Technically mayhaps not, because I ended up largely taking Sunday off, but all for a good purpose. It’s dismaying how little seems to get done with each day of reading and note-making… I’ve mostly been drawing lots of diagrams about the history of cinema (the distinction between film and cinema is that cinema is the public screening of film…) and rehearsing the general overview. Detail and theory have to be fleshed out later… in the past, I’ve often overread certain topics and then found there’s no way to put all that depth of knowledge into a 40 minute essay unless I had the extra hands which I think humans ought to evolve…  Still, I’ll probably get to modern cinema and find I’ve forgotten about the beginnings. This pessimism is comforting in its fatalism, and is how I stop myself from fretting.

I did my first bout of exercise yesterday, too. My concentration drops off after noon and only picks up again in the late afternoon, so this is the time for random Wikipedia browsing and exercise. The choice was jogging or the mundanity of the gym; eventually, I got my overindulged hiney to Imperial’s gym, as I was sure I was going to look pretty alarming after my first workout in ages, and I didn’t want to scare the people of Hyde Park. 1 1/2 hours of exercise… feel okay today. Some difficulty in climbing the stairs, which is why there’s an evergrowing fungus of plates and cups around me in my bedroom. What enters my room doesn’t easily leave it until it grows its own legs and escapes that way.

I also realised that I passed a new interviewee for one of the sci-comm department’s courses yesterday, and caught sight of two of the lecturers in the middle of earnestly interviewing someone else. I was busy glowering over the weight of my library books and didn’t realise until later. I must write a flashback of my own interview later… funny to feel on the way out of university again…

I’m not sure who I should cheer- the world of film, or green fluorescent protein.

Woke up at 8 with twitchy paranoia demanding I start the day, and study. Decided to sleep for at least another hour, to make sure I didn’t have a sleep deficit. Woke up at 10 and now feel displeasingly lazy and not at all interested in my revision notes. Hmph. Yet be that as it may, this has to be the first day of proper study. AND exercise. Even if I am going for delicious Chinese hot pot later with IC Wushu. It’s still a study day.

On Thursday we watched each other’s 10 minute films. Mind, I think all four films averaged 13 minutes. There was quite a mix. What we really ended up doing were making films tailored to the personalities and histories of the people we filmed, but the initial brainstorms and ideas had been about specific topics- being blind and having the specialised career of being a piano tuner, being deaf in a hearing world, why anyone would choose to be a living statue… In meeting the people, we ended up making the films largely about them, instead of the issue.

The films were: ‘I once was lost’, about the faith of a blind piano tuner despite hard knocks in his life, ‘The Silverman’, about a man who has an alter-ego as a silvery living statue, which people prefer, ‘159 Brick Lane’ a maddeningly mouthwatering film about the workings and people of Beigel Bakery, and ‘Talking Hands’, about a deaf sign language teacher and his opinions on sign language and communication. I don’t think the films are available online yet, but as and if they become available links will follow…

Incidentally, my favourite was ‘I once was lost’ for their neat blending of sound, limited footage, and narration. I was unable to judge our film ‘Talking Hands’ after having worked on it for so long.

I think we all owe our documentary lecturer for putting a final polish onto the films, but we’ve certainly learnt a lot in the process. I don’t know if I feel really excited about editing yet, and I’ve heard people cynically comment that they opted for our course because media jobs will always be available so long as TV is beloved by the masses. That knocked me back because it was far from the idealistic, enthusiastic vision I had of science communication and creativie filmmaking which had been my motivations for the course. It’ll be interesting to see how I feel over the next few months.

Well, feel like it or not, I’ll be more likely to remember what I do now in the morning, than the evening. So, here goes. The current modules are Radio theory and Film theory. Expect lots of rambling about both in the near future.

Right, I’m nearly up to date with the blogging- at least about Imperial-related stuff! Next term, we SMP’ers and Sci-commers both have exams. Two exams, six hours in total, five? seven? essays, five modules. Five weeks to revise- no, four and a half, really. Last Thursday, having recovered from wushu / pizza binge and a post-radio deadline gentle drink in the Union bar, I sat down and idly sketched out how much time I have to revise, and what I might study each week. How long has it been since I did exams… I last did a batch in 2006. Nonetheless, some feelings still feel familiar. The inescapable nature, the institutionalised fatalism, the weird, sick, anticipation of hours of masochistic study and scheduling ahead… mwahaha.

