smarty questions, pulling my hair out!

Can someone please tell me how to call info from the database, I want to do the following:

On the upload page I want to call some info that has been added by the user while signing up (ie hobbies, books or whatever)

I have tried calling them with {$smarty.request.hobbies} and {$answers[0].hobbies} they don't work as they stay empty

and I have also tried it with: {$hobbies}

None of them are able to fetch info from the database. The strange thing is that it does work on uprofile.tpl and also view_video.tpl

My question is why does it work for some pages and not for all? And how do I call them properly?

I want to have the persons hobbies etc on the upload.tpl before they upload a video or at least let them choose what they want to appear when someone views a video of theirs.

Thank you