Ready For Rehearsals

It's Thursday evening here, and we're finally getting everything locked-in, just in time for rehearsals to start on the set tomorrow. We start taping shows on Saturday, so Friday is our only day to get it all together.

Here you see Helge, our technical director from Germany hashing out last-minute details with Peter and the crew from Focus in the Netherlands.

Our set has been painted in the new colors from the palette of Zain, the sponsor. The lights are being set and programmed, and here in the control room the cameras have been tuned and synchronized. After doing three days of run-thrus with the host of the show, my program is thoroughly tested and I feel ready to go. The questions for the 1st day's taping are ready, and the questions for the 2nd day are in their final stages. The hope, by the time we start taping on Saturday is to be 3 days ahead in preparing the questions for TV.

On the set we have this marvelous rear-projection big-screen with an image so crisp and sharp it looks like it was painted on. The secret to the incredible image is the projector, which features a 12,000 Watt bulb. It's so powerful, I'm surprised it doesn't melt the screen. As expensive as this projector must be, we can't afford to be without it for the show, so we have a back-up ready to go.

Tonight I enjoyed dinner with our director, Dennis, our show's host, John, and Richard, the executive producer. We spent a leisurely 90 minutes at dinner being educated by John Sibi-Okumu on the finer points of the game of cricket. Walimu (teacher, in Swahili) demonstrated his deliberate teaching style in a lesson that lasted nearly as long as a cricket match, but was definitely more entertaining.