Battle and Television

They say that, "Battle is long periods of boredom punctuated by short bursts of terror." Well, television is like that, too.

After 5 days of everything going relatively smoothly all hell broke loose on Friday night, right before we started taping on Saturday morning. A glitch developed in my program that was throwing a white raster flash on the screen every time a question was displayed, and it needed to be fixed and proven before we could start taping, but I couldn't get to work on that because I was also needed to record student intros, a mind-numbing process that required me to click a button once every 2 or 3 minutes. Unfortunately it was once every 2 or 3 minutes for over 3 hours. When we stopped at 8:30pm I had a quick dinner and then finally got working on my fix. I worked on that until after 1am and then I still had 90 minutes more work to get the questions for the first day into my computer for taping. This night was a flashback to year one of the show, probably the worst 2 weeks of my life. I stumbled to bed after 2:30am and set my alarm for 4 hours later. I was due on the set by 7am.

My late-night fix worked perfectly the next day, and we taped our first 4 shows without hardly any problems. My biggest challenge was staying awake and alert the whole time. After finishing only 15 minutes late for the day, I had another 3 hours of boring student intros to tape.

Now it is Sunday evening here and we've just finished day 2 of taping and got another 4 shows recorded without any troubles. Once again I am in the middle of another 3 hours of student intros, but this time, for the first time in 3 days I have my computer back and I am able to check emails and post to my blogs again.

We have 3 more days of player intros to tape after this, and 6 more days of taping 4 shows a day before I get to go home again. We're barely a quarter of the way through, but I feel like I might be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe that's just the muzzle flash of the cannon.

The pictures above show how the signal from my computer is fed into Helge's switcher where it is composited with many other layers and signals into the polished video package that will play on TV.

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.

Morning Hijinx

Here in Kampala it rains nearly everyday, not that I ever see any of it. I've been in the hotel for 3 days now and only been in the open air once, but it rains whether I'm there to see it or not.

I was reminded of that this morning. I was enjoying breakfast at a table near the window to the outside patio when I heard a torrent of water pour down. The tables on the patio sit under the cover of a giant canopy and the canvas was sagging under the weight of all the captured rain-water from the previous night. One of the hotel workers had gone out with a broom to poke at the canvas from underneath and allow the water to pour off the edge. Peter, the 6-foot-tall leader of our Dutch production crew was outside enjoying a smoke and decided to use his height to help out. As he tugged on the edge of the canvas to stretch it out and release the water he was pushed under the cascade by one of his coworkers and drenched. A wrestling match between the two resulted in Peter getting his revenge on Remie.

The Eagle Has Landed

At 5:30 Monday evening my luggage finally arrived, 30 hours after I did.

It turns out that I didn't need to travel to the airport and back to get it. I don't know who was paid or how much, but I'm grateful that it's done.

After taking 5 minutes to unpack, I applied a liberal layer of deoderant and changed into my sneakers. True happiness lies in the small details.

Day 1 In Uganda

After 3 flights and over 32 hours of travel I arrived at the Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala at 11AM on Sunday. Unfortunately, my suitcase didn't make it with me.

We had a very short 1 hour 15 minute connection in Nairobi and we had been unable to check our bags all the way through to Entebbe, so we were faced with the prospect of having to wait in line to clear customs in Nairobi, then pick up our luggage at the baggage claim and re-enter the airport to check them back in with Kenya Airway; In short, an impossible task. Enter Kalpesh, our man on the ground at Jomo Kenyatta airport. Lillian had contacted him to meet at as we deplaned and he had already checked us in for the Kenya Air flight and had our boarding passes in hand. He directed us to the Kenya Air desk inside the terminal for help in getting our bags without exiting the terminal. Tom Cunningham went with the KQ rep to pick our bags off the carousel and have them re-directed onto our next flight, but he didn't pick my suitcase. Then, after he let Lillian know my bag didn't make it, she contacted Kalpesh to get my bag on the next flight. Unfortunately, his directions for me to file a lost baggage claim when I arrived in Entebbe never got to me, so now my bag has made it to Uganda, but we can't get it out of the airport. Today, Monday, I will need to ride 1 hour back to the airport to claim my bag personally. A total waste of about 4 hours of my time, I figure. Meanwhile, although I was able to shower and change into the extra clothes I packed in my carry-on, I haven't shaved for about 50 hours, I brushed my hair with my fingers, and without deoderant I run the risk of fitting right in, odor-wise, with the locals by this afternoon.

The rooms here at the Imperial Royale are absolutely huge. I don't know if you can tell from the picture the amout of open floor space in the middle of the room. There is a nice little sitting-area (that I will never use) and a 40 inch LCD TV hanging on the wall opposite the bed, about 20 feet away. Unfortunately, the remote control doesn't work, so I have to get out of bed and walk across the room to turn it on or browse the channels.

The bathroom is also big, over 350 square feet, with dual sinks and a shower stall that is about 3 X 6. The king-size bed has a nice comforter and 6 pillows, which sounds nice. Unfortunately, the pillows and the linens stink of cigarette smoke so badly that I couldn't fall asleep, and the mattress is a wooden plank rapped in stiff foam sitting on another wooden board. You don't realize how much of the softness of a bed comes from the foundation support until you sleep on a hard mattress on a wooden board.

I worked until after 11 last night, a 12 hour day after all my travels, but the room didn't prove too restful and I was awake at 4:30AM. Time to get back to work now.

This All Looks So Familiar

4 in the afternoon here in London where I sit again at Virgin Atlantic's Heathrow Clubhouse after an uneventful flight last night from Los Angeles. The Ambien worked as advertised and I got 6 1/2 hours of sleep on the flight, and then finally enjoyed the movie Wall-E while I ate breakfast over the Eastern Atlantic. Courtney Love was on our flight. She was in line behind me for the bathroom at the end of the flight when I was changing out of my VA Pyjamas, but I didn't talk with her. Some of the other guys in our group talked with her during the flight and said she's very nice, if a little chatty.

It's 8 in the morning back home, and hopefully the rain has passed and Marion and the boys will have a fun day today. If I were there I would head down to the beach and walk from San Jon Road to the river and back. Marion, Brodie and Nik, you should totally do that!

Soup seems to be my meal of choice whilst travelling, so I've just ordered a bowl of the very delicious Scotch Broth that I had a few weeks ago when I was here. I'll be avoiding alcohol for the rest of my journey until my return, so Coke Light is good enough for me.

Next stop, Nairobi, where we have a short 1 1/2 hour connection to make our flight to Entebbe. Virgin can't do anything to check our bags through to Entebbe, so we will somehow have to clear customs, collect our bags and then check them back in to the Kenya Airways flight in that short amount of time. It may not be possible. I'll let you all know what happens . . . .

Here We Go Again

It's less than 2 weeks since I've returned from my whirl-wind tour of Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria, and now here I find myself again at the Air New Zealand Lounge at LAX waiting to board a flight to Africa. It seems that I've only just got over my jet-lag and started to feel normal again, and now in the next 24 hours I will travel half-way around the planet again, far from those I love and miss.

This trip will be almost 3 weeks, but I will spend all of my time at the Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala, Uganda. Work has already begun there building our set in their grand ballroom, and for the next 3 weeks I will be working along with a team of about 100 people to tape season 3 of the Zain Africa Challenge.

My biggest regret as I leave is that I was within one day of completing the luxury tree-fort in my backyard for Brodie and Nik, but it has rained steadily for the last 2 days in Ventura, so I am forced to leave the job undone. All that remains is to finish the stairs that lead up to the deck 9 feet above the ground in our 45 year old plum tree.

Oh, well. Something to look forward to when I return on February 25th.