TUESDAY 08/26

-Woke up late, finally feeling rested. Calm soon turned into near-panic as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do for the next week between classes and the games. I felt the clock ticking and pressure to make the most of my time. After re-reading my ACC literature, I realized I didn’t really have time to travel anywhere and that helped limit my options.

-Called Alan, who agreed to help me find Capital University of Business and Economics (where ACC is located) and my dormitory within the University compound. We met at the Dawang Lu subway stop. The subway was intolerably hot and crowded, and I began to rethink my plan of using it to transport myself and my luggage from the Media Village to school.

-Alan showed me to the school, straight up to the ACC building, and gave me an introduction to the neighborhood as we walked. I wasn’t ready to meet anyone from ACC yet so we stopped just shy of the office. For lunch, Alan showed me to an impossible-to-find North Korean restaurant (there’s no sign, it’s located in a decaying building in a back alley off of a non-descript road) and we enjoyed bowls of the best Bibim-bap I’ve ever had in my life.

-Previously we were thinking of going to the Beijing Zoo, but Alan was meeting a friend for dinner and we were out of time. I followed him back to the newly-renovated Qianmen district where his hostel was. In the hostel, we had our hides tanned by a pair of Finnish guys in doubles game of pool, which wasn’t really that fun. I left Alan there and walked back through Tiananmen Square to the Line 1 subway. It was a miserably long, crowded ride home and by the time I got out of the subway at the Media Village it was dark and rainy. I met Brian again outside of the logistics office, but he was on his way to an office dinner.

-With nobody else around and nothing left to do, I went back to my room, packed, ate instant noodles for dinner, did laundry and watched “Mr. Right” on HBO. I also switched my cell phone into Chinese—the first step in my planned Total Immersion Regimen.

-That night we had crazy lightning and thunder unlike any I’ve ever heard before—abrupt, shredding groans instead of the low rumpling I’m accustomed to.

MONDAY 08/25

-Went into the IBC one last time. I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to Maria the night before. The whole research room was completely packed up into boxes—they really waste no time ‘striking the set,’ as it were.

-Ate breakfast and teared up watching the ‘closing credits’ on the commissary TV set (the Closing Ceremony had just finished airing in the States). Someone did a really good job putting those credits together—spectacularly beautiful scenery from around China and a lot of very moving moments from the Games. It was also cool to recognize so many of the names popping up along the side of the screen.

-Met up with Victor and former Changchun co-worker Alan, along with several of Victor’s friends, in Wangfujing for an astoundingly good hotpot meal. Alan was on his way to Sichuan but had a few days to stop over in Beijing.

-After lunch, Victor, Alan and I walked slowly through central Beijing to Jingshan park. Jingshan park is a small park directly to the north of the forbidden city. Most of the park is taken up by a mountain which was created with the dirt dug up while constructing the moat around the Forbidden city. From the top of this mountain you can get an astounding 360° vista of the city. We hung out on this mountaintop for a while, enjoying the perfect weather and the golden sunlight.

-Leaving Jingshan park, we caught a bus to a certain hutong a few minutes away. Victor, I realized, had quietly planned and led the entire day so I never had to worry about what I was doing next; for that I am extremely thankful to him.

-The hutong was an experience. I still don’t know quite what to think of it. It was an old, traditional Beijing hutong on the surface, but behind the doors and storefronts were campy boutiques, trendy art and clothing shops and coffee shops which somehow reminded me of the Beat Generation. We met up with Matt, one of the people with whom we’d had lunch (also an ACC graduate and a very accomplished Chinese speaker).

-Met up with some of the research room for dinner at Din Tai Fung, a world-famous chain of restaurants specializing in dumplings. Apparently they’re on the New York Times’ list of the world’s top ten restaurants. It was probably the nicest place I’d ever eaten in China. Victor did a great job ordering, and true to their reputation the restaurant delivered some mighty fine dumplings. I think this was also the first time I’d ever had real xiaolongbao (soup-filled dumplings).

-Bid Alan goodbye (at least until the next day) after dinner and went back to the Media Village with Victor, who had to collect his laundry. We hung out until his shuttle to the IBC arrived. Then we said our goodbyes and parted ways.

-Found Brian in the logistics office. After he got off work we spent a few hours sitting outside enjoying the weather and talking.

SUNDAY 08/24

-Last day of the O’s!

-A funny thing: one of the “pump-up” tracks played in the National Stadium was from the Ghost Recon soundtrack. I wonder if they actually acquired the license.

-Woke up early to see if I could catch indoor volleyball and handball. Ended up just having time to see handball, Russia vs. Poland. It’s a funny game. Here’s what gets me: soccer keepers have to defend a massive net from a ball that has been kicked at high velocity and potentially infinitely close range. Handball goalies have a considerably smaller net to defend, the ball is roughly the same size and goes slower, and attackers can’t get within a certain range of the net, and yet they still let in dozens more goals than their keeper counterparts. Hmm. . .

-Rushed to the bus to try to catch water polo. After a few minutes waiting for the bus in the blistering sun I decided to instead check out some of the sponsorship exhibitions. I trekked through the IBC to the side gate, only to watch them close and padlock it: Closing Ceremony access road restrictions were going into effect. Stymied, I decided I might as well just take a nap on the big leather couches in the lobby. When I arrived, the couches were already strewn with napping and resting journalists with not one seat left. Getting discouraged, I resolved to just go to the Lenovo internet café and check my email. Thankfully they had an open computer, or I might have flipped out.

-On my way out of the café I noticed one of the Olympic torches in a display case in the wall. I asked the attendant if I could take a picture of it. “Of course!” she said, then waited there expectantly while I withdrew my camera and took a few shots. Before I could even turn to leave, the attendant incredulously asked, “Well, don’t you want to hold it?!” I said, “Sure. . .” and withdrew the torch from the case. I stood there admiring it for a moment, hefting it, examining the flame-producing mechanism. The woman remained there staring expectantly. Sure enough, as I moved to put the torch back in its case, the woman interjected, “Well, don’t you want to have your picture taken with it? Out here in the hall?” That seemed like a good idea, and frankly I wasn’t about to disagree with this woman. So there I stood, feeling more than a little self conscious, holding an unlit Olympic torch aloft in a crowded internet café filled with cynical journalists.

-Funny things around the IBC: the entire cooking staff was Scottish, and they all spoke with heavy Scottish accents. And the Starbucks employees were literally the friendliest, most outgoing and happy people I have ever met in my entire life. And it wasn’t that superficial, bouncy, in-your-face kind of friendly—it was for real. Starbucks literally seemed to have combed Asia to find such uniquely friendly people, since the baristas were from such far-flung regions as Taiwan and Thailand.

