KEY POINTS:
The Herald on Sunday's award winning journalist Paul Lewis is in Beijing ready to answer your questions on anything about the Games.
You know you're in trouble in Beijing when the taxi drivers burst out laughing when you tell them where you want to go.
You want to go where? Cue guffaws and slapping of thighs and much hilarity in Mandarin. Stupid gwai loh.
On the way, our cabbie performed the unusual feat of running out on us. Usually, it's the passengers who do the runners, but our man was simply rushing out to get advice from passers-by to find the remote venue that hosted team function night for the New Zealand Olympic complement and the naming of Mahe Drysdale as the New Zealand flag-bearer at tonight's lavish opening ceremony.
Function? Did I say function? How's about malfunction? If it hadn't been for Dave Dobbyn and Drysdale, with supporting roles from Sarah Ulmer and Hamish Carter, it would have been an unmitigated disaster and a terrible intro to the Olympic campaign.
Almost everything went wrong.
Many of the hundreds of guests actually managed to find the venue - the Hot Springs Leisure Centre, a vast kind of Chinese Disneyland - but others had the taxi ride from hell, endlessly orbiting Beijing's ring roads with a driver who spoke no English and had no clue.
Then, once seated, we had the growing, gnawing feeling that someone in the NZ Olympic Committee had swapped the budget for a lunch voucher.
The Aussies were reportedly having a black tie dinner for 2000 people. We got the ubiquitous lion dancers. Then a Chinese acrobatic troupe, all tumbles and turns, including further Chinese clichés like the girls with the twirly plates on sticks. They did well enough until they made an obvious connection with the Olympics, using five rings to do tumbles through.
But the rings seemed to be made of cardboard with tin foil wrapped round them - a perfect simile for a night where New Zealand's hopes of showcasing a glorious Olympic banquet of medals seemed instead to be cold chicken chow mein in cardboard boxes. The acrobats kept hitting the rings and knocking them over.
TVNZ MC Geoff Bryan did his best but it's a sad thing when the continuity is better than the content. Chief culprit was a video link that had a link but sod-all video. The intention was to create a team feel by beaming in the yachties from Qingdao and the equestrians from Hong Kong.
What we got was lot of noise and indeterminate pictures. The yachties were plainly confused and unaware we could hear them. We in the theatre waited fearfully for the salty language that yachties have been known to use, fearing the effing and blinding might lob out like hand grenades at the feet of the dignitaries, including the Governor-General, Anand Satyanand.
It never came - just like the video link with Hong Kong. Finally, a connection was made and we heard a dark shadowy figure which might have been Mark Todd - but then again, it might not. We definitely saw Beatrice Faumuina beaming in live from Hong Kong but now she couldn't see or hear us.
And when Carter and Ulmer were introduced at the theatre by a video of their 2004 Athens triumphs, the inspirational TV commentary was replaced by something which sounded like a cat being skinned live. Ulmer almost relieved the tension by drolly joking that the feedback wasn't the noise of her back wheel scraping in her gold medal ride.
I'm sorry - the Olympic people up here are working very hard and trying their best. But this most definitely was not their best. It was embarrassing and we can only pray there weren't any sponsors present.
Thank God for Dobbyn. He stood up, just him and a guitar and belted out a rendition of Welcome Home that made the eyes blink and moisten and the throat tighten. If you didn't have the old prickly eyes with that, you're not really a Kiwi.
Dobbyn also added to the madcap flavour of the night when he revealed he'd been sitting in his room when the Chinese minders burst in, ushering him away to the stage. But they'd mistaken him for the Governor-General who was due to give a speech. "The resemblance", said Dobbyn, "is uncanny."
And then there was Drysdale, adding a real Kiwi flavour to events by being what he is - an absolute straight shooter and honestly earnest, even if he did wear crocs with his black suit.
He spoke movingly about the honour and bullishly about the prospects of the Olympic team being the best ever to leave New Zealand and how much he wanted to lead from the front and help other athletes to perform.
He's some man and he almost rescued this drowning sack of kittens of an evening. Let's hope it was just a poor dress rehearsal - the kind that goes before a fine performance.
Paul Lewis
Pictured above: Triple World rowing Champion Mahe Drysdale pictured after it was announced that he would be the flagbearer for the New Zealand Olympic team in the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing. (Photo / Kenny Rodger)
