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Gig Review: Rachael Hannah McCaul, Carpe Diem, Leeds

20 March 2014 As a media professional, I spend a lot of time at gigs.  My time in russia made me realise a few things.  Firstly, how much I missed live music while I was away, but also how much of my 'gig time' was spent for work and not pleasure.  So, as soon as I got back, I started organising my diary - not only the usual gigs I would be at, but some of the smaller gigs… Getting back into the 'local music scene', as it was. Gig number 1 upon returning is an artist that kept cropping up.  It seems to me that it's the point just before the buzz starts, but I also wonder if that's one of the more exciting times for an artist.  I had heard some good words being said, however, so it sounded like a good one to check out. Artist name: Rachael Hannah McCaul What a bit of research told me:

Rachael is currently 24, singer/songwriter, who brings a mixture of 'Yorkshire, Scottish, Irish and Israeli ancestry to surprise you with the sound of her fiery soulful voice and her acoustic guitar'.

She began her music journey in 2009, but has really began to focus over the past few years.  She has been aired on BBC Introducing West Yorkshire, with her track 'Grace' being aired on Box UK Radio.

The social media presence is in the earlier stages, but is fairly active.  She has an EP in production that is expected to be released imminently.

It seems to be the early stages of her career, and as of yet there is little for me to go on in terms of recordings/productions, but it seems like a good, perhaps promising, start. So, pre-gig.  Thoughts? This could be a good one.  Promising artists that I don't know that much about.  I'm hoping there is a band behind her; singer-songwriters are becoming very clichéd in the UK music scene at the moment - even if there are some incredible ones - if she wants to impress and stand out form the crowd, she needs the back line (however big or small) to compliment her songs and talent - it also shows a commitment and versatility, which is definitely required to break into the industry these days.  Plus, I'm a harsh judge. How about the review? The first thing I want to consider is stage presence.  Rachael Hannah McCaul has it.  Charismatic and comfortable on stage, the best first impression an artist can make.  Her first song was an original song named 'Finlay boy'.  Rachael has strong vocals with a soulful tone and knows where to take her songs to make this impression lasting. The line-up for this gig featured Rachael and her guitar.  I would like to see her again with an understated back line (light percussion, second acoustic guitar, bass) to compliment her, and allow her to concentrate more on the voice that would get her records sold.  Having said that, with a soulful voice, well written songs and an attractive artist on stage, Rachael has enough going for her to be taken seriously as an 'upcoming artist' in the industry as it stands today - although I'm certain that any deal she'd later be offered would be conditional of backline. Rachael's tonal quality intrigues me.  There is a smooth and controlled undertone in her style, nice strong lows, with an edgy higher tone - particularly in the vowels.  Her style encompasses styles similar to 'Katie Melua' and 'KT Tunstall', but with a lyrical and tonal edge that I'd expect from artists such as 'Ellie Goulding' and 'Of Monsters and Men' (check out 'Silhouettes'). Rachael has a big impression to make in the harsh industry we now aspire to, however with the right encouragement and complete determination on her part, she has the potential to make that impression.  An artist I'd like to see develop, grow and prove herself and her music as the next 'must see' show.

http://rachaelhannahmccaul.tumblr.com/ www.facebook.com/rachaelhannahmccaulmusic www.twitter.com/RHMMusic

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Winter Olympics Journey - The Journey Ends!

3 March 2014

Well, here we are.  This is the conclusion, the end of my Winter Olympics journey.

Right now, I am sitting in the airport in Amsterdam, and have just managed to catch up with all my blogs.  If you read all of them from the last one I uploaded (17th Feb) then I reckon you deserve some sort of award.  Although I do hope that some of you have been able to enjoy the experience as much as I have - or, appropriately, at times not completely enjoy it, as to be honest, that was part of the point.

I checked out of the hotel pre-2am, which was an experience that really made me laugh.  I had to wait at reception while housekeeping checked my room - presumably to make sure I hadn't trashed the place completely in the 12 hours since they were last in my room.

While I was waiting, the man at reception asked me how long I had been here.  I told him 6 weeks.  To that, he asked me another question, which was not the question I was expecting, but the source of my laughter.

'How have you… found the Winter Olympics?'.  HAHAHA.  I thought he was about to ask me how I found the hotel.  I think they must have realised along the line, if someone has been here for more than 'x' number of weeks, don't ask them how their experience of the hotel has been.  They won't be impressed.

I then got my last 'transporter' of the Olympics, who dropped me off at the airport.  There were four of us in the car, all in all.  Two of them also British - the other was Russian and going on a different flight.  We reached the airport, went through security, and the two British people began to make their way to the Business Lounge.  Now, I wasn't flying Business class, so they could easily have turned me away, but I figured if I played it right, they would let me enjoy this one.  I let the other two show their boarding passes first, and I handed them mine afterwards.  It worked in my favour that the person working was a young, attractive Russian lady.  She let me in, cheeky.  I was prepared so that if they said no, I couldn't go in, then fair enough, but in fairness I wasn't really going to take up much of their resource, I just wanted a comfy sofa to lounge on for a couple of hours while I waited for the plane.

The journey from Sochi to Moscow was pretty standard.  Aeroflot didn't disappoint with their food… and by that, I meant the food was a complete disappointment, just like last time.  Arriving in Moscow, there was an Olympics volunteer waiting for us, so that she could escort us to the next gate.  For the flight I was going on, there were only two of us that she needed to guide, so the three of us got to talk a little.  The other man was a slightly elderly man, and he was at the Olympics purely to swap pins.  Pins at the Olympics are like Cigarettes in Prison.  They can get you pretty much anything.  The girl was a student from Moscow, and she was studying English at degree level.

Going through immigration was extremely simple too, but then, they will have dealt with so many 'accredited' people by this point that the process will be a walk in the park for them now.  Going through Security at the airport for me, now, has also become easier than second nature.  It's so much a part of my daily routine that I really don't have any issues going through - not that I ever did anyway, but now I'm a lot more confident that it's going to be quick and simple.

I boarded the flight from Moscow to Amsterdam, due to fly at 11:15 local time.  It was then due to land at 11:45 local time.  Flying for 3.5 hours and only seeing the half hour is a complete mind mash at the time, but I'm fairly certain that by tomorrow I'll be back in the right time zone.

When I got on the plane, I was placing my baggage in the overhead compartment, when I felt someone place their hands around my waist and onto my stomach, whilst walking around me.  This caught me by complete surprise - I have never known anyone confident enough to do that to a complete stranger before, but when I turned and noticed the air hostess walking away, I couldn't help myself but say 'pozhaluysta', which could have been taken in one of two ways.  Either it means 'please', and therefore, 'please, help yourself' or 'please, do that again…', or it could mean 'you're welcome'.  Either way, it made us both laugh.  After that, the journey was pretty boring and uneventful.

So that brings me to Amsterdam, waiting for my final flight which will bring me back to Leeds-Bradford, and therefore home.

I'm fairly certain that I can now call this the end of my journey, and so would like to take this opportunity to sum up a few things that I will never forget about my Winter Olympics journey, Sochi 2014.

I will never forget the people.  They have all been amazing, and I hope to see them all again at some point in time.

I will never forget the Sensei experience.  The first time we were there, and how much we were able to change it - hopefully for the better.

I will never forget Eminem.  The craziest nickname that I will never understand.

I will never forget the hotel food. Enough said.

I will never forget the dogs.  They may have disappeared during the Olympics, but before and after, they literally had the run of the streets.

I will never forget the Russian builders/contractors.  They always find a way to get the job done - but I would seriously question whether you would ever want one of them to build anything in your home.

I will never forget the juice of the Granny from Parma.  Or that the correct pronunciation of 'awesome' is 'a-way-some'.

I will never forget the sunset. Such a stunning view.

I will never forget the mountains.  For the same reason as above.

I will never forget the showgirls.  And dancing with them, again and again.

I will never forget the buses.  Particularly the TM2.  Or how ridiculously hot the vehicles are, all of the time.

I will never forget the OBS pants.  That one should be left there.

I will never forget the Ski Cross.  The one event that I would have done anything to see, so am glad that I managed to.

I will never forget the curling.  The cause of all our mental breakdowns, but the thing that brought us closer together as a group.

I will never forget my valentine.  A very special lady who was the reason we all got through our mental breakdowns, as above.

I will never forget the few Japanese words that I have learnt - I am happy with my proficiency of discussing food at the table in Japanese.  Even if the conversation would be very limited.  I will learn more at some point, too… I promise!

I will never forget the crepe quality assurance testing.  Nor that the portuguese know their damn pancakes.

I will never forget security feeling me up every day.  Even when the scanners don't go off.

I will never forget half of the videos that there are of me on nights out.  Mostly because there are some great people out there who won't let me forget...

I will never forget the ridiculous attempts at trying to tie/tape each other up in a very manly, and definitely not homo-erotic war.

I will never forget just how hard we had to work to make sure we did the best we could for the Olympics, and I will definitely never forget just how much I don't regret that.

I will never forget… my Winter Olympics experience in Sochi 2014.

Now to find a new adventure!

Tom

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Winter Olympics Journey - Day 42

2 March 2014

Well, here it is! Today is the day!  My last full day in Sochi.  Tomorrow I will be flying all day - but it's not the flights I'll be thinking of, it's the idea of being home!

I decided that today was that day where I just needed to not do anything.  I spent the morning, once again, catching up with blogs.  I'm getting pretty far, but my aim is to get them finished during my flights tomorrow.

The next thing of note that I did was head off to lunch.  I wanted to venture out a little further again, so went to Sensei - the place that we had successfully changed from a Russian-only-welcome type place, to an international party place.  I thought it'd be nice to go back one last time to see how I was treated when I went in.

Being as though it was lunch, there was no-one else in there except staff.  They were watching a TV programme, a comedy programme - but of which I couldn't tell you anything about it.  It was starring three girls, probably early 20s, and it looked pretty cheesy.  Probably pretty good though - the staff found it hilarious.

