As I'm writing this post it is 3am, and I have a paper due in exactly 6 hours, which I have to print out, which means walking about a mile to the other residency where they have printers. I haven't started the paper yet. Is anyone surprised that this would happen the first time I have a real paper due this semester? I thought I was going to be better about work, but that was just a happy little lie that I told to myself. 

Instead tonight I have planned my spring break. 3 days in Aberdeen, and 5 or 6 in Nottingham, followed by a weekend in Prague sometime. I'm figuring that I can spend lots of time with friends this way and then do some travelling on my own instead of in a large mass of people that I don't really like. 

I guess I should probably go and get my work done now. I have a presentation to finish too, but at least that's not due 'til 1. 

See you in the morning,

The Champion of Procrastination

"Before Stonehenge they built Woodhenge and Strawhenge. But a big bad wolf came along and blew them down, and 3 little piggies had to be relocated to the projects. ...Whatever that means"

~Eddie Izzard

Yesterday we went to Stonehenge. I've taken a day to try and decide what to write about it, and I'm still not quite positive what to tell you. 

Getting out of the city was fantastic. The openness there is amazing and something that I'd definitely needed. Once we were close the guide started to tell us the history of Stonehenge, but I zoned out after about 10 minutes. I'm a fan of believing in the magic of things and so I wasn't really interested in hearing about my beliefs being crazy and how the whole thing is really "not that remarkable". We were told that many people go to Stonehenge and find themselves very underwhelmed. I'm not sure if the intent of being told that was some kind of reverse psychology but the overall opinion seems to agree with it. I found it to be extremely amazing and moving though. There's a lot of pictures here:

Stonehenge Pictures

I wish that I could give more detail on what it was like but I don't know how to put it in words. It may sound silly but I felt an intense power come from being there, and since I left I've wanted to go back. Maybe I'm crazy? When we were done at Stonehenge we went to Bath to tour the old Roman Baths. It was really awesome and so much warmer than standing out in an open field. There's pictures of the baths and the city here:

Bath Pictures

and here:

Bath Pictures 2

It was an amazing day, even with all of the people I had to put up with. I made a video that shows some of the landscape and talks about why the people I was with are rough sometimes. Link is here:

Video

I'm off now to do this week's homework.

Goodnight,

Tasarion

Today was interesting. I got to work early so I could help set up the shoot that we were doing for the York Dungeons. I was given the task of setting up the lighting, which is really exciting since it was only my second day actually in the studio. It was green screen though so it just meant getting lighting that was even and bright enough until the actor showed up to stand in one place and read off a teleprompter. Easy job right? If only. When the actor showed up, he told us he couldn't read without his glasses, and didn't own contacts. The next 4 hours were spent finding a place he could get some. Once he finally was set it took him 5 hours to get through 3.5 minutes of dialogue. Read off the prompter. Standing in one place. Film and television would be so perfect if it didn't involve working with actors. Seriously, if you are an actor learn to take direction. It will make your life, and our lives so much easier. 

While he was out for 4 hours getting the contacts me and Nick spent some time playing with the camera set up. We ended up setting it up on 6 building blocks, a tripod, a c-stand, a box, a scaffolding, two "magic arms" and a strip of camera tape. This is what some of it looked like:

Once I finally was able to leave I was feeling very confident in my ability to make the most of this internship and impress the people I'm working for. 

2 hours later I got home, and when I walked in everyone gave me a very strange welcome home, so I left the room to put my stuff away. When I got back to the kitchen there was pizza for us all from Toya and it was amazingly delicious. Once everyone was sitting down again I was told that it was my belated birthday party. I got a card that was signed by everyone, and then two of the most delicious cupcakes ever (each of which with a candle). It was amazing, and I really appreciated that everyone was there and did that for me. I'm so lucky I got put in the flat with the people that I did. 

