Monday Morning...

Well... It's Sunday night here... Sunday morning for y'all.
(Lucky bastards.)

Play officially starts tomorrow. Whoo-hoo!
My stuff is good, considering the hoops I had to jump through to get things here. All in all, its a flippin' miracle we are where we are.

I'm really starting to worry about the Olympics. They (China, Ministry of Sports, etc) have a huge learning curve ahead of them.

I got a standing ovation this afternoon...
Wish it was for doing my job...

I got drafted to do player escorts. They have no real security here and the players are getting mobbed by autograph seekers. (Bad... Scary Bad.)
It is worse than anything I have ever seen, anywhere.
Insanity.

Anyway-
We (Nick, Gavin, Michael, etc) have to use every bit of our not-so-inconsiderate gwailo physique to bulldoze a path from the practice courts to the stadium. It was really bad this afternoon.
Somehow in the shuffle while we were escorting Rafael Nadal into the building, we were hit by the biggest crush yet. They (the fans) knocked down our barricades and rushed Nadal...
In the crush I had my foot stepped on and I lost my shoe.
(Did I stop to pick it up? Hell no.)

Once inside, I headed back out... to get my shoe.
Lots of laughiing, staring, pointing...
"Look at the big monkey with only one shoe!"
There were about five people standing around it as it lay there on the sidewalk.
I think they were just in awe of the size (and the smell, no doubt) of it.
I think one guy wanted to take it back to his hutong to live in it...
I got my size 14 canoe back and carried it back into the Stadium-
As I was carried it in with me, the laughing pointing and giggling became cheering and applause.
I was walking with the Tournament Director who seemed to get quite a big kick out of the whole scene. For me, it was embarrasing...
It told the TD that if this made the local paper it would cost him extra...

Hell... they have already promised me a Peking Duck dinner for doing the escorts the past 2 days... This is starting to be an interesting event.

Anyway... What else...

Man, it's hot here. Hot-hot-hot.
Africa hot.
Tarzan couldn't take this kind of heat.

As for adventures in dining... Still having ramen noodles for dinner most nights.
Tonight was interesting, though...
I got an invite to eat with the CCTV staff in their dining hall.
There was some very suspect dishes on the chow line. I had to take a pass on several rather doubious-looking meat dishes. And there were some vegetables that looked downright alien. Something out of a bad 60 SciFi movie...
I'll pass on that. Give me another one of the pork buns.
Except they weren't pork buns, they were more like kale and dill buns.
Imaging boiled kale and dill, wrapped up in a soft white dough bun.
Yuck.
I'll have to work on how to politely pass on the chow line at CCTV next time.

Things won't be getting much better when it comes to dinner time in the next 2 weeks. Matches on Center Court will probably go to 11:30 or 12 every night starting tomorrow.
Oh boy. What fun.

I'm sure there are some things I want to mention but are slipping my mind...
I'll post them when I remember them.

TBG out-