Tuesday, August 19, 2008

DVR + Olympic Coverage = Almost Heaven

Despite feeling slighted by the Jerkbags over at NBC and their policing of my completely harmless video, I'm still glued to my tv every night at 8:00. Well almost at 8:00; today I'm stalling while the DVR records away and allows me to skip through commercials and events that I don't think I care about. Last night I skipped through trampoline, only to find out it was pretty interesting to watch, if not a little dizzying. To stall today I sat around and watched Wipeout, a crazy game show with hosts that try too hard, and and lots of people falling face first into things. It feels good to be a track and field fan again, I'd given up on the sport out of frustration a long time ago. It's also fun to see all the places I've been in Beijing and know exactly where they are. I am having a tough time watching the men's 200 meters. Usain Bolt is a fabulous talent, but I'd hate to see Michael Johnson lose the record already. I'll have to avoid the internet at all costs tomorrow, in order not to find out the results before they're presented for me sometime after 8:00 pacific. It's also been cool to see so many Auburn alums doing well, someone stopped by my cube the other day (where my Auburn Pendant is prominently displayed on one wall) and asked me if I had ever met Margaret Hoelzer or Kirsty Coventry. I am "more old-school" than that, but I appreciated being asked.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Is that really necessary?

It seems that I have somehow irreparably damaged the Olympic coverage piped into your home by NBC, and they've chosen to block my youtube video of the bouncing inflatable mascots I had posted below. Have I given away any results? No, and living on the west coast, under NBC's ridiculous tape delay policy, I frequently find results on the internet long before they're available to see on TV. I haven't been able to safely visit espn.com or si.com without spoiling my own evening. I intentionally stopped visiting my my.yahoo page, because it always leads off with a Michael Phelps story. So I showed no athletes, no scores, no results and only 1:37 of video that I recorded with my own camera at a game you wouldn't have seen on TV, and NBC has decided you shouldn't see it. It all seems like a bit of an overreaction. Maybe the issue was that the video didn't contain a single moment of synchronized diving or gymnastics, which seem to be getting disproportionate prime time coverage. Or maybe I should have sat down with an athlete in the studio and asked them the really hard hitting questions like how does it feel, winning the gold medal. Perhaps I should have broken it midway with a Notre Dame football commercial, because watching people who deserve all the TV time they earn at the Olympics is nice juxtaposition with a crappy college football team that has done nothing in recent memory to earn a national TV audience, unless you count getting blown out in bowl games good TV. So here's to you NBC, thanks for deciding what I want to see and when I want to see it.
In case you missed it and are patient enough to wait for the uncompressed version, You can probably find it here, with the rest of the pictures from my trip.

Friday, August 15, 2008

At long last, a source


It helps to bring a diverse group on this sort of a trip, since Millie's ability to speak Spanish scored us tickets on the cheap for women's basketball. We scored the tickets early, so the girls went shopping, and I hung around the hotel and answered a few work emails. I got a taxi to the pearl market, met up with the girls and helped them carry some loot back to the hotel. We really liked our cabbie, and talked him into taking us to the hotel, and then to the basketball stadium. We got to the stadium just in time for the start of the first game and took our really great seats. in the corner of the lower bowl. The first game we saw, Russia vs Korea was a great game with lots of lead changes, but the second game, between Belarus and Latvia was kind of an ugly blowout. Either way I had plenty of Tsingtao and ice cream to keep myself happy. You can tell basketball is an american export, and the stadium and the little quarter breaks looked just like something we would have seen at home. Here's a video of the cool part of the game some sweet dancing mascots for your viewing pleasure. After the game we tried like crazy to buy some tickets outside for the second session, but the scalpers didn't seem to get that the more time that expired during the session the less we were going to be willing to pay for tickets. The other thing the Chinese hadn't quite familiarized themselves with was when to clap when the Adams Family song was being played. We grabbed a little dinner at a hotel right across the street, and then went back to the hotel to get ready to leave.

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Originally uploaded by jrherron

The next morning after we've gotten ourselves loaded into a cab the remaining members of the group managed to score some pool tickets an wanted to know if we'd stay. I couldn't and neither could Millie, but W dumped us at the airport, went back and even managed to get herself on the today show. Yes, I'm jealous. I barely scored a business class seat on the way home and dove right into work, where it's fair to say a weekend trip to Beijing for the Olympics makes you a bit of a rock star.

Tickets, Please?