-Just like with the Opening Ceremony, the task of making the Closing Ceremony scripts fell to the research runners, which of course meant that one again, I knew the whole show ahead of time. I also got the print out our very last start lists and results, which was satisfying—most of the time my shift carried me through until half or three quarters of the day’s games were over, so I had to print all day but never got the satisfaction of actually finishing. This time, it was I alone who got to scrawl the “DONE” in big, highlighter letters across our printing schedule.

-The Closing Ceremony was, in this man’s humble opinion, terrible compared to the Opening. The artistic bit was cool but obviously could never exceed the Opening and just felt like more of the same. The speeches were interminable; watching the torch die was depressing. We all had a good laugh when Boris Johnson, mayor of London, came onstage looking completely disheveled and clueless.

-After my shift and the end of the Ceremony, a number of us found our way to the café on the rooftop of the Main Press Center. I hung around for a bit but was altogether too tired to be much fun, so I took my leave.

-On my way out the door, I had the random afterthought of jumping on a computer in the internet café. Once there, I jumped on Skype, took a leap of faith that my phone could call internationally, correctly guessed which combination of numbers would get me dialed out of the country, and called home. By some chance, my whole family was home at the same time and could access Skype almost instantaneously. It was the first time I’d spoken with them since I’d left for China and it was great.

-Went home and fell asleep mid-sentence while writing this journal entry.

SATURDAY 08/23

-It was a beautiful, sunny day, which I got to experience for about 35 seconds during my walk from the air conditioned media bus into the air conditioned IBC.

-Our task for the morning was printing names onto the BOCOG-issued Certificates of Thanks for all the researchers. At first we had only an exact number of certificates so there was no room for error, and if I sound too excited about that then you’re starting to get a sense of just how adrenaline-deprived we were for the last few days.

-Saw Mary Carillo and Brian Williams, completing my NBC Talent Sightings checklist.

-My tour of the IBC with Tong got called off—apparently her employers were busy.

-The first researchers were beginning to leave, which was sad. Things were finally coming to an end.

-Went to the Water Cube after work and met Victor. We watched the last round of the men’s 10m platform diving (guys, that’s really high. Like, three stories high) and the medal ceremony. The winner was a dark horse, an Australian, and seeing how genuinely happy he was to win that medal was truly heartwarming. Really, I’ve seen less joy in a child’s eyes on Christmas morning. All the other athletes I’d watched take the podium seemed happy alright, but this Matthew Mitcham was just beaming.

FRIDAY 08/21

-Covered an earlier shift again. It works for me: I don’t mind getting up early, and having evenings free means I get to see more events.

-Games were really winding down—we were averaging 2.5 events/hour that needed printing, which made for a very slow day.

-Spent about 2 hours writing my opinions of the Opening Ceremony ‘scandals’ on my new Tumblog. I had picked up a stomach bug and was feeling a bit low.

-In the afternoon a writer came in and had me make a bajillion copies of various closing ceremony-related packets. It ended up being a backbreaking 3-hour technological nightmare, the details of which you shall be spared.

-At 7:30 I met with Tong and her friend to arrange some guest passes for her and her employer to come tour the IBC. I figured it was the least I could do after she showed me around USA house.

-Brian and I headed out to the basketball venue. We caught the tail end of the Spain-Lithuania semifinal. The place was packed, and we squeezed onto the stairs to watch the US-Argentina semifinal.

I don’t really follow basketball, but it was still cool to see all these big names in basketball—Bryant, James, Wade—playing together. The entire time I wanted to yell “Kobe!” after Kobe made a basket, but his shooting game was way off and I never got the chance.

-At one point a guy from the commentator booths came out and tried clearing away the forty or so people sitting on the steps. At first I tried ignoring him, but for some reason he singled me out to pick on. He claimed that commentators were complaining that we were blocking their view. I’m certainly not one to stop people from doing their jobs, but there was no way I was blocking anyone’s view—I was on the lowest step, behind a wall, whereas most of the people were sitting above me. I calmly and firmly argued my cause—I’m not blocking anyone’s view, so I’m not moving. The guy kept at it for a while but he realized he wasn’t getting anywhere and he didn’t really have a leg to stand on. He eventually backed down, but not before shooting me an oh-so-hateful stare. I was nervous for about five minutes after that, worried he was coming back with help, but I soon relaxed. The reason I even mention this incident: I haven’t been bullied since middle school, and it’s nice to know that I can still stick up for myself.

-It was a rough game with lots of penalties (though whether that’s typical for a basketball game, I don’t know). Somehow the Redeem Team’s fans were vastly outnumbered by fans of Argentina; I had heard that many Chinese were huge fans of American basketball, but if that’s true it certainly didn’t show. The Argentina fans were being obnoxious, too, loudly booing the US during free throws and cheering at American penalties and gaffs. Between the poor sportsmanship and the discomfort of sitting on concrete stairs, Brian and I decided to peace halfway through the game. The US eventually won.

THURSDAY 08/21

-Slow day. I came in early to cover for a runner who was working off-site at BMX, but it got rained out. The rain was so heavy that my shoes got drenched on the way in, and I spent most of the day padding around the research room in my socks.

-Watched Modern Pentathlon with mild amusement. For the show jumping part of the event, horses are assigned by random lottery, and a few of the horses were extremely naughty and either refused to jump or threw their riders.

-Met Brian for dinner in the commissary and decided to go watch the women’s soccer gold medal match, USA vs. Brazil. The game was awesome. It was nil-nil the entire way through, and it seemed impossible that Brazil didn’t manage to score—their ball-handling made the US team look like they were in middle school, and the US spent most of the game desperately playing defense. In the first overtime, the US took one lucky shot that went in, then fended off the vicious Brazilian counter-attacks for the remaining 25 minutes. Some amazing saves by Hope Solo. Stuck around for the medal ceremony and heard the US national anthem for the first time in person.

WEDNESDAY 08/20

-Dick Ebersol came around in the morning handing out NBC pins.

-Funny things from around the IBC: sign over a bucket reading, “Please drop dead, batteries here.”

-Set up a Tumblog (a few of the RSS feeds I now read have opened my eyes to Web 2.0). Unfortunately I can’t access it from the restricted internet in my dorm.

-After work, I went by the set of the Today Show and watched for a bit.

