Olympics - Pavilions

So on Thursday it was back to Vancouver for some more Olympic pavilions.

My first stop was Ontario pavilion with their 4D theater. Even though I got there just 20 minutes after it opened the wait was still about 40 minutes and the movie is only about 7 minutes long. It was a pretty cool video though. I would say the 4D effects are better than those of the 4D theater at the aquarium. They timed and directed the water hitting you so that it's like it came right out of the splash on the screen. You also go on a roller coaster briefly and the vibration of the chair feels like you're on it.

Inside the pavilion after the movie I got a sample of some sort of apple dessert with caramel. I then got in line for the booth for using your brain waves to control the lights on the CN tower, the parliament buildings or Niagara falls, but then I thought it'd be better to do that one at night when you could better see the light. I came back later.

Next I visited the Saskatchewan pavilion which included this dome which lights up when it's dark with images of the province.

Inside the dome there were some booths about the province. One booth let you get a photo of yourself in the province using a green screen. There was actually a line-up! I suppose it's much faster than actually going to Saskatchewan. I was given a pin and a little packet of yogurt lentil clusters, which just tasted like yogurt.

In the other tent where they have a stage and food for sale there were samples of lentils salad. It just tasted like bean salad. Apparently it's power food.

Next I walked over to the BC Powersmart village over on the other side of BC place. There was a tent with comfortable wooden seats where you could watch the Olympics.

Then in another tent they had the sustainable dance floor.

As you dance on it you generate energy that is saved.

Inside the building they had a timeline of BC hydro's history including these quotes, one of which mentions Dawson Creek, where I grew up. It was interesting to see how Vancouver used street cars on rails before buses took over everywhere. BC hydro's predecessor used to handle the transit too.

Next I popped over to the Bell Ice Cube where they give you a pair of earbud headphones you can keep. Inside there were screens all around showing different live Olympics coverage. There were also some videos you could watch about the history of the Olympics. In either case you just plugged your headphones into the display or the dangling connections to hear the audio. The history video pedestal things were not very well designed though with a sensor that would only keep the video going if you were standing on one side of it. Plus you had to look down at the video which isn't great on the neck.

At the Bell Ice Cube there were some past Olympics medal winners being interview by other past Olympics winners. Charmaine Crooks (a past Canadian track and field Olympian) was one of the interviewers. She first interviewed Johann Koss (a past Norwegian speed skater and current coach of the Norway team) about the Right To Play organization. Then they had Clara Hughes there for a bit, who is the only winner of multiple medals in both the summer and winter Olympics, and she's Canadian.

They also brought out Catriona Le May Doan, another Canadian multiple medal winner in speed skating, and a torch bearer at the opening ceremonies. They asked her how it felt to be the torch bearer and she said "Which part? The part where it didn't come up?". She was the one who's "ice spier" did not come up so she didn't have anything to light with her torch because of the malfunction. So together the people on the Bell Ice Cube stage at this point had won 15 Olympic medals. Clara had to leave shortly after to get to some other event.

I left the Bell Ice cube before the end of the interview so I could find a place to watch the women's hockey gold medal game. Along the way I saw Batman!

I went to Robson square to watch the game hoping that perhaps someone I knew would be there but I couldn't find anyone so I found a seat near the front of the lower area. I watched the first period in which Canada scored the only two goals of the game. Around the time that they scored the second goal Gordon entered Robson square and walked up the back of the lower area to get a seat in the upper area. I didn't know he was there and I left after the first period.

I went back to the Powersmart tent where I got a comfy seat 5 minutes later to watch the rest of the game from. The second period had just as many penalties but no goals. The Canadian goalie played amazingly, surviving 5 on 3s twice. In the third period there were no goals and no penalties and so Canada took the gold for the 3rd Olympics in a row. I just hope they keep this event in the Olympics despite Canada and the US destroying everyone.

After the game I went over to the library to see CODE live 3, a digital art exhibit. Here they had a net with hundreds of paper airplanes. Except they weren't airplanes. Instead the paper was folded into the shape of maple seeds. Even when I went down and made one myself it still seemed to look a lot like a paper airplane.

What they have is a pneumatic tube that shoots the paper a few stories above the net and then it falls down down down onto the net to join everyone else's papers. Each piece of paper has a blinking LED light attached to it.

Here's my piece of paper with the battery and light. First you write a message of how you bring peace to the world on the paper. For the Olympics countries agree to be peaceful, so this was ideas to make the whole world peaceful all the time.

Here is the tube attempting to shoot a paper up it. This paper and mine which went before it both needed a couple of attempts to work. My paper got stuck partway up because the air didn't catch the pocket well. Then we had to let it fall and then try again. I guess my message for peace was not strong enough.

