Hum, curious here about the part of switching off only when in neutral. At least here in Brazil, the general recommendation by the transit authorities is to never have the car in neutral while driving. In certain situations you might even get yourself a traffic ticket or have your vehicle detained for that (driving in neutral). So as a general rule, when stopping at the traffic light, the usual drill is to hit the clutch all the way and put in 1st. It gets pretty tiresome at times having to keep the clutch all the way so often (especially when the traffic is too heavy) so sometimes people will put it to neutral so as to not have to keep hitting the clutch.. but that would be the an exception, not the rule.

Thanks for the recommendation. I've just signed up for it and also found particularly great the bookmark archiving facility. It's really annoying when you want to get back to a reference you bookmarked some time ago only to find the web site to be gone.

I'm from Brazil and the points you mention are one my major grips against soccer. It bothers me so much that the last Brazilian soccer game I've watched was during the 1994 world cup. I've tried watching a match during this world cup but really couldn't stand it. It's , as you say, getting closer and closer to WWE. The saddest thing is, I've often discussed this with other Brazilians and most of them actually ENJOY this subjectivity in the referee system as well as the acting. Being able to 'fool the referee' is considered as one of the characteristics of a good player!

Definetely. 4500 USDs is a HUGE amount of money in many countries. In Brazil an undergrand student would need to save 100% of his scholarsip during almost *3* years to gather that much money.