Olympics "I Believe" Song on repeat

I remember the first time I knew anything about the Olympics was in 1992.  I was in the 2nd grade and our gym teacher had us run around the gym pretending we were Olympic athletes.  Being the precious kid that I was, I decided being a spectator was my contribution to the "games."  

Even as a young child, I wasn't much into doing anything really physical.  I couldn't even dig in the sand without distain.

Then Lillehammer 1994 happened and I paid more attention to these games as Canada actually medals in the Winter games.  This was the year that Elvis Stojko unleashed the dragon and made figure skating two shades less feminine than it really is.  And my grandfather was very much into hockey, so I watched the tournament with him, and even though Canada won Silver, it was one of my favourite memories of childhood as I was able to spend so much time with my grandpa.


Through the years, Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake, Athens, Turin, and Beijing were always fun to follow, but I never really LOVED the games until Vancouver 2010.  This time Canada was the focus of the games, and I was determined to go and experience the fun.  I was lucky enough to get tickets to the Gold Medal Men's hockey game, gambling on the fact that Canada would be in the finals.  The country was slow on the medal count, but the games finished like a fairy tale ending.  An overtime goal by Sidney Crosby to capture Men's Gold, the Canadian Olympic Team set an all time gold medal record by a host country at 14 gold medals, and some incredible tales of triumph from athletes like Joannie Rochette, who lost her mom before she was to skate, made you tear up like a 40 year old single woman watching Titanic for the fourteenth time on a Friday night with her cats.

Going buckwild after Canada wins in overtime.  One of my best moments of life ever.

I'll admit, for a time after Vancouver 2010, I was in a funk.  I wanted to turn on the TV to watch ANY sport that involved three medals at the end.  It could have been Olympic speed knitting and I would have watched.  I was so obsessed with the Olympics, I had the Nikki Yanokovski "I Believe" song playing on repeat on my iPod as I walked to work and pretended to move in slow motion like the people in the montages on CTV.  It made for a slow walk to work.

Just in case you haven't had enough of it...

So, when London 2012 crept closer, and I realized that I would be in Europe for the summer, there was no question that I would stop by this city to enjoy the games.  Thankfully, my friends Alex and Sandy have conveniently moved to this city, so free accommodations mean cheap Terence can spend more money on booze.  (And trust me, I have).


The Opening Ceremonies
After a day of walking around the city with Sandy and our friend Laura, we went to Canada House in Trafalgar Square to see what it had planned for the athletes.  We were disappointed to find that all they had for us were pins (we took them nonetheless) and they directed us to the Maple Leaf bar in Covent Garden.  We were joined by Alex, Phil (another friend from uni) and Phil's friend Jamie and we celebrated the Opening Ceremonies with at least 400 other Canadians crammed into the bar.  There were several moments of SHHHH! to try to listen to what was happening.  Other moments of laughter at the British sense of humour including:


- Free health care promotion (an obvious F you to Mitt Romney who was visiting and made some rather silly comments about the Olympic games)
- the Queen jumping from a helicopter with James Bond
- Three dozen Mary Poppins flying into the stadium


And of course, cheering for the countries as they marched into the stadium.  We cheered the loudest for Canada and Team GB, but as we got drunker and drunkier, we started clinking our glasses for Team Swaziland and Uzbekistan...haha...who comes up with these names?


Speaking of drunk, one of the highlights of the bar, was this couple from the West Coast.  The wife got hammered and started hitting on Phil and Jamie.  She tried with Alex, but Sandy shot her some Asian cuteye and she backed off.  They still stole our seats that we had occupied since 5pm.  Lesson learned, don't be nice.


However, we were unceremoniously all kicked out right before Sir Paul performed and people were losing their minds.  Very unCanadian like behaviour was displayed and we all went home with a bitter taste in our mouths - or perhaps that was from the vomit after nine pints of Strongbow.


Day 2 - 3m Women's Syncronized Springboard Diving
Our only ticket to the games was to the diving event at the aquatics centre on Sunday.  We were lucky enough to get seats to this event - little did we know that we'd be watching Canada get it's first medal.  It started with Canada doing really well, and in true Canadian style, we lost the lead and China, being the powerhouse they are, won Gold.  We were sitting in the nosebleeds but I truly believe our cheers reached all the way to the platforms 4,000m below us.

This is with 55mm zoom.  We were still super far.

Alex, Sandy and I wandered around the Olympic Park afterwards and it's massive and quite impressive.  The weather was bipolar, so we got waves of sunshine followed by a lightning show and a downpour back to happy sunny skies within a matter of an hour.  Mother Nature must have been watching the Joannie Rochette story with her cats.


