Last week, we were visited by one of our mates who is doing an M.Sc. at Bath. Incidentally, I will soon be visiting him and his wonderful city (for the 4th time!). Back to the present, this architect friend of mine has been to visit me in London for 3 times before so I had to think of a new place to visit. I also had to find a new place to visit myself and had no difficulty in choosing: the London 2012 Olympic site.
In the past few weeks, I was tutoring 4th year students in a design project, which was the structural design of 2 stadia in the Olympic village. The main stadium and aquatic centre and quite impressive and I became quite bored simply seeing calculations and numbers. I wanted to see the REAL thing, so that was a good enough excuse to pay a visit to Stratford and the massive construction site there.
It is always good to catch up with a Maltese friend and after a long detour of talk which also included partially planning the Bath trip, we arrived to the viewing area overlooking the construction site. The stadium is almost done, the aquatic centre too, the velodrome is ready but the rest is mud and rubbish London ground fill.
I will visit the same place in a year's time and if the place is transformed from an almost urban wasteland to even a fraction of the magical computer-generated images, then I would have to say that the Brits managed to finish on time for the 2012 games only through divine intervention.
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