Life after Helsinki 2007 Eurovision

It's been two long years and four days since Duncan Laurence was crowned the Eurovision champion in Tel Aviv. Meanwhile his winning song Arcade has gone viral and on Tuesday night he received a platinum record for a one billion streams globally. Tonight he was meant to perform the song again and hand over the Chrystal microphone to a new winner. But no. On Wednesday he was tested positive for Covid-19 and instead will be watching the show in quarantine in his hotel room.... Sometimes destiny just plays tricks on us. (Not to mention some other tricks played by another Destiny's delegation to anger the fandom...) This said I can only say it's going to be a great show and the strongest line up I can remember, and also the most open contest I can recall, and I have been watching since 1976. Usually at this point I have firm favorites to win, 2-3 of them, and I can't remember when last time one of them didn't win. Maybe Marie N? Quite often I have had a winning candidat...

Now this is totally random. Maybe first time ever I'm totally clueless and certainly the most uncertain ever. And I've been doing this since decades..... Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Israel,  Macedonia, Netherlands, Romania but we could also have a megasurprise qualifiers like  Lithuania,  Ireland, Malta, Switzerland and San Marino . Austria, Hungary, Netherlands and Macedonia are uncertain for me. And where to put the Serbia? If it was up to me I'd send to the final Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Malta,  Norway, Romania, San Marino, Switzerland

I did the my usual place the country in a slot prediction just minutes before the show and here's the outcome: 18/27 right, not bad. The top was fine, the bottom very fine but in the middle it was so and so, but then so was the voting, too....  Will place 1-5 Australia Estonia Italy Russia Sweden  Will place 6-10 Azerbaijan Hungary Montenegro Norway Romania Will place 11-15 Belgium Georgia Israel Latvia Slovenia Will place 16-20 Albania Armenia Greece   Lithuania   Serbia  Will place 21-27 Austria Cyprus France  Germany Poland Spain UK