There are 21,600 reporters covering the Olympic Games, the vast majority from outside China, and a lot of them will be going home with a nasty taste in their mouths.

Al Himmer and Erik Kirschbaum blogged about their experience of crash-dieting during the Olympics, with most of the venues offering only cookies and bananas for reporters putting in 10 or 12 or 14 hours covering a sport.

Inside the Main Press Centre, there is plenty of food to be had. It’s not going to win any gourmet awards but the turkey on whole wheat is just fine and it’s hard to go wrong with a salad bar.

Sadly, it’s the Chinese food that is the real letdown.

Beijing is a city in which any given alley offers everything from noodle soups to savoury pancakes to fresh hot soy milk, and it is difficult to forgive Olympic caterers for reducing a culinary culture so rich and varied to a mushy blandness.

For those of us who live in Beijing, this dietary disaster is only a temporary privation — in a couple of days the Games will be over and we can once again eat three meals a day from three different regions of China if we so chose.

But it’s my colleagues from out of town who I feel sorry for. After several weeks in Beijing, many have had no chance to experience the pleasant surprise of biting into a soup-filled dumpling. They have not slurped the cilantro-spiced broth of a bowl of beef noodles or felt their tongues go numb from Sichuan peppers.

What a pity if they return home thinking chow mein and fried rice are the real deal.

My mother back in the United States thinks I’m having a great time in Beijing. She envisions me casually dropping into see the swimming and the athletics, having a relaxed lunch, and then strolling over to the next venue to catch another big event in the evening. Let me give you a run through of one day I had near the start of the Games…

7:00 - Wake up too late for breakfast, rush through ablutions and run for bus. Clear airport-style security. Get on bus for 20-minute ride. Transfer to second bus for 40-minute ride to shooting venue.

8:30 - Arrive at shooting hungry and hunt out the bananas (very important, as there’s no other food).

9:30 - Shooting qualification going on. But am distracted and worried about whether the comms are going to work. Unfortunately I’m not good with computers.

10:45 - Women shooter from Georgia gets 4th in qualification, ahead of 80 others. Good chance for medal. Need to become instant expert on her.

11:00 - File quick story on Georgia shooter who in 8-shooter final against Russia woman. Wow, what a story!

12:00 - Finals start

12:20 - Georgian rises to bronze. Russian falls to silver. Call in bulletin to desk, send update story in 3 minutes, second update 2 minutes later. Notice the Georgian and Russian shaking hands, embracing and kissing on cheeks. Great stuff. Add that to next story.

12:25 - Run downstairs to ”mixed zone”. Just catch Georgian as she passes through for quick comment. Add to next story.

12:45 - Press conference. More great quotes from Georgian and Russian. Another quick story.

13:30 - Hungry again. Eat another two bananas and a few cookies.

15:00 - Trap shooting finals begin. It’s raining. Am under a roof in press tribune, but it was made to shield from the sun and it’s leaking badly. Rain blowing in from all sides. Climb back a row. It’s a bit drier here.

15:20 - Finals winding down but it’s raining harder. Have crawled under clear plastic canopy in semi-futile attempt to keep laptop dry. Helpful tech guy holds plastic over my head while I type and helps spot for me who’s shooting. File quick stories, rush back to press conference. Get quotes. Write story.

17:00 - Another hour on bus back to main press center in heavy rain. Send advance stuff to editors for next day. Get comms fix from extremely understanding techs.

18:00 - Call wife. She’s slightly annoyed I don’t call more often. Take 2 aspirin.

18:05 - First and last meal of day. Ham sandwich the only option. Oh well. Better than nothing.

18:30 - Jump on hour-long bus ride to basketball gymnasium for U.S.-China. Bus packed. Standing room only. Lots of people had garlic in their lunch.

20:30 - Find great seat near basketball court. Very loud. Headache back again and worse now.

22:15 - Basketball game starts. Bush sitting not far away. Lots of excitement. 18,000 people in here.

23:30 - File blog on the match. Pounding headache. Get on another packed bus, among lucky few to have seat but keep getting hit (hard) in head by metal equipment in bulky backpacks of the zillion photographers here.

00:30 - Back at main press center. Switch to another bus home. Puddles everywhere.

1:00 - Clear security and get into media village. Too tired to watch TV. Turn on iPod instead and soon fall asleep.

And you know, I wake up again at 7 and think: hey, my mother is right. I am having a great time here.

