Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Perhaps it is the Hours

Tbilisi
Georgia

Perhaps one the hardest things to come to personal grips with on assignments of this length is the toll working hours in two time zones, and then having to work them twice or more in a day.
Time zones are probably my greatest enemy in many respects, here in Tbilisi we are eight hours ahead of Fox News Headquarters in New York. The affects of this after twelve days on assignment probably really hit home last night or afternoon depending on where you are reading this.
The day seems to begin the night before, as if we have to do a live shot for the Prime Time News Show"Fox Report" that means we are still working at 3 am , you do the shot, then have to break down. So as far as New York is aware we have finished just after 7pm, by the time you get to bed it can be 4:30 local and then to get up and gather the news for the day I have to be awake again no later than 9 am, to get the kit ready from Sat gear to Computers, power, cameras, first aid kit checks and the body armor.
Out of the hotel around 10 am (which remember is in fact according to New York 2 am, and the day has begun)
We head up the road to the frontline, film for a few hours, then head back to Tbilisi, I try to feed some of the material we have shot on the road so that the Channel has material for us to run during the day.



And this is before we start our rostered shift of live shots , our block of lives yesterday was from 3 pm to the 7pm shows, New York Time, which meant we were going locally from 10 pm to 3 am.
Then figure on getting up again and doing it again, sometimes the live shift good fall in your favor and we can wrap up by midnight. But you know that all things end, and at some stage life will be back to normal.
As far as what has happened here today, the reality is nothing, but my conspiracy theory for the future has no silver lining.
Tomorrow is another day, that is after we finish at 3 am.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good grief, Mr. James. It was a great blog, and very clear I'm sure, but after reading it I am not sure what time it is here where I am...In fact I am not even sure what day it is. Time zones suck. I think we should just have one time zone all over the world. The photo was great. Looks like siesta time in Mexico. Your conspiracy theory is as good as the next guys and you seem to know more what is going on than the world leaders do....which is sort of scary when you think about it, Mr. James.
A&N

Anonymous said...

I agree with commenter #one. But I am further confused because we in Arizona are three hours earlier than New York accept during Daylight savings time..which we don't observe in Arizona....wait...or is that Martin Luther King Day we don't observe.. so we are only 2 hours different here then, which isn't until later in the year...sometime. At any rate, as the Rolling Stones so aptly put it, "Time is on my side...Yes it is."...or was that the Beatles? You all looked beat in the picture. Which only makes us appreciate the great job you are doing all the more...all the time.
Neatie