So Much Olympics!

I have never in my life watched this much Olympics coverage. It's crazy. We're probably watching 7 hours a day on average, and that's if there isn't something important on that we've scheduled in to watch live (or 'live replay' the following morning). I've always loved the Olympics, and have always been happy to watch just about whatever sport is on, but now that my schedule is completely flexible (and Derek is home, too), and we have a PVR (one of those HD digital boxes that tapes tv shows automatically), there's just so much to watch and a fair number of hours in which to watch it!

I think some of my favourite moments have probably come from the Snowboard Cross and Ski Cross. It's so exciting to watch, and so wild, that I find it hard to believe that they haven't had it as part of the Games before. And to finish it off with a gold for Canada was the icing on the cake. We're watching a ton of sliding sports: luge, 'bob-skeleton' (where the Brits won their 9th gold ever at a Winter Games, so you can imagine how many times they've brought that up!), and 'bobsleigh'. There's been a good amount of short-track speed skating, although not as much long-track and thus we didn't see our Canadian skater win. There's been a lot of curling coverage too, even though the British teams aren't very good, and they've only shown our apparently excellent Canadian curling team when we're playing the Brits (or, really, the Scots). Curling's fun -- it's pretty much the only time that we hear the familiar Scottish accents from both the athletes and the commentators.

I should mention that I've learned that my use and understanding of the word 'athlete' is different from the BBC commentators' use of the term. I guess here it means a former track and field participant, rather than a generic term for someone who plays sports. I discovered this while watching the two-man bob-sleigh. The commentators regularly told us of the brakeman's former sports background, such as rugby, 'American football', weight lifting etc. And then a bunch of them were labelled as 'former athletes', which I still find a rather amusing title, as they are obviously still amazing athletes in my sense of the word.

We're still getting excellent coverage of important matches and sports thanks to BBC's red button coverage, which streams up to 6 sports at a time all day and night. One advantage to BBC's Olympic Coverage is that, since BBC does not have commercials (a privilege we all pay for annually through our £100+ tv licenses) their Olympics coverage doesn't have commercials either. This makes events such as the Opening Ceremonies wonderful, since you're not worrying about missing anything and you're not taken away from the atmosphere of the show, but it can be a bit boring during the skiing and hockey games as everything is put on hold for 2 minutes for the North American broadcasters to fit in their advertisements. We end up watching replays and funny shots of the crowd or the athletes (there's that word again!) for the break.

I'm so proud of how well Canada is doing. Our ice dancers were absolutely beautiful in the final performance, and I'm not a big ice dance fan at all. The Canada-US hockey game was a tough moment, but I'm very proud that they've pulled themselves back together and started working as a team to defeat Russia so spectacularly. We were told that 11 million Canadians tuned in for the game on Sunday night -- that's amazing! And it must have been absolutely devastating! I can't wait for the women's gold medal game, which we'll watch live tomorrow morning on the replay (I just can't stay up until 3pm!). And fingers crossed for our men to do as well. From the stats it looks really good for our curlers, too, so I hope that we'll continue to get coverage of that even though the British women are out and the men are on the border. So we may not be home to feel the Olympic fever, but we're still shouting and jumping off the couch in celebrations here, too. And boy, would another gold or two feel great!

A "Canook's" Olympics, BBC-style

Well, the Winter Olympics are well underway, and they're back home in Canada for the first time in 22 years, and where are we? We're way over on the other side of the Atlantic. No worries: London will be hosting the 2012 Summer Games. But wait -- where will we be in the Summer of 2012? We have no idea! but most likely not in Edinburgh, and odds are not in the UK. So we get to miss both. Sigh. And while I was lucky enough to be in Calgary for at least one night during the '88 Olympics, I was 5 years old and all I remember is the kind of cake my Aunt let me pick out at the grocery store for dessert that night. Really. My parents got to see some speed skating, and I do like my mum's stories of the celebrations at Olympic Square when Elizabeth Manley won silver.

The thing is, I'm a huge fan of the Olympics. I grew up loving watching figure skating, but by my early teens I just wanted to watch any sport that was on. And the Winter Olympics are particularly special, probably for all of us Canadians, because its in these games that we've got a good chance! So I tried not to think about the fact that I'd be missing out on the whole host country experience, which wasn't too hard here, but after a flatwarming on Friday night I came home and watched the first 15 minutes of the Opening Ceremonies (on at 2:15 am) I ended up in tears. So we had some friends over (2 Canadians, 2 Americans) the following night to watch the entire ceremony. It was great. We all critiqued the outfits, got bored with the excessive interpretive ballet, and felt pride in seeing some of our great athletes, musicians, actors etc. strut their stuff. I tried to take mental photos of my favourite outfits to chat with my mum about after, like we always do.

Now that I've been sucked back in (as I am every 2 years), it's time to figure out what BBC's Olympic coverage consists of. I was worried that we wouldn't get much coverage of the Canadians, which makes sense. I bet each country's media concentrates on their own athletes and their best events. And while this has certainly been evident in some areas, such as the initial hockey games being shortened to include only the goals (but still quite a lot of coverage, thanks to our girls getting 28 goals in their first two games!), we've lucked out. Because Canada is the host country, BBC is constantly mentioning our athletes, our stats, telling us who the Canadian hopefuls are, and even showing us the medal ceremony and anthem singing when we got our first home gold.

