cdrum

Well, it’s Monday – the day after the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

Things around the city seem to be pretty much the same – the car ban is still in effect and they still x-ray bags in the subway… I imagine these measures, and many more, will remain until at least the end of the Paralympic Games in September.

The question I have now, is whether our restaurant on the Siemens campus here has green beans (bian dou) and tofu (doufu).  During the Olympics, these two items (and maybe more, I don’t know) were not available “due  to the Olympics”.   Don’t ask me where the logic is here…

I’ll check during lunch today if I can get some toufu.  Let’s see if they try giving me the excuse “because of the Olympics” again – I’ll shoot back last night it ended.  So where’s the toufu?

BTW, I am a bit late, we saw some more events since the baseball photos I uploaded last week.  On Friday, we went to an Athletics event in the “birds nest” and Sunday, we went to the Men’s Volleyball final!  That was an exciting match!  Will upload photos in due time.

On Saturday, we were lucky enough to be offered Baseball tickets (at face value) to the USA-Canada game.

At first, it looked as if Canada would beat the U.S., with a score of 0-4.  But, they must have forgotten they were playing a game because they let the U.S. score 5 runs to win the game 5-4.

For more photos, check out my flickr set.

Melanie and I went with some friends (C, H, B, and J) to Friday’s evening session of Women’s Beach Volleyball.  It was fantastic!

The picture above is from the China v Cuba match.  China was quite good (and they beat Cuba, too!).

We were lucky to all get tickets to this same event as both H and I applied using our own accounts for the tickets during round 1 of ticket sales way back in August of last year. (or whenever it was)  Sure, we weren’t sitting next to each other, but we were close enough – for the later matches, we were able to consolidate.

We missed most of the first match (Germany v Austria) because H “couldn’t find a taxi”, but we made it in time for China v Cuba, so it was fine.

For more pictures, go to my flickr site.

On the evening of Thursday, August 14, Melanie and I went to a Boxing match, round of 16 Welter and Light Welter bouts.  Many thanks to my old friend Mike (who was supposed to visit Beijing during the Olympics, but unfortunately could not)  gave me his tickets (also to Rowing).

I’ve never seen boxing in real life before, so it was certainly interesting.  Some of the bouts were a bit slow – lots of hugging and dancing around.  Some of them, however, were quite exciting where one boxer it seemed would unleash a deadly series of punches – not really, but almost.

Thanks again, Mike!

See my photos on flickr.

Melanie and I went to our first Olympic event on Saturday – Rowing.  Specifically, we went to the first day of the event.  I must thank my friend Mike, from High School, who was actually supposed to visit me here in Beijing during the Olympics, but couldn’t due to prior commitments.  He was able to give me the tickets he purchased via proxy.  Here are my flickr photos. Unfortunately, we didn’t think to bring Melanie’s good camera!

As you can see from the photo above, the weather was eh.  I think it was fog ?  But being there was certainly interesting – I’ve never seen a rowing event in person, and of course, this was my first Olympics.  There was a sort of energy in the crowed when the rowers came by.  My only complaint – the sport is a tad on the slow side.  Our seats were very near the finish line (although not directly at the finish line) and because the track is 2km long, it taks about 5 or so minutes for the boats to get into view.  Then another 2 minutes for them to pass in front and glide across the finish line.  And because we weren’t directly in front of the finish line, we couldn’t tell who won!

But certainly an experience!  Thanks Mike!

Oh, if you ever go to a rowing event, it’s way out in Shunyi – about 50+km from the city.  We didn’t do our due diligence to find that there were free buses – we paid 150 RMB for a taxi out there! Ouch!  We took the bus back, though.

Next up: Boxing!

Air not so clean with 1 day to go, eh?

Today I went to the bank to pick up my Olympics Tickets

This is a picture of the envelope.

This is one of the tickets.