They made their way over to me to see what I wanted, so to speak.  I started with my Russian pleasantries, asked for a table for one - because I'm that cool - and shortly after that the conversation reached my maximum potential and I had to reveal that I couldn't actually speak Russian… it always makes people smile at that point, because they really appreciate how much effort you put in, even though you know there will be a limit.  So, I sat down and they brought a menu with English translation for me.  Shortly after that, the TV programme was put onto mute, and some music came on.  No word of a lie, right, they really can't think we listen to anything but cheese in Britain… they started with 'Yes Sir, I can Boogie', and then moved on to Celine Dion's 'I'm your lady'.  I'm not going to complain, I quite enjoyed listening to them… but that's not the point!  A bit of Bryan Adams came on later too.  I just think they're convinced the charts haven't reached us yet…

I made my way back to the hotel and chilled out for a few more hours.  As the evening was approaching, I then decided to do one last thing in Sochi.

Possibly one of my favourite things about Sochi has been the sunset.  It is simply stunning.  There have been times when standing in the Olympic park - particularly once when at the Stadium, and you just see it over the coast.  I decided I had to see it one last time, so I took a walk back out to the coast and sat myself on the beach.  This moment was one of my favourites of the entire trip.  The sound of the sea crashing gently against the pebbles took me out of the real world and I was fully emmersed into the sunset.  Watching how the sky changed from such a beautiful golden colour, and slowly draining of all colour completely was amazing.

I took a slow walk back home - but it was only a short one anyway.  About half way back, I decided there was one more thing I needed to do in Russia.  I needed to phone home at least once from a Russian number.  I still had my Russian mobile on me, and had (an equivalent of) a few pounds left on it, and I wouldn't be using it again now anyway, so I gave my parents a call.

Their reaction to an international number that they didn't recognise phoning them was typically British.  They thought it would be a sales call - wouldn't have surprised me if they hadn't have answered it at all! Luckily they did.  I should really have made the most of it and started talking about their mortgage rates… told them I was calling from a UK company, even though they know the number isn't UK based.  Damn, I really missed an opportunity there.

Naturally, I didn't stay on the phone that long - after all, an international call on PAYG wouldn't have given us much time - although I did still have a bit of credit left, in fairness, but I was also back to the hotel in no time.  At that point, I decided it would be a good idea to try to get some sleep, as I would need to check out of the hotel at around 1:30am, and then make my way to the airport - and there's no chance I'm going to be able to sleep properly once I'm travelling.  Big day tomorrow - can't wait!

Tom

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Winter Olympics Journey - Day 41

1 March 2014

I couldn't decide what to do today.  I was torn between either doing absolutely nothing, going into Sochi to explore the town a bit further, or going to the Cinema that we found in Adler yesterday to watch a film in Russian.

I spent the morning looking into all of the options to see if I could work out what I wanted to do, and then considered my options over breakfast.  I went to the log cabin for breakfast, as I'd never had chance before, and there was no chance I was going to the hotel breakfast.  When I first arrived, a waiter came over and handed me a menu.  As in, a normal menu.  I sat and looked through it, thinking 'are they seriously serving these for breakfast?'.  There was genuinely nothing that I felt like I could stomach at that time.  Eventually one of the waitresses came over to me, so I asked her what was good for breakfast.  She then walked away and brought me a 'breakfast menu'… That was more like it.  There was an 'English section', an 'American section', 'Russian' and 'German'.  I settled on 'scrambled bacon' whatever that meant, from the English menu, and 'toast' from the American breakfast.  The waitress had never looked so confused, and to this moment I still can't figure out why.

I told her exactly what I wanted, just the bacon and the toast, and she shook her head and pointed to the entire English menu.  I had no idea what that meant.  I knew it wasn't one of those 'order all of one of the other' type menus, because they all had a price next to the items, and there was no way I'd want one of everything on the menu…

After a few minutes of her looking completely blankly at me, and me being confused at why she had a problem, I asked her for exactly the same things again, in exactly the same way, and she said that was fine, and went away.  I always knew women were confusing, but that's just a level beyond…

It's funny what these Russians considered to be breakfast from each of these countries though.  The 'Scrambled Bacon' that turned up was literally just eggs and bacon, but with loads of random herbs and plants in the mix.  Never had that on in England before.  The US was the best though.  Cheeseburgers and everything else that is fried.  I'd had some great meals from this place at dinner, but the breakfast was really disappointing.

So, my plans for today.  There were no films that I wanted to watch - I also had the experience that I needed the other day in the restaurant, watching Pirates of the Caribbean in Russian, so I wasn't too fussed about that.

I looked quite heavily into Sochi too, to see exactly what I hadn't yet seen.  To be honest, there wasn't anything else.  I was almost certain before that, because of where the train station was situated, that I would only have seen about half of the city.  That there was still a lot more that could be discovered - where all the shops would be, and who knows what else.  I laugh at how wrong I was.  Sochi is nice, but it is literally just a pebble beach surrounded by market stalls, a couple of shops, and plenty of restaurants around the pier.  As you go further into the urban area, however, you quite literally walk into nothingness.  I had been convinced for weeks that I just hadn't seen most of it yet, but there is nothing else to see.  I figured I wouldn't really gain much else from the experience, so thought instead that I would do something that I really should have done when I arrived here.

I went to the beach that is only a stones throw away from my hotel.  A stones throw being an amusing term for it, being as though you go there and people are throwing stones…

It was a really nice day, and to be fair, it's a really nice beach.  Ok, so there's no sand - not really my thing anyway - but the atmosphere is good, and it just has a nice feel to it.  I definitely should have gone there earlier, because just sitting on one of the benches by the beach was so relaxing, it would have been the refresher I needed.  Still, it probably had more of an effect now.

I walked down the front all the way to the Olympic Park, near the stadium.  The sun was really warm, but the breeze from the sea was freezing.  You could see Russians with very different points of views - some, down to their bikinis or trunks, sunbathing, and some wearing winter coats.  I, being British, felt the weather appropriate to take my coat off and walk round in my T-Shirt.  The dogs really were in full force today though.  There is no doubt that all of the dogs that were hidden away during the Olympics have been released again and let to roam the streets.  On the positive side, at least this means they were kept safe during the games!

After a few hours of walking (having turned around half-way through… obviously) I found myself back on the street with La Luna and the other restaurants.  It was reaching around 3:30pm, so figured it was definitely time for lunch.

I went back to La Luna and ordered something that I knew I liked.  The problem was now, even when it's food that I would normally really enjoy, I have lost complete enthusiasm for food.  I'm desperate for some good home cooked food.  There has been just too many meals out.  I physically couldn't bring myself to enjoy the meal.  I thought some fruit would help, so had a Mango plate for dessert, which was literally just a plate of Mango with blobs of ice cream.  Sounds amazing, except I'd forgot I was in Russia for a minute, and Russia really isn't known for its fruit.  The Mango was not ripe at all.  At all.  It was vile.

At that point I made my way back to my hotel room, but a film on my laptop and continued writing up some of my blogs.

It was a pretty simple day, to be honest, but it was exactly what I needed.  I was beginning to feel a lot more refreshed already.  To be honest, at that moment I was ready to go home.  I was glad I had a bit of extra time in Sochi after finishing work - one day with everyone else would have been fine, but you have one final day and then rush back off again.  Two days would have been perfect.  At this point, I have no idea what I'll do tomorrow, but there isn't much to do out and about!

Tom

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Winter Olympics Journey - Day 40

28 February 2014

As you can imagine, my lie in was extremely successful this morning.  I think I may have just possibly managed to not be fully awake until around 7am? Maybe? I was in too much of a habit, and I'm guilty of not switching my alarms off too, which I'm aware is ridiculously stupid, but I like being in a routine…

Despite still being awake though, I wasn't going to be getting up any time soon, so when I felt naturally awake enough (around 8am) I reached for my laptop and began writing up some of the blogs that I was so far behind on.  Problem is, as I'm sure you will have noticed when reading them, there just wasn't time to write - the days were long and jam-packed, and by the time I got home I was completely exhausted, so simply couldn't have stayed up to write.  I had made rough plans with my colleagues though that we would go to explore Adler, the local town, a little more around lunch time, so I had plenty of time this morning to write as much as possible.

At around 10am, there was a knock at my room door.  Keep in mind, I hadn't yet gotten dressed, so I answered my door in my boxers… I told the housekeeping 'nyet' - I was pretty sure she would get the hint, and I'm fairly certain she did, considering she apologised to me (in Russian).  Except about half an hour later, the same girl turned up at my room and knocked the door again.  Well, what else could I do at this point, except invite her in?  She was attractive after all… Of course, being a gentleman, I did put some trousers on first…

Around lunch time I met up with my colleagues and we made our way to the bus to get into Adler.  On the walk, we noticed one extremely significant change.  Remember how I have discussed how the dogs all disappeared the moment the games began?  Well, guess who's back!  There don't quite seem to be as many as before, but perhaps that's just because it's day time?  There are definitely a lot more dogs around now though.

Before now, we had only ever paid 17 roubles for a bus journey.  Today, however, the first of us paid 17 roubles, while the next had to pay 20 roubles, and I was made to pay 35 roubles.  Glad to know there's a fixed pricing structure in place…

We reached Adler and went straight for lunch. Afterwards we took around one of the shopping malls that we hadn't been into yet.  At the top was a cinema, I had considered maybe I would go there tomorrow and watch a film in Russian, but we'll see how it goes.

The guys made me aware that I had made one significant mistake today… going shopping with the Japanese.  Those guys are relentless ;-) luckily I didn't mind.  We had a nice afternoon exploring Adler and quite literally seeing the rest of what existed there - there was nowhere else to see.  So we headed back to the hotel.

