LOLympics

The Beijing Olympics have been going on for about a week. As I\’ve mentioned before, I\’m not much of a sports fan, but I have been keeping track of the big news from the event, like the epic 4×100 swimming relay finals, and India\’s first solo gold medallist in the history of their participation in the Games (as well as the reaction at home – the railway minister promised to give him a lifetime travel pass for his achievement, which I found rather amusing).

Oh, and of course, there\’s the drama. Namely these little tidbits that have been making the rounds.

Windows XP BSOD makes an appearance at the Olympics

Apparently one of the computers that was projecting video onto the stadium walls met with the operating system error of yore. Bad drivers, perhaps.

A girl who performed at the opening ceremony was revealed to have been lipsyncing

And she wasn\’t even lipsyncing to her own performance – it was the performance of another girl entirely, one who was deemed insufficiently representative of her home country. And of course…

The victorious Chinese women\’s gymnastics team might be underage

The age threshold for taking part is 16 – I\’m not sure any of the team members look that old. It certainly fits into my own perspective of the decisions that tend to come out of figures of authority in China and Japan – the focus is not so much on accountability as it is on preserving one\’s image, and any blemishes are explained away or quickly hushed in order to save face.

I would express more indignation, but I really don\’t care enough to, and on top of that, I suspect that indignation will be in abundant supply thanks to the drones in the mass media. In the meantime, I shall return to amusing myself with the Singapore contingent\’s attempts to get a second medal through massive imports of \”foreign talent.\”