Londowners Grove

Technologeeze

It’s been an increasingly frustrating 36 hours. Here I am on a Sunday afternoon, tying to keep my cool in the face of a waterlogged laptop and a repeatedly-rejected ATM card. It is only thanks to the more reliable (incidentally organic) Blake Solomon that this blog post is possible.

Reading William Faulkner’s “The Light in August” is helping me, but not enough. I’ll probably start to drink soon, even though I have to be at work (ie: intersnship) at 9:30 am tomorrow. I just got an email with an assignment from IE, our first of several reports on the status of our internships. I should just do that and paste the report in here, but of course I’m not in the mood. Instead I’ll have you know that the first week at MSN has been most agreeable.

I haven’t gotten the chance to work on any assignments regarding movies, but I spent the better part of the week censoring penises, coming up with witty quips about deformed animals, and passing judgement on the best front men in rock and roll. Not exactly the most hard hitting journalistic offerings to be sure, but then again, I’ve never been much for seriousness anyway (RIP: Tim Russert!).

My favorite part of the whole experience though has been the staff. I’ve already started to feel close enough to some of them to reveal some of the more intimate details of my life and mindset (against my better judgement, of course). Or maybe that was just the result of some of the drinks they bought me at pub gatherings on Wednesday and Friday after work. This whole week has seen people buying  me stuff, including last night when Marylyn came to my rescue and paid not only for my passage on the Tube (aka Underground aka Subway) but a pint at the lively “World’s End” pub in Camden. Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom were sadly nowhere to be found, but I did get in a cool stand off with some guys in the street after they kicked a soccer ball into Mar’s face. Another reason for us Americans to hate the sport- it leads to the suffering and humiliation of pretty girls.

I just remembered; another sweet part of the weekend, Mar and I booked a trip to Greece for July. Not sure yet who if anyone else will be joining us, or if it will be entirely cool with work, but I’m definitely excited nontheless. Also on Saturday we spent a gorgeous afternoon wandering around the outdoor market on Portabello Road, replete with stands of fresh produce, my father’s favorite; knick-knacks, and other stuff that seemed suspiciously like it might have not come from the most legal of sources. Twas great fun navigating this psuedo black-market world. I snagged a pair of knock-off Ray-Ban’s (Fray-Band’s?) and a special belt buckle. And I know i’ll be back to pick up a genuine gas mask for $30, which yes, I will wear casually around the house.

How quickly I forget the monumentally positive in the face of the comparitively diminuatively distressing! Writing this post has made me feel better too. Hopefully the technology that keeps me in the lifestyle of a hedonistic young traveler will be fixed soon, otherwise I’ll have to do one of those old school things to keep everyone informed about me…what are they called…not lighters…hmmm….lead…lett- Carrier pidgeons, that’s it!! There’s plenty of eligible candidates around the city, after all.

Until then, Jah bless my friends and family, and any other unfortunate souls who happen upon the blog and have managed to get this far. Take care of the US for me.

Goals for the week:

1. Chill out

2. Slowly ease my way into dressing as casually as the rest of my co workers at MSN

3. Figure out how to request time off from work for Greece without sounding presumptious aka American

4.  Take more pictures for this blog

5. ….Maybe of the Kew Gardens

6. Finish Faulkner and start something else…suggestions?

I have at least one Intern-ets

Apologies! Apologies dear readers! I know you all have been very patient in waiting for the arrival of this post, and although much delayed, at last I have brought it to you (with admitted unceremoniousness, much like everything I undertake). You may all breathe sighs of relief and contentment now- the rumors of my injury, death and otherwise incapacitated state have been greatly exaggerated. I am, as evidenced by this pontifical introduction, quite alive, and furthermore, I am quite well.

Yesterday was perhaps the most satisfying day I have experienced in London to date, this despite a painfully early awakening by the alarm bells of various flatmates’ pay-as-you-go Motorola cell phones scattered around my bedroom, followed immediately by an doubetdly well-intentioned, dreadfully lengthy, boring tour of Westminster/Parliament.

Indeed, there were several reasons to enjoy Wednesday, June the 4th, 2008, and at the risk of sounding like a gloat, I will proceed to spell them out: First and foremost was the weather. When several of my flatmates and I took the stairs up from our basement bedrooms to the street outside and began our slow procession to the Earl’s Court Tube stop at the ungodly hour of 7:30 am, the sky looked as somber and the air felt as unreceptively chilly as it has since our arrival.

