China.... politics vs. olympics.....

And so... China has successfully ended its 16day goal of maintaining high standards of their Olympic events that was held in Beijing. I was glued to most of the events over the course of this 4-year event, and most importantly - I was highly attracted to the different venues and backdrop that CBD/NBC was showing, even for a glimpse. It reminded me of the times I had been working in China, a very energetic city that seems to shout that it is capable of accomplishing anything. Yes, anything. Despite there were lots of criticism ranging from Tibetian protests, to jeering of rendered fireworks; I felt that China did a great job of delivering its promise of hosting this great event. It may also have set the standards higher than expected since the economic powerhouse was reported to have spent 47billion to prepare and carry out this task. It is sad that over the course of Olympics, I was only able to access CBC and NBC locally; and can only listen to biased opinions from commentators not talking about the sports, but rather on human rights, yadda yadda.... C'mon - Olympics is a time for sports, and not for politics. I'm surprised to even hear that Mr. Harper has decided to skip the opening ceremony because of the Tibetian incident and his excuse is that "he has work to do"... Maybe that's why we have such a weak athelete support structure here in Canada, where future Olympian prospects are required to run around town trying to scrape up sponsors so that they can showcase their talent on world's stage. Maybe we are focusing on things that are less important and should focus our energy elsewhere. Maybe Mr. Harper can build better relationship with China, create more jobs to break us out of this 17yr record high of unemployment rate, ink more deals that will benefit our country and provide more support for our atheletes.
Anyways, that's my 2 cents; and I'm planning to once again visit China next year. This time I'm planning to visit my old team in Shanghai, Beijing's rich cultural architecture, and to Mount Tai. Not sure why, but recently i'm really into Mount Tai which is situated in ShangDong province. It boosts a rich history of being one of the 5 most famous mountains in China and it overlooks a sea of clouds as how one would describe it in JinYung's martial arts literature that I've always been very fond of. Hopefully I will get to see it with my own eyes, and this time; I'm glad I invested myself in a DSLR :)