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Updated as often as I can manage

Thursday, September 23, 2004
So Season 5 of the Amazing Race is over. Yeah, yeah, Reality TV sucks, believe me, I know. I hate Survivor, the Apprentice, you name it. But sometimes Reality TV just works, and the Amazing Race is a great example of it.

(The other great example was Season 1 of Big Brother UK. THAT worked because the show had a villain so improbably good he had to be scripted: "Nasty Nick". Nasty Nick avoided being nominated for eviction by becoming everyone's best friend by telling them all sorts of fascinating and contradictory lies. Of course, the viewer could see every single stinking lie, so it became compelling viewing to see what he'd say next. Eventually the rest of the housemates forced a showdown -- one of the greatest moments in British television history, honest -- and Nick was thrown out of the house. Gripping stuff.)

Anyway, the Amazing Race works because... well, stuff happens. Yeah, it has the stupid and contrived games from Survivor/Fear Factor/Big Brother/Your Reality TV Show Here, but in between all that you have people racing across the globe, trying to get the best cab, racing to find the best flights, and so on. Actually, for a good example of why the Amazing Race works, let me spoil a whole chunk of the last episode for you. Really, it's gripping stuff. There were three teams left:

Colin & Christie, aka Team Psycho: Very, very, VERY good team, won half of the legs of the race, but very intense and very angry (hence the Psycho). Chip & Kim screwed them over, and since then they've been... well, angrier.

Brandon & Nicole, aka Team Jesus: Models and Christians. When they're not praising Jesus, they're doing stupid things like Nicole passing out because she can't finish a bowl of caviar or Brandon refusing an instant pass to finish a difficult leg of the race by refusing to shave his head (he's a model, see).

Chip & Kim, aka Team Parent Trap: African-American parents who were painfully nice at first, but as the end nears changed their spots to screw everyone else over (albeit legally!) with the finish line in sight.

The episode starts with everyone jumping on a plane in Manila bound for Calgary, Canada. The cold of Calgary totally catches Team Parent Trap out, and they fall behind as they get changed into something warm. Their task is to climb 1000 feet in snowshoes to the top of a mountain to receive their next clue. Team Psycho lead Team Jesus up the mountain before both women on the teams start to slow up, leading both men to encourage them in their own special ways:

Brandon: Baby, just imagine that Jesus is on top of the mountain with this arms reaching out for you.
Colin: ONE. MILLION. DOLLARS.
Brandon: Go to Jesus, baby. Go to Jesus.
Colin: ONE. MILLION. DOLLARS.

At the top, they find out their next clue is at Olympic Park. So they all race back down again, with Team Parent Trap falling even FURTHER behind, to discover that they have a choice of two tasks here. The first is shorter, but scarier: Run a two-man luge in under 34 seconds. The second is longer, but harder: Speed down a slalom course in a mountain bike in under three minutes. Team Psycho picks the luge, and does it on the first go. Team Jesus has no clue what they want to do. Brandon chooses the luge after resistance from Nicole, who then points out while they're walking to the luge how close the mountain bikes are, so Brandon changes his mind (and gets bollocked for it) and picks the bikes. Nicole then has a mental breakdown when she realises how hard the task is (they were clocking over four minutes) and how she can't reach the ground from her bike to slow down. Eventually she cries so much Brandon has to piggyback her all the way to the luge, which they also complete in one go. This prompts Nicole to complain that Brandon can never make up his mind and what a stupid idea it was to choose the bikes in the first place, which is ironic given that it was her idea. Finally, Team Parent Trap arrives, chooses the luge, and crash twice, putting them even FURTHER behind.

In fact, they're so far behind that by the time they finish Team Psycho is already at Calgary airport booking the first flight out to Dallas on American Airlines. Team Psycho has so much time that they start making plans for Dallas, calling their own cab to be ready to pick them up at the airport and deciding to check in their luggage -- their idea is that it'll make them faster, because they won't be carrying all that junk around and when the race is over they can go back to the airport and pick their stuff up. Team Jesus arrives, books the same flight, and also decides to check stuff in.

