a shameful waste of madhouse time » tickets

American looking for Olympics basketball tickets video

peijin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:55:51 +0000

This guy had it all going for him: the Cat in the Hat hat and the Sichuan earthquake relief T-shirt…but could not, for the life of him, get 500rmb tickets. Last night, talking to scalpers, it seemed the going price for most events is 1000+ for most tickets, regardless of what the face value is. My friend managed to get a track and field ticket for 500rmb, which is a minor miracle. They wanted over a 1000 but there was only one (most people are selling in groups of two or three, adjacent seats) so let it go for 500. The ease with which we got it this one after spending a fruitless half hour going through the scalpers market made me somewhat suspicious. I guess tomorrow we will know if it all worked out or not.

Foreign scalpers at the Beijing Olympics…

peijin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:06:23 +0000

Business of Olympic tickets booming for touts via kwout

Apparently, foreigners are getting into the scalping biz too…what is interesting is that the article says a bunch of Chinese ones were arrested in front of their western counterparts.
That I wish I had been able to see!

Shanghai Expo tickets to go on sale Sept 28 for expected price of 160 RMB.

peijin — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:28:39 +0000

上海世博会门票9月28日首发价格拟160元_社会频道_新华网 via kwout

What is more interesting to me is this weird picture from the Xinhua article where I got this information. Maybe this design image has appeared somewhere else on the internet before, but this is the first time that I’ve seen anything like it, though, like with the Olympics, the Expo is one of those things that I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into caring about.

Some interesting tidbits from that article: many of the buildings used during the Expo are temporary, and are destroyed after the Expo is over…however the UK one will remain—because it’s just that good? In any case, the report is just a status update (as if the Expo people were tweeting, Peijin!)…now that I’ve seen how, in certain areas, Beijing and its infrastructure has really been overhauled I feel a bit more anticipation for the Expo than I did before. Of course, we are all easily bedazzled by showy things, aren’t we—a distraction from deeper issues that we’d rather not think about.