(Please be forewarned that this blog is my WRITING outlet, and even though I'm not particularly loquacious, this series of blogs will probably contain more words than you might want to read. And no, this isn't a diary, and so I won't be posting many personal pics here. That's what facebook is for.)
The Olympics.
I am in the fortunate position that the next two Olympic Games will take place in cities close to my heart: Beijing and Vancouver, and so I've probably grown to pay more attention to the Games now than ever before. Last year in Beijing, despite the Games being more than a year away, one could not escape Olympic-mania. I haven't visited the Mainland yet this year, and so I can only assume that the craze has only heated up even more. The Games are city-specific, not country-specific, meaning that the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver will take place in Vancouver and its vicinity, not branch out to other Canadian cities. This year, for the 2008 Games, Beijing and the IOC granted Hong Kong (some 2000 kilometers away) the right to host the equestrian events. I consider this an honor and a privilege. Yet unlike its brethens in the Mainland, Hong Kong has essentially demonstrated no Olympic spirit. Aside from a large Olympic logo on Victoria harbour and a few TV plugs by not-so-famous celebrities, the city really isn't sporting the same type of festivity and excitement as can be found in Beijing. In fact, a couple nights ago, I saw a commercial on TV featuring horse races and events, and naturally figured that was an ad to promote the Olympics. Then at the end, realized it was only an ad for the Hong Kong Jockey Club, the de facto gambling authority. Given, HK is hosting only one event, not the entire games, but still, wouldn't one take this opportunity to showcase and promote one's city, whether for cultural, social, or financial intents? Why this city has remained so passive in this regards is beyond my understanding, and frankly, has been disappointing.
On another Olympic-related note, I saw this image in the South China Morning Post today:
Apparently both photos are the exact same view taken from the same spot on two different days. Seriously now! People are BREATHING that!(And on a side note, it's nice to see CCTV's skin edging towards completion.)
Moving onto a recommendation for Gmail.
I'll keep this short, but can the engineers at Google please allow a date-search capability? So when I want to look for an email from a year ago, I don't have to keep on clicking "Older"? Plus the option to click "Oldest" really isn't that useful is it? Let's get rid of something that's useless, and replace it with something useful, please. Aside from that, I'm glad to see I've only used 1/3 of my 6.9 GB of storage space. Keep up the good work!
2 comments:
you can actually type in "January 2005" or whatever and it will bring up all the emails that happen in that month... or simply "2005" and it will find emails from 2005 or that mention it. Not exactly what you're going for but hey, it works.
they want you to keep clicking "older" so that the G-ads show more frequently. duh.
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