Owing to me having some time (way too much time) yesterday, I went ahead to Raffles City to catch the IOC action there. To recap for all visiting Venusians, the Internation Olympic Commitee is holding its Olympic SessionTM here in Singapore to vote for who gets to hold the 2012 Olympics, blah blah blah goldcakes. The voting takes place at the Raffles City Convention Centre, right above the Raffles City Shopping Mall. There my destination lies.
I apologize for the lack of photos, as my sister chose yesterday as the day she decided to bring the camera and take pictures of her new school. Bah. Moving on.
Note: The times are only estimates.
5:00PM - Waited at a bus stop for Bus No. 174 which will take me from my house all the way to the very entrance of Raffles City. I love the bus stops near my flat. All the buses servicing those stops can take me to places like Singapore Poly, Ngee Ann Poly, Holland V, Jurong Library, The National Library (Old & New), Orchard Road, Boat Quay, East Coast Park, to name a few. Who needs the MRT?
5:15PM - 174 arrives. No TV Mobile. I get bored instantly.
5:50PM - Arrival at Raffles Place. Yep, just as I thought, policemen everywhere. About 3 per square meters. I decide to walk one round round the Raffles City area.
6:00PM - Walked one round. Saw several armed policemen. Some armed with shotguns, some with SMGs, one with an M16. Nice. They couldn't seem to stop staring at me for some reason though. Do I look that suspicious? (Please don't answer that.) Thought of entering Swissotel. The amount of policemen and metal detectors changed my mind.
6:15PM - Entered Raffles City. For the first time in years mind you. Man, they changed the place somewhat. Didn't there used to be a bridge in the lobby? Anyway, the lobby was where I ended up, and wouldn't you know it, there's a big screen there, showing IOC President Jacque Rogge's mug. I see the lobby has an exhibition in the shape of the Olympic rings in the middle of the lobby. Quite a lot of people standing in the lobby and on the upper levels standing around watching the Olympic ScreenTM. On that very screen, Mr. Rogge announces the start of the first round of voting. The names of the candidate cities (Madrid, Moscow, New York, London and Paris) appear on the screen. I read somewhere that this round of voting will have the members voting on the cities in 4 rounds. On each round but the last, the city with the least amount of votes says bye-bye to their Olympic DreamTM and is eliminated. Voting will take 1 minute. Here's what I saw on the Olympic ScreenTM:
Moscow
New York City
Madrid
Paris
London
6:19PM - Mr. Rogge, President of the Insane Oinking Chickens, declares the vote closed. A few minutes go by, then someone hands Mr. Rogge a piece of paper. Says the President of the Irritating Onion Chewers: some voting statistics, nothing of importance, except that Moscow will not take part in the next round of voting. Translation: they'reeeeee out! Moscovites break their vodka bottles in despair. Not before emptying it into their mouths of course.
6:22PM - Mr. Rogge starts the 2nd round of voting. Meanwhile, I study the exhibition. They have summaries of the past Olympics from 1896 on. Man, the 1896 Greek athlete showcased in the 1896 summary needs to shave.
New York
Madrid
Paris
London
6:23PM - 2nd round closed. Soon, someone comes out with a piece of paper with the results. Amusingly, music is played right when that guy comes out. Not supposed to happen of course. Anyway, Mr. Rogge reads the paper and announced that New York will not participate in the next round of voting. Surprisingly enough (for me anyway), the crowd cheers. I shook my head, NYC was my personal fave. New Yorkers rose their middle fingers and swore as one.
6:25PM - The President of the Incorrigible Orange Chompers announces the opening of the 3rd round of voting. This time voting takes 2 minutes. More studying of the exhibition. That Nadia Comaneci's a cute one.
Madrid
Paris
London
6:27PM - Again, voting is closed. Again, someone comes out with the results on a piece of paper. Again, Play That Funky Music plays on the loudspeaker. Wait, scratch that last sentence. Mr. Rogge reads the paper and we say adios to Madrid. Some guy behind me says 'Bye Bye Raul'. Madridians continue to endure more tauntings from the Catalonians for still not hosting the Olympics.
6:30PM - The last 2 cities! The suspence grows! The curiously fetching Mr Rogge announces the opening of the final round of voting. By now, I see some French people gathering at the lobby. Including some women. Ooh la la!
6:32PM - You know the drill, except at the end, where Mr Rogge thanks the IOC members for voting and to invite them for a snack in the nearby room while they wait for the announcement of the winning city in one hour's time. A few people go 'CEHHHHH! Suspen onli!'. Obviously unaware of the 7:30PM schedule.
At this point, my legs were getting a little sore for standing for an hour. Naturally, I didn't heed that warning sign and went window shopping. Odd. Could've sworn there was a Times the Bookshop in Raffles City.
7:10PM - Went back down the lobby to get as close as possible to the screen. The French people I mentioned were sitting down right there at the centre. Eventually, a crowd formed everywhere from the lobby to the highest levels, including the highest level which was the Convention Centre where this whole thing was taking place. The Frenchies started to chant "PAREE, PAREE, PAREE". Oddly enough, I didn't see any English people around to counter those chants. Until a group of them started to chant "LONDON, LONDON, LONDON" from the Convention Centre level itself.
My feet got increasingly sore.
7:28PM - Some live feed appears on the screen to the cheers of all. Obviously, this isn't shown on Channel News Asia because we see the hosts Vivian Tan and some Chinese dude adjusting their clothes. The crowd loved it when Vivian tried to adjust her dress under her armpits. I must say, Vivian looks FINE! As fine as she was during her Showbuzz years. At this point, a few English got behind me and started chanting for their city. Notice I said "a few". Compared with the French, which was sizeable, this group of English men and women was made of 5 or 6 people. Therefore, their London chants were hopelessly drowned by the French.
