thiago_simoes

I'm really happy for Matheus. He deserved a world medal for a long time, so I'm glad he finally got it. Also, Cielo hinted he might retire after this competition.

Shout out to Marta Pihan-Kulesza who returned to competition after retirement (she had a baby) at the Cottbus World Cup and won a bronze medal on floor, despite the insanely deep field of athletes. Placing ahead or Lara Mori and Jade Carey was truly awesome! Respect! Love her floor routine and her infectious smile!

Artistic gymnastics, please! Even though I usually do pretty bad, it's the most fun I ever have in prediction contests. Also, for the first time ever we will have a junior artistic gymnastics world championships next year, so if you have some space left for even more gymnastics, it would be great. Rhythmic gymnastics would be nice as well, but I see there are not many people who would be interested. There will be a junior worlds in rhythmic gymnastics, for those who care.

Praise the Lord!

Any word about artistic gymnastics? Women's artistic gymnastics is going through the best ever moment in the Americas, so I hope Canada sends the best of the best.

Rebeca Andrade scored 14.766 on vault at the Cottbus World Cup. This would have been enough for a silver medal at the World Championships two weeks ago. It's insane how Brazil lacks planning. She didn't try a second vault at the World Championships.

Women's futsal and roller hockey are the ones I remember, but it's not like they are thriving Olympic candidates, I know. But it makes me uncomfortable when federations allow a non-UN state to compete against other UN states. Imagine what it is like for Spanish players to play against... Spain (or Catalonia, as they call it).

I disagree. If these sports federations want to be part of the Olympics, they must keep consistency with the way the International Olympics Committee organizes its events. There are federations that allow Catalonia to compete against other nations, and this is absurd, in my opinion, as much as it is absurd to let Tahiti compete. These territories will not be able to qualify for the Olympics, so if you want your sport to be at the Olympics you either follow their rules or you drop out entirely. This really bothers me. I am not familiar with qualification systems in rugby or curling, but I can imagine two situations: 1) the best ranked team qualifies; or 2) there is a chosen team (let's take Scotland, for example) that would represent Great Britain, and if they fail to qualify even if England is ahead of them, no place for Great Britain then. The first situation is outrageous, since they would have 4 or 5 chances to qualify (Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and some federations even allow Gibraltar to compete). The second situation is fair to some degree, but at the same time it would seem like some teams are more "British" than other teams, or that one particular sports federation is allowed to go with whatever they want, what could be chaotic.

This is why I believe the IOC needs to discuss their position and demand that affiliated sports federation follow their rules if they want to be part of the Olympics. Either the IOC accepts Macau, Faroe Islands, Tahiti, Gibraltar, New Caledonia and other few territories, or they end support altogether for dependent territories such as Aruba, Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, American Samoa, Guam and a few others. It bothers me to see swimmers from the Faroe Islands competing at the World Championships, or Tahiti at FIFA events, but when it comes to the Olympics the international federations suddenly pretend these territories do not exist. Great Britain's situation also bothers me a little. I don't care what sort of political scheme they got themselves into: if you are going to send four, five football teams to compete at the FIFA World Cup -- an event nearly as important as the Olympics -- have the balls to compete independently at the Olympics as well. Then there's the case of Taiwan, Palestine and Kosovo. Palestine is an UN observer, so they should not be bothered. If we use the limited recognition bullshit, then we should reconsider allowing other states with limited recognition as well, including Israel, since the state is not recognized by other 31 UN members. The Kosovo situation is still a mess, and the IOC has jumped the gun by allowing them to compete, in my opinion. Taiwan is, well, a mess that was more or less sorted out, but now they want to open the can of worms again. It makes a lot more sense, historically, for them to ask for recognition than, say, Hong Kong, but it's still weird. I would leave things as they are, but if Taiwan is gone (for good) from the Olympics, I would not be sad and, in this case, I would still call for other territories to get the chop as well.

Brazil lost the first match against Guyana, so they don't look so out of place now. Never underestimate the capacity of Brazilian athletes to fail hard when it comes to winter sports. They are practically nonexistent here, so if the athletes do not move out and train in other countries, they could lose to even a group of Totallympians.

I love it that the website looks like something that was created in 2002.

You can have pastel anywhere in the state of São Paulo (I believe anywhere in Brazil, to be honest). There's also an option with veggies, and another option filled with heart of palm, so there are even more ways to make your belly bigger. In all honesty, if you like Japanese food, Liberdade is the one place to go. But maybe I'm pushing it too hard because I'm a Japanophile myself. I've taken 2 years and a half of Japanese lessons, so it's nice to go to the restaurants there and reply in Japanese when they greet me (much to their surprise, as I'm basically a black latino man).

