selfies

Weightlifting has finished! So for the last few days I've been unwinding and catching up with Fel's (and now mine, I should like to think) friend Dave, who lives in Shanghai, but has come up to see some of the Games. It's been pretty nice to catch up with someone here. We went to a restaurant, and got given an English menu, a beer was 20RMB. We thought it was a bit expensive, and Dave, who speaks fluent Mandarin, asked for the Chinese menu. As well as having a much bigger range, the beer on it was only 4RMB. So always good to have a Mandarin speaker.
We had a lunch before the last day Weightlifting. It was really good, and nice and relaxed. I got given a cool hip flask with Chairman Mao on it! This is Jane, who was the ONS Manager at Weightlifting.

And here's Robert, who is from Melbourne. He won the Silver medal in the Men's 84kg Weightlifting at the Los Angeles Games in 1984. He was the Sports Information Specialist. His role was to write event previews and reviews, and help us out with information of the sport.
This is Dennis, who was the ONS Reporter. His role was to manage the Flash Quote Reporters in the mixed zone, though because he's Russian, he ended up doing a lot of interviews with athletes who didn't speak English. A positive effect of the Iron Curtain is that all those countries speak Russian as a second language, and so we were able to get quote from athletes that we otherwise would not have heard from.
After work, we went to KTV, which is a karaoke place. It was a fun night, but everyone was pretty tired, so we didn't stay out too long. They had mirrors on the roof!
This photo doesn't really relate, but it's from the lunch with the Weightlifting team. I reckon it looks like Star Trek food...
So I fly home in under a week. I'm going to try to go on a bit of a short trip. I talked to Dave about good places to visit. It's just a matter of getting around to it. There's lots of stuff in Beijing that I want to do too, so I'm not sure.