Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hotel experiences | Hacker News Reader

Journalists at Sochi are live-tweeting their hotel experiences

washingtonpost.com

93 pointsdanso50 comments

For someone who grew up in Russia this doesn't come as a surprise at all. This is how it is when the whole world is watching, one can only imagine what everyday life is like in Russia. I remember the stories of how back in the 1980 Olympics the, normally completely empty, grocery stores in Moscow were all of a sudden filled with 'luxury' food items imported from Finland to show the rest of the world how great the country was. Meanwhile Moscow was a complete lockdown and nobody could get in or out of the city. Deja vu all over again ;)

Can you confirm whether the russian in the "please don't flush toilet paper" is correctly translated?

Seems to be more likely that they actually mean "paper" or "paper towels" not "toilet paper".

It is quite common to not want anything but toilet paper flushed so I'm wondering if that is what the sign actually is meaning to say.

There are plenty of places around the world that have septic systems not designed to handle toilet paper. The sign is probably accurate.

Having recently traveled abroad, I can confirm that a lot of hotels in areas with bad septic won't even let you flush toilet paper.

Just went back to read it again. I must say it is quiet confusing, it says literally 'please don't throw paper in the toilet'. It doesn't specify what paper so it could be interpreted differently indeed.

In russian it simple "paper", not "toilet paper" [1]

[1] http://translate.google.com/#ru/en/%D0%A3%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%B4%....

it is toilet paper for certain. source: russian speaker.

No, it isn't. Sign says only "paper". It isn't clear what they mean, can be interpreted differently.

They mean any paper, including toilet paper. This warning is common in Russia, don't ask why.

Part of traveling is groking the local terminology for things. In Atlanta, soda is "coke". Ohio, "pop". New York "soda".

It says "Please don't flush paper". Not toilet paper, not paper towels - just paper.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070604222148AA...

It does say "paper", not "toilet paper" in Russian, but most certainly they do mean toilet paper.

Bins for toilet paper used to be quite common in old buildings with bad plumbing. Also, historically, toilet paper used to be in great deficit in USSR, so torn newspapers were used for that purpose instead, causing all kind of clogs.

That is actually quite common in Russia and not necessarily Sochi-specific. The sewage system is in consistent state of mild disrepair, and it's common for bathrooms in hotels, conference centers and restaurants to have foul-smelling bins for used toilet paper.

Every single olympics, there is dire warnings before hand, things will not be ready. There are guaranteed huge traffic problems, not enough volunteers or infrastructure.

Then as soon as it starts, all is forgotten, it is a wonderful time, the best Olympics ever, greatest world records broken, the best Olympians ever.

You hear the run up of 'they aren't going to be ready', but you don't hear it days before the Olympics. In Whistler/Vancouver, our housing was completed months before. You didn't have incomplete buildings or event venues leading up to the day. Some of the venues may have cut it close (I don't really remember), but still, I don't think anything was left to a few days before.

I really don't care about the journalists though. I'm more concerned about the athletes and the venues, particularly for their safety in many of these sports where (by the sounds of things) the competition will be essentially a 'trial run' of the venue. In Whistler, our Bobsled and Nordic Ski venues all hosted warm-up test events before the Olympics.

The venue issue is already present: http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-02-03/why-extreme-nature-soc... .

The main issue illustrated by this story is that the warm weather in Sochi is causing many of the venues to be built sloppily or incorrectly. In this case the slopestyle venue was difficult to build because of poor snow quality and the jumps are all massively overbuilt to try to compensate for high expected melting rates over the coming week.

OT, but damn, that is a very well designed website. And it's just a single dev, from their info page. Very impressive.

Not so sure about that.

http://www.palantir.net/experience/public-radio-internationa...

We had similar concerns in Whistler regarding the Women's Downhill Ski Coarse in particular. That isn't what I meant when about being concerned about safety. This sounds to me like a very challenging course, that doesn't mean it is unsafe. Women on the downhill in Whistler were complaining that the course was too difficult. Olympic organizes also voiced concerns, but realistically, that's just how we do it in Whistler, maybe Sochi is a bit of the same.

When I am concerned about safety, I do mean safety of the athletes, but I don't mean jumps being too big. I'm more concerned about poor fencing, inconsistent terrain, etc. A pedestrian pathway fell down just before the Commonwealth Games in India a few years ago. Those are the types of safety concerns I was worried about.

As far as 'big jumps' go, I figure, if you're a professional athlete and your sport involves jumps, you need to know what speed you can safely take those jumps at.

Contrast that to the tragic Skeleton accident on the first day of the Whistler Olympics. Everybody had said how challenging the track was, but nobody imagined anybody would fly off the track and hit a pole. The challenging track is acceptable, the pole is absolutely not. There was nothing the athlete could have done to protect himself once he came off the course.

I don't know that the snowboard cross comparisons is that kind of dangerous.

Point taken about challenging courses, Whistler, and Sochi. The bike park at Whistler is a pleasure every time and still the best in the world IMO, in no small part because Whistler aren't afraid to build big features.

I certainly don't think that the snowboard cross course as reported so far is dangerous in a deadly way like an alpine course with flawed fencing design or a skeleton or bobsled course with solid obstacles in proximity, but the reasons that the snowboard cross course are bad are still very worrying.

