It has been several days here in Lahore and while resting and editing has been mostly what I have been up to, I also need to digitize about 30 mini DV tapes of recordings from Jamshoro. Once again, I am told over and over that this is an obsolete format, and most places don’t have equipment to work with it. Those that have equipment, don’t use it as the machinery is long worn out.I called up a shop that sells and rents audio and video equipment here. I found them online and they even had a VTR listed. They really did not want to talk to me. I asked about renting a VTR and they asked me where I was from. I told them the city I was in. They obviously wanted the name of some large production company. After that they hung up on me. The equipment is imported, expensive, and not easily replaced. I understand that, but it’s also a pain that there is no legitimate way for me to pay and use equipment unless I know the right people or am part of a large production company. If I was working at a large production company, they would not care about doing a project with traditional puppetry and Sindhi music. This is why I have to beg for help and contacts at every step of the way. I am nobody. I don’t want to be any body either, but wish I could get proper information and access to services instead of being shut out.A couple of contacts suggested some shops on Hall road could digitize the tapes to DVD. That is really the only option I have right now. Now I have to go there, and convince them to give me the files on a hard drive and with the settings I want. I am already dreading this a bit, because asking people to do something even slightly different than what they normally do feels like asking them to move mountains. This is certainly not unique to here, but I am dealing with a lot of this right here at the moment.