Every man has his price

Both a price he will pay for something and a price he will sell himself for.

I was thinking here of the former. Over the past couple of months, most of us Beijingers wrestled with the conundrum of how much we would be willing to pay for last-minute Olympic tickets. Really good seats, that is. For one of the blue riband events.

At the beginning of August, I was offered a chance to buy into an unused corporate box at the Bird's Nest for one of the major finals sessions of the athletics. The opportunity proved to be illusory, alas; but it did get me thinking on just how much I would be willing to pay for something like this.

The figure that I initially latched on to was 1,500 RMB (a little over US$200). That's quite a big wedge of cash for me, since work has been very slow and frustrating for me over the last month or so, and I'm starting to feel severely impecunious.

But then......

Well, I went to a few events in other venues, so I had been able scratch that 'I was there' itch.

There were so many offers of free tickets floating around that everyone began to question whether it was not simply a waste of money to buy them.

My experiences of going to the venues (or, more particularly, of trying to get away from them after an event) tended to discourage me from wanting to attend anything further, anyway.

I guess, also, I became increasingly jaded with the whole business, particularly with the relentless parade of Chinese nationalism, their tedious domination of the medals table.

And, after a brief early flirtation with Olympic excitement, I began to recall........ that in fact I just don't give a shit. How many people do, really? I find the Olympics - well, most professional sport, really; but especially the Olympics - to be a tiresome irrelevance in the modern world. They are as much a cavalcade of corruption, commercialism, and (undetectable, or overlooked) cheating as they are a showcase of any nobler 'Olympic ideals'. And the lengths to which competitors must go in order to achieve success are, these days, just ridiculously excessive, life-limiting. I think enthusiasts of minority sports are about the only people who get really passionate about the Olympics, aren't they? I haven't taken any interest in them since I was a kid. (Until this year, I honestly had not watched a single second of Olympics coverage since 1984.)

And so...... the price I was willing to pay went into a nosedive. Half-way through the Olympics, I was thinking that that executive box I'd been told about might still be available, and that I might possibly still be willing to pay 800 or 1,000 RMB for a seat like that. But within a few more days, my interest in the whole thing had evaporated. A few weeks ago, I was offered a ticket for some athletics at the Paralympics for 50 kuai...... and I felt it was too much!!

I'm still quite curious to see inside the Bird's Nest one day. But I figure there'll soon be football matches or athletics meets held there fairly regularly - events where you can just buy tickets on the door. That will do for me.