Chapter IV

You will have seen by now that we lost our semifinal to the Koreans.

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Once again, I’m terribly, distressingly behind on my dissertation. I’m writing the last chapter, Chapter IV.

Last night, Karin urged me to explain it all to her so that I could organize my thoughts. I talked for about forty minutes. Then I said, “All of which brings us to the beginning of Chapter IV.”

We didn’t get very far after that.

The entire dissertation, revised in response to my advisor’s comments, must be submitted to the other readers by Sunday night.

Teenagers

Ecuador 2, USA 1 (U-20 World Cup). These are some highlights:

Alas, they don’t convey how dominant the Ecuadorians were. The defensive midfielders, especially, chewed up the U.S. dribblers.

It’s a proud moment for the country: we’ve qualified for our first World Cup semifinal. (Our opponents will be the South Koreans.)

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Meanwhile, other athletes have been doing Ecuador proud. The most impressive is the teenaged race walker Glenda Morejón, daughter of greengrocers. Though she enjoys very little financial sponsorship, she recently defeated a world record holder, an Olympic medalist, a world champion, and the like in a major race, her 20 km debut.

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Very unpopular right now is the men’s senior soccer team. Tonight, Ecuador lost a “friendly” against Mexico. I watched a few uninspired minutes.

David and Stephen and I use the same streaming account, but the company doesn’t allow us all to stream at once, so I watched on a YouTube channel whose broadcast looked like this:

Los pibes

The last bits of my dissertation, not counting revisions, need to be turned in around the beginning of next week. Meanwhile, I continue to apply for academic jobs. It amazes me that so many are posted so near to the beginning of the next school year.

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After starting slowly, with a draw and a defeat in the first two group games, Ecuador has progressed to the quarterfinal round of the men’s U-20 World Cup in Poland.

Ecuador’s opponent in the quarterfinals: the USA.

(I’m not saying that one side is morally better than the other, but one is like Luke Skywalker and the other is like Darth Vader.)

Los pibes, as the youths are called, seem especially bad at kicking penalties. They missed one against the Japanese, whom they outplayed and should have beaten, and another against the Italians, whom they also outplayed and with whom they should have drawn.

They did convert two penalty kicks against the Uruguayans. They used two different shooters who followed the same strategy: shooting low and centrally into space vacated by the goalkeeper.

Not very inspiring. I hope the quarterfinal doesn’t have to be settled with a shootout.

The documents in the case

Karin is combing through my academic printouts, alphabetizing and punching holes in them and storing them in binders. This is very helpful: I’ve been reminded of several articles that it’d be good for me to read or reread.

Occasionally, she finds an amusing personal document mixed in with the other papers.

There are some birthday cards that I never managed to send off. (Reader, don’t be surprised if you receive one.)

There are voided checks, old letters, business cards (“So-and-So, Independent Beauty Consultant”), and legal documents from Ecuador.

There are response papers that I handwrote – handwrote! – for a course that I took in my first semester of grad school. The early papers got Cs and Bs; the last one got an A＋. The professor for that course went on to supervise my dissertation.

My writing was less technically proficient then, but more inventive.

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Congratulations to Ecuador’s Sub-20 men’s team, which just won its first South American championship and qualified for the Pan American Games and the U-20 World Cup.