Sunday night and it's raining "cats and dogs" here in Beijing. Wish I could hail a cab but no luck. I've just come from a bloggers meetup at the Beijing Bookworm, sponsored by Olympics sponsor Lenovo and its ad agency Ogilvy & Mather. At the meetup were two blogging athletes who have been equipped with Lenovo PCs to continue their normail blog routine here. So happens that they have managed to hail seemingly the only empty taxi in the area. As they get directions to the Olympic Village, I ask if they could take me to my destination first. It's not far out of the way, so they agree. But the cab driver doesn't get the signal from the athletes; it's a communications breakdown due to language barriers. I end up at the Olympics Village and get to know these two athletes better on the way. Both represent Namibia and both are cyclists. Mannie Heymans has a blog, www.mr-african.com. The other gentleman athlete, Erik Hoffman, doesn't have a blog but managed to tough it out in the heat and humidity of the men's road race on Saturday. The photo here shows Mannie on the left and Erik. As we drive up to their dorms, I got to see the Bird's Nest and Bird's Nest in the twilight, and got the driver to understand my destination and take me there next. All in all, a 45-minute detour. How's that for surrendipity?
