Few observations from around the games from Sunday...

Sunday - we are entering the final week of Olympics and not everyone seems to be in high sprits and enjoying the games. With a press meet/photo-shoot with Cuban 100m hurdler Dayron Robles scheduled for the afternoon, it was lunch time at the Westfield food court once again. The queues were much longer this time around with the shops open for general public as well - but we managed to get the food rather quickly and then somehow find seats as well. As often is the case in full shopping centres, you do need to share your table with strangers which can be an 'enlightening' experience and you can sometimes meet great people.

But as I am sure you've guessed by now - my experience on Sunday was something a little bit different. I sat down to a table with one women sitting on the opposite side of me and made some comments on how busy it was or something like that. Oh BOY! should I have kept my mouth shut :-) This comment really got her going..."I f*****n hate these crowds"..."The flipping police and army couldn't control these people"..."I just want to go home and close the door"..."I don't see what the fuss is about the Olympics, for f***s sake it's just sports"..."So what do you do here, are you some sort of volunteer or other crap".."These games can't finish soon enough"..."Why are people screaming at the TV when GB win medals.. get a life!".. 

During the whole time I was having lunch (which I could not eat quick enough!).. not a single positive comment came out of her mouth, I think in the end she even said that the food was crap. Of all the people in the food court I chose (well, not that there was choice) to sit opposite to the Olympic Grinch. But for someone who seemed to hate the Olympics and the crowds, she had chosen a strange place to come and do her small shopping on Sunday afternoon, even on a normal Sunday I'd steer well clear of the place if I didn't like crowds.

Getting upstairs after this, to the media lounge, it was a nice contrast as I played the 'Turun Sanomat Olympic Final in Table Tennis' with the reporter who was there to write the story. Not quite sure who won it - but it was my first time of doing something sport-like during these games... unless you count this 100km photo-gear carrying competition that I am competing in during the games :-) And the reporter was laughing at me when we left our lunch place, commenting that it seemed like I couldn't eat quick enough... I wonder why!!

In the afternoon I took my first massage at the Media area 'Massage Centre' - it was painful but sure made my shoulders a lot more loose by the end of it. £10 well spent for that one..

Before evening handball action I hooked-up with Señor Ahmedas at the MPC for a quick catch-up on how things are going for both us during the games. Where as normally we'd be at the same games covering BBL Finals or Euro's/World's.. this time we rarely catch-up. And to my surprise the Team GB photographer seemed to have changed his support to Team USA.. (could be that he wants to photograph a winning team??)

Returning to the press centre after the handball (in which I had once again managed to get my face on Norwegian TV!!) I took probably the picture of the games so far :-) A sleeping/snoring photographer on one of the press couches.. what a sight (you might the photo on this blog..)

But stranger than that was a fellow photographer who was sitting slightly behind me on the next row - as photographers you do (or I do anyways!) look around at other peoples screens and see what they are editing and what they have shot during the day. Now, for various reasons I am not going to write what he was having on his screen... but I let you draw your own conclusions from my 'silence'. It could have been Teletubbbies... could have been 'It's a wonderful life'.. but .. well ;-) Suppose the tournaments are long for many of us and we spend a lot of time away from home....

To end the evening, I rushed away from the venues JUST as the 100m Final was finishing - and not sure what the travel was like after I had departed from Stratford, but if you look at my Twitter-feed, you'll see that my train was all empty for most of the way.. I could not see a single person in the four carriages I saw from my seat. Check out the picture at my @basketballview twitter account..  And I did get a little fellow coming up to me on the first leg of the journey.. "Hi, do you like work at the Olympics or something" (I had my accreditation hanging around my neck).. and as I said I was taking pictures.. then he followed up "Have you seen like, Usain Bolt... Blake... Phelps..Chambers..."  It seemed to have made him happy that I had taken pictures of Usain Bolt :-)

As you can see, it is not all about sports, it also about the people around it.. some like the games.. others, well they might have been better served by staying home.