As I watched the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, I noticed I had light goose bumps, which I wondered at first whether to attribute them to the air conditioning I am sitting next time...
Yet it is the grandeur of the ceremony, and more importantly of the Games themselves, that touches me. It’s the honour of sport competition, it’s the sheer madness of 200 countries competing in the same place, it’s 16 days where people share what are the only human values we truly share (and, indeed, acknowledge that we do): competition, victory, sports ethics. It’s just.. beautiful.
That’s the main reason why I was mad at the random hippies trying to disturb the route of the Olympic flame, before the games. I felt they were soiling one of the very few things that we, we all, remain capable of enjoying in common.
- On another note - China did such an awesome job with the organisation that I am almost relieved we didn’t win the right to host the football World Cup 2010 that were running for. We’d have failed miserably, with our unique and constant theme of dressing up as Pharaohs and running around the stadium...
2 comments:
don't forget to compare between the formations that were done yesterday and the formations done by the egyptian armed forces.
P.S.: don't try to compare between the collapsing Egyptian infrasrtucture and the chinese infrastructure ;)
Do you not like our infrastructure?
I mean, it is true that buildings crash because contractors replace cement with sand, and it is true that the streets of Cairo overflood whenever it rain half a centimetre because no one really bothered to put a functioning sewage system, and it is true that our public transportation system is a complete disaster,
BUT
that shouldn't keep us from hosting 32 nations and tens of thousands of supporters, right? Right?
(I can totally imagine the bus carrying the Brazilian football team getting stuck on the 6th of October bridge.. and the aircon breaking down.. and the players having to get off the bus to push a 1958 Fiat 128 that broke down in the middle of the bridge.. :)
Geez. I gotta stop here.
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