Safe at Home and Last Post

Got home Wednesday night and believe I'm finally adjusted again.

This will likely be the last post of the blog, since my purpose was only to document my Beijing adventures for friends and family.

Thanks for reading!

Summer Palace

Graham and I spent part of our last day in Beijing at the Summer Palace. Wow! It's a very large complex along one shore of a lake on the fringes of the city.

We walked the grounds marveling at the architecture of the pavillions and buildings, enjoying the cool lake breezes (it was a hot, hazy and humid day...surprise!) and even had lunch at a restaurant in the Hall for Listening to Orioles, which is supposedly very famous and has entertained over 100 heads of state from various countries. It was an interesting menu. Each page of the menu listed a multi-course variety of options that was priced for 2 people. You didn't order the exact food you wanted...you ordered the page. The pages got more expensive as you leafed through the menu, as the food listed on them got more complex or expensive. Luckily, Graham and I found a page around the middle of the restaurant that listed a variety of foods we thought we'd like. It was a huge meal...they just kept bringing stuff until the whole table was full of plates of food. We gorged ourselves and there was still plenty of food left.

After that, we came back to the hotel to pack and get ready to leave tomorrow (Wednesday). All of us left had dinner together then went to the hotel bar to have a beer and play a couple games of pool.

Looking forward to catching our flight home tomorrow! It's storming outside so hopefully that weather will have moved out of the area and there'll be no delays like the 14-hour delay the group going out Monday experienced.

Closing Ceremonies

The Closing ceremonies were great. I was in row 15 on what would be the equivalent of the 45 yard line in a football stadium. Great seats!

Closing is a bit more relaxed than opening. There was still a very energetic sound- and light-filled spectacular featuring human acrobats, a human tower, lots of neat contraptions and all the athletes in the center of the stadium for a celebration prior to the extinguishing of the flame inside the Birds Nest stadium.

I'm moved over to the 3-star hotel which is a vast improvement over the utilitarian media village. It's almost 4am Sunday night here in Beijing as I'm typing this entry, and I'll be getting off work soon and will sleep the first night in a truly comfy bed.

We've begun the process of dismantling the office and will be completing that over the next couple of days prior to leaving Wednesday.

I'll be losing our coporate network connection as well as the DSL line that was specially installed in my apartment at the media village, so I'm not sure how frequently I'll post between now and returning home.

An Angel Got Me Back Into Closing Ceremonies

Theresa Klisz, one of Gannett News Service's editors, just set me up with a ticket to the Closing Ceremonies. This is the same angel who switched return flight dates home with a co-worker whose father-in-law was gravely ill so he could get back sooner. Obviously, you can't compare those two gestures but what a wonderful person she is.

Anyway, more later about the ceremonies. Not much time between now and when they start so I have to get moving.

I can't believe she did that! and other musings

Vicky gave away my $3000 RMB ($400+ US) closing ceremony ticket. To a photographer, of all people. Like anyone's interested in seeing pictures of the closing ceremony. I can't belive she did that!

But she also gave me news that she's moving the 3 of us IT folk who are remaining in the media village over to the 3-star hotel attached to the Main Press Center for the last couple of nights. I think we're basically taking the rooms of folks who are leaving, but still...there's absolution for the Great Closing Ceremony Caper there as far as I'm concerned.

There's been talk of the medal count and how China has somewhat come out of nowhere in such a short amount of time. Aside from the controversy about the age of the women's gymnasts, though, their prowess has honestly just come down to hard work and determination. Through perserverance and a state-run athletic academy system (where the athletes live and may only be able to leave to visit their families one or two times a year), the Chinese have made improvements athletically in only a few years that most other nations take decades to achieve. Imagine if they continue to improve in swimming and track, where the US tends to dominate. Those are sports that have high numbers of medals to win and in which the US is highly competitive. If the Chinese start to dominate in them, the US tradition of winning the bulk of Olympic medals will probably quickly come to an end. It'll be interesting to watch in the next Olympics.

Tomorrow (Sunday) is the last day of competition. We'll be here until 4am to help support the reporters, photographers and editors with their final push.

I WON! I WON!

Not really, but the fine folks at the Olympics are giving more gifts out today (and yeah, it's even better than the Big Mac meal from those slackers at McDonald's).

We got bronze "medals" today (they're actually made of some type of medal because they're heavy) as a thank-you from the BOCOG folks for helping make the Olympics a success.

And then when I got back to my room, I had a nice note with a Beijing tourism DVD laying on my bed.

Keep the swag coming please!

Day Off

I have today (Friday) off. Don't worry...I'll pay for it with my hours on Saturday and Sunday.

Jim Bole and I got up and took the bus out to the Velodrome (indoor cycling) and BMX (first time as an Olympics sport). We didn't have tickets and couldn't go into the Velodrome, but with the BMX course being an outside venue, things were a little more chaotic and we walked right in. Right after we arrived, the women's finals started. Score! Oh, and there were cheerleaders. Yes, cheerleaders. At BMX. With feather dusters for pom-pons. Don't get me started on that.

