{"id":6107,"date":"2010-02-18T15:22:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T20:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=6107"},"modified":"2010-02-18T15:26:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T20:26:51","slug":"oh_the_life_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/18\/oh_the_life_of\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh, the life of an Olympian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P>It must be nice to be an Olympian, especially if you&#8217;re one of just three athletes<img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"India team.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sepiamutiny.com\/sepia\/India%20team.jpg\" width=\"370\" height=\"264\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right; margin: 0 0 20px 20px;\" \/> representing a country of&nbsp;a billion-plus people&nbsp;at the Winter Games. <font face=Arial>Shiva Keshavan, Jamyang Nangial and Tashi Lundup must feel like kings, what with the Indian sports ministry bending over backwards to give them royal treatment.<\/font><\/P><\/p>\n\n<blockquote dir=ltr>\n<P><font face=Arial>From bearing the expenses of their ceremonial clothing to daily allowances of $50 per day, the sports ministry on Tuesday said it has spent around Rs 7.4 lakh on the eight-member Indian contingent at the Winter Olympics<\/font><font face=Arial> in Vancouver, Canada. [<A href=\"http:\/\/sports.rediff.com\/report\/2010\/feb\/17\/winter-olympians-fully-funded-says-sports-ministry.htm\">Link<\/A>]<\/font><\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><P><font face=Arial>Wow, a daily allowance of $50 per day! They&#8217;ll be able to visit the prestigious French restaurant&nbsp;Lumi\u00c3\u00a8re, order whatever they want on the menu &#8212; six mushroom&nbsp;ravioli, Fraser Valley farm duck,&nbsp;braised eggplant &amp; peppers &#8212;&nbsp;and dash&nbsp;out before the bill arrives. No point in being a top athlete if you can&#8217;t&nbsp;make a fast exit.<\/font><\/P><!--more--><P><font face=Arial>If they prefer to actually pay for their food, they can still eat like a king,&nbsp;loading their trays&nbsp;at&nbsp;Burger King. They can also eat&nbsp;like a queen,&nbsp;piling on&nbsp;the toppings at&nbsp;Dairy Queen.<\/font><\/P>\n<P><font face=Arial>Of course, they probably don&#8217;t need to eat out at all. They have their own chef. His name is R.K. Gupta and he&#8217;s listed as&nbsp;the Indian team&#8217;s &#8220;Chef de Mission.&#8221;&nbsp;My French is rusty, but I think that means cooking is his&nbsp;mission.<\/font><\/P>\n<P><font face=Arial>And let&#8217;s not forget that they can get&nbsp;lots of free food at the Olympic Village &#8212; Big Macs and other grub &#8212; specially&nbsp;chosen&nbsp;by the Canadian Olympic Committee&nbsp;to ensure that&nbsp;visiting athletes have the best nutrition possible to maximize the medal&nbsp;count of&nbsp;Canada.<\/font><\/P>\n<P><font face=Arial>So don&#8217;t you dare suggest that the Indian team isn&#8217;t being treated well. Not only are they getting $50 per day, they also got to wear the coolest uniforms at the opening ceremony. Kudos to Indian officials who <A href=\"http:\/\/ibnlive.in.com\/news\/winter-olympics-rift-in-indian-camp-over-uniform\/110151-5.html\">rejected&nbsp;uniforms donated by the Indo-Canadian communty<\/A> and stuck with the original uniforms, which brought the team&nbsp;a lot more attention at the opening ceremony, as well as&nbsp;compliments such as &#8220;Are they sailors?&#8221; and &#8220;Wow, I didn&#8217;t know that India had a Kmart!&#8221;<\/font><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It must be nice to be an Olympian, especially if you&#8217;re one of just three athletes representing a country of&nbsp;a billion-plus people&nbsp;at the Winter Games. Shiva Keshavan, Jamyang Nangial and Tashi Lundup must feel like kings, what with the Indian &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/18\/oh_the_life_of\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}