-Then went to the Bird’s Nest and met up with Janique and Stacey to watch Usain Bolt win the Men’s 200m.

-After the race, Janique and I headed over to the Heineken House, a club that had been set up in the Beijing Agricultural Exhibition Center. It was actually more of a concert experience than a club, and hundreds of orange-clad Dutch thronged a floor beneath the stage where a band was playing. After a few minutes of that, we went outside and hung out with some other NBC folks until the club closed at around 2.

TUESDAY 08/19

-A very good day. Received a compliment on my marathon information packets as soon as I walked in the and it was only uphill from there.

-All the sports were stacked in the afternoon, so I had a very light morning. I used it to listen to Chinese Pod, practice characters and catch up on some important emails. I was feeling the end of the Olympics draw near and I spent some time contemplating how, exactly, I wanted to use my last few days.

-After work, I got on a buss to the Argentina vs. Brazil soccer semifinal. The place was packed, and all the volunteers—usually infinitely patient and good-natured—were clearly at their wit’s end dealing with the throngs of hurried and self-important media types pouring in. I somehow managed to find my friend Janique in the stands (she texted me incredibly detailed directions). I cherry-picked the most exciting part of the game, sitting down just in time to watch Argentina score two crushing goals against Brazil.

-Unfortunatly, I only got to see a few minutes of the game, as I had planned to meet Tong outside the stadium. My disappointment was short-lived, however, as Tong brought me to the [normally off-limits] athletes section of the extravagant USA house, a posh club where US athletes and their families can go to relax. Tong was working with US Wrestling Team, who were celebrating the gold-medal victory of their 55kg contender Henry Cejudo. I met some really nice people and I got to hold and admire Mr. Cejudo’s medal—very cool. Don’t know when I’ll be that close to a gold medal again. Tong showed me her extremely impressive collection of Olympic pins and hooked me up with a dozen freebie pins from USA House so I could begin trading, too. After helping some guys find a cab, she then gave me a complete tour of USA House, from the rooftop club to the basement boutique.

-Shortly thereafter I headed home, catching busses to the IBC and then to the MV, and went to bed exhausted.

MONDAY 08/18

-Phelps was in the IBC for an interview (he had just won his eighth gold) but I didn’t get to see him. Instead, I watched his interview on the live feed. I thought he did a pretty good job and was quite articulate.

-Watched in shock and dismay as Liu Xiang DNF’d his heat for the 110m hurdles. Again, it was awesome to be watching the live, uncut feed because I could tell something was wrong long before Liu took the field. Backstage, Liu was hobbling around, halfheartedly doing stretches, then occasionally standing up and pacing in frustration and despair. The broadcasters’ banter confirmed there was something wrong. In Athens, Liu Xiang became the first Asian man to win any track & field event. He became an overnight celebrity in China and the 110m hurdles final was expected to be the most-watched television event in Chinese history. Today, he must have known that he couldn’t run, and any other athlete might just not have shown up, but he had to show that he was at least trying for all of his millions upon millions of fans. I watched as he false-started, the tore the number off his leg and hobbled off the field. I’m told the stadium went dead quiet, and within a few minutes it had become nearly empty—with no Liu Xiang, people just left. The feed I was watching followed Liu as he limped down a side hallway, collapsed against a wall, and just sat there with a blank, disbelieving expression on his face. And there he sat, waiting for the fallout and no doubt feeling the disappointment of his country, his sponsors, his hordes of adoring fans, and himself. He seems like a very sensitive person—when he couldn’t run in New York earlier this year, he’d wanted to get on the microphone and apologize to all the Chinese fans who had come to see him—so this must have been devastating. What surprised me most is how alone he was; the entire time I was watching, nobody was there to help him. No doctors, no coaches, nobody to assist him or comfort him. I wondered what China’s reaction would be—anger? disappointment? encouragement?

-After a frenzied morning, things began to settle down in the afternoon. Week two had begun, and with it came a lot of the more off-beat or untraditional sports like synchronized swimming and BMX, hammer throw and modern pentathlon, water polo and show jumping.

SUNDAY 08/17

-As planned, I woke up at 7 with the intention of being on the subway at 8. Succeeded all too well and was at our planned meeting spot at 北土城, leaving me with forty-five minutes to kill.

-To pass the time I first went to find the media entrance to the subway, since it had moved since I was last there and I didn’t want to be late for work. Who should I run into but Ted, an old acquaintance from the days when I went to the youth group at my church. I knew he was in Beijing working for CCTV and we had been in touch on Facebook, but it didn’t make it any less surprising to run into him. He was on his way to see a handball match, so I let him go.

-Having found the media entrance, I went to explore places where Libbie and I could hang out. Directly across the street was a long park with a stream running through the middle. It had started to drizzle when I came upon an old, traditional-style house that I presumed was part of the park. I asked an attendant if I could go in and look around. He consented. Slowly, I walked around an old, moss-covered courtyard, admiring the ornate woodwork, the detailed painting, the tranquility of the rain falling on the stone. I sat down beneath an overhang and smiled at the beauty of it all. “How picturesque and Chinese!” I thought. “This will make the perfect place for Libbie and I to sit and catch up. And look, more quaint still, here comes the attendant with a caged bird!” The attendant took the birdcage and hung it on a hook behind me. Not five seconds later, the tranquility of the courtyard was obliterated by the loudest, sharpest and most shearing sound I have ever had the misfortune of hearing. I practically leapt out of my skin twisting around to see where the noise had come from, to quickly realize that it was the bird. It squawked again. The noise was intolerable. Another thirty seconds of trying to endure the noise and I was on my way out.

-Libbie and I finally did meet, after a miscommunication about which subway exit we were meeting at, exacerbated by the fact that all the nearby roads were closed for the women’s marathon. We walked back and forth through the park and talked.

-At 10:30 I headed back to the IBC for work at 11. Libbie really wanted to see where I worked. Much to my surprise we were able to hustle her through the media entrance without any sort of identification by pretending she was my cousin. We tried the same trick again at the IBC with less success. I was cutting it close with work, so we parted ways and Libbie went to explore the Green a bit before going home.

-Today was our medal-heaviest day: 35 gold medals were being awarded. I saw, for the first of what would be many times, Bela Karolyi, hanging out with one of our gymnastics researchers.

-After work I bolted to the Water Cube to see rounds 3.5 through 5 women’s 3m springboard diving. This time I put my camera away and enjoyed it as a sporting event.