The Olympic Park is located in London's East end, notorious for being the shady part of the city, has been refurbished to be the most sustainable Olympic Park ever.  The stadium, Aquatics centre, Velodrome, football and hockey fields are all located in this park.  A big wildflower field also serves as a live TV venue for those coming in and out of other events.  Alex wore his Union Jack and I wore the Maple Leaf flag.  The spirit of the games made the Olympic Park into a grown up version of Disneyland where everyone was smiling and greeting people with "hello, how are you?" or a "woot!  Canada!!!"  The Olympic volunteers were so happy, I think they inhaled a bag of happy gas before starting their shifts.  Here are some selects from the Olympic grounds:

Wildflowers are present all around the park.

The orbit - telecom tower and observation deck.

Very Polka Dot Door.

The Velodrome.

One Eyed Monster Mascot.

The Stadium.

Jump for the Olympics!

We don't have any more tickets to any of the other events, but with the controversy of the empty seats at the venues, we might get another chance to go!  If not, anyone up for Sochi 2014?

One bite at a time - Eating my way through Europe

There's a scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love, where Julia Robert's character, Liz, makes a simple Italian meal for herself and plants herself on the floor of her Roman flat, where she spends an entire afternoon just savouring each bite of her food.  This scene is significant to me for two reasons - the first, is that I just finished reading the book on my European travels (Sidebar: did anyone else find it really hard to get through the India part of the book?); and the second is that I had several of these EAT moments in Europe.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the movie, but I can see how people were pissed that so much was missing from the book.  Definitely a rental.

From my acorn-fed jamon in Barcelona to the lasagna I had in Markaska, Croatia, to the (several) cheese and wine combos in Paris, I've gained two new friends - I've named my lovehandles "Carbs" and "Consequences."  (Those "C" twins are so evil.)

I stare at this photo when I'm hungry.  It's the way of encouraging myself to write a lot of award winning books, gain the income to hire the chef that made this award winning lasagna, and hire a trainer to work off the weight I'll gain from eating this for every meal, everyday.

I've had a great time in Europe so far - besides the excellent food, I've experienced so much in the past five weeks that have opened my eyes to the fact that I am still as not as well traveled as I hope to be, that there are still things I need to work (cough...communicating my feelings...cough) and that I can really get used to this life of just wandering from place to place and not doing anything.  Now if I can only find a way of making income out of doing nothing...


Traveling has also given me a couple of story ideas to tinker with and hopefully that will result in the income that will allow me to travel some more, which will result in more story ideas and more income...you see what I'm getting at here?  Sigh, it is hard not to get ahead of yourself when you have this much time on your hands to just dream.  (Insert the Bob Sinclair Love Generation song from the Lotto Max commercials here as I dream about my next vacation.)


There are several highlights of this trip (besides the food - wait, I said this already) that I can't wait to start blogging about in my following entries - they include:


- celebrating Spain's Eurocup win in Barcelona on Las Ramblas and watching people drunkenly climb the lamp posts and praying they didn't fall to their deaths, 
- meeting a seminary student on the train from Zagreb to Split, Croatia and talking to him about everything from politics to religion to Croatian reality TV for about four hours as our train was delayed by a fire on the track (no, not dangerous at all),
- waking up every morning to the sound of the Adriatic waves splash against our boat and then jumping into the clear blue waters after breakfast on my Split - Dubrovnik cruise,

Life is hard when you have to jump off a boat everyday.

- the most random Sunday I've ever experienced which included a Tim Burton-esque circus exhibit, followed by running into a random Brazilian drum band and random carnival rides that made my friend Lindsay and I sick.


Each place I've visited in the last five weeks have left quite the impression.  Portugal was a friendly destination where surprisingly everyone spoke English with you, because they are probably tired of foreigners butchering Portuguese or speaking to them in Spanish.  Spain was incredibly hot and a great place to meet interesting characters on our Trafalgar tour - including some older Aussies and New Zealanders who insisted that the Spanish speak English.  Croatia was relaxing after three weeks of bus tours and an eclectic mix of young Australians - there were only Aussies on this part of my travels, I was quite the minority as an Asian Canadian (or Canasian).  And well, Paris, it was all about living the life of a Parisien, so much so that I was even getting annoyed with the tourists and saying my "Pardon!"s with an annoyance that would make any local proud.


What makes life so great at the moment is that my European adventures are not over.  There's still the London Olympics and Scotland and all of its foggy glory left to experience!  


It's not hard to keep saying to myself - fuck, I'm so glad I decided to take this break.