So, the last thing I did in Vancouver was revisit the Ontario pavilion and control the lights of Niagara falls with my brain waves. It sounds cool but it wasn't. The lineup was about an hour but went by quickly because they were playing the ski aerials on the big screens there. I watched as the Canadian who had the best score going into the last jump ended up getting 5th.

Anyways so when I got to the front of the line a guy had me sit in a chair and put on a head set that touched my forehead. On the screen there was a meter that had a baseline and went from smilie face to concentrating face. He told me that the meter would go up and down depending on how relaxed I was and then told me to focus really hard on something. The meter moved a bit but he declared that the machine was still broken and I'd need to wait for another one.

So a few minutes later I sat down in a different chair and a girl started instructing me, except that the instructions were very minimal and the girl looked to be about 13 years old. Sometimes the meter seemed to move according to my relaxation but sometimes it didn't. Perhaps it was because I was concentrating too hard on relaxing. So then the training period was over and all of the sudden I was controlling the lighting of Niagara falls. It was done by using a simple colour scale where you used a different colour depending on how relaxed you were. I could only get it to move to two different colours near the baseline and it didn't really go where I wanted it to. It was kind of lame. I had expected more instruction on how exactly to think to get your brainwaves to change.

LiveCity

On Wednesday I went out to Vancouver in the morning to spend a day in Vancouver enjoying the Olympics.

My first stop was LiveCity Downtown. The wait to get in was about 15 minutes. One of the places inside was CentrePlace Manitoba.

Inside there were many videos about Manitoba and some touch screens with info about it. Apparently Winnipeg has the most restaurants per capita and the province has over 100 different festivals a year.

This is their model of the Museum of Human Rights building,

to be complete in Winnipeg in 2012.

The other pavilion in LiveCity Downtown was the Canada Pavillion. There was a half hour wait to get in but this being LiveCity, there were many TV screens to watch with live coverage of the Olympics. While waiting in line I watched the first period of US vs Switzerland hockey.

Inside they had some simulation games, like snowboarding and this hockey penalty shot game. There was no actual puck, you just had to shoot as if it was on the spot on the floor.

The real cool thing about that day at the Canada Pavilion was the Stanley Cup! I waited in another line and got to touch it and have my photo taken. It was awesome! Also, again...kudos to LiveCity for having TVs everywhere to watch the Olympics while waiting. I don't know why every place doesn't do this.

After checking that out I walked across to LiveCity Yaletown where the line-up was surprisingly non-existent. Last time I was there it wrapped around the block. The place is a lot bigger than the downtown site with most of them pavilions belonging to Olympics' sponsors. The first thing I checked out was the Panisonic pavilion with the 3D theater. It was about a 20 minute wait to get a ticket for the theater and then we had to show up 10 minutes before the show.

The show was short but the 3D was quite good. It showed scenes from the last Olympics and then some highlights of this year's opening ceremonies followed by some highlights from this year's sports. I think it's awesome they have been constantly updating the video they show with updates from the days before. In particular there were scenes from the Canada vs Norway hockey game and the 3D, zoom and angle made you feel like you were right on the ice with the players. I've never watched hockey like that before.

Next I went over to West House, a sustainable laneway house worked on by SIAT, Smallworks and some other companies. It's going to be moved to another part of Vancouver after the Olympics and lived in for 6 months by someone to see how it works out.

Unfortunately Rob was not there to show me around, but I know he worked on this wall panel that lights up based on energy usage. There was no demo of it though. The house was a good size for one person to be really sustainable, but you couldn't really entertain many people in it. You'd also have to not keep much stuff, because I don't know where you'd put it, but people own too much stuff these days anyway.

Next I walked through the Vancouver Green Capital building. They had some displays of products made from recycled material and some videos from CEO's and experts who live in the area and are making green choices.

They also had these paper things hanging from the ceiling that lit up.

My next stop was the Samsung building but I took this photo earlier. When I went into it there was no line. Inside they had some cellphone games that had been blown up and put on touch screens. They also had a cross country skiing simulator and a snowboard decorating touch screen application.

You had to do all three games to get stickers of the mascots which then got you a scratch ticket. In cross country skiing I covered much more distance than the little girl I was up against, but on the scratch ticket I didn't win anything.

They also had some entertainment there where they tried to work cellphones into the theme. In this performance by Cirque des Communications they performed acrobatic stunts and balancing acts sometimes while chatting on their phones or taking photos with them.

...and there was a girl inside the moon.

...and a guy who could balance on chairs really well.

The next thing on their little stage were a couple guys who were doing improv and would work any lines into their skit that the audience texted them. They ended up saying things like "I'm pregnant", "Lets learn to belly dance" and "That girl in the red is so hot".

