The result, according to Pedro Almeida, a motorcycle mechanic in Dili, made everyone proud.

East Timor, officially the worst football team in the entire world, had played a competitive game and did not lose.

Forget the credit crunch, Sarah Palin, and an Australian dollar lower than Tottenham Hotspurs' Premier League standing.

Actual evidence the world is upside down was revealed last weekend by activities in and around Australian sports stadiums.

Australians love a winner.

Australians also love a winner on an international stage, especially when he or she appears to be a good bloke – or sheila and has worked hard for success.

Javier and I had a plan.

It was the sort of plan usually concocted over maybe 25 beers during a long night.

Alas, we had no such excuse. Javier was drinking a hot chocolate and I'd downed just one beer.

On Sunday night, in Managua, I shared a rum and Coke with Delfin.

That's not his real name. For what will soon become clear, we have to grant him a pseudonym.

This edition of Open Season is being tapped out on a rapidly failing computer on a mountain top somewhere in Nicaragua. No, really.

And then - it happened.

Thirteen years to the day after OJ Simpson was acquitted of murder, he was found guilty in a Las Vegas courtroom of 12 charges, including conspiracy to commit a crime, robbery, assault and kidnapping with a deadly weapon.

My ears have taken a battering this week.

I assumed, obviously incorrectly, that things could not get much worse than actor Kevin Costner and his band (called Modern West) dedicating a song they recorded to the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.