Young Reporter brouhaha

thoughts from Day 10, at the Youth Olympic Village.

1. my profile feature on Yelena Isinbayeva was presented to her to bring back to Russia woohoo! and i thanked her personally on behalf of the Young Reporters Program for coming to speak to us.
2. i utterly hate it when im treated like a second-class citizen in my own country. the retarded yog-ers check my (and only my) accreditation at almost every roadblock simply because i (1) look local and (2) am not doing their lousy job.
3. among the YRs are Africa's 4th-ranked badminton player, a former national tennis player for India, a national handball player of Latvia, and France's 400m runner at Beijing 2008. smlj. 
4. one of the most enduring and cross-boundary moments this YOG for me was being in a YOG bus full of Africans from Equatorial Guinea while the bus uncle had 958FM's retro Mandopop hits playing the whole way. 
5. as much as he appreciates it, four-time Olympic silver medallist Frankie Fredericks of Namibia doesn't like people coming up to say he's already a champion despite everything. respect and honour the real winner, he said, it's their time now, they worked even harder to get that gold. coming from countries like USA doesn't make them less deserving - Namibia has 2 million people, USA has 310. 
6. Tracey called me "a gifted writer". :)
7. like ive told some of the rest, maybe YRP should have tribal councils like Survivor.
8. football choked again. lost 2-0 to underdogs Haiti, who were whipped 9-0 by Bolivia.
9. unwell and sick of YOG, i finally went home today, and did two of the things i had most looked forward to - eat some real Singapore food, and cut my nails.