This is where the Amazing Race gets, well, Amazing: Team Parent Trap gets a huge, huge slice of luck. When THEY call American Airlines, the airline tells them that they just found out that the early flight to Dallas is delayed by two hours. They book a flight on United via Denver instead, and don't tell the other teams. The next morning the other teams figure it out and despite the flight being overbooked manage to wrangle their way on to the United Calgary-Denver flight. They DON'T get confirmation for their United Denver-Dallas flight (the one Team Parent Trap is taking), but stick themselves on standby and grab an American Airlines flight that arrives 10 mins after Team Parent Trap.

When they all get to Denver, Team Parent Trap calmly boards their plane while the others wait and beg to get on. And that's when they get screwed: Just as enough seats open up, they're told that their luggage is on American Airlines. And as we all know, you can't send your luggage on one flight and go on another (the whole bomb thing, you know). So they're resigned to giving up 10 minutes on Team Parent Trap, and despite their best efforts that 10 minutes -- 10 minutes gained purely because they were so damned slow that they found out the flight was delayed -- proved enough for them to scoop the million dollar prize.

That's just a minor taste of what I like about the show. I like the way everyone's racing around, trying to figure out the fastest way to get from point A to B. I like the way there's so much intrigue over flights, especially when teams split up (in one episode, two teams seperated from the pack and tried to get ahead by taking a different route that would have got them in earlier... if their connecting flight wasn't delayed by two hours). That stuff is just plain fun.

And there were so many other great things about this series though. There was the Amazing Race's very own Nasty Nick, Charla and Mirna, a pair of cousins (one of them a midget) with annoying voices and sour dispositions that delighted in screwing everyone else over. They provided one of the season's highlights when Mirna screamed at her midget cousin Charla to finish her scrambled eggs... except they were in Africa, and it was a scrambled OSTRICH egg, which by the way was the size of Charla's HEAD. There were the various fights between Team Midget and Team Psycho. There was the Caviar Fiasco, where women started crying when faced with the prospect of eating a kilo of caviar. There was Colin almost getting arrested for fighting with his taxi driver. Or Colin having an absolute meltdown when he couldn't figure out how to drive an ox. And best of all, there was Team Jesus getting swindled, Africa-style, when they were charged US$200 for a bus journey to the next village. The other teams were charged $3 and $5. Oh, and their bus broke down. And Nicole almost got beaten up by the driver. And the driver put a curse on them.

Brilliant stuff.

Posted at 6:41 AM

Tuesday, September 14, 2004
First off, Haneal just got back from the US, and he brought some presents for me with him: Burnout 3 (Xbox), Madden 2005 (Xbox), and the special 10th Anniversary DVD of Clerks. The downside is he bought copies for himself to play on Xbox Live, and... they won't work on his Xbox.

More on the greatness of Burnout tomorrow though. Today is all about TV. And not downloaded shows or anything, I mean real live TV. As covered in a previous post, local TV here sucks. Thanks to a myriad of pay-TV options though things aren't quite as grim as I suggested.

The first one is satellite channel Star TV, which covers the whole of Asia and thus caters more to an Indian audience. We don't have Star TV, but I don't think this is a huge problem -- the best channels there are Star Plus (lots of second-tier US sitcoms) and Star Movies (roughly equivalent to HBO, though I think HBO is better), neither of which I'm too keen on.

The second one is HK's own Wharf Cable, otherwise creatively known as... Cable TV. I rather like Cable TV because it has a ton of excellent channels (AXN, CNN, Discovery, HBO, etc) and most of the live football. On the downside, Cable TV is totally geared towards a HK audience (97% Chinese, remember), meaning that outside of the "brand name" channels like Cartoon Network or BBC you're not going to get anything more than the bare minimum in English. With football, for instance, all you get is English match commentary because the pre/post game shows are all in Cantonese. What makes it worse though are that the team there seems to treat the local footballing public as a bunch of brainless monkeys or something, because the pre/post game shows tend to resemble stupid parties with people dancing and screaming and handing out prizes and doing anything BUT showing the highlights. The biggest problem with Cable TV though are reception issues. If you're confused, this is because we get our Cable TV from a dish on the roof -- a dish that fails every time there's any rain (and remember HK is in the tropics). This is annoying, believe me.

