Recently, other people's blog has been indirectly affecting me.

Take for example Sasha Bashir's blog. I saw a picture of my tripod in her blog posting. That made me laugh.

A few weeks ago, Fadli SMS me before we left for Tawau. He wanted to borrow my tripod as he was leaving for South Africa right after Tawau. So I brought along my old tripod. One of it's foot was broken but other than that... it was prefectly usable. The head was a little dodgy already. You couldn't pan on it. The tilt was barely usable. It was mostly good for static shots or timelapse shots Fadli liked to use.

A week later Fadli came back and showed me my tripod. It came back in two pieces. The tripod head had seperated from the body. The treads from the screws holding it together was shorn of. It looked like it was ripped from the socket. My first reaction was like "What the f*#k?!" Fadli said when he got to South Africa and opened the tripod bag, it came apart. The strange thing is, it's not easy to take it apart. It would have needed quite a lot of force... plus it was in a bag!

I have a feeling it came apart at the airport while they were loading my tripod onto the plane or of the plane. Damn cargo handlers! I didn't get any reinbursement for the tripod. Anyway, I wasn't pissed at Fadli. It was an old tripod and I was more amused at its choosen mode of demise. Fadli said he had to had hold it together with two hands to use the tripod.

I just found it amusing to see it on somebody's blog in action. I Macgyvered the tripod before I loaned it to Azlan with my other smaller camera. He wanted to shoot his old house being torn down. I taped it with duct tape before giving it him. I was sniggering and trying really hard not to laugh when I passed it to him. He looked at it and declared he could do a better job fixing it with plumbing tape. Okay... if he says so.



Another way other people's blog have been creeping into my life was through the two episodes I produced (yesterday and today). Yesterday was a pretty lite topic. It was about mother's who blogged about their kids. I was surfing the net the past few days reading blogs and I realized there was a large network of mothers who blogged about their kids. I thought it was really cute seeing this mothers getting enthusiastic about their parenting skills. I randomly picked one and wrote her an email to invite her to the studio.

She even wrote about it in her blog today with the other mothers. Turns out one of the lady with the baby knew me when I was doing Money Matters. That was like so many years ago. It was strange. What a small world. I get a little freaked out when people remember my name and ask if I remember them. I am notorious for my bad memory.



Today's show was more on a serious note. I've been following the developement of NURIN Alert. It's based on the American AMBER Alert. It's a system that is activated to notify people if a child goes missing. A few concerned bloggers incuding Noraini A. Samad and Nurin's uncle started it. I called one of people involved in it and brought them to the studio. Before this, I had already cleared it with my General Manager. Some topics are too controversial for my to go on my own so it's better to touch base with the boss. However, I think 9 out of the 10 times I've approached him with a topic, he's given me the green light. Most of the topics I like doing are quite controversial. The 1 out of 10 times that I didn't get the green light... well, I can't even write about it here.

I had my reporter prepare some backup visuals of Nurin to use during the discussion. I forgot to tell my reporter to remove all visuals of Nurin's body. I know they roll it on TV but I personally find it quite distasteful. I didn't have the timecode for the visual of her body and a few seconds did slip by on screen. So that was kind of gross.

Sometimes I sit back at the end of the day and still wonder if I made a difference. Are more people excited about blogging about their kids? Would society accept NURIN alert? Does anyone watch WHI? Hrmm... I hope so.

The one thing I enjoy about sitting in the control panel producing a live show is the wierd thing that goes on behind the scenes. Normally I'm used to editing on a non-linear system. No pressure... but doing a live show is REAL TIME editing! Can't afford to make a mistake. I'm sitting there with the studio director to my left; the Production Assistants handling the CG machine and tapes playback to my left. I'm talking to my host through their earpieces directing the discussion.

Sometimes I just leave everything on 'auto-pilot'. That's when I just sit back and let the hosts ask their own questions. I usually do that during the sponsored segments where all they had to do is read of the list of prepared questions. Then... we're usually joking around in the studio control room. Sometimes the topic would be really serious but the crew would be laughing and making jokes in the control panel... most of the time nothing to do with what's going on in the studio at all.

I think the part I'll miss the most about doing a live talk show is having an impact on society. Not getting to do social engineering... yeah, I'll miss that. Well, one more show to go!