Today the Beijing Olympics officially comes to an end. This was a good Olympics. With 40 billion dollar budget, this is the most costliest Olympics. I read somewhere that the Chinese government has already did break even on the spending for the Olympics games. That is just brilliant.
I went to Beijing during the last year december, as a part of an "Exchange" program between Peking University and NUS. It was a good experience. I was the only non-chinese guy. I din understand a single word of Chinese. And the Chinese din understand a single word of English. It was a good experience.
" I WAS THERE "
In all the meetings with the professors from Peking university and from the meetings with few beijing based companies, (Lenovo, Sohu, Aigo, etc) one thing was clear to me. The ambitions of the country was high. They had huge hopes for Olympics and they were looking to expliot all the opportunities to take their companies global. If you can remember, Olympics in Japan paved way for all the Japanese companies to go global and that is why their economy became strong. The chinese were also looking to do that. That was the first thing in Agenda.
The dominance of Chinese in this olympics is discussed a lot. Check this article, in the Washinton Post. The article titled "The Real China threat" addresses their dominance and what it means to the rest of the world and how their policies contradict that of the United States. Talkin about the dominance, read this article in Newsweek magazine, about "The post-American World". Pretty interesting.
One take-home point is, this olympics is seen as the beginning of the end of America and beginning of another era of Chinese Dominance in the world history. Lets see.
This olympics was good olympics for India too. We won 3 medals. Read this article in Newyork times, that made my blood boil. They call india as the "mysteriously nonathletic nation". That is kinda demeaning. But i hate to agree, that is the truth. Cricket is not a athletic game. You need more stamina to play soccer or Tennis compared to Cricket. (One thing that makes me laugh is, Beach volleyball is in Olympics, but not Cricket. Sorry Cricket fans)
The opening ceremony was just brilliant. If you missed it, see these photo galleries in "Time" website. Pretty good collection of pictures.
But few really bad things happened in this Olympics. First the lip-sync. say whatever you want, nationalism, Olympic spirit, but that issue doesn't look good in the eyes of the world. Similarly the fake fireworks issue. It just shows their desperation to make the opening ceremony into a big hit. Above all is the Gymnastics issue. I don't know if anyone can prove it, or if it is true, but that really gave a bad impression to China. It raises a question as to whether china won all the gold in the same way. Obviously that is not the case, but i cant help asking that question.
Anyhow, today is the olympics closing ceremony. Am eagarly waiting to see that live in Channel 5.
I went to Beijing during the last year december, as a part of an "Exchange" program between Peking University and NUS. It was a good experience. I was the only non-chinese guy. I din understand a single word of Chinese. And the Chinese din understand a single word of English. It was a good experience.
" I WAS THERE "
(Can you see the "Birds nest" and the "The National Aquatics Center" in the background ?)
The dominance of Chinese in this olympics is discussed a lot. Check this article, in the Washinton Post. The article titled "The Real China threat" addresses their dominance and what it means to the rest of the world and how their policies contradict that of the United States. Talkin about the dominance, read this article in Newsweek magazine, about "The post-American World". Pretty interesting.
One take-home point is, this olympics is seen as the beginning of the end of America and beginning of another era of Chinese Dominance in the world history. Lets see.
This olympics was good olympics for India too. We won 3 medals. Read this article in Newyork times, that made my blood boil. They call india as the "mysteriously nonathletic nation". That is kinda demeaning. But i hate to agree, that is the truth. Cricket is not a athletic game. You need more stamina to play soccer or Tennis compared to Cricket. (One thing that makes me laugh is, Beach volleyball is in Olympics, but not Cricket. Sorry Cricket fans)
The opening ceremony was just brilliant. If you missed it, see these photo galleries in "Time" website. Pretty good collection of pictures.
But few really bad things happened in this Olympics. First the lip-sync. say whatever you want, nationalism, Olympic spirit, but that issue doesn't look good in the eyes of the world. Similarly the fake fireworks issue. It just shows their desperation to make the opening ceremony into a big hit. Above all is the Gymnastics issue. I don't know if anyone can prove it, or if it is true, but that really gave a bad impression to China. It raises a question as to whether china won all the gold in the same way. Obviously that is not the case, but i cant help asking that question.
Anyhow, today is the olympics closing ceremony. Am eagarly waiting to see that live in Channel 5.
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