The only reason the third option is any relevant at all is because Cable lost the license to show ESPN and Star Sports in Hong Kong to NOW Broadband TV. NOW is operated by HK's dominant telephone company and ISP, and I have a broadband account with them (which I'm very happy with, thank you very much, HK$300 for 6Mbit DSL!). Since ESPN/Star has the sole rights for the UEFA Champions League, I had to have it, so I subscribed to NOW and gave it a solid test run tonight during the first round of Champions League matches... and unfortunately, I'm not impressed.

Firstly, yes, this is "Broadband TV". That means the NOW box plugs into my broadband modem and my TV is delivered down the DSL line. I was worried at first that it'd cut the speed of my DSL connection, and despite assurances from people that it doesn't, it does. On the bright side, just switching the box off when you're not watching boosts your speed back up to normal, and it doesn't go THAT slowly, but it is annoying. The flipside though isn't how the TV affects my computers, but how my computers affect the TV. Though there doesn't appear to be any major damage in that direction (and the picture quality is really good), the sound is pretty poor. It seems to lose sync after 15 minutes or so, and then will start to break up. I'm not sure why it happens, but I'm hoping it's just an early glitch or a problem on their end. I know I wasn't downloading anything at the time, but it's a 6Mbit line and it's 5am -- surely the TV and computers can co-exist even with my download speeds cut?

The NOW box can do a lot more than Cable's too. Cable's box can basically bring up a channel list, it can try (and fail) to pull up a channel guide, and that's about it. NOW's box has channel previews, a (working!) channel guide, and you can even add new channels straight from the box's UI (rather than calling customer support). The flipside though is that IT'S SO SLOW. Again: I have a 6Mbit line. Why does it take so damned long to pull up a TEXT-BASED channel guide? In the time it takes to pull up the channel guide that 6Mbit line can suck down a song from iTunes.

Where NOW really loses it though is with channels. Don't get me wrong here, they have a very good selection... but ESPN, Star, and an Asian (as opposed to Chinese) MTV aside, Cable has everything they have AND a couple of important heavyweights like AXN and CNN that NOW doesn't have. What almost makes it worse for NOW but better for us is that NOW's channels are a-la-carte: You only pay for the channels you pick (plus 10 useless free channels). So I just have ESPN and Star. And even if I wanted other channels -- like Asian MTV, which I do kinda want -- I'm rather hesitant to go on and order them because the more NOW Broadband TV I watch, the slower my broadband line is. And man, can you imagine MTV with the audio out of sync? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Hopefully it'll get better, because if NOW ruin my Liverpool game tomorrow heads will roll.

Posted at 4:34 AM

Monday, September 13, 2004
I don't mean to shamelessly plug 1UP, but I'm really enjoying the Sims 2 Diary. Really good stuff.

In gaming news, I just picked up Pokemon Fire Red (and Leaf Green for my sister). As a Pokemon fan I'm liking the game so far. At the end of the day, Gold/Silver and Ruby/Sapphire are basically clones the original with the names changed to protect the innocent, so it's kinda nice to see the original monsters, original scenario and original villains (TEAM ROCKET!) back again. Gotta catch 'em all...

Posted at 2:20 AM

Thursday, September 09, 2004
I've been watching a lot of Scrubs lately, and it rocks. I'm not a huge fan of American TV comedies, but this just rocks. It's just really funny. It has that freeform humour that breaks those "audience" barriers by not taking itself seriously -- Death can walk the hallways of the hospital from time to time, dream sequences and reality intermix, etc -- the sort of thing I really enjoy (see: Shaolin Soccer). It also has a bit of an ongoing story, but not TOO much so that it intrudes on the humour (like with Friends after the first couple of seasons, when Rachel and Chandler got all anorexic and the focus shifted to whiny-boy Ross).

The characters are really cool too, because they're so damned weird and quirky. JD (Zach Braff, who I'm dying to see in Garden State) has the goofy white guy thing down, but not enough that he's total comic relief. Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley, who I first saw playing a TOTALLY DIFFERENT type of character in Identity) is one of the greatest comedic characters ever, and I will not hear otherwise on the subject. Turk (Donald Faison) always gets laughs simply because I'm still picturing him as the boyfriend from Clueless. There are numerous role players who do their thing and do it really well, like the Janitor, Jordan, Dr. Kelso and my personal favourite Ted (Christopher Lloyd's's nephew!). And they have AWESOME guest stars who really do the roles justice, like Dick Van Dyke, Brendan Fraser and... John Ritter. Moment of silence for the late, great John Ritter please.

