The Olympics in Beijing is going to be such an amateur show.

As some of you might know, the ticket lottery system started maybe a month ago. This is where people, only legal residents of the Chinese mainland (sorry folks from HK, Macau, and Taiwan) can sign up for events they would like, and then they will be awarded tickets later. Its a game of change. Feels like I’m in Vegas. Or maybe Macau. For most events, you’re able to select a maximum number of tickets per event (4 or 6 or 8, whatever it may be), and presumably the tickets, should you be awarded them, would be adjacent to one another. Makes sense, yes? Now, there’s a problem. These ‘people’, in their infinite wisdom, have limits to the Opening Ceremony and Closing Ceremony to 1 ticket per buyer. I thought “huh?”. So I emailed them. Hi, I want to buy 2 tickets for the opening ceremony, but the only application form only allows 1. If I want to sit next to my wife (who also is a resident of Beijing), how can we get two tickets that are next to each other? Thanks (I added the wife bit to add drama) I received a response the next day (today). Impressive! Here’s their response: Dear Sir, I’m sorry to tell you that if you are planning to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, each applicant can submit only one Ticket Application Form and one ticket only per applicant for opening/closing ceremony. So the seats are NOT adjacent to one another. The reason why we set the limit of one ticket on opening and closing ceremony is to guarantee “most comprehensive participation and fair purchasing opportunity”. Please make sure that you list all the tickets for you and your family in ONE application (except tickets of the opening and closing ceremonies). Session tickets applied for on an application form will be allocated together. Thanks for your enquiry. Excuse me? “Thanks for your enquiry.”? Thanks for nothing! You could say that I’m not going to let this go so easily. I responded with this: Dear Sir, This is very disappointing. Not only are the tickets for the opening ceremony the most expensive, you don’t guarantee that we will have adjacent seats with our partner? This is ridiculous. If I may ask you a question - How would you like to experience an event such as this with your husband or wife, you are willing to spend money on it, but then the authorities tell you that you cannot sit together? I would hope that you would feel saddened by this information. Would you not? Disappointing indeed. As for your reasoning “most comprehensive participation and fair purchasing opportunity “, I am so sorry. Try again. This is simply an unacceptable excuse. Is it fair? Absolutely not! Am I to understand that under NO circumstances will anyone be in possession of multiple adjacent tickets? If you want to be absolutely fair, I would certainly hope this is the case. Unfortunately, I doubt this is the case. I am sure there will be many people with the necessary “guanxi” who will be able to have such tickets. Is that fair? I can understand why you would have a limit. 2 is a realistic limit. Or maybe 4 even better as there may be a family of 3 (1 parent and two children where it would not make sense to split them up). What about the families? Splitting up the families is hardly fair. The Olympics is a once in a lifetime event that it only makes sense to experience it with the people you care about. Already the Beijing Olympics is leaving a bad taste in my mouth. This seems like a decision that was made recklessly and without regard to basic common sense. It seems like someone wasn’t thinking when this decision was made. Furthermore, I asked if there was a way we could obtain two tickets next to each other. You failed to answer that question. Is it impossible? Is there another way to buy tickets? Do you not know? I look forward to hearing a response. Thank you. Chris I am sure that I could have been more elegant with some of my points, but I don’t care. I just wanted to vent, and they certainly deserve to be on the receiving end. Let’s see how these guys respond. If this is how the Olympics is going to turn out, Beijing has a lot of praying to do for the shit that the visitors are going to throw. Maybe I should go on holiday for those two weeks. Nobody is forcing me to go…