I've been watching a lot of the Olympics and I had a few thoughts about the event so far. First up, the television part of the event.
- The TV coverage has been frustrating. I've wanted to watch the gymnastics competition, but they only show part of it early and NBC saves the rest of it until 11pm at night. My alarm goes off at 4am, so that means I either go to work on no sleep or don't watch. I've been going to bed.
- As I was complaining about this to a guy in my van pool, he mentioned that there's an Olympic channel. What? This would be frustration number 2. Comcast didn't really advertise its availability beyond a little box on the last channels screen, and since they've littered that with advertising, I've learned to ignore it.
- Which leads me to frustration number 3. So now that I know there's an On-Demand channel for the Olympics, I've been trying to watch all the events that I missed because I needed to sleep. I start the replays and they drop out and RESTART FROM THE BEGINNING. I haven't been able to make it through the 37-minute Part One of the individual all-around gymnastics despite trying three times now.
Other thoughts:
- That cupping thing some of the swimmers are doing, leaving giant hickeys on their body is horrible to look at. I haven't done any reading to see if it really works or if they just think it relieves sore muscles, but looking like you were making out with an enormous octopus is just...Yuck!
- The gymnasts look like they're twelve. Some of them look younger than that! It was a surprise to see that most of them (at least on the US team) are legal adults. O_O
- I saw a runner, a refugee from South Sudan, who was competing under the Olympic flag. I thought that was so incredibly awesome that athletes who didn't have a country because of political situations were still eligible. Love this!
- I was thinking about how many Americans were at the games and how so many other countries have few people there to cheer for their athletes. It's not just because the games are on our side of the world--the US always has a large number of people there. I think we need to remember how blessed we are compared to a lot of other countries.
My favorite event started on Sunday--synchronized swimming! I love the Olympics. :-)
