Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Red & Blue at 3 am

The diehards remain, the celebs and want to be celebs down to the E list have left. Perhaps only the true believers will be able to claim that they witnessed history and yet everyone who has left will tell tales of how they were here and watched it. I doubt that half the people here know the difference between the donkey and the elephant and who is blue and who is red.
Speaking of colors Correspondent Greg Palkot and I almost had a heart attack when the embassy map showed the state of New York as red before they changed it to blue , apparently the computers colors everything red first , and then you have to change it.
In the next hour I hope to witness history , perhaps that is why working in the media is magic at times, then again anything is better than two weeks ago in Afghanistan

1am London , 8pm Eastern

The hard thing about time differences is that over here it is already tomorrow and yet the time on the East Coast is 8pm. And watching various monitors around the embassy you are beseiged by the flashing of figures across screens, we cannot contribute much as there is no reaction to results because they are still to be counted. The mood of the party makes me wish that I had spent more time reading celebrity magazines like Hello as the guest list here grows and given that the locals have not figured out how to turn on the air conditioners correctly. Most of the guests sip white wine and try to network amongst themselves. The map on the wall has only two states colored and the cut outs have finally become somewhat irrelevant as almost everyone has had their photo taken with them. It appears that we will still be here at 3am at least providing those chads are a thing of the past.

Midnight at the Embassy

London Update Midnight , 7pm Eastern
The official results are still not being called and thus the party continues here in the Embassy spilling over three floors, with Burger King and Subway doing a roaring trade in the basement where we cannot film. The Obama cut out is just about faded with the number of flash bulbs . It is hard to determine a mood as people seem more interested in socialising than watching history unfold and the large projected map on the wall has no figures yet the next hour will be fascinating

Polls Closing

London 11pm
Party in full swing now , complete with Starbucks coffe man walking around and a lady who must of been paid a lot to dress up as the statue of Liberty. The Mc Cain cut out is a lone figure not suffering from the flashbulbs. Oh and as Iwas walking thru the crowd I thought I had pushed someone so I turned and said sorry, it was the Sarah Pallin cut out .

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Countdown to History

US Embassy
London

Local Time 9 pm , East Coast Time 4 pm

Sitting in the Via Reception room at the US Embassy here in London, is somewhat of a weird place to observe a moment in history , that is likely to happen in the coming hours, The local evening newspapers here in London have all agreed that Barack Obama is likely in the coming hours to become the next President and here in the Reception room there are four cardboard cutouts of the candidates where you can have your photo taken with your favorite so far no one has had a photo taken with Mc Cain or Joe Biden. Obama is the favorite thou Pallin is popular because she is shorter.

We all remember where we were in great moments of history, Man on the Moon, 911 attacks and perhaps tonight the next defining moment a black man becomes President of the USA.

Apart from that we wait till the early hours of the morning here, as we are five hours ahead of New York and it is most likely that we will be here till 4 in the morning.

Meanwhile the Obama cut out remains the most popular and if that is any indication of the cut out exit poll, perhaps the night will not be that long. And history may start a little bit earlier.