Globalization, Olympics-Style

I live in Guildford, a nice leafy town about 30 minutes on the train south of London.

The other day we took our four-year-old to the local sports center because we’d heard that some national Olympic teams were based there, ahead of their move to the main Olympic site in east London. Our little one wanted his photo taken with an Olympic competitor.

When we got to the local sports center, we immediately ran into Singapore’s national table tennis team. They were wandering along a corridor after a training session, replete in their splendid red outfits. We stopped to wish them good luck but were a little surprised to find they did not speak English. Only Chinese. I’ve been to Singapore, and most people seemed to speak at least some English. After all, English is the language of instruction in all of Singapore’s schools.

The table tennis players were heading to a mobile food kitchen that had been set up on the grounds of the sports center. We had a quick word with the people running this kitchen-on-wheels, and were interested to hear the table tennis team had brought with them their own cook from Singapore, and a nutritionist.

The players had strict pre-Olympic diets, as you would expect, though their “training partners” were happily slurping frappuccinos at the on-site Starbucks, unencumbered by the need to compete for medals.

We wished them all well – with the use of a few universal hand signals.

Minutes after leaving the Singaporeans, we ran into the Nigerian basketball team. They had also just finished a training session.

When we wished these towering green-clad giants good luck, we were again surprised to hear the accented response: they sounded like Americans!