Bluegrass Guitar

Vietnam

Off to Vietnam tonight. I have been there twice before, traveled extensively from south to north and really like it. The people, their culture and the senery all appeal very much to me with Saigon a city i felt right at home. Albeit that was twelve years ago and i hope Vietnam has retained his old charme and fascination.

Sports In June

Football World Cup 2014 in Brazil : Staggering events are going on in Brazil. You would think, in this football crazy country the people would stand as one behind their team and support them, but far from it. Many demonstrators took their anger to the streets to vent steam against unprecedented megalomania and the ultra corrupt FIFA and chances are, we see more action outside the brand new, mulimillion stadiums, than on the pitches. Four years ago the FIFA pulled out of South Africa with massive profits, while South Africa was left behind with enormous debts and expenses for maintenance of now useless stadiums. Many Brazilians see the same coming in their country, which has many problems in the social sector and even hope now their selecao would exit prematurely from the tournament. Here in Europe they tell us all year, what a great thing the EU is, but during the Cup it's fine to be patriotic and wave the national flag, but that is just another chapter of the madhouse called Europe. I would give a bloody whit, who wins it and should ignore it all together, but the punter in me needs to get a couple of bets on, so here is my bundle. I backed BRAZIL to become champion with NEYMAR as top scorer @ 21. Obviously it is hard to assess the teams, though it seems many of the market leaders have questions to answer with Germany among them. Some of their key players are out of form or dealing with injuries and add to that some distracting incidents during train camp, their preparation doesn't look proper. I backed GERMANY not making it beyond the group stage @ 7.5. Supprise packages could be JAPAN and the USA. I backed both teams to reach the quarter finals @ 8 and 13. Now over to the sport of kings. Two more Classics take place at the weekend in Epsom with the Oaks on Friday and the Derby on Saturday. The problem with both races is, that none of the contenders has run the distance of 12 furlongs yet, so a lot of guesswork is involved to find a jolly, which will stay. For the Oaks i backed TAGHROODA @ 3 ***WON. She is a classy filly, trained by John Gosden, however the ground conditions are more and more against her and i put another flutter on IHTIMAL (IRL)@ 10. She is trained by Saeed bin Suroor and her pedigree suggests she will stay - Go girls ! In the Derby Australia is the talking horse and hot fav, but for me unbackable with odds around evens and i rather side with KINGSTON HILL @ 12 (photo)***2nd from the in-form Roger Varian stable and also have an each-way dabble on RED GALILEO @ 126 !!***5th with Racebets.