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Olympic cheers and grumbles

Great opening. Looks like they didn't need Mr Spielberg after all. Ha.
Ferrer and Nadal enjoyed it

And great swim, Tao Li. Well done! I read a number of catty remarks online about her "only" coming in fifth and about her being foreign-born. I must confess I'm not in love with foreign talent or anything but give credit where credit is due, okay? Think it's so easy to come in fifth ah? Getting into the final is already an excellent result. And if you think of it, she is still quite a rookie compared to top swimmers in her event and yet, she is the 5th best and she now holds the Asian record.

I think people also forget that she is not the same "type" of foreign talent as some others. She was not handpicked or scouted and brought here to represent Singapore. She came because her mum got a job here. And she ended up representing Singapore. Same for Ronald Susilo who came in his teenage years as a student. And who also ended up representing Singapore.

Anyway, I think there's something wrong with some Singaporeans' understanding of medals at the Olympic Games. I saw on cable tv this montage of people who were interviewed about their hopes and wishes for our athletes and there were so many who said they hoped to see our athletes coming home with medals. MedalS, mind you. Astounding.

Now as for the cable coverage of the Games, it is certainly below my expectations because I don't expect two to three channels NOT showing live events at any one time. Or not even showing anything. Or two channels showing the same game. Or cutting a 'live' tennis match off at a crucial point to show people warming up for a volleyball game! I'm not sure about how conventional my sporting tastes are but I would venture a guess that there aren't really that many Singaporeans who are wanting to watch equestrian and fencing.

Anyhow, the best Olympic grumble I heard yesterday was from this commentator who was complaining endlessly about a woman's volleyball match that started 20 minutes late. Ha ha, all games in his country start on the dot ah? Wait till he gets sent to cover a tennis match that is delayed 24 hours.

Took the picture from here, which has very interesting fashion points about the opening (and I loved the Swedish ladies' outfits + I noticed that the men were wearing Li Ning)
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Comments

Anonymous said…
I was thoroughly wowed by the opening ceremony. The way the teams entered the stadium was quite interesting too, using not the alphabetical order but in order of number of strokes in first character of chinese name of country. the more the count of strokes, the later you appear. so you don't see austria etc in front but much further back. But this is what I overheard some young adults say yesterday at lunch. "Why the order of appearance of the teams so strange ha?""Random one, randomly come out one!" sigh - singaporeans. x-tongfang
10:12 am
Anonymous said…
Ha ha, put those people together with the ones who think our athletes should win medals. Anyway, the commentators said many times that the order was according to the 'Chinese alphabet' or something like that what. They weren't paying attention!
9:33 pm
fuzzoo said…
Yes those people interviewed on the streets were hilarious!!! What do they think this is? the SEA Games?! Their ignorance is truly shocking.
11:06 pm
Anonymous said…
Hi Fuzzoo,
Ya, maybe these same people also thought we would get into the soccer World Cup.
3:55 pm
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