After that, we walked around the corner to the Trek store that Jim had been to the other day with Sal Rubial, one of our reporters who specializes in cycling events. I picked up some t-shirts and Jim bought some stuff as well. When we went back to the Velodrome to get back on the bus, they told us we couldn't go through security to the bus area because we didn't have the right credentials for that venue (busted!). They initially told us we had to wait outside in the parking lot (where there was no way the bus was going to stop and pick us up), but we convinced them that actually, it made sense for them to let us through security since we had been "outside the wire" and were going back to the press center. That way, they'd know we weren't carrying anything bad into the Olympic Green. So we had to wait inside security right beside them, but we did get to get an up close and personal view of how they do vehicle inspections coming into the venues. While we were there, we took a picture of a neat sculpture and "hillside art" thing that was there.

When we got back to the office, we were planning to go to the cafe in the Hotel Intercontinental to have a nice lunch. As soon as we were ready to walk out the door, in walked a bunch of McDonald's employees with free Big Mac meals for everyone. So we settled for fast food instead.

Tonight I'm headed to a track and field event inside the Birds Nest stadium. It will be my first time inside it.

Rainy Days Equal Crowded Offices

It's raining a lot today, which means some outdoor events have been delayed or rescheduled. That means more staff than usual are in the office. So far, nothing too earth-shattering though...the staff have hit their groove pretty well at this point.

I ended up getting home from the office at 4am this morning, so I was very happy I could sleep in a bit; I just put the "do not disturb" hanger on my bedroom door and housekeeping skipped me when they came into our apartment this morning.

Brian T told me that my "countdown to returning home" widget was a day ahead of where it should've been so I updated it so it reflects my actual return date correctly (which added a day to the counter...gee, thanks).

I'm thinking I'll probably make September 2nd my first day back in the office. Some of the HQ based folks told me they were told to take that entire week off, but I never got such direction. Plus I have a ton of stuff to address when I get back so it probably makes sense to just take a couple of decompression days, enjoy the holiday weekend and head back to the office.

There's an all-staff Company Update meeting on August 27th while we're in the air returning home. The stock's waaaay down, so I think we're expecting to get on the ground to find that we've got some new belt-tightening rules in place. Hopefully that's all it will be for now....the parent company just cut 1,000 positions in the newspaper division over the past few weeks. There's always that little bit of extra apprehension, though, when you're halfway around the world and feeling out of the loop while these things are happening.

Slow Day

Not a lot to report today.

I'm pulling the 7pm to 2am shift at the office (it's about 1:00am Beijing time as of this writing). So far, a quiet shift, though I heard the guys last night (I got off at midnight) got the dreaded "I need some help with a problem" just minutes before they were going to head out the door at 2am. Hopefully the same thing won't happen to me tonight. My work schedule is kind of all over the place the next several days:

• Thurs: 1pm to 8pm
• Fri: off work for a 3rd day and as a bonus, I scored evening track & field tickets
• Sat: 6pm to 11pm
• Sunday: 6pm to 4am (yep, you read that right)

We're slowly coming to the wire. 2 people leave Friday, 3 Saturday, 5 on Sunday, 33 on Monday, 10 on Tuesday and the remaining 7 of us on Wednesday. There are signs up that after 4am Monday morning, there are only 8 of us allowed into the office--a couple of editors and the support staff, who will begin packing the place up.

Photo Wall

It's a tradition for us to post pages of the paper along with some of the photographers' work on the walls lining the hall outside our office. Early in the games, someone came by and told us we had to take them down with the explanation that we were "defacing" the walls (of all the nerve!). Anyway, we gradually started doing it again and so have others. Here's part of the wall outside our office as of today. Lots of people walk by and stop to see it, and we refresh it nightly.

New Photos

I updated my Flickr site to include a few of the photos from the Temple of Heaven and added a Miscellaneous folder.

But it's not my birthday!

When I was heading out the lobby of the media village building this morning, one of the front desk staff asked me to wait and produced a gift from under the desk. It was a neat wood and fabric fan depicting Chinese opera characters. Kind of neat...think I'll send it to my mom (hi mom!). Then when I got to the Main Press Center, one of the bathroom attendants (one of the two who always chats me up) gave me a good-luck braid that he says he asked his grandmother to make for me. How cool is that? I'm trying to score the little guy some tickets that nobody in our group wants, but so far the only ones I've been able to offer him were for a venue that he said would take him 2 hours to get to on the bus so it just wasn't do-able. I'll keep trying...especially after the nice gift...since otherwise, I don't think he'll get to see anything.

I was down in the central business district prior to starting my shift this morning, and from my taxi, spied one of the four Catholic churches in Beijing. I was able to dig out my camera quickly since we were at a stoplight, but wasn't able to get out and check it out because I needed to get to work. (Notice the ever-present surveillance camera on the right side of the photo...I chose not to crop it out because the things are everywhere.) I've heard that the Chinese government definitely keeps a grip on religion, through enforcing a "registration" process to selectively dictating what can and cannot be practiced or studied. Here's a neat article I found online about the State versus Catholicism, for those interested.

