24 August saw another spectacular ceremony

After 17 Olympian days in Beijing, China finally put up another spectacular ceremony on the night of 24 August. " China is really great ! " said by many foreigners. They love the people, culture, food , cities and would surely visit China again to tour the beautiful and fascinating cities! With this hosting of the 29th Olympic games, China has indeed expedited her new infrastructure implementation and other developments besides creating billions of jobs for her people. She has already spent as much as 70 billion USdollars to build the necessary infrastructure and to spruce up the city to be ready to host the games .Less than a quarter of the bill has been used to build the venue such as the Bird 's Nest stadium.Bloomberg reported today that London is planning to spend only 9 billion pounds to make preparations to host the games in the year 2012!

Again, we too gathered at our friend's house to view the ceremony together . We had our dinner in front of the big screen and it was really fun ! We had two types of roasted ducks, satays , Hokkien noodles of several types and a variety of fruits and chocolates. Somehow, I have not acquired the taste to drink red or white wine. There is no inkling to taste it !

It was indeed an extravagant farewell to the Olympics yesterday. A huge party had wrapped up the greatest sporting show on earth.Fireworks of all shapes and colours exploded over the stadium.I looked with awe two huge drums hoisted into the sky with two pairs of suspended drummers thumping out a hypnotic beat in mid-air. This was followed by thousands of dancers who took the centre stage to form all kinds of motives which fell in beautifully from above.Then there were the high tech entertainers who rode on special circular cycles to glide past the entire stadium.

Britain's eight-minute chance to tell the world what the London Games would offer to the world in 2012 started with the moving in of a red double- decker bus into the Bird's Nest.There was an Indian girl with a football who alighted the bus to be led by a lolipop lady to cross the road using the zebra crossing.She then went up the bus to pass the ball to David Beckham on top of the bus. A grinning Beckham then kicked the ball off the top of the bus into the hands of a delighted Games volunteer.This started the countdown to London 2012 ! The red bus then unfolded into a hedgeclipped silhouette of London and the 91,000 fans were entertained by the chart-topping singer Leona Lewis and guitarist Jimmy Page.

All of a sudden ,the tower of memory appeared and thousands of people performed all kinds of quick movement and a number of high flyers with lighted up costumes like that of " Ultraman "
dotted the skies above. The athletes then poured in from all four corners of the stadium blowing kisses and waving flags. Some countries only had the flagbearers around.

In between before the Tower of Memory came up, the Olympic flag was lowered and then passed over from the Mayor of Beijing to the OIC Chairman and then to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.Each of them waved the flag before passing it on to the next. The circular screen around the stadium was lighted up with happenings which went on during the past 17days and when the screen lighting reached the Olympic cauldron, the Olympic flame was extinguished. Everyone will be meeting again for the 30th Olympic Games in London in 2012 !

After the ceremony, we had a long session of chit chatting together before we left our friend's house well past midnight. It was a pleasant night together with good friends!