Doss times and shizzzle

Had quite a busy while of doing nothing in particular - the way life should be occasionally! :p

It's been a really nice break from all the work, and to catch up with things that have been residing at the bottom of my to do list for quite some time.

Last week I went to get my new contact lense from Moorfields. Wow that was a palaver... after waiting around I was finally seen, and had my eyes checked for probably the 700 millionth time in my life. Then they got my lense and put it in to check the fit. I had to let it settle so was left for 20 NHS minutes, meaning around an hour and a half, and was then crowded round by a load of concerned optometrists. They were all umming and arring without actually telling me what was wrong. Eventually I was told that the lense was so close fitting, I could damage my eye by taking it out if I did it wrong, and would only be allowed to take it if I could show them I could do it safely.

I was taught how to put it in, and take it out about 20 minutes later, and they decided I was fine to take it. Wow that lense makes me realise how bad my sight is without it. Everything is so much more crisp and colourful! I am still waiting to see whether I can see 3d or not!

The rest of the week was filled with other various activities. On Sunday I went into London with Ray to take some photos - we got some quite nice ones, for example:

*insert picture here...* Blogger won't let me show you them. How unfortunate.. :p

But yes, take my word for it, there were some quite nice aesthetic delights from that trip.

On monday I got a phone call from The Farm Group - the biggest post production company in the UK, calling me in for a job interview. It will just be a runners job if I get it, but tbh I would clean toilets for The Farm, it's a way in! Later on my friend from Luff who's at York St John came to the o2 and then crashed at mine with his mate from York, Rachael. We all drove back to Luff the next day and I have remained here for the Film Showcase later tonight! Can't wait to see the films this year after last years, will be a good night with most probable pub times afterwards! Good stuff!

So that in a summary of my past 10 days... bizzle!

Flan x

Summer!

Done! First year of Uni done. Wow.

And it's been the first 2 weeks of my long... long summer. First I went home for a week or so. It was nice to be home and catch up with friends, although some are still not back from uni. My first weekend at home was spent at the Glastonbudget music festival - Europe's largest tribute and new acts festival. I was working there as a steward and had a really good, but hard 4 days, and met some really cool people. Going by myself was pretty out of character to be honest... It seems that my confidence has severely improved in recent months - good stuff! That's always been one of my weak points.

Tuesday was Duncan's flat party, but having got home on the monday morning and then being late that night too I still hadn't caught up on sleep. I was asleep much before a lot of people even arrived! Not good!

On Saturday I went to my cousins 18th party with various distant relatives, you know the drill ;)

It was nice to catch up with my cousins, uncle, auntie and my Grandparents, I'm pretty sure since I've started living more independently, I see them more!

Was awesome being bought a pint by my cousin - seeing as we used to sit under the slide in the park and tell each other Noddy stories. Wow we feel old! :p

I'm now back in London and have had quite an eventful day! For the past 6 hours, I've been cleaning our kitchen, which was quite literally a health hazard. I managed to clean everything and the kitchen is now spotless :) I kind of don't want to use it now and leave it in that state forever!

I've managed to burn myself with oven cleaner. Good times :)

I also saw this fox out of the window during my cleaning shenanigans:

So my plan for the summer is still pretty much incomplete - I plan to go back to Loughborough for a few days to see my old colleges film showcase, seeing as we won it last year, and then back to London for the rest of June. We are talking about going away for a weekend too which'll be cool :). July; I plan to go on a road trip for the first week and a bit, from Cardiff to Lands End, camping wherever we can. And then spend the rest of my time properly catching up with people in Loughborough, once everyone's back.

Although I'd love to be in London August, September and October too before the new term starts, I won't be able to afford it, so I'll be in Loughborough for another month as well.

Well, that's about all I can say for now. I'll check back in a week or so, I'm sure I'll have to interesting tales to tell!

Flan x

Rave Live, End of Year 1, Crazy summer!!

Starting with a similar theme to previous blogs; where has the time gone??

I think it's more than safe to say that time has definitely flown this academic year, and although the start was rather shaky, overall it's been amazing.

So Rave Live has just been. It was a truly fantastic event, and made me proud to be a Ravensbourne student. For those of you who don't know, Rave Live is Europe's largest student broadcasting event, and involves a day of live TV broadcasting over two Freeview channels and internet TV as well. The event this year also had it's own radio station, and has an on demand service much like the likes of BBC and Channel 4.

The event allows industry professionals to walk around the college as we work, talk to us, find out more about the college, and hopefully pick up our CV's and offer us some sort of work.

