It's cold here

The temperature has dropped another 15 - 20 degrees since yesterday. The wind is not blowing as much but it is so cold I ran up to check the lines for the band because they decided not to come to and do a sound check today. I was on stage for maybe 15 minutes and my nose is running because it is so cold. I checked the weather before I came over and it said the lows would be in the 50's. Well our high for today was 54. I'm grateful for the layers.

And then the cat

I almost forgot about the cat that we had breakfast with. Yes, we walked into the coffee shop at the hotel for breakfast and found the hotel's cat.



Not really what I was expecting to see, but it did make for interesting conversation, especially when he jumped up and rested his front paws on the window.

Venue

I tried to take a series of picture to make a panoramic. I still need more practice, but here is what I came up with.
This was taken from the front of the stage.

Here is a view from my hotel room. I'm trying to figure out why the rooftops of some of the buildings are green. I guess they could be any color, most of the time they are white to reflect the sun and keep them cool. I see that the hotel has a putting green and some plants for decoration so it got me to thinking that maybe it is to help offset all the concrete and steel to make you think there is grass there. I'm going to try to find out why, I'll keep you posted.

Busan

My team packet had some very interesting information about Busan and the venue, The Busan Asiad Main Stadium.

* Busan was the host to the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the 14th Asian Games.
* Busan has a population of 3.65 million
* Busan is ranked internationally as the 4th largest seaport, and the largest in Korea.
*2007 is the 100 year anniversary of the Pyongyang Revival. That is considered the bench mark of the start of the Christianity in Korea.
* Busan is one of only 2 cities never to be taken by North Korean Communists during the Korean war.
* Busan is home to the largest Asian film festival, the PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival)
* Busan is home to the only United Nations Cemetary.
* The average Christian population is 23%. But in Busan, only 7 - 10% of the population is considered Christian.
* 40% of the population of Busan is Buddhist. The average Buddhist population in Korea is about 20%.

More to come...

Tight Flight(s)

I'm not a stranger to traveling but yesterday was one of those days I actually thought "I might not make it". It all started in San Diego as I started my journey to Busan, South Korea. Our American Eagle flight was 20 minutes late in boarding. It was actually late arriving but they turn the little planes around pretty quick. We boarded at 10:40am. I got on the plane and fell a sleep. I woke up as we were coming on approach into LAX. The 2 people across the isle were talking about how close their international flights were. I looked at my watch and realized it was noon and we still weren't on the ground.

I checked my ticket to confirm that I had a 1pm departure. LAX international terminal can be brutal if you have to through security and I needed to get a seat assignment. It turns out that American Eagle buses you to your terminal so we got dropped off a few gates away from where we were departing. That was cool, except for the line of people at the counter trying to get on the flight and the fact that we were now 20 minutes from departure. One of the agents taking tickets decided to help me out and she entered my passport info and generated a seat assignment and I boarded the plane. Departure time came and went and we were delayed because they were still loading luggage. For this I am grateful.

We arrived in Tokyo some time later...11 or 12 hours later. As we were getting off the plane I saw one of the other crew members who was on the same flight. We followed the signs for international connections and went through another set of security down some steps and straight onto another plane. We had an hour from the time we landed until our scheduled departure to Busan. Again we waited until all the luggage was loaded, again, I'm grateful for that, and then we departed. 2 1/2 hours later we arrived in South Korea.

I was thinking on the plane, this is the first time that I have been to Asia. I think I have now stepped foot on every continent. I think that is pretty cool, just a piece of useless trivia.

I think this feels more foreign because its nearly impossible to make any sense out of the letters. Oh well, most of the signs have English subtitles. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can get them downloaded.

Rain on, Rain off

The past few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Long days filled with rain and wind. But the last evening was picturesque.

The photo above is from the alter call on Sunday night.

All of the programs went off without any major glitches. One Saturday night I think we had 4 different bands, 3 of them back to back. Thanks again to Rick for keeping our side of the stage patched correctly and running smoothly.

I'll try to work on a photo page on the plane. A picture is worth a thousand words. Thanks to Adrian Goldberg for sharing some of his pictures from the event.

It was a great week and I have more to share. I just can't think to clearly at the moment.

Stay close, more to come...

Porkchikenflatfish

That is what we have called it. The "other" white meat. We know it's not a beef product of any type but after that, we're not sure what it is exactly. I'm talking about the meat we have had for dinner since we have been here. Our meals have been arranged and as I understand "business dinners" were ordered so we could eat when we returned from the festivals each evening. That is really cool. But we noticed a patter after a few days. The meat portion of the meal looked identical. One night it was chicken, one night fish, and one night it was pork. It was all breaded and pressed real flat. All of them were prepared the same way, without any seasonings of any type. So we coined the term, "Porkchickenflatfish" to describe the "other white meat".

That will help explain the excitement when we saw the sound check schedule an realized we were going to miss our catered lunch. We HAD to send out for McDonalds. Believe it or not, it was the best McDonalds I've had this month. It's the only McDonalds I've had this month so I guess there's nothing to compare it too. In any case, we enjoyed the burgers and fries.

Here to the left is our resident McDonalds expert Paul Hendrix. Paul has eaten at McDonalds on every continent except Antarctica. Paul managed a McDonalds for 5 years. It's a trip to be around him in McDonalds. He has them sized up about 3 steps in the door. The last time we crossed the threshold of a Mickey'D's we were in Norfolk, Va. While we were waiting in line Paul pointed out all the things that weren't up to par with the McDonalds standard. It really is very interesting. Did you know that the bathroom in a McDonalds shouldn't have any type of smell when you walk in. That piece of useless trivia is free.


