The Beijing Olympics are Less Than a Year Away!

It's getting really exciting now!

In the Chinese culture, the number eight is considered "the most fortuitous of numbers, making it much coveted for addresses, phone numbers and bank accounts."

afgen.com/china8.html

Eight
The word for "eight" in Chinese (Pinyin: bā) sounds similar to the word which means "fortune", "prosper" or "wealth" (发, Pinyin: fā). In regional dialects the words for "eight" and "fortune" are also similar, eg Cantonese "baat" and "faat".
There is also a resemblance between two digits, "88", and the shuang xi (囍 —— 'double joy'), a popular decorative design composed of two stylized characters 喜 (xi, 'joy', 'happiness').
Some people also think that 8 can be associated with the symbol meaning infinity (an 8 turned 90 degrees).
Telephone number 8888-8888 was sold for USD$270,723 in Chengdu, China.
The Summer Olympics in Beijing are scheduled to open on 8/8/08 at 8:08:08 p.m.[2]
A man in Hangzhou offered to sell his license plate reading A88888 for 1.12 million yuan.[2]
Dragon Fish Industry in Singapore, a breeder of rare Asian Arowanas (which are "lucky fish" themselves, and, being a rare species, are required to be microchipped), makes sure to use numbers with plenty of eights in their microchip tag numbers, and appears to reserve particularly numbers especially rich in eights and sixes (e.g. 702088880006688) for particularly valuable specimens.[3][4]

from wikipedia's web site

The Games begin at 8:08 p.m. on August 8th, 2008. It's going to be a great time (as much celebration will happen from the Games, marriages and perhaps inducing labor) on this particular day.

On 8/08/08, expect their to be more hype than what 7/07/07 brought this year.


Once again, here are the beach volleyball standings as of today:

men:

http://206.196.31.34/OlympicRanking.aspx?gender=M


women:


http://206.196.31.34/OlympicRanking.aspx?gender=W