G'day mates......

["Kevin Vahey" <kvahey@mediaone.net>]

Ok I'm 12,000 miles way from home, and I'm a little stunned at the concept
that I can access my pop email account from MediaOne this easily, and yet
here I am.

As I write this it is middle afternoon of September 13th, and my mind is
still scrambled eggs. I see in the Herald that WSBK and WBZ will now be
under one roof with Ed Goldman running both and I'm not surprised, but I
wonder what will become of the southern mansion that Storer built for TV38
some 30 years ago.

I am in Sydney as a free lancer working for CBC and I'm honored that they
took me on based on my work in Nagano 2 and a half years ago. However what
has happened the past 24 hours simply defies belief.

First of all, they say the flight TO Australia is a snap compared to the
return.............if that is the case then I may be found in early October
wandering around JFK like a zombie, because that is the way I feel now.

I arrived early in the morning Sydney time, somehow losing Tuesday
completely. I was "greeted" at the airport and whisked to the Sydney suburb
they call Lidcombe where the media types are being housed. I can say this
with complete honestly, I have never seen a better run operation than this,
once they took my fingerprints and compared them on what was on file I was
processed in record time.

Then came the shock.................as I was waiting for the bus to take me
to the room I will call home for the next 2 weeks, I saw a baseball game on
one of 100 monitors. It was the Red Sox game being played Tuesday night in
Cleveland complete with FOX25 graphics. I have to admit I'm stunned.

At this point while gazing at the monitor I run into Bob Ryan from the Globe
and he says follow me........and he takes me to the section where ESPN is
located. It is here I almost faint........DirectTV in Colorado is sending
the signals of about 50 US stations to the Olympic Broadcast Centre, and
WFXT ( along with WBZ, WCVB, WHDH, WSBK and WLVI) is available. I'm stunned,
and it's not because of jet lag. I find out that most of the major markets
are being sent to Sydney via K band in compressed digital.

Bottom line is, with little sleep and 12,000 miles from home, I am screaming
as the Red Sox almost blow a sure win in Cleveland. Ryan than tells me what
it was like 24 hours before when the Patriots blew a game in New York.

I'm settled in now, and have found the Sydney radio band is not unlike what
we have back home........bland. Give me a couple of days and I will report
further.

But gotta be honest, the last thing I expected to see was a Red Sox
game........and that brought home how much we have become a global village.