How i became a Games Maker - Part 3

Here comes Summer 2011, and i 'm seriously thinking of moving back to Paris for the usual boy reasons. My brain is going along the lines of " After all, London is 2h25 minutes away from Paris, if i'm taken i can easily come back for the Olympics and stay at a friend. Ok it won t be the same thing, but i need to get my priorities straight!"


Well life being what it is, come autumn, my lovely Paris plans are dashed and after a bit of moping around as is required, my single self finds solace in the fact that i will be in London whatever happens in 2012 and even if i don't get the volunteering job, i can still be part of the whole show by simply being here and that's pretty cool. i unfortunately didn t get lucky with tickets but i can work around that.


October comes and goes, no news, i keep my hopes up ( after a year of waiting what is a couple more months??) and in November go on wonderful sunny holidays for Sophie and Laurent wedding, in La Reunion ( get a map people, it s a beautiful place). I come back via Paris, and well it's grey and the post holidays blues kick in...just as i finish complaining to my friend Sonia and am on the RER (not the best public transport experience) i get the following email :

And yes i admit, i started crying in the train, one of those tears and smile combination that are not the most attractive but i couldn't care less. Lovely Perrine who saw me just after probably thought her friend had just gone mental....!! My little dream is coming true. Let's face it people, we all have childhood dreams, but most of them either don t survive your 20s or  they live on unfullfilled...Not this one, baby, not this one, this girl is getting her wish.


So now i know i'm in!! 


Next chapter is the first training!!...and i won't write in pink.

How I became a Games Maker - Part 2

Nine months after the formfillingfun, i get an email to say that i've been selected for an interview at the Excel in East London for an "NOC/NPC" role, scheduled on Friday, June 10th!!

Yeahhhh, happy me, but what in heavens is NOC/NPC? A little help from the best assistant ever, Google, doesn't turn up much more than "you'll be working with the Olympic Delegations"...duh.

Now in the meantime, I've learnt that there were 250 000 applicants to be a volunteer, so on e the one side i'm reassured to understand i'm not the only nut out in the world but it also means that well, i actually need to take this interview seriously if i want to get a chance to go through. More help from Google tells me about previous interviewees experiences. So it's a CBI type of interview (competency based interview), which means you're expected to answers questions like " Give me an example where you managed a team" or "tell me about a crisis situation you were involved in". Answers are supposed to be quite formatted, so i prepared as best i can.

And go in for the first "real" interview in my lifetime. Lucky me, the 2 past months at work have been challenging to say the least, so i've got plenty of concrete examples of "where i failed at communicating adequately" or "bringing people together around a situation".

I get to Excel promptly and after registering, spend my time looking at the other members of my batch of contenders. To my happy surprise, it seems a good selection of people, ranging in age from 25 to 65, as many guys and girls and obviously foreign people like myself, which is cool as it gives the group an interesting dynamic.

We first get to meet some members of the "NOC/NPC Services and Relations team"...I'm quite sure i spoke to Barbara, now my official boss and they gives us an overview of the role. This is when i start thinking I'm the luckiest person in the world  : I'm part of the group of 5500 people they are interviewing specifically for working with the Athletes and their delegation members...basically being the "hands on support" from them before and during the Games............

So so cool. Honestly i wouldn't have minded cleaning the toilets or handing out leaflets, as long as i was a part of the whole thing, but to discover this is like biting into a delicious chocolate cake and finding out the middle is made of melting caramel. You can t believe it and as the same time you already want to eat the whole cake.

In with the interview, 30 min, super well organised and formatted but it stills leaves space for personal conversations, the interviewer is good, not too pushy but keeps you moving. Shane, my roommate has said that some of y answers are so textbook, it's like i m a walking cliche, but hey, it went well!

So what if my favourite part of the Olympics is the opening ceremony, because that is when the spirit of the Games really come alive? ;-)

It's over faster than you can blink, and i find myself outside positively buzzing...i was on a natural high for about 24hours after it, feeling a bit ridiculous and happy at the same time.

Now the second wait starts....i won't hear from them til October at the earliest.

How i became a Games' Maker - Part 1

Ok, we've established my obsession with the Olympics.


When i moved to London in April 2009, i moved for work reasons and because i needed a change of air.I had in the back of my mind that i would be in the city for the Olympics but that seemed so far away...then it started hitting the news here and suddenly it hit me. So in August 2010, i did some Google research on how to become a "volunteer". It turned out the deadline was mid-September.

So one evening in September, when days were getting shorter, i settled comfortably in bed and started the process, which involves the usual "create a profile and password...which i'm always forgetting) and then a gruelling form asking me everything from the name of my grandmother to my shoe size. I'm a girl who has never had to interview formally for a job or anything ( im well aware of how lucky i am), so you can imagine i was thinking this was a bit OTT ( over the top), but i hung on, typed things in, erased, started again, only to stay with my original answer....then pressed the "Submit " button and o joy and miracle got an email saying that i had applied successfully...blablablabla...and learned that they would start interviewing in about 6 months (looooooong time.).

Now as i was applying, the form explained to me that there were 3 kinds of volunteers : general, medical and press. I have no medical knowledge but i do PR for a living so i thought "ahaa! they'll probably put me in that bucket"...It turns out they haven't and i can't help thinking that it's because one of the major competitors of my company is sponsoring the Games and well, maybe they didn't want to run the risk of me saying "bad" things about them. I wouldn't have ( i think!!) but it would have been a little weird.

Anyway, moving forward, winter 2010 comes along and while i'm getting plenty of emails from London 2012 to "sign up to this or that" and "buy this or that, it s got a logo on it and it squeeks", i'm not really getting any guidance on whether i'm in or out.

More in the next post, if you're interested.

First Post!

I thought i would begin by giving a bit of context and background behind my little adventure. For those who know me well, you'll know I've been obsessed by the Olympics Games for years and let us be clear: I'm not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination nor do i follow sports beyond the general headlines....I just get really emotional and passionate when i think about the Olympics because they are in my mind the only thing on earth and probably in our entire history that really federates people and brings them together...





It's not art, money, philosophy or religion that does this, and while that might be a sad, at least sports does allow us for 2 weeks every 4 years, to take a breather from all the problems and simply enjoy healthy human competition. The Ancient Greeks actually had runners go from warring city to warring city to declare the sacred Olympic truce and everybody actually dropped theirs arms, trooped off to Olympia to watch the naked guys run in mud, fight and throw sticks and other things.  






So yes, many of you make fun of my slight obsession, citing facts like the Games are just as politicized or commercial as any else, from the Black Power statements to major sponsors, and yet, i've yet to find somebody who is reluctant to watch the Opening Ceremony and does not recognized the Games are centered on human physical performance. I actually think it's because we are evaluating what makes us animals like the rest of the planet inhabitants that the Games are such a success. Arguable i'm sure.


woo, first post done... promise i 'll get better pics next time.