Originally, Rave Live 2010 was going to be held at Matter at the O2, however, 3 days before the event, they pulled out with no reason. All of us pulled together and turned the event round to continue as planned, from our own campus. Personally, as previously mentioned in other blogs, I, along with Ray and Andy edited all of the Talent Showdown auditions and VT's, as well as ingesting all of the on demand content and editing VT's for the award ceremony. We were very busy! The event was a huge success, and I think the best way for you to see the summary of it is by watching the round up at www.ravelive.co.uk.

It's been a hell of a journey, with regular, on average 13 hour days. We slept well the following night.

So, with Rave Live over, and only one more presentation to deliver before the end of term, everything feels like it's wrapping up. The last 9 months has seen the building of such strong and amazing relationships (even if they do involve me being the butt of every joke :p) that I would never have imagined materialising back in September.

So now it's onto the summer. Wow, it's a long one. Now through till the beginning of November pretty much. But I have so much planned! Next week I'm kicking off my summer by being part of the stage crew at Glastonbudget music festival, Europe's largest tribute band and new music festival. I am then back in London until July, chilling out and generally getting some well earned rest, along with a few editing jobs on the side.

July, I'm back in Loughborough for a month, well, sort of. I'm catching up with friends from back home, going on a road trip along the west coast, camping wherever we can. It will be amazing!

August I shall be back in London, moving house and, (fingers crossed) finding a job to keep me going. We're also going to V fest which I've been waiting for for too long! I want it to be here now! That leaves September and October, where I plan to be back and forth, living the best of both worlds.

So, wish me luck as I embark on this epic journey though what is supposed to be a long and hot summer.

Write again soon! Flan x

Workload, time and caffeine.

Well I haven't written an entry for quite a long time.

Time has been full with non-stop work, socialising and sleep. For a start, I have been living, breathing and dreaming Talent Showdown - a talent show due to be broadcast at this years Rave Live event. Along with my fellow editors Andy and Ray, I've been working hard producing audition tapes for online distribution, ready for voters to vote; successful auditionee's VT's for the live show; and above all, ensuring everything is legal and ready to broadcast from tape; bars, timecode, clocks and all! All together, we have probably worked around 504 man hours on the project - ridiculous!

It's been hectic, stressful, depressing, overloading, but above all a truly amazing experience, packed full of steep learning curves, new relationships and that ever closer feeling to my ultimate goal.

Today was the penultimate day. By this time tomorrow our work shall be done, and all we can do is sit back and watch our work be used on the day of the live broadcast.

Along side this project I've also had other stuff on. Firstly, my other editing jobs. The first is the 'Slugline Productions Training Project'. This is a project (entitled 'Adolesense' - I know that's not how you spell it - it's spelt wrong to enable a play on words.), working with actors from my final major project from last year. They have written a script, and are currently shooting it using my kit. As they shoot, I am receiving footage and editing it for them. This is proving a strange and long process, utilising various pieces of software and equipment. However, the project is going well, and I'm keen to see the final piece!

I've also been working on a short paranormal drama / thriller - details of which I cannot spread around too much. The piece is for a professional company, and looks really amazing! I'm the offline editor - another credit to my name, and some more awesome material for my Showreel!

My life isn't all Final Cut Pro and Avid.

I started a diet. Well, not a diet exactly, but watching what I eat. It started off really well, I was so pleased with myself, eating good food, exercising etc... but these great habits slipped as my workload increased... I still go swimming, swimming's great, and I hope to resume my habits in the gastronomic area very soon!

Well... just a random thought which doesn't really fit anywhere....

It's now nearly one in the morning, and after over estimating how long a job was going to take earlier on, and necking a big can of Redbull, I'm pretty wired. That was a pretty silly thing to do - I need to be up at half 6!

So...

It's nearing the end of the year - I really can't believe it! It's seriously flown by. It's one of those things where you can't wait for the holidays, but then realise that you really don't want this time to go so quick. People always told me that Uni is the best few years of your life - and they're seriously right. Although my Uni life is very different to friends at different uni's, I'm absolutely loving it.

Well, I should probably attempt to grab some sleep. Roll on the weekend! My first one in weeks where I have nothing planned, and I can seriously just chill, catch up on washing and sleep and pub. Hooray!

Peace x

End of term, home time! Don't forget anything....

I am now home in Loughborough.

The term finally finished... finally after some ridiculous online 'quiz' which was blates an exam, and a personal tutorial, giving us all the chance to slag off this term, but somehow being turned to defend it by the crazy mind controlling tutors of Rave. Ha, that last bit wasn't true. It was genuinely destroyed and deemed an academic hell.

So I drove all the way back to Loughborough, and cracked out my laptop... no charger. NO! This is actually terrible. I've borrowed one for the night but after that... I'm on my own. This is the second time I've left my charger somewhere, it was no where near as bad last time though, as I left it in Loughborough rather than London. Everyone at my college has the same laptop so there were thousands to borrow :)

I'm off to my Dad's today for the first time in about 2-3 months. Will be cool, I plan to watch Harry Brown with him. Gotta love that film. I also need to get a present for mothers Day. God these days creep up on you...

