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.