Based on what athletes said for example here: http://www.ctvnews.ca/sochi/safety-concerns-over-sochi-slope... , the snowboard cross isn't huge because the builders wanted to go big by design, but rather to anticipate extreme melting activity. And, like the Whistler courses, the slopestyle course was supposed to have been tested a year ago but was unable to be constructed due to a lack of snow.

I certainly don't think it's a good sign.

This one's a little different. Yeah every Olympics has this fear-mongering, but we're three days, not months (as is typically the case), from opening ceremonies. There was talk today that some event venues aren't even set up, when the games begin in 2 days.

This was two weeks out from the last Commonwealth Games. Familiar story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11379020

Or this one: http://www.smh.com.au/commonwealth-games-2010/comm-games-new... (although that was during the games fixing damage from the Opening Ceremony)

Sorry, those are a little off my radar :) Was just referring to Olympics.

What's more frustrating than your government overspending money on corrupt construction? Not even getting what you paid for. Construction and preparation costs were in the billions. Much of the money was given to Putin's associates and, in return, the people get this trash.

Same goes for Obama with Healthcare.gov. We spent all that money and got garbage in return.

Well, healthcare.org was an incompetent contractor. It wasn't corrupt.

By definition it's corruption. This is hundreds of millions of dollars here, either nobody did the due diligence, the procurement committee (or however they chose it) was mislead, or the contractor was chosen for other reasons than their competency. Pick your poison, but it's all corrupt.

Edit: it's late and what is grammar

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

How does an incompetent contractor win a contract without some corruption?

Bureaucracy of an archaic system.

By bidding the lowest

It was grossly negligent at best.

The lack of contractural provisions requiring the contractors perform to get paid displays a level of incompetence that suggests corruption.

The real issue was probably an insane deadline that required a "fast" procurement vehicle. I consider that systemically corruption.

What was so insane about the deadline? The site was mostly fixed in a couple of months and that included time to find someone to fix the site and dig through all the toxic code that was already written.

With the level of incompetence that was shown in the site, it's extremely unlikely the original contractor just needed a couple more months to get the project finished.

The deadline was more than realistic. There was plenty of time to create something useful, they were just too incompetent to do so.

Wait, it's "extremely unlikely" that the original contractor needed a "couple of months" and yet you state that the deadline was not insane because it was fixed in a "couple of months"?

Most of the actual repair to the site was done by the contractors in question, the "IT surge" team that was brought in were mostly for quarterbacking what needed to be done.

Would CGI Federal and the other contractors got it working with a bit more time? Maybe not, but I don't quite get how you can present such sweeping assumptions as fact.

The site was riddled with so many issues and "simple pickups", like 404 pages, that I had no confidence in that management team to finish the project within a couple of months. However, a new management team quickly showed that the problems were fixable by a competent team. I believe the timeline was reasonable for a well managed team.

I have a lot of experience in government, so I have a little perspective on this.

Just like if you hire a guy to remodel your bathroom, you get exactly what you ask for. If you tell the contractor "I need a toilet", you will get the cheapest possible toilet available.

Likewise, if you are contracting with a big vendor to deliver an IT project, they will do as much or as little as you require them to do. The government did not build in the gates/controls into the process that they should have, which is incompetence -- particularly with a service that is citizen-facing and critical to both the end-users and the government.

I mean, I don't really disagree, per se, but the inequities perpetuated on a daily basis across all levels of the United States government are vast and diverse. This really ain't one of the worst ones.

So corrupt contractors (a) pocket the money, (b) under-deliver the results. What do incompetent ones do?

American bureaucracy doesn't have the ability to deliver state level websites/applications. It will take several iterations for such a huge federal website with so many competing interests to take shape. /naive but hopeful

This seems way different than the usual "everything is going to be terrible" months out stuff we usually see. This is "the games start tomorrow and the HOTELS aren't actually finished".

As of "do not flush toilet paper", I have seen such signs in many places around the world (but I don't know reasons behind it), and it isn't only my experience [1]. It's intresting that it was a new for journalist who travels a lot.

[1] http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/20967/how-to-deal-...

Yeah, I know this is disappointing for a global sporting event, but I'm surprised experienced journos have not experienced stuff like this in other developing countries (e.g. India).

Most of the journalists that I've been seeing this stuff from are sports journalists. Very heavily biased towards the United States and Canada.

I knew corruption surrounding the games was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. What happens if they're not prepared? Do they just go "Sorry, no xyz sport because the venue isn't ready"?

Hopefully, all the olympic venues are ready.

Still, underdelivery and enormous costs of these olympics (~$20-50bn figures depending on what to include in olympic costs) are horrifying for us Russians even more than yellow rusty water is for europeans and americans.

If past experience is any indicator, whatever is built for the Games will decay and rot within months after the event.

In France, since the Albertville olympic games (1992), the local ski venues are much more accessible (thanks to tunnels), and you still can use the bobsleigh track. So it really depends if the infrastructures were thought only for the olympic games or with a broader view.

I haven't been to Russia since the 90s, but this sounds pretty par for the course for back then: undrinkable water, crumbling new construction, Stray dogs,etc. I'm a bit surprised it's still that bad. It's a shame since it's a beautiful country with some really warm people.

Also, really surprised seasoned journalists have never been to a country where you can't flush the toilet paper?

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