London meets Bollywood

My day began before 6AM this morning (round of applause, please) and, bleary eyed and not at all bushy tailed I made it to Wembley on (wait for it)... the 5-stops-train. Finally. Boom, pre-8AM-Jenny.

I had planned to sleep on the way there, but the man next to me had seemingly decided to recreate his own nightclub on the train to Waterloo and, whilst at the time I was pretty narked at Britney for keeping on 'dancing til the world ends', knowing my sleeping ability, I probably would have slept through all of the train changes, so it's probably a good job that he was such a loud Ms. Spears fan.

I arrived at Wembley to discover that pre-8AM-Jenny wasn't as on form as I had thought and, although I had remembered to charge my camera battery, I'd forgotten the memory card. Again. Hello, dinner-time dash to a Wembley camera shop after Argos and their ''only available for home delivery'' memory cards failed me.


Today I mopped for:

Men's doubles semi-final: Y. Cai & HF. Fu (China) vs. KK. Koo & BH. Tan (Malaysia)


Today we went for, not only the synchronised mop (insert ooh-ing and ahh-ing here), but also the mop after the match had ended, so we had to go off court and then go back on again, which was very exciting and involved walking very quickly backed by some super-cheesy music.

After our match, we went up to the stands to watch the remaining games of the session. After a brief (particularly deep) dilemma this morning consisting of Canadians speak English, I speak English, Russians speak Russian, I speak (albeit very bad) Russian, I decided that I was on Team Russia (сборной России- yey for language geekiness and dual language keyboards!), so I was very happy when they won their match. Potentially not as happy as I was when Denmark won theirs, though. Although supporting Denmark in a stand full of Koreans was minorly awkward...

We then went back to the stands in the afternoon (making it a 2-0 victory to the FOP Team on entering the stands today) to watch China play a lot of very impressive badminton and to hear their national anthem on repeat. In the women's singles final red-shirted-yellow-shoed-Chinese-girl beat yellow-shirted-red-shoed-Chinese-girl, confirming my point that it is really all about the yellow shoes. After the match, red-shirted-yellow-shoed-Chinese-girl put her medal around the neck of her coach, which was super-cute, and her coach was Zhang 'physio-replacement-leg-strapper-upper-for-retired-player-from-bronze-medal-player-match' Ning, which was a super-exciting blast from the past (even if her rather too big Team China top did make her look slghtly more basketball than badminton).

For the women's doubles final, the Japanese national team came and sat infront of us. Courtesy of their lesson, I now have two words in my Japanese vocabulary (oh, and I can say 'hello gorgeous' in Korean, just for the record). The Japanese lost, but it was a really close match and their team were fantastic to watch: they would start off sat up normally, lean forward as the rally went on, and then either jump back in their chair (if they lost the rally) or jump up out of their seats (if they won the rally). They were happy to take pictures with us, too, and we were out of uniform, so the camera came out... (until I encountered camera problem #2 and it ran out of battery).

After the matches we went out for tea at an Indian restaurant with some of the line judges and managed to gatecrash what seemed to be both a wedding and a 21st birthday party. This called for some interesting dancing and, for us anyway, Jess Ennis, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah all won to a Bollywood/ Nicki Minaj/ Katy Perry mash-up of ''the best hits, playing all night''.

I made it safely back home (after a somewhat bizarre train journey during which a man in leather pants with ribbons asked the question ''do I have too much glitter on my face?'') and I am now just about to go to sleep ready for another very early morning tomorrow. Woop *sarcasm* woop.

However, seeing as it was the women's doubles final today, I will leave you with these:

Guess what I found?!


Olympic spot of the day: Zhang 'beat Gail and Natan in Athens' Bo in the Ibis car park

Free ice creams and the first Victory Ceremony

The air-con-and-free-ice-cream combo of South West Trains pretty much made my morning today. So much so that it even made up for the fact that I got on the 14-stop-tube again (note to self: use. the. Met. line!)

Anyway, 14 stops later, I made it to Wembley Arena. I was a tad later than expected but was sped along quite drastically by the Miley Cyrus song that iPod shuffle decide to select just as I went down the steps to the 'last mile'. Despite the fact that this is horrifically cheesy and I should probably be mortified at the fact that it is on my iPod in the first place (and potentially even more mortified that I didn't skip past it...!), in true Disney-montage-style, the mopper made it to the ball/ Arena on time. Even though the mopper was today on her first ever day off and so was, therefore, not actually mopping.

For some reason, the seating arrangements for us had changed today and we were designated to the 'Olympic Family' stand. This didn't seem to be the easiest place to gain access to...

In the end we made it in (this makes it sound as if we gatecrashed, but we were actually totally law-abiding, accreditation-showing Games Makers) and we ended up on the front row, so I was pretty set for the day (other than the minor issue of neither having got food nor gone to the toilet).