7:30PM - A clock appears, counting down 30 seconds before the show starts proper. Guess what happens with 10 seconds to go? The crowd counts down the seconds and then the grand music plays and the show is on!
The hosts greets us in Malay, Chinese, English and the official language of the Improper Oblong Cows, French. What, no Tamil? Nah, Vivian already looks constipated trying to say Selamat Datang. The usual inane blabber ensues, your dress looks nice, everyone looks wonderful, blah blah blah dresscakes.
7:33PM - Eventually, the hosts introduce the much-talked-about (snicker) video of Singapore that the Idiots Only Clan kindly let the host country produce. Hey, don't let it be said that we can't take advantage of an opportunity like this. The video itself? Slick, well-produced, not overly patriotic (thank God), in fact probably very effective. Nice mix of tradition (lion dancing) and modernity (skateboarders).
7:36PM - Singapore's cheap tourism plug video ends. Now it's time to see the videos of the candidate cities. First up: Paris, directed by Luc Besson. If you've seen The Fifth Element, you know Luc's got some style. And boy does he show it here! It blows Singapore's video out of the water. The crowd cheered at the CGI planes forming the Olympic RingsTM. Oddly enough, not many athletes in the video.
7:38PM - New York up next, directed by Steven Spielberg. This one's a bit more modest, showing New York in black & white and at night, showing all New York's landmarks. Very nice, shows the spirit of New York well. I still prefered the video I saw earlier at home, which shows a torch bearer running through New York towards the Statue of Liberty.
7:40PM - Moscow this time. This one, I was shocked at the director's (whoever he is) seemingly lack of interest in showing Moscow and instead showing all the candidate cities and saying Thank You in their respective languages, ending in fireworks in the sky and the Moscow Olympic LogoTM. Lazy man, just lazy. (Speaking of which, I see this post is getting lazy too. Gotta step it up!) In fact, some of us in the crowd were wondering if they'd played the wrong tape, because it was never made obvious until the end that this was Moscow's video.
7:42PM - London video. This video uses comedy, something which I always advocate. An athlete runs through the streets, and ordinary Londoners get inspired by her and starts doing some sports of their own, for example two Englishmen fencing each other with umbrellas. Beckham cameos, and the ladies swoon.
7:46PM- Last video, Madrid style. It's basically a tourism video for Madrid, with some sports thrown in. 'Nuff said.
7:48PM - The crowd gets restless. The French and the English in the crowd (mostly the French) get louder and louder. My feet gets sorer and sorer and I nearly go deaf. The crowd is restless, which escalates into excitement when the hosts introduce Mr Jacque Rogge, president of the Incredibly Ornery Chimpanzees, to read out the host city of the 2012 Olympic GamesTM.
But first, the Olympic ThemeTM! Sung in French of course. Three local opera singers sing it. Impressively, I might add.
With the Theme out of the way, a Singaporean chick, excuse me, lady, comes out with the envelope holding the winning city's name.
Before opening the envelope, Mr. Rogge thanks Singapore for hosting this session. Raffles City thanks him back for making them obscenely rich during the last few days.
The lady hands Mr. Rogge the envelope. The sight of Mr. Rogge, president of the Impressively Obscene Cats, struggling to rip open the envelope gets some laughs. Eventually, the envelope is open. The crowd goes silent. I test that pin drop theory by dropping a pin. Didn't hear it drop. Must be the Basement 1 fountain drowning it out.
The tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Too bad I didn't have a knife so that I could test that theory too.
"The IOC is proud to present the 2012 Olympiad Summer Games to the city of....."
The crowd draws its breath. The winner is.....
Holy cow.
The crowd goes wild! Obviously, the Singaporeans wanted London to win. Whether it's because they were our former colonial masters or for Beckham, I'm still not sure.
On the screen, the English delegates are going delirious. Everyone's celebrating, Beckham eventually coming up to celebrate and whore the camera. The French delegates are weeping. You gotta feel for them. 3 tries, 3 failures.
8:00PM - Crowd disperses, leaving a few beaming English men and women. One dude even sang Rule Britannia. Quite a lot of French people were still sitting around, shell-shocked. Two French girls (YOW!) were talking to a reporter (lucky son of a bitch).
I stayed around for awhile, hoping for a glimpse of Beckham. Hey, I hate the celebrity, but I still like the football player.
8:30PM - Whaddaya know? My waiting wasn't in vain. Channel News Asia holds an interview for Beckham at the Convention Centre. In plain sight of everyone one floor below where a crowd was gathering. So off I went. And thus I managed to get my first glimpse at football's most famous face. Sure, it's from one level down and 100m away, but a glimpse is a glimpse right?
See, this is where I really wished I had a camera.
8:35PM - Interview over, Beckham goes out of sight. The crowd stays there for a while. Then rumour spread that Beckham was coming out of the nearby entrance to the Convention Centre. So what else? Most of the crowd hot foot it to the entrance. I didn't though. I got my glimpse, and that's enough. Besides, there's more than one entrance/exit and the organizers would surely have found some way to sneak everyone to their hotels unnoticed.
Well, this post has gone on way too long. No problem if I'm Charles Dickens, but I'm not, so I'm going to conclude by saying that I really enjoyed being part of the moment. It's not a "remember it for the rest of my life" thing, but certainly memorable.
I'm going to the Hideout club this Friday. Maybe this time, I'll bring a camera.
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