Samsung made my phone and its a piece of crap so the pavillion was better that I expected and there was no line up, just short line ups at the games. Across the way was the Acer pavillion which I popped into very briefly. All they had in there was a crap load of computers for people to play games on or surf the net. It was pretty busy.

The one pavilion in LiveCity Yaletown that I didn't visit was the Coca Cola one since there was a decent sized line up and I wanted to go catch the Canada vs Russia hockey game. Apparently LiveCity Yaletown is not, in fact, live. They play highlights every once and a while and at this point there was a band playing instead.

I watched the hockey game with these guys! Not sure whats up with Greg. He looks half dead. I also missed getting the youngest Brown brother, James, with my shot.

I had said I didn't want to watch it at Robson square again, but when it was about to start it wasn't raining. I put on one of the free ponchos anyway just in case, and because everyone else was wearing one! It was a good thing because it started pouring soon. Then the only problem became trying not to sit in a puddle. I find it hilarious how the ponchos say "You Gotta Be Here" as part of that campaign. You gotta be here...for the rain?...and prepared for it?

The view from the afro!

The game was awesome...but much less close than anyone thought it would be. Canada dominated right from the start. Russia was the leader coming into the Olympics, but Canada easily eliminated them. Now we face Slovakia (who also beat Russia) who beat Sweden in another unexpected game result. Tomorrow's game should be great.

Holland Heineken House

On Tuesday I was in a meeting for 8 hours going over documentation with my research group at school. Progress through our agenda was slow but I think we learned a lot. Anyways, after this finished I went out to Richmond to meet up with some people that I work with at the hospital.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera! One of my coworkers took this photo.

At the Holland Heineken House, HHH for short, there was not too long of a line. It was about 10 minutes to get in. In the line I found out that the Dutch skater who was supposed to get the gold that day had been messed up by his coach and disqualified....so that's why the place was not as busy as expected. They did however get bronze in the event with another Dutch athlete, Bob de Jong.

Inside there were some simulation games. I tried out bobsledding and then speed skating. I wasn't really that great at both but I think I could do a lot better the second time at the skating if I went back. To buy food or alcohol you need to use a Heineken card so I loaded some cash on one of those and then we all went into the arena part where the food and drinks were.

They have some food you would usually expect to find sold in the lobby of an arena such as hamburgers and fries but then they also had Dutch food so I had a little of both. The Dutch food I had was stamppot with bacon bits and a piece of sausage. It was tasty.

The Holland house is cool in that everyone working there is from the Netherlands. Sure they all speak English but the writing on the walls in the games area was all in Dutch and not translated and the announcer guy talking from the stage was speaking Dutch and not being translated. There seemed to be a lot of people in the crowd there who understood him too. One of my coworkers from the hospital is from the Netherlands so he translated a bit. I just think its cool that they brought so much of their culture with them in its true form.

So this mascot came out on stage that basically had a flame with a smilie face on it for a head. He was an olympic torch or cauldron. He/she/it really got the crowd pumped up and jumping up and down and waving their arms to some Dutch music. Then the flame went away and the bronze medalist Bob de Jong came out on stage. He was interviewed by the host guy (all in just Dutch) and then he too was jumping up and down on the stage and getting the crowd all pumped up. It was fun times.

After this a band setup and started playing Dutch music. They were Guus Meeuwis and Vagant. The music was alright...for not being able to understand the lyrics. At this point I had had a few Heineken and hadn't really drank much of anything else all day so I was getting a bit of a headache. So I started off for home around 10pm even though Armin van Buuren, the number 1 DJ in the world played there later in the night. Oh well, it was still a fun time. The Dutch know how to have a good time.

The bus I took on my way home had a Canada flag plastered across the front of it. Inside there were a number of flags around the driver and above the rear view mirror was stuck a paper with Canada's medal count. I love it when people display such pride in the country and I love how everyone gets into the spirit so easily. It's Olympic fever.

Olympics - USA vs Canada

So I worked like crazy over the weekend and Monday on documentation for a meeting today but I did take a break from that on the second half of Sunday. I went downtown and met Gordon after we both got off the same skytrain. We walked up to Robson Square to watch the hockey game but there was a big line up.

I went off to find a place to get some food and saw this street performer. He balanced himself up here well putting his body through a tennis racket. It was ridiculous. After grabbing some food I met back up with Gordon and we stood in line.

The security people tried to convince us there was no way we were going to get into the screen area to watch the game because who would leave the in the middle? In fact when we were first walking towards the line a guy was telling us that hockey wasn't even going to be played there. What a liar! Gordon tried to convince them to get the fire marshal so he could convince the marshal that they should put the game on the other screen too so more people could watch it.

While waiting in the line Gordon was interviewed twice by people with big video cameras. The first guy was from somewhere in Europe by the sound of this accent. The second interviewer was a French lady who was looking for someone who spoke French but ended up settling on Gordon. Having an afro really seems to attract reporters.