Found another western-style bar/pub/restaurant called Frank's Place last night for dinner.

Temple of Heaven

Had only my 2nd day off since we arrived on July 24th and Jim Cole and I decided to head to the Temple of Heaven. We took the subway down there since there was a stop right beside it on the same line that goes by the media housing.

The subway ride down and back was entertaining. Trains were packed, but we were clearly the "zoo animals", especially Jim, who stands 6'5". There was definitely some staring going on and Jim even spotted a girl sneaking a cameraphone picture of him/us. Both on the way down and the way back, there was a single little boy (different boys) with their mothers right beside us on the crowded train and they kept staring up at us with this "whoa!" look on their faces. I gave the one on the return trip an Olympic pin from our company and he proudly put it on with mom's help. Funny stuff!

The Temple of Heaven was cool. It dates back to the 15th century and was full of symbolism and sacred spaces, as you'd expect from something like this. Click the Wikipedia link at the beginning of this post for detail if you're interested. There's a cool map that identifies some of the more "interesting" spaces in the compound here. You know, places like Kitchen for Sacrifice, Slaughter Pavillion, etc. There was an oven where they said they sacrificed "young shaved calfs" and lots of cast iron cauldrons in which they built fires, which must've figured large in the ceremonies.

After that, we stopped by the Wangfujing Shopping area, mostly to check out their official Beijing 2008 flagship souvenir store. It was a mad-house as expected.

We headed back to the housing so Jim could grab his 'puter and head into work and I could pick up my laundry (yep, broke down and had it done for me this time) then relax for a bit and head over to the Olympic Green for a gymnastics event I scored tickets to.

Phelps Spoiler and The Race for Tickets

The man is officially a god. Phelps just took his 8th gold as part of the men's 4x100m medley relay. I didn't see it on the NBC feed we have from Virginia, so I assume NBC is going to tape-delay it for prime time back home. (Announcement)

I'd have killed to have been in the water cube building to see it. Haven't gotten tickets to any swimming events. When it became apparent that I wasn't going to get any through the company's available tickets, I tried to see if there were any for purchase outside of scalpers, since we're all seeing lots of empty seats when we go see stuff. I'd heard all the tickets were purchased, but there must be a lot of corporate-purchased ones that aren't getting used with all those empty seats. It's honestly kind of discouraging to be right here in the middle of the action, have some occasional opportunities when you're not working, know these amazing events are going on all around you and that there are empty seats at them and still not be able to get in to see them.

As I am writing this post, I did just score another ticket to gymnastics for Monday night. It's the finals for men's rings and vault and women's uneven bars. Only one American in all of it (Nastia Liukin on uneven bars), but amazing athletes are amazing athletes so I'm sure it will be a great competition!

Olympic Forest Park

Graham and I took a walk this afternoon and decided to head to the north end of the Olympic Green where it runs into Olympic Forest Park. It's the largest park in Beijing and was created for the Olympics (read: people were displaced to create it). It's very large. We walked about 1/3 of the way in, around a lake and islands and up a hill, from where we discovered a pretty swell view of the Olympic Green. On the way there, a family asked us to pose for a photo with them. Not quite sure why -- maybe they thought we were athletes they could go back and look up online. Imagine their disappointment! We had a good chuckle about it, though, and wondered if we ought to see if we could play that angle to our advantage for the remainder of the trip.

Shaggy No More

Got a haircut after work yesterday at the barber/salon in the Main Press Center. When I went down there, there was a video crew filming in there--I think it was the same one from Spain that was interviewing a reporter in our office earlier in the afternoon--so I walked around for a while and came back. No way did I want to have a foreign crew videotaping my haircut. Naturally, my luck ran out when I sat down in the chair and one of the employees of the salon pulled out a point and shoot camera and took about a half-dozen pics of me and the 2 other guys in there getting haircuts. D'oh! Only cost me $50 RMB, which is about $7 US.

After that I headed back to the media village to take a shower and hang out. Took a pass on a dinner invite that I would've really enjoyed going along on because I was really enjoying just relaxing for once. It was a good mid-trip recharge to just veg out for the evening.

Today is nice again. Reasonably comfortable temperature/humidity, blue sky for the 2nd day in a row and the smog is still only very light due to the rains from the other day.

We're going to work a different mix of hours this week to allow each of us to have a day off (woo hoo...only my second since I got here on July 24th). Mine is Monday. One of my colleagues and I were talking last night about trying to get to the Temple of Heaven together early in the morning, then we'll probably split up, since wants to see the Forbidden City (which I've already been to) and there are other things I want to see.

Ways to Make the Olympics More Kick-Ass

One of my co-workers gave me this link earlier today and I just HAD to post it.

Dan's Golden Ticket

I mentioned Dan Powers before. He's the photographer from the Appleton, WI Post-Crecent who is here as part of the Gannett contingent. Dan is a little wide-eyed like me since this is his first Olympics. He and I were talking earlier today about his opportunity yesterday to capture Michael Phelp's record-breaking 5th gold medal (he won a 6th one today). Dan's comment to me, which he makes in his own blog on the Post-Crescent's website, was that his experience photographing swimming to date has been high school sports. Wow...to go from that to capturing Phelps making Olympic history! What an opportunity. You can read Dan's own words here.

