What a Day!

None other than the Dalai Lama himself was on campus for a couple days this week, so my job has been revolving around that. He did a huge talk to over 5000 people that was videotaped and streamed - and you can even watch it right now! I ended up watching it on the big TV in the lobby where my office is so I could relax with my laptop.

The huge news for me, however, happened on the next day. He gave a talk to the Tibetan community of western Massachusetts, which was quite large (about 1000 people, and lots of kids). I had to be at work at 6 AM to do the audio checkout in the building before the FBI did their sweep. We had this really cool microphone that attaches to your ear and comes around to your mouth with a very tiny piece. You almost can't see it.

I should mention that the security around the Dalai Lama is nothing short of incredible. I don't think I've ever really seen the FBI doing their jobs in real life, and I have to say that a lot of what you see in movies is pretty close. They had their ear pieces and black suits, and came in black vehicles to the scene.

So, the best part of the whole day was that I was able to put the mic on the Dalai Lama! He comes in, surrounded by FBI and security, and instead of going into a little special room they had set up so he could meditate and have tea before talking, he goes straight out onto stage. I was kind of following behind holding up the mic and being like, "ummm, wait, I have to put this on." This FBI agent says to me, "Stick with me, bro," and so I did. I walk out on stage under the lights with the whole crew, and the agent gives me the ok. I walked up to the Dalai Lama in front of everyone and put the mic on his ear. He takes the transmitter unit, and I almost didn't get a chance to turn it on, but then he said thank you and I turned to go off stage.

It was great! And, one of the best parts about it is that it's all on video! Since he walked right out on stage and I put the mic on there, the video cameras were rolling and the whole thing was taped. I'm going to get the video as soon as I can and put it on the web so you can see me putting a mic on probably the most world-famous person I've ever seen in real life.

Maybe it's not that exciting to others, but it was quite a day for me :-D