Today I saw:

Men's singles semi #1: Lee Chong Wei (Malaysia) vs. Chen Long (China)
Men's singles semi #2: Lin Dan (China) vs. Lee Hyun Il (Korea)
Mixed doubles final: NL. Zhang & YL Zhao (China) vs. C. Xu & J. Ma (China) (surprisingly, China won this match)
Mixed doubles Victory Ceremony: NL. Zhang & YL Zhao (China- gold), C. Xu & J. Ma (China- silver), J. Fischer & C. Pedersen (Denmark- bronze) (yes, Europe!)

It was fantastic to actually be there and be watching an Olympic final (big tick next to that on the good ol' Bucket List), although it did make me feel like a right old codger, because it meant that it had been 8 years since 'back in the day' when it was Gail and Nathan playing that match in Athens. (In totally unrelated news, this also means that it is also 8 years since I last owned a pet hamster).

After the Victory Ceremony I made full use of the 'Field of Play' access part of my accreditation, and jumped over chairs and ran down corridors (Jess Ennis, watch out) to go to get some pictures of the players whilst they were being interviewed. Contrary to attempts over the past couple of days, this picture-taking was actually all done with a sim card in my camera...


My parents had tickets for today's matches (meaning that they will never witness my mopping ability live on the international stage, only on TV or in the kitchen). (Hi mum and dad if you're reading! It was great to see you and I hope that you had a great Games *big Games Maker smile*, but don't think that you're getting completely off ever cleaning the kitchen floor...)


Anyway I have a 6AM wake-up call tomorrow morning, so I am going to go to sleep (which is something that I do very well) so that I can get up in the morning (which isn't one of my strong points).


Olympic spot of the day: Xie Xingfang in the stand opposite Lin Dan during his match (if my long-distance-athlete-spotting-skills and my camera's optical zoom and are anything to go by).

Badminton-gate continues. And concludes.

To say that badminton hit the news after last night would probably be an understatement. It seemed to be everywhere: the Internet, the newspapers, the radio, the TV...

Of all of what I heard/ read/ saw, my favourite quote was this:

''A quirk of the draw system meant that winning their group would mean meeting the toughest of opponents in the quarter-finals. Winning would mean losing. So they played like depressed blancmanges''.
- The Independent

Naturally, when I found out that all of the drama was still going down this morning, being the curious Games Maker that I am, I decided to be early to work.

The first news in was that all eight players had been disqualified. All players involved attended a hearing and statements etc. were taken, as well as another ladies doubles match (Japan vs. Chinese Taipei, I think) being put under investigation (this particular match got a not guilty verdict in the end). Indonesia and Korea originally appealed against their respective disqualifications, but then Indonesia withdrew the appeal. Interestingly, China did not appeal and their coach admitted that the players had been told to lose. I heard on the news that one of them is now planning to retire, and it's such a shame for her career to end this way, I suppose.

I went up to the stands to watch Lee Chong Wei's singles before my shift started and, when I walked past the draw again on the way to my shift, I saw that their scores had all been taken off and their ranks within their groups simply said 'DQF'. (The photo will have to follow because I was a slight fail today and left my camera memory card in my laptop, but I promise that other than the memory card exception I am 100% the organised Games Maker).

When I started work it was confirmed that they had all been disqualified, and that, in order to avoid skipping the quarter final stages, the pairs who had finished 3rd and 4th from the groups that the Chinese/ Indonesians/ Koreans had finished 1st and 2nd in, were no longer eliminated from the competition and would play in the quarter finals instead.

I was so glad that the Australians, Canadians, South Africans and Russians got a second chance, and that my (admittedly pretty damning) judgement yesterday of ''the chances of them being thrown out of the competition are very small'' was proven wrong!

Today I mopped for:

V. Sorokina & N. Vislova (Russia) vs. M. Edward & A. Viljoen (South Africa)

K. R. Juhl & C. Pedersen (Denmark) vs. M. Fujii & R. Kakiiwa (Japan)

Q. Tian & YL. Zhao (China) vs. WH. Cheng & TC. Chien (Chinese Taipei)

Although my sweat mopping is obviously without bias, I did really want the Danes to win their doubles, not only because they played in my (mighty) hometown a couple of years ago, but also because they are the only players yet to thank me for mopping up all of their sweat (I know that this is not in any way required of them, but it's a perk if they do). They maintained this record today (along with the minor line-judge traumatisation record), and I got a thank you and a racket-bum-tap from Kamilla 'can you mop here please, and there's some here too, and here, and in the middle please, thank you very much' Rytter Juhl.

Speaking of the quirky badminton racket-bum-tap, I've noticed that it appears to now be making less of an appearance, and seems to be being replaced by the mainstream high-5. My inner badminton-hipster isn't too sure about this.