PHOTO: Brazil’s swimmer Cesar Cielo Filho, winner of the men’s 50m swimming freestyle at the Beijing 2008 Olympics, holds his gold medal in Sao Paulo August 19, 2008. REUTERS/Caetano Barreira/Foto Arena/Handout

Journalists don’t generally address politicians by their first name, they tend to ask them searching questions and it’s rare to see them fawning. Not so, sports reporters.

For the vacuous, how about this, heard in the handball mixed zone at the Beijing Games: “Congratulations, Anita. Fantastic match. How did you feel in the last 10 minutes?”

(Who are these people who seem to be on first-name terms with athletes of second-tier sports anyway)?

Or take the killer question thrown at the men’s kayak bronze medallist this week: “Benjamin, I saw you go over and hug your mum. What did you say to her?”
 
Imagine if the rest of the journalistic fraternity adopted the same fascination with touchy-feely trivia I’ve found while covering the Games. The White House press corps, for example:

“Hey, George, great speech! How did you feel as the applause went up at the end?”

And let’s imagine the U.S. president gets with the programme.

Question: “Are you looking forward to your encounter with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing?

Answer: “Well, it’s going to be a discussion of two-sides, Randy. He’s a very good politician, but I’ve been preparing for this meeting for months and as long as I keep my concentration I should be able to come out on top.”

John Chalmers is Reuters editor for political and general news, Asia. He is on first name terms with very few world leaders.

PHOTO: U.S. President George W. Bush throws out the first pitch to U.S. team catcher Lou Marson before practice while visiting the U.S. Olympic baseball team at the Wukesong Cultural and Sports Center in Beijing August 11, 2008. REUTERS/Larry Downing

Most blogs and reporter diaries from the Olympics start the same way. Your correspondent arrives in Beijing, jet-lagged but wide-eyed nonetheless, and waxes grateful about the helpful volunteers at the airport, the comfy shuttle bus to the media village and the smiling welcome from just about everyone, everywhere. And hey - even the smog isn’t as bad as everyone makes out.

Disillusion sets in a few days later, as they find access to athletes is incredibly hard to come by, you still can’t sleep properly and walking 400 metres in the city is enough to leave you with stinging eyes, a soaking shirt and an irritating cough. Damn that smog!

I arrived a week ago but decided to wait a while before starting this, to let the Beijing experience soak in for a while. Now the Games are actually about to start, I’ll be filing regularly about life here in the media bubble.

One thing to add: I really like to hear from readers and fellow bloggers, so please leave a comment in the section below.

Day release from North Star MV1:

I’m staying, along with thousands of others, at the North Star media village, a 15-minute ride from the huge complex they call  the Olympic Green. Most journos tell you at some point that it reminds them of being a student. You share a small but nice apartment with one or two others, with a private bedroom but usually a shared bathroom. There’s a refectory for your breakfast and a strip-lit late-night bar that you have to be desperate to visit.

In fact, it’s more like a comfortable low-security prison, with the inmates heading out each morning on day release.

You go through a strict security check to get on one of the buses, hauling your laptop bag on your shoulder and whistling or singing, “Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go.” Or at least I do, until one of my sleep-deprived colleagues asks me to shut up.

The bus takes us to the Main Press Centre, where you chip away at a laptop for about 14 hours before heading back on the bus to, in my case, cell block D3.

I’m joking, of course. Depending on your assignment, you may get to rush along to various press conference rooms, hop on more buses to the venues or take your chances with a hazy walk around town. You can even go up to the roof at the end of the day and drink a cold one.

Thinking about it, didn’t the inmates get to do that in the Shawshank Redemption?

More tomorrow.

PHOTO: The Olympic Main Press Centre, REUTERS/Claro Cortes

Food inflation may be a huge issue in the “real” world, but in the world of the Olympics, journalists got a welcome and tremendous reprieve on Thursday.

At the coffee bar inside the main press centre, the price of a double espresso tumbled from RMB 23 (almost $3.40) to RMB 12 ($1.76) overnight.

Asked why, the young barista simply said “The Olympic committee ordered it.”

Anyone who has been around journalists knows that a newsroom is fueled by caffeine. The lack of coffee causes scenes quite similar to this one from Airplane! 2.

(you only need to watch the first 50 seconds to get the idea!).

((photo: Australian Olympic swimmer Grant Hackett is swamped by presumably caffeinated journalists as he walks through the arrivals hall at Beijing airport to participate in the 2008 Olympic Games August 3, 2008. REUTERS/Tim Wimborne))