A well observed moment of silence, thanks.

Anyway, the one REALLY odd character in it is Elliot Reed (Sarah Chalke), the token blonde of the show. She's odd because she seems to take her top off/expose her bra/turn up in seductive outfits an awful lot for no real apparent reason. I mean, she's kinda pretty, but not especially so. And her character isn't really slutty or anything (on the contrary, a neurotic and sheltered rich kid). And it's not like Scrubs is a sex comedy, or that the characters are getting it on that often. But without fail, every three episodes or so she'll be ripping her top off for the most minor of reasons ("I have nowhere to change" being unusually common). It's just weird. I'm taking bets with my sister before each episode whether Elliot will take it off or not. We've been quite accurate so far.

One last, totally unrelated thing... I was hunting down population figures for India and found the official Indian Census website. You know what their slogan is? Take a look at the image culled from their webpage:

Posted at 4:43 AM

Wednesday, September 08, 2004
OK, this is just... unbelievable. I'm so angry right now. You might know by now that Hong Kong will be getting its very own Disneyland sometime in 2005 or 2006. You might have heard that there was a lot of controversy over it, but the gist of it is the Government put a lot on the line to get Disneyland out here, and I did firmly believe that it would be a great thing for HK. Not anymore. Because what you probably didn't know is that HK Disneyland will SUCK.

Look, I know a lot of people out there hate Disney and think Disneyland is a crock. I'm not one of those people. I've been going to Tokyo Disneyland since I was a little kid and loved it every time. My friends and I have been joking forever that once HK Disneyland opens, we'll buy year-long passes and whenever we need to kill an hour or so we'll hop on the train and go to Disneyland. You could say I've been looking forward to it for a while now. So I went to do some digging around to see what rides made it in to HK Disneyland, and... it's not pretty. Not pretty at all.

First off, there are only four "lands" this time: Adventureland, Tomorrowland, Main Street USA and Fantasyland. No Toontown, no Frontierland/Critter Country. Even though I have a soft spot for Toontown, it's no big deal. HK Disneyland is meant to be the smallest, so I'd prefer four fully-realised lands to six half-arsed ones. Except then I took a look at the actual rides. The main site rather conspicuously doesn't list much at all, so I went hunting around other sites. Uh oh. We have Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise, Dumbo (which I like very much, shut up), Winnie the Pooh, that Sleeping Beauty Castle Tour thingy, Buzz Lightyear and a bunch of basic merry-go-round Fantasyland rides. As if to highlight the lack of rides, one report noted that in an effort to save HK Disneyland before it sinks into a mess even greater than that of Euro Disney, they're quickly planning to launch the Haunted Mansion, It's A Small World and an all-new Pirates of the Caribbean in time for "Phase 2" by the end of the decade.

This begs the question: Wait, you mean they're opening the park WITHOUT Haunted Mansion, Small World and Pirates? WHAT? Um... WHAT? Are they INSANE? And that ride list... pathetic. I can't believe that that's pretty much it, but if you don't believe me take a look at a picture of the park model on display in a shop here:

I don't know about you, but to me that matches up rather nicely with the ride list. And incidentally, while ride information is thin on the ground there's PLENTY of information about the shops and restaurants and hotels opening up in HK Disneyland (though it begs the question: If the park is so damned small, why are there hotels when it looks like you'll be able to do the whole thing in less than three hours?).

So why is it so low on rides? Get this: Disney says that surveys in Asia find that tourists here prefer to take photos, watch fireworks and stage shows, and... take a stroll through the park scenery. They're not into rides like those boisterous Americans, oh no! They pay Disneyland's entry fee to take pictures with Mickey and walk past the flowers. Those wacky Asians just LOVE snippy-snapping everything they see with their cameras!

...

