Lunch and the World Cup

As I'm guessing is the case for most international companies that have employees from all over the world, we've been hit by the World Cup fever. I've seen a good number of Brazil, England, and other team jerseys around campus over the last couple weeks (although that's probably coming to an end now that all but two nations are knocked out). Skype got into the act as well, as was chronicled in Ryan's earlier blog post.

Lately our campus cafe has gotten onboard. For the France-Portugal semifinal yesterday, they set up a bigscreen TV so that employees could come down and watch while eating lunch (and probably buy more snacks.....the cafe folks know what they're doing). I had actually forgotten about it and walked in with about 10 minutes to go in the game. I was pretty surprised at how many people were there, so I went up to grab the camera to get a group shot. The funniest part was at the end though  - after Portugal couldn't capitalize on a few late chances (eliciting cheers or groans depending on who you were rooting for) and France held on for a 1-0 victory, everyone scuttled out of there to head to their next meeting, like bugs scattering when you turn the light on. Now it's onwards to France-Italy in the final (knowledgeable fans will recognize French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez on the bigscreen in the picture to the right).