奥林匹克运动会终于来了！

If any of you are relying on this sadly neglected blog in order to meet all of your media needs, you may be forgiven for being unaware that the 29th Modern Olympic Games are currently underway here in Beijing. One of world history's most impressive build-ups has finally broken and all the dozens of Olympics clocks scattered around Beijing that have been counting down for the past several years are now stuck at 0000 days 00 hours and 00 minutes (you can see one above near the Olympic green and the recently completed "Olympic flame" skyscraper). Some of them are being replaced by countdown clocks for next month's Paralympic games, starring the saddest mascot ever:

I haven't been able to take part in as many of the Olympic good times as some people (on account of being embarrassingly busy), but I've been very lucky to attend a few events. On Friday I joined Mark and a bunch of old classmates to watch the opening ceremony on the big screen at one of the designated viewing areas in Ditan Park. An impressive statement. I'll say nothing more, except for qi lai! qi lai!

The next afternoon Mark and I headed to the Olympic Green for his favorite sport, handball. Here are some pictures:

I trusted Mark's recommendation and was pleased to find that Handball is indeed a very entertaining sport. The first match we watched was between Romania and Kazakhstan and was dominated by the Romanians, despite cries of support which may have gone unnoticed by Kazakh athletes unable to recognize their names in Mark's screams of "PIKALUNA! C'MON" and "GO NEAGU!" Our section, at the very least, was much entertained, not to mention enriched by having perhaps the single attendee who understood the rules of the sport. After the first game we snuck into better seats, but I kind of missed our rowdy British neighbors who managed to teach several hundred Chinese how to do "the wave".

The second match up was between South Korea and Russia. Below you can see the Korean coach advising his team on strategy during a time-out. He used a little board with magnetic pieces that proved very effective in bringing his team from an 8 point deficit to a 29-29 tie with Russia. The Russian coach spent the entire game turning beet red at every goal made against his team, berating all of his players, and constantly taking them in and out of play.

During this game I learned that those inflatable tubes that people wave at games make a horrible tinny noise when banged together and also that the Olympics is the very best place in the world for both making outlandish jokes about geopolitics and history and for extrapolating vast cultural generalizations from the strategies and attitudes of national sporting teams.

And then there were the Fuwa, whose halftime show with the la la dui (cheerleaders) was totally worth the price of admission.

Here they are waiting to enter the arena before the end of the 1st half.

In action:
Yeah, its pretty clear that I play favorites, but you should all know by now that I can never resist a panda. Besides, the human inside of the Jingjing costume was hyperactive and really fun to watch. He seemed to take pleasure in mocking the cheerleaders and in messing with the short fuwa who didn't have much use of their legs or arms (as below). He ruled.

Here's a video (jingjing is freaking out to the right for the first few seconds and on the left for the last few seconds -- also notice the tiny blue beibei flapping his flippers in apparent delirium):

Fuwa & cheerleaders Olympic halftime show from Le Kougre on Vimeo.
There was no fuwa halftime show at the swimming event I attended on Sunday, but it was my first opportunity to get an up close look at two of Beijing's most famous pieces of Olympic architecture, the National Stadium (or bird's nest), with its newly lit Olympic flame:

and the National Aquatics Center (or water cube):

where I met a very special friend:

who totally tried to cop a feel (jk China! you know I LOVE the fuwa!)

The water cube is really quite a bit better looking than it appears in the Beijing haze, and the interior is all cool and spacey.

Although we couldn't see it from our seats, I'm betting the athletes were loving the ceiling of the main competition hall.

What we could see from our seats was limited. I spent a lot of time gazing dumbly at the national flags hung around the perimeter and wondering how I missed flag week in elementary school.

We could see the pool fine but there wasn't really much to see aside from blurs in the water. It was hard to keep track of the numbers of the lanes and the athletes that were swimming in them.

I spent some lot of time watching the big screens which had lots of close-ups and many of those amazing underwater shots you see on TV. What being there had over watching at home was all the excitement of seeing world records get broken (twice!), cheering for Michael Phelps, and watching all the little pockets of national supporters spring into action. Maybe your house is different from mine, but I rarely have a cluster of South Africans to my right, Canadians in front, and Japanese across the way all with flags a flurry.

By the time the races were all over it was dark and the rain had started up again in force. People wearing free plastic bag raincoats that glowed purplish from the lighting inside the cube waited outside for the shuttle bus to take them to the subway.

Some kids played in the fountains in front of the glowing red bird's nest.

I walked to the bus stop in my poncho thinking about all that has been said, done, built, and promised in the name of the Beijing Olympics and about what a vast disconnect exists between that and the reality of the games, with all the empty seats, confusing rules, excitement and hope, and pleasant conversations with international neighbors.

Then I went home and ate Totoro.

He was tasty, though the eyes were a little tough.