Beijing Olympics 2008

[nlagalle]

I'm sitting here working away tonight and have been in Beijing for 28 days so far. So I thought I'd put together a trip report on what I have been up to and what I have got left to go.

I'm working here as a technician for a major media group, so I've been involved in the setup and support of all technology being used here.

Firstly my trip over..

My flight (after being changed a few times with dates) was on Monday 21st July. I was travelling with the other tech and we were going MEL-SYD-PEK with QF.

Morning flight: 21st July

Early start! Up at 4am to get picked up at 4.45. I have the same driver whenever I flyso he always arrives on time, and now he drives a chauffeur car instead of a cab, it's even better. Check in at MEL was interesting as i have no visa in my passport to China. I have to explain to the check in girl that my Olympic accreditation is my visa and show her the paperwork. All's good and she organises 4 seats for the 2 of us for the SYD -> PEK leg.

Quick stop in the QP for something to eat, then off to board. QF404 to Sydney was uneventful, although i was stuck way back in 50D on the 767, but wasn't too bad as there was no one next to me. Flight was supposed to be delayed, but ended up leaving on time.

Getting over to the INT terminal in Sydney was straight forward. Getting through immigration and the security check wasn't!! The place was packed with everyone leaving the World Youth day event! But we made it through and after my mate bought a camera, it was off to the QP. Was still quite a few people in there but we managed to get a seat and kick back before boarding. Boarding was via the bus! Haven't done that for a looong time! An A330 is our aircraft for today on QF191. 33D E F G for the two of us so we have a bit room to move as well.

The flight was pretty uneventful aside from leaving late. Kicked back and watch a couple of movies on the AVOD. This has been the first OS trip I have done since going to Fiji in 2000 (worked there during the coup) so to me the inflight entertainment is a lot different. My laptop never came out of my bag as the selection of movies was pretty good.

Our flight into PEK was late, we landed just after 9.45pm local time. At the new Terminal 3. Crikey that is a huge terminal!!! I was a bit awestruck at first and forgot to get my camera out! Note to self, must take photos when leaving! After a quick stroll up to immigration, we had a pretty short wait as there are dedicated Olympic lanes. The girl was checking passports and accreditations pretty closely. but no dramas in the end and i was through to the next step of getting my accreditation "activated" which is just after you pass through immigration.

After getting that done it was done the stairs and onto a train?? so we had an express train to go to the baggage claim.. luckily the bags didn't take too long to come out and after a final stop at Customs to declare my electronic equipment (laptop, Sat phone, recording device) we were through. Finally in China!

Our next step was to get to the hotel we were staying at. this would be a challenge. A bit of background here. All media work in the Main Press Centre (or MPC). For Beijing 2008 this is located inside the Olympic Green. this is a totally new area on the nothern opart of Beijing, inbetween the 4th and 5th ring roads.

The Beijing MPC is also different because it has 2 hotels attached to it. Normally all Media/Broadcast stay in a Media Village (much like the Athlete's village). this time some people can stay close the the MPC. Me and my mate are lucky, we are staying at the hotel, not the village which is a good 20-30mins by bus.

However that was our first problem. No one knew about this hotel! we jumped in a cab and gave the guy the the print out we had in chinese of the hotel name etc. after consulting with a few taxi drivers and what seemed like shrugs, he jumped I the cab and we puttered off. I asy that because i don't think he went above 50km for the whole way in.

So we get into town and he gets us to the Olympic Green, but we are on the wrong side! Everything is fenced off for security. So our driver tries a couple of different ways and also tried to drop us off at the current convention centre (which our hotel is to become the new one!). So he stops the meter and keeps driving around. By this stage we had been in the cab a good 30+ mins. The cab fair was 64 Yuan which is a shade over $10. Anyway he kept driving around to try and get to the other side of the green and eventually we found the number for the hotel and rang that for directions.

It still took another 20 mins to get to the other side, past all sorts of security, but we finally made it. we could see the MPC next to us. I gave the cabby 100 Yuan for his trouble, which he was pretty stoked about.

We head through the temporary security and into the hotel to check in. we are staying at the 3 star hotel at one end, not the 5 star Inter Continental at the other end. howver i have to say, the hotel is better than any 3 star I've stayed in in Australia. so after we drop our bags off we decide to head downstairs for a drink in the bar! After the events of getting to the hotel I say we needed it.

