It is now Eurovision season—one of our annual highlights.  Last year’s post contains some background so please go here if you are not familiar with this European Song Contest.  It is nothing like American shows such as American Idol. 
http://parosparadise.blogspot.com/2008/05/expat-life-eurovision.html
This year’s broadcast comes from Moscow, which was last year’s winner.  The first round of preliminaries was Tuesday, the second round tonight, Thursday and the finals on Saturday.

We find it quite interesting that Turkey and Norway are running neck and neck with Greece a distant third.  Last years 100% telephone voting was extremely disgusting because of fans voting for their neighbours instead of the music.  So this year 50% of the votes come from a panel of judges.
We look forward a thrilling finale!
Update:  Alexander Rybak charmed the viewing universe and won by the greatest margin ever.  Norway was not our favourite; we liked both Iceland who came in second and Azerbaijan who placed third.  It was gratifying to see results based upon merit although regional voting was still noticeable.