Ole' Iraq
Nabil and Ferid between them are providing fantastic commentary and pics of Iraq's Olympic soccer team.
If you're a sports junky, olympic enthusiast or even just a bit curious there's also live weblogged coverage of other events from Stuart Hughes. Oh yes, the Iraq connection - Stuart's the weblogger who lost half of one of his legs last year after stepping on a landmine in Northern Iraq, anyway, he's in Greece right now.
Oh, one more thing, here's what bartleby.com has to say about Ole'...
Etymology ~ Spanish, perhaps from Arabic wa-llah, by God! (used as an expression of admiration) : wa-, and; see w in Appendix II + allah, God; see Allah.
6 Comments
Thanx for the link, I remember hearing about him when the bbc photojournalist Kave was killed, but I didn't know he had a blog.
It's a good read, he's very lighthearted about the whole thing.
yeah, i remember hearing about him back then too. just stumbled across it again now when i was looking for iraq/olympic things.
Emigre',
How is the Greek community doing in Sydney? I'm sure they're going to party till end of the Olympics.
Everything seems a bit low key over here olympicly speaking. Greek or not, i think people secretly believe that the 2000 Olympics were "The Best Olympic Games Ever" and that even Athens can't shake Sydney's golden claim to sports heaven.
Zeus a greek god? Forget it, as far as Australians are concerned there is only one god, he has fins and his name is Ian Thorpe.
As far as what Bartleby.com has to say about Ole' being derived from Arabic "wa-llah" (by God!), it strikes me that there could very much be a French derivation too, from "vw?-l?" ("wa-llah") or "Voila!" - as frequently mispronounced by Americans anyhow...heh, Napoleon stole croissants from Vienna.
hmm, fascinating. bartleby.com says the origin of voila is voyeur, which brings us back to weblogs...
voyeur ~ definition 2). An obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects.
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