As the much awaited Beijing Summer Olympics is nearing (official date to open is on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m, as the number is one of the most auspicious number in Chinese culture), one should know to stay strategically near the venues of the games you’ll want to watch. Unfortunately, I couldn’t attend any games so I’ll just take note for other people’s reference.

The stadiums are neatly constructed in a way that is convenient.

Number 1 in the map is the National Stadium which is famous for it’s Bird’s nest look. It has the capacity of around 91,000! This will be the one use for the opening and closing ceremonies.

National Aquatics Center (2) “Watercube” is another famous new venue which will host competitions like Swimming, Diving, Synchronized Swimming.

National Indoor Stadium (3) will be the venue for Olympic Artistic Gymnastics, Trampoline, and Handball competitions and the Paralympic Wheelchair Basketball competition.

Beijing Shooting Range Hall (4) which is also located in the district called Olympic Green will be the venue for qualifications and finals of 11 shooting events, consisting of all 10-meter, 25-meter, and 50-meter range shooting events.

Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium (5) will surely be packed with NBA and basketball fans.

Laoshan Velodrome (6) will be the venue for cycling competition.

Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park (7) will be the venue for Rowing, Canoe/Kayak — Flat-water, Canoe/Kayak — Slalom, Marathon Swimming.

Wrestling matches will be held at China Agricultural University Gymnasium (8).
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Visiting museums should actually be one of the top must see of tourists when visiting new places. You get to sense the culture, history but most of all, you can check out cool artifacts.

I am actually fascinated about museums but I seldom go because either no one wants to go with me or it’s really out of the way.

When we went to Shanghai, I knew I had to go because the structure itself looks enticing enough.

Shanghai Museum is actually a museum of ancient Chinese arts. Featuring a lot of furnitures, art masterpieces, old coins & money, clothes, I pleasantly scanned the interesting pieces. However I still like the feel of going to Forbidden city to glance at “how it was“. I want to walk the steps they took long before and imagine being there.
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Disaster after disaster…Myanmar had just experience a terrible cyclone that left more than 100,000 people dead. Now, China with the strong earthquake that hit Sichuan at 7.9 magnitude. With a lot of people still under rumbles, it’s quite saddening to know that most of the buildings that collapsed were schools meaning a lot of children got trapped and now calling for help, hoping they can be saved.

Pictures: Xinhua

Hopefully, there’ll be more survivors than those feared dead…

My landlady is from Chengdu also, I emailed her but no reply yet. Maybe their internet isn’t working yet. I hope they’re fine too.

if you want to help even in small ways such as money, please check out these details..:
For those who are looking to contribute to current aid efforts underway, you can now donate money to the Red Cross Society of China which has formed a disaster relief working group to be dispatched to the earthquake-stricken Wenchuan County in Sichuan.

They have also published an emergency relief hotline, along with bank account information to receive donations to assist their cause:

Account name: Red Cross Society of China
开户单位：中国红十字会总会

For those who want to donate in RMB: you can send money to the RMB account at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China branch below:
人民币开户行: 中国工商银行 北京分行东四南支行
人民币账号: 0200001009014413252

For those who want to donate in foreign currency, you can send money to the foreign currency account at the CITIC Bank branch below:
外币开户行：中信银行酒仙桥支行
外币账号: 7112111482600000209

Hotline: (8610) 65139999
Online donations: Red Cross Society of China website: www.redcross.org.cn

Interestingly, you can learn Chinese (Mandarin) at your own home. This sounds like an advertisement but I do think this is the best alternative for those who would want to self study Chinese. I found this site before, when I wanted to practice aside from our usual text books. I wasn’t really paying much attention to my teachers in BLCU because I have this tendency to deviate from my own thoughts (I think I have a slight Attention Deficit Disorder) so I push myself to learn online.

It quite fun actually to learn in Chinese Pod. It has audio voiceover which you can choose if you’re not sure how to pronouce Pinyin. Plus there are also levels if you want to accelerate the lessons. Likewise, it’s fun to know the basics. Now they only have 1 week trial but before they had a month. I used two of my emails to access the lessons unfortunately, I’m still not the diligent student even if I’m my own teacher. Argh. Got to waste another opportunity to practice.