Belated Oprah Post

I'm very sorry I've neglected this blog and never posted about my time at the Oprah show like I said I would.  So here it is...


I attended the morning session and had a total ball! My cousin and I dressed up in bright colours as Harpo recommended; I wore the Safari Maxi dress from French Connection in black with a black patent belt and black Espadrilles. 

Our tickets and wrist bands.

We stayed at Sir Stamford at Circular Quay, the closest hotel I could find to the Opera House. We figured we would have brekky and head down to line up at 7.30am - half an hour before Harpo wanted anyone to start lining up.  Clearly we were the idiots for abiding by the guidelines as I heard people were lining up since 2am! Crazy! So by the time we arrived, the line was already massive.

There were still many, many people people us though (who probably thought they would be on time or early!).

Yep, all those dots you see under those trees are people of this earth!

Unfortunately, our seats were in the monumental steps area and thus unallocated. This meant that our punctuality resulted to pretty average seats. But they could have been much, much worse.

If it wasn't for the recording setup in the middle, our seats would have been pretty darn good!

As for the actual show, I've always been an avid Oprah fan so to see her charm in real life was an amazing experience. I suspect the couple sitting next to me didn't really give a rats though, as they would complain every time she gave out free stuff to actual people in the show, instead of the audience *thumbs down*

If you squint, you can see Russell Crowe and Oprah sitting in the middle :-)

Oprah held interviews with Russell Crowe (who cited "dental care" as the difference between American and Aussie men); the Irwins (this segment made me cry); Jay-Z; and a couple where the husband is battling through cancer and dedicated a YouTube video to his wife for taking care of him (made me really cry).

So what did Oprah give away? The segment with Jay-Z involved him going to a special school in Canterbury, where the boys from disadvantaged backgrounds really look up to him as a role model. Turns out they were all sitting in the Opera House with their teachers watching the show recording live! Oprah in conjunction with Microsoft donated a PC to every student as well as a laptop for their teachers. She also gave away $250,000 to the couple battling cancer, with the help of XBox.

I honestly didn't expect to receive anything from the show, given there were 6,000 of us (except for water, which we received in a showbag along with an inflatable cushion, sunscreen and a poncho). But I probably shouldn't have underestimated Oprah - and I was screaming my head off when she said all 6,000 of us were going to receive a necklace from Kailis with a pearl and silver "O" engraved. A true momento of the day. I've called up to redeem the necklace and can't wait to receive it!