A New Perspective on Journalism

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited to the Guardian Student Media Conference in London (I had the not so good fortune to be stuck on a crowded tube that shut down and to miss my bus back to Bristol, but that alas, is a different story). I was not entirely sure what to expect, the only journalism I had been to previously was hosted by the Houston Chronicle and directed entirely at high school students and dumbing down what it is that journalists actually do. As it turns out, they do not just sit around making up fabulous quotes from famous people and sticking them in with a couple of transitions. If I learned anything yesterday, it was this--as a journalist you must live for the news. Most likely the news worthy story is not going to pop up on your radar at 10 AM after you've had a nice shower and a hot coffee. It usually comes in the middle of the night, in some far off jungle in the Congo, and you have to get out of your nice, warm bed, run to the office, chase down quotes from people who either hate you for your insensitive, "objective" probing, or actually don't know what the bleep they're talking about, and then write an article for the morning paper. Because you know the Times, the Independent and every other bloody newspaper are rushing to do the same, and you can't be the last with the story.

The conference itself lended an air of glamour to the profession. The Guardian is situated in King's Palace near King's Cross Station (yes, where Harry met his train for Hogwarts) and in a building meant for a modern day king. Glass, sterile black and white, abstract sculptures and paintings. I have a feeling Alan Rusbridger's (Editor of the Guardian) office looks something like a thrown, where his majesty overlooks his two newspapers and website. Interestingly enough, the Guardian website is in the top five most viewed online newspapers in the world, right behind two Chinese, a Japanese and the New York Times! Apparently somewhere in North America 8 million people look at the Guardian website every day (I have a sneaking suspicion many of them are British expats), and to think I had never heard of the Guardian before, much less guardian.co.uk...

The Guardian has definitely taken the internet ball and ran with it. They have realized the importance of visual and audio support for a generation brought up on DVDs and IPODs. They have gone from a print newspaper to the documentary film business. It seems that a journalist today needs to know everything--photography, web design, video, blogs. I can only imagine asking Walter Cronkite "Mr. Cronkite sir, would you mind keeping a daily blog for our online viewers". Mr. Cronkite, who anchored through Kennedy's assassination and the Vietnam War would probably tell us to bugger off (if he were British, that is). But it seems now that journalists either get digital, or get sacked.

I won't bog you down with all of the sessions (art and music criticism, editing, commentary) or the posh food (mini burgers, portabella mushrooms and goat cheese, apple juice in wine glasses, I assure you as students we were all very pleased). The one thing I think the conference was missing was the lower orders. It is all well and good to hear from top Editors, from journalism professors and esteemed art critics, but what we really want to know and hear about are the experiences of the trenches, the people out there sweating away for the Congo stories at 2 in the morning, who have to keep up their blogs, their internet commentary, their video feed, and somehow, their personal lives.

Otherwise, the conference was a wonderful experience (as London always is) and certainly fired me up for at least giving newspaper a go...My work on the UWE newspaper and on PARN's e-magazine have really fired up a dormant passion for writing that died somewhere in my four years at Rice. I will still apply for teaching jobs in January, but (hopefully) the urge to write will still be there.

On a much different note, HAPPY THANKSGIVING! PAB and I are headed to France in a couple of hours, not to celebrate Thanksgiving, but a very early Christmas. At least the food will be good :) Love you all, enjoy your turkey (make a turkey and roll leftover sandwich for me) and see you at Christmas!

An American Mum in England

Where's me Mum?

Even the pugs have caught the Liberal New York spirit! Now if only it could work it's magic on my Dad...

A quick update before my Mom arrives (in approximately one hour!) and takes up all my extra computer time...

The Masters is going well, though it's hard to tell after only 3 weeks. I've already had my first run-in with Academia and its elitist principles. In a class on academic writing and presentation, we discussed who scholarly articles should be aimed at--almost every student said OTHER PROFESSORS! Exactly my contention with Academics! Reading should be pleasurable and for everyone, and if you have a good enough thesis, and an interesting enough article, anyone from high school on up should be able to read and understand it!!! Pretencious arses ;) I bet there is a lot of Shift-F7 (Word Thesaurus) going on behind closed doors. They should take their fingers out of their butts (as PAB would say) and write a decent article!

I didn't even realize I felt so strongly about the topic until I started writing :) Well, there you go! Either the PhD is not where I'm meant to be, or I need to revolutionize the system! I have realized that I am a HUGE NERD, and greatly enjoy spending a sunny Saturday (a rarity in Bristol as it is) cooped up in the library reading about Oscar Wilde. I have decided (tentatively) to do my thesis on literature after 9/11, so if you have read books, articles, poems, seen movies, etc. let me know!