Vineyard Cafe

Last night, Jim, Eddie and I went to the Vineyard Cafe. It's an ex-pat place in a hutong sandwiched between the Lama Temple and the Confucius Temple. (Enough links in that sentence for you?) Anyway, it was a cool place, and their menu has about everything a homesick Westerner could possibly want....all kinds of homestyle food, pizzas, pastas, wines, "imported beers", etc. I had an apple, pear and walnut salad, chicken and bacon pizza and a capirinah to drink. Jim had pork chops with mashed potatoes and peas and a good import beer and Eddie had a bacon cheeseburger and fries. Best of all, it was all pretty damn good.

After eating, we went for a walk down a cool street that ran alongside the Confucius Temple. There were a series of gate-type structures, all of which were uplit to really stand out at night. We passed plenty of friendly locals, including a group of girls who we couldn't figure out if they were giggling because of our poorly-pronounced Ni Hao's (hello) or because we just looked so out of place to them.

Electronics Shopping - China Style

Had a user with a non-standard laptop blow out his a/c adapter yesterday, plus we ran out of the photo-quality ink we use to print out the pages of the paper that we hang on the wall outside our office, so our telecom guy Eddie, one of our Hong Kong office reps, Winnie, and I headed out to an electronics store to see if we could find stuff today. Ummmm....this was no simple electronics store. Four floors of a very large building full of booths selling virtually everything electronic under the sun...and Winnie said there were 4 or 5 similar places in that part of the city. Needless to say we found exactly what we were looking for with very little difficulty and walked around the place a bit. You could go crazy in there!

We had lunch in a food court at the top of the building. Manchu Wok or Panda Express it wasn't. Tasty stuff. Interesting thing was that after we ordered the food, we had to pay for it before they brought it to the table--like they thought we might dine and dash or something!

It's raining here. Hard. Delaying or postponing some outdoor events apparently, but it has cooled it off a bit and it ought to wash some of the smog out of the air.

More Interesting Stuff

Courtesy of my colleague Jim Bole, check out his posting and links to an article, picture set and videos from a bike commute a group of folks (including Jim) staged to capture some of the local color of Beijing.

Also, one of our photographer colleagues, Dan Powers from the Appleton, Wisconsin Post-Crecent has some really good pictures and observations on his blog.

Now That Really Bugs Me!

Started seeing some fruit flies or gnats in our bathroom a few days ago and by yesterday, they'd multiplied to nuisance level. Figure they must be coming in or breeding in the drain or exhaust vent. Nothing harmful, but not something you want to deal with, either. When I saw the building manager in the elevator last night, I asked him if he could stop by to look at it and within 10 minutes he was there. He agreed there was a problem and said he'd have someone take a look at it today while we were at work. Instead, he and another guy majically showed up with bug spray and fresh bath linens only moments after they'd left. So we closed off the bathroom door so we wouldn't be sniffing Raid while we slept last night and this morning, things were much better. I picked up my own can of spray when I went to the store this morning, though. If I see any more, I'm zapping them myself!

National Pride is Rampant

Went to the women's gymnastics finals this morning and it was an amazing show of national pride. The Chinese gymnasts are very strong and the home-town crowd came out en masse to see them. Every time a Chinese gymnast stepped up to compete, the crowd roared. And between rotations, they changed "China...China...China" while waving flags of all sizes. It was easy to get caught up in it and I almost found myself rooting for the home team as well. They went into the final rotation with China up only one point over the US girls, and the final rotation was China versus US on the floor routine int he center of the stadium. Hmmmm...wonder if the rotation was scheduled that way???

You can almost sense the palpable national pride continuing to expand as the games go on. The Chinese athletes are performing very well and the citizens are rallying behind them. I'm sure it's a combination of the favorable medal count and the fact that folks are seeing the end of the tunnel in terms of the non-permanent disruptions to their lives that the Olympics have caused. But truly, they're proud that the Games are going off so smoothly (deservedly so) and are ecstatic that their athletes are performing so well. Financially, purchasing Olympic tickets is outside the means of much of the citizenry and so to them, the Games are more of a burden than something they can enjoy themselves. Yesterday, I offered up a pair of table tennis (ping pong, which is big in China) tickets that none of us was going to use to a worker in the main press center and when he saw they were 300 yuan each (one-fifth the most currently-available average Chinese monthly wage), I had to work hard to convince him that it was OK to take them.

I'm noticing more and more the subtle differences in culture and it's all so interesting.

It's a 3-Shower Day

Got up early this morning and instinctively jumped right into the shower, planning to run out to the store near the media village to get some stuff, then head over to the indoor stadium since I had a ticket to the women's gymnastics finals before my 2pm-11pm work shift.

