Women's 100m Final

Olympic bar hopping

Friday night started out at Lan. A restaurant/bar on Jianguomenwai Dajie.
It had won thebeijinger.com 2007 award for best bathrooms, best décor, and outstanding service.
It certainly lived up to the décor and bathroom awards. The toilet was about the size of my university dorm, and included a couch.

Drinks were about 100 kuai (16.80AUD) per wine/cocktail so it wasn't cheap. But it was definitely worth going to.

After this, we went to Aria, inside the World China Hotel. This bar won awards for best wine selection and best business networking. There was mega security and we had to lie and say we were meeting someone there before going through scanners and getting escorted to the bar. There I had a Very Berry cocktail which was awesome. I would go back just to order that 100 kuai drink.

Then we headed to Centro in the Kerry Centre. This bar was a lot lot more busy than the last two, and had won awards for best people watching, best night away from the kids, best happy hour, best cocktails, best business networking, best service and best wine selection.
Kerrie and I had just ordered our drinks when some Americans started chatting to us. They were heading to the Club Bud later (a bar where you could only enter with an invitation) and they asked us to join them.

Here you could drink all the Budweiser you wanted for free, and it
was definitely packed out. I'm sure there were a lot of Olympians out there, but I wouldn't have recognised anyone as I don't know what anyone looks like :S

After partying there until 4am, we headed to Kokomo. Best roof top bar of 2007, and one of my personal favourites.It was the most packed I'd ever seen, and I went dancing like an idiot. It was a lot of embarrassing fun. I also met camera crews from Miami Telemundo, and the Brazilian network. Nice, but terribly slimy!
I got home at about 5:30am, and Saturday was torture, but all in all, an excellent evening!

Shenyang Football Goal!

NED - JPN 1:0 (0:0)

Due to my current laziness, I am going to put up the video I took of the only goal of the match, and write about it later. Tomorrow!

Rudd's plan for Asian Australia

By Samantha Maiden | August 12, 2008

KEVIN RUDD has unveiled his vision for Australia to become the most "Asia-literate country" in the West.

In a speech in Singapore today, the Prime Minister pledged to boost the investment in the study of Asian languages and culture in schools and universities, The Australian reported.

"Australia's future will also depend on our ability to engage constructively and effectively with the countries of the Asia Pacific,” he said.

"That is why I am committed to making Australia the most Asia-literate country in the collective West.

"By investing in Asian languages and cultural education in Australia's schools, my vision is for the next generation of Australians - businessmen and women, economists, accountants, lawyers, architects, artists, film-makers and performers - to develop language skills which open their region to them.”

Get more national and international news at The Australian.

Men's First Round Soccer- Group B - Match 17

I JUST got tickets to
Men's First Round - Group B - Match 17
Netherlands vs Japan

I'm soooooooo excited! Its this Wednesday in this stadium in Shenyang:

Beijing Barbecue

Opening Ceremony!!

My friend Kevin is a volunteer who is helping to show Channel 7 (Australian TV Network) and a whole lot of influential Australians around for the Olympics (including former Prime Minister, John Howard) . Because of this, he was able to go to the Opening Ceremony for free!! I have some of his photos for you:

Beijing on the big day

And check out this pollution from my window.

Where is everyone?

A new gigantic mall has opened up across from Lucky Street (Haoyun Lu), and it is actually really nice looking. However, only a few shops have opened so far, and there were a maximum of about 5 people there. The Olympics are only 2 days away, and I have yet to see the half a million tourists that are supposed to be here.

There are stories of all the empty rooms in all the newly built hotels here in Beijing. I was lucky to get a $40 a night bargain in a really clean and modern business hotel, just behind the opulent Kempinski Hotel. Granted, my hotel room had no windows and I never knew if it was night or day (which is especially confusing when you have jet lag), but I was rather surprised.

Finally, a friend of mine here in Beijing, LEE, wrote about the lack of tourists in the popular Sanlitun bar district.

Makin’ Bank

Last night I had an interesting conversation with the owner of a popular establishment down in the Sanlitun area, the bar streets where people go to party. For obvious reasons I will not identify this establishment, whether the proprietor was male or female, nor whether the place was a bar or restaurant.

The proprietor informed us that they (to use the generic asexual form of “he” or “she") had been visited by representatives of the Chaoyang police department. They were told, explicitly, that if any foreign reporter asks how business is going they are to state unequivocally that “business has never been better.” The fact is that because of the draconian security restrictions that have been in place for the past few months business has never been worse. This particular person said that their establishment was making about 20% of their usual daily take on the weekends. That’s right, a week before the Olympics and they’re operating at 80% less intake than normal. Hotels are reporting that the usual summer tourist season has resulted in their operating with less than 50% of their usual occupancy.

The proprietor did, however, confirm the untruth of one particularly nasty rumor, one I blogged on previously.

“Uniformed Public Security Bureau officers came into the bar recently and told me not to serve black people or Mongolians,” said the co-owner of a western-style bar, who asked not to be named.

The local authorities have been cracking down on blacks and Mongolians in an attempt to stamp out drug dealing and prostitution ahead of the Games, the proprietors said.

We were informed that the police did inform the proprietor to be on the lookout for black men and Mongolian women since, and this is an unfortunate fact, drug dealers here are almost always black men, and young, sexily-dressed Mongolian girls are most likely prostitutes. So there was no explicit order not to serve them, just to keep an eye on them if they happened to show up.

Just a little insider info on the no-fun Olympics.

Corpus Christi - Houston - Toronto - Beijing

Sitting on my Air Canada flight from Toronto to Beijing reminded me of how much Chinese I really don't know. I sat down next to two Chinese businessmen. About 3 hours into the flight I gathered the courage to ask them if they were from Beijing (in Chinese). I really have no idea what the reply was...
I seem to have no problem being able to make myself understood, but my ability to interpret what people are saying in Chinese in return is dismal.

It reminded me of the mistakes I've made in the past. i.e:

1. Instead of asking for a bunch of bananas (xiāng jiāo - 香蕉) I accidentally asked for a bunch of pandas (xióng māo - 熊猫).
   And vice-versa when I asked for the Banana Fuwa instead of the Panda Fuwa. or ??
2. For about 6 months I asked for taxi drivers to take me to Frog University (Qingwa Daxue), instead of Tsinghua University (Qinghua Daxue).
3. I'm pretty sure the entire year I've been asking for a bowl of tampons (I read in the Lonely Planet Chinese Language Guide that it was miantiao), instead of a bowl of noodles (miantiao, different tones)
4. I'm sure there are many more that I don't know about!

Booooooooring

But I ended up having about 5 gin and tonics. Noice.

2008 Beijing Olympics

I'm leaving tomorrow.

I'm rather excited. I don't know how much Beijing would have changed in over a month.

I left Beijing on June 25th. I've been travelling around South East Asia for 3 weeks and then relaxing in Texas for 2. The last two were necessary to get my tourist visa fixed up.

The year previous I had been learning Chinese at Tsinghua University. My Chinese is still pretty crappy, but I can get by.

I will let everyone know the changes in Beijing and how the Olympics goes.

P.S. Aoyunhui (奥运会) means Olympics in Chinese. It is actually shortened from: Àolínpǐkè yùndònghuì = 奥林匹克运动会. The first word is obviously a chinesified version of Olympics and the second word means "sports competition".