A TYPICAL WEEKEND - Sunday

Had such a lovely Sunday. Wandered along the South Bank for a while, I really love it there....it doesn't quite compare to the Brisvegas Southbank because there is no artificial pool, but still it's a lovely place to hang out and watch the world go by. I spent 3 and a half years on this boat, the HMS President - it was a little hard to get used to initially (it rocked every time a boat went past !!) but I think it was one of the reasons I fell in love with London.

I then went a met my lovely mate Menko at the Tate Modern for a long lazy Sunday afternoon lunch.

We caught some of the art which I have personally title “Destruction of the Titantic”...not sure what it's real title is !

We got the best seat in the house (mainly due to Menko's eyes!!) and this was our view...right across the Thames to St Pauls...

The London Eye....I can't belive I was actually there when it was being constructed yet I still haven't been on it ! Must do that before the end of the year....

A TYPICAL WEEKEND - Saturday

I quite like London in the early stages of winter....as long as it's not raining...

Went out with some friends on Friday night and therefore did the obligatory hangover brunch the following morning....followed by a brisk stroll through the park...

stopped at the shops on the way home....rosie in milk buying action....

THE LAST DAY….

Ahhh finally, our last day of travelling !!

Had a very strange check in lady who told us that there would be no stewardess, no drinks and no toilet on the plane – “will there be a pilot?” I innocently asked. She didn’t smile. She had an odd accent so I asked her if she was Australian. “No, South African, and if you say otherwise I’ll beat you to death” she replied. She didn’t smile then either.

The smallest plane so far on our 19 seater plane (you can actually see the female pilot at the very front of this picture!!). Badannie isn’t the most confident flyer so luckily she didn’t notice the propellers on the front !!!

As we were checking in our bags – the big porter (below) said to Hugh “you smell real fine” and then asked where he got his aftershave from!!As we were going through security (for the last time!) we asked the Security Man where all the lighters went that they confiscated off people “we give them out to school children” We all looked a bit shocked as he continued “we want them to start fires so that the firemen can all have a job to do !!”. I’m sure he was joking….

“Welcome to Gatwick – it’s -4 degrees” was pretty much the last thing I wanted to hear at 9am in the morning after flying for 9 hours ! After spending the last week or so in 25 degrees in nice Sunny Florida, it was a bit of a shock to the system.

Anyway – it’s quite nice to be back in London and to catch up with some of my mates. I start the edit tomorrow so now it’s just a matter of putting it all together to make a show…..this is where the real fun begins….

My favourite photo from the trip...

And that, is a wrap....

We had a really amazing last day of filming in some beautiful locations....we just wanted to film the friends doing something together that they hadn't done before and this swap boat tour was great to give us some scary shots as well !

Got very up close and personal with some aligators. Hugh was filming one of them as it swam toward the boat - just as it got right near my left elbow it suddenly dived under the water and I screamed very loudly !! We never did see it resurface so not quite sure where it went !?

We took our main interviewee back to her old dance school - she used to be a ballerina so took a moment out to show Hugh and I some moves !

Then it was back to the house for the final (and most important) interview - it went quite well.....B & I were just relaxing before they arrived....

The final interview set up

Feeding the homeless...

I think Hugh was a little jealous of our measure of good faith the other day when we gave apples to homeless men with no teeth so tonight he made sure he made up for it !

We were just waiting outside a hotel when we saw a man very thoroughly going through a bin looking for food....we'd run out of apples (and chocolate) so Hugh kindly handed over cash instead....

Here is a lovely picture of him in action...awwwwww

TODAY'S LIFE LESSON

We had dinner tonight with our main interviewees and their families. It was a lovely evening and I'm quite nervous/excited about our big day of filming tomorrow....fingers crossed it all goes well.

I learnt a very interesting thing tonight....I seriously never knew this (feel free to make fun of me if you all knew this). Americans cut and eat their food in a very very strange way, let me talk you through it

let's use steak as an example

step 1) knife in right hand, fork in left - cut meat
step 2) THE SWITCH - swap utensils
step 3) use fork in right hand to pick up meat

Here is some photos for those of you that didn't manage to keep up....




Is it just me - or is that very odd?

Crazy Americans....

Did some good interviews yesterday - it's always nice when someone says something about the subject matter that I didn't know before I got there ! Both of the guys yesterday were sound bite heaven - just kept coming out with line after line of good quotes....cool

One was a journo with size 17 feet !! (and you thought your feet were big Dunk!!) He was so tall that I had to stand on a box to interview him.

I'm not sure if it's because of the rather strange, small towns we've been travelling to but we have meet some of the weirdest people in the last 10 days.

The prize goes to the late night reception guy here at our last hotel. When we arrived the other morning at about 1am he was acting very oddly. When he realised I was Australian he started reeling off every Australian State and Capital city !!!! And then the national animal, and the prime minister and lots of other info even I didn't know - I figured he must have lived there but no, he just happened to know?

He then asked Hugh if he knew sign language? did some and then told Hugh it meant something, well shall we just say, very suggestive and rather rude!!!

Here is the man himself !!

The Fun Continues....

Yesterday was a very very very long day - about 23 hours to be honest....

