Well yeah, it just started, and the opening ceremony is going on right now (It's so freaking cool it's not even funny).

Any thoughts or opinions on it?

It's awesome.

Live stream: http://os2008.nos.nl/index/live/ (can anyone confirm this is accessible outside NL?)

I am amazed with the Opening ceremony till now!

It's been awesome, almost impossible for london 2012 to compete with this unless something really special happens.
This is awesome, i liked all the drums and lights at the start and its been uphil since then.

Its kicked M*A*S*H off of Channel 7 over here, i never watch the olympics, never been something to interest me personally, although i will probably watch 2012.

Now that the actually opening ceremony is over, I am STILL watching Olympic-related stuff...almost eight hours straight. Almost every channel in Hong Kong is airing non-stop Olympics stuff...even the evening and the midnight news are redecorated with Olympics and are ALL about Olympics...

The footsteps and the drums were cool...funny how the last torchbearer went faster than the scroll he was on and at the end, lagged so far behind he was in the pictures...

(Don't forget about Hong Kong, we're hosting the boring equestrian events. )

I watched all of E3 Live and ComicCon 08 Live, i'm all live'd out, and plus I don't really care about the Olympics

I must've caught the boring parts... I saw a few countries doing the walk, waving their flags, and the torch barer on the suspension wires being scuffled past the scroll, but I got bored and decided to have a little fun on the stock market... I'm kinda regretting it now after hearing about the firework display and stuff

You were unlucky. You missed the best part. I agree the countries walk was a bit boring and think there were 204 countries. But hey, it is sure there will be DVDs and all that stuff about Olympic Games so you will see the opening ceremony if you really want to.

Pfft... Youtube will help me with the highlights, the rest I'm sure I'll live with not seeing.

Which country does everyone think is going to "win" the olympics (most medals)? China, I have to say, look quite strong this year...

China will win the most medals.

The opening was epic, apart from the teams walking in, but how do you make that interesting anyway.

The sport itself doesn't interest me too much, might watch a few games when i zap by tho.

I must say, for someone who ususally finds the openign ceremonies boring it was quite good.

16 days of non-stop sport it's gonna be a good few weeks. Except for my uni work.

Did you guys see all the smog around the stadium?
it was more evident during the fireworks and the outside lighting of Beijing [Sorry if I spelt it wrong].

That can't be good for people with asthma.

I liked the drums as well. And the type writer thing with the people inside.

The Australian commentator goes its a new mechanism used to make the individual keys go up and down and 5 mins later all the people jumped out of the keys.

First ever Olympics to be broadcasted in HD The opening ceremony was awesome and I had seen this documentary on the Discovery channel a few days ago which showcased all the buildings that the Chinese made just for the games.. the Birds Nest and Water Cube are amazing
This could just be the most awesome Olympics wrt everything it has to offer..

quote:

---

Originally posted by High Speed Chaser
Did you guys see all the smog around the stadium? it was more evident during the fireworks

---

notice how their opening ceremony completely overshadowed  the tibet protests and human rights arguments?

it was amazing for a reason...

quote:

---

Originally posted by MenthiX

quote:

---

Originally posted by High Speed Chaser
Did you guys see all the smog around the stadium? it was more evident during the fireworks

---

Bejing has serious smog problems, but most of what you saw was probably the fireworks smoke.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by High Speed Chaser
I disagree. The smoke wasn't from the fire works as the amount of smoke illuminated was too much to be caused by Fireworks. Every New Years I see fireworks on the TV and you can just make out the smoke if you look. During the ceremony it was way too obvious.

---

they had 600 people just to look after the fireworks display.

quote:

---

Originally posted by High Speed Chaser
That can't be good for people with asthma

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by icd*
notice how their opening ceremony completely overshadowed  the tibet protests and human rights arguments?

it was amazing for a reason...

---

At last team GB won their first gold in the Female Road Race

quote:

---

Originally posted by ipab

quote:

---

Originally posted by High Speed Chaser
That can't be good for people with asthma

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by icd*
notice how their opening ceremony completely overshadowed  the tibet protests and human rights arguments?

it was amazing for a reason...

---

I have to bitch about this... the Olympics are not about politics... the whole point of the Olympics is to foster healthy competition. It's original intent was nothing to do with politics, so don't bring it into it.

---

Heyy
the opening ceromney was like AMAZING ! Shame half the fire works were computer animated or sommet like that ! and the lil girl who sang one of the first songs was miming and an older girl was singing it but they said she wasnt prety enough to be on TV ! i meen how sole destroying must that have been ??

Can't belive how far up the medel table we are !! lets hope we can get some more medels and go even further up !

Yeah, we ruled in the cycling. One gold medal after the other. amazing.

Does anyone know if Phelps is done with these games yet? I believe he won his 8th a few days ago.

He won his 8th gold medal and he is done with these games. He broke the previous record which was 7 gold medals.

A certain frenchman said in his 13+ years of living in england he'd never seen a swimming pool. Paha.

i read in the paper on thursday, that if he was a country, he would be 4th in the medals table. obviously, not true now but hey. also, he takes in 12,000 calories a day. a day! the RDA is only 3000 i think.
btw, fuck you austrafailia, we pwn you

yep. He's also said that for the next Olympics he's going to take part in other events that he didn't do this year. So..can we assume then that the swimmers shouldn't bother turning up?

Been nice to see Team GB do as well as they have (but most of all for me the Scots! ) but it's been interesting to find out how some of them get to the Olympics. Take the british lass that was in the Taewondo (?) semi-finale today. She was only there because she got funding from Jackie Chan (something about he saw her fight in Australia and thought she had potential for a medal in the Olympics). I don't know if many people consider what it takes to get to the Olympics and represent your country if you know what I mean.

Oh well, closing ceremony tomorrow and I still have the Opening to watch lol