This blog has taken 4 days to post and to be honest I don't know where my train of thought is. I know that as excited as we were to not eat at the hotel, when we got to TGI Fridays it was closed. We ended up at Arizona Bar-b-que which come to find out is owned by an American and a German. The decor was americana at it's finest and the service was fast, and good. We ended up there again on Sunday night. I apriciated the apple pie and the funny thing was it cost more than my thin crust pizza.

I must say that the breakfast buffet was a very enjoyable part of the day. I enjoyed the fresh tomatoes, hard boiled eggs and English breakfast tea.

I can't believe I spent so much time talking about food.

Hunker Down

Well, today began early and with grey skies. All the free time yesterday came at a price today when we had a lobby call at 7:45am. Day 3 seems to be the worst for jet lag too. In any case, we had quite a bit of work to do to get ready for sound checks. It rained overnight and everything was wet. By 10:30 or so it was warm an humid and things were drying out.

We got everything ready by lunch and had a few minutes to chill. Our first sound check was 3pm and everything was going well. The clouds started moving back in and we started covering everything. By 4:30pm the deluge had begun. Within an hour it felt like the temperature had dropped 30 degrees and I was looking for some kindling to make a fire.

The service started on it's own at 7pm. I know that sounds like a funny line but we don't really know how it happened. Miles, the FOH A2, was at FOH trying to re-patch a line (more on that in a minute). Jeff, the FOH mixer was on stage next to me, as was Rick. Winfrey was under his plastic listening to the mic that we were trying to fix. It is somewhat of a mystery how the track started, but it started on time and the program was off and running.

I need to give kudos to Rick (see photo on right). I took this photo the first time I saw him sit down all day. Actually it was the second time because he got up before I could get my camera out and I asked him to sit back down. He is soaking wet from standing at the podium while we are working on trying to figure out why one of the lecturn mics had some noise on it. Actually, Rick spent the better part of the afternoon working on the 2 lecturn mics trying to get them clean. Something happened while we were at lunch and the mics didn't sound good at all. These happen to be the mics that Franklin and the translator use. The comical part now was that when the CD started we all scrambled back to our positions for the service. Rick and I were trying to get the mic issue finished and I decided to run a new cable. I got all the pieces together and headed out on stage to hook up the mic. I grabbed the loose cable on the stage, plugged it in and the to the cable we had just run and Jeff turned it on so the speaker could talk into it. I know that sounds a little crazy, but it really happened that way. We talked about it at dinner when we got back to the hotel and Jeff said he was watching the channel for the spike when we made the connection, as soon as he saw that, he turned it on and the speaker started talking. I was one of those, "I can't believe that just happened moments".

The rain was off and on for the service and the wind blew really hard. We had to hunker down to keep from blowing away. I'll end with this picture of our work in progress.

Have a great rest of your day. I'm off to grab some shut- eye.

Day 2

You may be asking yourself, "Do we ever work?"

Well yes, yes we do. This is my 3rd post today and I'm trying to play catch up. We have 20 minutes until our next lobby call. This time things should be in a better place for us to get some work done. Here is the view from my hotel room: (Click on the pictures to load larger images)
Just got a message that our call was moved back another hour so I should be able to finish this post.

Here is the view from the field:



Ok, one more. This will look very similar, but I have noted the location of my room.

Ok, with the extra hour, it is safe to say that we have to much time on our hands. By the way, this is not the "normal" set up for Franklin Graham. It happens that George Michael has a concert on Monday night, 24 hours after our last festival. The use of some of their equipment was negotiated and they will be setting up at night after we are done with our programs. Sunday night as we are loading out, they will be loading in their 25 trucks worth of equipment.

That's all for now. It looks like I can grab a quick nap before our lobby call.

Hurry up and Wait

I've been in Kiev a little more than 24 hours. I'm a little upside down. We are 10 hours of time change away from home so things are pretty much upside down.

I landed at 8:30 am yesterday (July 3). It took us about 30minutes to reach the hotel after we waited for another person at the airport that never showed up. After checking into the hotel I ran into another crew member who said everyone was meeting in the lobby at 10:50am. From there we went to the stadium to have a look around and come up with a plan. That took us about 2 hours, waiting for all the different departments heads to show up.

After our meeting we came back to the hotel for a little break and got ready to go to the Chernobyl museum.

One of the festival volunteers gave us a guided tour. He was 6 years old when the accident happened and lived in the closest town to Chernobyl. Both his parents worked at the nuclear power plant. I didn't realize that the plant continued to operate for 14 more years after the accident. There were a total of 4 reactors. 3 of them remained operational after the accident. They finally shut down the reactors in 2000.

One of the things that I found most interesting was the fact the total lack of care for the people. There was such a high need to keep the strong image, the government was willing to risk hundred's of thousands of lives. It took 3 days to start evacuations near the disaster site. 4 days later on May 1st there was a big parade planned in Kiev. The government had a chance to call it off, but didn't. Thousands of people were exposed to high levels of radiation.

The picture to the left is used to depict the devastation and lack of life since the accident. There were entire villages that were buried because the radiation levels were so high. They say the radiation levels were 500 times that of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan during World War II. Over 600,000 people, mostly young servicemen, were involved in the clean up of the accident. They were released from 2 years of their mandatory service time if they would spend 45 seconds cleaning up the debris from the core of the reactor. In that amount of time they received a lethal dose off radiation.

It was a pretty sobering experience.

From there we went across the street to a restaurant that specializes in Georgian (Russia) cuisine. It was very interesting. The bread was good, the veggies were fresh.