I’ve been wanting to blog for the past couple of days. But suddenly, I find myself swamped with a ton of work I didn’t see coming, and the prospect of leaving Melbourne as early as the last day of semester (ie the last week of October). Just thinking about it overwhelms me. Will I be able to sell my stuff in time? And so, if anyone needs anything, watch this page. I’ll be putting up a list for sale soon, hopefully.
The Olympic Games have come to an end. Of course I’m sad. What else am I going to watch all day everyday whether I’m really looking at the screen or yet another of my readings for the week?
I was most interested to watch the promotional video for Beijing 2008. I thought they did a good job, though I did find it funny that there was a Chinese kid who was wearing a t-shirt that said “Boston”. But I’m sure it was deliberate. An effort perhaps, to thwart any notions people might have of China as completely “un-westernized”, though honestly, why should that matter? Unless of course the notion of “westernized” is still as closely associated with “civilized” today, as it was like three to four hundred years ago. Which is fertile ground for a massive debate I shall start but not continue. Hmm… maybe I’m reading too much into this. All because of a t-shirt.
I haven’t heard the song “Mo Li Hua” (the only Chinese song they kept singing over and over and over, besides the national anthem) since my primary school days, whereby without fail, at least one person would sing it for the singing competition every year. But my reminiscing was rudely cut short when I saw the girls playing “er hu” (that small stringed instrument they play like a cello) in very, and I mean very, short “cheong sam”. Not to mention their swaying and dancing. Call me conservative – no one has ever called me that before – but was that really necessary? I thought it looked just a teeny bit weird, maybe because I’m used to seeing cheong sams which cover more than just the posterior, and maybe because I have a fleeting suspicion that not even the Singaporean government would allow that kind of attire on stage, never mind the Chinese one. And because I really know nothing about anything, I shall stifle my shouts of “Sell out!” and say, “perhaps it was an effort (again) to reflect open-ness on the part of the Chinese government.” You know, anything to bring the people to Beijing.
Having said all that, I am already excited about Beijing 2008. The emotion, the excitement, the inexplicable reason why I love these sporting events so much… Of course these will fade within the week, only to surface again somewhere closer to 2008, but the seed has been sown. 4 years is a heck of a long time. Who knows what we’ll all be doing in 2008? But when the Beijing Olympics finally come round, we will remember, or at least I will, what I was doing during Athens 2004 and gasp at how quickly time has flown and how much further on in life I’ve gotten.
And on a totally unrelated note, Selamat Belated Hari Merdeka. I remembered, though this blog entry comes a little late (read paragraph 1). I didn’t realize how long it’d been since I last heard our national anthem until I heard the Chinese one being played. I suspect it may have been high school, 1999.