Getting down to revision is going to be the hardest part. Illness had wiped me out for a few days… now I guess I have no excuses. Sigh. Fawgeddabowdit. I just want to amble around in the clear cool sunshine.

What’s Annabel’s revision plan? Urgh. Well, I suspect my strategy is one which has been honed by trial by error / fire. Fortunately I still like reading and learning stuff, thinking contemplative thoughts etc, so revision appeals to my snobby and introvert sides. Come on, we all have different sides. Generally it pays for me to write lots of lists of things to do, and schedules, even if I never get enough stuff done- I have to lay things out in writing. I write notes in black pen or pencil on plain white paper, usually the backs of printed sheets to save paper, with lots of diagrams and arrows. I eat lots of healthy stuff to combat the tedium of sitting at a desk rehearsing information in my head, and sitting at a desk not exercising much beyond my brain and finger calluses.I get irritable if I don’t have the right brands of muesli to chomp on. Muesli? Yeah, I know I’m boring.

Sadly, I focus best in the morning or late at night… it might have something to do with the afternoon daylight, perhaps- I find it hard to feel content and focused after noon, I just want to get outside and go places. I remember now in 3rd year, I used to draw the curtains and switch on the light so I couldn’t see the daylight outside. Sort of like casinos do to encourage people to stay in an endless, timeless, cosy place where they’ll keep gambling. I develop an obsessive chewing and popping habit of sugar-free, spearmint gum. Towards the end, I pepper the walls with blu-tacked small notes in the hope that even if my eyes try to skate away from the pile of notes on the desk, they’ll be forced to read something potentially useful and memorable. I sleep around midnight but wake early as a knot of stress propels me callously out of my bed.

I never did get myself to the gym in second term- perhaps I’ll try throughout the revision period. If I’m knackered, I won’t mind sitting down… I’ll try to fit running, wushu in Hyde Park, or gym into every other day. Shrug. I’ll either have great fitness or slothness after the revision period. Watch this space and see.

After the exams, for us SMP’ers next term will consist of our work placements. I’ve applied for film companies, but although it took up massive amounts of time, I’ve found radio editing quite fun. Prior to starting the course, I wasn’t interested in radio. It was one main reason why I was worried SMP was the wrong course- I mean, the focus of SMP is ‘film and radio’, so what happens if you don’t really care about 50% of the course? Thankfully, the course wasn’t divided like that, anyway- plenty of other stuff involved- and I found I liked doing / planning / listening to radio. I spent a few amiable days layering sound effects tracks and snippets of interviews into a completely indulgent intro for my radio project before the deadline loomed too close, during which I realised that editing radio stuff is kind of nice, much more instinctively comprehensible than film. Anyway. Radio is a pleasing option, then.

Iiiiii hhhhaaaaveee the POWAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

Adam draws the now official unofficial wushu club symbol… a dragon with two eyes on one side of its head.

Sarah is so ludicrously graceful that she gives martial arts darts a good name

By freak chance, I hit the right number to win the game. Oddly, I was aiming for a number one space to the right by misaiming two spaces to the left.

For Sorami, flexibility is no obstacle...

Two handed dartstrike!!!

Why, they play martial arts darts of course! This fun evening on the 12th of March was jointly organised- I think…- and featured lots of silly posturing in martial poses while chucking darts that possessed a surprising propensity for springing straight off the board and landing, quivering, point down in the floor by your foot…

As IC Wushu is small but with a powerful camaraderie, there were a lot of us present on the night

Grant lunges wildly at the dartboard. I think he looks like Constantine, you know, flapping tie and suit and all...

Synchronised throwing!!!

That small, malevolent head in the centre is my lovable boyfriend, peeps.

Surprise attack!!

It’s been a good time for wushu socials lately… kung-fu / wushu pizzafest last week, and Chinese hotpot this weekend… *happy sigh*

If anyone *does* keep an eye on these blogs, you may notice a slew of posts coming through in the recent days. That’s been because I 1) don’t set regular blogging times for myself- something I should really rectify, instead of blogging when I feel I have something to write about, because when I’m tired / bored I don’t think people want to read about me being tired / bored… and 2) I’ve been preoccupied with studenty work and all. They weren’t kidding when they said we should find a part time job in the first term, if we needed work (SMP’ers, at least. I’m not sure how the work pressure has been for Sci- Commers).

