As I prepare to head to my third Winter Olympics in just a few months, another piece of the puzzle finally fell in to place last week and another piece that emerged a few weeks back, got closer to being put in place.
The thing that has been the biggest problem for me when it comes to Beijing 2022 has been getting my accommodation funds to the right people. When I got the first invoice, I went to my bank to make a wire transfer, only to find out that my bank did not do transfers in Chinese currency, which was a requirement of the Beijing Organizing Committee. So, I had to set up an account at another bank and quickly made the wire transfer. Of course, it wasn't that easy, as the first transfer didn't go through because of an error somewhere in the paperwork. On the second try, we got it through, but the "purpose code" required for China was not correct and that correction had to be made.
Thanks to the wonderful work of Melissa at the Wolfeboro branch of Citizen's Bank, that issue was corrected and with all the correct information we needed, the hope was that the second payment for my accommodations, due at the beginning of this month, would be easier, since we could just copy the paperwork and change the amount of money.
Of course, it was not that easy. Melissa once again got the paperwork off to Beijing, but I received an e-mail a few days later saying that the "purpose code" was wrong. I communicated with the BOCOG representative, sending a photo of the wire transfer with the proper code, but he sent me an e-mail with a picture from his end with a different code. Thanks to Melissa and the Citizen's Bank team, the code was eventually changed and I got confirmation last week that my second payment had been accepted and my accommodation was secure. Without a question, this was the most difficult of the wire transfer situations I have encountered in my four pre-Olympics preparation periods.
The other issue popped up a week and a half ago when the media had an online meeting with the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing Organizing Committee to discuss the playbooks that were issued outlining what is required of the press leading up to and during the Winter Olympics. One of the things that was mentioned was that the press needed to use something called "temporary flights" to get in and out of Beijing.
Since I had already purchased my airline tickets on traditional commercial flights, I was a bit concerned as to what was going to happen, hoping I wouldn't have to rebook everything at a significant cost. Beijing did provide us with a list of airlines that were able to fly the temporary flights and the airline that I had booked my flights on, Cathay Pacific, was one of those airlines. Beijing also gave us contact information for the airline and I sent an e-mail with a query regarding my situation.
Cathay Pacific was incredibly prompt in their first response, with the woman saying they had a whole team assembled to work on the Olympic issues. Not long after the original e-mail, I had a message from one of those team members saying they had found my flights and were working on trying to rebook me on to the temporary flights from Hong Kong (my original flights went through there) to Beijing and back. I must say, after my fun dealings with Air Canada on the way home from Tokyo, it was refreshing to have consistent communication regarding my situation. While nothing is official, it seems the issue is being worked on and for that, I am thankful.
The temporary flight thing still had me confused, so I did a little research. As it turns out, Beijing is working on getting all Olympic family members (press, coaches, athletes, judges, etc.) into the country on flights together, limiting their exposure to other people outside the Olympic family. Once in China, we will be in a closed-loop system, which means we won't have interaction with people outside of the loop in an effort to control COVID outbreaks. The bones of this system is similar to what we did in Tokyo over the summer, but seemingly a bit more controlled.
That being said, things are slowly moving forward. The next step would be to figure out how to get approved COVID tests. That's also proving to be interesting.
This photo, taken from Olympics.com, shows the first snow that has fallen on the mountains outside Beijing. This area is the biathlon center.
