Back in Britainnia

The Games are over, my job is done and I've returned to British soil to re-aquaint myself with the simple pleasures in life like waiting in a queue, fast customer service and fixed prices. I also had to indulge in a mixed grill the other day, which was possibly the closest I've come to total happiness.

5 weeks in India was tough. The food was very 'samey' and almost always laced with chilli or spice, the laid back lifestyle was sometimes so laid back the most minial of tasks didn't get done and the constant exposure to poverty and social decay, especially in outer regions of Delhi, was overwhelming. Taking all this into account however, I've never gone abroad and done something so enjoyable which was classed as 'work experience'.

Seeing sights like the Lotus Temple, Taj Mahal, India Gate, Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, Red Fort and Gandhis' memorial were spectacular and visiting Jaipur was a definite highlight for me. I initially never thought I would enjoy India as much as I have although the company I was in along with the reason I was there helped me a lot.

Team India in the Games, did suprisingly well, coming 2nd only behind Australia in the medals table. They did field a team in pretty much every sport with varying degrees of success, the cycling, for instance, was poor but their teams in events like boxing, shooting and wrestling did pretty well, although I'm not sure how well they will be able to perform in the Olympics against the likes of the US, China, Russia and the combined force of Great Britain. We shall see.

Would I go back to Delhi? or India? I doubt it. There are too many other places in the world I'd want to see before revisiting the Asian sub-continent. I wouldn't however completely rule out a return to India in the future but for now, I'm just glad to be home.

Last day at the Office

It's been 5 weeks since landing in Delhi, almost everyone now is looking forward to getting back to the UK to enjoy what we now consider the simple, yet most important things. Bacon sandwiches, fish and chips, steak, bacon sandwiches, decent cups of tea, proper vegetables, sunday roasts, bacon sandwiches etc. You get the idea. Eating nothing but curry and chicken flavoured sausages has driven the group to the point of insanity, with food being top of the "things I'm doing when I get home" list. I'd tell you what I'm looking forward to most but If you haven't figured that out, take a guess.

Our last day of work came in the form of the Time Trials on Wednesday at the Noida Expressway, a day long event which would consist of mainly sitting around waiting in the white hot sun, for at least an hour before anyone interesting crossed the line to be interviewed. As we had no shade, we were kindly reminded of the conditions by a picture of the roadside thermometer every 5 minutes on the big screen. The highest reading being at 44.4 degrees Celsius. Compared to weather in the UK at this time of the year, It's safe to say I would probably have been more comfortable chilling, half naked in a deckchair on West Street than in the stands at Noida. The day itself was interesting, team GNS acquired an actual office due to our outstanding contribution to media distribution during the games (so we like to think) and we were told by the boss to go mental and just interview any athlete we can find around the arena. Easier said than done. After an hour in almost 50 degree heat, I must admit, the last thing I would want to do is stand around and talk to a journalist about how the race went, a sentiment shared by the majority of the female athletes, who somehow managed to dodge every major broadcaster and reporter and just, well, vanish! Really, it was like something off the twilight zone, they all finished and disappeared with only the winner giving a couple of statements. Strange.

On my way to the office during the half way interval, I managed to brush shoulders with Scottish National Party Leader Alex Salmond MP, who was clearly present to witness David Millar get a certain gold medal and not at all about to leech off the glory as all politicians love to do. That and of course to give a speech at the closing ceremony the next day, which was subsequently hailed by a paper in Delhi as "One of the greatest spectacles of all time" (a bit drastic) although I had a bit of beef when they described the Games as one of the best the world has ever seen. Considering the shambles of it all in the lead up and the abysmal organisation of security and staff throughout the duration, to say that was maybe pushing it a bit too far. Kalmadi even said he hoped to bring the Olympics to India as his next goal. I think the Australians would have something to say about that, they haven't been the most tolerant of people as the games have gone on and a group of Aussie athletes even dumped a washing machine out their apartment window in the games village because they lost the cricket to India. All fun and games until an Aussie gets upset.

Back to Noida, the mens race went on and, as predicted, David Millar grabbed gold for Scotland and I interviewed him on what is probably his final medal of his career. I never thought I'd say this but hearing the Flower of Scotland was so refreshing after a week of listening to the Australian National anthem about 15 times. Not a bad anthem either, although I was desperate to hear "Danny Boy" at some stage. The closest I got to that was interviewing Michael Hutchinson who came 4th on the day. He is possibly my favourite interviewee, almost like talking to an alien. Some of the answers were scientific and precise, very articulate for a man with an accent as thick as his. For example, I asked him if the heat hindered his performance, rather than a bog standard, run-of-the-mill response, I got "Well I live 45 degrees longitude above the equator, I'm now 27 degree longitude above the equator, so you can imagine the rate of persperation I'm going through after that." Who answers a question like that?! Amazing.

