Weekend Fun: London 2012

The first weekend of London Olympics 2012. Guess what I did? Yep, watched some Olympics. Not on TV, silly. In the court. Actually, in a volleyball court. Actually, I watched two women volleyball matches: USA vs Korea and Brazil vs Turkey.

Guess who won Gold and Silver medals in 2008 Bejing Olympics? Brazil and USA. Guess what? USA women volleyball team has two Stanford alumni as part of the team: Foluke Akinradewo (No. 15) and Logan Tom (No. 16). So any guesses who I supported in the first match? Of course, Stanford. And yes, we did win, thank you very much.

USA women’s volleyball team.

Although I must say that South Korea did fight back. It was Olympics after all. The amount of talent and energy was amazing. I have watched some live games and its always fun but Olympics is a class of its own. These are truly professional athletes. Its so evident by their sheer power, speed, judgements and team spirit. 

Anyway the second match, Brazil vs Turkey was even more intense. While US won 3-1 against Korea (3 sets to 1 set), Brazil and Turkey played all five sets. The audience spent the last set on the edge of their seats. Literally. Both Brazil and Turkey supporters were up and cheering for their team. The tension in the stadium was palpable. Unfortunately for Turkey supporters, their team lost.

It was a great experience being in the audience watching an Olympic match. Before I close this post, I do want to mention the contribution of volunteers, called ‘Game Makers’. About 70,000 people from the city volunteered their time to help out with Olympics. They took their personal time off to help with the games. Some of them got duty in the stadium, some were participants of Opening Ceremony, others are helping people find their way to the games. 70,000 people with no repayment what-so-ever, took vacation from work to help out.

The photo above are six volunteers mopping the floor during time-out in, what a friend called, synchronized mopping technique.They deserved and got a round of applause from the audience.

That was my weekend saga. How about you? Did you do anything fun during the weekend?