One more week to go. Oh god, the documentary is still not finished *groans, holds head*.

Though I am certainly one of those people who needs a deadline in order to produce their best capacity of work, I protest that I’ve learnt by now to anticipate the terrible stress they can bring, enough to try very hard to avoid it. It’s infuriating to find myself pressed up against one here. In my point of view, it’s largely from problems with working with someone else, but what would be the point of complaining about another person here. C’est la vie. Que sera. Buggerit. Mai pen rai. Too late now, head down and keep plodding on.

Erm, well, anyway, I suppose the time is ripe for a sort of ’round up’, about where I am now and where I was about a year ago. We had our end-of-year hooha on Friday, cue hangovers on Saturday. It was great to kick back together, a handful of lecturers and students alike. Shame that work had to continue for me on Saturday, but a little paracetamol is a wonderful thing. Although still feeling terribly underprepared- I haven’t packed, I haven’t got an up-to-date travel guide, I’m still waiting for confirmation on my flights- I should be in Laos rather terribly soon. Which in its own way brings me full circle… the last time I left university, I went to SE Asia and backpacked. Then I went to Korea. The same prospects face me again. Er, I also went to a Chinese martial art school for a bit after Korea, and, well, I’m considering doing that again in Kuala Lumpur.

It’s not that I don’t want a science communication or media job in England, but mostly that I’m still attracted to drifting, to travel, and I’m terribly afraid of not being able to find a job for a good while. Having done this course and having made up my mind to do this course and go into this sector, I’m not going to give up- I will take work experience, applications, wonderings, unemployment, and the continuing diet of cheap canned foodstuff as long as I have to. For as long as I can hold out. Yet there’s still a lot to be found outside of England, I think, if I can let myself be a drifter between categories for a little longer. Or if I let myself be just indulgent. Or just plain odd. There might not be any shame in finding a job abroad while pursuing creative projects in my own time, and as my mum’s Korean but I’m horribly British, there’s always the draw of going to Korea again to gain a little Korean culture. Maybe. It still can be a little strange, to be in charge of one’s own life choices. However I remember that when I was doing my undergraduate degree, I was much more stressed about life choices, and full of self-criticism for what felt like a lack of direction and too much indulgence. ‘I might do this, I might do that…’ Meanwhile I had watched my parents work and work throughout my childhood. I couldn’t imagine that they had ever been as directionless as me. Yet now here I am again, after a degree, and I care much less. Mentally, this is much better.

I’ve caught up recently with a few friends from my undergraduate time, and we’ve briefly shared experiences. Many are disillusioned or restless with the corporate world already, though, well, nothing comes easily anywhere, and I certainly seem to like my restlessness and disillusionment wherever I can generate it. Some are heading back into university on the Phd route, seeking personal fulfilment. Both have always been options, I guess. I am curiously curious about working for a corporation, for one of those companies that deal in business and figures and office hours, open to anyone with a yen and a university degree. And goodness knows, a salary one can save on would be great. But I’ll still happily avoid that for a while longer. I’m enough of a nerd to like the idea of a Phd, but not driven enough to hunt out a chosen subject yet. So I guess I’m still in a similar mindset to how I was pre-Imperial, yet with a nice helping of experience and a few more skills, and a handful of good people.

And… London was, and is, very fun to live in. Especially in the summertime.

I wish I had an adventurous road trip to blog about like Natalia, but for my documentary, the stories are still rather boring. We’ve interviewed a mixture of councillor, psychologist, geographer and journalist on the topic of shared space, and meanwhile, the other things to be filmed are just general street scenes in London. I still hope that my brother, entrepreneuring businessman and classic speedy driver of a white van might let me sit in with a camera while he drives confidently round London one day, but that thrill of being an un-driver squeaking in terror as someone else negotiates hair-pin turns with colourful language is as exciting as my filming experience is likely to get.

Nonetheless, we have our interviews, and our lecturer seemed remarkably amiable about their nature, even largely unedited and deliciously waffle-ey as they are. I tend to go in nearly every day to the department (and stay embarrassingly late…) yet only got to the stage where I could start editing sequences in earnest on Tuesday. Man, editing takes ages, just the very nature of having to watch minutes of footage over and over again every time its reshuffled, catches me by surprise every time.

We’ve a couple of weeks till the deadline and I feel pretty constantly stressed or absently worried, but it’s kind of cool, a constant prickly adrenaline high that mangles my dreams and ups the amplitude of comfort eating. For the Bank Holiday weekend, I guiltily went to Creamfields as part of my Oxfam festival volunteering thang this year (don’t go, it’s overhyped and / or just plain rubbish) and to compensate sat up half the night, before I left, rewriting the documentary script to the nagging voices of Panic and Conscience in my head, who like to turn up the volume at night. Incidentally, for those who may make documentaries or films in the future, one good bit of advice is to find work colleagues who have as similar a work style to yourself- especially if you have to work in pairs. For instance, if one person likes to plan lots while the other prefers to be spontaneous, or if one person prefers to work only at certain times and never outside while the other likes being flexible, there’ll be a long and arduous period of getting puzzled / annoyed / wearily tolerant of each other.

As mentioned before, the comforting cushion of what-to-do-After is for me a short internship in Laos at the end of September. It’s unpaid but with perks such as being in Laos, and I’ll blog about it somewhere, hopefully on that website I keep meaning to create once I find out how websites are created, instead of pretending I understand that sort of thing. It’s pretty highly recommended to construct some manner of website or web presence if you want to work in the media, anyway, but mind you, after recently watching an episode of Nathan Barley for the first time, I’m a bit worried that it also might turn me into a mediatwit. Still, watch this space, erm, on both counts.

Oh and I did film the Michael Jackson Leicester Square tribute! I stuck it onto Youtube here. Reckon it’s long overdue that I joined in with the Youtube revolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcAOHP7Hq00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c3zjv0shv0