Closing Ceremony
It was an interesting experience watching the Olympics from another country's perspective.
Firstly, we learned that there are other countries besides the US competing in the Olympics. I know this may seem surprising to those of us used to watching the red, white, and blue conquer sport after sport. When you're watching several hours of coverage in a country that doesn't win everything, you start to realize just how many countries are competing.
The next thing we learned was how many heats are involved before the final events. Because of the weird time difference (and lame tv licensing agreements), the events we were able to watch at night were all of the preliminary heats that nobody cares about before all of the excitement of the finals.
And finally, we learned just how small the mass market is in Australia. We were already very aware that Australian tv is not so great, but seeing the five total commercials played over and over were very tiring reminders of this. I finally gave up watching the Aussie coverage one week in and ended up watching the day-old coverage from the states on the slingbox. It was such a relief that first night hearing the voice of Bob Costas and seeing those well-made human interest pieces. Ahh to have a tv show produced with a decent budget.
Australia had high hopes for its competitors going in also, but ever since that first swim final the story here has been how poor a showing the Aussie Olympic team has done. We both cop a lot of grief on a daily basis for being American but seeing as we are the ones who uprooted our lives and moved across the world to experience something different you'd think people would cut us some slack. Yes, most of it is deserving, we are a lazy, fat, materialistic, and ignorant nation, but we are also a nation of competitors and it was great to see the country do well. So for all of those times we've been made fun of for our silly little Americanisms, here's a little revenge.
Firstly, we learned that there are other countries besides the US competing in the Olympics. I know this may seem surprising to those of us used to watching the red, white, and blue conquer sport after sport. When you're watching several hours of coverage in a country that doesn't win everything, you start to realize just how many countries are competing. The next thing we learned was how many heats are involved before the final events. Because of the weird time difference (and lame tv licensing agreements), the events we were able to watch at night were all of the preliminary heats that nobody cares about before all of the excitement of the finals.
And finally, we learned just how small the mass market is in Australia. We were already very aware that Australian tv is not so great, but seeing the five total commercials played over and over were very tiring reminders of this. I finally gave up watching the Aussie coverage one week in and ended up watching the day-old coverage from the states on the slingbox. It was such a relief that first night hearing the voice of Bob Costas and seeing those well-made human interest pieces. Ahh to have a tv show produced with a decent budget.
Australia had high hopes for its competitors going in also, but ever since that first swim final the story here has been how poor a showing the Aussie Olympic team has done. We both cop a lot of grief on a daily basis for being American but seeing as we are the ones who uprooted our lives and moved across the world to experience something different you'd think people would cut us some slack. Yes, most of it is deserving, we are a lazy, fat, materialistic, and ignorant nation, but we are also a nation of competitors and it was great to see the country do well. So for all of those times we've been made fun of for our silly little Americanisms, here's a little revenge.
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