In Continuum.

Like most of the other ceremonies, this one has been wrapped in the utmost secrecy from the rest of the world. The excitement around the Bird Nest was almost unbearable days before the ceremony, and the rehearsals behind closed doors were treated like top secret by the Chinese government. They didn't pump one-hundred million dollars into the opening ceremony itself for nothing, and keep in mind that most of the performers were there voluntarily. I, for one, wanted to see what the committee came up with, after all the hype that surrounded the ceremony itself, and how it compares to all the other previous ceremonies. I'm not a chinese from China, of course, but I am still a Chinese anyway. People from around the world aren't going to be able to tell the difference anyway, my skin color is going to be how I am going to be judged on first sight. I'd like the ceremony to be successful as well, despite all the little things that the government has done to bully my country into submission. Five minutes before eight o'clock, and I was already seated in front of the television, just waiting for the whole thing to begin. I admit, I was kind of excited for the whole thing, to see what the other 4 billion people around the world are going to see. 

I have been a fan of opening ceremonies for the longest time, despite all the cliches involved. You know how it is, a bunch of athletes marching into the stadium, the country pouring in millions of dollars for the performances and the special effects, and for four hours try to change the world' perception about the host. That's the way it is most of the time, not to mention the recycled speeches and how one thing leads to the next in such a predictable manner. Still, there are surprises and there are big surprises, and there are times when the predictable can become wholly unpredictable. The other time when I stayed up until five in the morning to watch the opening ceremony of the Athens Olympics was completely worth it. Given, I was drained by the time they managed to light the main torch, but everything that led up to the moment was pretty breathtaking. You only need to do a little search over at YouTube to see just how amazing that ceremony was, and naturally so, since Athens was where it all started anyway. 

I liked how that ceremony had a theme to it, a story line that actually made sense. Everything from the Greek mythologies, to the philosophers and the sciences, the maths and the architecture - like I said, amazing. Besides, everybody remembers the giant pool of water in the middle of the stadium and how it appeared out of nowhere. That giant paper boat with the little boy and everything, and then the body of water simply disappeared after the lights changed - how in the world did they do that? I am still in puzzlement as we speak, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is to fool the audience right there and then, it doesn't matter if they figure it out after the show. It is all about the illusion of grandeur, the presentation. As long as it looks beautiful in that very moment, nothing else matters any longer. The lighting of the torch was less than exciting though, I mean it was just a giant matchstick tilted over for the torch bearer to light, end of story. Nothing, I repeat, nothing compares to the lighting of the torch during the Sydney Olympics. Nothing. 

Sure, you can complain for all you want about the technical glitch during the raising of the torch, but you probably didn't expect the torch to rise out from the freakin' pool of water, did you? The way the entire torch rose up through the audience and then to the top of the stadium, it felt like something out of a science fiction movie. I remember Mr. Ragu coming into class the next morning and telling us how wonderful the opening ceremony was - and I agreed. It really was one of those unforgettable ceremonies, the kind that everybody is going to want to top in the years to come, the kind that people talk about all the time. I don't remember much about the performances in the middle though, but it wasn't as memorable as the one in Athens. So, two times in a row, Greece and Australia has wowed the world over with their ability to bring shock and awe. How did China measure up? 

Let's just say, the ceremony began on an amazing note. The bit with thousands of drummers drumming in the middle of the stadium was simply amazing. It had Zhang Yi Mou written all over it though, the way he takes care of the colors and the music to the littlest details most of the time. He took what he does best from the movies and into the stadium tonight, and I applaud him for that. This year's ceremony was a visual treat, every frame was just beautiful to look at. However, here's the problem: it didn't have a plot. The problem was that it tried to cram too much into a small window of time, and each performance took up way too much time. The first performance with the drummers was definitely the best of the lot, but then it kind of went downhill from there. The whole thing with the puppets was a little redundant, and it lasted for way too long. When you have a stadium filled with 91000 people, you want the center of your performance to be big enough for everybody to see, not puppets that are thirty centimeters in a sea of people. Then the other performances kind of fell flat as well, for the most part, despite the fact that they showed the various achievements and inventions in China's long history. It was impressive, but then it sure did not feel very coherent. They felt like bits and pieces of performances stitched together because they look good individually, but not as a whole. 