We got back at around 7pm.  The rest of the crew were all leaving tonight.  After then, it would just be me in Sochi for a couple of days.  So, I went back to my room for a bit, carried on writing, and went back out at 1am to say my final goodbyes to everyone.  This was definitely me now saying bye to the people who had made my time here what it was.  Now it's official, my time here is definitely coming to an end.

Tom

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Winter Olympics Journey - Day 39

27 February 2014

It was looking so promising for today to be the last day of work, I was almost dreading it.  Not because I have become a sucker and fell completely in love with the work - don't get me wrong!  No, it's because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, I could almost taste the freedom, if something happened to take it away from me at this point, it would destroy my spirit!  It really has been great, but all I want to do right now is finish, sleep, and go home.

Luckily, the day started pretty much to plan.  We got everything packed how we were told.  It turned out that Inventory wouldn't need to scan every item, as long as our databases matched well enough, and we agreed on what was there, or what should have been there.  This meant that as soon as we had completely finished, we just needed to go through said database.

With it going so well so far, I decided there was a little bit of time for misbehaving.  Left over in our vendor was a couple of bags of condoms - 200 in one and 100 in the other.  I decided to tape them to the other audio vendor, where the guy who had some fun with a condom in the photographer's bag the other night is based.  I wrote to go with them 'These are so you don't pass on what you caught last night'.  I then also found a bag of 'bluescrew' tent pegs, which are almost industrial - if they were screwed into the ground, they wouldn't move anywhere.  To go with this, I wrote 'Ribbed for her pleasure'.  I'm not sure how funny it well and truly was, but to me, then, it was the funniest thing I could do.  Seeing the face of the guy later on when he arrived at the vendor was absolutely priceless.

It was a reasonable time late morning - possibly nearing the afternoon slightly - when we had finished our work.  I began to compare my database with inventory when the pallet that we had been missing was finally delivered back to the warehouse.  Not a problem, would be a quick unpack - and was.  Also meant that the database tallied up completely as to what we were expecting ourselves following the strikes, so we just went through the completely minor bits with Inventory, when early afternoon we agreed everything was finished.

I was just writing up a few reports to send along while my colleague began to discuss the shipment with Logistics.  We had been told that they would then pack everything on to the pallets for us, ready for our couriers to pick them up.  It turned out, however, that it was actually our responsibility to do that.  As we had believed inventory would be scanning the stock back out, it wouldn't have been possible for us to do it before, but if we had known that, and then known because of that fact we were meant to prepare the pallets ourselves, we would absolutely have been packing them in that way from the start - it wouldn't have taken us any extra time!  Unfortunately that's the way that it was, and there would have been no way to know until that moment, so logistics were kind enough to provide us with three of their warehouse guys and we stormed through to get it all finished.  We were pretty pleased, as we had then managed to palletise it all within a few hours, and at around 7pm, we were officially finished!  Work is over!  Well, physical work is, we were to have another meeting that evening, but that was fine, it was the physical work that I was concerned about.

We made our way back to the hotel and met up with the big boss and went for our business dinner.

It was very productive actually, there was a lot of discussion, and hopefully there are some key points made to make our team's presence at future Olympics even stronger.  We were there for a while though - I'm not sure what time we finished up, but I could tell the staff were glad when we finally left, as I'm pretty sure they wanted to get home themselves!

I went to bed happy.  Tomorrow was a day off.  My plans are to sleep in for as long as I possibly can!

Tom

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Winter Olympics Journey - Day 38

26 February 2014

Today started as expected, early, with the determination to get as much done as possible.  We had set ourselves a goal to get all of the mics packed and accounted for by the afternoon, then hopefully the windshields and other accessories by the end of the day, leaving only the wireless equipment for tomorrow.

Today was significantly lighter-hearted than previous days, however, proved when one of my colleagues decided to walk over to me, slap a strip of gaffa tape onto my arm, and attempt to remove it as though it was a wax strip.  Luckily for me, it didn't work properly.  This did mean I wanted to get revenge, however.

I got a roll of tape for myself, and with the help of our other colleague, we ran the tape around him to bind him up.  It took us a bit of time, he was very successful at putting up a struggle, but eventually we managed to get him tied up.  Unfortunately for us, the tape was pretty rubbish, so with fairly little effort, he managed to rip himself out of it.  I at least wanted him to keep it on for a photo, but the spoil sport had removed it all before I managed to get my camera.

Despite our tomfoolery, we managed to get all of the mics packed and sorted by about 1pm, which was right on queue.  We were pretty happy with that, so went for a quick bite to eat and went straight back down to finish the accessories.

Yesterday, we didn't seem to get anywhere fast, but today we seemed to be on a roll.  Somehow we managed to just get stuff done, and by 6:30pm, the accessories were also then finished - well, despite one pallet that hadn't yet been delivered to the vendor, but not much we could do there.  My colleague went to see whether he could locate this pallet so that we could get everything finished, so in the meantime I decided it could be worth making a start on the wireless.  I did the calculations and worked out, based on how quickly we were working, and what equipment there was left to pack, that we could get the wireless done pretty damn quick and then we wouldn't have to worry about having to do yet more packing tomorrow.  By the time my colleague got back - without the pallet, it was well hidden from us at this point - I was well underway, and he was definitely on the same train of thought as me.  We didn't speak, we just got everything packed up.  It was only about 8pm and we had finished the wireless.  Damn it felt good.  We had a few loose ends that we would need to sort tomorrow, but at least at the state we were in, we could see a practically packed vendor.  This meant one more day of work, and hopefully a couple of days off to recover from a mental 5-and-a-half weeks!

We got back to the hotel at 9pm, absolutely starving.  We went straight to the log cabin restaurant for a quick dinner - no messing about, order straight away, only order one thing, then get straight back out again.  It worked pretty well, the food came pretty quickly.  In fact, the new waitress that served us yesterday (who recognised us, too) brought over a plate of pancakes for us and told us it was for a Russian Holiday called Maslenitsa - a week long holiday also nicknamed 'crepe week'.  We tried asking at the time what type of holiday it was - whether it was religion or what, unfortunately we couldn't find the words in Russian, and she couldn't tell us much more herself - that we could understand, at least.  So eventually she wrote the holiday name down and we did a quick bit of research (well, my colleague did using LTE.  I couldn't because I couldn't get LTE, and there was no WiFi available.  But that's another story that I'm completely bitter about… haha).

Basically, Maslenitsa is the mark of their Easter period about to begin - more specifically, the week before lent.  During this week, meat is forbidden.  It is the last week that they are able to consume milk, cheese and other dairy products.  Pretty harsh!

But, this meant, to celebrate, they were including us in their tradition and gave us free pancakes before our meal.  It's a good job they didn't include us too much and forbid us to order meat!  I would have been devastated!

We finished the meal by about 10pm, which must have been a record for ordering and eating a meal in a restaurant in Russia! Or at least Sochi…  We had some good entertainment while we were eating too, the restaurant was playing 'Pirates of the Caribbean', in Russian.  Now that really was interesting!

Straight after the meal I had to go for a quick meeting with the big boss, so that I could give him the photos that I had taken, and to give us a chance to discuss everything a bit further.  What was meant to be a quick meeting ended up lasting over an hour - although it was enjoyable, so no complaints - and I then went straight back to my room, and pretty much straight to bed.  I'm struggling to stay up late at this point, I just need sleep.

Tom

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Winter Olympics Journey - Day 37

25 February 2014

Now that the Olympics were well and truly over (even though the Paralympics were still to come) everything around the IBC was pretty much closed.  All of the shops, extra restaurants, etc.  Even the restaurants that were still open had reduced what they were offering.  We got our breakfast, but realised quickly lunch would be no fun… it was also another reason why we wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible - literally no motivation to stay late.

We started work at the normal time and just worked our way through.  We did a lot, but had very little fun today.  There was too much to do, and we felt as though we were getting nowhere fast.

Lunch time eventually reached us, when we made our way to the food court.  The food was quite literally the same food as breakfast.  It took a while to decide what to get, and I certainly didn't enjoy it at this point - still, it was food.

To be honest, today was then quite uneventful.  I asked my colleague, who had to go upstairs for one reason or another, whether he could bring me back down a sandwich, as I was running out of energy.  This became the highlight of my day, not just because I had a sandwich (although that's half of it), but because the sandwich came in a bag which had been decorated by one of the Russian girls, and it said 'From Russia with Love'.  Pretty cool.

We finished up at around 7pm and headed back.  We had a moment where I felt that no-one knew what was going on.  We were leaving the office, but going out the back way as we were hitching a ride back.  As we were leaving, one colleague was behind us, when all of a sudden he disappeared.  I phoned to see where he was, he then poked his head out of the office, I waved to him and told him to follow.  A few moments later, and he had disappeared again!  I phoned again and made him catch up to us.  By this time, the two others had carried on, but when we got out, they were nowhere to be seen, and weren't answering their phones.  Eventually we all met back up, got into the car, and made our way back home.

We arranged to meet back up shortly to go for a meal.  It was the chief Rigger's last day today, so we wanted to have a meal with him before he set off.  I have made a lot of great friends since been here, and a lot of people that I look forward to keeping in touch with, but this guy was the one who I felt like an immediate friend with, and one of those that I'd had the most fun with since being here.  He'd be missed indeed.

The meal was great, albeit the food took forever!  I think it was a lot of people's last day - the final of the busiest days - so the place was pretty full.  The Russian waitress (who was new, hadn't seen her before) came over to tell us that the food would be 10-17 minutes… most of the food would be 10, but the pizza would be 17.  Granted she didn't speak English, so we could have misunderstood, but I was pretty certain that's what she meant.  The pizza came in about 17 minutes, so that was bang on.  The other food, however, took significantly longer.  Eventually everyone else's food turned up, and they ate and enjoyed.  Mine, however, had still not yet turned up.  To their credit, the waitress kept giving me time updates whenever she passed.

