I was struggling to keep track of how many medals we won.
You will be pleased to know that Britain ’s success has upset the Aussies.
There was a bit of sledging going on yesterday between an Aussie journalist and a group of Brits.
The Aussie was asking for a steward’s inquiry, as he did not believe Great Britain could be up to third in the official medal table and ahead of Australia .
He resorted to crocking about Australia ’s cricketing success and some Mickey Mouse football friendly victory a few years ago.
I was lucky enough to see two of the gold medals Britain won over the weekend – Rebecca Adlington’s in the 800m freestyle swimming and Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter’s in the rowing.
Adlington’s performance was incredible. She smashed over two seconds of the longest standing world record in swimming to claim her second gold of the Olympics.
Cassie Patten was in that final, but her and the other six finalists were totally overshadowed by Adlington.
An interesting fact that I have found out about Adlington is that she’s scared of deep water. She will only swim in a pool and she prefers to be able to touch the bottom.
However, she cannot do that in this Olympic pool which deeper and wider than any other. It is three metres deep instead of two and has two extra lanes. It has been designed with the help of scientists to produce faster times. There is a big debate going on in Beijing about whether the pool and the new swim suits are responsible for so many world records, which has upset some of the swimmers.
Going to the swimming finals on Saturday was entertaining and I got to see Michael Michael Phelps win one of his record-breaking eight gold medals.
But as pre-final entertainment, ahead of the arrival of the now famous mascots, they had the ‘Water Warrior Drummers’.
I have never seen anything like it before. They were nine young glamorous women dressed in white boots and short while dresses banging drums that were covered in water.
Every time they whacked the drum they got covered head to toe in water. It was a bit like watching synchronized swimming where the women desperately try to smile despite almost chocking on water.
After watching that I then realized why the mascots at the pool are made of rubber rather than cloth, as there was a mad rush to try and mop up all the water left by the drummer before the mascots arrived.
I was hoping one of the mascots would slip, but they didn’t. However, made of rubber it would not be such a problem if they did.
The problem I am having at the moment is trying to forget about the annoying song the mascots come out to. It is your typical cheesy song that children love, but it is annoyingly catchy and you can see everyone humming it and tapping their feet to it.
I had a ticket for the athletics on Saturday evening after the swimming – yes I was in the stadium when Usain Bolt produced his incredible run yet he was so fast and so many people stood up in front of me that I hardly saw any of the race – but to kill a few hours beforehand I visited a shopping mall near the stadium.
In this department store was a fast food court. The only outlet I recognized was a Diary Queen, but I walked around the other food counters out of interest.
With it being near the Olympic complex all the food shops have written their menus in English as well I Chinese..
However, I don’t think this has helped one of the counters. It would probably be better if foreign visitors didn’t know exactly what they were offering.
On the menu – and this is in order and spelt as it was written – was tripe, black tripe, bork throat, duck intestine, chicken gizzard, chicken heart, chicken wings, chicken cartilage, large intestines, small intestines, beef tendon, fish ball, prawn ball, luncheon meet and pork belly. There was then a separate section with gold mushrooms, flat mushrooms, fresh mushrooms and shitake mushrooms, bamboo shoot, black fungus and vegetable ball.
Anyway, as you can imagine there were no western tourists queuing up at this counter and I am going to disappoint you all – well, maybe not the vegetarians – by telling you that I didn’t do a taste test of the top menu. I will leave that to the likes of Alan Wicker and Michael Palin.
I did buy a t-shirt in the mall and it is very confusing how Chinese shops operating.
After deciding I wanted to buy it – after more helpful persuading by another shop assistant, who I’m sure must get commission – I started getting money out only for the assistant to shake his head. He takes the t-shirt away and writes on a piece of paper which he gives me and then points to a women about 20 metres away sat in a box. I take the paper to her and she takes my money and then gives me two other bits of paper back and then sends me back to the shop assistant again. I had to take the paper back to him and he finally gave me the goods. Gosh it was confusing and time consuming, but it turns out this happens in all main shops. At least I will know for next time.
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