Olympic Flame and Closing Ceremony Reflections

This post has been a long time coming, but I've been a busy beaver so you'll have to forgive me =D

Viewing the Olympic Flame is something people feel drawn to do during the Olympics. It becomes something of a pilgrimage, a feather in your touristy cap to say "I was there". People felt so obliged to see what is essentially, just another bonfire, that queues for the viewing platform grew hours long!

Luckily for me, I went during a hockey game, and was standing in a quickly-moving queue for no more than 10min. It was the best time to go. Evening, a blue twilight making the flame that much brighter. All the city's lights coming aglow.

As I stood in the queue I met a couple from Canada, who'd been pavillion-seeing all day. I also met a family from Vancouver who had the amazing idea of taking a flag up with them, and taking a picture of themselves infront of the flame with the flag! Deffinatley one for the album. You see, that's what the Cauldron's all about. There's not much there, it's not that amazing, it's just one hell of a photo op'!

As you probably know, they had technical difficulties with the torch at the Opening ceremony, lol. Well, they took the chance to put it right again in the closing ceremony, and hats off to them, I think it was a brilliant idea. Better to laugh at yourself than get angry! They had a mime pull the fourth arm of the torch from the ground, and then let the athlete who couldn't light it before set it aflame. So at least she got her moment.

You see, even though this games has been frought with problems, Vancouver 2010 has not only coped, but gone beyond the pail to make it right again. Somehow I can't see the British cynics doing the same if - sorry, when - our games go wrong. Plenty of politicians will be loosing their jobs. And another thing! If the UK Press has led you to believe that Vancouverites have been "lapping up the dream" over the last few years your very, very wrong. It's been nothing but a thorn in their side for all this time, but strangely enough, during the games, I think a lot of them actually came around to the idea.

The closing ceremony, like the opening, was a mixed bag and suffered a little from poor planning in my opinion. It's hard to put into words but it kinda just left a bad taste in your mouth. They could've done without bloody Nikki Yanofsky & friends for one, because that was quite bland - but the Sochi 2014 exhibit was AWESOME!

The atmosphere was buzzing thanks to Canada's last gold in the hockey earlier in the day. They were so hyper-active that during John Furlong's speech they wouldn't stop cheering! The speech was really good, he's such an eloquent public speaker, that I actually wasn't bored - more than what could be said for the spoken-word pieces by William Shatner, M J Fox and that other woman - once I'd gotten over the fact that - look it's Captn JT Kirk!!! It was quite boring, and everyone in there was ready for a party - particularly the athletes!!!

Shame that they didn't really deliver a party really - after the boring spoken word pieces came Michael Buble (also miming), and some inflatable giant beavers, Mounties etc... omg it was horrendous, and boringly coreographed - I even felt slightly embarrased.

Then came Nickelback - woo yeah! Awesome, get this party started! Then Avril Lavigne - woo yeah! Concert! then Alanis Morissette - miming to a very boring song, which was disturbingly mellow after all that rock music! She just didn't capture the stage like K.D. Lang did. Then a few Canadian bands I'd never heard of but were OK - except Hedley, they were designed for Teeny-boppers. Then (after stopping-and-starting) came a hip-hop dance group which was quite cool (but by this point I was bored), and STOMP (well the Canadian equivalent) - then before you knew it it was all over! And a little underwhelming after all that! lol, oh well, it's still a shame to see these games go - cock-ups and all! =)