Gary BUTTERWORTH Online

In case anyone still bothers to check this out from time to time, I thought I better update you now on what I’ve been up to the past few months, because I really hae no idea when I’ll be able to do this again.

Anyway, I think everyone knows that I went to Dustin’s wedding in May.  A little less than two months after that, I went to New York City for work.  I spent a weekend there filming pieces on Times Square, Pakistani entrepreneurs, and (the main reason we went), the West Indies Cricket Team!  I enjoyed the match, even though we had to leave early, and it was a thrill getting to run the camera for an interview with Brian Lara.  (Some people say Brian Lara is the Michael Jordan of cricket.  I say Michael Jordan is the Brian Lara of basketball.  Best player since Bart King.)

NYC was my first ever business trip, and it was a lot of fun.  Fortunately, the good times kept rolling over the summer, because just a month later, I got to go to London on the company dime! 

I worked on a bunch of stories there, the highlight of which was an interview with deposed Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (who was incredibly fascinated by my camera). 

(The second highlight was a soccer game.  It was a fun ending to the trip, but it was frustrating to be in a new place and have almost no time to explore.  I thought about calling out sick and hanging around an extra day to explore, but I didn’t think that would be very professional.  I certainly made the right decision; if I had hung around, I would have been flying back the day the bomb plot was foiled!)

Those work trips were really productive, and a lot of fun, too.  I wish I had the opportunity to shoot more, because it seems that I improve quite a bit after each shoot.  Of course, I still have room for improvement.

Part of me felt a little shortchanged by not getting to sightsee in London.  Ironically, going away made me want a vacation even more!  So a couple of weeks ago I went to Montreal.

To see Maczde Carpate: 

I found it a little odd that they played the whole concert without shirts on, but I met them afterwards and they were really nice guys.  They were surprised that I came so far just to see them, but they were cool about it.  They signed the new CD for me, which is really good.  The new Barenaked Ladies CD (see the last post, below), is also very good.   

The next afternoon I rented a car and went to a QMJHL game in Drummondville, where I had a bad experience.  But let’s not dwell on that.

So now I’m back home and off to virtual Afghanistan. 

You probably know that I’ve been working on an Urdu-language TV show to Pakistan for a little over a year now.  Well, next week they’re launching two new shows to Afghanistan: one in Dari, the other in Pashto.  And they want me to help out for the first four weeks.  The catch: it’s shown live in Afghanistan, so we work 4am-12noon; it moves up an hour once the time changes.

They say four weeks; it better be four weeks.  Of course, I wouldn’t be shocked if they ask me to stay longer, and I guess there’s always the chance that it’ll not work out, but I’m planning on working 4am-noon for the next four weeks.  I might try to keep my current job in Urdu at the same time; we’ll see how long I can swing that for.  I’m still young, right?  So I can do a month of 16 hours days, right?

Anyway, you might not see me for a while.  So that’s where I’ll be: Virtual Afghanistan.

Filed under: Cricket, international, Life, Music, Posts with Pictures, Travel