In other news...Work is going well! The woman who was previously head of communications and marketing left on Wednesday, so the training is finished and the real work has begun! I have two e-newsletters to send out by the end of the month. I will send examples so that you have a better idea of what I'm doing :)

Time to get the flat prepared for me Mum (don't want her thinking we live like heathens!) Catch you laters gators!

The Peak District (and other good news!)

The last weekend in September seemed to mark the end of what the English call "summer"--occasional sun and chilly winds. Fortunately, PAB and I had planned on a "mini break" (the English actually have a term for weekend vacations) for this last weekend, before school and (presumably) work started for me. The end of my summer of "do nothing" :) We chose the English Peak District as our destination, and brought along two other couples, friends from PAB's Masters at Cranfield. Our little party consisted of 4 French, one American and one British. As it turns out, the French made crepes, the American made sandwiches, and the British made a traditional English breakfast (bacon, eggs, etc.), so we all lived up to our country's respective expectations :)

We left for the Peak District on Friday, and after a slight problem with the map (PAB kept waiting for the toll of the M6 toll, not realizing that there is no toll until you get off, which happened to be 6 exits after our intended exit!) we arrived in the charming village of Hartington in the South of the Peak District National Park. F.Y.I. the difference between a "village" and a "city" in England--a city has a cathedral. I think in the U.S. the difference is whether you can find John Deer tractors on the main roads in the village ;)

The weather was PERFECT, our cottage was ADORABLE (see above pictures!) and there was an apple tree literally sagging with its delicious fruit! England started to take on some of that charm the Romantic poets had so unfairly made me expect. The cottage had three large rooms, a full kitchen, a living room with a FIREPLACE (not the electric, fake one that adorns my living room in Houston, but an actual fireplace with a hearth and wood and a poker!), and a state of the art kettle, everything one would expect from the perfect British cottage :) We ate outside the first night, a "plancha" (a kind of French grill) with chicken, pork and sausage, and some kind of delicious tomato sauce they make in the South of Spain! We had wine galore and saucisson and chorizo for appertifs, who said Europe wasn't LOVELY?

Saturday we took advantage of the gorgeous weather (which I am very grateful for now, as the sky has gone back to its natural grey and drizzly state) and rented bikes. We planned to take the Tissington trail (an old railway line) down to the reservoir and then back up the High Peak trail. On the Tissington trail all was wonderful and gay, the ride was mostly downhill, we took our time and had a relaxed lunch (supplied by the brilliant American sandwich maker). The view on the trail was absolutely gorgeous, quaint hills with stone marked fields, cattle and sheep. We even had a cow block the road as we biked through the hills (again see pics above). We made our way to the reservoir and realized that it was closely closing in on mid-afternoon, the bikes were due back at 5:30, and we had completed less than half of our journey. We then began a race back to where we had rented the bikes, unfortunately having to make up for all the downhill on the way there on the way back. Not surprisingly we didn't make it back at 5:30 (or even at 6), but the bike renters were nice chappies, and gave us back the full deposit (perhaps out of pity when they saw our tired and dirty faces). We calculated that in total we had done 31.5 miles!!! I guess my training for the MS150 was not in vain...Saturday night we celebrated our "Tour de Angleterre" and Fabienne's birthday with cake, champagne and poker!

Sunday we cleaned up what little damage we had done to the cottage, took some apples from the tree (okay 30, but I didn't want them to go to waste!), and headed to Bakewell for the legendary Bakewell tart. Bakewell is the largest village in the Peak District, and has all the tourist charm one could ask for. I would definitely recommend the Peak District to English travellers, but ONLY if the weather is nice! 31.5 miles is trying in good weather, deathly in rain.

And after a wonderful mini break, it's back to school! So far, my classes are WONDERFUL, I like the professors (nothing beats British humor) and the material is interesting. AND (drumroll please)...I found a JOB! I will be working part-time (20 hours max with my student visa) at an organization called PARN. Check out there website:

http://www.parnglobal.com/

because until Tuesday I won't know exactly what the company does. But as for me, I will be going back to Marketing and P.R.! I will keep you updated on the progress at work :)

Until later gators! Tata!

Garden Party Anyone?

