When I started OzSoapbox back in January this year I had no idea where the blog would take me. There were a lot of decisions that had to be made,

What was I going to write about?

Would I stick it out solo or find a co-writer to take share the workload?

WHAT IF NOBODY READ THE SITE?

and the big one, would I publish anonymously or under my name?

Despite choosing to publish anonymously it seems the further I get with OzSoapbox the more the internet pushes back, slowly chipping away.

Recently I was contacted by Galima Akhmadullina from Zvezda News.

My name is Galima and I am a producer on the Russian nation wide TV-channel. I found your blog very interesting and would like to offer you to comment on your post about scientology.

We are making a feature for our evening news and would like to record your short (just 1 minute) comment on the subject. PLease, let me know if you are available.

Thank you for considering this idea.


The first reaction I had was that my friends from the Russian Mafia were screwing with me and just wanted to send me some more death threats. However after poking around the Zvezda news site I decided there was a good chance it was legit and thought I’d give it a shot.

No guts no glory right?

Unfortunately due to the time zone differences between Russia and Australia I missed the Scientology story deadline. However just a few days later Australia was hit by bushfires and Galima contacted me again with the opportunity to do a commentary on it.

Having not written about the current bushfires I did a bit of reading up on the situation and then agreed to do it.

The next few hours were spent stressing out about how to film my commentary. I don’t have a giant credible looking office overlooking the city or anything and there wasn’t really a room in my house that didn’t look loungy.

With time running out I decided to go with the plain but safe cream wall. As those of you who live in Melbourne know after having a wonderfully sunny week the last few days here have been overcast and cloudy; a total disaster for natural lighting.

Using artificial light and not having my shadow show up on the wall was a definitely a challenge but eventually I got it, although I do look a bit yellow. The segment was shot on my mobile phone which meant I had to stand relatively close to the lens otherwise the mic wouldn’t pickup my voice properly.

After a few takes (and some frustrating bloopers) I finally managed to get through what I wanted to say in one take. I then sent it off to Galima and spent the next 24 hours anxiously waiting to see when it would go to air.

Somtime yesterday my commentary went to air, broadcast nationally over Russia.

I hadn’t intended to put my face up this soon on OzSoapbox but hey what better way to do it then being broadcast nationwide into the homes of Russians in over 1400 cities.

I don’t know exactly what the news presenter at the start is saying, other then the last bit where she introduces me under a psuedonym. If you’re like me and don’t speak Russian just do what I did and imagine she’s talking about how hot she thinks I am (“he is hwot, hwot lyk booshfyre!”).

The images of the fires should help for you visual people.



I’d like to thank Galima and the team at Zvezda news for giving me the opportunity to appear on their news, this has definitely been one of the more surreal experiences I’ve had as a blogger since starting OzSoapbox.

That and I’ve always wondered what I’d sound like if I was in a James Bond movie.

Galima seemed pretty happy with the video so depending on whether they are covering Australian stories there might be some more of these videos to come.

Watch this space and as always, thanks for reading!

(ey, and no making fun of my news-guy accent for the clip!)



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