On the night we arranged a few beers at the Infrostrata hotel in the north west of Delhi and chilled out for the night talking to the other supervisors, including those who I worked with on my day off at the rhytmic gymnastics (very fun, but more about that later)

So that was work! Now it's just a case of counting down the days until it's back to Britain and back to the lecture theatre for the final year of uni, with too many bacon sandwiches to be had in between after a whole 5 weeks of being deprived of it!

The British Abroad

We are now at the tail-end of the games. This time next week I'll be heading home, which is odd to think I've been here a full 4 weeks. It seems like only yesterday we rolled up to the YMCA hostel.

Before that though there was the fashion show I was on about on Friday which was....different. It was a collaboration between Indian and UK colleges (namely Delhi and Bradford) showcasing a weird mix of feathery things and leathery stuff. Personally, I can't stand fashion shows, they bore me to tears, the idea of somebody designing something to reflect a cultures heritage or an emotion in the form of a blouse or a skirt, usually making the model look like a turkey, isn't something worthwhile or exciting in my view. Fashion designers and models are, most of the time, very pretentious and stuck up characters with terrible attitudes and shallow personalities, easily offended and universally irritating. Any right thinking man or woman wouldn't dare go out in public in 99% of the things that are modelled so why bother. Unless your Lady Gaga obviously.

To top it all off, the bar was closed during the show, meaning you couldn't drink your way through the pain of people taking everything too seriously. Some woman was talking to me about the connections between the younger generation of designers compared to the classics, a conversation I couldn't have been more disinterested about. After shaking her off using the old 'nod and smile routine' and finally getting through the 2 hour event, the bar re-opened and the night got better. But overall, I wouldn't want to attend a fashion show like that ever again. Unless there was more beer and more eye candy on show. Then i'd think about it.

We ended the night by recruiting some of the Bradford designer girls (and the tall gay lad who wore fake nails) to come to Blues Bar with us, not only that but the hostess of the event came along too, who happened to be Miss Mauritius, not a bad addition!

The day after the fashion disaster, we attended a "networking dinner" at the Head of the British Councils house, which was basically the same story as the Embassy, free bar, free booze but this time the music was in the form of karaoke. I never do karaoke, mainly because I couldn't wrestle a microphone off the northerners without losing an arm but also due to the fact I never drink enough to stumble over and have the guts to give it a go. Saturday night however, I apparently did. Never done it before and don't really remember it but apparently my rendition of Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer went down rather well, so much so I had the British Ambassadors bodyguard duetting with me. How I managed that, I'll never know.

We did the same old networking malarkey, speaking to random people about what you do and where your from. Or if it's the Indian contingent, same old questions like "What does your father do?" and "How many girlfriends do you have?" or "Do you have a wife" and "Are you from London or Manchester?" the same old story. For me those vary from person to person. Sometimes i'm a polygamist from Birmingham who's dad works for NASA or I'm the Prince of Greater Hertfordshire with a hareem of wenches who tend to my every beck and call. Funny thing is they all believe it. After a few hours of speaking to the Glasgow 2014 reps, Leeds Metropolitan students and some other random self-important people, we managed to drink the bar dry (quite literally) and stumbled back to the coach.

On a 70/30 ratio, It fills me with both a sense of pride and slight sense of embarrassment that we always end up getting collectively smashed, ultimately taking over these events and lowering the social tone to a point where it becomes a civilised visit from University students turns into an invasion of Brits on tour, although, sadly we have no more of these posh shindigs planned. Looking on the bright side, I've been hearing through the grapevine, word of a staff party planned after the closing ceremony, every cloud has a silver lining!

The Games Begin

We arrived on Monday at the Indira Gandhi Sports Complex, suited and booted and ready to take up the role of "Commonwealth Games News Service Press Operations Reporter" sounds fancy, no?

After being buried into more armpits on the metro and taking ages getting through security, we headed into the office for our briefing, which turned out to be simple, get out there and get some interviews with the athletes as they train. We headed into the mixed zone, our home for the next 4 days, and waited with patience and optimism for our first interviewees. Mine, I must say, couldn't have been any better. A young blonde girl, sporting the Welsh dragon, came up the ramp and passed us, I managed to secure a decent set of flash quotes from her and we had a friendly chat off the record. Three days later this same 18 year old girl is walking out of the Velodrome with a Bronze and Silver medal to her name. Know who it is? Hot Welsh Cycling prospect Rebecca James! We were told by Chris (Supervisor) that if you get friendly with the athletes, it's more than likely they will take time to recognise you in the media scrum, which I'm pleased to say she did, giving me the time to talk to her after winning both her medals, selecting me ahead of established journalists. Amazing.

