London 2012 All the buzz and excitement!

The world's spotlight is on London at this very moment. All the buzz and excitement has been building up and on Friday, I was all bursting with Olympic excitement! Work wise, my new manager has been asking everyone if we are all set up to work from home if needed. They expect transport woes especially those who live far away. One of my team mates has to pass by Stratford every day to get to work and back home. As for me, no excuses. If the DLR trains stop working, I can still walk in to work! A 25min walk which is a pretty ok distance to walk here. From my office on the 29th floor, we can see the Olympic stadium, so we were saying IF we work late, we can get to see fireworks. With work and home being in East London, that is where all the Olympic action is happening!

Everywhere, we started to see all neon pink signs popping up, all Olympics related. Olympic lanes are also painted, only athletes and officials can use that lane. The rest of us common folk - good luck to us - we have to squeeze on the other lane. No that it matters to me, I can walk to work.

Then everyday we receive travel updates all related to the Olympics. It's all over the TV. Huge boats are moored on the docks near office, one of them named the Octopus who is owned by Paul Allan, a co founder of Microsoft. Mr Gates himself is also in town for the games. Another huge German cruise liner is anchored right behind our office bringing tourists here for the games. You get the idea - it's everywhere!

So back to last Friday. The opening ceremony. My manager was asking everyone to finish work and leave early. She left after lunch with the intention to work from home for the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully it was an ok day so I left at 5.30pm and I decided to walk around the boats and have a little look.

View from my office towards the stadium

The German Cruiseliner anchored behind my office

The Octopus further down

I went home, rested for a bit and then went to meet K for dinner. We were still clueless where to go afterwards. We had dinner at a restaurant which had a TV showing the Opening Ceremony live. We later adjourned to a pub to continue watching, and decided to stick to our original plan. To sneak to Stratford, where the Olympic stadium is, to watch the fireworks. Well, not really sneak per se, but the Transport for London has been urging people to avoid Stratford after 3pm unless you had a ticket to the Opening Ceremony.

I thought that the brains behind the opening ceremony, Danny Boyle, did a fantastic job. I was captivated until it ended. The eclectic mix of eras and characters was brilliant. I loved the segmant with Mr Bean playing Chariots of Fire - haha that was funny. JK Rowling reading Peter Pan to the children before a whole group of Mary Poppins appeared. And of course, the Queen making her little acting debut with James Bond. What a surprise!

We left the pub when the countries' athletes came out (think it was at D.. Denmark). We took the Central line to Stratford at about 11.30pm and sneaked to the perfect location to watch the fireworks. After a long wait - about an hour later - and gatecrashing into someone's party (because their spot was great we decided to blend into the atmosphere), we saw the AMAZING fireworks!! Wheee... everyone around us were screaming like mad, the atmosphere was unbelievable. At that moment, I was feeling proud to be a Londoner, proud of London; I can't imagine the pride of the British folks. East London used to be wasteland, and for me to see the building of this stadium from start 4 years ago to its completion now.. Wow. The only times I went to Stratford were to wait for the airport shuttle to Stansted airport with Cynthia. We used to look at the stadium and said something like "oh look! They are building the Olympic stadium..." Fast forward to today, Stratford with its new mega size Westfield Shopping Centre, together with this stadium and aquatics area, it is such a different story.

After the fireworks ended and Paul McCartney took on stage for Hey Jude which we found out later on, we rushed back to Stratford station and took the first train out headed for Lewisham which worked perfectly. I was worried the whole 60-odd thousand spectators would be rushing out after us but hey we even got seats on the DLR train, not bad! We reached home at 2am, with satisfied smiles on our faces, thanks to the fireworks and this once in a lifetime experience of such close proximity to the Olympics. I went to bed feeling somewhat honoured to be in London this very moment.