Just a quick post because I’m away from home right now, but I couldn’t NOT say something about today’s opening ceremony for the Olympics. So while I’m laying here waiting for my meds to kick in so I can slip into my drug induced ‘haze’ which I call sleep, I decided to give my congratulations to China on an amazing opening 2008 Olympic Ceremony.
Just how the heck the UK is going to compete with something like that I don’t know. We’ll be “knackered” for starters if we try and base it on our ‘past’ history. We’re probably responsible for 99.99% of all world cock-ups (colonisation, religious wars, slavery, corruption, etc etc)… It should be fun seeing how we match up to what the Chinese did today.
It was fascinating to watch and even had all 3 of my kids glued to the TV for the whole even (which did surprise me).
Apparently China has “human rights” issues, and China has “a bucket load of other issues” according to a bunch of so called “perfect people” in some “perfect country”. Well hello… Who are we to preach to anyone with our track record? (And that stands for both the US and the UK). Who are we to impose our beliefs, our social and moral judgements on a country that basically 99.99% of us know absolutely nothing about. We (both the US and the UK) are not perfect, we don’t live in a perfect world and hello, at least some people are at least open to change.
I hope that these games allow us to see China in a different light, a much better light than the media/governments would have us see. The Chinese people are themselves are amazing and I wish them the best of luck with the Olympic games and hope it brings them the success that they deserve. (To be honest, I have absolutely no knowledge what-so-ever of the Chinese Government on a personal level, only from some business dealings, so I base all my assumptions on the various Chinese people I have worked with or have come to know socially over the past few years).
$20 Billion is a lot of money I guess, and even I wonder if that money would have been better spent elsewhere, but then it is about more than just the money. It’s about the hope and belief that it brings to a country (and to all those taking part). It’s about bringing the whole country together, which after the earthquake disaster has got to be a good thing. (Which won’t be of any comfort to the families of the 20,000 people still missing). But who knows, it might give them something to focus on, to help them move on. It might also educate the ROTW that the Chinese are not so different to the rest of us and it might actually bring us all that little bit closer.
“One World, One Dream”
We can only hope so.