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The other day, I was looking through my pictures and videos, showing my family the things that I'd seen and the events that I'd gone to.
This is among the best/funniest videos I took in China at the USA vs. Greece Basketball game.
Enjoy:
I've been so busy lately so I haven't had the chance to write a new blog post. I'll tell you about the most recent updates since I don't have pictures (I'm not using my computer) and I have little time.
With the Olympics now in full blast, we've been feeling the full effects of Olympic Fever, also considering that China has the most gold medals in the games. China, for the first time in years, has been leading the count in gold medals for much of the duration of the Olympics. But what led me to talk about the effects of the Olympics was an experience that occurred the other day. So I know I've told you guys about the experiences I've had with Olympic athletes. Admiring from afar, whether it be around 20-100 feet away, close, but nonetheless...still far. I finally experienced meeting one of the Olympic athletes face to face and talking to her for a short walk.
We were getting in from shopping for traveling gear when we ran into a 6'2'' girl at the gates of BNU (our school), she had the most upset and distraught face, speaking to the guards in English, though we all knew that they didn't understand a single word or gesture coming from her. So as we start talking to her she explains how she is so lucky and relieved to hear English again and to be out of that taxi she was just in for around 1 hour. The trip she told us she took should have been about 10 minutes...wow, they really do rip off foreigners. Nevertheless, she was happy again to have talked to us about it and then we walked with her and found out she was on the USA Women's Volleyball Team. It was really cool talking with her and listening to how she spoke, so American....by that I mean she used profanity openly and knew our "Norcal slang - 'hella'" because she was from Irvine herself. After saying bye and taking a quick picture (though we realized after we should have gotten a signature or some TICKETS), we looked her up and she is BOWN from the team, the one who was DOMINATING. Oh man, was that cool.
But in addition to the random occasion in which we met an Olympic Athlete face to face, I also went with Derrick and Angela to a USA vs. Greece basketball game, probably ranked 3 out of the 3 games I've watched but still very memorable. I took millions of pictures of all the players and cool videos of dunks and blocks, only to exhaust the hell out of my battery and my SD card, poor camera. I'm soo glad I bought it though, as it is my first camera, I'm fully enjoying the feeling of being picture happy and using any and all opportunities to take a picture. Anyway, at the game we ALMOST got our tickets signed by Deron Williams, just like we got our tennis tickets signed, but missed out on the chance because we got to the side too late and there were far too many people trying to butt in and lean over the spectator bars. Nevertheless, I got really close up pictures of many of the players who each looked at me (or at least in my direction) for a good period of time. The ranking of events in my book, after today 8/19 (my final event), goes #1 tennis (because of the amazing seats and because we got to see so many events and it was also our first event to see), #2 athletics (because we got to see so many events, though far away, but also it was in the National Stadium - the Niao Chao with the torch), #3 basketball (just because we had level A seating, but also got to move up even closer after the USA team had left and Argentina, another good team, started playing). I think the totality of my Olympic game experience has been really amazing. I chose the right games to go to.
Aside from that, we met at strange cab driver who blasted music in his car off his tape and continuously asked if we liked the Chinese music. We also met with our haircut people, who came out with us on Janelle's last night in Beijing. Janelle, who has been a loyal customer to the haircut people, invited them out to karaoke and buffet all for 45 yuan, what a great deal. You can never get that in the states. 4 hours of singing until your throat bleeds in Chinese AND English and a free buffet and drink stand. But to mention that I must also mention how it is sad to see all the Summer Session EAPers leave. We've spent about 2 months with the same people and not seeing them often in the halls anymore makes a lot of us feel lonely and missing our own respective homes. Nonetheless, we will be going on a trip (us fall people), I think it might just be Tammy, Ivy, and me, but that should be really cool, I think 4 is perfect, but 3 is good too. We will be going to Qingdao --> Anhui --> Shanghai --> Fujian --> Guangxi --> Yunnan --> back to Beijing for Fall Session in late September. We might make a stop in Guangdong for some Cantonese food and nice dian xin (dim sum). Oh boy, can't wait.
Hope that was enough for you guys for now, sorry I don't have pictures at this time, computer is away in storage. BTW, the Athletics events, including all the Finals events and the Medals Ceremonies were SICK, there were soo many US wins. It was amazing, so was the atmosphere. Too bad stupid Chinese hopeful for the 110M Men's Hurdles Liu Xiang had to hurt himself, I think since he wasn't in the event I paid too much for the ticket. But it was still an experience that I can never replicate. I'm glad I have 300+ pictures for that event alone, a good 4 hours spent the night before I leave for Qingdao. I just love it here in Beijing, especially during the hectic, crazy Olympic times.
