I totally didnt plan to watch the opening but the perfromances this yr was surprisingly 紧凑 and kept me qt entertained. Also, cos everything was choreographed by zhang yi mou, i actually enjoyed the visual treat.
I'm still watching it on tv and although only 85 countries have made their entrance.. i realise i do not know the exact location or existence of so many countries! Clearly, i'm really ignorant :(
If u had tuned in to the parade of athletes.. did u figure out how the countries are ordered? Apart from greece who marched in first and China who will do so last, the other countries are sequenced according to the number of strokes in the first character of the country's name in chinese. Pretty cool right?
I managed to find the list of the athlete's marching order and singapore is 188th!
The commentator makes very interesting remarks about each country.. some not so nice as an introduction like 'burkina faso is a very poor country'. Some facts may be true, but it came out in a somewhat mocking tone. 'Malta has been taking part in the olympics since olympics started but has never wont any medals'. 'Liechtenstein is the longest standing member of the IC tt has never won anything.' Then there were funny comments like,"clearly not everyone in this country is blond" after the camera did a close up of a representative with hair roots of a darker colour when the rest of the hair is blond.
Despite all these, there were things i learnt from the commentator.. like liechtenstein has a population of 35,000 only! :):)
I was reminded of a lot of things when watching the athlete's parade. Watching papua new guinea march in actually reminded me of PIGBEL we learnt in micro B! This makes me wish my memory was put to better use -.-
I also saw countries i rmbr by the pretty stamps they print. Like dominican republican and liechtenstein. I actually have a dominican republican of a swan i really like :)
Hmm...Enough of my rantings.. more photos!
