another sam chan: the student blogger

I’m not gonna front, I haven’t thought much about blogging the last week or so and it’s not because I’m lazy (oh yes it is). But the truth is, for the last 2 weeks, I’ve been completely glued to Olympics on the tv and online. My sleeping hours have generally fallen between 7am and 12pm. Even as I write, half my screen is covered with Argentina flopping against the US in men’s basketball. It’s been even rougher on me than back when I had a job. Now, while I am a big sports guy, I don’t intend for this blog to turn into some sort of random sports chatter, although you’re more than welcome to do so in the comments section. That’s because I can do that for free at niketalk and a billion other forums. However, I am memorized by how attractive this Olympics has been to everybody and I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually isn’t about sports.

From Michael Phelps to Usain Bolt to the supposedly 14 year old Chinese gymnasts, the Beijing games have provided plenty of flare, excitement, and newsworthy items. For the record, I have no idea why the US coaches would be whining that the Chinese gymnasts are too young. I mean, losing already sucks but crying foul because you lost to somebody younger than you? Where I come from, older people are supposed to have the advantage at all things except finger painting. But I digress….

Anyways, the key is what hasn’t been mentioned. Take a look at the medal standings: USA and China have dominated and grabbed most of the headlines for one reason or another. But what’s going on with the red, white, and blue today? Last I checked, they’re still in a war that many don’t really know what for. Something about the fight against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. As for China? It just survived one of the most deadly earthquakes that left over 68,000 dead and has rebounded its morale swiftly. In a day and age where what’s considered news is 90 percent about people dying and 10 percent about the dead, the games have been a complete 180. Forgotten are Britney Spears latest haircut or who’s pregnant and or divorced. Hidden in the black and white pages is Bernie Mac’s sudden death. Instead, the news has been filled of success stories about athletes and their journeys to make it to the top. They talk about Michael Phelps troubled childhood and the rebound of a re-dedicated US basketball team.

So this is what these Beijing Games are about. For a brief period of time, people can momentarily forget about the difficulties of life, put away their swords and come together to witness healthy competition from athletes who have proven that with hard work and dedication, dreams can become a reality. The athletes are even saying all the right things: that they are what they are, athletes in a competition, and not politicians. Even as athletes from different countries compete against one another, they share a mutual respect for the fact they have all taken long journeys to get there. The attraction is so great that it is enough to get the US and Chinese president together to watch a meaningless basketball game where the results were determined before basketball was even invented. As the games start to conclude, there is a tinge of sadness in me because I know that once the games over, life’s troubles will resume. We will no longer get to feel the joy Bolt had when he won the 100m sprint or share the feeling Phelps had when he finally got his 8th gold medal. Not even vicariously. Our lives will go back to the way it was: the rain, the chores, and the stress. Take advantage of the last few days because we’ll go back to protesting against China and Burma soon. The Beijing games have been an absolute success. Let’s hope Vancouver 2010 can be even better. I wouldn’t bank on it, but after all, the current games were made in China.

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It’s hard to imagine Michael Phelps as an underdog. For those that don’t know, some quick wikipeding will tell you that he currently holds 6 world record times in Men’s Swimming. He is arguably the best (most gifted and talented didn’t seem to cut it) athlete in the world today and aspires to break former US swimming great Mark Spitz’s record of 7 Olympic Gold Medals. Only the best of the best get Olympic gold. Check it out: athletes such as Wayne Gretzky, Babe Ruth, and Wilt Chamberlain don’t own one – this guy wants 8 more after winning 6 in Athens four years ago. However, France had proven to be the favourites in the 4x100m Men’s Freestyle Relay, boasting swimmers who’s names are only paid attention to by those who follow the sport. All that you, as a casual reader need to know is that France not only boasted the World Record Holder Alain Bernard for the Individual 100m (4 laps in your community pool, 2 laps in an olympic sized pool) Freestyle, he also had this to say prior to the races:

“The Americans? We’re going to smash them. That’s what we came here for, I’ll start my Games in the 4×100 metres freestyle relay final, confident that my pals will have qualified easily. If the relay goes according to plans, than we’ll be on a roll.”