As soon as I headed out the door, I was sweating. By the time I shopped in a store that felt like it had no a/c at all, then lugged all the stuff back, I was drenched. Shower #2 before heading over toward the venue and the office. Couldn't possibly go through the entire day smelling like I did.

Got over to the indoor stadium and then ran up the olympic green to check for shot glasses at the store (they still didn't have them and I suspect that half-way through the games, they're not re-ordering that stuff). By the time I made it back to the office, even taking a shortcut that we found, I was sweating like crazy again. Shower #3 will be when I get back to my room around midnight, then off to beddie-bye because I have an 8:00 shift tomorrow (meaning I'll need to get up at 6 to allow time to shower, scarf down some breakfast and take the slow bus ride over to the office).

Have I mentioned that the weather really sucks over here? It's so hot and humid, my Listerine breath strips just melt into a single block in the package.

Yep, We're Safe

Arrived at the Main Press Center this morning to find a small tank (as in military) parked out front. I think that gives me a sense of security...sort of. I've decided that I'm probably better off not knowing why exactly it was there.

The rain of the last couple of days has made things more pleasant, at least temporarily. The temperatures & humidity were a little lower and I actually saw a hint of blue in the sky when I looked up as I exited our apartment building this morning.

Souvenir Shopping

Finally made it to the Souvenir Shop on the Olympic Green yesterday (Sunday). The place was a freaking zoo. In a flash of poor planning, they put all the stacking cubbies of packaged-for-purchase clothing right under the displays of the unwrapped samples so you and the multitude of helpful salespeople had to fight through the crowds of people, then squat down and practically reach between peoples' legs to try to find the right sizes in the bins. It was crazy and a bit claustrophobic! Picked up a few things, but didn't have a lot of time so I'll need to re-visit that one or a different one to finish up.

Rainy Days and Cute Little Eastern Block Girls

Don't let the title fool you...I'm just feeling froggy today.

The gymnastics event last night was fun. I was in the nosebleed section as you can see from the photo, but the gymnasts were good...as is typical from the eastern bloc countries. Ended up sitting next to the husband of one of our reporters who lives in the Chicago suburbs and there was an ex-pat Jewish New York retiree sitting in front of us who kept chatting us up when he heard us speaking English. We had a very boisterous group of Ukranian or Russian fans behind us who liked to drink beer, cheer and sing.

Sounds like I’m going to be working mostly an 8am-5pm shift. Hopefully I can get myself into a better routine now that things are running pretty smoothly (oops, did I just voice that out loud?). It might be easier to work a normal amount of hours instead of spending so many in the office and even maybe eat dinner before 10pm!

Walking around now that the games have started is like being at the United Nations. Everywhere you go, you hear a big variety of different languages being spoken and experience the (ahem) variations on cultural idiosyncrasies that vary, literally, person by person. It's different than when you're traveling to a single country and interacting with their citizens collectively. Here those differences are apparent with almost each different person you interact with...the Chinese being largely an exception to that because they're uniformly rolling out the welcome mat to all the rest of us.

But if you wonder if I might be just a teenie-weenie bit looking forward to returning home, note that I replaced the countdown clock in the top right corner of the blog.

Opening Ceremonies Highlights

If you missed seeing the Opening Ceremonies, here are some highlights on NBC.com.

The drum (fou) section I was gushing about begins around minute 45 or so. There were 2,008 drummers working in complete synchronization. I thought it was cool as hell.

Just when you thought it wasn't possible to hate doing laundry any more...

....comes the self-service laundromat in the basement of each of the Media Village apartment buildings. They have this european-style all-in-one washer/dryer doodad, which I've seen and even used before. But these things can make you want to go totally postal. First, they're tiny...you can fit only about a third of a normal load of laundry in them. Second, it's a mystifying "automatic" process that somehow decides what to do and for how long based on your fabrics, the weight of what you've put in the tub, etc. Third, they take HOURS to run! You can put a couple of shirts and a pair of shorts in one, set it to "quick wash" (no dry) and it'll take about an hour and a half. Add drying to it and add on another hour to hour and a half. You read that right---3 hours to do a tiny load of laundry!!!!! And even then, the clothes come out clean but if you put "too much" in there, they'll come out so wrinkled that they look like someone tied them up in knots. And forget about air-drying in this humidity...it'd take days for something like a heavier shirt or pair of jeans to dry. Some folks have taken to putting in laundry before they go to bed and going back after it when they get up in the morning...so much so that the onsite staff (yep, there's an attendant or three in the room 24/7 just like everywhere else) added some bins for folks to dump finished laundry into to make the machines available for their own use. It's not pretty. I'm going to look into drop-off laundry options, even if I have to pay for it out of my own pocket. Wish me luck!

After being on the go from 8am to 11:30pm yesterday, I had no choice but to do some when I got back to my housing. I'd been trying to carve out time the past several days and my hand was forced when I started running out of stuff. So I finally went to bed at 2:30 and got back up at 6. I'm working 8-5 then going to a gymnastics event, so my butt's going to be dragging by the end of the day.