* 4am - got up to drive to airport to fly to DC.
* Flight delayed due to broken plane.
* Fixed plane, flew, arrived in DC.
* Drove 1 hour south to Frederick, lovely town.
* Quick hair trim by Badannie to ensure that I look my best for the interview !!
* Did great interview with fascinating woman.
* Grabbed lunch - drove back to airport.
* Fights over excess baggage - what's 15 extra bags between friends i say !
* Credit card gets rejected - they want to take our bags off. we win - run for flight.
get "specially chosen" for security check (AGAIN !!! THE 4TH TIME THIS WEEK!!)
* Waiting to be frisked when i hear a loud "Bang!!" - i look over to see the security lady dropping my laptop, video camera and hotbox - simultaneously !!
* I got to retrieve it and get yelled at by the security guard. luckily nothing was broken.
* get to get only to be told that the 70 seater plane has been replaced by a 50 seater one - is there anyone that would like to volunteer their seat? we are supposed to be interviewing the District Attorney at 9am in the morning. No, not me.
* Badannie argues and pleads and begs - and finally we are allowed to board "we're on, we're on, we're on"....

but where are our 15 bags? did they make it?

oh dear....

back to square one.

xx

My Head Hurts

Oh dear - we finally got a chance to let our hair down last night and oh boy did we ever !! Bad Annie made me drink saki at some Japanese restaurant and then Bad Hugh made me drink Martinis at this very cool bar in Tampa….we all had a bit of a boogie and lots of laughs….cool.

It's so nice to be able to sleep in one city for two nights in a row, often a rarity when on the road. We've done so much travelling in the past week - here's the amount of gear we have to lug around.....(well Hugh does most of the lugging !!) ; one of our many airport transfers and a view from the sky !

Part of the excitement is checking out all these really weird towns that I would never have had the opportunity to come to before. To be honest - I'll be glad to never go to most of them ever again but Salt Lake City was really cool....i met some really amazing people there and had a great time.

Why oh Why?

Today was hard. Interviewed parents of a murder victim. Sat during the interview and just wondered why ?! why would they want to take part in this programme after mourning their child for nearly 30 years? what do they get out of it? they talked about their grief as if it were yesterday, what right do I have to bring all that up again? Was a very difficult time....just hope I can make a show that somehow justifies their pain...

Aussie Invasion

Forgot to mention - have had really weird encounters with some Aussies over here.

I asked a girl for directions in the Target in Washington the other day and noticed she had a really odd accent...turned out she was not only from Australia, but from Brisbane and went to Wavel High. She met some American Navy guy at City Rowers one night 5 years ago, married him and now lives in the States - freaky !!!

Alligators and Bears....

I love Florida. It reminds me alot of Brisbane, not sure if that's just because both of them are hot and sunny and are called the Sunshine State? Hmmm, maybe....anyway - did an interview today in this really cool location - we were trying to be a bit arty farty so hung out at this swamp all day.....check out the local habitat !!!

The City of Salt Lake

Here I am trying to look important with some exciting camera gear that we got to play with...

These are the two actors in one of the reconstructions we were filming.....loving the mountains in the back drop....
This is the three of us doing a location recce at this cool building in Salt Lake City, Utah - we were working really hard, honest.

We've had a really funny time here and have met some, shall we say, very special people ! My favourite was the homeless man that I met yesterday. He was waiting at the lights with a sign that read "Hungry & Homeless - want anything" so i thought i would up his nutrional input for the day and handed him a bag of apples "thanks" he replied, crestfallen, "if only I had some teeth to chew them with i'd be grateful!!!". I gave him a kit kat instead and he was very happy with that...no wonder he has no teeth....

We flew from Salt Lake to Atlanta last night and as we boarded the steward said to Hugh "have you just flown from Holland?" (Hugh doesn't look nor sound Dutch) "errr no mate I haven't" he replied "why do you ask?". The man pointed to his "Von Dutch" tshirt and stated that he couldn't understand what language we were speaking !! You've got to love Americans...

Anyway - I'm off to bed - will update you on the Florida leg of the trip asap....

xx

Women at work

Thought it might be easier to let you all know what i've been doing if I just showed you in photos ! So here we go - number one is Badannie and I with our monster truck. I haven't been able to drive it as my driving license is somewhere in a Plymouth Court.....oh well...

This is what Salt Lake City looks like from the air - look closely at the picture on the wing of the plane !

The U. S. of A.

Well well well, here I am in the good old U S of A. So much has gone wrong already, I'm not quite sure where to start....let's see...

1) the car that was bringing the camera gear to the aiport broke down & arrived 50 minutes late 2) ran to the check in and the stupid woman wouldn't let us take the very expensive video camera on board (but relented after a few heated debates)
3) we just made the gate withh about 1 minute to spare only to hear that the flight had been delayed !!!!
5) got to car hire and they had booked us asmall sedan (with 15 pieces of luggage?!) but luckily we ended up with lovely huge american thing with sat nav - brilliant !!
6) because we arrived into DC, we ended up sitting in peak hour traffic for hours (not that fun after our long flight...)
7) then realised (after being up for nearly 24 hours) that we had lights, but no light stands !
8) was awoken at 5am yesterday morning by very loud country music after having had a dream about a mate of mine being attacked by a wolf and I had to save her...maybe it's symbolic somehow?!
9) the first interview was with an ex FBI profiler and really fascinating but because the light stands arrived half way through, I had to cut the interview short because we had another flight to catch
10) we missed the flight (of course) so had to stay in DC for another night and get up at 4am to make the next flight to Salt Lake City in Utah

So overall not a good start, but let's face it, things can only get better...i hope

xxx

ps - I've just bought a new digital camera so next time I will upload some photos for you...