What bugs me MORE about this is that recently Disneylands seem... more exciting. Where before each Disney park were basically clones of each other with slight local quirks, they're really branching out now and stuff like Tokyo's DisneySEA (an entirely new park next door to Tokyo Disneyland with a totally original nautical theme) makes you hope that Hong Kong will have cool, unique stuff too. And even that new Pirates of the Caribbean ride supposedly in the works for HK's Phase 2 sounds pretty cool. They're going to make it more of a thrill ride now to tie into the movie, with Splash Mountain-style drops through the jaws of Skull Rock separating the "story" segments we all remember, though these will be redone with new effects (and a Johnny Depp cameo to boot!).

But that's for later. At launch this is going to be an unmitigated disaster, and it's going to turn Hong Kong into a laughing stock. And I'm so angry.

Posted at 6:54 AM

Tuesday, September 07, 2004
You know... I lay in bed this morning thinking it was the weekend, and that I had plenty more time to sleep. It is, of course, ONLY TUESDAY. Ugh.

Posted at 11:17 PM

Monday, September 06, 2004
I know, I know, I'm REALLY late on this one... but ScummVM rocks. For the uninitiated, I'll try to explain this as quickly and simply as possible, so don't get any on me if I screw up the technical details.

Once upon a time, LucasArts didn't make Star Wars games. They were known for graphic adventure games. These were point-and-click sort of adventures where you investigated and interacted with puzzles, people and objects by, er, pointing and clicking. Believe me, they are a lot more fun than it sounds, primarily because LucasArts adventures had a very healthy dose of humour in them. And I loved them. The Monkey Island games are in my personal top 10, and stand with SimCity 2000 as the only non-console titles there (and seriously, Monkey Island 2's ending is the videogame Sixth Sense... really... I feel very strongly about this).

Where does ScummVM come in? Scumm was the sort of engine that ran all their 2D games. ScummVM is kinda likean emulator that allows you to play all those old Scumm games again... and unlike emulators, there's no real legal grey area about the "ROMs" here. Whereas it's highly unlikely (impossible?) that you legally have your entire NES collection in ROM format, ScummVM can play the data files from the old Scumm game CDs or floppies.

Since I have my original copies of Monkey Islands 1 & 2, Sam & Max, Full Throttle and The Dig, I've had a rather nice weekend. I finished Full Throttle first, their biker opus. I have a serious love/hate relationship with Full Throttle. On the one hand, it's inventive, clever, witty, and a kick-ass ride. On the other, it has lame-o minigame segments that just don't work (both in original format AND especially in ScummVM, which has trouble with them), is really short, and has a couple of stupid and illogical cheap bits. Overall, it's definitely one of the great ones. And though I'm kinda happy LucasArts killed the planned sequel since it probably wouldn't have been the same in 3D and without the original design team... I really would like to see more Full Throttle.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the best thing about ScummVM: It's portable. And I mean that in two ways. Yeah, there are Windows versions, and Mac OS X, and Linux, and oddball formats like Dreamcast and Xbox, but also... PocketPC, Smartphone and Palm OS. Observe!

Monkey Island in the palm of my hand. Bliss. Pure bliss.

Posted at 6:44 AM

Sunday, September 05, 2004
Interesting stat that will interest only me: Last week marked the first week of my second year at CNN. In my first year, I missed only seven days of work (6 for holidays, 1 for sick). Since I only get weekends off and no public holidays, that works out to 253 days of work.

Considering how lazy I am and how at school I used EVERY SINGLE EXCUSE POSSIBLE to skip days here and there ("er, I have... a headache... yes... no school today, very sick"), I'm really rather impressed by that.

(Of course, I went on to mark Week 1 of Year 2 by being sick on Tuesday. Go figure.)

Posted at 6:38 AM

Thursday, September 02, 2004
Right, so I have a bit of a Rainbow Six addiction (killing terrorists and a headset for voice comms to boot... it's like the older version of cops and robbers). They released an expansion pack of sorts for Xbox, which is good because I've been playing the original over and over and over on Xbox Live with Haneal and Muk and we need new missions to run through. I've already done four missions, so... impressions!

