Not Prepared?

The 2019 SEA games have kicked off and the netizens (the most important Filipinos) are flooding social media with cases where the committee handling the event has bungled or made mistakes. Photos of unfinished event areas, athletes sleeping in function rooms or squatting on floors to (and this, I think is scraping the bottom of the barrel) eating the same food everyday. So much so that Alan Peter Cayetano has seen a need to address these allegations personally.

It must be said that organizing these type of events are very difficult and one will almost always end up with things like minor over sights, to major hassles. The most important part of every singular issue is that they are addressed! Now, if the Cambodian team is still sleeping on the floor a days after this happened, I'd say that's a major issue. Same goes with the teams from Timor-Leste, Myanmar and our own contingent.

Now, another issue I find in all of this is when news outlets decide to make a mountain out of a molehill. I saw the post of a Thai footballer simply stating that their head decided to buy them a different kind of food as the food that was served to them was repetitive. This wasn't a complaint, as far as I gathered from Google Translate. The way I see it, if I were an athlete and the news outlets saw me waiting for my food, ask me if I was hungry and publish that I was starving due to slow service.

These hiccups are normal for any major event. An amazing events coordinator will make it so that very few of those happen or make it onto Facebook. But our government officials are not trained in handling events. I would say that they should've hired a more competent organizer but I don't think that would've helped either.

Let's take a look at what the committee had to say about the first few incidents where some athletes had to wait in function rooms because their rooms weren't ready. I've been to my own share of hotels and this is NOT UNCOMMON!!! This irked me so much more than it probably should as our family does operate a hotel. Check-in time is typically in the afternoon and these athletes arrived early in the morning. Should they have been given preferential treatment? Maybe, but if all your guests for the SEA Games are VIP, then guess what? No one really is VIP.

This is why when one travels to a place early in the morning, it is expected that you'll have to wait until the afternoon to check-in. Also, these hotels inform their guests (or should, at least) that check-in time is usually around 2 or 3pm. So late check-ins? Not really. The function rooms were just set up to allow the athletes a place to rest while waiting. Considering the number of visitors arriving for the games, I'd venture to say the lobbies were full at this time and the function rooms were the only space decent enough for the hotel staff (yes, not the committee) decided to house their guests pre-check-in.

Just 2 bottles of water? (Gasps in Singaporean!) I seldom attribute to malice or incompetence things that can be more easily explained by ignorance. Hotels, in the Philippines typically include 2 water bottles per day per room (this matches with the story detail I read about) as a complementary thing for their guests. What's complimentary is the bottled water. Also typically free in Philippine Hotels - filtered water. Now, foreign athletes and local housekeeping attendants might lose more in the translation. Typically, the attendants will want to sell their wares and tell these foreigners that they made purchase more bottle water if they wish. Foreign athletes, may also be unaware that (for the most part) filtered water is safe for us to drink here). I'm sure that if I go to another country, I wouldn't know either!

Brought to a wrong hotel? (Gasps in Bahasa!) Looking at how the story went down, it seemed that a team was housed in one hotel while their staff was housed in another. In a less nefarious telling of the story, it could be said that the driver brought said team to their hotel only to find out that some people in his van should've been brought to another hotel. Lack of communication? Of course! Worthy of criticism, yes! Worthy of all the hate they're getting online? No.

Unfinished sporting venues? I see a lot of these but it seems to be a mix of things from journalists taking a photo of the wrong venue (old arena vs new arena) to actual unfinished new arenas which are really trying to beat the clock as far as construction is involved. The committee has stated that all venues do have a back up venue just in case something happens. I'm still in a wait and see mentality right now.

The main issue about the netizens is that they jump on a story without confirming any details or looking deeper into the story. What I like to do is to let a story breathe. Let all the details come out and see from their whether criticism or praise is warranted. But if you have a news outlet that simply wants to push a certain narrative, you're out of luck there.