so that’s that

So that’s that. It’s all over now. Well, until the Paralympics. Don’t forget we still have the better part of a month before the official Olympic Period draws to an end.

Watched the closing ceremony last night with Roubaozi. lzh was too busy taking care of a cousin to see much of it. It was spectacular, in some ways even more so than the opening ceremony. Actually, I couldn’t help but wonder if Zhang Yimou had gotten the inspiration by dropping a shitload of acid and spent three days straight reading Dr Seuss and watching Tim Burton films. Well, no, I don’t subscribe to that rather shallow and pathetic school that holds that chemical stimulus is needed to spur the imagination, just that that’s how it looked, and that was cool and amazing and specactular.

And I’m really glad I wasn’t one of the four strapped to the two giant, floating drums.

London’s little segment was pathetic, though. Seriously, they have a hell of a lot of work to do to even come close to Zhang Yimou’s spectacle, and what they showed last night did not inspire confidence.  Well, Leona Lewis and Jimmy Page were cool, but that’s about it. Note to London: Stick to your good rock stars. And the good ones are generally all eligible for old age pensions, or very soon will be. Whatever talent may exist in the younger generations is mostly wasted on pathetic, mediocre whingeing.

But then we got back to Zhang Yimou’s spectacle and that was awesome. Still, when the ending came, just as with the opening ceremony, it was a bit of an anti-climax. And once again, we could hear the fireworks from here but could not see any (note: I have no idea where the fireworks we could hear were being fired from. My best guesses would be Yongdingmen or the badminton gymnasium).

And I do have to wonder how Rogge’s “truly exceptional games” is to be interpreted. Is he marking himself out from Samaranch?

Anyway, apart from that brief and pathetic London interlude (and what was it with Boris Johnson not shaking hands with his Chinese counterpart until they were just about off the playing field and back into the stands and Guo Jinlong came up to Boris hand outstretched?) , I thoroughly enjoyed the closing ceremony.

Well, there was one thing: After the last two weeks’ non-stop desperate search for something to bash China with, whether it was a real issue or totally meaningless, Roubaozi and I spent a fair bit of the ceremony trying to guess which sections the Western media were going to cry “Fake!” over. And are we going to be treated to more melodramatic over-interpretations of the presence of Chinese soldiers? Shit, it’s a soldier’s job to raise and lower flags on such grand occasions, there was nothing surprising or sinister in their presence in the opening ceremony, despite the overwrought rantings of some Western commentators, and the same applies to the closing ceremony. I have yet to read any review of the closing ceremony, so this paragraph is all purely speculation, but I will be interested to see….

So we get a short breather before the Paralympics. Well, in a quick run over to the office for some minor paper shuffling, I already noticed an easing of certain local security measures, so hopefully we get to relax, now, and slowly ease back into life as per normal. Even so, I’m sure September 21 will bring a huge collective sigh of relief- and a sudden jump in pollution levels, unfortunately. But you can’t win ’em all.