Today was the scarily-named 'third phase', the day Olympic event tickets went on sale to the public. The first two phases were lotteries in which we failed to win a single ticket even though we thought we'd chosen two utterly unpopular sports, to whit synchronised swimming and trampoline gymnastics. It turns out they have fans. Lots of fans.
I woke up this morning with a sinking heart. None of us are big sports fans in our household. We can't really see the point in getting off the sofa to run around a track or catch a ball. Because we live in Beijing, however, we've decided that our children need to attend at least one Olympic event so that they can tell their grandchildren about it. But that's easier said than done. In the last phase of applications for tickets, the computer system crashed. Sure enough, when I went online this morning, the system just took me around and around in circles. Want to order tickets? Sure. Which event? OK. Want to order tickets? Sure. Which event? Ok. Want to order tickets?.Sure. Which event? …
I hurled the computer out of the window and reluctantly, every part of me protesting that this was madness, I went to join the queue at the awful Bank of China, which has been draped for the past week in a red banner proclaiming that it is a venue for Olympic ticket sales starting today. The queue snaked outside the bank. There were eighty people in front of me. Three hours after the bank opened, only ten of them had been served. Some of them had been queuing since three in the morning. They'd brought stools and snacks, and eventually bank staff handed around cups of water. The mood was one of resigned, even amused, tolerance for this latest display of Olympic ineptitude.
'There's a problem with the computer system,' a member of the bank staff explained sheepishly. 'It's taking forty minutes to process each customer's request…'
Now I'm no good at maths, but even I could work out that at that rate the bank was scarcely going to make it to number 30 by the close of play, let alone number 80 in the queue…
So I walked back home, turned on two computers, set up two accounts, one in my name and one in James's, and went online on each, scouring the Olympic schedules for tickets that were still available and leaping for my Visa card every time the screen barked at me to 'Fill in this form in two minutes.'
Two hours later I had discovered the sport which is less popular than any other sport in the entire world. Even worse than synchronised swimming. We now have tickets for women's hockey coming out of our ears.