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Originally uploaded by jrherron
I was worried about tickets. reports of complete sellouts, and scalper arrests were enough to make W unable to sleep. She woke up around 5:00 a.m. Sunday to find an email saying that 9 tickets were available for a 10:00 tennis session. It would cost us $75 per ticket, but given what was out there on craigslist and ebay, that seemed like quite a bargain, and would even mean we didn't even have to decide amongst ourselves who would go and who wouldn't. The guy even came to the hotel to drop them off. We knew it would be far to walk, so we found one of the hundreds of information tents (all of which are staffed by eager, helpful, uniformed and even English speaking volunteers), and asked the best way to get there. Olympic bus number one is what we were told, but every Olympic bus with a 1 on it was crammed, finally we figured out bus number 2 would get us there too, and we even got comfy seats. It was raining, so we were worried we might get there and not see any tennis at all, but we had to go anyway. We arrived and worked our way nervously through security (an x-ray and a bag check) we had a little bit of food with us that we managed to get through, and I had some sunblock in my pocket that I needed to demonstrate that I was willing to put on. For a brief moment you then wonder if the tickets you've bought are real, so you kind of hold your breath as they scan it. Each ticket has an rfid chip, so you just wave it over the ticket reader and in you go, then you go to another station where someone tears off the stub. Each segment starting with security, ticket scan and tear all had more English speakers. In to the tennis venue we walked where someone pointed us to centre court where we finally see that we're watching James Blake. Needless to say we're pretty excited about that, but the game won't actually start for an hour and a half. I spent most of that time in line at the concession stand, but came away rewarded with some delicious ice cream, and some most refreshing and cheap 8 yuan Tsingtao. Just as the tennis match gets started, my camera battery dies, and I realize the backup battery is in the hotel. I'm still not done being angry about that. James Blake wins pretty handily, and then we realize a second match is coming our way, starring Serena Williams. (We could also see Venus and the rest of the team sitting in the stands) Fortunately W has some pictures on her camera of that match. It was eventually rained out during the second set anyway.

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Originally uploaded by jrherron

We weren't able to get any more tickets for Sunday, and we decided to walk back to the hotel to tour the grounds along the way. It was a long walk, but worth seeing many of the Olympic Green venues. Then we ran off to our favorite Malaysian place despite waiting around almost half an hour for a cab to come to the hotel for us. We were not disappointed by our dinner, but had a sobering moment when a pedestrian got hit by a car near the restaurant. Time to crash for the night, still with no tickets for Monday, and still possibly getting on a plane.

A trip of Olympic proportions


So lets start this post by fully admitting that I am potentially one of the luckiest people alive. About 2 weeks ago W. came home from work one night and said the flights to Beijing aren't very full, Do you want to go and try to see the Olympics. My answer was of course yes, but we're in the middle of a financial forecast at work, It won't be easy. So I started doing as much work ahead of time as possible, and working very very late trying to get a few more things done so my bosses and co-workers wouldn't think I'd abandoned them. It all managed to work it's way out, so last friday I got up at my old start time and caught the 5:47 bus to Bart, took bart to the airport and started doing just a touch more work at the airport. The T-mobile connection there is not exactly lightning fast, but at least I was available when people had questions, and managed not to burn a full vacation day on a half day anyway. I met up with longtime travel bud Dave, and new travel bud Bon, and off we went in some comfy first class seats to Beijing. The meal was a delicious veal dish, and I managed to catch Kung fu panda, 3000 B.C. and Charlie Wilson's war (although I have spent the last few days calling it Charlie Murphy's war). We arrived in Beijing in good spirits, found a very helpful young lady who added minutes to my china mobile phone card, and off we went to our hotel, the Holiday inn Express Beijing Minzuyuan. Trouble is the hotel is really really new, so cabbies don't know exactly how to find it and the little back alley its entrance is on. After several calls to the hotel, we finally made it, and got settled in and met up with W and the rest of the girls who had been on the ground since the day before. The view from our hotel was incredible, it was unbelievable that such a location would still be available with the Olympics going on. Oddly enough the hotel is right above some sort of theme park, so the outside is coated in a fake stone that you can see in the upper left corner of the picture. The boys walked out to an ATM, and then we grabbed a beer in the hotel's inner patio, which wasn't easy, still part of the newness deal, they hadn't quite figured out how to get us all a beer in an expedient manner. We were starving then and found our way out to Qianhi lake to eat at our favorite restaurant from last trip. The group split, Millie and Dave came with us, and the rest of the group went off to find a store they were looking for and would come meet us. Having traveled with this group before we knew this meant they were more likely to forgo dinner than anything else. We were disappointed when the restaurant somehow had didn't have the beef or chicken dish that we really liked, but really enjoyed the dishes they did have. We went to bed that night, still no tickets in hand with lots of doubt about whether or not we'd actually be able to score any. At that point I was already making plans to come home Monday. When I arrived in Beijing I had lots of emails from facebook saying I'd been tagged in some photos, and much to my surprise someone had dug up photos from our days in Auburn. This one is absolutely my favorite. Every Friday during football season Anthony (sitting on the roof to my left) would pull this VW bus right into the middle of campus near the eagles cage, and we'd meet there on Saturdays, cook up some brats and drink a few cold ones before the game. They are some of my best college memories.