After the meal we went to the reception bar to say our final goodbyes to the Rigger and one of the other crew that had recently turned up to depart.

At little after midnight, I think (but could be wrong), I decided it was time for me to head to bed, so I said my goodbyes and told them I'd keep in touch - which I will.

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 36

33 February 2014... I mean, 24 February 2014

I was certainly tired this morning, but not too tired.  Last night was another of those blow outs that allow you to relax enough to get over the work.  In any case, the hardest work should be over now, so although there will be a lot left to do, there should be no reason we shouldn't be able to finish at a reasonable time again from now on.

We started the day with breakfast at the Stadium before we had to strike that equipment.

I have mentioned the stadium's food before.  Venue food is always the best food you could ask for (around here anyway), but there have been times when no other venue is open/providing food, so the stadium are able to do something a little extra special.  The first time I went there, it was a pretty epic steak.  Today, for breakfast, they provided not only bacon and sausage, but a mixed grill with chicken, steak, and other treasures that you could only dream of.  This was the best (or, only good) breakfast I've had since been here.  The only issue still for me was that the quality of the meat still wasn't brilliant - particularly the bacon, I still need some good British standard bacon.

We got the strike well underway at the Stadium.  When the bulk of it was done, I left everyone else to it to get back to the Vendor and start sorting everything that had already returned to the vendor.

For the afternoon, now that all the strikes had been completed, the other two guys joined me in the Vendor to get as much as we could done.  Every time we felt as though we were getting somewhere, more deliveries turned up.  It was almost impossible to move through the loading section - in fact, it was practically impossible to get in or out.

At 6pm, we felt as though we hadn't even got anywhere, but a lot of the audio team were due to fly out after tonight, so we decided to leave on time to go for one last meal with them all.

We all arrived at the bus stop, so that we could get into Adler and eat in one of the decent restaurants there.  We looked across the road while we were waiting, and noticed three Russian contractors on the roof of a building opposite us.  They had to do some work over the side of the building, closer to the top than the bottom, so they were having to find a way to suspend themselves from the top of the building.  Keep in mind, in the audio crew were a group of riggers, whose job it is to safely climb and suspend themselves at heights.  This was going to be interesting.

We were absolutely fascinated.  Can you guess how they did it?  They had a 2 by 6 plank resting off the top of the roof, they then suspended a ladder off the plank of wood.  No ropes, no form of safety, just a plank of wood and some ladders.  The guy climbed down the ladders from the top.  The ladders were rocking slightly, and there was absolutely no guarantee he was going to make it out of this in one piece - it was a long way down!

After several minutes, the man climbed back up to the top of the ladders, and with some assistance climbed over the ladders and back onto the roof.  At this moment every single one of us burst out in applause - through respect and relief.  We soon realised that we weren't the only people clapping, there was a line of people at the bus stop who were as engrossed as we were, and they were applauding too.  Russian builders, eh?

We had a great time at the meal, another evening full of laughs.  I got to know some of the other A3s a bit better too, they were a great bunch of guys.  It was amusing actually going out with a group of many who were Russian, as it showed both the advantages and benefits of being with a Russian group.  Not being with Russians ourselves over the past 5 or so weeks, we had to learn more Russian to get by.  The others, who had been with Russians, didn't know as much of the basic necessities, but the experience was definitely much easier, and they learnt more of the 'fun' words that they wanted to know, more than the things that they needed to know.  I guess it's one of those things were you want to have a mixture of the two.

After the meal, we made our way to the bus stop to get to the hotel.  On our way, a busker began playing the French national anthem on a horn.  One out of our group was French, so of course he did a little dancing and had to go over to the busker to give him a bit of change.

At this point, another local who had been watching us, walked over to us to ask us a few questions.  He asked (in Russian) where the French guy was from - upon telling him, the Russian guy replied with 'nyet, Arab?'.  Lol, casual racism.  There weren't any of the Russian guys from our crew around us at this time though, as they had gotten side-tracked by looking at some of the market stalls around us, so we pieced together some conversation, but called the others over to join us so that we could speak with the man properly.

Apparently, what we couldn't understand for ourselves before was that he was asking us all to go to a bar that he owned/work at around the corner, where there would be a shot of vodka waiting for each of us.  We got our guys to translate that we were very grateful for the offer, but we either had work in the morning, or some were flying out, so maybe another time, but thank you.  Apparently he replied saying that he respected our decision, and if we were ever around then to find him in the bar and he would give us those shots.

So, we carried on to get the bus, which had just pulled up.  As we were getting on the bus, the man ran after us again holding three plastic bags that he then handed over to us.  I have no idea, personally, where he got them from (obviously the market stalls, but don't know the connection of how), but he handed us three bags full of Mandarins.

We thanked him, and laughed amongst ourselves.  What were we going to do with so many oranges?

We did the only logical thing that we could think of.  We took some for ourselves to start eating, and then proceeded to hand them out around to other passengers on the bus.  You have never seen so many Russians smile so genuinely.  There were a few people in particular who you could tell loved what we were doing.  I won't lie, it was pretty insane, but really was good fun.

We then emptied the remainder of one bag into the other two bags so that we could go back around the bus and collect the peel.  As the journey went on, a lot of people got off, and new people got on.  We would then offer them oranges too.

We then made our way to the hotel complexes and said our goodbyes.  A lot of people from that crew that would definitely be missed.

It was a fairly reasonable time when we got back - probably around 11pm - so I decided I would quickly phone home to speak to the parents again to see how they were.  It had been too long since I'd had the opportunity to call them, so was nice to catch up.  I was shattered by the time we had finished the phone call, so afterwards pretty much went straight to sleep.

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 35

23 February 2014

Today was going to inevitably be one of the busiest days so far.  It was the last day of the Olympics.

First things first, I arrived at Figure Skating (Iceberg Skating Palace) for 9am, after one heck of a journey on the TM1.  Because today was the day of the closing ceremony, you needed a special pass to be able to get through the Olympic Park - which, because I was in the mountains yesterday, my pass was given to someone else, who I hadn't yet had chance to see.  So, I got on the bus to ride it out - it shouldn't take that long after all, right?  Normally, right.  Today, wrong.  Day of the Closing Ceremony also meant that the routes had changed and they were doing some incredibly ridiculous things.  After the first stop, the bus had to go all the way back to the IBC so that it could turn around and go a bit further to get to the second stop.  It then just took forever to get around the park to the arena.  Still, I managed to get there on time, and before the others.  When they all arrived we set our plan of action.

The audio team for the venue were sorting through the de-rigged equipment, two of us would get the wireless equipment down while the rest of the riggers went up to the catwalk to remove the mics mounted up on the roof.

The guy assigned to help me was one of the Russian A3s.  I already knew he was a cool guy, but hadn't worked with him properly myself before, so didn't know the benefit working with him could have…

We got up to the RF platform, collected all of the equipment and started to make our way back down.

The way up to the platform was convoluted, as it was the way we were took up originally, and the only way we knew how to get up there - this was by walking through the media section and climbing our way to the top.  While we didn't have the equipment in our hands (this time, we had to when we first installed it…) it wasn't a problem, but we really didn't want to have to carry it back down in the same way, so we decided to find out way down the 'normal' way - keeping in mind that we were going through the executive suite on the way back down, so there had to be some form of easy way out?

We walked out to the corridor and saw no sign of any lifts, but we did see a set of stairs that would take us to the spectators seats, so made our way down the stairs with the heavy flight case, bags and other equipment.

We reached the level of seating and saw a lift.  Brilliant! Except it wasn't working…

My accomplice then turned round to someone walking on the floor and asked them where we could go to find a working lift, in russian.  That was handy… however we reached where they said, and those lifts weren't working either.  There was a security guard at the next place, who had no idea what I was asking, but when the Russian guy stepped in, at least we didn't have that language barrier.  What we did have, however, was a guard who had no information at all about lifts, so at that point the only thing we could do was suffer the last four floors of stairs.  Not fun.

We finally got down and made our way outside of the venue, where we would have to walk around to get back to the compound.  There was a security guard outside of the doors who didn't look happy with what we were walking out with.  He started saying something in Russian.  I knew he was saying something about the equipment, what I understood was that we couldn't pass him with the equipment for some reason.  Luckily, having a Russian guy with me meant that he could speak with the guard with ease and resolve the situation.  Basically (he told me) what the guard wanted was some form of papers for the equipment to show what it was.  Except the papers for the equipment was all in the compound, where we were trying to get it, and it didn't just cover that piece of equipment, it covered all of the equipment we were trying to de-rig.  With no effort at all on my part, we were making our way back to the compound without any issues.  At that point, I asked him where he had been for the past 5 weeks - definitely would have came in handy!

The rest of the pack down and checks went without any issue at all, so at around 11:30am we were heading back to the IBC.  I had about an hour after reaching the IBC before I had to head up to the mountains, which gave me time for two important things.  One, saying my goodbyes to a few that I wouldn't get chance to see again, as they were leaving that night.  And two, lunch.

The time went really quickly, and I didn't get to see a lot of people, so I just had to hope I could get back with enough time to see everyone tonight before they left.

The next stop was Cross Country.  When we arrived the final event had just finished so we made our way straight to the RF platform to de-rig from there and get it back to sort the rest of the equipment.

There were four of us from our crew, and we had a group of A3s too, but even that wasn't enough.  There was equipment everywhere, and the way it came back wasn't ready for just packing and counting - there was also very little space - so we worked flat out for about four/five hours before everything was finished and we could move on to the next place.  Unfortunately, that meant it was about 6pm and we were running about two hours late for the next venue, Sliding, which at this point we were dreading, as we feared being there forever.

