Watch Olympics opening ceremony online?

[Guest realmayo]

oh a side note, just seen this headline come through:

17:15:06 BEIJING-BUSH HAS BEEN UPDATED REGULARLY ON RUSSIA-GEORGIA CRISIS-WHITE HOUSE SAYS - RTRS

so I guess bush was a bit distracted throught the ceremony

[Shadowdh]

Roddy you've been the perfect host!

well I dont know about that... where are the pints and crisps... but charmed as always to be in such illustrious company...

Renzhe thats pretty shocking mate... true story?

[gougou]

can those of you in Beijing see and hear them outside?

I'm just south of Wangjing, and I could barely make out any fireworks with all the haze...

I was trying to catch the ceremony outside, but was underwhelmed by the venues I went to. Big screen at Chaoyang park was broken, newly opened All Star was full of kids eating hamburgers, several venues around Gulou were packed but quiet. When the friend I was intending to meet then told me that her parents wouldn't let her out for fear of terrorists, I decided to head home.

The amount of police in the streets was impressive.

[adrianlondon]

BBC World quickly interviewed a few Chinese who just said stuff like "We are honoured to host Olympics and invite foreigners here to watch". No one in any of the shots seemed to have any emotion. Pity.

I guess they already knew it was going to be an expensive, flawless, fantastic ceremony, so when it turned out to be an expensive, flawless, fantastic ceremony there was no surprise.

In London we're going to applaud madly if the stadium doesn't fall down during the ceremony and the trains leading to the venues actually work.

[Shadowdh]

What you expect the trains to work in London... your expectations are rather high arent they Adrian...

[roddy]

We've got to get the stadium built first. There's every chance the 2012 opening ceremony will be in a school gym. What hasn't gone up can't come down . . .

[Shadowdh]

Good point Roddy... too much red tape and union rubbish here...

[roddy]

1,000th post, congratulations Mr Shadowdh.

Amusingly enough, we've had hundreds of visitors today searching for things like 'watch opening ceremony online' and finding only us gibbering on. Hope they weren't too disappointed . . .

[The Elf Piper]

I found the "gibbering" rather amusing, myself.

Does anyone know if this sort of thing ever ends up on DVD? I don't normally pay much attention to the Olympics but this ceremony sounds like a keeper.

[roddy]

If you know where to look in Beijing, it probably already is on DVD!

Stuff like this comes out - I'd be surprised if there isn't a Beijing equivalent. There's certain to be something released in China.

[Shadowdh]

Thanks Roddy... that slipped by...

I have it saved on the sky+ box and will try to transfer it to dvd later... perhaps I should start an enterprise... hehehe:mrgreen:

[renzhe]

Renzhe thats pretty shocking mate... true story?

It was quite embarrassing, really.

The best part by far was when they said that the big choreographies involving many people are a sign how the individual is worthless in China.

I don't know if they noticed that every Olympics in recent times has had these kinds of choreographies. I don't quite understand what they were trying to achieve there.

[Shadowdh]

That is bad... tbh it would make me embarrassed to be German... anywho...

[roddy]

BBC News is gushing all over it - 'simply breathtaking', etc - and that's a BIG torch, must be visible for miles . . .

[renzhe]

v interesting: the order of countries processing around is not alphabetical, but done by stroke order! cool....

THAT'S what it was. I was completely stumped.

The German commentators said it was "sorted according to the Chinese alphabet", which I had trouble understanding. I would have hoped they'd tell us info like this instead of wishing some kind of catastrophe.

Ah, here they are. Is French the official language of the Olympics or something?

English and French are the two official languages of the IOC.

One of the areas where French is still entrenched are the official languages of international organisations, like FIFA, IOC, UN, etc.

[renzhe]

whats the letter they were just talking about... some athlete was a signatory on a letter to President Hu...??

I hear that some athletes are denying having signed that letter, including Croatia's high-jumper Vlasic.

[-Bee-]

v interesting: the order of countries processing around is not alphabetical, but done by stroke order! cool....

THAT'S what it was. I was completely stumped.

The German commentators said it was "sorted according to the Chinese alphabet", which I had trouble understanding.

Not only German commentators said that.. I watched the whole thing on two different channels - Latvian and Russian - and they all were saying that it was sorted according to the Chinese alphabet...

...I guess now all my endeavours of convincing people I know that Chinese don't have an alphabet were absolutely useless

[imron]

WTF! 335 new posts!!! You guys are crazy!

[roddy]

And where were you, Imron? Letting us down by actually being in Beijing and enjoying the show, no doubt. . . .

[imron]

Indeed, I was attending an opening ceremony party and watching it on a big screen Didn't take my laptop with me, and I don't have one of them snazzy new-fangled phones that let you go online, so obviously I couldn't keep up with the blow by blow accounts. I will say however, that finding a taxi in Beijing tonight was a friggin' nightmare!