NBC's today show and the great wall

It's second to the last day of the Olympics already. There is so much going on and events slip by every second. Not enough seconds in a day to blog especially with the lack of wireless connection.
Randomly interesting news from the Beijing Olympics front:
1: MSNBC with its 800 million procurement of the exclusive US right to broadcast from the Olympics, staged its Friday morning's today show right in front of the Olympic tower - in between the birds' nest and the water cube. I was standing there outside the blockade for an hour waiting for this couple minutes of segment on the Chinese cuisine shot right in front of me. All the anchors did was taste the lobster meat and interviewed the famous chef. The most hilarious part was an American schoolteaher next to me grabbed his McDonald burger from his bag and started enjoying it right when the Chinese cuisine segment was shot.

They showed off the Chinese beach volleyball cheerleaders....in the middle they had to take off their jackets, and they were changing right in front of my view since they were being filmed on the other end of the arena...so I have perfect pictures of these girls "derobing" to just swim suits......This type of cheerleader is a new phenomenon in China - this group was recently trained this group by American cheerleaders.

On a beautiful morning, I took some US Olympic committee staff to the great wall at Mutianyu. The place is supposedly much less crowded than the disneyland like picturesque Badaling. What we saw was beautiful wall, magnificient watch towers, rows of towers, and a sea of visitors involved in the Olympics. There were more UK athletes than Chinese tourists.

The first and former governor of Hong Kong SAR and his family was on the wall. He even personally greeted me for some odd reason...maybe because he thought I looked like I was from Hong Kong.
Coming down from the wall to the valley we had the option of the chairlift or the tobagan. The 5 minute tobagan was well worth the 40 min wait.