I already knew that because of the work that we had to do today, it would be impossible to be able to make the Closing Ceremony, but I was glad to have been at the opening, so I didn't mind so much.  What I did want, however, was for at least one of us to be able to make it - after all, we did have some wireless set up there which needed to be monitored.  I think I mentioned before, in previous Olympics (to my knowledge) none of our crew have been able to make a ceremony, so for me to be able to get us in for the Opening, and then one of my colleagues to be able to be at both, it felt good.  So, as we left Cross Country, I made my way straight off to Sliding with one of the others, and sent him off to the stadium so that he could get to the RF platform before the ceremony started.

When we reached sliding, we were pleasantly surprised with just how organised everything was.  There were a couple of mics that were still out on the field that they weren't able to locate, but by the time we had finished what we needed to do, they had managed to locate most of them.  That left one mic that was out somewhere, but it was getting too dark to be able to locate it properly, so they said they would find it first thing in the morning - in the meantime, I would consider it missing in my report until it was found.

By about 9pm, we were already heading back out, after doing everything we needed to do.  We definitely weren't expecting that turnaround.

I reached the IBC again for around 10:30, so contacted some other colleagues who were at the other Hockey venue striking the equipment from there.  They said they had it all under control, as they had enough of them there, so I decided to quickly head back to the hotel to shower and change, then get back to the IBC for midnight to see who I could before they left.

At around 11pm, I think, I heard the biggest series of explosions I could imagine.  Over the Olympic park was the greatest golden display lighting up the sky around surroundings.  The fireworks to mark the end of the Olympics.  It was official, Russia had pulled it off.  Despite anything people may have said to find faults with this Olympics, from everything I saw before the event, and everything that had been changed and put in place for the Olympics themselves, I could only say that these had been some damn successful Olympics.  I think my only comments would be that, unless Russia were specifically competing in some events, there wasn't necessarily a huge turnout to all of the events.  Because of security, it had been made quite difficult to get visas for people to visit from around the world - and the Russians are very nationalist (which I find a good trait, to be fair, so don't get me wrong), meaning games that should have potentially been big in terms of around the globe, were not necessarily very big here.  Still, I saw a lot of great atmospheres around, and I could see the people who have paid in to enjoy their own Olympic experience have definitely been caught up in it all, and I would imagine they have, in fact, enjoyed it as much as they would have hoped.

I think it's also important to remember - to all of those who slated the Olympics this year, vowed not to watch it because of the controversy that had been created around this Olympics, those who wanted to boycott the Olympics purely because it is 'Russia's Olympics' - this year's Olympics, as well as all the others, have been made not only by Russia, but by a huge team of internationals who all came together to put on the greatest show/event they could imagine.  By not supporting the Olympics, you're not only harming Russia's reputation, but the reputation of all the people who do care about every aspect of the Olympics that we care about too.  The people who did everything in their power to make sure every person, of every country, race, sex, and orientation could all enjoy the experience as much as the last.

I think it's safe to say, now, more than ever, I am a supporter of the Olympics, and I hope to see many more successful ones over the coming years.

Anyway, enough of my political standpoint… I made my way back to the IBC.  The roads were busy, as you could imagine, but part way through the journey I heard someone shout 'Slim! Come and join us!'

I couldn't believe it, after all this time, that nickname had still stuck - and, in fact, had spread further around the groups.  I think to some people, I will still always be that famous rapper who liked to party ;-)

The bus journey was a laugh, we reminisced a little over some of the times we'd had over the past 5 weeks.

We arrived at the IBC, and there's then only one thing to say…

The Olympics closes, and the parties begin!

The IBC had been turned into a massive rave as a celebration for all of the staff, and all of those who had worked so hard to make it all happen.  Naturally, I was gatecrashing ;-)

There were genuinely so many people, though, that it was almost impossible to find anyone.

One of the interesting things during the night is that you could be with a (small) group, perhaps of about 5 or 6, and just step aside briefly to find someone, and straight away you had lost your group.  The pattern seemed to be groups of about 2 or 3 would walk around trying to find other people, then by the time you had found other people, you had lost some of the others.  If you ever walked away, too, there was no chance of finding people again.  Still, the atmosphere was fierce, the music was loud, and everyone just wanted to unwind.

We had a great time, danced a little, tried to talk, managed to see a few people before they had to jet off, but unfortunately there were a lot of people we simply weren't able to see/find.  At around 1:30am, it suddenly hit me just how hungry I was - being late from Cross Country to Sliding meant that we didn't have time for any dinner, so we went to the food court to get a quick bite to eat.  They originally tried to tell us they were closed, but when we pointed out they still had food left, and we were starving, they buckled and stayed open for a bit.

We went back to the dance floor after gaining strength from the sustenance, where I met one of the Russian girls that I kept happening to see everywhere I went, so we talked for a bit, and danced for a bit.  After that, I managed to find some of the audio group again and chilled out with everyone.  When 3am hit, we were all feeling it a little too much, and decided it was time to head home - after all, we still had work in the morning.

We got on the bus, and the first thing I noticed was the date.  Now, it was past midnight, so you could understand if it now read '24 фев'.  But no.  And I don't think anyone else noticed it - I tried to take a photo on my phone, but I was too far so don't think the picture managed to catch it… the date read '33 фев'.  That's a new one on me!  Either after so long here, I am beginning to go crazy, or I have entered the twilight zone!

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 34

22 February 2014

I felt like an entirely new man today.  I was able to get plenty of sleep and the cold that I was beginning to contract was pretty much completely gone.  It may have been an early awake, but having been asleep since little after 9, I was more than ready to get up and start the day.

I spent the morning working further on the database.  Basically, I already had all of the right information, and it was perfectly good, but during the morning yesterday, I had began to track every item by barcode too, as it meant I would know exactly what is where, and in which shipment the item was sent in.  This more than doubled the work that I *needed* to do, but it certainly came in handy later today, so am extremely glad I did it.  After all, I already had all of the information, it was just a case of compiling it.

By midday I had pretty much finished it, but at half past there would be a car picking me up to take me and my colleague to Extreme, so I had to start getting ready to go out anyway.

The colleague that went with me was the one who had been stationed at Curling permanently over the games.  Luckily for him, Curling had now completely finished (and the venue had been struck last night) which freed him up significantly.  He was coming with me to help, naturally, but we were getting to the venue early so that I could get a head start on the XFR equipment before the XSB load came in too.  During that time, I told him to go and watch the end of the competition, where he would then join me once it had finished to help strike the XSB load.

The Extreme strike went pretty smoothly.  The audio team from XSB were entirely helpful and we had a good system going.  We felt as though we had finished - all mics were back off the field, but there was one extra mic missing that we weren't expecting.  We were discussing it and figured out where the mic would have been expected to have been, and one of them mentioned how many were out on the field with 'Operators'.  The number that were out, and the number we had in front of us was then one short.  We remembered the correct amount of people came back, so decided to search all of the windshields that we had packed.  Low and behold, there it was, hiding inside a Rycote windshield (for those who don't know what these are, you know the big furry things that is used for broadcast mics, generally held up high, above the audio source that is being picked up (people speaking, etc)… well, one of those.  This then completed the process, which took us a completely acceptable 4 hours, which covered the two venues.  From there, we headed back to the GMC to grab a quick bite for dinner - it would have been about 7pm at this point.  At 8pm, I made my way back up the mountains to get to the Laura Cross venues for Biathlon.

The audio team weren't particularly happy with the idea that I would be there that evening.  It was 9pm when I got there, which meant we all knew it would be at least 11pm - midnight by the time we would leave, and in fairness, we all wanted to get home.  It turned out, however, the reason they weren't happy at first was because they thought I needed the windshields to be dry before we could pack them - they thought it was the actual strike itself, rather than the 'pre-strike' preparation.  Once this had been explained, and they were happy that we would have to wait for everything to dry, just have everything ready, checked and counted when we could then go, they were happy.

The process was fairly organised, so wasn't too bad, but it did take a while to get everything sorted, so was about 11:30pm when we did finally leave.  Helping me with the strike - as well as the audio crew who were responsible - was a new guy that I hadn't met before today.  He was one of the Audio Relief crew, so basically had to know each of the venues, and therefore also knew what he was doing.  He was a great help.  It was definitely today when I saw the value of being present at these 'pre-strike' pack downs.  A few days previous I may have been guilty of moaning a little, but to be fair, I still feel it was justified.  The audio team before deserted us when it was their responsibility, leaving us to do everything that we shouldn't need to do.  Today was a completely different experience.  Yes, of course we helped dismantling the equipment and preparing it to go back, as well as simply checking it over and counting it… but the addition that made the difference was the audio crews responsible for the equipment while it was in the venue being such a great help to us.  Taking that extra pride in their jobs, and putting in the hours even though they want to go home - hopefully they appreciated that we wanted to go home just as much as them, so we were in the same boat there.  Being the person who sent out all of the equipment, too, meant that I knew exactly what they should be expecting - and having the barcodes meant that I could trace which shipment the mics were sent in.  There had been an issue with one delivery in the very beginning, but a couple of mics that we had struggled to locate were definitely not in that delivery, which is why it was so worth spending the time tracking with barcodes earlier on.  I was now happy with the extra work that we hadn't been expecting.

The people really helped during the pack down, not just in the physical helping, but the conversation and amusing stories during were what made the time go quicker.  One of my favourite conversations were the ones about 'lost in translation', where google translate made people say some interesting things.  The VTM of the venue told us about a coffee shop in Spain where, instead of asking for a Coffee to go, he asked whether he could steal a coffee.  Oh translators.  You are great, but we do over-estimate your capabilities at times.

Once we had finally managed to finish, the two of us there only for the strike made our way back down the mountains to get back to our hotels.  I had never been up in the Laura mountains at night before now, particularly not until this time, so had a few new experiences.  Firstly, instead of getting the internal shuttle bus from the compound back to the cable car that would take us down the mountain, we decided to walk instead - apparently it wasn't far… and my now colleague was fairly certain he knew where he was going…

We nearly went off course briefly once, but true to his word, he did know where he was going, so all was good.  We reached a cable car that would take us to the main cable cars.  Only issue was, I have never seen cable cars moving so slowly.  Genuinely, I have seen tortoise move quicker.  Still, it gave us plenty of time for conversation about various different things - mostly work/broadcast related, but was really interesting.  We finally reached the other end of the first cable cars, and we soon realised why they had been so slow.  At the station the other side, there was a cleaning crew that was cleaning each cable car inside and out, so the speed had to be slow enough to do every single cart while it was still in the station.  Now I'm sure you can see why it was slow.  The next cable car was going at normal speed though - which is good, as it takes over 15 minutes at the best of times.