Links to updated pictures:

Field Trip

Internship

Birthday Party

Tomorrow we have a field trip, I'm not telling you where, I'll just post pictures and maybe some stories tomorrow. For now I need to go to bed. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

I've just woken up from going to bed at 8, it's now almost midnight and I'm going to go back to bed in a couple minutes. I'm trying to get used to getting up at 5am for the next two days because I have a 7:15 call Thursday. Tonight when I woke up though the first thing I saw was my window, and outside it the city is illuminated in a way that Philadelphia just never is. It look beautiful, and being on the top floor of my building allows me to see the tops of buildings for so far. It's absolutely peaceful.

Random moments of awe make me happy. 

Goodnight, 

Tasarion

It's been days since I've properly updated, and I'm sorry for that. As a reward for putting up with me I'll go to Parliament tomorrow and take lots of pictures. Just for you. 

Back to the past few days:

Thursday was the first day of my internship and i absolutely LOVE it. Today I was briefly introduced to everyone, and told that I would be helping on a small production for the London Dungeons. It was for the Jack the Ripper segment, so it involved lots of fake blood and pig organs. Once that was done I helped to pack up fo r a premiere that everyone was going to. 

A bit of background about this:

The film was called "I, Superbiker" and was created by the person who runs The 400 Company, Mark. This was a press premiere, and it ended up being that I was the one interviewing for the 400. I'm still not sure how that came about, but it was amazing. People that I got to interview include: James Ellison, Gary Mason and Tommy Hill, all of whom the film was about, and David Vanian of The Damned and Paul Cook from The Sex Pistols. 

I did mention this was my first day right? The film was great, the people were great, and it was all around awesome. 

The next day at my internship mostly involved looking through all of the things in the office. Among what seems like hundreds of other things there's an original God Save the Queen poster, drumsticks signed by Paul Cook, and all of Pauls original copies of The Sex Pistol records because he "don't got a record player anymore". I was sent home with a copy of one of The Damned's CD's from Christian to burn. Christian is a whole nother thing of amazement. We'll talk about that some other time though. 

The weekend was fairly dull. We went to Oxford Street and back to Portobello Market. Ran into one of my internship bosses that I don't really know, which was awkward, and now we're all going to bed. 

Check out the 4 or so new pictures in 1/23 and 1/24 and come back tomorrow for better updates. 

Goodnight, 

Tasarion

Ok, so I haven't updated this in far too long. I've been too tired every night when I get home, and I've been so busy with my internship I haven't been able to process all of my thoughts. I'm going to leave this post for now though, and update either after I've organized all of my stuff, or tomorrow. If it's tomorrow there'll even be lots of new pictures (I really hope that's not a lie for once). 

Until later

Tasarion

I woke up bright and early this morning and made my way to East Croydon! 

Ok, so East Croydon isn't terribly exciting, but the people I was meeting are and the place that we were going is. We met up at the train station, and started our drive to Brighton. I think the most terrifying moments of the day happened to occur in the car while Kayleigh was driving, and I imagine my feelings were very simliar to those that Brendan and Alex have had while driving with me before. The car is reversed, steering wheel on the wrong side, the people drive on the wrong side of the road (I don't care if they think it's right, it's wrong), and the driver was insanely awesome, though a bit scary. On the way home at one point Kayleigh all of a sudden swerves out of our lane to follow another car, only realize that she was no longer driving in any lane and about to kill us all. This was after driving to Brighton during which we sped around a corner, and she yelled: 

"Oh shit! That was a curb!"

Quickly followed by:

"Well, good thing no one was standing there"

Seriously. Scary. But we made it.

The first thing we passed was this palace thing, and neither Kayleigh or Louise know what it is other than a big palace thing. 

