Lightening

Was able to capture some cool shots of lightening with the video camera.

Here are a couple of stills and a slow motion of the strikes.

Yurts so good...

Not much new since the little Thailand episode. Glad that's over with and in no rush to repeat it.

Most recently had to work a weekend and Fan Di, Ben and I headed up to Angula Lake. About 5 hours drive from Beijing into Hebei, towards Inner Mongolia. Actually it is part of the Mongolian plateau. What makes this lake interesting is that although it is still on the map, it dried up six years ago. We spoke to some locals who remember fishing and enjoying the lake as well as making some money on the tourism side. WIll post the story once it has aired. Also had the fun of staying in a yurt. See pictures above.

As an aside, I work in a very strange business. So i'm in the middle of nowhere with Ben, but the weekend show decides that they can't live without Ben filing Kyrgyzstan. Ethnic violence and TV are a match made for each other. Not that Ben and I are going there, just file'er from where you're at. Now since Ben and I are literally in the middle of nowhere this presents what I would call a technical challenge. So it's 10 pm, the power is out do to an electrical storm, and I'm fair away from 3g cell service. So Ben writes said item and my resources producer suggests phoning it in. Not a bad idea, but one better. Send it as a voice note. Seems our blackberries can send voice note. So out comes the ipod mic/earphone combo and viola, TV. A medium as it is rarely done well. So from a Yurt in the middle of China, we bypass thousands of dollars of TV gear and file the voice track for a story on Kyrgyzstan. Done in the middle of a power failure in an electrical storm. Was a very strange night.

Also managed to lift a still from the video that caught a bolt of lightning. Pretty cool. Was a wicked storm over night. Made the yurt experience that much more interesting.