Whatever your opinions on Beijing's eligibility to host this event or the value of sport itself - today is pretty momentous. In a little under 6 hours' time it's reckoned that two-thirds of the entire human family will turn their heads this way.
I'll likely be at Chaoyang Park South Gate, one of the umpteen "live sites" broadcasting an opening ceremony that promises to astound everybody. It's being directed by Zhang Yimou, once criticised and censored by the government for slamming the Cultural Revolution, now embraced and celebrated for his colourful and "apolitical" epics - a label he claims for himself despite having joined the CPPCC.
Of course everything is politics. The banners are everywhere; support for the Olympics is quite explicitly linked with love for a "united China" and for "scientific and harmonious development", the line oft repeated by Hu Jintao, keen to make a natty catchphrase his legacy.
But tonight I will stand in a smiling crowd of Beijingers and feel happy for them. The vast majority will be good people, to whom too many of us attribute the sins of the few.
In other news: I cooked my first omelette and my fish perished. The two are unrelated.
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