To the olympics

The 2008 Olympics came and went without me barely noticing, the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony, and everything in between.

Apparently, it's very much the social faux paus to be nonchalant about the Olympics, because when I mentioned the above fact in passing to a group of colleagues, they all looked at me as if I've just spouted horns and turned green all over or something. It is, NOT THE THING TO DO, missing the Olympics, because it's the first time ever to be held by an Asian country, and China, the country not the porcelain, spent a whole lot of money and effort to making it the greatest Olympics EVER!

*Rolls eyes*

Ok fine. Call me the apathetic non-sportsman showing unsportsmanship behaviour and not rooting for the international gathering of sporting nations in a display of camaraderie and peace and harmony, which is what sports, the link between all men and humankind can bring all together in unity. (Wait, does that make sense? That sentence is so long I got grammatically lost!)

So what?

So what if I'm not too interested in who wins and who loses and who broke records? As in every game and sport, there is a first place, a second place and a third place, and a half a dozen more non-winners of the sport crying at their loser-status, away from the lights of the TV. There will be natural sportsmen and sportsmen who got where they got by dint of 20 out of 24 hours a day pegging away at whatever sport they play, and only 4 hours left to be non-sports-like. And there will also be the dopers who insist on taking drugs even though they'll most certainly get caught and be shamed and exposed in front of their peers and disqualified from the games.

Which brings me to a most persistent question in my mind, which is, how many of these people will still play the sport if there was no such thing as the Olympics and no such thing as winning a gadzillion dollars for being first and for doing the same thing over and over again? How many people are left if we take away that gold medal and the glory and the money? Isn't that where people take performance-enhancing drugs even though there's such a high chance of getting caught? Because all that money is worth all that risk!

Why do I have to be interested in the Olympics? It's hard to be interested in the Olympics when you hear about water being deviated from the rest of China, from the crops that need the water, at the expense of the livelihood of millions of other Chinese people, when you hear about the lives of Beijing-ers almost coming to a dead stop just to accomodate the presence of an international Sports event which has brought it nothing very much else in terms of rewards, but has brought so much in terms of unappreciation and a bad stinking attitude from the rest of the world.

How about when you hear that people's houses are torn down to built spanking new shopping malls to feed the lust of engorged pocketbooks and to appease and please the insatiable lustful condescension and patronage of the rest of the, dare I say, Western world.

I am proud of the indomitable Chinese spirit, but I'm not proud of that incessant need to show off what we already know about ourselves, that we are an incredible people who can do incredible things, and there is no point in my opinion, in having to prove that point. I am proud of the beautiful buildings, the air-tight logistics, the brilliant showcase and display of talents, but I am sick to the stomach knowing the amount of extravagant resources that went into it, at the expense of her own people. Is it worth it really, punishing your own just to feed other people's big fat children?

One last comment. It's quite funny, the irony of the closing ceremony ( I heard about it although I didn't watch the ceremony!), the easy-going random attitude one country has vs the pompous granduer of the other. And I shall stop here, and not say any more on this particular topic, before I actually get killed or something for all my irreverent and sacrilegious remarks.