'Rule 40' (limiting displayed sponsors on kit) has also been getting a fair amount of coverage on the news (though I think the match-fixing debacle did just about win that headline battle)and a lot of the players have had to have various logos 'taped up'. Apparently the Chinese ladies doubles pair went on to court with tape on their knee bandages yesterday and then ripped it off on court, displaying the sponsor. Today, they came on with said knee bandages (complete with tape), but one of them had some form of back support on around her stomach and, during the intervals, she seemed to be lifting her top to reveal this (bright blue) contraption and (presumably) the sponsor on it! It's all going on at the badminton at the moment!

Unfortunately, the night's matches did end on a sad note today, as the Japanese ladies singles player injured her knee and was forced to retire from the match. I was on the court next to it, and I became aware of it when the crowd booed her for not getting up (I guess that they're still slightly cynical after last night's events). She was put in the recovery position, and eventually sat up and was treated but, upon trying to play, she was in tears and could barely walk. She tried to play a couple of points and then asked for her knee to be strapped up, but that cannot be done until 11 or 21 (they had passed 11 and were quite a way off 21). She tried to carry on, but she couldn't put any weight on her leg, and she was sobbing so loudly (which, sadly, the cameras loved). Our match finished and, we were slow enough walking off court to see her coach get up, hug her, and bring her off the court. Her opposition (Tine 'wears extremely, extremely nice dresses even if they don't comply completely with clothing regulations' Baun) also came over and hugged her, and the crowd redeemed themselves by giving them a standing ovation. I then was on my way off court, when we saw one of the Australians in floods of tears after losing her match. I guess that it's inevitable really that stuff like that does happen, but hopefully we'll have happy tears in the future!

On a slightly more awkward-Jenny-story note, when I left the Arena today there were loads of fans waiting at the workforce entrance for some of the players. To say that me walking out was an anti-climax would probably be an understatement!

And, in other news, as of yesterday, my blog has been read on every single continent in the world! Thank you, mopping blog readers!

A very warm Arena and lots of mopping action

We watched the cycling (yes, Team GB!)  again this morning and our (German) flag made its TV debut on the BBC this afternoon. This called for many excited Skype calls to Germany.


The distance between the female cyclists shocked me, as I had time to watch the leaders and the Peleton, go and get ready, and then there were still bikes going past when I left the flat for the station.
I arrived at Wembley to be given a Games Maker journal (see left along with a pin that Team GB gave me because they thought that I was doing a good job) (have no fear, though, the blog will still take priority!). Apparently, we now get incentives on certain days of our shifts, and we have a card to attach to the back of our ID to say when we've got them. Freebies!

Today two extra moppers had been recruited to our team because yesterday we'd had to run from match to match and didn't have a break in 5 hours, despite the heat. We did get more little breaks, but, somehow, however, I managed to get myself on to every single match that went to three ends, so I was on court for over an hour each time!

Because of the heat in the Arena (if you're going, I reiterate: it is boiling even if it's bad weather outside so don't wrap up at all unless you're on an extremely drastic mission to sweat off all of your body weight), there was obviously a lot of sweat action going on (we're talking splatter patterns of sweat which appear with each overhead shot) (glamorous, I know), so this equalled lots of mopping action, and I lost count of the number of times that we had to go on, especially in the men's matches.

I mopped for:

P. Abian (Spain) vs. P. Koukal (Czech Republic) (despite Raj's match going on simultaneously, this was a very good close fought match, and when Koukal lost he was a total sweetie and kissed the London 2012 logo on the floor)
K. R. Juhl & C Pedersen (Denmark) vs. LY. Poon & Ys. Tse (Hong Kong) (I here got my first mopping thank you, courtesy of Kamilla, who is one of my favourite players on the circuit at the moment, and who was absolutely lovely to me, despite leaving the line judge next to me minorly traumatised)
M. Boe & C. Mogensen (Denmark) vs. V. Ivanov & I. Sozonov (Russia) (this was far closer than everyone expected, and it was kind of weirdly reassuring to see how much the player's hands were shaking when they served!)

While I was mopping for my last match, Raj's match was on the court in front of me. And. it .was. so. loud! My friend sent me something the other day about someone trying to sue Justin Bieber for his concert wrecking their hearing, and I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that I couldn't hear a single word that my umpire said, and I actually came away from it with earache. But the atmosphere was fantastic and it was so good to have a Team GB win after Chris and Immy's nightmare-ish past two days.

I'm working again today, but I'm going to be at a different house for the next three nights, so I'm not sure whether I'll have Internet to get a blog up. I'll write it anyway and then batch post it when I get back to Internet if I don't have it.

Olympic spot of the day: my favourite player, ever, ever, ever, Gail Emms, in the commentary box, air-punching and dancing throughout Raj's third end (as far as I'm concerned, I could spot Usain Bolt in London Waterloo and it would not top this).