On the way down, I got to hear more stories about life in the mountains.  Naturally, I know all about things like the hotels on the coast, but there were further complaints in the mountains, mostly because it was longer before they were ready.  Many of the hotels were not owned/run by Russians either, they were ran by people from other parts of eurasia.  Namely people whose personal hygiene were not as important a factor as it would be for normal people, apparently.  A lot of the buildings were only for show on the outside, too.  Having said that, we discussed that there was enough built and enough finished for the Olympics themselves.  We agreed that, despite the unfinished state, we weren't left without things we needed, only things we wanted.  And when you consider that about 6 years previous, none of it existed.  Literally.  As in none of the mountain courses, not a single building, no roads, no train lines, definitely no cable cars.  It was an empty, unaccessible space.  Seriously, Russia have pulled off something amazing to have held something so successful to this stage.  I mean, there are a few days left at this stage, so we'll wait to see how the rest goes, but so far it's looking good.

Apparently, also, the cable cars already have buyers who will be taking it off Russia's hands once everything is all over.  It makes sense, they are literally to parts of each mountain that are functional specifically for the games, and won't be needed afterwards, so they might as well recycle and try to recover some of the money they have overspent on…

After what felt like a very long journey, I managed to get back to my hotel room for a reasonably respectable 1:30am, so enough time for some sleep before tomorrow's inevitably busy day.

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 33

21 February 2014

Today was the ski cross.  This was the event I most wanted to see above all else.  In fact, the remote possibility of seeing this was what excited me most about going to the Winter Games this year.

Thinking back to the 2010 winter games, I was in University at the time, and my house all got together to watch some of the games.  Our favourite of the competitions was the Ski Cross, as it seemed to remind us of 'Mario Kart', on Skis.  All the athletes need would be a couple of banana skins, and there we have it.  We even said, as a house, that we should be in Russia to watch the Ski Cross for the 2014 games.  Being here put me one step closer to being able to see it as planned.

Luckily, my schedule today pointed me towards the mountain - in particular, the Ski Cross was the final competition for what we called the 'XFR' venues, which meant the equipment should have been packed down afterwards, and I would have to be there anyway.  I decided that, being as though I needed to be there anyway, all I would need to do is just be there a bit earlier, and that would mean I could see a number of the competitions.  Good thing about Ski Cross is that it's a bloomin' quick competition, so I only had to be there an hour early to be able to watch a good deal of the comps, meaning it took me out of my work time for no longer than a lunch break would have done.

It was great to just sit and relax to enjoy the Ski Cross.  I was feeling like crap today, like, really under the weather.  It was purely based on tiredness, but I had a cold starting and my throat felt like it was lined with daggers.  Being able to sit and watch my favourite sport of the winter games was just what I needed to get me through the day.

One thing I love is how unexpected some of the placement transitions can be.  You can have someone in first place, and all of a sudden something happens which could potentially take out everyone else, or they just slip into last place.  That's what reminds us of mario kart.

After the competition, I watched the flower ceremony (which is the first time I have watched one of those since been here) and then made my way back to the compound.  I phoned the strike co-ordinator to see what his plans were, when he said that everything would now be done tomorrow, as the XSB side of the Extreme Park wouldn't finish until tomorrow.  He said it would be more worth my time to come back the following day, rather than staying up there for XFR.  Now, I'm glad I was still able to go for the Ski Cross, but I was a little frustrated that I had made it to Extreme and my work was postponed, as I spoke to the team earlier that morning and we were all pretty certain that the XFR would need to be done still, even with XSB tomorrow.

So, I made my way back down to the IBC.  I went straight to the Vendor to unpack some equipment that had then made its way back to us.

There were a few more strikes planned for this evening, but with it reaching 8pm already and things really catching up with me, I was genuinely struggling to keep my eyes open.  I think my colleagues realised this, and - which I was very grateful for - they insisted I headed on home to get some rest.  I got back to my hotel room for 9pm, went straight to bed, and was asleep within minutes.

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 32

20 February 2014

It was painful to get up this morning, but we got up and met at reception as planned and made our way back to Hockey.  We needed to speak with the team responsible for the equipment, so got to the venue for 9am.  Unfortunately, the team themselves weren't there - it turns out they were actually already on their flights back out of the country.  So, we discussed the situation with the VTM and he agreed that the most likely situation was that the microphones were being used in the other Hockey venue.  Other than that, the only job left to do was to wait for one of the riggers to retrieve a few final mics from the arena.  When that was completed, we went into the Olympic Park to get some breakfast - we were starving.

There was a crepe/pancake place near the hockey venues which I was planning to go to, but one of the others insisted that there was another one on the walk back, closer to the IBC.  He assured me that it was as good as, if not better, than the place I had intended to go to.  I assured him that the pressure was on, and if the quality of these next pancakes were not as good, he would be in serious trouble, and I would never trust him again.  I think he understood the gravity of the situation, and knew what was at stake.

We arrived at the crepe outlet, and placed our orders.  I am pleased to announce the place passed our quality inspections, and my fellow crepe assessor was right on the mark - I will now continue to trust the Portuguese for their pancake/crepe recommendations.

We arrived back at the IBC at 11am, and just got straight on with my work.  A few hours later, one of my colleagues came over to join me for lunch - we went to the Asian restaurant in the IBC for, what would be, one last time.  We knew from that point there wouldn't be a chance to get there again.

We had a really nice lunch, albeit with terrible service… but why change the habit of a lifetime?  I got back to work again, but this time sat myself in the vendor, rather than in the office, so that I could make sure everything was ready for the equipment to return, potentially later that day.  I basically just sat with my head down for the remainder of the afternoon - one of the other vendors was being a bit too inconsiderate for my liking by smoking in the warehouse… not exactly the conditions I wanted to be working in.

In Russia, you come to terms pretty quickly with the idea that a lot of buildings are going to be smoky.  It's very different to the UK in that way, and feels like going back in time a little - at least for us Brits.  The idea of people smoking in buildings doesn't bother me - if it is a smoking place, then it's fair game, if I don't like it, that's my problem.  If I have that big a problem, I can leave… The only time I do have a problem is when it's a place that is meant to be no smoking - particularly a place of work.  If I have no choice but to be somewhere, it's not fair to be smoked out.  Anyway, rant over.

I finished the work that I needed to do at around 7pm, so decided to then head on back.  If I'm honest, I really don't remember any more of this day - what I did on the evening I really couldn't tell you.  Did I just grab something quick to eat? Or did I go for a meal?  I guess when I get a chance to sit down with my receipts I'll know for definite, but until then, my tiredness from this day has pretty much got the better of me.  If I ever remember, maybe I'll update you…

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 31

19 February 2014

Today was an early start to get the database finished.  We had a 'date' at 12noon, so decided to all work from home in the morning so that we could each work in peace and get stuff done.  At 11am, we then made our way into the IBC to get a present for our date, when we then headed off to Curling.

If you haven't realised, our 'date' was to see the wonderful lady at Curling, who was also my 'Valentine' last week.  It was her last day, as she would be leaving after the Semi finals today, so we had to say goodbye to her - particularly as she was the main reason we didn't go completely insane during the week of Curling.

After our goodbyes, we then went back to the Vendor to begin sorting everything out in preparation for everything returning towards the end of the week.  We did a physical count of the stock still in the vendor and arranged everything so that as it returned, it could be packed straight into the boxes and be obvious what was still to arrive.

Naturally, this took a while, so by the time we finished it was time for a late dinner, following which we then had to make our way to the Hockey venue (Shayba) to see the end of the game so that we could pack the venue down at midnight.

I will admit, at this point, we were a little bitter about having to be at the Hockey Venue for pack down.  Mostly because we started work at the normal time of 8am this morning, and staying for the pack down meant we wouldn't be finishing work until very early hours of the morning.  This, added to the fact that it is already the job of the Audio crew onsite to physically pack down and check all the mics, annoyed us a little, as we didn't feel as though there was any need for us to be there.

When we arrived, the audio crew on site left before we barely had chance to say anything.  This left us and the relief crew (chief rigger and his crew) to pack everything away ourselves.  We were then left with missing equipment that we had no idea how to locate.  We did wonder, however, whether these items had been shared with the other Hockey venue - but we wouldn't know this until the other Venue is struck too, and that isn't until Sunday.

Basically, we were then running around like lunatics until 2am, when we finally decided to leave, as there was nothing else we could do without having the audio team or the other hockey venue with us.  At this point, we were genuinely just doing someone else's job, which is worse because we have to physically work a lot more hours than those people, and they are being paid for the job where we're not.