Again, Guo Jingjing won. Supposedly we were witness to her career final dive—she announced plans to retire after this Olympics—but we’ll see if they let her quit. Both she and Wu Minxia take respectful bows to the spectators after each dive. I stuck around to watch my first medal ceremony. China took gold and bronze, Russia took silver.

SATURDAY 08/16

-An awesome day that began the way of so many other days: getting shut out of yet another swimming event. I should have known I didn’t have a chance, as there were four gold medals being awarded that morning (including Phelps’ controversial seventh gold which he won by 1/100th of a second). Nothing else was going on locally, so I went to the IBC and had a leisurely breakfast and watched the swimming on TV.

-Several cool things at work. Most notably, Canada won its first gold medal. In honor of Marc, our resident Canadian, we put together a rather involved medal ceremony that was perhaps on par with even the Opening Ceremony. All work in the research room stopped while we prepared for Marc’s entrance at 5 pm. A shrine to famous Canadians was constructed along one wall, topped by a full-page color printout of Dudley Do-Right. Somebody produced a Canadian flag, and Cory devised an ingenious way of hoisting out of a drawer and up to the ceiling using string and paper clips. A selection committee found a suitable music video to the Canadian national anthem on Youtube, and Maria had me distribute print-outs of the lyrics. I also managed to get a flashlight from Production Logistics (they have everything back there) for a spotlight. Thus, when Marc walked in the door, he was greeted by all of this: a dozen researchers (and a few Canadians from other departments) belting out the Canadian anthem to music while the spot-lit flag rose majestically towards the ceiling. Marc made an admirable off-the-cuff acceptance speech.

-I got to do some actual research today, too. The commentators needed more information on the women’s marathoners. I found out the top 15 competitors and used a combination of NBC databases, interviews, articles, etc. to put together packets of information about each of them. I was later told that the information was well-received and useful. So there you go, my little contribution to Olympic coverage (well, that and the packets I made for the Men’s marathon a few days later).

-After work I sprinted to women’s 3m diving semifinals, just in time to see Wu Minxia and Guo Jingjing take their final dives. Guo won the round handily, to nobody’s surprise. I was extremely frustrated with myself—the dives happen so fast, and I feel like I wasn’t fully in the moment because I was trying to take pictures at the same time. Fortunately, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I would have a chance to redeem myself at the finals.

-On my way out of the Water Cube I was accosted by Brian. We made our way over to the Bird’s nest and got in with no trouble. Getting into venues when it’s not primetime is much easier.

-We watched a few Women’s Heptathalon 800m races, which were mildly entertaining (not least for the many beautiful women in track outfits). One touching scene: a Chinese racer came in second to last. Most of the other racers had fallen to the ground in exhaustion, but this Chinese girl went up to each of them one by one, congratulated or comforted them and helped them to their feet. It was extremely sweet and gracious.

-The marquee event was the men’s 100m final, the competition to decide the world’s fastest man. Usain Bolt of course won it handily in his signature gold shoes, and probably could have knocked another few hundredths of a second off his score if he hadn’t started celebrating before he crossed the finish line. For 9.69 seconds of running, Mr. Bolt then enjoyed about of hour and twenty minutes of victory laps and interviews. On the one hand it struck me as unsportsmanlike to draw as much attention to himself as Bolt did, but on the other hand, that was probably the peak moment of his entire life right there. The body can’t stay at that level of performance for very long, and it’s unlikely he’ll gain such fame for anything besides running so it makes sense to milk the fame for all it’s worth while you have it. To get out of the stadium the athletes must march past rows and rows of press boxes containing reporters and cameramen and do interviews. Brian and I stuck around to watch him pass ten feet in front of us.

-After Bolt left Brian and I went upstairs to see the views and check out more of the architecture. Got back home very late considering that I was waking up at 7 the next day.

FRIDAY 08/15

-Woke up early, only to be shut out once again from the swimming. The big swimming events are during prime time, so the media section is always packed. In order to get in, you needed a special green ticket (which I of course did not have).

-Instead, I finally got into the Bird’s Nest (which had also been on high-security lockdown since before the opening ceremony). Needless to say, it was extremely cool to finally be inside. I blundered my way around until I found the press section. I was rewarded with getting to watch Tyson Gay win his 100m sprint heat.

-Work continued to go smoothly. Mark and I have made a habit of watching the shooting events together; Jeff and I watch gymnastics. I had a good conversation with Monica at lunch and learned that she was on the US National Crew team and spoke some Chinese. -It was a pretty huge day in terms of important events. Individual all-around gymnastics was the headliner: Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson took Gold and Silver for the US and Yang Yilin snagged bronze for China. Phelps won his sixth gold; Lopez Lomond and Tyson Gay ran more heats. Matt Emmons missed gold once again, placing 2nd in prone rifle, and Du Li redeemed her earlier loss by taking gold in 50m rifle.

-Probably the most exciting part of an already-exciting day: I chose the right time to walk down the hall. First, I had my first glimpse of Bob Costas—it’s always fun to see how different people look on TV and in real life. Not five seconds later, though, I see a crowd gathering around the Green Room at the end of the hall. The crowd parts a bit, and there is Nastia Liukin, waiting for an interview. I’m walking briskly and as I round the corner I nearly trip over Shawn Johnson, getting a hug from one of her many enthusiastic supporters. She looked up, looked me straight in the eyes, and smiled. I smiled back but kept walking.

-After work I called Tong, one of the Chinese graduate students I had met at Tufts through my Chinese practice partner Ningyu. We set up a time and a place to meet. I then set off to meet Colton again at Peking University. Making clever use of the Media Transport busses, I got myself a free ride to the Peking U campus (where the table tennis hall is located), and in the mean time got some Chiense practice and made friends with Lucy, the bus attendant. We agreed to meet in the future to practice speaking.

-Maybe I just imagined it, but as I walked across the Beida campus I couldn’t help but notice that it has a very Harvard-like feel to it. I did some people-watching while waiting for Colton at the south gate.

-We hopped in a cab to Wudaokou and found a real Chinese restaurant. We ordered a few delicious dishes and had a much less hurried conversation than the last time we met.

-Parted ways with Colton at the table tennis security checkpoint, and had an uneventful trip home.

THURSDAY 08/14

-Work was work—nothing eventful.

-After my shift I met Victor, one of the researchers. We strolled across the Olympic Green, admiring the stadiums, the lights, the fountains and the crowds of people. We walked out past the Crowne Plaza to a hot pot restaurant and had a veritable. It was my first real Chinese meal since arriving in Beijing, and it was the first real Chinese hotpot I’d had in more than a year. God how I’d missed that meal. We had a wonderful conversation and it was clear to me that I had found a good friend.