This pic is to make this posting less serious

(By the way, I just spent ten minutes blogging smoothly away, only to destroy it with a mistouch of my touchpad and a keystroke. This is not the first time this has happened, and actually may be a reason why I haven’t always updated even if I’ve actually sat down and written stuff…)

What have we had to do this term? Less essays- last term we had four, this term we had three- but more practical projects. The three essays were for the modules of Narrative, Documentary, and Sounds, signs and meanings in radio. For Narrative, you could either write a story or analyse a story or film. I opted for the analysis, because to be boring is often to be safe, and I wasn’t sure how the story would really be marked.

For Documentary, we had to watch and analyse a documentary. In the process I made a list of good documentaries to catch up on (the Academy Awards lists for Best Documentary Feature are a good starting point.

I really wanted to analyse ‘Waiting for Hockney’, a film about American artist Billy Pappas who spent 8 years, full time, drawing a painstakingly detailed copy of a Marilyn Monroe photograph in pencil. He later centred on David Hockney as THE artist who would understand his motivation and reason for doing what he did, and would be the man who would get the wheels turning in the ‘Art World’ for him. Billy’s amazing dedication- 8 years of exile, living in his parent’s house, funded by an eccentric seeming architect who hopes he will make a huge splash in this fabled art world- and his unwavering, unquestioning nature, sort of exacerbate your worries about what will happen when the picture is finally revealed and shown to Hockney. We the viewer don’t see the picture until three-quarters of the documentary passes. It’s an interesting documentary for anyone remotely interested in art theory or art- the central question is really whether Pappas has spent a large part of his twenties and thirties wisely, and whether his efforts will hold any merit in the notoriously confusing and fey world of art.

Invisible FAIL

Unfortunately, 40D no longer hosted the Pappas documentary, so I watched a few others- ‘Grizzly Man’ finally educated me on who Werner Herzog is- and chose ‘Jesus Camp’. Another recommended one- look at the way they pump up the preaching scenes. The strong Christian-kids themes kind of reminded me of South Korea, where Christianity is really catching on. A lot of the children I taught had been recruited to our English school through church groups that the headmaster was active in. It was quite hard on the ears to hear young, smart children saying assured things like, ‘I don’t believe in evolution,’ and trying to respect their beliefs at the same time, when these were things their parents had specifically drilled into them. I did give my opinion more freely in a couple of the biology lessons I gave.

Though really, that should have been 'leshh seerius' or something in lolspeak

Anyway. The Radio essay involved listening to a play, then analysing that, too, using knowledge of the codes, editing tricks, and nature of radio, plus confusing terminology about semiotics. Semiotics- a way of labelling the categories of meaning of ’signs’, like words or pictures, makes more sense in film, but not, for me, in radio.

Thus 6700 words aside, there was a 6-7 minute science radio documentary to research, interview for, and then edit. I’ve ranted abbout this variously before- man, the hard part was finding an original idea, as it’s apparently not considered worthy in the real world of work unless it’s current news or is going to become current news in the near future. I interviewed Dr Anders Sandberg, a very approachable and interesting philosopher of science, the amiable and helpful particle physics Prof Mike Green of Royal Holloway, and Felicity Mellor, Imperial’s own science communication lecturer and straight-talker. The toughest part was splicing together the material to meet the 7 minute deadline… and we were advised to make it closer to 5 or 6 minutes, for the best programme. I…. think I pushed 8-9 minutes. If it’s not complete rubbish, I’ll post it up here. I’m not sure because the editing process took an amazing amount of time, and having edited my former final draft yet again and sent it in on the evening of the deadline day, I haven’t dared listen to it again. I could dedicate an entire day to the radio editing computers, and only be a tiny step closer to the finished product- like have eliminated fifty ‘umm…’s and stutters, cut out the answers I thought I might want to use, maybe make 30 seconds of opening montage…- I don’t know why it was so timeconsuming, it seems illogical and impossible, but there you go. There was some desperate scheduling and competition for the computers between the late-finishers of us, during the final week. I’d like to make something longer out of all the interview footage I recorded, all contributors had good points or suggestions to make, it’ll just depend on how keen / panicked I feel over the vacation while I’m revising. I’m still holding the footage of International Night, which I have yet to find time / knowledge to edit and put together. Argh!

Then there was the group documentary project… three of us, working together to shoot and edit a 10 minute documentary. The final project is completely different from our original plan, drawn from what were random questions and filming ideas on the actual shooting days, which ended up being picked out when we were looking through the footage and wondering what to do. It was kind of a warm up for the final documentary we have to shoot this summer… to understand more about documentary making, and who you might like to work with, and who you definitely won’t. Jonny, Shamini, that last comment was NOT directed at you- honestly!! The class’s subjects ranged from filming at a bagel bakery, a blind piano tuner, a living statue, and a deaf sign language teacher (ours). After viewing ours so much, I’m really looking forward to viewing the other documentaries to see how the styles will differ.

