Today I watched USA and NBC during the day - from about 8:00 am to 6:00 am.
I did laundry, and updated tags on my photos and cleaned the kitchen, and played some Civ IV while doing it.
This evening, when it is morning in Beijing - more of the live events started coming online. On the Internet I watched at least a little bit of each of the following events:
Badminton - Women's Singes Round of 32. Zhang, N from China vs P Salakjit from Thailand. I rooted for Salakjit from Thailand because, in China, against a Chinese, she seemed like the underdog. And, it turns out she was. It was a good three set match (21-23, 21-17, 21-7).
Badminton - Women's Doubles Round of 16 - China v Indonesia. I like watching badminton, but it made me want to play instead of just watch.
Men's Individual Epee - Tikhomirov of Canada vs Khvovost of Ukraine.
I think this was a battle of age. The elder statesman Tikhomoriv (who used to fence for the Soviet Union) vs the young guy, Khvovost.
Tikhomirov won. I thought he seemed cocky in his style. He just lets his left hand flop around. It doesn't look disciplined. In fact, I didn't think any of the fencers had the kind of form I expected - the traditional one hand on the 'sword' and the other behind and pointing up. Maybe that's another variation on the fencing.
I learned that there are three rounds of three minutes each. When one fencer earns 15 points, its over. If play continues through the nine minutes, the player with the most points wins.
Its very confusing to watch because a red or green light flashes on the helmet (and in front of the judge) when a fencer makes a 'hit' on their opponent. But, instinctively, it looks to me like the light goes on when the person is 'hit'. So, I'm a little backwards, which means I cheer for the 'other' person instead of the one I decide to root for.
Team Archery - Korea vs Italy - I turned to this at the very end when Korea set a new world and Olympic record (231). The team event looked interesting so I'll try to watch that more tomorrow, if its on.
Sailing - Series Race, 49er. A 49er is a performance dinghy so they move quickly. In this race, the boats go up the course and back, and up the course and back again to the finish line. It takes about 30 minutes. It was kind of interesting watching them line up for the start and turn at mark 1 and mark 2. But, in between I had a hard time orienting what I was seeing with the course that had been laid out.
Overall, I had a nice Olympics day. http://www.nbcolympics.com/ is a great website. I can watch some stuff live that I'd never see on TV. There isn't any commentary so I'm forced to figure out what I'm watching on my own, which is fun. Because there are so many sports going on at any one time I'm having a hard time catching the flow of a sport or picking out an athlete to follow and root for. I usually root for the person that looks like the underdog to me. But, I could be wrong.
I'm going to miss a lot of the competition because a good half of the day, I'm asleep while its happening online. During the day, there's NBC and USA (at least this weekend there is), and in the early evening I can watch the less televised sports live online for a few hours. I'm pretty satisfied.
On TV today, I watched some beach volleyball this morning, women's weightlifting (48 kg class) - the clean sweep (?) and the clean and jerk combined. I enjoyed that competition. This evening I caught Michael Phelps win.
And now, its getting late, so I'll end the evening watching some more swimming.
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