I must say that the local Beijing brew Yangjing Draught is actually a good drop. We are sitting outside drinking away when the hotel manager comes up to us to sat the cab driver called and had found a phone in the cab and he was bringing it back. we are looking thinking we both had out phones, then I realised my PDA wasn't with me. so 5 mins later the cab driver rocks up and the hotel staff run out and grab it for me. I think tipping that cabbie was karma!! PDA is back in my hands.

We finally crash out at about 1am local time... Tomorrow we have to check into our office and start the set up...

[Timtammi]

Very interesting to get a trip report on the "inside" of the Olympics.

Looking forward to the rest of your report!

Cheers

[nlagalle]

Set up time:

I won't give a daily blow by blow account of our set up, but will highlight some of the things we noticed along the way..

We got up around 8am on the first day. after the long day getting here i actually felt pretty good. The hotel itself doesn't have a restaurant or room service. Down on the bottom level of the complex is the Media food court, complete with a Macca's (although we found out it doesn't open for another 9 days).

We wander downstairs and have a look at the slim pickings. and it is pretty slim as the MPC is pretty much deserted at the moment. There is really only Techs there setting up. Much to my surprise there was Sultana Bran. the hot food left a bit to be desired, so I stuck to the cereal, fruit, juice and coffee. We have breakfast vouchers so we pile up the food. The food court seats a couple of thousand people. During Games time there is over 35,000 media and broadcast people here so everything is large!

So it is time to move into our office.. Everything you order for the games (office space, chairs, tables, phones, data comms etc) all get ordered through the Rate card. It's like a one stop shop to order everything you can't bring over. we ship all our own computer and networking gear and order lines etc. We find the rate card office and get the ball rolling. The Chinese love their paperwork and there are plenty of forms to sign! We get it all sorted and head off to our office upstairs. The MPC is a huge building with over 16 floors, but only 4 are being used for the Games. To give you an idea of length, it's about as long as Jeff's Shed in Melbourne. the IBC (International Broadcast Centre) makes Jeff's Shed look small!

Our office is very plain - only the furniture is in there. I call our freight carrier and advise them we are in the office so they can deliver our road cases - 4 of them in total. They expect an after lunch delivery. This suits us as we get our delivery of SIM cards, Datacards etc. So it will take some time to sort it all out.

One thing we quickly notice it isn't 1 chinese person doing something, it's at least 5 or 6. The network people cam in to set up our leased lines and there was a flurry of them around the place. However they were very efficient and had our main leased line up and running quickly and would come back to install the venue to office links we had ordered.

Our gear arrived after lunch as promised and we bgan the huge task of ubnpacking and setting up. At the same time we were arranging for delivery of our rack cabinet for the switches and servers. we had to get the gear delivered before Wednesday night as Thursday was lockdown - when the place was swept for bombs and full security was in place. Up until this time anyone could enter provided they had a bump in pass.

We have over 30 staff coming to Beijing, although we weren't setting up 30 workstations we had a lot cabling to run and also run power. by then end of the day the Rack had arrived and we were well ahead of schedule. we called it a night around 7.30pm and went off to dinner.

The manager of the bar told us there was a good restaurant just up the road called the "Daily Duck" so we thought we'd give the local cuisine a bash. so after a 10 minutes stroll up the road we were there. it was interesting getting "outside the fence" as we came to call it because inside was so sterile, but cross the road and you were amonsgt the people.

So our first taste of local food was at "the duck". We walked in to be swarmed by waitress chanting "Nei How" at us. The ushered us to a table where we were given two menus that were about the size of large photo album and just as thick! Now i had always read about the Engrish and Chinglish etc, but had never seen it myself. This menu was a hoot. I've gotta go back before i leave and take some photos. There were things like: extremely good perch - better than the normal perch, something that burns the stomach and so on.we were having a good old laugh reading it.


In the end we settled on the ribs, calamari, some veges and rice. We also discovered there was no duck left.. Seems like you need to get in early to get the duck! And I love the beer here too! $2 for a 600ml bottle! although they jsut don't serve it cold enough for my liking. so all up with a few beers, dinner set us back about $15 each!

