Olympics – Nicolas Demers

Now that the party’s over…

And, just like that, the 2010 ~~Spring~~ Winter Olympics are done.

Frankly, I’m not missing them. The choppers flying around day and night, the road closures, the crowds, the noise… It could have been worse, though. I could be living right next to one of the venues.

And, just like that, the 2010 ~~Spring~~ Winter Olympics are done.

And I realise I probably would have felt differently if I’d gotten more in the Olympic spirit. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed some of the events, but overall I wasn’t as flag-wavingly fanatical as some of my friends who put up a Canadian flag on their Facebook profile, or spent every hour of every day watching the events, and who are now all going on about Olympic withdrawal.

Here’s what I enjoyed: first, watching a friend of mine run with the Olympic torch.

Second, the opening ceremony, which I’ve already blogged about. It managed to stir some patriotic pride in me, which I hadn’t felt in a long time.

After that, I followed the events somewhat, though never live (I’ll say this for CTV, their dedicated Olympic site kicks a lot of ass. I did cheer for Alexandre Bilodeau, our first gold medalist of the season; I cheered and wept with Joannie Rochette; I high-fived strangers on the street whenever we won a medal, and sometimes when we didn’t. And on Sunday, though we were supposed to play volleyball, the director agreed to let us listen to the hockey game live on the radio. I totally didn’t mind. Go Canada!

What else? Well, I did the tourist thing in my own city, and checked out the mint and cauldron, and Vectorial Elevation, and the cauldron again. Swung by to visit a few of the houses (such as Maison du Québec and Place de la francophonie) but those places aren’t really touristy places to visit, they’re to hang out in and drink and watch the games.

Oh, and I went to see Laurie Anderson’s show Deluded. That was… pretty fucking surreal. Which I expected, of course, so it’s all good.

And… that’s about it, really. I caught part of the closing ceremony online; that wasn’t nearly as impressive as the opening ceremony. Besides the nice pomp and circumstance, and an Olympic anthem I could actually understand (and a Russian anthem that kicked so much fracking ass), there wasn’t much that really grabbed me. Michael J. Fox is made of awesome, as are William Shatner and Neil Young, but the rest? All those cutesy self-deprecating jokes? Meh. Also, John Furlong should never, ever try to speak French again. Ever. The live feed died about halfway through, and after a couple minutes’ trying I gave up.

Though I will tell you, my heartstrings were tugged at the end of Young’s Long May You Run, when the torch just… went out. And I though, Oh, wow, it’s really over.

Okay, I admit it. Part of me will miss the games. But you gotta move on, right? I just hope all our guests left with a good impression of Vancouver. And, congratulations to our Canadian athletes. First in gold and third in overall medal count? Awesome.

Night Lights

A few photos I took last night, as a friend and I went out on the town:

I wanted to see Maison du Québec, especially since I heard some Cirque du Soleil acrobats were there the night before. Nothing much was happening when we got there (6:00 — 7:00) so we wandered around Ontario House and Hockey House and a couple of other houses, swung by Robson Square, watched some foreign dancers for a bit and listened to the screams of people going by on the zipline above.

Off to Sunset Beach to check out the lights (I meant to go back with a tripod. My camera dealt with low lights very well, but the pics were still a little blurry). I tried to experiment with taking different exposures of the Burrard Bridge to play with HDR photography, but all photos ended up more or less the same. Damn. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong. Oh well, it’ll still be there tomorrow.

Then cutting right across downtown again to check out the Olympic Cauldron. Which I’ve never seen at night. Bowing to popular pressure, the powers that be did cut a little band in the surrounding fence at about eye height, so people could at least stick their cameras in and take proper pictures. I don’t know, I understand about security and safety, but surely there were better alternatives than some dreary chain-link fence?

I don’t remember if it was near Robson Square or the Art Gallery that we saw this little structure that smelled of delicious cedar. Mmm. Was that Haida Gwaii House? I’ll have to go back and check.

Next on the list: Granville Island attractions. Maritime House and Place de la Francophonie, anyone?

The Olympic Opening Ceremony

It was not a nice day. The weather was cool and overcast, predicted to rain in the evening. Which it did, but that didn’t stop me from going down to David Lam Park in Yaletown to watch the opening ceremony. My jacket had a hood and was waterproof, but I could have used a layer or two more. At the end I was starving, shivering, and my legs and neck were killing me.

It was totally worth it. The ceremony was beautiful and stirring, a wonderful showcase of our country’s culture and diversity that, dammit, made you proud to be Canadian!

But it was totally worth it. The ceremony was beautiful and stirring, a wonderful showcase of our country’s culture and diversity that, dammit, made you proud to be Canadian!

The bad: the embarrassing mechanical hiccup at the end, cheating Catriona Le May Doan out of her part in lighting the cauldron. Boy, someone’s head is gonna roll over that.

And Nikki Yanofsky’s rendition of O Canada was incredibly annoying. She’s a great singer, but the anthem doesn’t need all those frills, which messed up everybody who tried to sing along. Though I appreciated that she switched between French and English.

(Come to think of it, the whole ceremony was very bilingual, with all announcements and introductions done in French first, but the countries were introduced in alphabetical order according to their English names. Usually that doesn’t matter, but then you’ve got Netherlands vs. Pays-Bas, or Uzbekistan vs. Ouzbékistan.)

The meh: Nelly Furtado and Bryan Adams’ duet. The song was alright, I guess, but I’m not a fan of those two. Also leaving me cold was Measha Brueggergosman’s rendition of the Olympic Hymn. Sorry, she’s got some incredible pipes, but I couldn’t understand a word she was singing. I could tell some parts were in English and others in French, but that’s about it. I’m not even sure she wasn’t sneaking other languages in there.

The awesome: pretty much everything else, really. The First Nations greeting and dance was stunning, Ashley MacIsaac kicked so much ass, and k.d. lang blew me away. Not to mention the outstanding visual effects, with the whales, and the breaking ice, and the trees, and the audience participation, and the… everything.

So hey, I finally caught the Olympic spirit!