An Awesome Day

By Cherelle Jackson

I think we spend too much time complaining instead of embracing, well at least I do, so in this entry, mock-editorial, I am going to do something out of character and praise the day. Today was awesome because even though I was tired [I worked until 2:30 in the morning,] I still woke up at 7.00am and brushed up on my work before heading off.

what to wear
The only glitch of course was what I was going to wear. I wanted to wear something bright because the day was dark, however the only appropriate clothes for my first appointment were dark, so black and white it was. I have about five black skirts to my name, I never run out of dark, boring clothes, it is to make up for my height (the lack of it) and my weight (the lack of it as well :)

smart people are fat
Let me just step out of topic for a second to explain the black skirt phenomena. When I started out in my first job as News Reporter for Samoa Observer, the biggest challenge was not in the writing, news gathering, or interviewing but rather my appearance. I am convinced that if I was tall and big, the job would have been easier. Why? Well easy, people show you more respect if you are older, bigger, taller, fatter, maybe ugly too, and generally people who have these admirable attributes are viewed as smarter. Say for instance I and a fellow Journo bigger than me approached someone at the time for an interview, they would respond to the other person, as I am the 'little shit that has no right to question her elders.'

back to the day
I got to my planned interview at about 9.00am and sat at Poloma Komitis waiting room for half an hour waiting for an appointment that was never recorded, for a person that was not there and most likely not keen to speak to me. I was hunting down some more info concerning Sunan Siriwan the Thai tiler whom Phillip Field suspiciously brought into the country for "immigration reasons." Anyway my editor was up my arse about chasing down this story, which I was not interested in as it was going way overboard. So anyway in that half an hour as I waited, I chatted with two old men and an elderly lady from Savaii. We laughed about our own peopls stupidity, naivity and of course the down right assholes. One man was complaining about a couple he took under his wing to help as they were both banned from their villages. "I took them in, fed em', clothed em' and housed them, but they did not lift a finger for a whole month, so I threw them out." He went on, he got vulgar and soon more couples were staying at his house and they wer all equally worthless, and our story teller was the hero of his own story :)

jake brown
My next appointment was with Mr Jake Brown, a young good-looking with a nice butt... sorry.. accent Brit, who is an Australian Youth Ambassador, currently teaching Broadcast Journalism at Samoa Polytech. As the Secretary of the Journalists Association of [Western] Samoa, one of my responsibilities is to arrange trainings for current Journalists to improve our outputs, in other words SOMEBODY SAVE US PLEASE, from all the shitty news thats coming out! About three weeks ago I asked Jake, who has a post grad in broadcast journalism and two years of experience with BBC if he could train our local radio journalists on basic radio news writing. He was keen, so as part of the prep to the training he wanted to see the studios in each radio station and ask the news readers some questions to get a feel of

radio journalists
I tried, unsuccessfully for two days to contact the radio stations to schedule a tour for Jake, so I decided to do what we hamos to do best, walk in. I met up with Jake at 11:21am and we arrived at the SBC studio at 11:23. We walked into the Studio and asked for Lave, one of the reporters, a kid directed us to a door where a lot of laughter was coming from. We knocked, once then twice, and finally the door was opened by Fuapepe who was, how should I say this, she was on her niece in prayer position, we opened the door, to see solitaire on one computer, solitaire on the second and third. In the small room the whole SBC news team were having a break. The News Editor, the Senior Reporter, News Presenter and News Reporter, all chatting and laughing. We got so lucky as Merita, the brains and real sweat behind SBC gave Jake a personal tour of the tv and radio studio. It was awesome.

man i gotta finish this some other time as I am tired and need my beauty sleep...