I'm really impressed with BBC's coverage. We've been recording the 5.5 hour edited coverage that they show every night after midnight, and in HD it's pretty darn nice to watch. They also show one or two events every evening, like snowboard cross or skiing. But the amazing thing they do (and which I am only beginning to figure out) is their red button coverage. Anytime you have the BBC on, you can press the red button on your clicker and be taken to an interactive menu that shows news headlines and tv shows via BBC iPlayer. However, now that their Olympic coverage has begun, there's a new option: live sport coverage. You suddenly see a bunch of squares, each which a different video feed from the different venues, and then choose which sport you want to watch. The coverage is initially live, but some get repeated throughout the day or night. So this gives us the opportunity to watch more sports that might not have made the cut of BBC's edited coverage. It's really cool. It's also how we'll be watching the Canadian men's first hockey game and how my friend and I will be watching the men's free program in figure skating.

One last note on the BBC's coverage: it's a tad amusing. We get slightly more informal commentary (eg. we were told that the next athlete had 'butterflies in his tummy', and the German gold medalist had an awesome hat), a bit more opinion (eg. the figure skating commentator was really pulling for the one Chinese pair), and some odd statements that make us think twice (eg. we were informed that the snowboarder from Alaska would be competing for the United States). We all had a good chuckle at the coverage of the Opening Ceremonies, which rarely even showed Stephen Harper, and I'm not sure they even mentioned who he was, instead giving us all the details about the Governor General, which kind of makes sense as she's the Queen's representative.

My favourite so far has probably been the pronunciations, which I will attempt to recreate phonetically. We learned that one athlete was from 'Winny-peg,' as in Winnie the Pooh, and that we're all Canooks (as in Chinook). Eek. But it happens, and it's great fun listening to some of the commentators. I should mention that they also have a token Canadian commentator, Karen Lee Gardener (sp?), who says rather obvious things, like that Canadians want to win. So that's how we've experienced the Games so far -- we watch 4 to 5 hours a day, are generally a day behind, and are pulling for our Canadian athletes all the way. There's been lots of yelling at the tv and high-fiving, just as I'm sure there's been across the country back home. We've been loving the snowboard cross and can't wait for the big hockey games. We may be fighting an 8 hour time difference and some British bias towards certain sports, but it's still our games and we're following it just as closely as we'd be back home (or possibly more so!). And there's hockey parties with friends to come!

So to conclude, as one commentator just said, 'The Canadians are going mental!'

Back to the Burn

Last weekend I ventured back to The Burn with a group almost three times the size of last years'. There were 25 history postgrads and 5 faculty members on the trip, and this time we all took a nice coach up instead of getting our own train tickets. The Burn house, an eighteenth century manor home about 2.5 hours north of Edinburgh, was much warmer than I remember. There was a light coating of snow everywhere, which made the hills in the distance that much more beautiful. The place is too far east to be in the highlands, but there's rolling hills on the horizon.

We made the same two trips as last year, Edzell Castle on Saturday morning and Arbroath Abbey on Sunday afternoon, and had beautiful sunny weather on both days, although the winds were pretty brisk and it got cold in the evenings when the fire was allowed to die down. Saturday night consisted of a rather amusing performance of a medieval play, in which my character ordered the torture and death of three holy virgins, portrayed by the three younger male profs who'd come along, and who were hilarious in the roles. One was a modest girl, one was a Scottish girl, and one was himself dressed as a girl. deep voice and beard and all. All three also had blue eyeshadow on, which to me seems an odd choice for a medieval play and for three modest virginal female characters, but I suppose we weren't really going for historical accuracy with our production.

It was a good relaxing trip. I stayed away from all electronics, including my phone, the laptop and its wireless internet and email. I didn't even watch the tv to see the Australian Open final with Andy Murray. The trivial pursuit game was a lot of fun, even though as it was an almost 20 year old version a lot of the questions were pretty difficult. Each team had one prof to try to make things easier. I got our team the pink entertainment slice because I knew which Beatle was deported from Germany in 1960 for being underage. The food was excellent -- on Saturday night the cooks and staff held a Scottish theme night, with haggis, neeps and tatties. They also provided a box of fabric and clothing to fashion our own Scottish looks. The vegetarian haggis was excellent! But then it turned out that this was only the appetizer, and lasagna followed! They sure kept us well fed over the weekend!

So it was an excellent weekend, and one that might not have happened if I hadn't helped. Back in September I planned a letter-writing campaign when it was confirmed that the Grad Studies Committee had decided to cancel the trip without telling any of the students. I didn't even need to submit my own letter -- I guess the threat of a written protest against canceling one of the two socialising opportunities of the year for history postgrads was enough to make the trip a possibility again. Then, with the help of my stories and photographs from last year to promote the trip to new postgrads, 27 students signed up immediately and paid their deposits right away, and we received supplemental funding from the Head of School Tom Devine's personal budget to ensure the trip would happen. And everyone of course had a great weekend! I wonder if we'll have to go to all this trouble again next year...