August 6- Tying up the loose ends

Xin Qi San, Ba Yue 6

Wednesday, August 6

Two days until Opening Ceremonies!!! And today, it is so much more apparent that the games are about to begin. Throughout our offices, everyone is just running around preparing their department for the arriving guests, going to meetings, briefing people, briefing some more people, and most of all, stressing out! People are literally running around and going crazy!

The first guests have already arrived, and they are some of the most VIP, so they are having to be catered to and taken out to dinner.

My job today was to just do random stuff for whoever was pretty much stressing out the most. I started in administration this morning and helped them collate some welcome packets and add the badges with the correct names on the outside. Then, we finally got some help from the transportation team… since they didn’t have much to do today… and so I moved on the opening and applying the logo to picture frames.

Around lunch time, I got drafted to another position. I had to make the Emergency Manual packets. Here, I copied, labled, hole punched, and put in all these papers to make a binder of what to do in all kinds of situations of an emergency.

After about three hours of this, I moved on to helping the food and beverage team. Here, I loaded some Visi Coke coolers, witnessed the ballroom transform and supervised some workers dealing will all of the 1400 cases of Vitamin Water that came in the night before.

Luckily, today started the first day of the staff food area. This way, we could all eat on the run, yet most people still could’t spare enough time to get in a get some food. Today, however also started our uniforms. Everywhere you look, everyone has on the same shirts, same pants and same, shoes. Its pretty cool when you are walking around a venue like this, but at the same time, whenever you are looking for someone, each person looks like the person that you want!

Another thing that really changed today was the level of security. Everywhere you go, you must be wearing your badge, and on every corner of the halls, the security men are standing there alert, just waiting for something to happen. If they can’t recognize you by name, they will even stop you and have a closer look at your badge. I guess when you have so much valuable décor, electronics, collateral and so much more, someone has to be looking out for it all!

One thing that really set the mood for the Olympics to start was the same, catchy song that was in the Shuang Center. At every digital signage board, that song is playing over and over again, and then people start huming it and then you start humming it… and that’s the end of the silence.

I guess with today, there is really no turning back for the Games… tomorrow the guests start arriving, the ballroom opens, the next day is Opening Ceremonies, and then there it goes… the Olympics is on its way once again!