she's back!!!

i had a surreal weekend. surreal may be a bit out-there. but it was definitely... good. had a special holiday last friday, so i got to properly blow off work.

anyway.
friday night - lounging around the house (i have a very boring life), watching World News while waiting for dinner, and they have a feature on Pixar. ooh, interesting (interesting side note: Toy Story is a story by Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel)... A report by Liz George.
Liz George! Missed you so! where have you been, young lady? and what are you doing in san francisco? are you based there now? liz was in true liz george form, perky, vibrant, making everything seem like the most interesting in the world...

saturday afternoon - my mind was on sabbatical, so even though i should be working through a head cold and writing up reports for work, i was idly watching TV, flipping through channels. passing by CNN... hey, that's not colleen mcedwards. that's... Suzanne Simons! hello. Where have you been? her hair's longer. she still looks like that journalism graduate you saw around in school that you just knew would do well and be taken seriously in spite of her good looks.

"in other dinosaur news... now there's a sentence i never thought i'd ever say..." - suzanne simons, 26 feb 2005

saturday night - while waiting for the Gilmore Girls on another channel, i switched around the channels, and heard that oh-so-familiar voice. i pause at cnn, i wait. could it be-? is it she-? i hold my breath. it is! yes!
HALA'S BACK!!!
Hala had her hair cut. That's nice hair. She can't pull it up in strange hairdo's anymore, but that might be the point.
oh hala. missed you. it's only been two (or three?) weeks, but it seemed so long...
sunday night - more hala. waxed pathetic at every top of the hour from 2000 to 0030 HKT just watching hala tell me the world news. and headlines. for some reason i could take global issues when hearing it from a familiar face. hala has a way of reporting the news and making me feel like it's not all bad, and it will get better...

nice hair, miss gorani. i hope to see you sometime this week.

okay, now i'm just toeing the line of insane.

oh, she's back. she's back. the world makes sense again...


p.s.: yes, i've changed "stephanie" to "suzanne". i had to. thanks to tina for pointing that out and making me crawl to back to my cave and checking the vcr. the sentiment, however, remains the same.
Seriously, Tina: thanks for the note.

looking for hala...

this is the reason why i created this blog.

when i started working like a normal person (8:30 to 17:30 daily hours), i would miss cnn today. if i got lucky and got home in time, i would catch the end part of business international. it became a game for me to catch hala's desk duties.
it would make me so happy that i wanted to share my joy with everyone.

now she's MIA again, and, darn it, i'm getting a little annoyed. i already miss her so often (YWT ruins my beauty sleep --- hahaha) , but it's always so comforting to know she's there. Now she's not even there. I (sob) miss her so much...

oh for the love of God. I'm sorry. I'm overly dramatizing this. I just miss her. the skeptical expression, the knowing smirk, the honest humor... i know some of these aspects haven't been on display without richard quest to annoy her, but still.

don't you love her expression whenever she realizes she's speaking to the wrong camera? or when she has no clue which camera she's supposed to be on?

just some random sharing.

where in the world....

i miss hala. it's been a whole week since i last saw her (the replay of ITME notwithstanding), and if i've mentioned how much i miss her witticisms, i miss seeing her more. yes, i know i don't always catch her on Your World Today, but it's comforting to know she's there.

last weekend i would switch the TV on and off, and at one point my heart actually leapt for joy at the sight of blond hair at the news desk (pathetic, i know). except it was andrea koppel. by the way, other than her mispronounciation of Jolo and a bunch of other locales and names, for some reason i was more than willing to forgive her. and i actually liked her at the desk.
i would say i enjoyed her reporting, except i was too distracted by the fact that miss gorani is missing.

(just a note: i have been spoiled by microsoft word, and now expect capitalizations to happen automatically. and i am too lazy to even hit the shift key to make names proper. but this is my blog and i can do with it what i wish. so there.)

just where is hala? whereisshewhereisshewhereisshe? last week i was up late into the night (HKT, remember), and first it was rosemary church, then zain verjee. aggh.

i wish she'll show up later, to appease my troubled mind. (yes, i'm exaggerating the dramatization of my mental state, but forgive me for it. i just like my global updates with a familiar face.)

pull yourself together, woman. - Questy to Hala, who has lost all composure in her giggling fit, after a report on the annual cheese rolling races at Cooper's Hill in Gloucestershire, 2002

Inside New York City

Last weekend's edition of Inside the Middle East had Hala in NYC. Hala, was it cold? :)

Apparently the woman many describe as being quite an ice queen has some weakness to snow. But didn't she look adorable in her layers and layers of clothes? Nice coat, by the way.

And indoors, in that comedy club (a feature on Arab-American comedians), Hala was wearing my own favorite clothing combination: blue jeans and black top. Goodness me, the woman can make blue jeans and black shirts look classy. and she smiled a lot. laughing, even.

More people should see Hala hosting Inside the Middle East. Or even when she was in Design 360. She is absolutely vibrant in these "lifestyle" programs.

By the way, I've stopped watching Design 360. Nothing against Fionualla Sweeney, but she's no Hala. And I'm too tempted to draw comparisons.


on a way-off side note, why haven't i heard from Robin Curnow lately? now she showed some potential.

solo flight

Hala was hosting Your World Today, and as sleepy as I had been, it didn't take too long for me to realize that, hold on, they weren't switching cameras to Michael Holmes or Jim Clancy. I waited, until it dawned on me: Hala was flying solo on the program.
And doing a mighty fine job, I might add. Without the pressure of having to balance out a co-anchor, Hala did a really good job on reporting on her own.
Ahh, the days of Business International.
And the truth is, if I weren't so sleep-deprived, I would've stayed up to see if Hala would conduct the whole shift on her own. But I was (sleep-deprived), so I could only stay up for an hour, and at one point just had to concede I would just have to be content with that hour.
But, got to say, alone or with a co-anchor, Hala seems capable of handling any reporting duty.

This is why I do Business International, I'm all alone for it... - Hala, after a disastrous autocue between her and Richard (2003)

P.S. Saw the promo for Inside the Middle East. Hala in New York? Reminds me of her last trip to NY, back when she was still based in London. Todd Benjamin couldn't help but tease her about how many shoes she must've bought... It was funny.

Anchor of the Year

there was this post at the cnnfan.com forum, on the thread of Anchor of the Year. (i won't bother, because if this blog is anything to go by, it should be obvious.) so here's the post that warrants widespread acclaim, because i say so:

in my opinion, the anchor of the year is Hala Gorani. she can do political as well as economic news, also design and artistic to social and cultural subjects. she is excellent at breaking news and moderates splendidly different opinions on Insight. she has proved herself on every kind of program.

she has climbed the echelons gradually and did the graveyard shift longer than anyone (before Quest was hired by CNN)

most of all she has personality and makes the news interesting to watch.

so there. it was by a guest, so i can't give the person proper credit for this. whoever you are, we're on the same page.

The California bush fires have spread to roughly the size of Venezuela. If you don't know what the size of Venezuela is, it's time to bring out a map and look for it. - Hala (October 2003)