I'm sitting here watching the table tennis match between Congo's Suraju Saka and Puerto Rico's Brian Afanador. While this is the first event I've watched since the opening ceremonies, it is not the first event I've watched during theseOlympics. I was able to catch parts of two women's soccer games on Wednesday night.
So far the sports have been great. The table tennis match is really close. And even thought I should be rooting for Afanador since he's arguably from the US, I can't help but root for the older Saka, who is more relatable to me. Wednesday's soccer games were not close. I saw France beat Columbia 4-0 and the US beat New Zealand 2-0. I'm not really a fan of soccer, but today's game is US vs. France and I'll be interested to see who wins that one.
Last night was the opening ceremonies. They were not as intriguing to me as past Olympics. I was struck by how much of the ceremony was orchestrated for the TV audience. There was one point where dancers were running across a simulated roofline projected onto the field. There was only one angle where that made visual sense: the TV angle. I found that distracting. There was also a long segment of infographics about global warming. Perhaps those were also shown on screens in the stadium, but again seemed optimized for the TV audience.
Gail and I usually make international dishes for most nights of the Olympics. Since our daughter, Noele came home for a visit last night, we decide to go out to Japanese/Korean instead. We kept the international theme, just didn't cook it ourselves. I did have a glass of Greek ouzo in honor of the first Olympics.
By the way Brian Afanador won the table tennis match 4-3.