It is! There's a very easy way to do it by putting a can of condensed milk in a pressure cooker and boil it for 35 minutes (link here with instructions in Portuguese). If you want to buy it pre-made, the best brand, in my opinion, is Uruguay's Lapataia. It's worth every cent. My favorite thing to do there is to visit a neighborhood called Liberdade. It has lots of stores that sell Japanese snacks, cookies, drinks and candies. You can buy packs of sushi, onigiri, lotus flower root snacks (they taste really good) and drinks like Calpis and Ramune. Also, there's a street fair where you can eat all sorts of food, like takoyaki, gyoza, tempura and nikuman. I recommend eating lamen in a restaurant, too. There's a very good one, but I can't remember the name (I'll look for it). You should also try Bolivian and Peruvian food if you haven't tried yet. I believe you've tried Mexican food as well, but if you haven't, there are some good restaurants there too. There are also nice Korean restaurants, though they are not my favorite, at all. You should also try Argentine empanadas. There's a fast food restaurant that serves some delicious ones, and I assume it will be easy to find its address online. If you want typical food from São Paulo, you have to go to the municipal market and ask for pastel (deep fried crust pie filled with either cheese, ground meat, chicken, ham or shrimps) and drink caldo de cana (sugarcane juice).

Looks like the paradise to me. I would love to live in a place like this. The closest place in Brazil would be the city of São Paulo. Not even Rio de Janeiro has such variety. I currently live in a "small" town with 500 thousand people. Since I was born and raised in Rio (6 million+ people), I am bored to death in a city with less than 1 million people. There's nothing to do here, and most of the families that settled here in the past came from Germany, so I'm even more bored by their style and especially their food. Yes, cinnamon rolls! How could I forget? I thought they were filled with dulce de leche, somehow, so I thought it was strange to use this filling in Italy.

Oh, that makes sense. In Spanish it is huevo, in French oeuf, in Romanian ou, so I thought Italian would have had a unique word too, like oufo, or something like this, so it makes sense to be uovo. In Portuguese we write ovo, and I have to say the word looks quite weird, but I can't explain why. Nice! There's a Cirque du Soleil show called Ovo. It was created by a Brazilian choreographer, and she meant to make it sound different for people who speak other languages, because the word looks curious, but Croatians and Italians might not have been so enticed, after all.

Is there any reason for that? In Brazil it's not uncommon to find Japanese drinks in a number of select stores. Not really surprising, since the largest Japanese population outside Japan lives in Brazil. I'm especially fond of Calpis. This thing is delicious!

I thought "ovo" was a word exclusive to the Portuguese language. You learn something new every day... And the pictures are really great. Congrats!

I want them all! Especially the watermelon, tamarind and guava variations. There are local brands in Brazil that market unusual flavors like pineapple and tangerine too. There's even a brand that created a soda made of leaves from a Brazilian plant called chapéu de couro, a rather bizarre choice for a soda variation. The funny thing is that this drink, called Mineirinho, is somewhat popular in the state of Rio de Janeiro. @heywoodu, have you drunk Mineirinho?

What are these? They look like Swiss rolls but they were baked in a very different way from what I'd expect them to be served (like we do in Brazil). By the way, we call Swiss rolls in Brazil "rocambole".

I tried to focus on medals. If we add "first time in the final" there would be a lot more to discuss.

If Slovakia's idea of selling beer is having naked men on TV, I feel like moving there.

What's the best selling beverage (preferentially non-alcoholic) unique to your country? In Brazil we all drink guaraná, and even Fanta decided to create their own soda version of the drink.

I love Metroid Prime, even though it's not really a first-person shooter per se. Same thing with Deus Ex. Half-Life was good, though. I have to admit.

It was certainly different from what I would expect. Too bad I absolutely hate first-person shooters and I would never consider playing this game.

We've had so many "firsts" in gymnastics this year! Let me review some of them: World Championships Acrobatic gymnastics - first gold medal for Aerobic gymnastics - first medal for Artistic gymnastics - first medal for , first women's medal for , first gold medal for Trampoline - first medal for , first gold medal for Youth Olympics First world medal in gymnastics for First YOG medals in gymnastics for , , and Iran, of course World Cup series Aerobic gymnastics - first medal for Artistic gymnastics - first ever medals for , , (and only the second time that and earned medals, also a respectable fourth place for ) Rhythmic gymnastics - first medal for (also a respectable fourth place for ) European Championships First ever gold medal for in rhythmic gymnastics after being world champions numerous times.