Eurovision

Today was the annual Eurovision song contest where almost every European country is represented by one song and TV viewers then select the best song by phone voting. Latvia was represented by a capella group Cosmos which finished 16th with 30 points:
8 points (representing 3rd place) from Lithuania
8 points (3rd place) from Monaco
4 point (7th place) from Ukraine
4 point (7th place) from Ireland
3 point (8th place) from Estonia
2 point (9th place) from UK
1 point (10th place) from Russia
Cosmos did not make top 10 in the other 30 participiating countries.

As usual, many viewers voted for their neighbouring countries. Latvia almost always gets votes from Lithuania and Estonia, regardless of how good the song is. Russia and Ukraine also supported us this year, probably, for the same reasons. Ireland has a large number of Latvian guest workers. Monaco's vote is the only mystery here.

Not all votes are decided by friendship between the countries. To win the contest, a song has to do well across the Europe. This year's winners, Mr. Lordi from Finland, collected 289 points from 33 countries.

Most of 600 million viewers probably complained how bad the songs were but, nevertheless, they will tune back for next year's contest. And, according to Wikipedia, NBC has purchased rights to create a similar show where songs from US states will compete one against another.