中国加油！
My bad for not updating, a lot of things have been happening since we had a week countdown before the Olympics official start, which starts today! at 8:08, can you believe it! I'm in the country and city where the Olympics will be hosted and in China, the number 8 is lucky! 8/8/08 at 8:08 PM. That's pretty sick.
Anyway, building up to this moment I've been very busy. I've actually, like I said before, become a Olympics tickets dealer, on a very small scale. I've bought tickets from people that are crazy and buy the tickets in bulk, making ridiculous amounts of money. This one guy we met, we'll call him Dannyclimber, since that's his account name on thebeijinger.com website (if you remember, its the Beijing craigslist). Dannyclimber, who we think might be gay, has so many tickets. We have gotten at least 6 from him as a group, and these tickets are to really good events, good finals events for prices cheaper than others out there. But he has weird conversations with my friend, who's been talking to him. He would be like, "Want to grab a bite when we meet to exchange tickets?" or call on Skype and talk casually instead of business saying, "What do you think of Skype? I think it's 'Hao Wanr'". Ohh too funny. Anyway, he pissed me off this morning because some tickets we had secured for a really good USA Basketball Men's game he sold to some other people, but I can understand I guess since they offered 700+ for each ticket. Greedy bastard.
Anyway, what happened in the end was that I was selling the tickets I was interested in initially. So to make long things short, I wanted to go to some events early on, only finding out that they were to the Women's only events...not as cool as I thought. So, I bought more because they were cheap tickets and good seats, only realizing these too were only Women's events. Losing hope I decided to put them up for sale. I did and got a million responses from people and was able to jack up the price two fold, making a profit and giving me enough money to bargain for good seats. Now, I have really good seats to a really good Finals Athletics game (this means track and field) and I only bought it for about $50, compared to the $300 it was really going for. $250 profit on the side for someone not serious about buying and selling tickets...not bad I would say.
But another funny side story about the ticket sales is that the people I finally agreed to sell to were people that knew each other. One woman buying my 8/15 tickets was the teacher to students that were buying 8/19 tickets and we met at the same place. Jeez, it was weird because we thought they were in cahoots to scam us. Anyway, the students were fine and paid us but the teacher was a BEEZY because she came to us and told us that she thought it was different, saying "What, I thought you were another guy selling 3 tickets for 400 each?" What a crazy request, these tickets that she was looking for were probably fake because nobody is selling that cheap, well unless they are fake, which I have encountered endless times. A good thing about some of the tickets that are being sold is that some, under a black light, have a China Olympic seal, which is really cool. I'll show you guys when you get back home. Anyway, we brought our price down from 1500 for the pair to 1350 because I'm just such a nice guy. I could have gotten more, but I was already out there and didn't want to deal with it anymore. Anyway, that small discrepancy was about $20 USD, so I thought it was not a big deal to risk not selling the tickets as a whole.
Aside from that entire ticket sale process, something else exciting has happened...
THE MEN'S USA OLYMPICS BASKETBALL TEAM IS HERE. THEY'RE HERE AT MY SCHOOL. Even though our school is ridiculously strict with an unusual amount of security, I was able to get some good shots in of some of the starters and key players. Let's see...I got a a picture of Lebron and DWade waving to me. A picture of Kobe, hiding behind a trainer. CP3, two pretty good pictures, and a bunch of pictures of Dwight Howard, Carmelo, Tayshaun, and others who weren't nice enough to look. I'll show you guys if you want.... :).
But I'm glad I decided to chase their bus and lose a sandal because I got to take nice pictures that no one else will have. It's because the time I got those pictures, the security was lower because they didn't anticipate all the US students coming to see their USA Basketball idols. I saw them entering, but when they were leaving practice (in the gym at our school that was specially made for them), some took a hidden entrance out, but this is even not accounting for the massive people blocks that the guards put up to keep the US students away. It was lame, but I'm glad I got my sweet pictures. I chased them one last time on their way out of our school and screamed DWADE, he looked at me and gave me a peace sign. Sweet. Too bad I couldn't get a good picture, their bus windows were tinted. Dream Team 2 Baby, they got the Kidd, how can they lose?
I think USA has a good chance to win it.
Just a small sample of what I got: Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh.
This dragon bush thing was pretty cool.
They almost closed us in the Summer Palace because we stayed past closing hours for the second half.
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