WEDNESDAY 08/13

-Spent the morning catching up our results and start lists.

-After that, a relatively easy afternoon. Had some bonding time with Cory, listened to some Chinese Pod and kept up the books.

-Because I had come in early, I also got to leave early. At 7 I got off my shift and Brian and I went out to watch some events. First, we hopped on the bus to Badminton. It was awesome. We watched a lively men’s doubles quarterfinal match between Poland and Denmark (the Danes won). There was a short break during which some cheerleaders appeared and danced around uncoordinatedly with people in Fuwa costumes. After that came women’s singles. This was a crazy match, the world’s #1 ranked female badminton player Xie Xingfang versus Germany’s top seed Xu Huaiwen (also of Chinese descent). Their styles were complete opposites of one another: Xie was tall, bamboo-thin and arrogant, with fast, whippy strokes. Xu was a shorter, stockier woman who was deceivingly fast and finessed, but who seemed to win points by sheer force of will and earnestness. You could see her panting after each point, where as Xie showed no visible signs of distress. Despite this, they were matched almost perfectly, and they chased each other point for point for two long games. Both games went the exact same way: the German would take a six or seven point lead early on. The crowd would begin to cheer anxiously for Xie, and she would catch up point by point. Xie would wear down Xu with long rallies—once a rally lasted more than ten hits or so, Germany inevitably got nervous and gave up the point. At around 16 or 17 points, China would tie it up, then pull ahead. Then Germany would tie and pull ahead again. At the last minute, Xie would pull ahead and take victory. It was really fun to watch and it made me understand why badminton players can acquire rock star status in China.

-After badminton we hopped in a cab to Chaoyang Park, where the Beach Volleyball venue was located. We got out at the wrong entrance and had to walk the entire length of the park to get to the stadium. Still, it was cool to see the park. When we got there, the US (Branagh-Youngs) was playing Cuba. Disappointingly, the Chinese were rooting for their Communist brethren. At most games, the Chinese crowds are guns for hire (I heard that at one game a solitary Russian had stood up and orchestrated an entire section to cheer for his team), but here they had a clear preference. Also, if there’s one downside to sitting in the press section, it’s that nobody claps or cheers. I wanted to be across the way with the crazy face-painting, flag-waving American crowds. We watched the US dominate the second half of their first game, then get destroyed by Cuba in game two. Brian and I were both exhausted and decided to leave (apparently the US came back and won the match in the third game).

-We took the shuttle back to the IBC and indulged in bacon cheeseburgers from the commissary. Then back to the MV, and bed.

TUESDAY 08/12

-Tried to get into swimming again to see Phelps, but again got shut out. Instead I went to go see men’s sabre preliminaries.

-Work went extraordinarily smoothly as we got our system down perfectly. I continued my goal of being productive during downtimes by listening to Chinese Pod.

-After work I met up with some of my sound technician friends at some outdoor tables at the MV. By the end of the evening we were having a heated discussion about the ethics of cultural assimilation and the meaning of democracy. I have more questions and more ignorance about the topic than I expected. Then again, it’s the kind of topic where disagreements usually come down to opinion rather than to logic and the only way to find an “objective” answer is to take a poll.

-Got to bed early since I had to come in a little earlier the next day in order to cover one of my fellow runner’s shifts while he working at a different venue.

MONDAY 08/11

-My journal entry for today started normally, but seems to have completely disappeared after the first paragraph. Bizarre.

SUNDAY 08/10

-I resolved to make this a better day. I awoke in time to go in and see an event. I got shut out of the Water Cube, where Phelps was about to win his first gold medal, because George Bush was in attendance and security was extra-tight.

-Instead I headed over to the National Indoor Stadium, where the Chinese gymnastics team was having its qualifying round. The whole time I was sitting there I couldn’t get over how young the girls were (underage or not—they’re still young) and how much pressure they’re under. Especially for the Chinese athletes, when they fail, they not only fail at their event, they fail at the only thing they’ve ever done in their entire life, and they fail their whole country. It’s clearly not healthy: just look at Du Li, the markswoman who was expected to win China’s first gold but who ended up choking and coming in fifth.

-Went to work and finally put together what would become our authoritative system for printing and sending documents. That was a huge relief, and it gave me something to do every morning when I first came in so I could get started right away.

-Now that I knew exactly when I had to get up to print things, I had some time on my hands. I replied to some emails, caught up my Facebook, read the news and watched Olympic events on WinTV, the buggiest and least reliable piece of software I have ever had the misfortune of using. I realized that I should find some sort of regular, self-improving activity to do during these blocks of time between events and began brainstorming.

-After work I reluctantly headed back to do laundry. I was feeling mentally restless and I decided I needed to find some kind of creative release. I ended up sitting in bed and writing for a few hours—the outline and the first few scenes for a series I want to make. It felt great, and it was just what I needed.

SATURDAY 08/09

-On Friday, I tried to brace myself to prepare for a post-Ceremony let-down. And on Saturday, sure enough, it came. Work was frustrating: for the first (and pretty much only) time, the hours were dragging by. We still hadn’t worked out a good system for keeping track of what needed to be printed and sent to New York, so all day I was going crazy checking and re-checking the database for start lists and results. It wasn’t stimulating, it wasn’t gratifying; just panicked and frustrating.

-Spent the evening by myself and went to bed early.

FRIDAY 08/08

-FIRST DAY OF THE OLYMPICS!!!

-Chatted with my friend Brian down in Logistics, checked email, then headed to work. Grooved out to some Daft Punk (Human After All) and some Ratatat (Mirando, Party & Bullshit) on the way over.

-The research room was hopping. There were dozens of scripts to be made for the Parade of Nations. We were burning through printer paper so fast that the girls in Production Logistics were getting accustomed to me coming in and asking for inordinate amounts of it. This time, they basically just pointed out the hand truck and told me to go at it. -Ran an errand down to BOB (Beijing Olympic Broadcasting, the ‘host feed’ that has cameras at every single event and venue) and got to see their very cool control room. They have glass-backed rooms so you can see what’s going on. The place is basically a giant wall of TV monitors with every single feed from the games coming in. Also saw Jim Lampley twice (the talent, as they are called, are always easy to spot since they’re the only ones who wear suits).