Shortly after the first intermission they let us in after some people left including Gordon's aunt and uncle. It was funny how security had been telling us the whole time we wouldn't be getting in. We started watching at the back and I could see just fine except after Canada scored because everyone leaped up in front of me!

It was awesome watching with a big crowd of excited fans.

At the second intermission we moved up to sit with a guy Gordon knew from watching the last couple Canada men's hockey games there. Here he is with some other fans trying to get everyone to make even more noise! The game was quite intense especially the last couple minutes where Canada had so many shots on net but didn't managed to put one in. It was ridiculous.

Hopefully they do better against Russia on Wednesday. Unfortunately they're now lined up to play a lot of tricky games while the US can probably breeze through to the finals. US plays Switzerland who they just beat last week in their first game.

After the game we started wandering to find a place to eat but not before Gordon had a third interview, one in which I was included this time. The lady said that people in Europe had expected riots in the streets here if we lost the game yet there weren't any. Also she asked us how we were feeling about the loss. What kind of question is that?

So after eating some Subway and having random conversations in the Subway with some teens waiting to use the washroom we hopped the skytrain back to Surrey.

In Surrey we went over to Holland park and checked out the SIAT tent with the weBlimp thing before getting in a large lineup. The lineup was to get into the tent to see 54-40 and the lady at the gate to the park had said the line was 45 minutes long. She was right and we missed the first few songs BUT it also meant the security people by the line who were saying we wouldn't get in at all were very wrong....again. I don't know what it is with security people and just wanting people to not even get in line.

This was the view of 54-40 that you could see from our spot in the line IF there was no tent wall in the way. I thought it might be as close as we got. I mean, how could security people lie twice in one day?

Inside it was a really awesome show. They really got the crowd into it with everyone shouting "Go Canada Go!" for a while, yet it wasn't as packed as the previous concerts. You had room to breathe.

The Sam Roberts band

On Friday morning and afternoon I helped my brother out by acting in a short trailer he is making for a contest. The trailer is about not using disposable cups and we filmed a stop-motion part where I get devoured by paper cups. It should be interesting to see when done.

In the evening I met back up with my brother and we went to the Sam Roberts band free concert in Surrey along with some other friends. It was a great concert and although there was lots of people there it was less busy then the OLP concert the day before.




After the concert we went back to the theaterette at school and saw the last few minutes of the Germany - Finland hockey game.

The O-Zone

So on Thursday afternoon after doing some work from home I hopped a couple buses out to Richmond to the O Zone.

It claims to be the largest free celebration area for the Olympics. They do have a lot of room in front of the stage and the Holland Heineken house is quite large but the line up is also very long for that.
I filled out a draw for 2 tickets to the closing ceremonies but found out later that night that I lost. Then I waited in this line to get into the BC Lottery Corporation tent. It moved pretty fast but then there wasn't much time spent inside it.

Inside I chose to try my hand at a simulation of the biathalon. I had to put on little bootys and slide back and forth on a board to simulate the cross country skiing and then there was a short amount of shooting at the screen targets. When I left the place they gave me a scratch ticket but I lost at that too.

After the BCLC tent I went back to the field where a country band was playing on the stage, but more people were watching the first period of the Canada-Switzerland hockey game on the screen beside it. Since the Canada Line is so convenient to get to Vancouver I decided to go catch it at the end of the first period.

I watched the third period, overtime and the shoot out of the game in Robson Square with a whole bunch of crazy fans including Gordon, Clarisse and Murray. The game was intense with Canada winning it in the shootout and the crowd breaking out into singing Oh Canada after the win.
Shortly after that I took the Canada Line right back to the O Zone for the Our Lady Peace concert. I grabbed a quick bite at the mall and then got fairly close to the stage just as the Arkells began playing. Some of there songs were pretty good. The band is from Hamilton. The crowd became quite pushy leading up to Our Lady Peace. Since the concert was free there were some kids on their parent's shoulders. There was also a lady with a stroller squished into the crowd who was trying to stop people from pushing.

While Our Lady Peace was setting up they replayed the hockey shootout on the big screens. This is just before Sidney Crosby won it for Canada.

Our Lady Peace put on an awesome show only playing a couple songs I didn't know. A lot of people were just there to have fun in the crowd. I had a couple people crowd surf over me and a bunch of balls were bouncing around on top of the crowd.

At one point the lead singer Raine climbed up the side of the stage cover.

There was no encore at the end of the show as the announcer said that the city of Richmond had a curfew on the place.

It took me a bloody long time to get out of Richmond mostly because I was waiting at a bus stop that apparently the bus had been rerouted around. Across the street from the O Zone there was a ferries wheel and the outline of Olympics rings and a maple leaf on a field behind a fence.