Perú versus Chilé – a World Cup qualifying match. ‘Nuff said. This past Tuesday night, these two international rivals met in Santiago, Chilé to duke it out for three points that go towards qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I heard people talking about the game, but not until Jon, my roommate, and I went about town did we see what everyone was talking about.

Almost every store we went by had a tv or radio tuned to the game. Banks and stores were closing earlier than normal, streets were empty, TGI Fridays had the shades drawn on their windows to keep the onlookers from gawking. Every restaurant that had a TV had every seat in the house taken. The remarkable thing was they did not care if you bought anything or not, the servers weren’t going to wait on you anyway. The one restaurant we did go in to had hardly a person in it – no TV – but a radio was playing in the kitchen, therefore the entire staff was listening through a small hole in the wall and could not care less if our order was taken or not.

I finally remarked that if we can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. We ended at Papa Johns and ordered some pizza to go, while the entire restaurant was glued to a huge flat screen tv mounted on the far wall. Upon looking at the clock to monitor the 20 minute guarantee on the pizzas, I was told that there was no guarantee tonight – too many pizza orders. So the timeliness guarantee only applies when they don’t have a lot of orders to guarantee. Good to know.

Perú lost 4 – 2.