3 Things I Miss Most About The Beijing Olympics

I know! I know! The Beijing Olympics had been over for more than a week now. It’s yesterday’s story. Yet I still think about it sometimes. I have many fond memories of it, so today I’m going to talk on what I miss most about the Beijing Olympics. Some sort like Beijing Olympics Revisited, if you will.

There are actually quite a number of things I miss but I'm going to concentrate on the top 3 otherwise this post may end up being too long. So the 3 things I miss most are....

1. The footprints fireworks

It’s such a pity that this one had been found to be digitally faked by China. I really love those footprints fireworks that started “walking” from Tiananmen Square all the way to the Bird's Nest Stadium. Actually the fireworks were real but they could not film all 29 footprints from the air, so they resorted to faking it for the audiences in the Bird's Nest Stadium as well as TV audiences worldwide.

Look at the video below – aren’t those footprints awesome? Notice they even included some “camera shake” effect to mimic the effect of filming from a helicopter.

Now this video is the real deal taken from the ground. Still looks awesome.

But do I blame China for this? Not really. Look, safety comes first. If it’s too risky for the pilot to fly the helicopter in such a way and at such an angle so as to film all those footsteps, then it’s too risky. So why not create them digitally? We don’t want the audiences to be disappointed, do we? Anyway, it’s quite close to the real thing.

2. The Fuwa mascots

Oh! Aren’t they cute? Since the Olympics ended, I’ve been seeing less and less of them whether in the newspaper, magazines, TV or on the internet. I miss them!

The 5 mascots, designed by Han Meilin, were originally known as the “Five Friendlies” but later changed to the name “Fuwa” which means good luck dolls in Mandarin. Well all for the better because friendlies sound like “friend lies”. Hmmm.... not very auspicious sounding!

The five fuwa consists of Beibei the fish, Jingjing the panda, Huanhuan the Olympic flame, Yingying the Tibetan antelope and Nini the swallow. The five characters’ name spoken together create a sentence that sounds like “Beijing huanying ni” or "Welcome To Beijing" in English.

Now, that’s pretty cool, no?

My favourite fuwa is Huanhuan. Look how cute in his football pose!



My next favourite is Jingjing. Notice that "smile" as he shoots?



See Huanhuan and Jingjing battle it out at both judo and wrestling!

Here's Beibei with sailing and water polo.

Yingying with road cycling and athetics.



Nini with fencing and trampoline.

Aren't these mascots adorable? I will most certainly miss them!

3. Michael Phelps

This man is simply amazing! At only 23 years old, he won gold medals in all the 8 swimming events he participated and broke the world record in 7 of them! He had already won 6 gold and 2 bronze medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics so he had actually won a total of 16 medals. That makes him the athlete who won the most medals in the history of the Olympic games! Wow!

Photos taken from Yahoo News

Now if you want to know how he did it, go no further than Mun’s blog. It’s the best write-up on Michael Phelps I’ve read!

So there you have it - the 3 things I miss most about the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
How about you? Do tell me what you miss most.

Let The Games Begin!

It was 6.45pm on Friday and I was trapped in a massive traffic jam in New Town, PJ. What the hell was happening?

It was bumper to bumper crawl. This was very unusual. I tried to navigate through the traffic and tried and find the best route home. I’d be damned if I miss the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics!

Oh, that’s it! Only then did I realize what the traffic jam was all about. People all rushing home to catch the Olympics!

I was hungry but with the traffic condition like that, I think I’d just forego my dinner outside and head straight home. Trouble was, the clock kept ticking but my car was not moving much. I was beginning to lose my patience. It was 7.50pm and I was no where near home! Maybe I should just have my dinner at a mamak stall and watch the Olympics on the TV there.

Luckily, for me, and to cut the long story short, I managed to reach home at 8.25pm.

But with no Astro and relying on RTM, it would make no difference even if I came back later because they only broadcasted it at 8.40pm after the news. What the crap! The opening ceremony started at 8.08pm and RTM, our official Olympics channel showed the live telecast about 30 minutes late!

Better than nothing, of course so I watched the opening ceremony and all. It was a great opening – truly grand and entertaining. I liked the part where a giant translucent globe came out from the stadium floor and acrobats walking around it as if defying gravity.

But the best part has to be the lighting of the Olympic flame. This was where we see six-time Chinese gymnastics gold medallist Li Ning carrying the torch being hoisted up to the top of the stadium and then did an incredible “kung fu style” walking the entire circumference of the stadium before sending up a torrent of flame that spiraled upwards to the huge cauldron and lighting the Olympic flame. Simply cool!

And then of course there were the fireworks!

Here’s some photos taken from Yahoo Sports.

I only found the part where all the countries came out on stage a bit tedious and boring.

Still overall it's a successful opening ceremony to the Games. And RTM had the nerve to end the live telecast prematurely before the fireworks show was over! Who wants to watch the RTM commentator in the studio talking nonsense when there's live fireworks on display? Please RTM, if you can't give us a decent live telecast, stop promoting yourself as the official Olympics Channel!

Anyway, here's wishing the Beijing Olympics a great success!