Games Maker Day 2

Today was my second day at the Olympic Park. It was also my first of two early shifts! This involved a very early start at approx 3.30am before I had to leave to get there on time. Seeing as tubes and trains don't run until later I was supposed to be getting three/four buses to my shift travelling from Wimbledon all the way to Stratford, however, I somehow managed to persuade my Dad to drop me off at Waterloo on his way to work. It was completely out of his way but hey-ho he didn't mind and I think he felt like he was doing his bit to make the games happen my dropping me off. I then jumped on the very first Jubilee line train of the day for the short 20minute ride to Stratford. I was completely surrounded by other Games Makers on the tube. It was almost surreal as everywhere I turned there was just a mass of red and "poppy" coloured uniforms. Once we arrived at the station there was even more all eagerly making their way towards the check-in areas. I wasn't so keen and eager as it was still only like 5.50am and I hadn't woken up properly yet.

After doing the usual business of checking-in and going to grab a drink from the workforce area we congregated under the aquatics centre roof for our morning briefing. After this we split up into out own individual teams  - ours was green for the day which was Greenway Gate. I had already had some previous experience of being on a gate, however, there was quite a contrast between Stratford Gate ad Greenway Gate. So much so that there is something like 95% of spectators using Stratford and the remaining 5% using the Greenway, Eton Manor and Victoria entrances. It started painfully slow and Suzi (another GM I had met) and I were on the end gate doing ticket entry scanning, I think over a 1.5hour period we didn't scan one single ticket. After having our break for Breakfast at 8.15am I moved down to join one of the other teams which was being led by a team leader called Michael. This was much more fun and I must say I met some pretty cool people today. We kept smiling throughout the day and the banter was flowing throughout the 6/7 of us standing down directing people under the bridges into Orbit Circus. At one point we all got a complete bollocking from another team member from the info point for giving out Olympic Park maps instead of the newly branded Paralympic maps! Of course, this became the joke of the day and we would think of every little thing whereby we could bring up the maps as part of a conversation. The main person involved in this was "Map Boy" a.k.a. Ben and Michael our team leader. We also played little games between us and this involved slipping in random words into conversations with spectators/sponsors/forces etc. The words were: trousers, hat, hair, sausage and saveloy. I think in the end it was between Michael, Ben and myself (I even got double points for slipping it into a conversation with a police officer)! :-) By this point of the day I was glad I had joined part of Michael's team as the whole experience of volunteering is about having a laugh, getting to help the spectators etc and making them feel like part of the games. 

So a few hours passed and after lunch it was another quite period where we went back to Greenway Gate. We scanned a few more tickets (the first of the day for me), directed a few more spectators and even got to look after things on the Info Point at one point which I'm sure was much of a disappointment for "stressy" when she found out we covered for her! As the late shift came on duty at 1.30pm they'd had their main briefing and they came over to join us at Greenway Gate around 2.45pm which is when we started to get ready to head off home at 3pm. We got checked off by our team leader and off we went... another fairly quiet day at the Olympic Park but it's all part of the experience!

On the walk back through the park we had to stop several times for Laura who wanted her photo taken with every man in uniform starting with the "Policemen with big guns". I'm sure tomorrow she'll be after the armed forces or some other sort...

As we were exiting the park we walked through the new Stratford Westfield Shopping Centre avoiding the snipers on the roof of Holiday Inn (picture below) where we were on the look out for every "freebie" possible! We started off at The Body Shop where Games Maker's get a free tub of body butter, I though to myself don't worry that's one Christmas present to cross off the list! We then waited for Louise who was in a rather long loo queue and I saw the Swatch watch shop, we looked at the other London2012 watches which all retail at £38.00+ and the guy came over and said that ours as part of the GM uniform are worth much more due to the rarity as there's only 70,000 (ish). Whilst waiting he even cleaned mine and removed some scratches from the clock face - now that's what you call good service. Next stop was the Nivea stand - all we had to do was take a photo (picture below) to get a free "goody bag" for Men or Women. I am yet to investigate further as to what was in this bag. Finally, we stopped off at the Samsung stand on our way out to the tube. We managed to get all four of us (Laura, Louise, Ben and myself) into a photo and we got this made into a pin badge (photo below). 

Three of us are all on early shifts tomorrow so we arranged to meet outside our check-in area in the morning so we could get in the same team again as its always nice knowing a familiar face - especially at 5.45am!

I'm on my last early shift tomorrow morning - 5hours, 15minutes and counting until it's time for my alarm to go off so I bid you goodnight! Thanks for reading. 