I should note, by the way… It may be obvious by how I have described the above (and apologies if it is) but in case it isn't, the 'Strikes' that I am talking about are simply when Inventory go in and 'strike' all of the equipment out of the venues.  Technically we aren't working the strikes, we are working the 'pre-strike', preparing everything for the strike itself - which, again, the audio crew at the venue are meant to be responsible for…

The only thing that made it worth while is that we, ourselves, had a good team, so worked well, and had ourselves a bit of a laugh…

I'm not sure if I have mentioned before, but one of the amusing things about working with mics in broadcast is always the condoms… yes, condoms.  Now, when microphones are in the outside element, they are one of the best ways to keep them protected.  I had one funny moment when walking through Sliding last week; I had to change a couple of condoms on the mics - they weren't completely necessary in this venue, but the team wanted to be extra cautious, and that's never a bad thing.  So, as I went through security, the woman at security asked me to open my bag.  The first thing she saw was about 100 condoms… try explaining that one in Russian ;-) we laughed about it anyway…

So, moving on again.  The condoms that had been sent to Hockey had not been touched… after all, it's an indoor venue, so wouldn't have been needed in practise.  So, towards the end, some of them had started to be used as balloons.  One of the guys, the absolute legend, started having a bit of extra fun.  We caught the bus back from the Hockey stadium to the IBC.  There was a large group of Russian girls waiting, so, of course, we made a joke about photo-bombing them as they took their group pictures.  That was when they invited us to join them to actually be in the photos.  There were also a couple of photographers that got on the bus and sat on the seats next to us.  The condom balloons were becoming a little old now, so the legend himself decided to make it a little more interesting.  He placed on of the condoms in the 'drink pouch' section of the photographer's bag.  Where it was completely obvious for the world to see.  We couldn't stop laughing, but the photographers didn't look around once.  Even when pictures were then being taken, and someone forgot to turn their flash off.  We were sure that would make them turn around, and when it didn't, we laughed even harder.  I won't profess to be the most mature group at this stage, but after the day we'd had, we really needed the light relief.  We wondered whether they would notice it before returning the next day, and trying to go through security themselves with what looks like a used condom (but, of course, wasn't) in the side of their bag.  Oh dear.

We got back to the hotel some time between 2:30 and 3:00am, but were all too wound up still from the day, so went to the bar just to chill out and unwind before bed.  We have an early start in the morning, so really need to be rested (enough).  I left first, after about an hour.  I was shattered, but my mind still on the job, so at around 5am, I finally began to drift off to sleep.

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 30

18 February 2014

I was meant to spend another day in the Mountains today, but I really didn't want another day in the Mountains, and also had loads of work that I needed to do to prepare for all of the sports to finish and the strikes to begin, so my colleague very kindly offered to go up to the mountains instead.

I spent the day in the Vendor working away on the database that I started working on properly yesterday.  There isn't really anything interesting for me to say about this either, as I just worked away on my own for the day.  I did meet up with my colleague who was stationed at Curling for lunch though, went to the Asian restaurant to relax a little.

After lunch I worked away again until my colleague came back early evening to see whether I wanted to go with him to one of the hockey games (Russia - Norway).  I had got a lot done, and had plenty of time the next day to finish the work off, so decided it would be worth doing.

The hockey game was pretty damn good.  My first… It's an extremely fast paced game.  I know that's obvious, but seriously, you don't realise how fast until you're there and are watching it.  I genuinely couldn't have focussed on the puck if I weren't wearing my glasses.  Russia played pretty well, too - they won 4-0, after scoring the final two goals in the final 80 seconds of play.  We had a great view, too.  We were sitting on the front row of the media section, right behind where the players are sent when sitting out for a penalty.  I must say, this is the first time I have seen Cheerleaders in an actual sporting event.  I couldn't help but see exactly why they're there, and I'm wondering why we don't have them in more sports.  In fact, I wouldn't mind them cheering me on to encourage me to do better in my work.  I would be a lot more productive in the office with a team of Cheerleaders cheering me on…

After the game we went to meet our Colleague who had made his way back from the mountains and was waiting for us in the MPC bar.  When we found him, he was sitting with the OBS RF team again… I told them they were beginning to get themselves a reputation - every time we went in there, we'd see them already there!

We left the bar and made our way back so that we could get some dinner.  We had decided to go to one of the local Russian places to eat there.  We didn't stay long, literally just ate and left - the fastest meal you could have in Russia…  On the way back, we stopped by some local shops to have a look around the coastal shops.

The final shop was just the grocery store so that we could get a few little important bits (namely food/breakfast), at which point I realised how lucky we are in the UK.  Visa is the official sponsor of the Olympics, so although there are still a fair few places that don't accept card, there are now a lot of places that can now accept visa following the Olympics.  This means that we, having UK bank accounts, can pretty much use our cards anywhere.  One of my colleagues, however, has both a Japanese and US bank account.  I believe that neither of these cards have chip and pin, they are simply swipe and sign cards.  In Russia, however, although chip and pin cards are supported, there are many places where the 'normal' cards are not, so we can pay easily enough, but others are still unable to pay, even though the store claims you can pay by card in the window.  This makes it so much easier for us to travel than many others.

Since been here, I have realised many small things that really do make me thankful for being a UK resident.

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 29

17 February 2014

It was a cold, wet and miserable day on the coast this morning, but I had high hopes that meant it would be snowing in the mountains.  It'd be welcome at this stage, to ensure there's enough snow to get through the rest of the games.

The driver picked me up at 8:30 to take me to the Alpines first to take a few last photos, and then on to Extreme park to spend the day there.

The music was significantly better in this car, starting with a bit of Bastille, and a few other English-language numbers.  I was also able to sit in the back, behind the driver, because of how he was parked when waiting for me.  I was particularly pleased about this as it reduced the chances of him trying to make conversation - which, even though I was in a much better state this morning, was still preferred.

We pulled into a petrol station to re-fuel, when I noticed two fairly significant things.

One, just how cheap the fuel is here.  30 roubles per (litre? Hmm, not sure about the measurements here) which works out to be about 60p.  Probably at least half of what we would expect to pay in the UK...

Two, you don't fill up yourself.  There is a guy at the pump who, when you pull up, starts filling up your tank for you while you go in to pay.

It's the little things that I'm really beginning to notice these days...

As we were driving up the mountains, there was no sign of snow yet, but considering visibility ended about 20 meters in front of us, it was hard to know where the roads were, let alone whether there was snow falling above us.

For the journey, the only conversations I had with the driver were about directions (which we both struggled with due to not being able to physically see the roads) or what time I would be ready to be picked up to go to the next place.

So I reached the Alpine mountains, where I didn't exactly have the best of experiences the other day, and things weren't much better today - but this time it made me laugh...

There was no extra snow, in fact.  Visibility was even worse the further I went up.  I literally couldn't even see the cable car in front of me, and the course was not physically visibility as I was going over it.  It really was that bad.

The purpose of going back was to take a few extra photos at the start line, as there was an array of mics that I didn't have great photos of, because it wasn't possible to reach them while the competition was on the other day.  What we didn't consider, however, was that when the competition wasn't on, the start line and mics are removed.  So I got to the top of the mountain and had nothing to take any pictures of...

Considering the visibility, I phoned ahead to Extreme to let them know I would be coming, but to ask how it was there. They said visibility was much the same, so would question whether it would be worth it.  Speaking with the boss man, however, he considered that it would be worth me trying, as it might not improve from here - which he had a good point about.

I made my way to Extreme and the VTM was certainly on the mark, visibility was practically zero.  I made my way up to the top of the Snowboard Cross course to get a few photos.  I tried to capture the mics, but the fog/mist was that thick my camera couldn't see the mic to autofocus, and I couldn't see it well enough myself to manually focus either.  The photos I did take, the mics were barely even visible.  The competition itself was cancelled too, so now wasn't the time to be trying.

I made my way to the OBS dining tent, had something to eat, got out my computer and worked my way through until I would find out whether Aerials would still be on that evening.  If they were, maybe I could still make the day worth-while...

I was working heavily on creating a database of what equipment had been sent where.  It had become apparent that nobody had an accurate list anywhere, as either things had been missed, or on our side, sometimes the relevant people hadn't been included on some emails and not others when Inventory had scanned everything, so it came to being me that had the only accurate information of everything that physically left the vendor, but with everything else that had been going on, I had packing lists and paperwork for everything, but not a physical database that included all of the information.  Particularly because there were already two or three people doing this exact thing - it felt as though there were enough people already doing the same job.  Still, it was an unavoidable situation at this stage, and probably easier for me to do it because, like I say, I physically sent everything, so I could trace everything back in my mind to know exactly what had happened.

While I was working away, I heard someone shout hello to me, so I looked up and saw the girls from the other night - who I directed to restaurant from the bus back from the mountains.  I remembered them saying they were athlete liaison at Extreme, so made sense that they'd be there.

At 4pm I heard positives that the event was going to be on, so took a look outside and noticed that the weather had really started to clear up, so made my way to the venues to see what photos I could take.

I had a quick look at the top of Ski Cross first, but all of the mics had already been wrapped up and sealed to keep them dry and safe, so wasn't able to get anything there.  Went over to the Aerials course, however, and things were looking good.  Athletes were out practising/warming up, and they had began to set up the equipment.  I stayed around, got some good shots, and waited for the event to begin.

As I was waiting for the event to begin properly, I was just hanging around one of the areas to the side of the OBS production area, where I could get some good angles of the mics and production team.  It was quite funny at this stage, as one of the security came up to me and said that I couldn't take photos there, the press area is over to the left of me, blah blah... I then pointed out that I was OBS, and needed photos of the mics, not the athletes, and he apologised and said 'Technical, yes, thank you for understanding, please stay'.

I got the shots that I needed and decided to sit and watch the end of the first heat - after all, it had been a long and ridiculous day up until now, so wanted to enjoy the day a little while I waited for my car to come pick me up and take me back to the hotel.

The car came for 6:30pm, so I phoned ahead to my colleague to say lets meet at 8pm for some dinner.  The moment we began to drive, I realised there was a very good chance it wouldn't take 90 minutes to get home...

The driver was a genuine maniac.  We were still on the mountain, barely even out of the venue itself, and I knew that I feared for my life.  He was taking unbelievable risks - the first, there were two buses and a car in front of us.  The roads are convoluted and bendy at the best of times.  Yet still, he decides that it's still a good idea to try to overtake all of these vehicles at the same time.  He floors it.  I meant literally floors it.  I would say that he uses the acceleration pedal as a footrest, because he has a foot that weighs a tonne!  As we overtook the three vehicles (or, I should say, as we were overtaking...) a car came up from the other direction, literally out of nowhere.  He was dead in front of us.  My driver swerved straight in front of the first bus and got us to safety, but I swear I have never seen anything that close before.