Michael Phelps is a Stud

Spoiler Alert:

From: Breaking News [mailto:Breaking.News@olympiad.staff]
Sent: Saturday, August 09, 2008 9:12 PM
Subject: BREAKING NEWS: Phelps breaks WR for 400 IM gold, Lochte takes bronze

Michael Phelps (Baltimore, Md.) set the world record in the men's 400 IM on the way to his first swimming gold medal of the 2008 Olympic Games Sunday morning. He covered the course at the National Aquatics Center in a time of 4:03.84, improving his world mark by 1.41 seconds. Laszlo Cseh of Hungary took the silver medal at 4:06.16, while the USA's Ryan Lochte (Daytona Beach, Fla.) won the bronze with a 4:08.09.

My First Event Ticket

OK, so it's totally dorky to post this, but I just got offered my first event ticket for Sunday night right as I'm getting off work (the National Indoor Stadium is only a block from where I'm working, though). Some form of women's qualification event and if I read the schedule right, it's Australia, Germany, Russia and the Ukraine. Mmmmm...loves me some nice solid eastern block "female" gymnasts!

Silk Market

I was scheduled to work a 2pm to 11pm shift today (Saturday) so I went along with a few other folks to the Silk Market. Basically, it's a big building full of vendor stalls (think flea market). Tacky: definitely. Fun: depends on whether you consider haggling over a bunch of souvenir items and designer knock-offs a sport. This place is intense...the vendors are incredibly aggressive. There's no such thing as "just browsing"...they come out and try to pull you into their areas, and all you hear is a cachophony of "hey mister" all around you. If you decide to take the bait and look at something, the first thing they'll tell you is how nice the product is and how they'll give you a "special discount". Then out comes the calculator. This is where the fun starts. They'll type in a number...an absurdly high number. The rule of thumb is to offer them a small fraction of that by typing in your own number, then the haggling begins. Best bets...don't show too much attraction to what you're looking at, begin negotiating at a really low number, keep a smile on your face and don't take the negotiations personally and most importantly...be willing to walk away (which will usually result in them chasing you with a final offer that's frequently the same as or close to what you told them you were willing to pay in the first place. You know they won't sell at a loss, and even though some of the stuff is probably made about as well as the stuff it's knocking off (we all know that just 'cause it's expensive doesn't mean it's high quality), so you can typically get a pretty good bargain and if you can't, you can walk around the corner to another vendor selling similar stuff and start the negotiation at the break-point you arrived at with the previous vendor. See...it's sport!

I bought a knock-off Tag Heuer Tiger Woods watch that would go for $1500 US if genuine for $200 RMB ($30 US). The negotiation began at $850 RMB ($125 US). Yeah, it might end up turning my wrist green, but I'm not really out anything if it does.

It was definitely a one-time-only thing to see, but I'm glad I went. It was a good "cultural" experience if nothing else.

Opening Ceremonies Part 2

So I didn't get to this last night right after the Opening Ceremonies and before the tape-delayed NBC broadcast, so hopefully you've already seen them on TV. Wow! The Chinese really set the bar high for the next venues (Vancouver in Winter 2010 and London in Summer 2012).

We started by watching the "artistic" portion of the Opening Ceremonies on a live feed provided to the media. The sheer number of people involved in the spectacle and the precision and artistry involved were a real sight. Fireworks featured very prominently and they were going off all over the city. The pre-ceremony featured a swooping helicopter shot of a coordinated set of fireworks in the shape of feet "walking" across the city toward the Birds Nest stadium, and each major piece of the process was punctuated by them, ending in another incredible fireworks show over the Olympic Green and other places in the city (we could only see the ones near us due to the smoggy conditions, of course). My favorite part was the coordinated drum routine near the beginning, but it was all quite awesome. By the time those of you in the States are reading this, they'll have aired or possibly even been posted on the NBC's website.

Once the Parade of Athletes began, we used those special credentials we got to go walk around on the Olympic Green. Security was incredibly apparent(and I'm sure there was plenty that we couldn't see), but once in, we were able to walk around most places, including right alongside the Birds Nest stadium while the events were going on inside. We saw some of the parade of athletes (but not the US folks) and took some neat pictures which can be found here. One of my colleagues also posted a YouTube clip of us watching the events from the hotel.

After walking around a bit, we headed to a co-worker's 12th-floor hotel room that faced the stadium and hung out there so we'd have a great view of the flame lighting and fireworks. It was really great to see the event unfold right there in front of us!

Opening Ceremonies

So the folks who have tix to the Opening Ceremonies have left the building to head to the Birds' Nest stadium (lucky dogs). The rest of us found out this afternoon that we're able to walk around the outside areas of the Olympic Green, which have been "locked down", as long as we have a special credential sticker, so several of us ran out to get the stickers put on our credentials while they were doing them. It was at a table set up outside and it was like walking into a sauna when you went out the door. Ugh!

I'm starting to get that little bit of scratchiness and feeling of "muck" in the back of my sinuses. Hope it doesn't get any worse.