I are fond of lolcatz

Deadlines were generally met this week and last week, leaving me kind of exhausted and not in the mood to start my revision. I still had and have a couple of things to do- articles for I, Science, I helped organise an Engineers Without Borders exhibition on Tuesday- but post-deadlines, even small tasks feel like mountains.

The worst thing, though, was getting ill. On Saturday I came crashing down with some cold / viral bug that my boyfriend had been mucousily hosting for a week. It’s left me exhausted, headachey, and drained… I think I feel normal again today, but I feel like I spent most of the days in between in a kind of sick, zombie-like daze in bed, thinking weird thoughts and blowing disgusting material out my nose in pitiful little groans. At one point, I looked up the chemical composition of mucus. Protein chains, apparently. All the while, I’m aware of what a waste of time it is to be ill… all this free-er time post-deadlines, and I just wanted to be mostly unconscious all day. I lost my enthusiasm for almost everything… why write? Why draw? Why interact?… and so felt a bit depressed for a while.

Ever notice that people have three set reactions to people who are sick? It’s either ‘Oh, you poor thing…’ (nice people). ‘I felt obligated to be sorry for you at first, but now you’ve just been a complete misery all weekend / stopping me from living my life’ (my boyfriend) and ‘You’re sick? You’d better not make me sick!!’ (pray tell, HOW? Shall I command each and every germ to stay in my body? Besides, what are you going to do if you DO get sick- cough on me? I’ve been there already!)

But now it is Thursday, I feel human again, and we’re showing our finished documentaries to each other today. I’m happy to actually feel enthusiastic again about this.

Monday 16th Feb- Friday 20th was Artsfest week. I’d noticed random flyers around, but didn’t really keep up to date with what was going on- hey, what about sending email schedules around next year, peeps? I can’t be trusted to remember times info from flyers unless I write it all down, and I only got the impression there were mysterious events occurring at the Union, but no details for them.

Two big billboards were set up in the Sherfield building to advertise the week. People were free to draw or write on them. At first, noticing them on Mon / Tues, I felt sorry for the large open white spaces… maybe the next day I should do some graffiti / random picture drawing… but it wasn’t necessary. Soon people were adding rude words and pictures with happy abandon. But yeah, that’s Imperial student creativity for you. Shrug. We could be a university purely of Phd students and I think people’d still draw these if they see a free pen and open space.

Still, one Wednesday evening post-essay business, I wandered over to the Union to find free cheese, crackers, cheap wine, cake, and barn dancin’ going on. Funnily enough, this combination has amazing healing power for a grumpy work-bored soul…

We the IC Wushu club also did our thing again for the Artsfest finale. I didn’t film all of the night, as I did with International Night, but I got a little of it plus our performance, which was quite a random addition considering that most of the other performances were ballroom dancing and band music. Still, wushu is a performance based martial art, and I liken it to a form of dancing which I, an uncoordinated person who is also useless at team sports, can do.

But that was Artsfest… fun, though still one for the undergrads who keep these sorts of college events in the know better.

I must apologise if my posts have had a grumpy tone of late; deadlines are collating from now until the end of term, and occasionally dredging negative bits of my mood. I suspect I may have been cured by events of late- the turning in of another 2500 word essay today, and the Telegraph media party I got to go to last Tuesday. I didn’t rub shoulders and exchange phone numbers with many media / scientist figures, but I did regularly brush fingers with the employed and mildly famous as I handed over their name badges. I just have to get the hang of schmoozing… I met a fellow former biologist from my year in Oxford, spoke with a tipsy Alok Jha, and shook the briefly proffered hand of Ben Goldacre, who was looking for a printer at a Royal Society party, presumably to print something science-ey before going on Newsnight. A printer at a party? Oh, well. David Attenborough was allegedly supposed to come… there was a name badge laid out for him, and someone quicker than me quickly nabbed the ‘A’ section. I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done if he’d actually attended. Beyond fandommage, did I have anything new / intelligent to say to him? I suspect, unfortunately, I probably would have slipped up behind him and stolen a lock of his hair.

And then, there was also Picocon, on Saturday 28th Feb.

