the random oracle

Visiting the Olympic Park was incredible.  Even though actually getting there was a huge pain the ass (you have to go through a security check before even getting in the subway that takes you inside the park), it was worth it.  The architecture inside the park is awesome; if the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube hadn’t stolen the show, the other stadiums and centers would certainly have been just as talked about.

Much of the park is dedicated to sponsors’ exhibits.  Now I know people complain and complain about how commercial the Olympics are becoming, but some of the exhibits were actually pretty cool.  I especially liked the GE pavilion, where they had a water fall that had tiny individual jets that could draw designs in the falling water.

The star of the show however was of course the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube.  Walking inside the Bird’s Nest is equally impressive as seeing it from outside; all the stairs are open and the glowing red is just as beautiful inside as it is eery outside.  I didn’t get a chance to go in the Water Cube but got some nice shots of it from outside.

As for the athletics themselves, the show was long but ended with a bang.  The last event of the evening was the men’s 10000m race, and after 8 boring laps around the stadium the competition picked up.  In the last 3 or 4 laps the runners kept on passing each other; first an Eritrean duo was leading, then a Kenyan, but finally in the end the Ethiopian runner Bekele came up from behind and snatched the gold.

On the way to a late-night snack, we saw a bunch of Ethiopian supporters in the subway, and started chanting “Go Ethiopia!” which quickly turned into “Ethiopia jia you (加油)!”  When the Chinese people in the subway started looking at us funny (Who were these crazy laowai screaming things in the subway at 12 in the morning?  I was kind of mortified…) we just started chanting “中国加油!” (Go China!) and they started chanting with us.  See, the Olympic spirit is alive and well; it just needs a little translation sometimes