Saw a Beijing health official interviewed on one of the news channels yesterday (I can't find the video, though) who claimed that the terrible smog is just water vapor in the air. I'm sorry, but I've been in 90+ degree temperatures with a similar humidity and been able to see a few hundred yards in front of me just fine. This ain't water vapor. Check out the multi-day time lapse in this CNN video.

While I was on CNN, I found this other neat video that showed the Media Center, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City...all places I've been.

Security Musings

With the games starting finally, security definitely is a big issue and the Chinese are very committed to nothing making them lose "face".

Security is really tight.

Normally, we all go through "mag and bag" security going in and out of all the buildings and housing. They're pretty aggressive about searching bags and if they find any food or beverage products, they'll typically make you take a bite/sip in front of them to prove it's legit. Pressurized canisters like the spray sunblock I brought are no-no's. They even denied a co-worker the ability to bring a bottle of wine back to his hotel room adjacent to the Main Press Center (though they were happy to let him bring it into the Media Housing village (good for me because I got some free wine, but obviously we don't "rate" as high security-wise.

They're locking down the Olympic Green and the surrounding area for the Opening Ceremonies (sounds like they're giving 300 journalists special credentials that'll allow them to move around more, so my chances of walking around outside tonight might be slim). Potential protesters/dissidents have been shipped out of town or denied/had their Visas revoked. Cameras are everywhere, the military and police are noticeably present and they're even completely shutting down the airport during the Opening Ceremonies.

Found this cool article on Slate.com related to security.

Games Start Today

So it's 8/8/08 over here in Beijing and everyone's gearing up for the start of the games and tonight's Opening Ceremony at 8:08 pm (I don't have tickets, but I may hang out on the Olympic Green tonight assuming that's allowed and it isn't raining (there's a chance, which would stink since the birds nest stadium does not have a covered roof). It's another hot, humid and smoggy day to boot.

In actuality, there have been a number of athletic events already, but the high-profile stuff doesn't start until this weekend.

As a lucky number, the 8's are figuring very prominently. Besides the date and time of the Opening Ceremonies, there are 8,000 couples getting married in a mass ceremony today and I heard somewhere that a lot of expectant mothers are having c-sections so their babies' birthdays will be 8/8/08.

There was word yesterday about a bomb-on-a-bus threat. Turns out there were two false alarms: a broken-down bus whose engine was smoking and a turned-out-to-be-nothing "suspicious package" near the water cube building. Of course, real or not the Chinese will probably over-react to it from a security standpoint. There was already an indication that reporters & photographers covering the Opening Ceremonies have to get an extra credential just for that.

Co-Worker Blogs

If you're not "blogged out" from reading mine, I added links to Jim Bole's and Graham Anderson's blogs to the right side of my page (under the links section). They're co-workers of mine who are also over here.

Company Party

We had a company cocktail party at the JW Marriott last night. It was fun. There were guests from our company, the International Olympic Committee, Beijing Olympic Committee, US Olympic Committee, State Department and some companies we do business with. Basically a schmooze-fest. We ended up closing the place down, so I'm operating on a little less sleep than I'd like today and I'm scheduled with a small group of folks to go out to dinner with the Editor of the paper tonight. When I arrived to open up the office this morning, there were 4 people waiting at the door for me. Hopefully it won't be another late night and I can catch some zzzzz's.

Still hot, humid and smoggy!

Opening Ceremony Rehearsal

I missed it, but one of my colleagues captured this brief snippet of a rehearsal of some of the Opening Ceremonies fireworks while he was down by the Bird's Nest stadium.

Water Cube at night

Rather than taking the time to do my own video, I thought I'd post this good YouTube one of the water cube (swimming venue) at night. Cool stuff!

Great General-Interest Article

Check out this article (and this one) for folksy twists on the games and what they mean to China. I helped get this reporter (Mike LoPresti)up and running yesterday and one of my colleagues said he writes this style all the time. I enjoyed reading the articles and look forward to reading more of his stuff.

Staff Arrival Day

The last big wave of staff arrived today and most of them came directly into the office jet-lagged, grumpy, full of questions and mysteriously eager to get to work despite all that. Knowing they were arriving late afternoon, we planned to have one IT person in the office in the morning, then do an all-hands-on-deck approach from 2pm until 10 or 11pm. There were issues in the morning, however, so we all came in early to take care of it (and we expect we'll be staying late still...I'm posting this at 8:45pm and still looking at at least 30 people working around me). Here are a few photos...all the cellphones and Blackberries that we had to get set up, distributed and teach folks how to use, and the office filled with people, as opposed to the "before" quiet emptiness that we had before.

US Olympic Committee Daily Newsletters

The USOC sends us all a daily newsletter via email and there are sometimes some interesting things in it. I found where they post them online and am going to add it to my olympic-related link list on the right side of my blog.

China's Mixed Agendas and Messages

Interesting article about the mixed agendas and messages China is sending.

We're getting an influx of about 40 people today at the office. I believe they're en route from the airport as I'm posting this, so more later.