-Had a lovely conversation with my boss, Maria, while we furiously taped athlete bios to index cards for Matt Lauer and Bob Costas for the Parade of Nations that night.

-Things started to calm down around 4 PM. With the lull, I grabbed myself an iced coffee and went to stretch my legs. I was shocked to see that the sun was still in the sky—for some reason, as soon as I entered the windowless IBC, I would immediately begin to assume that it was dark out.

-At 6 PM I was given the task of delivering Parade of Nations scripts to some of NBC’s big names. In this way I caught my first glimpse of big boss Dick Ebersol, as well as getting to see the inside of Control Room A, which (I believe) is where the producers sit during showtime. Like the BOB control room, the front wall of Control A is all TV screens. There are three tiers platforms with workstations on the floor facing the screens. The back wall is made of glass and allows you to see straight onto the NBC studio set.

-Delicious dinner—New York strip steak with some kind of onion gravy.

-Took care of a few final tasks after dinner. At quarter of 8, I went to the commissary and got myself a cookie and a mocha espresso. Then I pulled a chair up to the research room TV set and watched.

-The Opening Ceremony was truly unforgettable and I watched it in a near-stupor, transfixed. I was feeling China’s pride and getting very emotional. It was extremely painful to have to watch it on a tiny TV screen knowing that just a few hundred meters away it was happening live. The room was nearly empty since most of the researchers had been recruited as ‘spotters’ in the Parade of Nations staging area, making note of which athletes would be participating and reporting it to the appropriate people.

-It was really fun to get to read along with the script—I knew what was coming, what was going to be said, when to run outside to see fireworks. The best part, perhaps, was getting to hear the banter between Lauer and Costas during the ‘ad breaks’ (obviously there were no ads yet, since it was being taped).

-At the end of the ceremony I ran outside to watch the fireworks display. It was a heck of a show, with ‘works going off all along the north-south axis of the city. At one point there were so many explosions that the ground was literally trembling. Of course, I’m hard to impress, having witnessed the over-the-top month-long fireworks display that is Chinese New Year.

-Since we knew the media busses would be mobbed, Brian and I went back inside to the research room to bide some time. We watched a slo-mo replay of Li Ning’s flying stunt and saw that he’d received a bit of a jolt while transferring from his “elevation” wires to his “running” wires.

-Ran into Matt Lauer in the hallway on the way out and introduced myself. We chatted for a minute, but he was clearly very busy so I quickly took my leave.

-On the way out of the IBC, Brian recognized a cameraman whom he had met previously (between working at Logistics and the Today Show, Brian knows pretty much everybody). I was feeling particularly outgoing and I decided to strike up a conversation. I wanted to know what it was like actually being there in person at the ceremony. As we walked out of the IBC, it became clear that it was going to be a long ride home—hundreds of people were flooding out of the IBC and packing into the media busses. I must have been grumbling about it because the next thing we knew, this cameraman and his friend had invited us to ride with them on their private van back to the Media Village.

–So, while we sped past long lines of busses jam-packed—standing room only—with world-class athletes just trying to get home after a long Opening Ceremony in our private, air-conditioned van, I smiled.

-Back in my apartment I cleaned up, then stayed up until 4 AM recording the events of the day.

THURSDAY 08/07

-I woke up having had strange dreams. My head was heavy and my bed was comfortable, and I found it nearly impossible to drag myself to my feet.

-Finally forcing myself awake I went and ate breakfast at the MV cafeteria. Then went to Lotus, a nearby supermarket, and bought some instant noodles and some drinks. The ashier was clearly having a bad day: she rung me up impatiently and left me standing at the end of the counter with no way of carrying my groceries home. I asked her if they didn’t have plastic bags. With nothing short of hatred in her eyes, she stuck out her palm for the 2 mao bag charge, then reached under the counter and threw a plastic bag at me. I was a little shaken and extremely put off to have such a needlessly hostile encounter so early in the morning

the Media Village

-A busy day at work—more kinks to work out of our scanning/filing system, some of our competition schedules were outdated and needed re-doing. Midway through all this, our Beach Volleyball researcher dispatched me to the beach volleyball venue to pick up press kits. I was excited—my first chance as a runner to actually run somewhere. I hurried off.

-My momentum was killed when I learned that the next bus for beach volley didn’t leave for half an hour. This ended up being great: I had a captive audience with whom to practice Chinese. I chatted with the bus driver while we waited for departure time, then talked to the bus attendant on the trip over. -At the venue, I spent 15 minutes trying to find someone who would know about media kits. I finally found the FIVB Press Liaison, who informed me that all of the kits were currently being held up in customs. I reported this back to the research room, got the guy’s phone number and picked up all the other literature I could.

-Having 45 minutes to kill before the next bus left, I decided to go check out the venue. On my way over I had my first brush with a Rabid Pin-Trader. Let me explain: everyone affiliated in any way with the Olympics gets a big, yellow identification card from BOCOG which one wears around the neck on a yellow lanyard. Some people like to decorate their lanyards with pins; for example, many people who have worked with NBC in previous games wear their official NBC pins from Athens, Sydney, Torino, etc. Some people take this game a little further and will obsessively hunt down every single Olympic pin they can find. Their lanyards look like steel girdles, weigh twenty pounds and can be heard jingling from hundreds of meters away. Truly serious collectors will also carry cloth wallets stuffed with all the hundreds of pins they can’t fit around their necks. Anyway, lots of TV stations, newspapers, sponsor companies, athletic delegations, etc. give away free pins to their employees, so the best way to get other people’s pins is to trade your freebies for someone else’s rarer, more valuable pins. This not only creates a fascinating marketplace, but gives rise to a ruthless social culture. Anyone wearing a pin on their lanyard runs the risk of being accosted, sometimes forcibly, by a total stranger and asked to trade. I’ve been stopped by a collector who put himself bodily between me and the bathroom door so I couldn’t escape. I’ve been riding the subway and have people lean in so close to my lanyard that their noses were practically touching my chest. Today, at the beach volleyball venue, I only had one pin (which I wasn’t willing to trade), so upon realizing what my assailant was after I made my hasty getaway and hurried inside the stadium.

-The inside of the venue was very cool, and I resolved to come back and watch a game. I’d heard that the beach volleyball venue in particular acquired a “party” atmosphere at other Games and I wanted to see what that actually meant.

-Same bus driver, same attendant on the way home, only all of a sudden the Chinese-speaking part of my brain had decided to throw up its arms in exhaustion. Within the space of a few minutes I suddenly found myself incapable of stringing together even the most basic sentences and listening to complete gibberish.

