You meet people from all over the place at the Olympics and have all kinds of conversations, which sometimes have a way of careening in new and interesting directions.
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Life inside a shipping container
- February 19, 2010 2:18 PM |
- By Joe O'Connor
Story provided by
You meet people from all over the place at the Olympics and have all kinds of conversations, which sometimes have a way of careening in new and interesting directions. Like Thursday, for example, on the chairlift ride down from the ladies super-combined event. My chair-mate was a security guard.
We got to talking about our Olympic accommodations. I told her about living in a tiny room with three other sportswriters, sleeping in a single bed built for an eight-year-old and wearing earplugs, just in case. I told her it wasn't so bad. The only snorer in the room sounds more like a snuffling baby cow, than a buzz-saw, and the bathroom rotation, given our varied wake-up times, was running smoothly. (Knock wood). We were a big happy ink-stained family, I said.
Then she told me she lived in a bunk bed...in a shipping container...in a complex of shipping containers, with about 500 residents in all. She said the shipping container wasn't so bad, and that her three roommates were basically strangers. The food, though, was a bit of a problem. "It's not good," she said.
After saying goodbye I caught a bus. Mike, the bus driver and I, we got to talking. He loves his Olympic gig -- "better money than I was making in Ottawa" -- he says. Mike was staying in Squamish in a ship, instead of a shipping container. The ship's name was the Mona Lisa. Mike said the rooms were not a masterpiece, but that the "food was really good."
About the Author
- Bruce Arthur Bruce Arthur is the National Post's national sports columnist. A Vancouver native, he has been with the Post since 2001, and a columnist since 2005. He is covering his second Olympics, after the 2008 Games in Beijing. He expects these Games to be slightly less propagandistic, and for China to win slightly fewer medals.
- Joe O'Connor Joe O'Connor is a roving sports feature writer with an open-ended beat. He joined the National Post in 2002, and has spent the past seven years bouncing from sport to sport, offering fresh perspectives and delivering unique stories wherever he goes. Whether it has been getting Don Cherry to open up about his love life; George Chuvalo to talk about heartbreaking loss; or racing down the side of a mountain with former Crazy Canuck, Dave Irwin, the veteran Postie chases a story wherever it leads. Before joining the newspaper he was a two-time silver medalist at the National Magazine Awards. Vancouver will be his first Olympics.
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