I've been lucky in the past three days. I've had chats with numerous accomplished and decorated athletes and have established great relationships with them all. Mark Christian, Bronze medallist from the Isle of Man, Ross Edgar; flag bearer for Scotland in the opening ceremony and a brilliant rider; Anna Meares; 4 time Gold medallist for track cycling; Travis Smith, Canadian cycling hero; Scott Sunderland and Shane Perkins, a young Australian pair who have smashed 3 CWG records between them in just 2 days; Jenny Davis; the Scottish silver medallist who switched from Judo to Cycling, Megan Dunn; 2 gold medals in 2 days with still the road race to go. The list goes on and on. Besides the athletes, I've even met legends in broadcasting. Today I was in the media lounge talking to sports commentator Simon Brotherton, and on all three days have hung about the BBC section, speaking to Jill Douglas and her crew. On a lesser scale, I spent the majority of yesterday morning giving BBC Wales sports reporter Tomos Daffyd a crash course on the rules of cycling. Madness!

It's funny how a lot of journalists take your opinion really seriously. I think I offended a member of the Indian press today by saying that it was a waste of time for the Indians to send in a team. They haven't competed in cycling since 1978.... and it showed. I wasn't being malicious, It was great they had a team. But in all fairness, they were shocking. One member of the Indian press even asked Megan Dunn in the press conference how the Indian cyclists can improve on their performance by learning from her. So I wasn't completely wrong.

The work itself is fairly straight forward, get to the mixed zone at the end of a race, jostle for a decent spot at the barrier, send the supervisor to the person you want quotes from, interview an athlete (preferably a medallist), get back to the News Room, whack in the quotes on the Games News Service website and repeat for 10 hours. Easy. Of course you have lunch in between, however after going into the Volunteers mess hall on the first day (which to be honest, was an absolute mess) we decided we belonged in the more up-scale media lounge around the corner. The food was eadable and the water was actually cold. Some bloke in the mess hall took my tea off me because he said it was "broken". How you can 'break' a cup of tea is something i'm still trying to get my head around, but the media lounge served English breakfast tea, none of this saffron 'spirit calming' nonsense.

Tomorrow is our final day at the track, hopefully I'll be able to sum it all up a bit better after the track cycling comes to a close at 2 o'clock. Can't be too long though, we've been invited to a fashion show at 7 o'clock at the British Council which includes a free cocktail reception afterwards. I could get used to these free bar soirees.

The Opening Ceremony. D-Day for Delhi.

Sunday 3rd October was "make or break" day for India, the Opening Ceremony of the 2010 Commonwealth Games at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, If it went wrong here, it would spell disaster for the nation so desperate for the Games to be a success. I dreaded to think about the scale of the global media backlash or of the number of sackings that would be made should it all go down the pan. We didn't get tickets to the event so did the next best thing, grabbed our wallets, invaded Connaught Place, sat ourselves down at a bar and watched it all on the big screen.

As opening ceremonies go, It was...well, the same as any other. A smorgasbord of entertainment, culture and history ranging from the old, traditional folk music and arts to the modern celebrities of Bollywood and the Indian popular music scene. Obviously, the Slumdog Millionaire hit sensation "Jai Ho" made it's eagerly anticipated appearance, much to the delights of the British contingent surrounding me. Someone less delightful on the other hand was head of the Organising Committee, Suresh Kalmadi, who we had met a fortnight before, shortly after our arrival to Delhi. On that occasion he spoke to our group for two minutes after making us wait an hour, surrounded by his 'yes men' and was, we felt, extremely dismissive and uninterested. In short it was merely a great photo oppourtunity for a man with the combined popularity of Sepp Blatter and Raymond Domenech. His opening speech was met with a chorus of boo's and cheers, both from within the stadium and the bar.