-I didn’t get back to the office until 5:30, at which point I got another treat: we were making photocopies of the Opening Ceremony script for all the talent. In addition to knowing what the broadcasters were going to be saying 24 hours before pretty much anyone else in the world, it was also neat knowing that the binders I was putting together were going to put into Matt Lauer’s and Bob Costa’s hands, then read to tens of million of viewers. This perfectly encapsulates the nature of my job with NBC Olympics: yes, I was making photocopies, but they were Dick Ebersol’s photocopies, and when I was done making them

I could go watch Usain Bolt run the 100 meter. -After work I hopped in a cab to Dongzhimen, where I met up with none other than John Speed, one of my Chinese [language] classmates from Tufts. He, by complete coincidence, was rooming with one of my Chinese language classmates from Exeter.

We caught up over dinner—he was in Beijing with China Care and had been doing all kinds of interesting things on the side, such as exploring Beijing and being hired to test the English language abilities of bank tellers before the Olympics. For some reason it was nearly impossible to find a cab, so we split a ride home.

WEDNESDAY 08/06

WEDNESDAY 08/06 -Today was the first day of sporting events with the beginning of women’s soccer prelims. One of the runners’ main responsibilities was to print out start lists for games and send them via scanner to New York, since a handful of games were being called live from 30 Rock. We also were responsible for printing results for every competition and filing them in binders so the research room had hard copies/archives. Thus, having a few days of soccer prelims gave us a chance to develop and test our organizational systems and get the kinks out before the more hectic days came along. The difficult part wasn’t the printing or the scanning, but keeping track of the starting, ending and start list posting times of 30 different events and getting information to get to New York within a few minutes of its availability. At the peak of the Games we might have 70-80 competition starts or results coming out in a single day, or 20-30 medals awarded.

-Before I go on, I guess I should explain what the “research room” actually does and how it works: The room is open 24-7 and staffed by a few dozen researchers, each working 12-hour shifts and each of whom is required to be an expert in certain sports. The researchers sit down at the computer workstations on the floor. Then, there are several people up on the raised part of the room (befittingly called the ‘platform’). The platform has a radio panel that allows a variety of writers and producers to be in direct communication with the research room. When a call comes in over the radio for information, the platform directs the question to the appropriate researcher, who then comes up with an answer as quickly as possible and tells the platformer, who in turn feeds the info back to the writer or producer. During downtime between their sports, the researchers try to preempt any possible information requests—if Croatia wins this handball preliminary and has to face Poland, when was the last time that match-up occurred and who won?— in an attempt to achieve coveted “negative split.”

-After returning from work I wasn’t quite ready for bed, so I decided to go for a long walk. I was trying to find any place open that sold food—a convenience store, perhaps, or a restaurant, or a street grill. But everything around was dead, save for a 24-hour McDonalds. I couldn’t bring myself to go in, so I returned to the Media Village and resolved to buy myself some snacks as soon as possible.

TUESDAY 08/05

-I was working a later-than-usual shift today because all of the school-program runners had a big banquet dinner at the Crowne Plaza. That meant I didn’t have work until 3 PM.

-I got myself up at a reasonable time, ate, then hopped on a subway to the Lama Temple. It was a pretty cool place—lots of creepy ornate Buddha’s and incense cauldrons throughout. I was in a reflective mood and I spent a long time just watching people pray—lighting incense, standing before a steaming cauldron, bowing to the cardinal directions or kneeling and placing their foreheads on the ground. Everyone had a slightly different style of prayer: some held the arms out straight and upraised; some bent the elbows and kept the hands flat together. Some people bowed deeply from the waist; some nodded their heads instead. The youngest one there was probably five years old and the oldest perhaps ninety-five. I’ve never really understood prayer and I have a lot of questions about it, so watching these people gave me plenty of food for thought.

-At the subway transfer at Beitucheng there was a long line at security. Several reporters were complaining to an unfortunate volunteer about the line and wanted to know if there was a special media entrance; she clearly didn’t understand what they were saying. I stepped in and did my best to translate. Three [cute] volunteers waiting in line in front of me, hearing that I spoke a little Chinese, took the opportunity to strike up conversation. They all went to the Beijing Forestry Institute and were working in an Olympic post-office. They all seemed very impressed that I had the “infinity” sign on my credential (meaning “unlimited venue access”). They hijacked me for a photo op in the new subway station and kept me company for the rest of the ride. It’s random little things like that which keep life spicy.

-I still had time before work, so I went to see GE’s exhibition. All of the major Olympic sponsors had exhibition halls along the road leading to the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest. GE’s featured a rousing video about the possibilities of their technology solutions, and interactive exhibits about all of their major technologies—water purification, metals, light, wind turbines, etc.

-Working the late shift meant I was responsible for delivering the daily internal newsletter, the Daily Olympian, from the research room (where it is produced) to the Crowne Plaza Hotel where all of the bigwigs were staying. At 1:30 AM or so, the newsletter was done. I delivered it to various places around the IBC before catching the bus to the Crowne Plaza and delivering the rest. If the lobby is any indication, it’s a damned nice hotel.

-I got home by 3 and went to bed.

MONDAY 08/04

-Just took it easy in the morning before work—I had been feeling unusually tired and I decided to give myself a day to sleep, lest I need begin making use of the 24-hour Starbucks in the NBC commissary.

-Reasonably busy day at work, despite supposedly having run out of things to do the day before. Just did various jobs and errands for the researchers and writers.

-After work I jumped in a cab to Wudaokou to meet Colton, a friend of mine from Exeter and one of my first Chinese language classmates. We had been to Taiwan and Beijing together on Mrs. Fontaine’s trip, but it didn’t make it any less surreal seeing him after two years of little contact. We really just wanted a place to sit and talk, so we headed for the nearest open restaurant, which just so happened to be California Beef Noodle King. We spent an hour catching up over mediocre fast-food noodles and sprite. He had class the next morning, and I had work, so before long we went our separate ways.

SUNDAY 08/03

-Took the subway to the Forbidden City with Natalie and Andrew in the morning. This was my first time on the Beijing subway, and overall it was not an unpleasant experience. Our BOCOG credentials got us free subway tickets and free admission to Gu Gong.

-If there’s one thing you can say about the Forbidden City, it’s that the place is huge. Really, the only reason you would need courtyards that big is to show off (which I suspect was exactly the point). With 8000+ rooms, if you were born in one room of the City and slept in a different room every night, you wouldn’t have to sleep in the same room twice until well past your twenty-first birthday. I had a new perspective on it this time having watched both Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower. We walked from the entrance in the south straight through to the north gate, then walked all the way back again via a slightly different route.

