A visiting friend commented on how disappointing Vancouver was not least having nothing much celebrating the olympics apart from that stupid countdown clock. Well I suppose we should feel thankful that it's one that counts down instead of farting.

We're days away from an important event which has consumed loads of public money and the city is doing nothing to celebrate it. What's with these people? Are they just so geeked up in coffee shops, skyping each other, to care that in a few days this place is going to be on global television, who will no doubt notice the lack of celebration and hype. We need this if the cost of the games is going to be justified from a business sense and not just pull the city into recession further.

I've always said about the folk in Vancouver that vancouverites couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery. Well we'll see what they do with a major international event. But I have my skepticism.

My wife is very organised, thank you very much, and i take offence at your comment

That said, at least you're telling us all that you're rubbish too, being in Vancouver.

I take it you haven't been in Vancouver long enough to remember Expo 86 then? I visited vancouver that summer, the whole organization seemed to work pretty smoothly and most Vancouverites I spoke to thought it was a very well run event. The city is still reaping the infrastructure benefits of the Expo 24 years later.

You really have no idea what you're talking about, have you?

Are you a bit of a wind up merchant??

Perhaps you should wait until it starts? Just a thought.

He spends all his time looking for and writing negative things about Canada. He's a bit of a pathetic case. We should all feel for him and pray he is soon released from his living hell.

You mean the two weeks of the games itself isnt enough for you? Havent they spent enough as it is? Wont the event itself be a celebration? Everyone knows that Vancouver is hosting the games surely, so why not let the games speak for themselves when they actually happen eh!


I have no doubt that the games themselves will be extremely well run and a great success. At $6bn they had bloody well better be, because as parties go, that one is going to carry quite the hangover for the people of BC. My bigger problem is that I just dont really care about the olympics anymore, its just another big business, corporate sponsored gravy train, and I think that Baron de Coubertin is probably spinning in his grave at what his Olympic amateur ideals have warped into.

OK, this thread is pants but, just because someone wishes to say negative things about Canada, it doesn't mean they are pathetic. Not everyone thinks that Canada smells completely rosey, there are other viewpoints you know

Calgary is crap and everybody who lives there are dirty, inbred, cowboy hat wearing horse-worriers. And that's just the women

What should we be doing? How will celebrating before the games justify the expense?

I saw a couple of ugly women in Regina a few years back.

I was standing in Lloydminster at the time.

...and your point is?

And there was I, thinking you had never been to Calgary. How wrong I was

I actually visited Calgary "proper" for the first time last year. Had a chinese meal in a place in Okotoks (lovely food it was, didn't think much to Okotoks though), and a crappy Italian meal somewhere downtown.

I was expecting something likened to a Spaghetti Western but was surprised of the lack of tumbleweed and spittoons.