We go to the Olympics and Ev has his second birthday bash

On Friday night we got tickets to go to one of the Olympic events being held in Hong Kong (and here, dutifully, is the Olympic flame that burns at each venue - all six odd stories high of it) which meant going to see showjumping - not my first choice of sporting event of course, but the only really accessible option - the other HK events are sailing. That being said, it was a lovely thing to go to. For a start, the crowd was frankly huge. My guess is that the majority of people, yours truly included, had never been to a showjumping thing before - so there were a lot of officials with signs telling people how to behave - which basically meant keeping quiet (with a big crowd that's quite an achievement) while the riders took their turns - a very mind your manners (Manors) and cucumber sandwich sort of thing. However, beneath the veneer it remains a really tense affair, with people dressed up in all sorts of national colours, jumping up and cheering and waving flags when their riders had completed their rounds. It gave the whole event a football match with a mute-button feel - though the mute failed each time when a pole went down (or someone fell off, as did a Kiwi rider, who was as unceremoniously dumped onto one of the fences as our rugby team has just been at Newlands) because plenty thousand people would let out an involuntary and simultaneous "ai-yaaah" - expressed with a falling tone, which is the cantonese equivalent to oh no, but with a lot more dramatic effect. I'm not terribly wowed by horses, but these were excquisite - just desperately beautiful animals, and the riders very elegant and composed on the outside. The tension of it all was very much on display when one of the two Hong Kong riders completed a perfect round at top speed to get himself into first place. The crowd went wild, as did Patrick Lam, the rider. When he cleared the last jump and crossed the line in 86 odd seconds, he leapt up in the saddle, punched the air wildly as he galoped around, and then took off his riding helmet and flung it into the crowd. It was much more of a motor-cycle grand prix head-space than a polite cough into the picnick blanket in the shade of the Range Rover. I thought it greatly contributed to the atmosphere. Here he is on the left above, galoping around without his helmet on while the crowd roars its approval. You'll have to click on the small horse pic on the right above to see the detail, but I took it to give you an idea of how beautiful and beautifully groomed the horses were. I also liked the dragon hedge which formed part of the arena - cool touch that. On the way out I took this cool picture over the Sha Tin river at the back of the stadium which I thought was very Hong Kong - a Jumbo floating seafood restaurant with lit pagodas, a wall of Sha Tin housing estates in the background, and the Olympic slogan in the front. All in all it was a heap of fun - must be a hell of a (brief) rush to see a big track and field final.

EVAN'S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY - EVAN'S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY - EVAN'S SECOND BIRTHDAY PARTY

Ev's birthday is only on Monday - but I'll be out of town next weekend so we had the party today. It was super-hot and the usual humid, so lots of sweating from running around, and pink faces to go with it. Ev had a ball, discovered he was in a dancing mood, but insisted on the same song being played again and again while he cavorted around beaming away. Ange made him a cool cake, a racetrack two, in keeping with his committment to things automotive, which Aiden very nearly trashed just before the party by slipping and falling, and getting his elbow stuck in the corner in the process. I think I might have been a bit abrupt with him at that point, but it was very repairable as it turned out. I've shot a little .mpeg clip which I'll post here when I've worked it out, in case you fancy some boogying lessons from your littlest brother. He's now 97cm tall, and a very solid and cheerful two year old. I'm looking forward to his birthday proper on Monday, and it's been really great to have Ange's folks here, taken a lot of the bite out of the distance. I hope you're having a cool weekend - hope to chat to you tommorrow.