While the French were big talkers, they were not without skills to back it up and were the heavy favourites with three sprinters on the team. As amazing as Phelps can be, he cannot be four people. However, this blog is not about Michael Phelps. In fact, this isn’t even about swimming or the United States. This is about resilience and will power. This is what the Olympics are all about.

At 32 and past the prime age of average swimmers, Jason Lezak (Jay-suhn Lay-see-ak for many Chinese) has suddenly become the sound coming out of millions of mouths. Starting almost a full body length behind Frenchman and WR holder Alain Bernard, he front-crawled all the back to finger tip past him for the Gold Medal, World Record, and respect of the world. It seemed impossible and looked even worse as Lezak played catchup to the closest thing we have on earth to a 6’5 human fish. He never gave up hope, even when many others did, and was rewarded with defying the laws of physics and an unofficial world record at 46.06 – almost half a second faster than anybody else, ever. Look no further than the sheer joy on Michael Phelps face. He is ecstatic because he knows that this isn’t about him. This is greater than him (and he’s pretty great). This is the inspiration for anybody who wanted something more than anything else and succeeded out of pure will. The Olympics are important for the world because they show that it is not always the famous, the talented, the richest that win – it is those who show the most heart.

As for my mother country, Canada? Well, Brent Hayden certainly showed heart when he gave up his own individual race to focus on the same medley as Phelps, Bernard, and Lezak. The lead off man on the race, he had his own personal best at 47.56 – a mere .05 behind Phelps and tapped in at 3rd. However, the rest of the team did not make good use of his sacrifice, finishing 6th in the race. After three days, Canada has accumulated the same amount of medals in Beijing as the number of medals sitting in my closet: zero.

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In my little group of friends, we constantly run into the same problem: we can never decide what to do. I’m not talking about homework, projects, work, or anything remotely stressful, we can’t even decide what we want to do for fun.

First, we decide on what we want to do. It takes us about an hour or so, because we have to factor in things like cost, distance, time, and how much ‘work’ our fun activity is. For example, let’s take swimming:

- Swimming involves us all going home to get our respective Speedos and wet suits.
- Swimming requires all of us to shower and change (hopefully individually) before and after the activity.
- Swimming requires all of us to take off our faces and reapply afterwards.
- Swimming is basically an array of moves in a large volume of water either back and forth or around in a close ended shape (usually a rectangle or circle). It appears more like exercise which is more correlated with work than fun.
- All of us are now about 18 and must pay the adult fare. Even though it is still cheaper than many other activities, it doesn’t feel good knowing that some pimply kid gets to pay 2 dollars less than us to do the exact same thing we’re doing just because he was born later. It’s a psychology thing.

As a result, we have never gone swimming together. Ever. A common activity we do choose is watching movies. When we finally make the decision to watch a movie, we then go into what type of movie we want to watch. Action, comedy, or chick flick? Yes, I do, do the occasional chick flick. After that, we decide if we want to watch big screen style, or in the comfort of one of our homes – usually mine because I’m the laziest. I never knew having fun was so much work. I used to think it was just my personality, or perhaps the personality of my friends. But then, the other Friday when we were finishing up our weekly movie search at Rogers Video, I heard one guy say:

” [screw] it, come on! Why do we always take forever to pick a movie? We’ve been here for 25 minutes! Just pick one already!”

I laughed. Hard.

Then yesterday, we took another couple hours to figure out what we wanted to do on a nice Saturday evening. We finally settled on another movie (maybe we should just set that as our default). As the weather was gorgeous and it was the Celebration of Lights fireworks finale, we figured that most people would head out there and so we decided we would take a pass this year and have yet another relaxing night at an air-conditioned movie. However, when we got there, it was packed. Like the inside of a macbook air packed. Top it off, the movie we wanted to watch was sold out (It was Step Brothers, by no means a grammy winner) and the line up for 3 week champion Dark Knight was as long as the wingspan of 20 Yao Mings. I guess everybody thought that everybody else would be at the fireworks and hence went for the more “relaxing” evening. So to sum it up, what I’ve learned this summer vacation is:

1. People are indecisive.
2. People are lazy.

I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or bad thing. I guess I’ll worry about it later.

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