Tag Archives: Beijing Olympics

London does it best…!

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Yes we’re there.  London 2012 is here now and we’ve got another amazing week to go.  The last 7 years of planning, moaning about costs, getting the transport infrastructure sorted out, training for all the athletes, buying (or in most cases trying to buy) tickets and everything else Olympic related has finished and we’re now celebrating in great British style.

The opening ceremony was something else.  A great show, showcasing the amazingness that is this great island country and less of the spectacle that Beijing 2008 was.  Some parts maybe missed if you’re not British but they were genius!  The Mr. Bean bit had us in complete stitches.  Classic.

We had our own Olympic party to watch the ceremony and all got into the spirit of it in true British style…

And then the games began.  Unbelievable achievements everywhere for all countries.  Some stunning events – including gymnastics (what these guys can do with their bodies defies belief), weightlifting (how much can they lift?), athletics (my favourite) and much much more.  The training, focus and everything all the athletes put into it, is a real inspiration to us all.

We had tickets to see the rowing early in the week which was amazing.  Standing seats (?) only but a great atmosphere.  Seeing the boats going past along the 2km course is very cool, with the crowd cheering for them.  Living in Twickenham we were lucky enough to see the cycling time trials come through here – over and done with in 8 seconds (going past you) but again great to see.

      

Paralympic athletic and judo tickets also for us, so more amazingness to see in a few weeks time.

Mrs. Noble managed to see the Olympic torch coming through Richmond – exactly where I was working until the end of last year (typical) and then again going up the Thames to the Olympic Park for the opening ceremony.  Daddy was working so didn’t get to see them!

   

We headed up to Heathrow Airport the week before the Olympics to spot athletes coming in and we did.  We got to see the teams for Australia (rowing), Japan, India (table tennis), UAE, Mongolia, Estonia and a few others.  Very cool to see them arriving.

On the opening weekend we had to venture up into London – without event tickets (on the off chance that we could have bought some – fat chance, the whole ticketing system and process has been a complete and utter shambles; you couldn’t do it worse and whoever built – ha! – the actual online system needs a severe talking to; but that’s for a different post – to be titled something about why testing and planning is important).  And complete with friends up from the South coast.  Great fun, getting the buzz everywhere.  No tickets, not even close but good to be up in the middle of it all.  And seeing our great British armed forces on patrol – filling in brilliantly where G4S abysmally messed up – was the ultimate in re-assurance.

   

Our London 2012 mascots are everywhere in London and all very nicely themed.  Now I’m working in the city (near Bank) I’ve done some great great runs around the city at lunchtime and even better to Vauxhall – part of the way home – in the evenings.  The run across Tower Bridge, along the South Bank, across the Millennium Bridge (what was the wobbly bridge), past London Bridge, past Waterloo and the great London Eye is unbelievable.  What a run past some of the greatest sites in the world.

Amazingly the London transport system is doing very well under the immense pressure that this many more people brings.  There are signs at all the train stations pointing you in the right direction to the different Olympic venues, tube train maps have been updated showing you the right stops to get off at, Olympic volunteers are everywhere to help and daily updates are sent out (by e-mail) to let you know busiest stations that day.  It’s all working and well…

Go Team GB.  An awesome achievement so far and more to come.  14 gold medals (as of now) and 3rd in the medal tables behind the USA and China (both much much bigger countries in terms of land sizes and populations).

A great stat below from a friend on Facebook today…

London doesn’t get much better than this.

Royal Mail show us how it should be done – London Olympic tickets

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Despite the fiasco about booking tickets for the London 2012 Olympics and the lack of thought that seems to have gone into the whole way the tickets are sold to UK residents (and how user friendly the systems aren’t and how the system couldn’t handle the demand for tickets, I could go on but that’s not what this blog post is about), the tickets we did get have arrived.

A very nice package, with tickets and a bit of information about the event.  It’s for rowing, which is over in Windsor, so not London, but they’ve very kindly included 4 travelcards for us to use on the day to get to the event in London.  Hmmmmm.

And they’re standing area only but the cheapest “seats” or tickets so not too unexpected.

Don’t get me wrong, I may sound not too positive about all this but I am.  It’s going to be an awesome summer in London and as I’ve said in previous posts, this is London’s year.  Plus with the Jubilee celebrations this weekend, it really doesn’t get much better.

I was at a conference in London this week about the online Olympics and the technology behind the scenes is incredible.  Never have there been games before where the demand for online media has been so great.  Back in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics, social media services like YouTube, Twitter and even Facebook were still growing up.  In 2012 it’s a completely different story, social media is pretty much everywhere and being used in all sorts of different ways, by consumers (of all ages), brands and everyone else.  The demand on the back-end infrastructure for storage, distribution and more is going to be unprecedented.  The task of forecasting what to expect will have been no small feat, and no doubt is still changing and being fine tuned.  The plans around redundancy and how to fix problems – with the technology – will be something else.  What the BBC have planned is fantastic – their Sports page on their web-site is the centre piece and the experience you’ll get on all devices – personal computers, tablets, mobiles, smart TVs and anything else, is going to be so good that it will almost (maybe not quite) be a better more immersive experience than actually being there!  That annual license fee we pay in the UK for the BBC doesn’t look too bad.  The planned 24 live better than HD (as we know it) simultaneous video streams is impressive to say the least.  This really is the first global online digital Olympics.  Right up my street – in both ways!

The BBC have got it right, lots they’ve learnt from that amazing service that is the BBC iPlayer and other global British broadcasts they’ve done – the Royal Wedding last year for example.

But the ticket system and booking events, we’ve not got it quite right.  One shining light here though – and the subject of this post – is Royal Mail.  That amazing British institution that just works so well.  Where else in the world can you post a letter or anything for that matter and know it will arrive anywhere else in the country pretty much the next day.  Yes the prices have just gone up, but it’s still worth it.  Interestingly as well, a postman I was speaking to only this week, said it’s one of the few services you still pay for before they deliver and actual give you the service.

Having had a few e-mails from the Olympic organisers about when roughly to expect the tickets to arrive, you kind of sit back just waiting and hoping.  This morning, I got an SMS message and e-mail from Royal Mail telling me the tickets would arrive today.  They then arrived care of our very friendly local postman Mick, with a big smile on his face.  Signed for with the mobile pad he had and then literally less than one minute later another SMS message and e-mail confirming they’d been received.  Now that’s proper service and a very very good use of the latest technology.  Keep it up Royal Mail, another reason Britain is brilliant.