My Blog about Paris that's not about Paris

Is Blogger’s Block a real thing? I think I have it. I’ve tried several times now and I just can’t manage to get going on a blog entry about my weekend in Paris and my first few days of work at CNBC. And tomorrow it will be a week since my last entry! This time I’m doing it no matter what. Here goes…

I’ve only got a little time to fit this in tonight because I need to go to bed early. Getting up at 5 for work at 7 (takes an hour to get there) is pretty rough but I really think it’s going to be worth it. Tuesday was my first full day and today I worked from 7-11. Yesterday was great, even though I was really tired for most of the day. The worst part about it was that I didn’t want to be tired, and I was genuinely excited to be there, but the lack of sleep and full weekend just got the best of me. Still a great day though!

My adorable supervisor, Fiona, had me hang out in the control room (they call it ‘The Gallery’…so much more elegant) to check things out. Then I sat in on the anchor meeting with Fiona and the anchors from London, Singapore and New York. The show I work on is called Worldwide Exchange and it’s great because they have the 3 simultaneous anchors and guests from all over the world that they each interact with. So we went back to the gallery for the show and Fiona had me sit by her and she mentioned that I should watch the teleprompter because it’s crazy-hard to do thanks to the one-second delay for the NY anchor and the two-second delay for Maura in Singapore…so you have to roll it ahead of what they are saying. Probably sounds weird, all the broadcast people reading this can relate all too well.

Thirty minutes into the show Fiona looks at me and says, “So you can take over prompter then, yeah?” Ummm, yeah? I can run a prompter with my eyes closed but I was a little nervous about messing up an international broadcast…which of course I did. More than once. If you happened to be watching CNBC at 6 am and you noticed the New York anchor listing Beatles’ song titles at an awkwardly slow pace with a very confused look on his face…well, that may or may not have been my fault. I hope I made up for it today. The regular prompter person was out sick again so I did it from 7 until 11. I haven’t quite figured out the significance of the futures markets or the 10 year bond yield but I am definitely an expert at the teleprompter. I bet Maria Bartiromo can’t beat that. :)

Alright, it’s 10 pm here and I’m going to bed. I hate that I just said that but 8 hours from now I’ll be headed out the door. My roommates and I just spent 15 minutes staring out the window into the hotel across the street. It’s great reminder to close the curtains when we’re changing because we can see right in… We all keep talking about how our lives in London would make a great reality show. The random, funny, awkward things that happen are more than enough to make us laugh--from coworkers named after office supplies to weird encounters on the night bus, and I’m convinced we would make a great sitcom. I guess until that happens I’ll just have to keep blogging…

Stay tuned for Paris,

emily