Adrian’s QT Experience. Day Uno (I’m only going to do the Spanish thing for the first… 5 days, then I’m out. I might try Latin after that.)

So, My first day. I rock up. Editor isn’t there. CoS isn’t there. Today is their first day in their new office so everyone is at their new desks unpacking, either lovin or loathing their new position in the space. I sit down and read todays QT. I read it from cover to cover (front to back mind you). I’d even started doing the SuDoKu(by started I mean sit there for 5 minutes looking at the page and then putting one number in. News Conference is called. In we go.

It goes around the table for a while. Gets to me, I have no ideas (of course…) so I sit in silence. It’s OK, I’m just watching for now.

Oh, and at the conference I get the Vox Pop Question. Hard. Hitting. Stuff. Brace yourselves. Are you looking forward to Summer? And I’m gonna bust that thing wide open.

But the Vox wasn’t till later. Firstly I went with Kate and Damian to Ipswich State High. Apparently the QT had given them a bit of a bad rap recently and they were holding an ‘Exo Day’ (short for Excellent… *groans*) so we gave them a bit of positive spin for a change.

Immediately after we were storming towards RAAF Base Amberley. We’d been requested to attend from the Defence PR with no explanation at all. The guards didn’t know, it all seemed very secretive. I was hoping for a missle launch or a jet fighter unveilling. I was disappointed. They had detected high levels of heavy metals in a run off creek. Which ran into the Bremer River. Which runs into the Brisbane River. So yeah… I guess.

The funniest thing about the RAAF story was watching the TV journos. Three orange women in not quite attractive dress try to get their footage. Before the press conference one gave the other the name of her fake tan place. They ‘loved the smell of fake tan’ and her’s looked ‘really good’. Enough to make you sick and giggle at the same time.

So back to the office, Kate had a billion stories to write so she gave me a tiny crappy story to do, I don’t entirely know what for but it wasn’t for tomorrows paper and I can’t see it ever being in a paper.

So then Peter, the fill-in CoS/ Editor / Big guy realised we hadn’t done the Vox yet. So off rushed Damien and I to Ipswich Riverlink (shopping centre) to do it. Damien had been doing it for 5 years so he had an eye in for this thing. He sounded like a lion on the hunt. “Aim for the weak, young people or old people and just rush in and ambush them so they don’t have a chance to get away.” A direct quote. So we did, I won’t lie and say I did it alone, Damien was a fair bit of help, at least for morale, but we got the six required and got out of there in 30 minutes.

Getting back to the office its about 4.30pm and Zane (JSchool Grad) had just got back from court after a big day covering a father who allegedly (yeah, I got this defamation stuff down) bashed his 21 month year old. That was front page. I ended up leaving about 5.30. It was interesting. Unorganised. Weird. And everyone was saying that so it just reinforced the fact.

Another thing I discovered. Journalists don’t really believe in Lunch. What a bummer…