where i sit

The weather is filling the air with heat and humidity and it will burst into monsoon come june. i'm hardpressed to leave the house after noon, especially because my work day does not begin until any time between 4pm to 5:30 pm. After work I tend to be wide awake and buzzing with the day's residue- ideal for going to the gym normally. At 2 am I'm left with my own thoughts or sitting in an over-priced coffee shop of a luxury hotel with some colleagues listening to them wax politics. There is normalcy in the fact that at least the five of us share the same wacked out schedule.

Daily, I am pretty amused that this motley crew of young folk decides what hits the pages for the next day. When you grow up reading the paper you never really think about who is formulating the news, choosing the news, designing the layout of the news. At least I assumed someone conveying the news would have a certain knowledge that I don' t have access too. That's not really true. Journalists tend to be intensely curious, news/gossip oriented, information-seeking, question-asking, fun-loving. They tend to ask impertinent questions, and good ones are very hungry for the story. They talk about story in terms of "meat" and extraneous informtion as "flab". Carnivorous lot.

I think I relegated myself to the editing desk at least for a while because this hunger freaked me out. On my first day reporting they sent me to the home of this kid who had managed to stop an AlItalia flight from taking off by saying there was a bomb on board (made national news). His reason, according to schoolmates, were that he was upset he did not make the MUN delegation to go to Geneva and he didn't want his girlfriend to go without him. I was so weirded out by how easy it was to find his address, his phone number, his building. He lives in an old-money part of town. There were security guards sitting there, but I walked right in and took the elevator straight to his door. I got the door slammed in my face three times by the houseman. I tried talking to others in the building but not knowing Hindi was a major barrier. I couldnt believe that I had so blatantly tried to invade their privacy for what at that point was gossip- how could a kid do that? why would a kid do that? etc. Anyway after that I wanted to sit safely away from the craziness for a while. What I am learning though is that getting a good story has only to do with a sense of picking up clues, knowing how to spin an argument, and having a sense of urgency about the story.

I think I talked about this before, the Alitalia thing. Anyway, sorry if pete and repeat walk into a bar, pete sat down, who's still standing? repeat . If pete and... :P