Without Zhang Yi Mou, this ceremony wouldn't have been half as good, I felt. What attracted me the most was definitely his use of colors, colors, and more colors. The golden and the red, the yellow and the green, everything was used to visually emphasize the physical size of the performers coming together to form a bigger picture. Initially, I thought the performers who danced on the blank canvas was going to do something nifty with the ink that came out from their sleeves. But they spun around the blank piece of canvas too many times, and it didn't really amount to anything more than a few strokes here and there. Like I said, they spent too much time on the redundant acts and too little on those that actually mattered - more on those awesome drummers, come on! The event made use of the amount of performers involved to the maximum, but I felt that they were a little under-utilized, in a way. They could have done so much more than just running around and making pictures and formations. I don't know, I felt like there were too much gap and nothingness in between the acts that it amounted to nothing more than an extravagant showcase of monetary power. 

However, that is not to say that it completely tanked - it didn't. Like I said, Zhang Yi Mou's contributions more than rescued the performances. And let's face it, the fireworks in the previous years were less than spectacular. A good display of fireworks, to me, doesn't have to have a lot of varieties of colors, it really only needs one or two. This time, they emphasized heavily on the color red, and naturally so. The result is probably the most dazzling display of fireworks during an opening ceremony I remember. And, let's also admit that the main torch for this year's ceremony is the most badass torch. Athen's torch was like a giant matchstick, and the flame was like that of a stove in the kitchen. The cauldron during the Sydney Olympics looked okay, and it's awesomeness really had to do with the way it was lit rather than the way that it looked. Atlanta 1996 probably had the worst torch, it looked like a broken beer bottle mounted on a bunch of makeshift platforms. Barcelona's torch wasn't very nice, but at least it had the coolest way of being lit (By an archer! Beat that!). When I saw the torch in this year's ceremony, I turned to my mother and said, "Now, THAT'S a torch". It had the potential to turn the Bird Nest into a smoking pile of ashes, but it didn't. That's a big torch, and that's a big flame. Browny points for that. 

At the end of the day, the people over at various discussion boards should just stop arguing over who did the best and who did the worst. Athens had the best actual performance, Sydney had the best lighting of the flame, and Beijing had the best looking torch and fireworks. The best opening ceremony would be the combination of all three, but that is not going to happen - unless the organizers for London 2012 decide to plagiarize. So stop with the debating, stop with the arguments, they are not going to go anywhere. The point is that every country did their very best to impress the world, and there are bound to be people who are going to be dissatisfied with whatever that you decide to dish out. Besides, think about it this way: it is never going to be half as bad as a ceremony I can think of that is going to happen in the near future. This opening ceremony is going to be so bad, the previous Olympics are going to seem like the best things that ever happened to mankind. That ceremony is going to happen in about sixteen hours, and that is the National Day Parade. 

The National Day Parade is the most sorry attempt at trying to glorify the country. Every single year, we are treated to an hour or two of the same propaganda bull broadcasted over every local television network. The story is the same every year: Singapore was a small fishing village, Singapore was taken over by the Japanese, Singapore experienced racial riots, Singapore overcame the odds, Singapore became a first-world country in a short amount of time, Singapore is number one in a bunch of things, Singapore is this and that despite this and that - the same old, every time. It is the government's way of reminding commoners here to love the country, despite the hike in price in every aspect of our lives. Remember your roots, remember where you came from. Remember how hard we fought, and always remember the greatest of this tiny red dot, despite everything else. For two hours, we are being brainwashed by images on television of recycled performances and horrid theme songs. The parade is also the only real reason why the army of Singapore exists in the first place. To showcase their advanced weaponry, to showcase their skills, to showcase everything that they know instead of what it really takes to kill the enemy. Yeah, the army exists for the parade, and that's about all there is to it. It's pathetic, it really is.

It certainly isn't helped by the fact that it is going to be held less than twenty-four hours after the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. Now, the latter was a world-class showcase of the best, the local parade tomorrow is going to feel like a five year old's birthday party. The Olympics shouldn't be about the opening ceremony anyway, though it's nice. It shouldn't even be about differences in race, language, culture, and it really shouldn't be about politics at all. It is really about the world coming together to play some games, and that's the end of story. If you are going to bring in other aspects of our rotten species into this innocent event, then you really don't deserve to be a part of it in the first place. Anyway, I personally cannot wait for the soccer, the basketball, and the tennis matches. And it's great that I won't have to catch those matches at three in the morning now. Woohoo!