Back from the U.S., an amazing trip (to say the least). The fast-paced life in New York definitely made my return to the quiet, nothingness of Filton a reverse-shock, but a pleasant shock. I can breathe again :) I can drink tea in the middle of the day, and now I can do so in my garden! PAB and I moved flats last weekend, disassembled the furniture (pulling 100 nails out of a delicate cardboard wardrobe backing is no easy feat!), though not as trying as it sounds--we moved approximately 25 feet, down. We have moved from 77B Wallscourt Road to 77A :) A pain in the butt to move everything, carrying arm load after arm load of books, clothing and airplane models, but well worth the hassle! Last weekend was perhaps the most brilliant of the summer, weatherwise, and we made the absolute most of our new garden--dinners and tea outside, burgers on our new grill! We still haven't quite arranged the garage for the car--I tried to go inside last weekend with a broom and was chased out by spiders larger than any roaches we have in Houston--but we do have a little shed for the bikes! The flat downstairs is much bigger (still relative to English living spaces), so visitors are welcome (and now we won't have to put the table in the kitchen when we pull out the futon)! Garden parties will abound!

Last week PAB and I also had a visit from his high school friend Mathieu (not to be confused with Matthew) and his girlfriend, Audrey. I acted as official guide of Bristol and London, in French! See parents, you didn't entirely waste your money in sending me to Paris :) Our trip to London was one for the record books, we did a river tour of the Thames, walked the bridges, took an inside tour of the Queen's palace (otherwise you can only go to Buckingham by invitation!), and did the National Gallery! I felt I did Mathieu and Audrey well and London justice, they fell asleep as soon as we got back on the bus for Bristol ;)

Last week I also had my Induction ceremony for my Masters programme (busy week eh?) There are 15 students in the programme, and I am the only one not graduated from U.W.E. A little unnerving, but apparently normal in England (most students who continue their studies stay at their school). The professors all seemed nice and approachable (not always the case at Rice, as Natalie can confirm with Skura), they had wine and cheese with us after the ceremony. Free food/drink is definitely a benefit of being a student :) My first class is Monday, and I am trying to get in all of the pre-reading while desperately searching employment; already a lot more work than undergrad!

New York State of Mind

The Great Return to the U.S. of A., and after three months of various shades of grey--SUNSHINE! And heat, albeit unbearable at times in the New York metro and crowded streets. I had forgotten how LOUD and dirty New York is, even getting off the plane at Newark airport I knew I had entered a completely different world. Certainly not one of polite cricket matches and afternoon tea. I got onto the elevator for baggage claim smushed in between the scratchy beards of a Hasidic Jewish family and the golden chains of Harlem's finest. The doors closed to revel a giant bullet hole in the metal elevator door--it was in this moment that I felt truly back in America :) Home Sweet Home!

The streets of New York are impossible to negotiate with luggage (I seriously prefer narrow cobblestone streets in Paris to vicious, suitclad New Yorkers on their way to work). Thank god for taxis. It amuses me how the airports change their taxi rates from day-to-day (or maybe tourist-to-tourist), but once you're in the line and they give you a number, there's no haggling. The taxi brought me to the apartment in Battery Park, a "quiet" area of New York. Battery Park consists of the financial district and the ridiculously long lines for the Statue of Liberty--thankfully both tourists and businessmen tend to go home at a decent hour. The apartment has windows covering the entire Southern wall, giving us a spectacular view of the New York harbor, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and Govenor's Island; definitely a benefit of 32 story buildings ;)

New York is incredible dirty. Trash and rats are commonplace. The only thing missing is the dog poop you find in Paris and other European cities; whoever made the ridiculously high fines for picking up your dog's excrement in N.Y.--THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart (and my soles). Somehow New York's dirt just adds to the charm, a city where people are literally too busy to worry about trash and the likes. It makes the city more alive, more REAL. You see gorgeous models doing photoshoots along the harbor while trash and dead fish float in the water beneath them. I can't quite express it, but I LOVE the dirt and the chaos and even the chance encounters with the rats. It gives New York a certain vitality that Paris lacks.

There is always something going on in New York. Every night, every day, a street performance, a show, a movie premier. In less than one week I have been to a latin jazz performance, flamenco dancing, an Indie movie festival...And I am sure that I missed a 100 other things in my down time. The quality of the free entertainment (all of those aforementioned were FREE by the way!) in New York is incredible. The flamenco dancing in particular is something I would have gladly paid to see in Houston. The dancers (7 luscious Latin boys) had been performing together since childhood. There dancing infused flamenco, hiphop, acrobatics and ballet. The flamenco gives it drama (like watching a Spanish soap opera to music), the ballet gives it grace and the hiphop gives it a little edge and spunk. As if it wasn't enough to be multi-genre talented dancers, each of the 7 boys played an instrument. After finishing their pirouettes and back flips they would pick up their flute/cello/violin/drum/keyboard and show us all what pure, raw talent is. One even played the flute while doing flamenco. It's almost as if impressing New Yorkers requires multiple talents--Ah, we've seen a celloist before, but not one that can do flamenco!

