YOG- Part 2

Singapore has been getting prepped for these games in a serious way. And in a city-state as small as Singapore hosting an event as large as an Olympics you can imagine that a good percentage of the population, especially high school and college students, were involved in some aspect of the games. So this sight, the bright purple and orange polo shirt, has become a ubiquitous sight in Singapore of late. This lovely fashion statement is accompanied by the official khaki colored zip-off leg cargo pants and the ever-so-popular YOG official fanny pack. The uniform however does serve its purpose- it is impossible to miss- which I guess is the idea right? Have the officials dressed in an obvious manner to designate their authority.... right, Singaporeans missed out on this concept somewhere along the way. Instead of the uni's being warn exclusively by the relevant official helpers for the given event, half the city of Singapore turns out in these polos. No matter that they are an official helper for the triathlon and have no official capacity at the Opening Ceremonies, they rock their shirts with pride. This resulted in it being nearly impossible to actually get directions or ask questions to anyone because everyone but us was in the purple shirts and yet seemingly no one knew the drill. Oh well- cannot knock their enthusiasm for free shirts for the games. 

 Dave with our goody bags. 

One of the true highlights, and funny parts, of the ceremonies were the goody bags. Now even with my vast experience in watching the games, I had forgotten about the occasional crowd interaction gimmicks and overlooked the fact that there might be some sweet freebies involved! I cannot reiterate enough how much Singaporeans LOVE free things, especially goody bags- its a national obsession. One that in this case warranted extra special procedures to ensure that people were not hoarding bags (given the contents of this bag it is unclear why it would be necessary to have more than one, but no matter). Instead of just passing you a bag on entrance, they gave you a coupon redeemable for a bag, which you then had to exchange for the all important bag at a booth designated for your seating area. This seems like a lot of trouble to go to, but this is Singapore, somethings are inexplicable. Or maybe this is normal procedure for things like this these days, no idea. Regardless, the goody bags were a treasure trove of amazingness!!! It contained the following ridiculously awesome items:

Two flags, one Olympic and one Singapore, with plastic bases for later display. 

One plastic light-up bird toy complete with batteries and flappy wings.

Some thunder sticks, being blown up by David. The two little boys in front of us were HUGE fans of the thunder sticks, HUGE. 

And sort and sundry other things like bottles of water, programs, a bizzare little pastry they named a dragon cake (totally inedible). I can admit that I too like free things- so the bag was well received. The real value in the bag was that we got to the stadium almost three hours before the start of the ceremonies. Why would we do such a crazy thing you ask? Because Singapore is crazy and they didn't to assigned seats for the event. To be fair, it was held at the float, a floating soccer pitch, and the existing stands have colored sections- but not seat numbers. So that is how the ticketing was done- you purchased your seats by colored section but with in the section, it was first-come-first-serve. Luckily we had been in Singapore long enough and are accustomed to the kiasu ways of the land and recognized that if we wanted decent seats we were going to have to harness our inner-Singaporean kiasu spirit and show up at the games super early to defend our territory. So this is exactly what we did, and we ended up with amazing seats. And they were conveniently located next to a very very friendly Chinese woman, decked out in her "official" purple shirt, who not only assisted us in inserting batteries in to our various plastic made-in-china crowd interaction accessories, but also guarded our seats so we could stroll about and take in the sights during our wait time. It turned out that unsurprisingly the no-assigned seat idea was one of the major snafu's of the event because although it was indicated in the tickets that it would be this way, it caught many an unsuspecting foreign visitor off-guard who were left to struggle to find multiple seats together upon their arrival right before the ceremonies. There were more than a few very disgruntled westerners who arrived too late to find (a) good seats and (b) more than two seats side-by-side. I felt their pain, especially because a lot of the foreign visitors to the games were probably there to support a friend or family member who was participating in the games, so they understandably wanted to be able to see their kid walk across the stage, etc. I would guess this was the single biggest logistical goof-up of the event (although the exit strategy must take a close second- more on that later) and while it left some people disappointed and irritated, worse things could have happened.

Luckily, the view from the Float has to be one of the best views of the Sing skyline- so we did get a chance to relax in some decent weather and take in the city sights.