Don't get me wrong, I like it. It's Rainbow Six with new missions. And the AI is better, baddies run around more, take cover, throw grenades, the scripted ambushes are cooler, the settings (the Underground!) are great... but... there's also a lot wrong here. The maps are WAY too linear. Look, I know all games are linear and they need to be (you have to go from Start to Finish at some point, you know?), but this is way too transparent. You have maps set in wide-open places like a Hotel, Back Alleys and the Streets of Milan and not only are they totally linear, there isn't even any attempt to disguise the fact. Streets of Milan is a great example. It's not even CLOSE to being anything like real streets. You're stuck on a road until a predetermined point when a convenient alleyway that you can walk through pops up. You can't enter any buildings until you need to pass through one. The Hotel is another great example, because you're needlessly forced to go through this circuituous route because for some insane reason, every staircase in the entire hotel only goes up one floor at a time, and access to the next floor is provided by a staircase at the other end of the building.

The game is littered with conveniently blocked passages -- gates in the Underground, couches in the Hotel, police barricades in the streets -- but what also bothers me about them is how terrorists have the bizarre knack of popping up behind them. First, there's the leap of faith question. Those areas of the Underground/Streets were blocked off by police presumably to keep the terrorists IN. So why exactly are they shooting at me from the other side of them? And why exactly can't I go there? There are tons of places where baddies will pop up from places you don't have access to. I don't mind seeing a few guys on the roof acting as snipers, but sometimes I get the feeling that almost a third of the baddies in the level are hidden in areas I can't reach, popping out to ambush me because I simply have no way of clearing them out or preparing for them.

And that brings me on to my last little flaw: Scripted events. In case you don't get what I mean here, let's just quickly explain a scripted event. A scripted event is when you progress to a certain point in a level and trigger some form of pre-determined action, be it an ambush, bomb, etc. A scripted event IS NOT when a terrorist sees you and reacts, because he can do a whole bunch of different things when that happens: Sometimes he'll run away, sometimes he'll run to you and shoot, sometimes he'll shout and chuck a grenade, or he'll call a friend, etc. In a scripted event, the ambush happens whether you're seen or not and it unfolds in exactly the same way (the same guys go to the same positions and fire/throw the same weapons at the same time EVERY time you trigger it). Now, scripted events can be really cool when done properly, but it's totally overdone in Black Arrow. At least 5-6 times a level you'll hit a certain point and suddenly and inexplicably someone comes rushing up either from an area you thought (nay, KNEW) you'd cleared or from one of those mysterious roped-off areas.

This bothers me so much partially because I really like Black Arrow otherwise and partially because it's a change from the Rainbow Six I know and love. When I started with the first version of Rainbow Six, the maps were fairly free and open; you had a planning segment to pinpoint exactly where you'd go, when and how you'd hit it; and you had a rough idea of where the terrorists were (it's called "intel") and therefore you knew how you'd take them down and clear the area. Because that's the point here, hunting THEM down and clearing the area, not waiting for them to kindly show up so we can off them. Black Arrow almost feels like a slower, more realistic Quake/Doom/Half-Life/Counter-Strike/whatever your latest FPS squeeze is.

Still, this isn't going to stop me from playing this game non-stop on Xbox Live as soon as Haneal gets back.

Posted at 6:28 AM

Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Yeah, I know I haven't blogged in a while. But a lot of things happened that I just don't want to talk about. Michael Owen left -- don't want to talk about it. Greece wins the Euro -- don't want to talk about it. Liverpool's stuttering start to the season (sensing a pattern here?) -- don't want to talk about it. But the Olympics ended, and I DO want to talk about that.

I have to say, even though I really don't look forward to the Olympics as much as any footballing event, I really do enjoy it. I mean, come on: I'm a sports fan, insomniac and lover of inane trivia. How can I NOT like the Olympics? How can I NOT like seeing 12 hours plus of sports of virtually every sort on TV every day? How can I NOT like that it provides great TV from midnight to 6am every night (believe me, this is a problem out here)? How can I NOT like knowing all the minutae (favourites, ones to watch, sentimental picks) for all the events and odd facts like British long jumper Jade Johnson's allergy to sand? It's perfect, really.

