Anyways, on this inaugural day, I wasted a good hour of my precious, short life stuck in SF Muni metro hell. A fifteen minute commute to work turned into at least forty-five minutes sitting on a train in the tunnel. The commute home turned into a half-hour wait on the platform waiting for the right train to show up, or the right train to show up that I can squeeze myself onto. And none of this can be blamed even on the Olympic torch business going on above ground. The mayor or whoever was in charge actually secretly did a switcheroo and changed the torch route to avoid the Tibetan protest which wreaked havoc in Paris. So the running of the torch thru SF, the only US city of the entire tour, became rather pointless since nobody who really intended to see actually saw it. It's like you plan to throw a party, invited a whole bunch of people, and then changed the location of the party without telling any of the people you invited. What then would have been the point of having the party to begin with? As for the Tibetan protest itself, I am on Tibet's side, and I think it's good to bring the public attention to the plight of the Tibetan people, who have been wronged by China in so many tragic ways. You take away a people's culture, you take away the people. Think America without Thanksgiving turkeys and Labor Day sales. Tragedy, right? Yet I hope no country will end up barring its athletes from the Beijing games. I don't think you should punish the Olympians who've trained for years for a chance. The games themselves should be free of politics. It's about idealism and sportsmanship, which politicians can learn from for certain.
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