We ended up back at the bar later that night where we met a couple of people from the OBS (Olympic broadcast Service). Funnily enough we saw them at the Duck earlier on too! It was quite pleasant sitting outside in their "beer garden" having a few quiet ones. Although their quiet ones are a bit pricey at around $7 for a pint.

Tomorrow is our last quiet day before the first wave of our crew arrive in 8 people are coming in tomorrow night.

[Lindsay Wilson]

This certainly is a unique TR. I wonder whether you are the only AFF'er working (or competing) at the Games. Looking forward to the next instalment.

[nlagalle]

Wednesday/Thursday 23rd/24th July.

Our last day of peace and quiet!

We have finally got our network up and running and we have a VPN tunnel back to Australia to handle all our IP phones, email, text and picture flow.

This is when we discover our problems. We have ordered a 10mb leased line and the performance is well under that. we are expecting pictures to take 20-30 seconds to send back and they are taking minutes.

We do some tests to try and nut it our with no success. So we have the network people here to test it all. They claim the link to Australia is the problem, but we are getting pathetic speeds. We also discover that sites are being blocked. This was against a promise made last year that internet access would be unblocked and unmonitored (we'll leave that until a bit later on).

The link speed would be an issue for us for at least the next 10 days. We employed some tricks to speed things up, and we did get our pic times down to 30 seconds in the end. We soon discovered another agency was having the same speed issues as us. so we weren't alone.

This was also the time my mate came up with the first of his phrases. he said it was being slowed down by the Great Firewall of China.

That aside we managed to have the office up and running by the end of the day which put us in front of our schedule. It's a pretty good set up here. we have IP phones connected to our PABX's in Sydney and Melbourne so we can call out back home for nothing. We have a wireless LAN in the office to save on cabling (don't get me started on the hoops we had to jump through to get a license for that!). Our IM client for chatting online and skype works a treat to call home!

My mate has done some good tricks so there is no configuration changes for when people are out of the office. They can plug in anywhere and the internet will work. Our aim is to make it simple and easy for they guys out there and file quickly.

We finish up and headed to Hou Hai (the lake "district" in the centre of Beijing) for dinner. It's a really happening place with so many bars around. We found a place and kicked back near the water for dinner. and kick back in the beer garden again awaiting the arrival or the crew. In the end they arrived at nearly 1am! There was issues at the airport as the name on some of the accreditations was different to their passports (short name on 1 long on the other). They got through ok in the end but it did take some time. To top it off some of the guys were staying at the Media Village were locked out and couldn't get in as it wasn't opening for another 2 days! after some frantic phone calls we got them into our hotel for a couple of nights.

Then we told them the bad news that we had to be up and out of the hotel by 7.30am due to lockdown happening! Needless to say they were happy about that!

Lockdown is where everyone is kicked out of the venue and the bombsquad go over it which a fine tooth comb and seal off each room after it is done. The hotel was first to be swept in the morning and it was off limits until 1.30pm. we sought refuge in our office until we had to leave there too shortly after 9am.

We headed up the road to a little bakery for a coffee.. A few of the guys weren't quite adjusted to the humidity and heat (coming from Melbourne) so we didn't last long there. In the end we were at Ya Show market. having a wander around all the "replica" stuff.. it was my first time in a chinese market and it can be a bit daunting, but you soon get used to it. The bargaining is always fun, and my mate is very good at it. He knows all the steps.. bargain down, walk away etc.. They have an excellent food court upstairs and it cost about $3 for a huge lunch. One thing I have noticed here is unlike most Australian Chinese food, a lot of the dishes we have had have either lots of spices or pepper. Great flavours.. I'm really loving the chinese food here.

After a bit more wandering around we finally jump in a cab and head back to the MPC. We still can't get into the MPC but we can go into our hotel rooms.

Now it all starts getting interesting.. The security is now in full swing. So everyone gets Magged and Bagged. And the metal detector is probably on the highest setting too. So coming back in I set off the metal detector - i never do this at the airports and I have to power up my laptop, phone, PDA, take a swig of my coke, use my hand cleaner and this is after i've been patted down after the wand went over me! I hope they don't keep this up for the next 5 weeks! There will be alot of grumpy people!

We head off for dinner somewhere in town - our translater is a local uni student and she takes us to a restaurant strip in town and we find a place and get a private dining room.. Once again a dirt cheap dinner.. about $15 worth.

