Vancouver 2010

Okay.

First of all, these past few weeks have been stupidly busy with midterms and such, so I haven't stayed in great contact with my accompanist, which apparently shows that I'm not committed, so she didn't put aside time to practice my piece, and she's entirely booked up for March and most of April anyways, so now I'm left feeling like an idiot, and lacking an accompanist.

Just had to get that out of the way, and now that it is, I shall move on.

Speaking of being busy, and yet not getting anything done, that's pretty much the position I'm still in. But this time, it's cause the Olympics are very distracting. Especially since Ken showed me the Vancouver 2010 website, that has live updates of scores and ranks, so I can keep track of those things as I watch the events. Very helpful.

Anyways, something that comes up with the Olympics that comes up every time they happen, is the insane hype about medals. Yes, medals are wonderful, and yes, they give us a huge reason to be proud of our country, and yes, our athletes should always strive for the podium.

But please tell me...should we be dissing, and putting down our country and our athletes simply because they don't make it to the podium?

It seems there are always those people who will put down our athletes, say they weren't trying hard enough, saying they're making stupid mistakes, just because they don't make it into the top three. And I've already seen Facebook statuses stating "Canada sucks" when we didn't do particularly well in an event.

It's the later statement that really gets to me. Honestly, if you need Canada to have medals in order to be proud of it, I really don't want anything to do with you.

As for the athletes, I'm always proud of our athletes, and that they're at the Olympics in the first place. It takes a lot of hard work to get there, and they don't just randomly pick people to compete in the Olympics.

I think the Olympics is an amazing event. What other event brings together the entire world to compete, watch, cheer, and experience together? I'm always amazed when I think of how many countries are involved, and how many people from all those countries are either coming to Vancouver to see the games, or even watching them from home. That's a lot of people, from a lot of different places.

I'm incredibly proud of Canada, and all our athletes who make it to the Olympics. Sure, sometimes some of them do make stupid mistakes that cost them a rank. Don't we all regularly make stupid mistakes? Haven't we all caved under pressure every now and then, in some form or another? I'm not about to bad mouth our athletes because they're human.

And I'm proud of the other countries and athletes that come out to compete with us. I was proud of the Chinese figure skaters who won China's first gold medal in figure skating. I loved the shot on TV of the Japanese family in the crowd watching speed skating, waving a Japan flag and cheering on their athletes, just like the Canadian family was doing in the rows behind them.

It all makes me think that maybe the Olympics have become, or maybe always were, about so much more than just winning medals. Maybe it's about showing each other that despite the fact that we come from different places, that we look different, and talk different, wear different clothing, and eat different foods...despite all this...

We all want to do our best and show everyone else what we have to offer. We want to cheer, laugh, and celebrate. We all wear our colors proudly to any event. We all just like to have a little fun.

Maybe this is about showing each other that we're all very much the same.

~Calminaiel~

"Death spiral? Shouldn't there be spikes, and fire? And they should throw a starved tiger on the ice!"