18 Days in August, an Olympic Blog

Hari - great coverage. I didn't watch the Opening ceremony - the pictures from this post kind of make me wish I had. I have been watching some events tonight - our rowers are doing well!
 

Watched the opening ceremony last night on Thai TV. Overall it was very impressive; well organised, the mix of history, culture, surrealism and modern music worked suprisingly well.
The athletes parade was interesting: How many Indians? (would have expected more from the worlds second most populous country); I do feel sorry for single competior Djibouti!!; not suprised by the crowd reaction to Iraq and Afghanistan (although the cynical side of me thinks that those two countries sending a team will be used by the US to stress that they are getting back to normal!).
Overall, a great spectacle, and a perfect start to what could be the best Games ever!
 

I watched the coverage from Thai TV and here are my comments as promised. I was very impressed by the ceremony, it looked extremely professional and not tacky at all. The lake was very photogenic as where the little torches held up by the spectators. I don't know what the Thai commentators were saying (in between shuffling their papers to find the next bit they were supposed to read) but they had obviously been given a script (I caught a mention to Kolokotronis and bits of descriptions of countries, e.g. the continent they are in). On the TV coverage Cyprus sounded like they got a warm welcome as well as Iraq. USA also got a loud cheer but mainly from the Americans there (the Greek spectators shown looked distinctly stone-faced) Other various random observations: did anyone notice that the Afganistan flag bearer was a woman? Hopefully, it signifies a real change in the country's attitude and not just a PR trick. On the other hand how conspicuous was the lack of women from some of the Arab states? Oh, and the 2 Koreas with one team?

Watching some random American channel this morning (not CNN or one of the other big ones) and the main focus was the doping and the security, no mention of the opening ceremony. They also said that their athletes have been told how to compete in front of 'hostile Anti-American crowds'.