I still have 5 days left. I am trying to squeeze in as many performances (hopefully a musical) as I can, reap the benefits of a big city. But, ridiculous as it may sound, I will be happy to go back to Bristol, to my little love nest in Filton where it is quiet and peaceful, where I can think and I don't feel compelled to go out every night and sacrifice my precious sleep. New York is more of a novelty for me; I will definitely be back, but certainly never for good.

"I'm leaving London because the weather is too good. I hate London when it's not raining." --Groucho Marx

After almost two months of being culturally stifled in Bristol (not that I had much more opportunity in Houston, Texas, one would just expect more from a country with royalty) I was ecstatic when PAB's sister arrived and provided a much needed excuse to escape the city limits into the big city. Little did I know that half the European and Asian world were at that very moment planning their own "escapes"...I had never been to London in August, when most of Europe is on summer holiday. And now I know why. Somehow crowded streets and metros add to the charm of nouveau cities like New York, but in Paris and London there is nothing so charming about squeezing your way down tiny cobblestone streets while half a million other tourists are bumping you with their fanny packs and asking you to take pictures of them and their extended families.

We parked in a London suburb, the first secret of a London tourist who doesn't want to pay the Emission fee for the city nor the ridiculous parking rates inside city limits. The London suburbs definitely have their charms (though I have avoided the dodgy ones), and PAB safely wedged himself between a BMW and an Audi, reassured that if someone's car were to be stolen it wouldn't be his :)

We made our way first to Picadilly Circus, stuffed into a metro between three Italian friends who kept whacking us during their conversation with their zealous gesturing and a Russian couple who said nothing but looked very cross (either at each other or at the loud Italians). Picadilly Circus and its animated advertisements doesn't have quite the umph of Time Square (maybe it's because they are posted on 18th century buildings instead of skyscrapers) and I would guess the Japanese tourists fill the same. The circus does, however, lead to two brilliant streets of shopping, Regent and Oxford. Regent street was as crowded as the rest of London, it seemed only the stores were empty. It's funny how you hardly ever see anyone go into a Burberry or a Gucci, almost makes you wonder how they stay in business. H&M and Next, on the otherhand, were fit to burst. But PAB and I had one objective--PRIMARK.

The Irish may have done many things wrong, they may be raging alcoholics and be at a loss when the potatoes aren't blooming as they should, but the one thing they have done amazingly and inexplicably right is Primark. Please, if you go to London, avoid the overpriced British retailers, Next, Dorothy Perkins and Topshop (which seems more of an overpriced store for teeny boppers), and head straight for Primark. I don't know how they do it, but Primark has managed to combine fashionable clothes with an incredibly cheap price (they put H&M to shame). Imagine, Primark is the equivalent of the designer for WalMart obtaining an actual sense of new and trendy fashions. It is BRILLIANT! I don't know whether it's that Ireland has no child labor laws or they're just going for broke to please the British, but however they do it I LOVE it, along with thousands of other London shoppers without the funds for Regent street. The lines for the dressing rooms are always crazy (I've tried early in the morning, late at night, nothing seems to shorten them in the least), but it is well worth it. The clothes fit well, they are of good quality and the most you'll pay for a shirt is £8. Absolutely LOVELY.

PAB finally dragged us out of the store and back into the crowded streets where it promptly started raining. We headed for the museums, a natural course of action in bad weather, and found ourselves squashed into the café of the National Galleries with tourists of every shape and size trying to devour their afternoon meal in a heated and dry environment. After eating our packed lunch (and getting angry stares from the café workers for taking up a table with our homemade sandwiches) we headed to the British National museum to see what the the Brits had in the way of old things.

I have never been a fan of museums of history; I like a mummy or Greek statue as much as the next person, but when it comes to row after row of broken pots and rusting swords, I'd just as soon spend a day in the sanitarium. We had to fight our way to see the Rosetta stone and the extensive collection of Greek ruins, but had almost free range of Japan and the Middle East. It reminded me of the Louvre, where everyone crowds around a 12"x12" painting of a woman with a stupid smirk while hardly anyone stops to look at the enormous canvases that showcase some of DaVinci's more interesting work. In any case, PAB and I lucked out because a great majority of the tourists were Japanese, thus giving us at least a 5 inch advantage on all the exhibits.

We ended the day with an incredible dinner at La Locanda, an Italian restaurant off Regent Street that PAB found in a guide book. Typically I am disappointed with guide book recommendations, but this one is a keeper. The restaurant is owned by an Italian man (black shirt with grey chest hair poking up over the top, gold chains, 100% Mafia) and serves the most incredible pizza and pasta at an affordable price, especially for London. Five stars in my book.

Overall, a nice trip. PAB and I will have to take advantage of our easy accessibility to London and visit during the low season (if it exists). I am open for any other visitors who would be so kind as to give me an excuse to go back :)