List of the Month - that Opening Ceremony, huh?!

To lighten the mood a little after my last rather morbid post, I give you a List of the Month on.......

10 questions that ran through my mind during the Olympic Opening Ceremony

1) How many ties does Hu Jintao have, and are they all red?

That must have been a pretty tough wardrobe choice for him to make, huh?

2) Is there rationing of Grecian 2000 in Zhongnanhai?

Hu Jintao's hair just gets blacker and blacker with each passing year. You'd never guess he was in his mid-6os, would you? None of the other leaders has quite such brilliantly, glossily, blackly black hair as Hu. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is starting to show a few streaks of grey. Is there some kind of status thing around the hair dye, do you think?

3) Did anyone else think the fly-by shot of the fireworks down the central axis of Beijing looked like CGI?

It was a nice shot and all. Almost too nice. I'm sceptical as to how they co-ordinated the speed of the plane so precisely with the setting off of the rockets. And the pictures did seem uncannily crisp. Beijing was enveloped in a soupy haze that night, and I can't figure out why the lights and so on didn't look more fuzzy.

4) Was that Lang Lang, and has he now given up on the 'serious' career?

I think it was him, but he was pretty much unrecognisable under the heavy layers of make-up and eye-liner. And wow, that cockatoo hairstyle! This was the most cringeworthy segment of the whole show, but mercifully brief. I can't help but wonder if this performance signals that Lang has now given up on his attempt to be taken seriously as a classical pianist and is repositioning himself as China's Liberace. All he was missing on Friday night was the candelabra.

5) Erm, is it really safe to be flying that many people on wires, that high, in the dark?

I think that's probably a NO - but there weren't any accidents, at least as far as we could see. Some pretty weird, baffling imagery there at times: Olympic fairies???

6) Who greenlighted the goosestepping??

I know, I know, it's a common style of ceremonial marching in many countries around the world. But it is particularly associated with the Nazis. And there have been so many disparaging comparisons made between Beijing '08 and Munich '36 that you'd think the organisers would now be doing their best to avoid any further reminders of the Hitler Olympics. Heck, having your national flag brought in by soldiers is sinister enough as it is. Why couldn't it have been carried by laughing schoolchildren? Or hot women in qipaos? Or Olympic fairies??

7) Da Shan - what the fuck?!

Why on earth was Da Shan marching with the Canadian team? God knows, the parade takes long enough anyway, without having all sorts of extraneous hangers-on joining in. It's supposed to be just the athletes. OK, and maybe the coaches and physios. Does it include judges and national Olympic committee members too? I don't think it ought to - but at least they still have some clear connection to the team. What is Da Shan's role with Team Canada? Mascot??

It undermines the credibility of the whole parade when you allow 'celebrities' to take part. You immediately start to question whether those stunningly beautiful women carrying some of the flags weren't just hired in from a model agency for the evening.

Whose idea was this? BOCOG's or the Canadian Olympic committee's, or the pair of them in concert? Shame on whoever it was! A horrible, horrible misjudgement. I think even a lot of Chinese are becoming bored by Da Shan's ubiquity these days, irritated by his smugness. For us expats, he is one of the most reviled men on the planet: one glimpse of his inane rictus-grin gets our bile ducts working overtime.

8) Did anyone else fantasise that Jacques Rogge might stray off message for a moment, and have one or two little "Tourette's" outbursts?

"Shining moment in your nation's history.... [cough, twitch] Free Tibet!....... inspires the admiration of the world..... [blink, head jerk] Falun Gong!....... enjoy a happy and successful Games...... [barely restrains Nazi-salute, Dr Strangelove-style] but Taiwan is not a part of China!"

Ah, if only. I wonder if the thought ever crossed his mind??

9) Do you suppose that flying torch-bearer (and/or his crane operator) had to "make self-criticism" afterwards for briefly getting ahead of the 'unrolling scroll' projection?

I fear it may be so. That is still the way they do things in China.

10) Was that Flame-lighting gimmick SAFE??

That huge fuse thingummy was a mighty big chunk of pyro, and it did seem to flash back quite a way. I noticed they dropped the torch-bearer away from it mighty quickly, but I reckon he still got his eyebrows singed. I wouldn't have gone within 20ft of the thing!

And a last - fun - question for you all: which national team got the biggest cheer where you were watching?

Well, apart from China, of course. Where I was watching (a favourite local bar called Room 101), it was Australia, by some margin. And there weren't that many Australians in our crowd. Closest runner-up was Jamaica. Everybody seems to love Jamaica. It's that Bob Marley thing, I suppose.