Thursday, August 14, 2008

08/14/08

Oh joyous rain! It sucks bad if you're out at an event and it rains... but it makes the temperature soooooo nice and cool.

Deadlines here are weird - have I talked about that yet? Let's say it's Tuesday, August 12, 2008 here in China. I have until roughly 12:00 p.m. to be able to make deadline in the States for the night of Monday, August 11, 2008 (that'd be 9 p.m. there). So that means I can photograph an event on Tuesday morning in China and still make it into Tuesday paper in America! Sometimes it makes my head hurt.

I actually got back to the room and there was still light outside... that's a first, but I still had to do another assignment. Headed over to men's water polo this morning. USA versus Serbia. They lost 4-2. If I had to pick a sport that I would least like to try, it would 100% be water polo. First I'd have to wear a speedo, yes not a pretty picture. Second, I don't like water, don't get me wrong, I have a huge amount of respect for water, so much so that I like to stay out of it. I did a report on water currents in fifth or sixth grade and the picture I drew to go along with it had some dude getting sucked out to sea to his untimely end. (I can sort of swim/float if I have too) And thirdly I'd get claustrophobic - those dudes are always up in each others faces.

During water polo I got a text from Rachel that one of our columnists (Ann Killion) was writing about Table Tennis - so I headed straight there - well, you can't go straight there unless you take a taxi - so I headed back to the MPC via bus and then caught the MB14 bus over to the table tennis venue. According to the media guide it's a new building at the Peking University. I totally passed out on the bus ride there and the nice volunteer had to wake me up to tell me we were there. When I awoke it was raining pretty good too.

At table tennis I saw Jack Gruber (USA Today) and Michael Macor (SF Chronicle) - we were the only US papers there and I realized that we were all from the Bay Area! Weird. On the floor of the venue are eight table tennis tables and the spectators are elevated - take a look: http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2008/08/tabletennis.mov

The US Women's team was playing Nigeria, so we all shot them. Next door was Men's table tennis with Korea taking on Taiwan. Let me tell you it was like a whole different sport between those two tables. I shot some miscellaneous rain features on the way back and when I got back found out that they might be able to use them.

oh and while I was at table tennis I got another message letting me know that of our other columnist Mark Purdy is writing a story about sports bars in Beijing so I went over there tonight. That's why there was daylight when I got back to the room - had to drop off all my gear and grab a taxi from here. I think both ways the taxi drivers kinda took the loooong way. Even though I had a map and an address the dude had no idea where he was going - he drove for like five minutes before calling the bar to find out how to get there - shouldn't he have done that before he started driving?

The bar is in this totally crazy superduper mall with a gazillion boutique shops. If you've ever been to Santana Row in San Jose, it's a new mall that's made to look like some Europeanish place with high-end shops - well that was this place times 10.

Well gotta get up early tomorrow to check out New Zealand Women's bball cause there are some local Stanford players on there...

Oh photojohn, I put up a picture of the MPC at the bottom of this post - the MPC is on the right, the IBC (international broadcast center) is on the left... I'll eventually get around to posting more behind the scenes types of stuff...






1 comment:

80s90s said...

Dood, take some pics of the gestapo security guards for me.