Tomorrow is going to be busy getting everyone set up with SIM cards, laptops configured etc.

[dot]

Great TR Nick. I am looking forward to reading more... (and talking on Skype)

[nlagalle]

Thanks guys for the feedback! I'm enjoying writing it up.

I'm going to merge the rest of our setup work that we did up til just prior to the opening ceremony as we had some bloody long days getting stuff done. So I've extracted the "highlights"

Firstly I finally found an aerial shot of the MPC/IBC and have marked each bit.



Now the MPC also goes underneath the whole lot as well. The place is bloody huge! This view is looking north east and the watercube and Bird's Nest is basically to the right of the pic.

After the initial rush of people arriving we settled in and went about the usual assisting people setting up and getting used to working remotely.

So over the next 2 weeks the office starting filling up with snappers and journos lobbing in. kept us busy sorting out all their questions!

One thing i have noticed since being here is how the chinese take to their jobs here. There is a real sense of pride among the people and the person sweeping the floor shows the same enthusiam as someone higher up the pecking order. They all small and wave and say hi as you walk past...

Another thing that has every talking here is the fact there is virtually no privcay in the toilets. you can walk past the toilets and see inside! in fact one of the toilets has a shared hand basin and a girl washing there hands can see a guy at the urinal. They are also so eager to keep the place clean.. no sooner have you been, they leap in and clean everything! There have been plenty of jokes flying around they before too long they will be offering to wipe for you!

At the same time we went to set up our main two venues, the water cube and the stadium.

The watercube is an amazing venue. So large and great views. The media tribunes are on the camera side - basically the whole other side is taken up by Broadcast, Media and Olympic family. that's the side that never makes it on TV!!

We were finally allowed in the Birds Nest the Sunday before the opening ceremony. Everything there was under wraps, no cameras allowed etc. I have to say looking at it from outside it is impressive, but inside i wasn't a big fan. I still think the MCG inside is by far the best stadium. It has a cauldron effect when full. However an advatage of the new stadium is the closeness to the Field of Play (FOP). Even the nose bleed seats are still really close.


We got our links set up, but w have to run some cabling down into the moat (it's like a trench that runs around part of the track so photographers can take pics). butr we'll have to come back with a roll and do it manually and crimp it up. There is also a huge platform that looks head onto the 100m straight and during the athletics it will have a couple of hundred photographers on it.

This is where we ended up having a few trips to the Electronic part of Beijing to get some parts. The place is like the biggest swap meet, but on 10 floors! We looked around trying to find some obscure bits we needed, haggled on price and walked away happy!! people are touting and trying to get you into their shops or stalls to buy cameras, USB sticks, the works! We found a couple of good stalls that had what we needed and the price was pretty good (even without haggling too much).

We ventured out to another couple of restaurants.. The first one we had seen before on the way to the Duck one night so we thought we'd give it a shot. It was pretty basic inside, but the tables had cookers built into them so it looked pretty good. the menu pictures looked great too, so we are thinking that this is going to be pretty good... until they tell us the main meat - Donkey! we thought why not we'll give it a bash, let me tell you never again! not exactly the nicest meat.. needless to say we ate more greens that night... The following night we found a decent restaurant around the corner.. cheaper food, but really nice.. It's also the palce where my mate came up with his second classic line.. "Living behind the Banmboo curtain" (he thought of it when he saw one next to where we were sitting).

During this time there was also the great Internet debate. As more media arrived and found the internet was blocked there was a big push and finally a week before the games the Chinese lifted the ban on most sites.. We werwe also very weary of them monitoring traffic (well trying to at least) which would explain our slower speeds. My mate was going around telling people to get used to life behind the bamboo curtain!

So by the 7th August we were all set up and read to kick off.. Although we had been here for nearly 3 weeks and people filing stories and pics, the main game was about to start.

[straitman]

Excellent Thanks for sharing.

[garyjohn951]

Set up time:

During Games time there is over 35,000 media and broadcast people here so everything is large!

Amazing number of media, as there are only 10500 competitors

[nlagalle]

Amazing number of media, as there are only 10500 competitors

It is a huge amount. but it is such a large event to cover, and there is a huge amount of support people too.