The big game is coming up on June 3rd. In preparation, Bahrain played Saudi a couple of days ago and drew 1-1. More on the analysis in the next few days, but first to more important matters.

I'm sure quite a few of you are in the same problem as me, where it is very hard to find places to watch to Bahrain games if you are abroad. Sure, if you're in London, you can go to Edgeware road, but usually there are other games (e.g. Saudi Arabia or Kuwait) on at the same time that attract more people and hence are shown in the coffeeshops. Also, Eurosport occasionally shows the games (Eurosport one will show the Bahrain-Japan game), but this is not always the case and it is of no use if you don't have cable. Hence, we are sometimes reduced to watching games on the mediocre steaming of the Saudi sports channel.

I have just stumbled across this cool thing called, surprise surprise, coolstreaming. It's really good stuff, where it streams lots of (Chinese) channels that show lots of football games live. The difference between coolstreaming and normal streaming is that in normal streaming the more people are watching the stream the worse it becomes. It starts to buffer a lot, and it jams. Coolstreaming has the opposite features. THE MORE PEOPLE WATCH IT THE BETTER THE QUALITY AND THE LESS THE BUFFERING! This is why I'm telling you guys about it. Not out of the genrosity of my heart, but because the more of you that watch it the better quality I get. It apparently works in similar fashion to bit torrent, where people share the files (or buffering in this case) between them, something similar to peer-to-peer programs. I'm not sure of the technical stuff, I'll leave it to the computer whizzes.

Anyhow.... it's really good because it also shows tons of premiership, italian and spanish leage games. All for free!

There is a drawback. First, you need quite a high broadband connection. Secondly, all the channels are chinese, since the inventor of it is chinese, so no Al Jazeera etc and pretty weird commentary. Just shows you how creativity is flourishing over there but it is largely stagnant in our area of the world. When will we get an Arab who does this stuff?

Anyway, here's how to do it:

1. Download the program from this link.

2. Install it.

3. Make sure all firewalls on the program are turned off.

4. Pick a channel and enjoy!

The schedule for the channels and the games showed are found here.

The Bahrain Japan game is shown on ESPN on june 3rd at 17:30 BST (Bicester Shropshire Tranmere) timing.

One last thing. If you really want to watch the game, load up the channel and let it buffer for as long as possible beforehand (the longer the better). This way it'll never chop up or rarely buffer again.

Enjoy, and good luck to our national team!

¶ 3:57 AM