I went to the first shoot of the Slugline training project last night, 'Adolesense'. This can be found on my website www.sluglineproductions.co.uk.

They did really well and I barely had to do anything at all. I'm really looking forward to editing it!

Well, that is enough for this Friday... not much to talk about in all honesty.

Farewell!!

Odd. Nearly there! And the continuation of 'poverty'.

It's been a strange few days. Very strange.

I've had the majority of the week of college, due to interviews for next year, as well as the test next week which I am supposed to have revised for. Oops.

The money dilemma continues... I bought my V ticket.. but because we missed out on the ones we wanted, had to pay an additional 50 quid. Ouch. But! Oh well, life's too short to be worrying about that! I want to go to V! And see Florence again, and Ellie Goulding, and Passion Pit (seeing as I can't go on Tuesday, despite having tickets...) and Kasabian! Yes! It's gonna be an awesome weekend!

As I've had so much time off, I'm kind of done everything I need to do... so it's got to the point where I am literally just dossing around and killing time. I also used my time off to become nocturnal which wasn't the best plan in the world. I got stopped and searched at 2am the other morning because I found it perfectly acceptable to be posting a letter at that time. The police didn't agree. They thought I was out drug dealing or something.

Thursday, Claire came down to visit, and we went to see Avenue Q (something we've been meaning to do for ages! The last time we booked to go I accidentally double booked myself).

It was a brilliant musical and really cleverly done. I'd love to see it again actually, it has some pretty good life lessons in it, despite it's satirical surface.

Yesterday was pretty weird. Everyone was in a mood for one reason or another, and after presenting our last piece of work for this term, Ray and Andy came back to time, we were going to drink the sorrows away. However, when it actually came to it, that never really happened. Andy got drunk and (i'm not sure how much Ray had in this particular stunt) drew a large phallus on the inside of my wardrobe door in permanent pen whilst I was out. I personally find it a nice touch to my room :). They also VERY cleverly faceraped me. I made so much effort to lock my mac before I went out, but after exploring my room, found my old laptop, which still has me automatically logged in. Hats off to them. Clever stuff.

They also took great amusement from hiding my clothes and a few other exciting things to mess up (or as they would put it, excite) my life for a short while!

So today, I slept until 2pm. And still haven't got up. What's the point? I'm not going anywhere and I'm quite comfortable as it is thank you.

So the terms coming to a close. Just two days left which involves one 20 minute online 'quiz', a presentation which I have produced on Satellites which I know nothing about, as well as a short meeting with my tutor about how the term has been. I think they're going to be pretty shocked after those meetings. This term has been awful.

So I plan to go home on Wednesday, and hopefully eat something. I don't know when I'll be back here, there's no one around in Loughborough the majority of the time so I may as well come back here if I can afford it.

There's another week gone then! Blimey.

Laters! x

The darker side of studenthood.

Firstly, I know I said this was going to be a weekly thing... but I decided I forget a lot of things, and writing this will also use up time that I could be using for useful things such as washing and presentations.

So it has come to my attention that with 1 week to go, I have ran out of money. Don't sympathise, I spent the majority of it on alcohol. Which brings me to my first point;

So, Saturday night, I went to Lewisham (brav!) to Ronnie's 21st Birthday at Dirty South. Beforehand during the day (even though I actually slept till about 3) I went to source to good, yet relatively cheap vodka. The first place I went to was Lidl. A fine, cheap food and drink vendor on Eltham High Street. Standing on the alcohol isle, eyeing up the cheap booze, a security guard approached me. He obviously made the assumption, from my small stature and young looking features that I was not of the age to buy alcohol and questioned what I was doing. I told him; I said 'I'm looking for vodka.', to which he gave me a bemused and slightly aggravated look, followed by the 'How old are you?' question. I told him '18', and he looked at me in slight amusement and asked if I was sure about that?

By this point I was getting rather annoyed. 'Urmm... yeah I think so... last time I checked...'. This was obviously the wrong thing to say to the power hungry security guard. He threw me out the shop, despite me offering to show him my ID. Apparently, my ID is 'probably off the internet'.

I went to a small shop and bought my vodka there.

I then went home and drank it. Pretty much the whole bottle, and proceeded out into South London. Everything's a bit blurry after that. In fact everything is a bit blurry up until around 3am this morning when I decided I felt better, and my stomach was making the rumblies.

So now, I have this dilemma. I have rent, phone bill, water bill to pay, along with my food and drink.. and my V fest ticket which needs to be bought tomorrow. I somehow doubt my overdraft will cover all of that..