Games Maker Day 1

WOW.. It's finally here! Day 1 of being a Games Maker for the London 2012 Olympics.

My first day wasn't too bad, I didn't have an early start as I was working at the Opening Ceremony. The team I am part of is Event Services (EVS) in the Common Domain (CDM) which is the biggest staffing team at the Games - we look after all the "common" areas of the Olympic Park such as the areas between all the venues, entrance gates, access control points etc.

When I picked up my uniform from the Uniform Distribution and Accreditation Centre in West Ham earlier in the month, I was given a Paralympic Volunteer Oyster Card to travel to and from my shifts. This is great apart from the fact I live just too far out of the Zones 1-6 where this is valid! I had two options - I could pay and get the train from my home town or I could drive to Wimbledon where I usually work, leave my car there and use the free travel courtesy of London2012 and TfL. I opted for the easier and slightly cheaper version on leaving my car in Wimbledon. I then made my way to the train station, got on the fast train to Waterloo where I hopped on the Jubilee line for my short trip to Stratford.

Upon arriving at Stratford I realised I was completely surrounded by a sea of purple and "poppy" clad volunteers all making their way to the Olympic Park. I followed in suite and once through the initial accreditation checks made my way to check-in for my shift. Ahh.. seeing as the Opening Ceremony hadn't even started and there was no spectators in yet I realised that everyone was only just coming on shift and obviously, as you can imagine, there was a very long queue of volunteers waiting to check-in and get that all important meal voucher! After standing around in the rain for quite some time in various queues we were all assigned a team and my team for the day was the blue team (Stratford Gate).

I had already started talking to a couple of other volunteers in the queue and we headed down to get some lunch and go for our afternoon briefing. This is where the volunteers are told about the daily schedule, any planned events, special instructions etc. Today they talked about the Opening Ceremony plans and at the end our staffing manager was making jokes about the Paralympic Torch running 2.5 hours late! After the briefing we headed down to our area where we got assigned a post - or should I say a task. Our team leader was a gentleman called George. Also in our team were 2 ex-Olympic team leaders (no names mentioned!) who too thought they could take over and tell everyone what to do. It got quite annoying and the few GM's that I'd already spoken too found them annoying as well to the point we made our own way down the Stratford Walk to meet and greet spectators. This involved directing them to the nearest facilities, taking photos of them in front of the Stadium and the rather controversial structure that the majority of people don't like a.k.a. the Orbit. At one point I was filmed in the backdrop to APF interviews (a french company) - still yet to find the footage thank goodness!

After the crowds came through it started to dwindle down quite a bit and George came to see the 4 of us and told us to go and have dinner. We eventually found the Aquatics/Water Polo workforce break area and stayed there until it was time to come back. Upon arrival back at our post there was hardly any crowds left entering the Park, no sign of any of our team or our team leader so we went for a walk down the bridge E which was closed to the public due to the Athletes parade. We stood around there for about 2-3 hours and managed to see the whole entirety of the Athletes parade as they made their way into to 80,000 strong crowd inside the Olympic Stadium. It was really great to see such inspirational athletes being so cheery and happy about representing their country in the Paralympic Games. Half of the time I think we spent trying to work out which country was which by deciphering the shortened country name and looking at the flag on the placards - which is easier said than done! However, we were with another volunteer called Cameron who I'd met right at the beginning of the day in the check in queue - he was probably the best out of us all at naming the flags/countries (it maybe something to do with him being an International Relations student that helps)! :-)

The other good part of being down at the athletes parade was getting to talk to some of the athletes themselves. We had various different athletes from different countries and sports come and talk to us. A few of these were: a guy from the Colombian Track and Road cycling team (Diego German Duenas Gomez - Photo right) and two members of the USA 7-a-side Men's Football team (Adam Ballou and Jerreme Wade) who are both taking part in their first ever Paralympics. It was nice to get a chance to chat to them and we wished them luck in their competitions and they took a few photos before they where briskly whisked along to go into the Stadium.

At the end of the athletes parade we made our way back to the Stratford gate for egress via the workforce break area to grab a coffee to warm up as it was a pretty cold night. Upon arriving back at the bridge all posts had already been covered, there was no sign of our team leader and several of us had to make our way back so we didn't miss our trains etc.

We said goodbye to the GM's we'd been with most of the day - I'm not sure if I'll see them again as some of us are on early shifts and some on late shifts.

I then made my way home and there we are... the end of day 1! Already looking forward to my second shift on Friday despite the fact it means a 4am start! (I'm writing this late, it's now Thursday night at 23:46 and I should really get some sleep now before my early morning.)

Until next time....