Monday, August 11, 2008
So on Friday, my family and I went to Pulai Springs in Malaysia for some family bonding time, though unfortunately Prelims were, and still are impending, so I brought work with me.This holiday, it seems, saw a lot of time spent sitting in front of the TV together.We managed to watch some of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, because the place where we ate our dinner had two TVs both screening it. It's the first Olympics opening I've ever seen, and to my untrained eye, it was spectacular!Even though my sister complained that they spent more on it than on the Sichuan earthquake victims, this is an international event to be outdone each time by the next country, I suppose. I'm more concerned that the burning of the torch will probably produce a lot of carbon dioxide.My sister, brother and I stayed up watching the parade of nations, holding out until Singapore finally came in. Since the nations came in order of number of strokes in the first Chinese word of each name, and Singapore's has 13 strokes, we had to wait really long!The next morning we continuued by watching the gymnastics qualifications for men, and it's really cool to watch all the somersaults and stuff.At 5.45 pm, we faithfully went to watch the National Day Parade, and I felt really sorry for the poor audience and performers in the rain. We looked out for Tan Whenn (supposedly a sunflower in the first Act) but the camera didn't capture him. I personally liked the uniformed groups, precision drill, statues, and songs!After that we watched the pilot episodes of the new serials Calefare and First Class. It's quite entertaining, really.The next day we managed to see some of the gymnastics done by the girls teams, and I think it's so much nicer to watch than the guys, because their floor exercise is more dance-like, and they have the uneven bars event.
We also played rousing games of Taboo and Pictionary. I was previously doing work while they were playing Taboo, so I joined them near the end. To declare the winner, a tie-breaker was intiated, where I would hold the cards, and whichever team guessed first got to keep it, so no stress for me!The best one was when the word was 'Exhaust'. When not allowed to use words like tired, car, pipe etc. I remembered the car joke I told my brother and two younger sisters the other day. So I said: Remember that day I told you this joke-Yan: EXHAUSTED!I was stunned, because how could she remember the joke, and then get the right word in half a second?!?!?! We must have a PSYCHIC CONNECTION.I confess I was biased towards the Papa, JieJie and Yan team, because I joined them for 2 rounds of guessing prior to the tie-breaker. But in our defense, Mummy distracted Papa by asking him about what word he'd used to describe the taboo word, thus cutting from our guessing time!On the way home, we stopped over to buy durians and fill up on petrol before reaching Singapore. Upon reaching home, after keeping our stuff we promptly went to watch the synchronised diving finals for women, and it was won by a far margin by the China team.Even though we're unable to see how they were much better than the other teams, or why the Great Britain team got low marks for more complicated-looking twists, I suppose the judges must see things that the normal unspecialised audience doesn't.THE OLYMPICS ARE AWESOME.
Thanks to all the blogs i referred to (countless) for html code help :) (esp. cyn' and sixseven)
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