WorkPlace Snippets

Category: Musings

  • Beijing Olympics 2008 – Closing Ceremony – The Moon is Bright Tonight


    Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

    It has only been 4 months since the Beijing Olympics 2008, but for some reason it seems to have happened so very long ago. Perhaps it’s because of the credit crunch and lots of real life things happening, but my online activity has really dwindled. This includes the continuation of the series on the Closing Ceremony, where this post has been in ‘draft’ for far too long without actually having ever been written up.

    Above is a photo of the 7 sopranos who serenaded us all with their rendition of the Chinese folk song 今夜月明 or The Moon is Bright Tonight. Out of all the performances that night, I have to say this sweet love song was my absolute favourite performance of the evening (more photos of some of the other performances can be found at the end of this post) Their voices (and their outfits) were absolutely gorgeous!

    This is the list of the soprano performers:

    張也, 湯燦, 張燕, 陳思思, 雷佳, 王麗達,哈輝

    The original plan was to introduce all of the singers individually, but I think it’s safe to say that they are all very accomplished sopranos and perhaps it will be fine to leave it at that, since on a personal level, the actual song and their rendition of this particular arrangement was the most wonderful part.

    I have actually recorded the song from the BBC broadcast of the Closing Ceremony, and find it so very uplifting to listen to. The song is sung by a girl to a boy in the mountains, and she sings about the magnificently bright moon that has risen, which reminds her of the one she is missing. And as the wind sweeps up to the hills, she asks if he can hear her calling to him.

    At least, that’s my interpretation of the original lyrics, although CRI Online has helpfully provided the names of the people who brought us this arrangement (卞留念、趙兆、孟可 and 尹宜公) I have decided to edit the original lyrics and post what the sopranos actually sang here:

    (恩噠恩噠 哩羅來哩羅來)
    (恩噠恩噠 哩羅來哩羅來)
    月亮出來亮旺旺亮旺旺 （哪呀咿哪呀咿也 哪呀咿哪呀咿也)
    想起我的阿哥
    在深山 (噠 噠 哩羅來哩羅來）
    (哪呀咿 哪呀咿也 哪呀咿呦呀咿也)
    哥想月亮天上走天上走 哥 (哪呀咿哪呀咿也)
    哥哥啊 (來啦哩 來啦哩 來啦哩 來啦哩羅來哩羅來）
    山下小河淌水
    清悠悠 (哪呀咿哪呀咿也 啊呦呀呦 咿也)

    月亮出來亮旺旺 亮旺旺 月亮出來亮旺旺 亮旺旺
    亮旺 亮旺 亮旺 亮旺……
    月亮出來亮旺旺

    一陣清風 吹上坡 吹上坡 哥啊 哥啊 哥啊
    你可聽見阿妹叫阿哥……
    阿哥 月亮出來 月亮 月亮

    It is a little shorter than the original, and the words that you can see within brackets interweaves between the actual lyrics, and are nonsense if taken literally, but musically they are a perfect accompaniment for the song.

    If you would like to be reminded why this song is so good, feel free to listen to the mp3 recording that I mentioned earlier from the BBC broadcast below. Alternatively, you can also download The Moon is Bright Tonight for your own enjoyment as well. It is really something worth listening , especially in the winter months, in my humble opinion, and it would be great to find out if you thought the same too!

    Download the mp3 recording of The Moon is Bright Tonight from the BBC‘s broadcast of the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony or click on the ‘play’ button above to listen to the mp3 on the site!

    Unless I get round to writing about the Handover to London, this may be the last post on the Olympics 2008 for the time being. But I think, as the BBC’s Matt Slater summed up so eloquently in his blog post:

    The closing ceremony was absolutely in keeping with everything I have seen in Beijing over the last three and a bit weeks: staggering in scale, perfectly choreographed, visually stunning and absolutely on time.

    p/s: Some of the other photos we promised at the start of this post from the Beijing Olympics 2008 Closing Ceremony including Jackie Chan, Karen Mok, Andy Lau, Joey Yung and other really big name (old-skool) celebrities singing 遠方的客人請你留下來 or Please stay, Guests from Afar.


    Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

    And some of the 75 acrobats mimicking flames as they performed on the 25-metre tall Memory Tower.


    Photo courtesy of azzurri_nr1

    Last but not least, Placido Domingo and 宋祖英 (Song Zuying) singing the duet of 愛的火焰 or Flames of Love together.


    Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

  • Beijing Olympics 2008 – Closing Ceremony – Introduction

    And so the Beijing Olympics 2008 have officially drawn to a close with the handover to London for 2012. I’m sure many many people dropped what they were doing to watch as much of the closing ceremony as possible, I know I did. So, what did you think of the Closing Ceremony?

    It wasn’t quite on the same scale as the Opening Ceremony – a mere 200 drum performers and 1,100 silver bell dancer for the first ‘Reunion’-themed part, compared to the 2,008 drummers at the start of the Opening Ceremony. In all, 7,000 performers took part in the Closing Ceremony and they didn’t even get a chance to rehearse in the stadium in the past few days because of the Athletics.


    Photo courtesy of One Ben K

    It was also a very modern performance compared to how the Olympics were introduced, and the underlying message was to ‘greet and welcome guests’. The music was gorgeous – delicate and upbeat in parts, contemplative the next. The cinematic effect was beautiful, as expected of Zhang Yimou, the director. At this point, I was impressed by the 60 light wheels that ‘rolled’ into the darkened stadium, traveling along path of lights formed by the dancers, which reminded me a little of the Wall of China (even if it wasn’t intended)


    Photo courtesy of rich115

    As the formation changed, they were joined by followed by 200 bouncing and flying performers, which were supposed to reflect the more modern and extreme sports in the Olympics (according to the on-going BBC commentary) and finally, the opening of the closing ceremony ended as the dancers formed four passages to greet the incoming flag bearers of each country, and then the athletes.


    Photo courtesy of 赤子之心

    In contrast to the formal entrance of the athletes at the Opening Ceremony, everyone was allowed to run in freely. Needless to say everyone pretty much looked ecstatic and cheered at the camera 😉 This was followed by the award ceremony for the winners of the Men’s Marathon event (a new world record was set by the gold medalist WANSIRU Samuel Kamau!) and a big thank you was given to all the representatives of all the volunteers who had worked so hard to support the games.

    So much more followed, that I think it would be appropriate to split this post into a few sections and write about the individual performances that really stood out for me, such as the London Handover and the musical rendition of The Moon is Bright Tonight. Please stay tuned for the next part of this series! 🙂

  • To WordPress and not to WordPress

    Having been overwhelmed with Olympic fever, it’s been awhile since I’ve made a post relating to WordPress, but the community is as active as ever, especially with the release of WordPress 2.6.1 and the final round of voting for the WordPress Plugin Competition.

    This will, fortunately for you all, be a short post with what maybe a catchy title! The good book ‘how to write a good blog post’ sites teach us that a catchy title is very helpful in attracting the attention of browsers. Whether this will be one of the popular posts as a result remains to be seen, but there is a point to this post and the title: it turns out I have been spelling that special word wrong.

    That word, of course, is:

    WordPress

    I’ve always spelt it as WordPress, and never thought more of it, so I was utterly mortified when I started reading Lorelle‘s excellent article Tips on Writing Good WordPress Tips. The first point she made (as convincingly as always) was that:

    WordPress is a trademark and thus must be spelled appropriately.

    That sentence came like a bolt from the heavens (or stepping on a garden rake) and I was left with a sinking feeling in my stomach – just hours before I had chided someone on the WordPress Forums about getting the name of a plugin wrong, and yet I was already making an even more fundamental mistake about something I read about almost everyday – WordPress!

    That feeling of guilt happened to coincide with me reading a new post by Mark Ghosh on WLTC called Be Kind, Educate, (which is just as inspirational as Matt Mullenweg‘s Price of Freedom) where he analyses why there are so many fans of WordPress, and nature of the WP community. His last point, and the title of his article, credits Lorelle as an inspiration for his new pledge:

    to be as kind as I can be … to educate everyone that cares to listen

    So at the end of this post, not only am I going to spell WordPress correctly from now on, I am also going to endeavour to be a lot more patient and polite when I reply on the forums!

    p/s: Apologies to anyone I’ve offended on the forums from before.

    p/s2: I think I’ve patched up this site for WordPress, but if you spot any omissions, please let me know!

  • Christine Ohuruogu wins gold in the 400m sprint!

    I made my daily (frequent) pilgrimages to the BBC news website earlier today, and was delighted to find the headlines that:

    Christine Ohuruogu won Olympic 400m gold for Britain with a stunning surge down the home straight in Beijing!

