After The Beijing Olympics 2008

The Beijing Olympics of 2008 has come to an end. As I'm sitting here, watching the closing ceremony. I couldn't help but remember the entire production cost of the event is $44 Billion. And they did this out of their own pocket, without borrowing a cent from anyone.

China has also broken 50 Gold Medal count. The last time that happened was by USSR.

The opening ceremony for example, had 15,000 performers. Not a single one of them repeated any performance.

I think the declaration to the world is loud and clear. "We are here. We have a lot of people. We have a lot of money."

I don't know how many people will remember that China denied entry visa to Joel Cheek. Or that China's success in the game is due to "Project 119". A system where they find kids all over the country at the age of 4 with potential for certain sports, and remove them from the family to put them in the elite sport school. Or that China sent two women in the 70s to "re-education through labour" because they dare applied to protest during the Olympic games. That's right, they didn't even get to protest. Or the fact that the original dancer for the performance where she danced while more than 30 men carried the dancing stage that's 3 meter tall, fall off during rehearsal 3 weeks ago, and is paralised for life from waist down. When the real open ceremony started, the girl who was the real "Queen of Dance", and was in fact the real "Liu Yan" was lying in the hospital struggling to sit up. But they kept her name and her bio while at first cover up her injury then downplay it.

In some ways, I feel bad for London. How on earth are they going to be able to come close in terms of budget? Not to metnion everything is much cheaper in China. I bet to put on an event of similar scale in US would cost 10 times as much, or $440 Billion.

Because by 2012, all everyone will remember is, "Beijing 2008 was awesome, there were a lot of people, and there was a lot of money put into it. China won a lot of gold medals."

Always Use Https With Gmail

A new feature has been added in the account setting area of gmail to force all pages delivered under https. If you haven't done so, go turn it on right away.

There are already exploits out in the wild for capturing your gmail account in non-encrypted mode.

When A Name Is Not Just A Name

First, let's get this out of the way. There is no such thing as a country called Chinese Taipei, or China Tapei, or anything that's some strange mutation there of.

The name of the country is Taiwan. The flag of the country is not the silly Olympics generic flag. It looks like this.

The reason you may know otherwise was beacuse of China making it a condition to allow Taiwan to attend Olympics back in 1984. Taiwan wasn't allowed to use the true country name, nor the real flag. It was a compromise for Olympics, the end.

Now, I have no idea why South Korea feel the need to bully Taiwan at the World Cyber Game Asia in Singapore during 8-8-08. Taiwan team was competing under the country name Taiwan with the real flag. South Korean team filed a formal protest, claiming Taiwan has no right to use either the flag or the name. So the name was changed and flag was stripped. Taiwan team also filed a formal protest, but was ignored.

Last year the World Cyber Game event at Seattle, when the Taiwan player won 3rd place, the Taiwan flag was shown. As the result, players from China ran up and try to prevent Taiwan players from leaving the stage, while shouting "是狗生的" (SOB) at the Taiwan players.

Wei-Ling Chen(陳葦綾) Won First Medal For Taiwan

No, it's not Chinese Taipei. It's Taiwan. But that's for another post.

Her coach once told her "Your skill in weight lifting is the worst in the world" after watching her practice. But she won the first medal for Taiwan.

She placed 11th in 2004 Olympics. At the time, her coach told her "All you have is strength." He then told her, "I'll teach you everything else." She was in the position for the Silver medal. But her lift wasn't balanced. She tried to hang on, but in the end the weight fall on her. She was 1 sec away from Silver Medal.

Afterward, she said in the interview that she was quite nervous. For her final lift, she thought to herself. "即使折斷手臂，死都不放掉槓鈴" (Even if I broke my arm, or if I die I would still hang on to the weight).

She wasn't favored to medal at all, in part because her weight is far lower than others in the event. She is 0.5 kg lighter than the 4th place winner. When asked, she replied with "Honestly, I was eating hamburger yesterday. The person in charge of the weight control was very upset with me. But I was like 'I'm eating for my country!'"

When asked about her future plan, she said "As long as my coach doesn't give up on me. I'll be back for the next Olympics. My two assets are my youth and strength. I can do better."