A few more miles down the road and we arrived here:

Once we were finally out of the car we walked down the pier and looked at all the delicious looking food, the arcade (which included slots), and the rides before heading to walk down the lanes. The lanes are full of little shops ranging from punk stores to sweet shops to lego shops. Walking around took us a good amount of time. We stopped into a few punk shops, an American sweets shop, the lego store (which I wish I had gotten a picture of) and an amazing chocolate shop. We also had lunch at a place called "Red Veg". If you can't gather from the name it's a vegetarian fast food stop, so we all had veggie burgers for lunch. We ended the day walking around taking pictures of graffiti, which you an see in the photos area.

I'm back now, and completely exhausted. Tomorrow is going to be spend doing all the homework I didn't get done this weekend. It's been a very busy weekend and I'm proud of the amount we did, but we're gonna step it up next weekend and try to see more. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

Think I'm gonna run out of firsts to title my posts as? Not sure what I'll call things when that happens. Today I woke up at 930am despite being kept up til about 6 with the drunks in my flat. Waking up Toya and Sasha we got ready and were out the door by 11 (I think this is a new record for fastest time when it involves getting other people moving too). Taking the tube we went to Notting Hill Gate and walked to the Portobello Market. It was full of everything you could imagine. People, cars, antiques, food, clothes, toys, furniture, street performers, and everything else inbetween. It was an incredibly long day, that involved going to more of the outlet stores than I would've liked, but we still saw some amazing things. I took a few pictures, but not many. I wasn't quite on my game since I was so tired. They'll be in a pull down list soon under photos. You can check on the history on the market in the links area if you're interested. 

Tomorrow I'm getting up early, going to East Croydon, getting picked up by  Kayleigh and being brought to Brighton! I'm very excited to see her and Louise again. I hope it's an easy trip. 

Goodnight,

Tasarion

Today I woke up bright and early at 11am and sat in the living room for 3 hours. Finally the group that I was hoping to go to the museums with woke up and got ready, and we headed to the Natural History Museum that's about a block from here. There was a ton of cool stuff to look at, and we actually managed to get through everything. We saw the dinosaurs which were awesome (videos at the bottom) and we saw the minerals and rocks, and we saw the jewels in the vault, and we saw the 500 million butterflies that there were in the cocoon. I don't think anyone is ever going to let me live down how terrified I was of the butterflies even though they were dead. 

I took 135 pictures today, and they're all in the photos section under the Natural History Museum. If you don't know how to get there, just hover your mouse over the "photos" link, and you'll see a drop down list. Click through there. The rest of the tabs aren't set up yet, but I'm working on it. 

Tomorrow we're going to Portobello Market at 10am, so it's time for me to start heading towards bed. But first, here's two videos of what we saw today:

I know the T-Rex is scary. I don't blame you if you had to stop watching because of terror. I reacted in a very similar way. 

Goodnight everyone,

Tasarion

This morning at 7:30am I woke up and got ready to go to my internship interview. Out of the place by 8:30, I had plenty of time to get there by 10am. Only to find out they wanted me back at noon. So after wandering around for 2 hours (I now know that area better than where I live) I went back, met Ashley (a man) and was told I had the job. No questions, just instructions on my tasks. I'll be editing music videos if I can learn Avid soon enough, and I'll be working on productions for their TV channel. They said that they'll do their best to get me into the production side of things so that's exciting. 

I'm back at home now learning about everyone else's  experience on their interviews. One person got a job offer for after their placement already at a photography company, it sounds amazing but she's a junior so I'm not sure if she's going to be able to do it. 

Tonight we're going to the theatre. I'm going to see a play called 'Blood Brothers', apparently it's a musical. Some of the other area going to see 'The 39 Steps' which is based off a Hitchcock movie and is a comedy. We weren't given choices in what to see, or who to sit next to, so we'll probably be next to strangers for the show. 

This week is going to be spent learning to use Avid and getting ready for my internship. I have a bunch of readings for class this week that I'm going to try and get out of the way tonight/tomorrow, and then Sunday I'm off to East Croydon to meet Kayleigh and Louise and they're taking me to Brighton. Should be an amazing day. 

I'm off now,

Tasarion