Last week the Prime Minster of Singapore was in town for the Nuclear Summit. Actually, just about all the world leaders were in town, but I was shooting for Singapore based Channel News Asia, so he was the one I was focused on (Singaporeans just call him "PM" - like "Let's go film PM giving a speech"). The Nuclear Summit was held at the Washington Convention Center and they had the whole place fenced off for a few blocks in every direction. It was a huge pain trying to get into the convention center, because there was only one entrance and it was nowhere near the metro or any other convenient access point. I spent most of my time carrying my heavy gear in a large circle around the building. When I did get inside, the shooting schedule was a bit frantic. I had to run from PM's meeting with Hillary Clinton to the Group Photo with all the world leaders, to the Plenary Meeting, to PM's meeting with the Crown Prince of UAE and back to the media center to send everything. On Tuesday, Obama gave his big wrap up speech, which I filmed from the "cuts riser" off to the side of the stage. The riser was mobbed by still photographers, many of whom acted like it was a trampoline, making it hard for me to get steady shots. Finally the CNN cameraman and I yelled at them enough times to make them stand still and we were able to get some nice shots of the President.

On Wednesday, I followed PM to Chicago along with a hoard of Singaporean journalists and his large delegation. We covered his speeches, his meeting with Richard Daily (it was fun going to Daily's office), his meeting with the President of the University of Chicago and his lunch with Singaporean ex-pats. But the highlight of the trip was, of course, the food. I brought the journalists to Due's for deep dish pizza the first night we were there. They loved it and wanted more. The next night we tried to go to Gino's East, but it was closed by the time we got there around 11pm, so we went to Giordano's instead. After two nights of deep dish pizza, I couldn't look at a slice of pizza for days (a rarity for me). I got back into DC on Saturday and had barely enough time to rest, before starting another hectic week.

Tuesday was The Week Magazine's awards dinner. I was in charge of our technical operations, which meant setting up the cameras, switcher, record deck, live digitize computer and live streaming computer. The event itself was interesting - it was headlined by Rahm Emanuel and featured a panel discussion with Rep. Eric Cantor, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Gov. Ed Rendell and Steve Schmidt. Afterward, Kate and I were at the office until 5:30am editing video segments for their website.

The rest of the week was spent shooting interviews with Sen. Inhoff, Gov. Pataki, Dick Morris and Grover Norquist, chasing around people in whale costumes for an anti-whaling documentary and crash editing a video for the Lowell School that we shot a year ago, but have basically forgotten about until now. Hopefully this coming week will be a bit less hectic.

My mom was in town for the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) meeting last week. I was there to shoot the Netanyahu speech. They let all of the journalists in early and gave us a disgusting (although I'm not complaining because it was free) dinner. When they let the general public in, I was sitting at the press tables talking to some journalists. I watched my mom climb onto the press riser and ask the other camera-people about me. When she couldn't find me, she left something near my camera. Finally I went over and met her. She had brought me a sandwich wrapped in a napkin. They all laughed, but said that they have Jewish mothers as well, so they understand.