9 replies to this topic

[forever freedom]

It was just spectacular!


China really brought the olympic's opening ceremony to a whole new level. I really am not much into ceremonies (i've never before had the patience to watch an entire ceremony on TV) but this one was the most beautiful and majestic one i've ever seen.


Congrats to China. Made me want to apply even more to the mandarin lessons i'm taking, maybe someday i'll go live there as i always liked the orient and it's culture..

Edited by sam988, 08 August 2008 - 05:16 PM.

[Heliotrope]

where did you see the whole ceremony? is it uploaded to any website yet? i searched youtube and some news sites, but only got a few minutes of it. i guess only NBC covers it in the US and i'll have to walk to a diff building to get to a cable tv if you need some pointers in mandarin, i can help you. it's always good to know a few more languages. I speak mandarin, english, spanish, but hopefully learn some others to keep the mind sharp and working, we've got more than enough memory capacity for all the languages in the world right?

[Cyberbrain]

I just finished seeing it here in Greece. It was spectacular! They could have used more fireworks imo, but overall it was very beautiful!

GREECE ALWAYS FIRST!! ... GO GREECE!!

[forever freedom]

where did you see the whole ceremony? is it uploaded to any website yet? i searched youtube and some news sites, but only got a few minutes of it. i guess only NBC covers it in the US and i'll have to walk to a diff building to get to a cable tv

I don't know about the US.. but here in brazil it was shown live on open TV and later (currently) a cable channel here is showing it again.

I wish i was there to see it.

if you need some pointers in mandarin, i can help you. it's always good to know a few more languages. I speak mandarin, english, spanish, but hopefully learn some others to keep the mind sharp and working,

Nice. We speak many languages in common then . Apart from portuguese and english, i know advanced german and spanish and plan to get fluent in them in one year at most. I just need to maintain my studies. As for mandarin, first i started getting an idea of how the language worked; learning about the existence of pinyin was a huge relief for me as i thought that i would have to learn it all through chinese characters (which, by the way, once i started learning the radicals, i realized that they're not so hard to learn).

What's your level of proficiency in chinese? It is definitely the most challening language i've met so far.

we've got more than enough memory capacity for all the languages in the world right?

let's hope so

But soon pocket computers will do a near perfect instant translation of languages, and in a few decades we may "download" an entire language directly to our brains . I almost don't want this to become true because it's so unfair with those that learned them the hard way

[Johan]

I'm watching it right now on Swedish TV. It's magnificient.

[elwalvador]

KO (Coca-Cola) is riding high today thanks to the Olympics! I'm up 3% in the last 3 days. Unfortunately, I only own the stock in a "stock simulator" with play money. Kind of like play money in poker tournaments.

[mike250]

watched it yesterday. very nice

[Shannon Vyff]

it was awesome, just sad that it was used as a diversion to start war... good luck to us avoiding the situation escalating...

[forever freedom]

it was awesome, just sad that it was used as a diversion to start war... good luck to us avoiding the situation escalating...

Yes.. the next day when i read the newspaper there was, in the front page, a big picture about the opening ceremony and only more down the page, in much smaller letters, there were these news about this mini war going on in georgia. Most people didn't even notice..

A war of any kind is always dangerous, especially when there's a powerful country, like Russia, involved.

Edited by sam988, 09 August 2008 - 07:23 PM.

[Heliotrope]

where did you see the whole ceremony? is it uploaded to any website yet? i searched youtube and some news sites, but only got a few minutes of it. i guess only NBC covers it in the US and i'll have to walk to a diff building to get to a cable tv

I don't know about the US.. but here in brazil it was shown live on open TV and later (currently) a cable channel here is showing it again.

I wish i was there to see it.

if you need some pointers in mandarin, i can help you. it's always good to know a few more languages. I speak mandarin, english, spanish, but hopefully learn some others to keep the mind sharp and working,

Nice. We speak many languages in common then . Apart from portuguese and english, i know advanced german and spanish and plan to get fluent in them in one year at most. I just need to maintain my studies. As for mandarin, first i started getting an idea of how the language worked; learning about the existence of pinyin was a huge relief for me as i thought that i would have to learn it all through chinese characters (which, by the way, once i started learning the radicals, i realized that they're not so hard to learn).

What's your level of proficiency in chinese? It is definitely the most challening language i've met so far.

we've got more than enough memory capacity for all the languages in the world right?

let's hope so

But soon pocket computers will do a near perfect instant translation of languages, and in a few decades we may "download" an entire language directly to our brains . I almost don't want this to become true because it's so unfair with those that learned them the hard way

I wasn't able to get to a working tv so watched parts on websites.

Pocket computers can already do nearly perfect translations. the UN meetings use those translators or else it'd be difficult w/ so many languages, even the UN has half a dozen "official" ones. Downloading things to our brains would be nice. Learning it the hard way takes a lot of time, energy, effort, even money. It's wasteful to learn these things the hard way but right now the only way to do it. like you say, it is so unfair but it works for now, and helps to keep our brains in good sharp. In the Matrix situation, ppl would even be downloading martial arts skills like Keenu Reeves