He cranked the music up loud, too, except it was nothing like I would have imagined... instead, he was rocking Kylie's 'Can't get you out of my head'.  Surreal.

Quite frankly, after a few stunts, and realising that he was driving a minimum of 120 km, but easily reaching 150 km on an open road, I knew he was going to take a fair few risks along the way, and I didn't want to see any of them.  I also wanted to find a way to be as relaxed as possible, as if something happened, my best chance to survive would be by staying limp (maybe?).

I figured the best thing to do would be to close my eyes, and go into as deep a rest as I could.  This kind of worked.  I was aware that we were driving quickly, but not of anything else that was going on, so was pretty relaxed in the finish.  I only opened my eyes for the first time when my phone started ringing to check how far along I was, and whether the time frame was achievable.  In fact, I then had a look at the area to determine where we were, and we were nearly at the coast and had been in the car for about 45 minutes so far.  I have to believe that is some sort of record.  I can barely get anywhere in 45 minutes, and he has just got us from the mountains to the coast - which has been known to take me 2 hours.  15 minutes would easily, and comfortably, get me home, so the time frame was still good - even give me a bit of time to chance and get ready before heading out.

That was, until the driver drove past the turning we should have took, and took the one after instead.  We were going too quickly for me to tell him, but the second exit basically takes you all the way back on the motorway up to the airport.  There's no easy exit, and the exits you do have take forever to get back on course.  This easily adds an extra 30 minutes onto the journey.  Easily.  I figured I would be a little later now, and probably wouldn't quite make it back.

Pah, why did I worry?  We were driving that fast, we genuinely overtook a police car who had his sirens on.  Who drives that fast?  And how on earth did he manage to get away with it?! I'm really not sure what the laws are in this place, but I'm fairly certain the limit is supposed to be around 90km where we were?

So, within 15 minutes (literally half the time) we were back in the place we were before.  We got back to the media hotel plot, however he kept driving in some extremely unusual places, until eventually he tried to drop me off at a completely different hotel.  This guy, obviously, couldn't speak a work of english, so trying to direct him in the first place had been interesting, but in the finish I managed to direct him to my hotel.

I must make a point, however, during the times I then had my eyes open again, he took a lot more risks that I did get to see.  He began to overtake again on a small road, another car came right at us, so he made the decision to swerve back in and hit the cars by the side of us, rather than hit the car dead on in front of us.  We were extremely lucky, however, as the guy in the car that was (then) behind us noticed exactly what was about to happen and he floored his brakes.  When we swerved, I think we barely just felt the bumper, but luckily didn't do any damage and nobody was hurt, so all was fine, but man was my heart racing.

When we got back, all I wanted to do was run the heck out of there and, quite possibly, make out with the floor from relief of actually still being able to (I didn't, of course), whereas at that point, that's where he wanted to exchange pleasantries, exchange pins (which I didn't have any of, anyway), and he thanked me (in Russian), rather than me thanking him.  I'm not quite sure why, maybe because he was able to joyride, and he had the time of his life?  If I never saw him again, I would be pretty damn happy.

I met with my colleague and went for dinner.  Mine tasted all the better - one of those perspectives of 'I'm still alive, how did that happen?'  We had a nice pleasant evening, however.  We went back to the log cabin inside the restaurant, as we hadn't been there for a while.  The showgirls were still there, but one of them had been replaced.  What we did notice was very different, however, is that they didn't bring anyone up with them to dance at any point - and their boss was watching them from the corner with his arms folded at all times, so perhaps they had been told they weren't allowed to do that any more?  Still, at least it meant I didn't have to worry about being dragged up any more!

After the meal, we made our way over to the reception bar just to chill out a little before heading back to our rooms, when we saw another of our friends from the Audio crew who were at another bar in one of the tents.  We decided at that point to go and join them.

We had a good laugh with some very weird conversations... We finally then headed to our rooms at some time... not entirely certain what time, but it was getting a little late.

Tom

[griffograph]

Winter Olympics Journey - Day 28

16 February 2014

Last night, I am happy to say, they had turned the music down by 11:30pm, so I guess they read my blog and realised they'd be in serious trouble if they didn't act fast… either that, or one of you contacted the Embassy for me and they got the job done.  Either way, I was pretty thankful.

After that, I went into my bathroom to brush my teeth and noticed that I have had a hair dryer installed in my room!  Now, granted, I have no actual use for a hair dryer, but it's just more to support my room getting better and better.  If I can just get a shower curtain, I really will be living in luxury!

I was also pretty hopeful for this morning.  Last night, we got it approved that we could go down to one person at the Curling.  This was great news, as it was definitely getting too much for us all.  I was also under instruction to take my time this morning and get whatever rest I needed so that I could make sure I was on top form.  Based on that, I had already sent one of my colleagues home at 5pm, but later sent the other home after the first 5th ends, when there would have been nothing we could do during the game anyway, so it made sense to make sure they had some rest that evening so they could be in this morning well rested.  I then switched my alarms off this morning, for the first time ever, so that I could let my body wake me up whenever it was actually ready to awaken.  I was really looking forward to this.

Unfortunately, what actually happen, however, was my colleague arrived into Curling this morning in a terrible state, definitely no fit state to be working.  What that meant was I was woken up not long after with the news that they were in, but weren't physically up for the work.  That meant I was awoken much earlier than desired, and also had to get up and out as quickly as physically possible.  Not the start to the day I had hoped for.

I also had the most ridiculous moment myself.  I was trying to get into my bag.  I began to unzip the top when I noticed another zip on the side.  That's strange! I've never noticed that zip before.  I have another pocket on the side of the bag that I had never noticed before!  It's almost like a long but thin pocket, which I guess would be great for bottles or other things like that.

No, Thomas.  That zip is the main zip to open the bag.  The zip I was meant to be opening.  I was actually opening a small pocket at the top which I was very much aware of.  There are no hidden pockets on the bag.

I'm questioning my own state of being able to work this morning…

Lunch time couldn't come quickly enough, but when it did, I welcomed it with open arms.  It was also the time when my other colleague joined me and would take over for Curling for the afternoon so that I could get to a meeting with the big boss.

During lunch, we had a laugh, which picked up my spirits for the day a bit.  My colleague noticed a girl across the room who was removing her bib provocatively, which sparked a disturbing memory for him from the other day.  For me, it was hilarious, for him, it was the worst moment of the entire trip.

Context: The OBS uniform is really good, however the girls' trousers/pants (depending on where in the world you are from) are exceptional.  They are pretty much the talk of the IBC… or at least to the perverts of us.  To be fair, most of the girls are included in the conversations, and we have even discussed setting up a poll for the best… erm… lets say 'wearer of the trousers'.  So, my colleague was walking up the stairs of curling and he saw an arse bent over at the top of the stairs, so he began to enjoy the view.  Then I turned around.

I think his eyes were burning, and he was considering turning himself into the Russian police, while I nearly dropped on the floor with laughter.

After lunch I set off to my meeting.  While on my way I ran into the audio manager who told me he had a great video of me at one of the venues that he was going to use at the future meetings.  Now, I was skeptical, however I had seen him at a lot of the venues I had been to, so I did wonder whether there was some truth into it.  Like, 20% max.  As soon as the video started the 'venue' part was confirmed, however only if you consider the night out the other night as a 'venue'.  Not a person that you want to have a video of you dancing…

I went into my meeting and was happy that the big boss was happy with what I had done so far, and there was only really one more place that I needed to spend a significant amount of time, and that was at 'Extreme', which is where I knew I needed to spend more time anyway.  It also gave me an opportunity to find out exactly what my schedule needed to be for this week.  It also meant that once I had gotten a few more things done, I'd be able to clock out earlier so that I could get some much needed rest.

I got out at 5pm in the end, and it felt like such an early finish.  It almost felt as though I was just leaving half way through the day.  It was only when I was half way home that I realised what felt like a cheeky early escape was, in reality, still more hours than a normal work day in the UK.  Plus, it's a Sunday.  So, I did the only rational thing I could think of doing, I got back home and got straight into bed.

After a couple hours of rest I then went for a quiet stroll so that I could get both some fresh air and some food.  The slow walk was quite nice - I was wrapped up in literally in my full ski gear to keep me warm and dry from the drizzling rain that had recently started.  It also gave me a chance to think about how much the neighbourhood had changed since arriving.

There are so many more shops and restaurants now.  Even those who were here originally have changed dramatically.  When I first got here, even the people who had been here for months had only just moved to this area, as it wasn't built at all at that point.  It was only in process when I arrived.  Only really in the past week or two has so much more popped up.  One of the biggest, and most obviously changes is how much the number of dogs has been reduced.

I was speaking to someone during the week about this, who said that apparently a rich man funded a place where they could house all of the dogs, so that they didn't have to put so many of them down.  How true this is, I'm not sure, but I can't imagine the Russian officials being so considerate of so many stray animals if not.  When we arrived, though, you'd find packs of 10 dogs all chasing cars.  When all of the press began to arrive, they made a big fuss about how many dogs were around, but by that point they had already reduced the number pretty dramatically.  Now, there are a few around, but really not many.  I thought about this more when walking around and seeing a cat and its tiny kitten, but no dogs.  My first week of walking the same walk, we were literally stalked by dogs.

It does have a nice feel to it, and hopefully it will continue to improve.  I really hope they manage to utilise all of the space once this is all over.

For now, though, I'm back home, have eaten, watched a couple of TV episodes to unwind, and I am now going straight to bed to get some sleep before going back to the mountains tomorrow.  At 10pm, I think it's safe to say this is a first since being here.  In fact, this has been the first evening I have had to myself since being here.  I can get through the next two weeks easily enough, but man am I ready to go home now.

I hope everyone else's weekend has been better than mine.

Tom