British Student .ca

The other night I passed by a TV showing the news on CTV (has the Olympic broadcasting rights) of how Britain is really hating on Vancouver and the Winter Olympics. They zoomed in on a small quote from the Guardian “…make these Games the worst in Olympic history“, so I thought it right to find the whole Vancouver Games are a disaster article and sum up the hate points it makes.

• A commemorative coin is being made for Alexandre Bilodeau, the first Canadian to win Olympic gold at home.
• Canadian politicians may be working overtime issuing congratulatory statements about medal-winning performances by home athletes.
• Vanoc (the organising committee) is pumping out tweets of “YAAAAYY! GOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD”
• Torrential rain had washed away snow, making it impossible to build spectator viewing areas that would be safe for the snowboarding events at Cypress Mountain.
• The transportation system, which some would call sporadic and others would describe as chaotic.
• The Premier of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, and the chiefs of the four host First Nations to miss the singing of the Canadian anthem at Friday’s opening ceremony.
• The hydraulics used to construct the torch bowl failed at the climax of the event.
• Questions about the safety of the luge sliding track after qualifying Georgian, Nodar Kumaritashvili, died the day of the Opening ceremonies.

Of all things, I don’t know why they’re complaining about the public transportation. The good old BBC have a much more upbeat article asking if London 2012 transport can succeed like Vancouver 2010 (link via The Buzzer). I’m so impressed, it reminds me of the hussle and bussle of a normal London day, with Vancouverites who are as friendly as a walk in the countryside. The whole set up is different to a UK city though. We don’t have specific ‘downtown’ centres and we don’t drive into them as much. Vancouver was ready for this amount of traffic, there are the lanes that can be used for special traffic. What might work is how large stretches of roads (Robson and Granville) are closed of to all traffic, and I’m constantly seeing Transit information staff/volunteers. London will do well if it encourages foreigners to walk about more to get home, some of our underground stations are much closer overground than by the escalators and station hallways below the streets.

Back to the Guardian article, and the main point Lawrence Donegan makes is that the 4,000 ticket holders for the Cypress snowboarding got turned away. Yeah that sucks, but the rather good UBC student paper, The Ubyssey, reports that it is a standing space area which became unsafe due to a foot of washed away snow. It still sucks, The Ubyssey puts the emphasis on those who bought tickets through friends of scalpers, as they won’t get their money back.

I laugh at the hydraulic failure of the opening ceremony myself. But let’s be fair, the other three supports of the torch worked. The wait built up excitement as I watched it, and all the pain was on one athlete that didn’t get to help light the torch that symbolised the coming together of four people required to light up glowing hearts(Vanoc will sue me for using their trademarked motto, which quotes the national anthem). The show was still pretty cool, with all the visual light effects and projections. The floating Bear made of stars freaked me out a bit, but I’m going to say I liked it now.

Last of all, what’s wrong with Vanoc tweeting excitement? I’m tweeting similar things, and it’s great reading tweets from the venue organisers to hear what’s happening and what’s really busy (sometimes with tips to get around it). I love joining in the cheering and chanting on the streets with my adopted country for this year, CAN-A-DA, CAN-A-DA, CAN-A-DA! Sometimes we chant other countries so everyone can have fun, and I’m learning parts of the anthem (only the English version for now).

My twitter list to follow for the Olympics is currently Team_GB(tweets results and the days upcoming events, with GMT times), richmondozone(I want to go there at least once with some 19+ friends), BC_GottaBeHere(high frequency of tweets but lots of good retweets about most venues inc. Robson Square), thebuzzer(from the eyes of transit/public transport, which you know I love), and GregoryMarler(oh, that’s me). Sadly I don’t have a cool phone here so I only tweet when in my room, but you can still catch where I’m about to leave for, plus I check the #olympics and #olympicfun tags to retweet what’s cool and happening. Who needs a $1000 event ticket to enjoy the two weeks, Eh?!