One Day Left!

A little more than 24 hours until the big day.  In case you didn't already know,the number 8 is considered extremely lucky in China.  So 8/8/2008 at 8:08:08pm is the perfect day and time in which to hold the opening ceremonies.  I happen to be one of the lucky ones working during that time as well.  yay!  

A little background (from Wikipedia):

Eight

• The word for "eight" (八，捌) in Chinese (Pinyin: bā) sounds similar to the word which means "prosper" or "wealth" (发 - short for "发财", Pinyin: fā). In regional dialects the words for "eight" and "fortune" are also similar, eg Cantonese "baat" and "faat".
  
• There is also a resemblance between two digits, "88", and the shuang xi ('double joy'), a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (xi, 'joy', 'happiness').
  
• Telephone number 8888-8888 was sold for USD$270,723 in Chengdu, China.
  
• The Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m.
  
• A man in Hangzhou offered to sell his license plate reading A88888 for 1.12 million yuan.
  
• Dragon Fish Industry in Singapore, a breeder of rare Asian Arowanas (which are "lucky fish" themselves, and, being a rare species, are required to be microchipped), makes sure to use numbers with plenty of eights in their microchip tag numbers, and appears to reserve particularly numbers especially rich in eights and sixes (e.g. 702088880006688) for particularly valuable specimens.
  

and so forth and so on...

So, before all the excitement and mayhem, I decided to take one last peaceful walk out on the Olympic Green two nights ago.  I was working midnight to 7am so it was the perfect time for me to go out, enjoy the calm and relatively cool atmosphere, and snap a bunch of pictures.

Here are a bunch of shots from that night.  I must say to was quite a surreal experience and I'm really glad I was able to get out of the office for a little while to explore the empty and alien world of the nighttime Beijing Oylmpic Green.

Enjoy: 

first, some shots of the Water Cube in all it's LED encrusted glory.  

a video:

now, a couple pictures I altered for maximum desktop background usage.  (for those non-savvy folks, left-click on the image to open the high resolution version, then right click on the image once it loads and select "set as desktop background")

the water cube:

the national stadium:

these "mini nests" line all the pathways to the stadium.  ain't they cute?!?

most of the Olympic Green is covered with these color-changing lighted footpaths.  very alien, indeed!

not a UFO coming to abduct me, just a cluster of lights.

That's all for now.  As promised, I will provide plenty of pictures of the IBC in a few days.  I was just waiting until all the feeds are up so you're not just looking at a bunch of blank screens.  how considerate am I?

until then...