Anyway, with only a week to go until the Opening Ceremonies, and a slow Friday work day (finally!), I wanted to catch everyone up on the latest goings on here in Beijing.
First of all, the anticipation is palpable. I had been staying at some nice hotels this past month, and just this week, I noticed a lot more foreign faces wearing the obligatory Olympic placards around their necks. Important people I assume. Excitement is definitely in the air as more folks are arriving. This morning I met a woman in the elevator with a bag full of adidas boxes and geared up in adidas herself (My experiences attending international sporting events has taught me how to pick out sporting officials from a mile away. Its the athletic gear and always with the crispy, clean kicks- mostly adidas). I come to find out that she is one of the dozens of FIFA referees staying at the hotel to participate in training to gear up for the Games. Pretty cool. Unfortunately, their arrival and other Olympic folks means that I have to move out of these fine digs tonight, and into a modest two star hotel. The rates at the hotel have gone up to about $800 a night and my non-profit can't afford such a price. Such a bummer. I had been living pretty large for the past month at the Ritz-Carlton and then The Regent (I know, crazy, but we get an insanely reasonable rate usually), and instead of rubbing elbows with fancy Olympic folks, I may end up having to make my own dumplings for the next two weeks. I move into the new digs, Home Inn (or as a buddy of mine here calls it-- Homey Inn), tonight. I'm hoping for the best. OK, enough whining, here are some quick hits of what's been going down lately:
- I have tickets to rowing preliminaries on Aug. 10, US-Nigeria and Argentina-Serbia (Messi!!) soccer double header on August 13 (compliments of US Soccer of course), and a baseball game to be determined. I'm working hard to score a US hoops game, but this is obviously a tough ticket. I also want to check out the track stadium and swimming venue which are great architectural designs. Whether or not, I get tix, I'll post pics of the venues. Pretty amazing stuff.
- I've watched so many DVD's this past month, I wanted to give a very quick list and review: There Will Be Blood (excellent!), Cloverfield (great concept, too shaky), Hot Fuzz (funny), Hancock (wait for video), Season One Dexter (very good, but I doubt I'll watch season two. Serial killers aren't my bag), The Other Boleyn Girl (good first half, fell asleep for the rest-shocker!), Super High Me (super mediocre), The Hammer (I like. Rent it if you can) and others I can't remember right now.
- I went for pizza at a place called The Tree last week near Sanlitun (bar street). This is a popular place for foreigners and they serve up a decent pie as well. Anyway, in the bathroom I saw a sign that said during the Olympics, the bar will close at 10:30 each night instead of the usual...actually I have no idea, but I know this place usually rages until the wee hours. So weird. I would have thought that places would have wanted to take advantage of the foreigners wanting to party, but instead the Chinese govt decided to close a lot of nightspots early during the olympics to prevent any ruckus I suppose. Terrible plan. I have a feeling that the vanilla hotel bars and their $8 beers will be all the rage. I'll let you know what happens.
- Somewhat related to the above point, all of my "go-to" DVD shops have vanished since last Sunday. Actually, they haven't vanished, but any of their English language titles (aka bootlegs) have disappeared. It is as if you went to McDonald's for a burger and found out they were serving spaghetti, it was pretty jarring. Especially since I was hoping to pick up Season One of Mad Men that I had just seen a week prior, and now it was gone. When I asked, the guy behind the counter shrugged. I think if I went with a local, they could speak Mandarin and get the low-down, but a foreigner like myself gets nada.
- My language skills are still atrocious but I have a few words down: hello (ni hao), thank you (xie xie), The Regent Beijing (li jing da jo dian), cold- as in cold beer (bing da), check (mai dan), I understand (ming bai), I don't want (bu yao), I don't have (mei yo), OK (hao), yes (duai), rice (mi fan), Tsingtao (Tsingtao). Sadly, that's about it. I actually know a few more words, but these listed above usually get me through the day.
- I really enjoy meeting ex-pats when I travel. Last week, a partied with an Irish guy, and 3 Dutch folks that all live and work here. Its especially great after a few drinks and realizing that I'm in Beijing talking about agricultural engineering in Pakistan with a Dutch guy while listening to hip-hop playing in the background. This never gets old.
- Also, our organization actually has a blog to give some Asian perspectives on things happening on this side of the Pacific, I contributed an entry this week: http://asiafoundation.org/in-asia/2008/07/30/in-china-olympic-expectations-and-anxieties/ I've received pretty good feedback from co-workers, but any faithful readers to this here site will recognize that I have been edited to no end. I mean not one of my jokes were left in. Anyway, have a look and if you are interested in such info, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter. You can get email updates and the content is usually very strong. Also note that my entry has zero to do with issues.