Picocon is the one-day convention for sci-fi / fantasy fans from around London. Imperial Sci-fi society has a fine library of books, DVDs, and freebies, and is a great deal to join. I admit feeling a bit out of my depth amidst the society, but the members of the club are all so nice that after popping in to collect my free T-shirt (I designed the skinny cyber-girl who was their Picocon logo) I decided I just had to go along on Saturday.

The bar / club room of the Union was transformed to host LAN gaming (does anyone else get murderously angry when playing deathmatches, or do I just have a secret anger problem?), bookselling, author-signing, and scavenger hunting. Important debates like ‘Ray Guns’ and lectures like ‘A Load of Old Toot’ by Robert Rankin were hosted in the physics department. SFF fans from other universities or just random parts of London turned up to join in, and there was an overwhelming profusion of black clothing, flapping long leather coats, unusually coloured hair, cloaks, swords, piercings, and perfected coordinated group Monty Python quotes.

Myself, I have funny-coloured hair since I dye it cheaply and infrequently, I do have a floppy wushu sword, and a flapping leather coat. I may not have brought all items with me, but I had the right credentials in spirit. I don’t read as much fantasy, sci fi, or much of anything as I should do anymore, yet I remain a Discworld-till-I-die / George RR Martin / Robin Hobb fan.

So yes, there were two authors I hadn’t heard of before, Pat Cadigan and Michael Marshall Smith, and Robert Rankin, who I’d heard of in a vague way- comic, absurd fantasy type stuff… but wasn’t sure where… I suspected that if I approached him, I would end up trying to liken him to Terry Pratchett who is familiar ground, and only embarrass us both.

All right, who killed me?

Later on closer inspection of the flyer, it turned out he wrote The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse, which is one of the best titles for a book- possibly *ever*- and the book had also spent several months lying around our grubby house in second year, being occasionally picked up and read, and put down in baffled bewilderment (it’s a comic noirish detective story using nursery rhyme characters, as far as I recall. Humpty-Dumpty is murdered, and it just goes on from there). Anyway, the authors gave talks- all highly amusing- and at one point, Rankin both strummed a tiny guitar with his wife and sang us a merry song…

Said abruptly mid-Ray Gun debate, “Hey, check this out,” and stuck his head under the projector, then made absent attempts to drop his trousers and do the same ther-

Robert Rankin's wife shows her thigh tattoo

Showed us his wife’s tattoo-

And was generally an excellent comic speaker and holder of well delivered bizarre anecdotes and tipsy insults!

Oh, and another popular event was The Destruction of Dodgy Merchandise, using liquid nitrogen… who needs a Sawshot Batman, after all? Pieces of crap merchandise like Ninja Warrior, strong contender for worst and most boring ninja film ever despite featuring ninja motorbike chases, the Golden Snitch Quiz ball, and Sawshot Batman, were cheerily bid upon for charity and then destroyed with massive mallets. At one point, someone overenthusiastically knocked over the bucket and sent a rush of hissing white cloud racing our way. Fortunately, after the initial five seconds of terror, when I lifted my feet up, my toes remained attached. To my feet, that is. Where they should be.

This is the mighty hammer of Thor, which weighs 4g. Who wants to freeze it and smash it to oblivion?

And the finale of the night- before the quiz which required random knowledge way beyond my sff knowledge, and I’d even read at least one of the books they asked a question about- The ferocious Fish Duel. Two competitors, rivals from different universities, wearing embarrassing plastic helmets, smacking each other with massive raw salmon while a gruff voiced presenter roars them on… (and I got a fish landing on my feet again, I tell you, never stand at the south at the next Picocon). Words fail me, it was a magnificent event…

We also nabbed one of the free, non-used, superb quality salmon!*

Sorami had had dreams like this. Fish vengeance was finally his...

Shortly afterwards, Tim left two fingers behind

Now things were getting silly with the fish-limbo.

Bristol University laid a bendy one on Imperial

FINISH HIM

Fish-on-the-knee

*By the way, if you become tempted to host a group dinner when you have a large free salmon, and you’re anyone like me, just don’t do it. You’ll go crazy buying herbs because they’re on half price at Asda and still miss the essential ingredient for Gordon Ramsey’s aromatic lemon salmon recipe, then your oven will betray you and your guests will have to amuse themselves somewhere in your house while you hop around swearing at the oven. destroying the kitchen, and poking nervously at the foil wrapped fish.

Also, I do have plenty of videos of the fish-smashing and product-smashing, if only my internet connection didn’t take half an hour to upload each one!! Check back later…