Olympics Opening

I watched the opening ceremony of the Olympics yesterday. What immediately struck me was the order of the languages: French, English and Mandarin. I tried my best to figure out what they were saying in French, and then double checked it in English and Mandarin. What can I say, my French is about as good as my Chinese.

Needless to say, I was very impressed from the very beginning. When the BBC commentators mentioned that Zhang YiMou was the director of the opening ceremony, I knew to expect a breathtaking display of lights and colours, which is characteristic of his style.

The opening, with the drums that lit up when struck, was extremely impressive. Drumming in such a large group is already grand enough, but using it as a light display is extremely creative. I liked the way that they counted down to the start using the drums as pixels on a large display.

The next act that impressed me was the caligraphic painting done by people dancing with brushes for hands. It was very artistically done. The rest of the acts did not quite impress me until the final act, the lighting of the torch. Although the pace of the flying runner was not right at times, it was an extremely impressive way of lighting up the torch. I don’t know how London could possibly top that, in 4 years time.

My friend and I were also busily watching the different cute Chinese girls that were involved in the ceremony. We were commenting that after this opening ceremony showcase, Chinese girls will experience <em>saham naik</em> worldwide. Overall, I think that China managed to put on a dazzlingly spectacular show of an opening, which will set the benchmark for all future Olympic openings.

Then the parade of athletes started. When they mentioned that they were being arranged according to the stroke count of the Chinese characters, we realised that Malaysia would come in quite quickly, as “ma” had only 3 strokes in it. Then, when the contingent came in, we lamented on the small size of the contingent. As usual, politics would come into the picture.

In the past, our country had many good athletes in various different events. However, these days, we are hardly competitive in anything outside a handful of events. Our only hope for an Olympic medal is in badminton (unfortunately, squash is not an Olympic event, otherwise, we’ll get the gold there for sure). But outside that, we’re kind of hopeless.

Then about halfway through the parade, they mentioned that Brunei was left out of the parade because the officials forgot to register the team. That was such a fiasco and I think that someone’s head might actually roll for it. We quickly messaged our Brunei friends to tease them about it. Funny!