Today's
Olympic scandal is that
FIFA (who are apparently the world
Soccer governing body) visited the
Canberra stadium where the soccer heats are to be held. This is the stadium where after seven years notice, the local government has
miserably failed in getting an acceptable playing surface of
turf ready in time. Anyways, the firm that won the contract to supply the turf was not a local company, rather a
Far Northern Queensland specialist in
tropical turf. Canberra, one hastens to remind the local authorities, is thousands of kilometres south of
FNQ and is still gripped by
winter frosts and sub-15C days. The turf, once it was flown down here from the 40C FNQ
Cairns prompy
died.
Cut to today, two weeks later. The local govt, for a fortnight, has been assuring the local Canberrans, SOCOG, and FIFA that the turf wasn't dead, it was just pining for the fjords, and it would burst back into life at any moment.
Nope. So, today's the big inspection day. The press and officials turn up. What had the govt operators done overnight?
They'd painted the dead turf green and hoped no-one would notice.
They're getting
caned in the media, and the locals are
livid.
Went to SYD today for a couple of hours, traffic and airports and everything worked surprisingly well. Met with The Big Web Portal's new local marketing director, San Franciscan woman 2.5 weeks in .au so far but says she loves it here (oh, don't they all, and then they just break our hearts...) I think we did a damn fine presentation, and she was impressed that I've been a subscriber of one of her firms offline publications for some 11 years... Found out we won the account for The Big Financial Portal which was cool, but the place is still pretty frosty...
Indian food for dinner, Gemma is studying, Molly is asleep on my foot. All is well at home.