The first couple hours

After unpacking and a quick shower we then did what any good Getty Images employee would do and found the media village bar. A couple Tsingtao’s later we decided we wanted to head to our Getty office in the MPC. After a 15 minute shuttle ride passing Olympic venues such as the Olympic Stadium (Birds nest) and the Swimming venue (Water Cube) we pulled up to the MPC. The MPC is a massive building that houses the world’s media covering the games. Our office is on the second floor next to all our rival agencies. Inside our office is room for our 78 employees to work, with like 30 big screen monitors to sync to our laptops up to and 20 TV’s located all over to watch all the games once they begin. Our team that set up the room up did an amazing job.

After catching up with fellow coworkers who were at the MPC, the west coast US crew went to dinner at a hotpot restaurant. Getting there was rather interesting as our cab driver cut off a bus which led to the cabbie behind us, who was carrying our people, to get out of his taxi opening our door and start yelling at our cab driver. We were shocked to say the least. Unfortunately it was all in Mandarin so we couldn’t understand what he was saying but we had a good idea.

So hotpot was a totally foreign concept to me. Similar to a Korean BBQ restaurant where you cook your own food, however the difference is instead of cooking on a grill you drop the food in boiling hot liquid. The liquid, similar to a soup, was in a pot split in two with one side spicy and one mild. LA based photographer Harry How, who can speak enough Mandarin to get by, did all the ordering for us. We had squid, special beef, fat lamb, shrimp paste, and lots of vegetables. The food was excellent and the service might have been even better. Our waitress Cady (her American name she said) who knew very little English but enough for us to kind of understand her at times was so helpful and stayed by our side the entire time. She kept bringing our more and more food. We must have eaten for two hours straight and there wasn’t a moment where she didn’t find something new for us to put into the hotpot. After the meal was done our bill came to approximately 10 American dollars per person. This meal at home would probably run like $60 per person with all we had if not more because of the beer. We were so thankful of the service from our waitress that Patrick gave her a couple Getty Images Olympic pins. We offered her a tip (an equivalent of $5) but she refused to take it because the Chinese do not tip.

After dinner I just headed back to the apartment and finally was able to get some real sleep.