God Bless Luke Perry

The Olympic Ceremony is going to kick off soon. I can hardly believe it's been four years since the last one.

It feels like only yesterday I was lying on the couch in my Battersea flat in a despondent daze watching a race of some sort. I remember this, because a local drug dealer tried to hide in the phone box outside my flat (note: not the best hiding place) and it took four police men to remove him from it. I watched all of this unfold instead of the race, which was the 200m (or some shit) so I don't know who won it.

The opening Ceremony will kick off at 8:08pm China time, and as 8 is a lucky number in those parts, I think it is actually starting at 8:08:08 (down to the second). The ceremony will run for 88 minutes, and then an 88 year old man will unveil a screen, and everybody will be forced at gunpoint to watch the movie 8 seconds in it's entirety, 8 times.

I heard there's going to be a shitload of fireworks and dragons in the ceremony, and at one point Jet Li is going to burst out of a giant pork bun and cause an entire family of Pandas to explode just by glaring at them.

It's going to be an all singing all dancing affair, but because of the time difference the ceremony will be starting at 1:08pm here - so there's a good chance I will miss it, and be embroiled in a slog of deleting emails and watching Hentai porn (it being a word day and all).

I wonder what the Australian uniform will look like this year? Will they go for the deranged Park Ranger look, or the formal woollen attire that makes them look like they should be handing out tea and biscuits on the Qantas Friday afternoon flight to Bali. Fuck it, let's Google it:

Looks like they went for the latter option. Australia usually does quite well in the Olympics, taking into account our quite small population (finished in the top four last two meets, mofos), and I reckon we should enter the ceremony like this:

That would be awesome.

Australia has always been such a juggernaut on the sporting scene, which makes me wonder why I, personally, have always been so shit. I kicked three goals in a game for the Moonta mini league about two decades ago, and I think I came third in the long jump at a school Sports day around about the same time - But I've done absolutely nothing of any value since. I'm pretty good at Guitar Hero though, so it evens out in the end.

I can't believe this is my second Olympics in London, have I really been living here more than four years? How am I still alive?

One thing I like about watching it here, is that a different set of events take centre stage to back home. A country's televised coverage will of course concentrate on the sports that their team excels at - and the limeys prefer a different set of events to us Aussies (if I was back home, I could expect a day's viewing to consist of six hours of equestrian events, followed by ten hours of long distance swimming. Yeah, rock on). Though I have to admit that like any sporting event, it feels a little empty without Roy and HG's input.

And no sporting event is complete without a little gambling, so I've texted my limey mate Buzz to see if he wanted to take a 10 quid wager - Australia to beat the UK's medal count by 20 (or more).

Let's see if he accepts.