Some random stuff about Beijing Olympics…
Bush is happy
US president George W Bush visited the US women’s beach volleyball team on August 9 during their training session. It was a happy visit obviously…
Lee Myung-bak is happy too, but…
South Korean president Lee Myung-bak must be happy with the achievement of his athletes thus far, but he was probably not too happy with a photo of him carrying the Korean flag upside down on August 9 while cheering for the women’s handball team…
To be frank, I didn’t know that the Korean flag is not symmetrical; apparently there are some differences on how the ‘stripes’ are arranged. Korean netizens were not too happy about the mistake, but the president was spared with focus being shifted to the medal tallies which the Koreans are doing really well at the moment.
The stadium jukebox
Gold medallists at the Beijing Olympics are granted rights to the ‘stadium jukebox’ in which their songs of choice would be played around the hall shortly before the medal presentation.
The Chinese athletes were mostly playing patriotic songs after their victory; while a couple of Koreans decided to go easy… judo champ Choi Min-ho picked a song from pop star Lee Hyori while swimmer Park Tae-hwan chose a song from girls group SNSD.
The cute and the talented
Lin Miaoke, the 9-year-old girl who ‘sang’ the song during the opening ceremony, is becoming an international sensation following her performance. Little known though, is that she was not the real singer during the live show.
The real voice behind the performance is a 7-year-old girl named Yang Peiyee… but Lin was chosen to appear at front stage for her cuter image to wow the audiences. Well, they certainly managed to achieve the purpose, at least for now; but is the gimmick necessary? It’s not fair for both kids in my opinion.
Natalie du Toit and Natalia Partyka
South African swimmer Natalie du Toit and Polish table tennis player Natalia Partyka are the only two athletes that are going to take part in both the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing 2008.
Natalie, 24, was the flag carrier during the opening ceremony. Her leg was amputated at the knee after a scooter accident in 2001. She will compete in the 10km open water race event in the Olympics.
Natalia, 19, was born with a right arm that ends at the elbow. She will play in team event in women table tennis in the Olympics.
The first ever amputee to compete in Olympics was gymnast George Eyser with a wooden prosthesis for his left leg in 1904. Amazingly, he won three gold medals… including a rope climbing event (ya, Olympics were really fun in those days).
lol at bush.
the fake singing issue is heavly debate on chinese forums now. some say the reports are fake but some say the tv news have interview the real singer so its truthful. the people also have mix response to this, some agree some don’t. i like miao ke, she is cute, and its not her fault for the arrangement, but I will want the real singer to perform on stage.
salute to natalie and natalia, two amazing woman.
Great shot of Bush. Looks like he had a good view from where he was standing as well.
On the Korean flag, maybe they should punish whoever put the flag on the stick backwards to begin with. The president could only hold the flag one way.
As for the singer. Ummm… that’s not good at all. It shows a lack of character on the part of the organizers. But it’s not surprising either. In fact, it sort makes a statement about what alot of folks feel about China anyway. That things in China are raraely as they appear. Kind of shows a reflection of how Chinese do business in general….’counterfeit’ products, lol.
Trying to fake the people out about the singer gives a bad image. And doing it because the other girl was ‘cuter’ than the actual singer is just pure assinine and ridiculous. Will they ever learn, that the outside world is not as stupid and naive as they believe.
The singing story is making global headlines now… kinda sad that the two innocent little girls are under the spotlight for the wrong reason.
haha, that’s a nice capture of bush there. is he really looking at what we think he’s looking at? maybe he’s just happy. but who knows? lol, so did he pay the team just to watch them practice?
why are the netizens so mad at the korean president? he was happy cheering, and a happy cheerer would probably lose focus on other things. and yeah, isn’t that flag just made upside-down? if it is, then it shouldn’t be his fault. i never paid attetnion to which way is right for the korean flag though…
the choosing song thing for the gold medalists is cool. patriotic songs might be a bit boring though. but they seem more suitable at this event than pop songs.
is it that girl who sang the first line in the song “welcome to beijing”? i thought she didn’t look like her. but anyhow, if this case is true, i’d feel a bit embarassed as a chinese. does a cute look really matter? it’s just the olympics, not a fashion show. it’s a horrible decision and these young girls shouldn’t be under this kind of pressure.
lol not paying, pardon me for my poor choice of words. He just visited them while they were training.
About the girl… she is not the one who sang in Welcome to Beijing. The girl who sang in the MV was the performer in 2004 Athens.
About the girl, I don’t think its a rumor as it was on bbc news last night. I think its wrong that a girl’s looks are judged instead of honestly letting her perform on stage.
Another thing they were talking about on the news last night was that during the opening ceremony, some of the fireworks which appeared around the city was pre-recorded a few days earlier and some were just computer-generated. I’m not sure if thats a rumor or not but bbc did talk about it.
I wonder how many more secrets China is keeping about the olympic opening ceremony?
i went out today and i saw some local newspaper here (toronto) writing about the 2 girls as the headline. they showed a picture of both the girls. i think both girls are cute…aren’t all kids cute? but lin miaoke does have a face that makes her look like a little princess. the article also mentioned that they hired fake audience to go watch the games so the seats would be filled up more. and as Jessica mentioned, the fireworks were apparently fake too. this is a whole bunch of bad image for china. i feel like despite how successful the olympics are gonna be, this news will be remembered by everyone. seems like the harder china tries to make the olympic better, the worse it becomes. it’s not going to be a flawless olympic.
Jessica… both of the ‘rumours’ are apparently true now. I am actually ok with the pre-recorded fireworks, just a bit disappointed, but doesn’t bother me much. The girls-swapping really annoyed me though… it’s really unnecessary.
bb… it’s actually not uncommon to have ‘fake’ audience to fill the seats, but Beijing did it in a rather stupid way. Most of the time the organisers would sponsor tickets to students… it helps filling the empty seats, and it gives the kids a real experience with the big games. It’s supposed to be win-win, but Beijing organisers are a bit inexperience obviously.
To add injury to insult, that’s interesting what bb just said about them hiring spectators to fill the empty seats. Incidently, guess what one big reason the seats are empty is to begin with?…today’s latest news update is about frustrated fans and empty seats because of ticket scalpers who bought up alot of tickets and are selling them for 5 times their value and upward. Some even into the thousands. One American spectator admitted he had to pay something like $425 for his ticket.
Also, a US highschool gym team of about 11 people that traveled to watch the games got ripped off by some Chinese ticket website called Beijingticketing.com that turned out to be bogus. It was removed off the web last week. Luckily two legitimate American travel agencies were able to secure enough tickets for the group to still see the games.
Chinese….wow. Sure making a good name for themselves on this one, lol.
In addition they were saying that available affordable tickets were just hard to find. Some rumors for instance were that some hotels had them selling at face value…but nobody knew which ones.
Point they were making also, is that hardcore fans and spectators weren’t getting to watch alot of the events they wanted to because of all this.
Yeah! Frg prjt ,.nn c iryya ir or xf.