Upon release from the dark, stone hallways of Westminster, stepping through the tall, ornamental gate, we were greeted with the shocking astrological development of a yellow sun against a spotless blue sky, rays wrapping around us and all within sight like a celestial hug, or, for those who aren’t big on PDA, a cosmic high five. It didn’t even matter that we had to rush through lunch to make an afternoon tour of the BBC, our morale had been boosted with such a high dose of the most natural of growth supplements.

And, as if the whole of London had gone mad with sun drunkeness, our tour of the BBC proved to be thoroughly interesting and surprisingly interactive. While our male-female tour guide team proved to be more than a bit on the snide side, grossly chastising anyone who whispered for more than a few seconds while they were speaking, they were highly knowledgable; and more importantly, quite willing to relate gossip on the habits of egotastical celebrities like Prince, J-Lo and Mariah Carey and others who had made apperances on British television in years past.

Fun fact: J-Lo is the only other person besides the Queen of England who has ever been permitted to ride in a car around the inside courtyard of the BBC building (this only after she refused to walk the 20 meters from the outer road to her dressing room).

I didn’t bring my camera and we weren’t allowed to photograph much anyway, but my favorite room was Studio 6- a room of warehouse like proportions with innumerable cameras and stage lights clinging to the ceiling like a colony of bats. Checkerboard gray and black panels lined the walls for soundproofing purposes, and as a consequence all who entered felt compelled to whsiper, lest their voice dispel the pure stillness of the place. The conspicuously smooth floor turned out to have the most to say through our guide- as it is repainted every single time a production is made in the studio, and then returned to it’s neutral colors through the use of a zamboni-like machine. The BBC evidentally rents out 6 and other studios for anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 pounds (60 to 100,000 dollars) for 12 hour sessions. This is how the publicly funded station earns supplemental income to pay for new facilities (there is a tax on every television set sold in the country as well, a licensing fee, as it is called, but this is by law only collected to pay for BBC programming, not infrastructure stuff).

On a less technical note, a few students and I found ourselves in the limelight, pulled out in front of the group and literally on camera (closed circuit, of course) to participate in some demonstrative games. Three lovely ladies from upstairs had their short-term memory skills put to the test in a specialized version of the “The Weakest Link,” final score: Jen-5, Christy and Caroline-2 each. I played the part of news anchor, or “presenter” as they are referred to over here, reading some statements to the crowd in between some random news clips. Jen recieved a collectible BBC mug for her victory, the losers and I recieved pens for our apparently less than stellar performances.

While lounging around back in our flat in the evening, I received a call from the exceptional Jamie, one of the advisors from International Enrichment (the program that is responsible for this whole trip). She was just about to leave the office after working overtime, but wanted to let me know that I will begin an internship in the entertainment division of uk.msn.com at 10 am on Monday. Furthermore, she informed me that my friend, upstairs neighbor and former Missourian colleague, the improv extraordinaire Lauren Zima, will also be interning in the same department. In the immortal words of Borat Sagdiyev: “Great Success!” especially coming on the heels of a rough and tumble, totally formal interview process we went through on Tuesday morning.

Well, if it wasn’t before, this post has now surpassed any justifiably reasonable length, and so I will refrain from writing about trips to Paris over the weekend and to Warwick Castle and Stratford Upon-Avon last Wednesday…sufficed to say, my friends and I confined the majority our activities in these places to the touristy stuff. You can get a pretty good idea of what I mean from the pictures above. Now I’m off to get grocieries with Marylyn, who is growing more and more impatient the longer I fail to wrap this up. Oh, precious irony, I salute thee. Until the next, hopefully shorter and more timely post, I’ll leave you with some of my goals for the coming days:

1. Purchase yummy but cheap, long-lasting foods for meals in the house.

2. Read up on films and develop extensive familiarity with http://uk.msn.com

3. Be more concise in speech and writing (possibly in thought too, although that’s something I’ll have to think long and hard about)

4. Enjoy my last weekend of internshiplessness

5. Try to prevent Alan from passing out for hours upon hours in the middle of the day again