With Relevance to Yesterday’s Advice
Sunday, August 10th
After watching a preliminary round of Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (which I got into for free because a nice Chinese woman, whose husband couldn’t make it, gave me a free ticket), I wandered around the Olympic Greens trying to trade pins. Success was relative. What I did gain from those aimless wanderings was knowledge of the USA vs. China basketball game commencing later that night. So off I went, trusty chunk of cardboard in tow.
Sequence of Events
- I get to the venue’s main entrance, and find a good spot to hold up my sign (read: area through which a large volume of pedestrian traffic would be passing
- I hold up my sign
- I hold back outrageous amounts of laughter in the form of embarrassed grins as a semi-circle of people, near 50 or so, immediately forms around me
- Plural people want to take their picture with the token white guy and his goofy sign (still lacking the Chinese characters of 学生需要票)
- I try to move directly in front of the entrance; volunteers yell at me and I yell back good-naturedly until I realize they aren’t joking, and move back to where I was. About 50 feet away.
- It starts to drizzle, people are laughing at my sign
- Volunteers offer me rain jackets, I politely refuse
- It starts to drizzle harder, people still laughing at my sign
- Volunteers offer me rain jackets, I politely refuse…but keep one for my backpack
- People continue to take pictures with me, holding up peace signs and acting Asian
- First news crew comes by, interviews me, goes away
- Rain becomes a steady, but still somewhat light, downpour
- Volunteers offer me rain jackets, I politely accept one and put it on
- I discover that the rain jacket is accomplishing almost nothing
- Friendly old woman starts talking to me and, in my broken Chinese, I communicate that I have no money whatsoever
- I exchange small talk with other foreigners trying to get tickets, no one seems quite as at ease as me with my sign
- More news crews come by, interviewing me; mostly Chinese, but at least one Italian and a Russian mixed in for flavor
- Various people offer to sell me their tickets, but I politely decline
- I realize that the rumor of over $1,000 per ticket is true
- My hopes fall
- People continue to take their picture with me
- My hopes rise
- Crowd slowly disperses
- My hopes fall
- Rain increases into a steady, medium-strength downpour
- My sign begins to disintegrate, cardboard peeling away from cardboard
- I get interviewed for sportsbusinessjournal.com (interview still not up), trade pins with the guy
- Meet cute girl; shame she went to Stanford
- Try to look forlorn as rain becomes harder - and that meant in the sense that the pollution was, quite literally, actually making the rain pellet-like. Volume was unchanged.
- Game not for another hour and fifteen minutes
- I’ve got no chance of making it to my favorite dumpling place to watch the game unless I leave now
- My sign falls over, limp and dejected, like something…well…like something limp and dejected
- Go find cute Stanford girl
- Tear up sign, with love
- See someone get a free ticket
- Shrug my shoulders
- Rain becomes a torrential downpour, redefining the phrase, “Really, really, ridiculously wet-looking”
- Realize that that’s a rip-off of Zoolander
- Go to dinner with cute Stanford girl
- Enjoy the game, the dumplings, and, despite expectations, the company
Life is hard, when you’re begging for tickets.