The parade of the participating countries was interesting. Besides the obvious uproar for the Indian and English teams (with the token mutter for Wales) the Pakistan team got a surprisingly warm reception, something I must admit, I didn't see coming. Fair play I say. A number of us played a game during the parade. The "Spot the people you spoke to at the Garden Party the other night" game. I made a point of telling everybody I knew the physio of the British Virgin Islands (which was quite funny to watch as they were the nation with the smallest number of competitors at just 2) Guernseys tennis number 1 Patrick Ogier and the Welsh women's hockey team, the goalkeeper of whom I found out lives near where I used to go to school. Very small world. In terms of our game however, It disintegrated after about 15 minutes when a few of the guys found out, if you order chicken burgers, they light it on fire, WHICH WAS COOL!... I'd agree, some of them are easily distracted.

The ceremony marched on, ending in speeches from Prince Charles and President Patil respectively along with the handing over of the Queens baton to light the fire to signal the beginning of the games. The whole country breathed a sigh of relief, the papers claimed it was much better tan Melbourne 4 years ago and the plan went of without a hitch.

I say that, but everybodies favourite events organiser,Mr Kalmadi was heard telling one of his aides that Princess Diana had aged terribly......Oh dear Mr Kalmadi, oh dear.

Oh and, by the way...

Apparently there is an Australian couple, of no athletic or competitive background, staying here at the YMCA who have been asked to join the Nigerian national team in the opening ceremony because they haven't got enough competitors....

I'm not quite sure what to make of it myself but our lecturer, Brian, has sent one of the lads to interview them about it. It should be worth keeping an eye out for them in the opening ceremony. Not that you can miss them, they will be the only white people in the group.

Stadiums, Supervisors and Free Champagne

Yesterday was induction day for Team Cycling at the Indira Gandhi Stadium and the first real sample of our surroundings over the next two weeks. Getting there wasn’t as bad as initially thought, a 10 minute trip on the metro, obviously buried into someones armpit during the 9am rush hour, followed by a 5 minute tuk-tuk ride to the front gate. First of all I must say, contrary to what has been said in the papers here about the under-furnished state of the stadiums, by and large, the Velodrome is a magnificent building, inside and out. Walking down the boulevard to the main entrance and seeing the huge glass face of the Velodrome shining in the sunlight was a truly amazing sight, just across from it stands the Gymnasium and behind, the Wrestling arena. My press pass, unlike my other colleagues, allows me access to all stadias in the Indira Gandhi complex, hopefully I will be able to mooch about and watch some of the other events when I’m off duty. Happy Days!

Our supervisor, as I mentioned before, is a lovely Canadian (not Australian as I first thought) bloke called Chris. He introduced us all to the team, outlined the basics of what we would be doing during our shifts and making sure we were comfortable and clear about what is expected of us. As well as this we were informed of the race types, both speed and endurance, team and individual and given a tour around our work stations, the conference rooms and the mixed zone, all of which were very impressive. It turns out India have entered their first cycling team since 1978, so all eyes will be on the host nation to see if they pull anything spectacular out of the bag upon their return to the Velodrome. A big part of me wants them to do well, providing they don’t beat Team England of course.

Later that evening we attended a Garden reception held by the British High Commissioner and Lady Stagg at the British Embassy. I can safely say I have never been somewhere so fancy in my entire life. We were all speculating throughout the day as to what It would actually be like, the general feeling being perhaps just a few important bigwigs with a table of nibbles and make shift bar in a village hall. It wasn't anything of the sort. Upon arrival we were ushered to the main entrance to brandish our individual invitations, then directed to the garden where we were greeted by a queue of waiters offering endless free drinks and canapes. It was safe to say by this point we realised a village hall function was a very pessimistic guess. The garden was vast and pristine with fresh food being cooked at one side, an unlimited selection of alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages being served at the other and a live band providing a relaxing ambiance throughout the evening. After getting familiar with our surroundings (and picking our jaws up off the floor) we were told to "mingle and network" so during the night, that's what we all did. I'm not going to blow my own trumpet but meeting new people is something I'm not too bad at and, with the aid of some Dutch courage, I was in my element and talking to all kinds of interesting characters ranging from journalists and military officers, to coaches and athletes (the latter of whom were only home nation and channel island competitors). During the course of the night, my main conversations were with Guernsey Tennis No. 1 Seed, Patrick Ogier; Margaret Rees and Katrin Budd of the Womens' Welsh Hockey Team; British Virgin Islands Physio, Mark Latimer and a Scottish Journalist called Julian Hampshire. All in all, not a bad night for meeting and greeting. We've been invited to attend a meal at the High Commission again on the 9th October, the other guests are still a mystery but it's an experience I'm elated were doing again.

Work-wise there was no training today for Team Cycling, October 2nd marks the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi and It's a national holiday, which has left me the day to swot up on the preliminary team sheets before donning on the suit tomorrow for my first shift as a workforce volunteer.