    The line, taken from “ Ohuruogu grabs gold for Britain“, really summarises the amazing performance by the athlete. I watched the event on the video player (hopefully international readers can also watch the video) that showed the entire finals from the starting blocks to the parade after the sprint, and strangely, although I already knew the result, it didn’t stop the onset of nervousness that always seem to accompany ‘live’ viewing of competitive events that involve team GB.

    This is probably because for about the first 300 metres, Christine Ohuruogu really didn’t look as though she was in contention for gold at all. I’m going to put this down as me being an unseasoned 400m viewer, but after watching America’s (title favourite) Sanya Richards leave her fellow runners behind in the first half of the race, I could barely watch the last stretch. But oh my god, didn’t Christine Ohuruogu impress at the end?

    In that very last stretch, her speed suddenly increased and she emerged from the ‘pack’ (I mean this) of 400m sprinters to power ahead into gold! It was actually a very surreal experience watching it, dare I say a bit like watching Usain Bolt‘s captivating Men’s 100m Final performance, except she didn’t slow down.

    And after reading a few more articles, it is almost for sure that the tactical performance of Christine Ohuruogu during this big moment and all of her hard work in training has paid dividends and won her this precious medal. The BBC’s Tom Fordyce called her win ‘A Tactical Masterpiece‘, where he mentions her coach, Lloyd Cowan, as one of the key players in this campaign; although according to TF, Katherine Merry (bronze medalist of the 400m in Sydney) believes that:

    the victory had its roots in Ohuruogu’s decision to spend the first half of the year working on her one big weakness… …short sprints.

    What is clear is that this win will go far in taking her away from the doldrums of the past two years, where she was banned for a year due to missing 3 random drug tests. I didn’t follow the story very closely, but it was genuinely sad that this could taint an otherwise impeccable record (she has won a medal at every major event that she has attended) from an obviously talented athlete and I am just very very glad that she has taken the top prize of the event. As the Telegraph’s Richard Edwards and Richard Spencer so succinctly put it (in their excellent article about Christine Ohuruogu):

    From hero, to zero, to hero again.

    So a huge congratulations to Christine Ohuruogu and also to all the other Olympic medalists today, such as Victoria Pendleton and Chris Hoy (both cycling), Paul Goodison (sailing) and Germaine Mason, who took silver on his Olympic debut for the high jump – a ‘wild card’-esque entry who wasn’t expected to win any medal. Their combined efforts, along with the rest of the GB team, have shot us to a mind-blowing third on the medals table! The gold medal tally of 16 is certainly the best that Great Britain have seen in a century!

  • Speedo’s LZR Racer swimsuits or “Where are all the breasts?”

    The article that I’m about to introduce was originally supposed to be added-on to the end of my previous post dedicated to Michael Phelps, but after being tickled pink by the tongue-in-cheek approach of Simon Barnes, I have decided that it warrants its very own post!

    Although the article did initially focus (inevitably) on Phelps, The Times’ Simon Barnes couldn’t help but start to wonder: Where are all the breasts? I haven’t watched many of the women’s swimming events, but no doubt the more dedicated viewers of the sport might have noticed th change in some of the female competitors’ body shapes, as illustrated by the photo below:


    I’d say she’s female, judging by the painted fingernails, but then again, you never know …

    The second half of the article discusses the proven sporting merits (5 new world records!) of the new hydrodynamic Speedo LZR Racer swim suits, which, says Simon Barnes, “increases hydrodynamic efficiency by compressing the body so the muscles don’t flap about so much” when you’re in the water.

    Of course, there is always a downside to such wonderful technology (according to Speedo, the new range is ultrasonically bonded so there are no seams); SB mentioned ‘wardrobe malfunctions‘ that could only have been inspired by ‘Janet Jackson’ (it happened twice to the rather unfortunate medal contender Jessica Schipper) as apparently it breaks quite easily, which has even prompted one swimmer to wear another suit underneath to save herself from baring all.

    Given the track record so far (even Phelps wears the legs-only version) I think the important take-home message for other female athletes from that article is this:

    It’s worth looking a bit flat-chested if you want the speed …(and) you can always regain your femininity when you have wriggled out of the damn things after the race.

    For more of Simon Barnes‘ blog posts from Beijing, click on the link below!

    http://timesonline.typepad.com/olympics/