Friday, February 12, 2010

Vancouver 2010: Let the Games Begin -- and Meet Taiwan's Sole Winter Olympian

The Vancouver Games begin today! Here is a great collection of photos from the torch relay.

Foxtrot and I love the Winter Games -- quite possibly even more than the Summer Games. To quote Foxtrot, "There's more stuff to do in the winter! In the summer, there are only so many ways you can run and swim and jump." Then again, that girl does love skiing.

Anyhoo, I'm looking forward to my 4-yearly indulgence in goofy sports that I hardly ever see outside the Olympics. I want some ski jumping and some curling! (I actually tried curling once, and it is SO MUCH HARDER than it looks.)

On a related note, some friends and I were talking about sports that SHOULD be in the Winter Games. How about snowmobile racing, dogsledding, ice sculpture making, and competitive snowball throwing? Come on, that would be pretty awesome.

Check out this cool photo essay of "unlikely" winter Olympians, including Taiwan's only representative in Vancouver, 24-year-old Chih-Hung Ma of Pingtung (my dad's hometown!) Ma will be competing in the luge. Good luck!

I'll save you my usual rant about "Chinese Taipei." You've already heard it plenty of times.

I'll tell you something else too. I'm so glad the Games are in Canada, a free society and open democracy. Oh, there will be the usual host-country displays of pride, but there won't be the ridiculous shenanigans of the type we saw in Beijing. Along with the the lapdog media that swallowed all the propaganda hook, line, and sinker. Geez, who else is glad that the "Beijingoism" is a memory?

Now we can get on with more important things, like watching people hurl themselves down mountains, perform triple axels, and club each other in the pursuit of a slippery puck. YES!

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