Forbidden City

I had Sunday off (well, sort of), so I ventured out to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. I took a taxi down, but rode the subway back. Both were very easy. The taxi ride was 15-20 minutes and only about 40 yuan ($6 US) and the subway was free for me with my Olympic Credentials (all public transportation is).

Forbidden City. Wow! It's huge and incredibly impressive (wikipedia). As you go deeper into it, you pass through a series of gates that get increasingly elaborate and impressive until you get to the deepest area where the Chinese emperors, their wives and concubines lived.

After that, I headed over to Tiananmen Square. I couldn't see Chairman Mao's preserved body (the mausoleum is only open limited hours), but I walked the square and took a few pictures. There were tons of people, but by this time the heat, humidity and not having eaten all day were taking their toll so I hopped the subway back toward the media housing apartment complex.


More pictures can be found on my Flickr link in the right-hand toolbar.

Weather Update

The weather is turning hot and humid again and the smog is definitely coming back. Check out this blog post that a co-worker of mine made about it. She took the same picture out the window of her hotel on August 2 and August 4 that is a really good illustration of what we're seeing.

Nicer Weather

It rained a bit the past couple of days and it cleared the air a bit. The smog isn't as heavy and it's a little bit easier to breathe. A couple of folks have sore throats and they're saying it's not likely to rain again for the next week or so, so we're all expecting it to get ugly again....just in time for the games to start. It'll be interesting to see if the government tries cloud seeding or institutes any further pollution restrictions if that happens.

Photos on Flickr

I'm going to start posting some photos on Flickr as well. Right now, it's probably the same stuff as what I've included in posts but I'll flesh it out as I can. I'll also add a permanent link to it on the right side panel.

Videos

A co-worker of mine made some videos...one of the MPC (press center) and one of the Media Housing. Check 'em out if you have some spare time.

Adventures in Grocery Shopping

We ran to a store near our housing this morning before heading to the office. We needed a few things for the office, but couldn't resist walking through the grocery section. Wow...what a shock to what we're used to. The highlights were the piles of raw meat sitting on stands in the middle of the aisles to go through & pick your own, followed quickly by the live seafood area where the fish were jumping out of their water tanks right onto the floor, and all sorts of live seafood (fish, eels, turtles, shrimp) were swimming and waiting for folks who like their food REALLY fresh! I got a pic of the raw food, but my battery went dead before I got to the seafood, though.

Another Birthday

Today (Friday) was the birthday of another of my co-workers (and Olympic Village roommate). The front desk staff of the media housing building we're staying in stopped us on the way out this morning to give him a gift and sing him happy birthday (in English). Obviously they knew (just like the hotel staff for Graham the other day) from his passport information that it was his birthday, but it was a real hoot that they sung to him.

The Great Firewall Status

We heard a lot about the "Great Firewall" before we got here. That's the lingo for the Chinese government's strict filters that control what their citizens can reach and not reach on the internet. Search for things like "Tibet" and "Tianamen" over here and you'll likely get a "page cannot be displayed" message.

We're assuming that since our office's private network is riding across state-owned lines, there's lots of snooping and sniffing being done. And that was pretty obvious when we got here to discover that our 10 megabit per second internet connection was actually operating at anywhere between 1.5 and 3 megabits per second. Pretty quickly, word started circulating that websites were not accessible and some groups (one of the Australian media companies, for example) started testing the data packets between China and their home office to find out if they'd been "opened" and they had. Nice! News outlets picked up on the story pretty quickly, the gist of which was that they were continuing to block things they considered "objectionable, but not related to the business of reporting the news of the sports happening at the Olympics".

For our own needs, we got the local folks on the job and eventually they made some changes (we don't know exactly what) to restore our bandwidth. We're still going on the theory that everything we do is being watched, though.

Today (Friday in Beijing) we heard that the bad press had motivated the Chinese government to open things back up. I'm sure it'll be quickly apparent if that's indeed the case, as the media masses have begun to arrive.

Great Wall

We had a little bit of "down" time Thursday so a few of us took off for the Great Wall. It was an adventure just getting there. We got a later start than we intended. The plan was to taxi to a bus depot then take a bus out to the wall. It's about an hour ride, we were told, and hey--why not catch some "local color" in the process, right? Well, we arrived to the bus depot to see the bus number we were told to look for pulling out just as we got there. D'oh! After being hustled by some locals who wanted us to pay 400 yuan (actually only about $60 US but still a rip-off), we found someone who spoke English who told us that the bus that we saw pull out was the "express" bus and that only "local" busses would be leaving from that point forward the rest of the day. The "local" bus would take 2 1/2 hours since it made so many stops. Double d'oh!

We decided to double back and try another day so we emailed the co-workers to let them know we were coming back in, only to be told that the driver we had for the day wasn't being used so we could ask him to take us out there instead. Woo hoo!

So after a late start, and some negotiation with the driver, we headed out. It was DEFINITELY worth it. We rode a chair lift to from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the hill, walked a decent-sized section of the wall and rode a stainless-steel toboggan track back down the mountain. Besides the fun of the ride up and back, the wall was truly "great". Here are a couple of pics.