Monday, October 22, 2007

NBA China Games - Wrapping it up.

Let's see... Lessons Learned Checklist:
1. David is Satan.
Check.

2. A hotel/casino with a built-in arena is a Good Thing.
Check.

3. MonkeyFarts are bad.
Check.

4. Obscene sculptures are OK if the government pays for them.
Check.

5. Crack-smoking blondes will slap you for absolutely no reason at all.
Check (ouch).

6. Shanghai-Pudong is a nice airport but they don't have enough jetways.
Check.

7. Don't eat at the Japanese restaurant in the Food Court at the Venetian, unless you want to wind up looking like a glazed donut.
Check and Double check!

8. David is Satan.
This bears repeating. - Let there be no mistake! David=Satan.

Well...
We made it through the event.
The Orlando Stats crew performed like the champs they are. Big kudos to them.
Also let's give a big hand to the NBA IT Crew... Always on top of any issues, problems and needs that cropped up. When the network went belly-up 10 minutes before tip-off, they were all over the situation getting it resolves, and had a backup plan for getting stats out to the rest of the world.
Genties and ladlemen- a round of applause for Satan David, James, Peter, Will, Sean, Ryan, Sergio and Steve. Thank you for your help!

Now then-

More pictures:
Because I know some of you Constant Readers are just really Constant Picture Lookers.

The attention to detail here in the Venetian is pretty remarkable.
They really went to a lot of effort to bring the details of Venice to the hotel.

For instance, the decorative columns.

Near St Marks Cathedral there is a colonnade that extends from the cathedral to the water.
On the tops of the columns there are carvings of animals.
As far as I could tell, (and I looked for them), this was the only place these particular carvings were found. Until now.


The Dog in Venice


The Wolf in the Piazza San Marco.

Now in Macao-


The Dog (Macao)


The Lion (Macao)

Amazing, no?




They passed out cell phones for the staff to use here in Shanghai and Macao.
A telephone list was thoughtfully pre-programmed into the phones, to facilitate use...
I was looking for someone's listing in the phone the other day...
I didn't know there was a Chinese Porn Star on staff...


Speaking of Chinese names...
Many Chinese people have an English name, in addition to their normal Chinese name in order to simplify things for us dumb Gwailo (Cantonese) or Baichi, as they called me in Shanghai. (I'm pretty sure it means fool or idiot. Either way it fits. But I digress...)
Steve H. was working with the folks in Credentials (Andrea, Areola and Chia-Bret) and had so many issues and problems getting their stuff operational that they gave Cred System a Chinese name... Sum Ting Wong.

I guess you had to be there...




The air inside the arena was just buzzing... And not in a good way.


There were flies everywhere.
Nasty.
You couldn't put down a beverage container without having it inspected by a flying insect.




Now, I might be wrong about this. Follow me for a second.

I can understand wanting to exclude the kiddies from the casino.
Let them shoot craps and play baccarat on the playground like we did.

But why are you excluding the women from the casino?
This is the button for the ground floor in the elevator in the hotel...

Someone call Martha Burke! Quick!

Enough of this foolishness... More later.

TBG out-

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