trade it for only 2 or 3 silver medals? Or maybe for 10 bronze medals? I wouldn't.

(If we apply those values to the Cuba-Georgia case, Cuba would score 74 points [2 x 15 + 11 x 3 + 11 x 1] against Georgia's 48 [3 x 15 + 0 x 3 + 3 x 1], which looks about right. Order would be restored and we would be well on our way to a fair table.)

There should be, however, a couple of additional provisions in this system. See, in the Montreal Olympic Park they built, after the games were over, a monument honoring all the countries that won a gold medal there. The monument itself is actually is quite simple, just a bunch of flags arranged in a circle and a plaque, but nevertheless a symbol of how important it is to get at least one first place. It's like joining a brotherhood: here are all those who made it to the mountain top.

So this should be tweak number one: you need at least one gold medal to be ranked above a country that has a gold medal; and one silver to surpass a country with at least one silver. I don't care how many times you came in second or third, if you didn't win any event you can't say you did better than a country that did. You're not in the brotherhood. Moreover, would you trade your only gold for any amount of silver or bronze? Didn't think so.

Tweak number two should address an even more pressing issue: how on Earth can a medal in events such as Women's under 48kg Weightlifting or 200m Butterfly Swimming count as much as the ones from, say, basketball, football or volleyball? A team of several people working in unison throughout an entire tournament is the same as one dude swimming funny for a couple of laps? Really?

What bothers me is how athletes like Michael Phelps - amazing as they are and as entertaining as it is to watch them - can throw the entire table out of whack by racking up 3 medals a day in several different events just because their thing only takes a few minutes, while equally dominant football of basketball players wouldn't even get that same opportunity because their tournament takes 2 weeks. Or, even worse, how they have all these distances and weight limits in a lot of different sports, each one of them worth a medal, but we don't get to see stuff like basketball under 2 meters, football 7-a-side or one-handed volleyball.

In that sense, it is definitely unfair to compare the achievements of entire groups of athletes with those of individuals, especially considering how these individuals are often broken down into several subcategories to reflect different performance levels (e.g. weight limits) or really specific skills (like swimming belly-up). That is something that ultimately softens the absolute terms under which teams have to compete and, simply put, is a double standard. There's only one winning team, but there's a whole bunch of fastest runners, fastest swimmers and best judo wrestlers; one for each situation. And that, for ranking purposes, is a freaking nightmare.

Therefore, unless you consider swimming (34 total gold medals), weightlifting (15), wrestling (18), judo (14) and even diving (8) that much more relevant than the aforementioned teams sports - all of which combine for merely 6 podiums (8 if you count beach volleyball) - you can't say that this is a system that accurately measures the Olympic success of a country.

This, however, is a tricky problem to solve. First, the temptation of giving more weight to the most popular sports should be avoided - even though it would make for a very interesting table. The Olympics are about all sports, not just the cool ones and, in the end, any criteria based on popularity of would merely reflect individual preferences, meaning yet another never-ending argument - not the most decisive of steps if the goal is a standardized table.

Moreover, there is also the danger of concocting a formula so complex that would kill one of the best features of the traditional table: the simplicity that allows anybody to follow the medals race. If we start to compensate for things such as the length of the tournament or the number of different categories or whatever, we risk creating, instead of a medals table, something akin to the FIFA rankings: a process so confusing that only a half a dozen people in the world would even know how that final number of points was reached.

Nevertheless, there should be a way of rewarding those who excel in events that require the combined efforts of several athletes, even if for no reason other than the necessity of having that many people performing at the highest level to win a medal.

Thankfully, there is a straightforward enough solution: for ranking purposes, the value of medals in team sports (including relays and doubles) should be equivalent to the number of athletes competing in each squad. That way, for instance, a medal in football would count as 11, one in basketball would count as 5, one in the 4 x 100 meters relay would count as 4 and so on. After all, we count the medals of the "swimming teams", "track and field teams" and all the other "teams" individually, so why shouldn't the actual teams receive the same treatment?

It could definitely work: just multiply each medal by the value attributed to its color and then by the number of people who won it (reserves and alternates not included). Don't forget the brotherhood rule and voilá! Although not perfect, such a system would correct most of the flaws in the traditional table without becoming a statistical monster, preserving the fun of watching the Olympic gold rush while bringing the rankings closer to what most people would consider important.

Now, if only someone could please forward this to the IOC, it would be awesome.