But the problem for me was that I watched it in Hong Kong. Now, don't get me wrong, everyone knows how much I love Hong Kong. And the late-night timing was perfect for me. But local TV out here just sucks. It's embarassing. With all due respect to TVB, I know they try, but they really don't have the budget or enough people who care to make it work. The team on TVB Pearl (that's the English channel) was decent and tried hard but were simply overmatched by the event. The English commentary on TVB Jade (the Chinese channel) however was abysmal. You had one old commentator (and not old-but-lovable in the Barry Davies/Murray Walker way, but old-but-stupid) who really had no clue. In the swimming events he got the name of the favourite in to his mind and never stopped talking about them, even if they weren't leading. He also had a co-commentator, which surprised us because she rarely spoke but in fairness to her he rarely acknowledged her. She'd go without saying anything for minutes at a time, then butt in and say something, and he'd either repeat it without acknowledgement or ignore it and move on. It's a pity, because she actually seemed to have a clue. During one race (women's 100 metre butterfly I THINK), Inge de Bruijn led for most of the race but was fading fast in the last 20-30 metres while Petria Thomas raced up behind her. The commentator went on and on and on about how Inge de Bruijn was just easing her way to victory, and finally when Thomas pulled level the co-commentator just shouted out "LOOK IT'S PETRIA THOMAS TAKING THE LEAD!". Just ridiculous, and it totally pales in comparison to the BBC's coverage in Sydney.

Aside from piss-poor coverage and a lack of any knowledge whatsoever about what was going on (both on the field and on the TV, since the pictures were coming direct from a broadcaster in Athens and it sounded like they had no control over where they were going next), one other element that I miss is some form of local spirit. HK has our own Olympic team, yeah, but it's tiny and never in contention for anything (barring the silver we won, but let's save that for later). In the UK it was kind of cool to have a local to root for every so often. Not in every single race or event (like Russia or the US), but in enough to really make their participation matter. The nice thing was that the BBC really strikes a nice balance between being fair and showing us what people want to see (rather than focusing on events just because a Brit was in them) and rooting for the home team. It makes for a good story and... I don't know, it gives the Olympics some SOUL to have a grounding with a nation and watch them flourish. And since I'm British by nationality, that works for me.

Unfortunately, I missed most of their triumphs. I caught the second half of Kelly Holmes' gold double and that was a real highlight. Other highlights for me were most of the swimming events (I really prefer them to athletics), especially the 200m freestyle Race of the Century and the Dream Team's loss to Argentina; sadly, the incredible men's 100 metre dash and 4x100 metre relays were not highlights because the latter was never broadcast live and I missed the former by 15 seconds (literally -- I switched on to see Gatlin celebrate seconds after winning).

But the two real highlights for me were the HK's medal and the Greek sprinting scandal. With HK's medal... despite what I said about following the British team, despite my British nationality, I'm not REALLY British. But I am from Hong Kong, and watching us scoop a table tennis silver (holding our own against the mighty mainland Chinese!) for only HK's second ever medal was really, really special. That really meant something to me, and it was great to see. The Greek sprinting scandal though both was amazing and embarassing. The whole affair was just so surreal. I was at work and I saw all the events unfold via the newswires; watching things progress with every updated write, every odd twist and bizarre turn. To summarise events for those not in the know (shame on you), Greece's men's 200m sprint gold medallist from Sydney (the host country's first track champion since 1896!) and women's 100m silver medallist first missed a drugs test the day before the Games. This in itself was huge, since it means an automatic ban for the two brightest stars the host country had to offer. Then it emerged that they were in a motorcycle accident. Then they were in hospital. Then they were summoned to a hearing, hospital or not. Then after days of to-ing and fro-ing they finally quit the Games before they were thrown out. It was just so damned surreal, especially when you're getting live snatches on the wires. Motorcycle accident? What? Hospital? What? Only minor injuries? Faked accident? History of missed tests? It just went on and on. Amazing.

Oh, one last thing: I have to take issue with the opening and closing ceremonies. I know Greece is full of history, I know it was well constructed and put together, but man, save me from the WE CREATED CIVILISATION nonsense. One thing I kind of liked about the Sydney ones was just how stupid they were (Greg Norman, Elle MacPhearson, etc). It was like the Aussies came out and outright admitted: We have no culture or history, so let's celebrate the little things we DO have. They sent themselves up for the sake of a good party, and I thought that was rather cool and very different.

Posted at 6:35 AM