-The most exciting development at work was that we got two computers for exclusive runner use. We also got tentative shifts: it was looking like I’d be working from 1PM -10 PM or 5 PM – 2 AM. (Actually, my shift ended up being neither of these, and I worked most days from 11 AM – 9 PM).

SATURDAY 08/02

-Long, uneventful day. In the morning I went exploring, wandering through the fencing venue and the National Indoor Stadium with a purpose in my stride that I hoped would make it look like I was actually supposed to be there. They were rehearsing medal ceremonies in the fencing venue.

-At work we made more binders, learned about the various news feeds and computer databases we would be using. But for all intents and purposes we had already done about as much as we could do before the beginning of the games.

-That night a group of runners went to Houhai, one of the bar districts. I was not really impressed with the area—it was seedy and very touristy—and I felt no need to ever return.

FRIDAY 08/01

-I neglected to record this day in my journal. To the best of my memory, it went as follows:

-I met some of my sound technician friends for a quick breakfast at the media village cafeteria. We then proceeded to the Secure Bus (as they call it) to the IBC. The bus is “secure” because before you can get on it your bags are scanned and you are walked through a metal detector sensitive enough to pick up the foil gum wrapper in your pocket, then mag-wanded front and back by a cheery Olympic volunteer. Once the bus entered the Olympic Green, though, you did not need to go through security again.

-I followed some sound guys into the NBC wing of the gargantuan IBC. Down an exceedingly long and windy color-coded hallway with lots of off-shooting smaller color-coded hallways I came to the “runner pool,” where most runners bide their time between jobs. A man there directed me to the research room and told me I’d be reporting to Maria.

-The research room was mostly empty when I got there, which gave me a chance to look around. Along one wall there was an elevated platform with desks, computers, printers and some kind of radio device. The rest of the room was filled with clusters of tables, all of which had computer workstations on them.

-Before Maria arrived I met two of my fellow research runners, Cory and Natalie. They gave me an extremely warm welcome, which helped alleviate some of the tension I was feeling. For some reason they had arrived a day before the rest of us and so already knew the ropes. Our first task was to create hard copies of the room’s Research Manuals. These were basically encyclopedias of information about every sport in the summer games, with bios, rules, predictions, historical results and a variety of other info. I’ll spare the details, but suffice it to say it was a very paper-intensive process: We probably used close to 160 reams of paper over the course of a month. If there’s a hell for those who kill trees, I’m going there.

-That kind of project took up pretty much the whole day—creating all kinds of binders, folders, manuals, rulebooks, etc. and shelving them in an organized fashion. The research room was responsible for keeping a vast amount of information on-hand and available quickly, and we would spend much of the first week doing the infrastructural legwork necessary to make that level of organization possible.

-That night, Natalie, Brian Andrew and I went out to look at the venues. I got my first look at the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube, all lit up in the dark. I typically dislike most modern Chinese architecture (e.g. the Pangu hotel next door or the Ling Long Pagoda), but I think they did an exceptionally good job with both of those two buildings (the new CCTV tower is another new building I approve of). We went inside the Water Cube ([H2O]3) and sat in the front row seats. The Bird’s Nest was off limits because there was a rehearsal for the Opening Ceremony going on.

THURSDAY 07/31

-Logan airport was surprisingly crowded for a non-holiday Tuesday morning in midsummer, and most of the people there did not look like business traveler (must be the stimulus package).

-Waiting to check in, I glimpsed my first NBC employee, identifiable by her NBC-issued luggage tags. I also ran into Tufts’ very own Wang Laoshi and his son, who were also headed to Beijing.

-My Chinese experience began unexpectedly in the terminal at Logan. I was studying characters to kill time and a Chinese man sitting nearby leaned over and struck up conversation. He worked in Qingdao but was in the States on business. Sitting next to him was an adorable old woman who I initially assumed was his mother. It turned out that this woman—small, frail and very old—had ventured all the way to Boston to see her relatives, not speaking or reading a single word of English. You think Logan is confusing, try navigating it as an aging illiterate foreigner.

-The only notable thing about my stopover in Chicago was that I had an extremely disappointing steak and egg sandwich.

-On the flight to China I was seated next to two other runners—Eric and Andrew—who ended up working in the Research Room with me. I tried to put myself on Beijing time by forcing myself to sleep as soon as we took off. -That flight never gets shorter. It somehow doesn’t seem right to me that I get a personal TV screen on my transatlantic puddle-jumps to London and Zurich, but am reduced to watching a worn-out VHS on a single, dim screen at the front of the cabin during my 13-hour transpacific doozy. I killed time by reading the Sports Illustrated Olympics edition, watching the in-flight movie and admiring polar ice floes and vast, barren tracts of Siberia out my window.

-The new terminal of the Beijing airport was, as has been said a million times before, impressive. Less could be said for the air quality—you could barely see the wingtips from the window seat.

-Took a bus from the airport to the media village. Depending on which translation you read, the media village was called the North Star MV or the Green Homeland MV (a more direct translation—绿色家园媒体村. Amusingly, the whole naming issue was also completely moot: there was only one media village, and none of the cab drivers knew where it was anyway.

-Settled in—found my room, unpacked, went down to NBC Logistics and got my cell phone, took a “get my bearings” walk.

-Bravely integrated myself with a group of other NBC-ers who were hanging around in front of our building. We struck off in search of dinner and eventually found it at a Papa John’s. Not exactly what I was in the mood for, but it appeared to be the only game in town (that or KFC—we were in a special Restaurant Free Zone). Spent my meal chatting with some of NBC’s sound guys. Everyone in the sound crew already knew each other from other gigs—it gets to be a pretty rarified field at their level. I had a lovely conversation with the guy who mixes the sound at the Super Bowl.

Starting up again?

To all of you who wrote me comments in 2006--THANK YOU. I am sorry to say that I am only now reading them, since I forgot that I had my comments set up so that I had to moderate and approve them first. Needless to say it's been a long time since I've checked my admin page. . . So I'm back in China, which means it's time to start writing again (at least while I still remember English). I've have a year of successful journal-keeping under my belt and I'm now much better at writing short and avoiding comma splices. THADWFE was nice but I feel like I need a fresh start so I'm contemplating some new sites/formats. Keep an eye out for a link. In the mean time, a beautiful picture: