Holy Moly

Well hello there, long time no talk!

Very sorry for the lengthy absence. If we thought we were busy before, we were only kidding ourselves.

I don’t even know where to start.

So, as I mentioned last time, our friend Jose was here for a month. Sadly, he left this week, but we got to spend a lot of time with him while he was here. We tried to watch the one and only matinee Leafs game of the year at the Canadian pub The Maple Leaf together, but they weren’t showing the game (apparently the pub is owned and operated by Brits).

The Maple Leaf is in Covent Garden, and it was St. Paddys Day:

Chris’ new work ‘hood (where “The Man” lives – the banker/uber businessman area of the city, akin to King and Bay in TO):

 

At 5:02 PM, the streets in the area suddenly flood:

Confused elevator:

The night the worst assignment (to date) was due, a bunch of us from my course went out to a place called Queen of Hoxton. A dance bar in the basement, a bar on the main floor, and three floors up a rooftop patio. The patio was massive and included a Hogwarts-esque canopy tent with a firepit/grill in the middle and lots of fairy lights:

A couple weekends ago, we went for a big tour around the Thames. We started at Borough Market, gigantic food market with all kinds of food stalls. We opted for the amazing pulled pork sandwiches, with rocket and homemade apple sauce:

Southbank book market, every weekend. We will definitely be returning, we picked up lots of gems:

A bit of the Eye with Beg Ben and Parliament:

Big Ben on the right, Parliament and Westminster Abbey:

MI6 (Bond, James Bond):

 

Notting Hill/Portobello Road. Our friend Libby, also a Glendon alum, has been living and working in London for over a year now. We had lunch a couple weekends ago, she’s going to Lausanne, Switzerland to work for three months. Luckily we’ll still be here when she gets back:

Friend and classmate Natalie invited us over for dinner and we had the most delicious fajitas ever (and I’m so envious of her house!):

Sadly, Natalie lives so far from where we live. The three of us missed the last tube of the night, so it took me and Fran three or four buses to get back to our neighbourhood. But we had a lengthy wait at Trafalgar Square while waiting for one of our buses:

 

Hyde Park in bloom:

 

 

Ok, some school things! First, for my project module (the one where we started the writing prize), we did a guerrilla balloon campaign one week before the deadline. We got 200 balloons in the colours of the course and logo, put our info on them, and handed out information leaflets with chocolates in areas where we’d tethered balloons. Either it worked, or people were procrastinating, but we ended up with 123 submissions!! We are so so happy with the result. Now we just have to read them all!

Last Thursday, seven of us from the course went to Clays. Clays is the biggest printer in the UK. They do all kinds of printing except full-colour printing (like children’s picture books and cookbooks). It was incredible to spend the day in Bungay touring their facilities. I feel like I now know everything there is to know about printing (although I’m sure anyone who works at Clays would disagree):

 

5-6 billion £ warehouse at Clays, with robots manoeuvring the whole thing:

 

This past weekend we had brunch with one of our old flatmates, Elodie. We went to The Breakfast Club, and this is their “American”:

This past Sunday, I went to an “unconference” ahead of London Book Fair. Organized by Read Ahead, it was 16 45-minute sessions (four ran at a time, so you had to pick one, four times). The participants chose the topics of the sessions and decided which sessions to attend. It was really cool:

 

Monday saw me start my work experience placement at HarperCollins. One week down, and it’s great. I’m working in the children’s rights department which is a lot of fun (who could go wrong with titles like “Bombs on Aunt Dainty”?). Being surrounded by mountains of books all day long? I’ll take it. London Book Fair was this week, and I was lucky enough to get to attend on Thursday afternoon. It was so cool. Earls Court is MASSIVE, and hundreds of publishers from all over the world have stands and negotiate rights deals for three days straight. And of course, there is partying in the evenings:

 

One of the projects I’ve been working on is archiving old foreign publisher contracts and sending them to the warehouse. In amongst C.S. Lewis Lithuanian contracts was this 3D recipe for Shirley Temples. I’m so glad someone thought it important enough to keep with the contracts:

 

Tomorrow, our friend Adam is coming to visit! He met us in Nice in the fall, and I saw him in Canada over Christmas. He’s just finishing up the course-bit of his MBA in Barcelona. He’s staying with us until Tuesday or Wednesday. We bought an extra bed for the occasion (don’t ask where we’re gonna put it when it arrives tomorrow), so now there’s no excuse for not visiting (except maybe the cost).

So I’ve got three weeks left at my placement, then we’re going to Barcelona to visit Adam, then Chris’ parents are visiting, and then my mom is visiting! I have two assignments due in two weeks, Chris has been working extra long hours. It’s all very thrilling and tiring. We’ve been a bit tricky to get ahold of lately (the time finally changed here so we’re back to five hours for most of you) and so busy. After my assignments are in in two weeks, things will truly return to “normal” and in the meantime, we’re sorry!!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo

Meg

Harry Potter Marathons

So, Chris might be more thoughtful in his posts, but mine have more pretty pictures.

School has sort of started. On Friday and Saturday, I attended ISOP, the International Students Orientation Program. There are students from 150 different countries at UCL, and we were a group of at least a couple thousand. It was a nice opportunity to discover a bit more of the campus, but because there were so many of us it was rather difficult to make any connections with fellow foreign students.

Monday saw the start of my departmental orientation. I have to admit I am excited/affirmed in my decision, but slightly frustrated too. Because it’s departmental orientation and not program orientation, all the students from the Department of Information Studies attend. So this includes MA students for Publishing, Information Science, Archives, and Library Information Studies. A lot of the seminars we’ve sat through have been heavily tailored to IS, Archives, and LIS. Also, yesterday I spent three hours learning how to write a bibliography. I’m surprised that it isn’t expected that we know how to write a bibliography at this point in our academic careers. But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

But all is not lost. The publishing-specific course instructors seem like they are all phenomenal. All of the courses sound hugely interesting, and there is already a very strong emphasis on careers. While there is a dissertation, there is more emphasis on the work placement and networking. That’s a huge relief to me, as I have to admit I was worried that I might come out of this degree no better off than I was before starting it. The teaching staff has listed what practically every former student is now doing career-wise, and given valuable tips that’ve worked for others in terms of getting their feet in the door. Just in case anyone’s interested, the first-term courses are: a one-week intensive module on the overview of the industry (commencing Monday and ending with visits to the CEOs of Faber&Faber and Bloomsbury) called Publishing Contexts, and then starting after that is Author Management; Sales, Marketing and Promotion; Applied Creativity and Content; Publishing Skills; and Publishing Project. In the second term we get to choose some optional modules.

Anyways, that’s the “boring” stuff. Now for some more fun things:

Campus is beautiful. I thought Glendon had spoiled me in terms of its green space and gorgeous buildings. There are pubs and cafes on the ground floors (which are different than the first floors!) of every single building. Also, the students from the publishing program seem to be lovely people.

We visited Brick Lane, Soho, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square, and we’ve explored our neighbourhood some more. We’re still really enjoying our flat and our flatmates, despite the fact that Chris managed to lock himself out today while I was in class. (Who knew the credit card trick they use in the movies actually works?) Tomorrow I get to see King’s Cross and Platform 9&3/4!! In preparation, we started marathoning the Harry Potter movies last night. Today we saw an art installation hosted by Tourism Austria that was in Trafalgar Square. Austrian artist Alex Kiessling was shown on a screen in an Austrian gallery, using a Sharpie to draw on canvas. In real time, a robot in Trafalgar Square was creating the same piece of artwork, while another robot in Berlin did the same. The robots were operating via satellite, that was bouncing off a small attachment on Kiessling’s Sharpie. It was very cool. Tomorrow I get to go spend the day in a local bookstore, observing and interacting with their customers, regarding Books Are My Bag. I am incredibly excited to work on this project even in this small way. The Booksellers Association has also requested that we as a class submit our findings to them. We also got to see two Canadian bands perform here this week. Basia Bulat played for about 10 people at Rough Trade, a popular record store. She was great, and I couldn’t believe our luck. The other was The Provincial Archive, and they played at a pub called The Windmill in Brixton. They also played for about 10 people. Chris interviewed both of them after their performances. We got an advance copy of Basia’s new album and she’s invited us as her guests to her show in London in October!

We seem to have begun to figure out escalator and walking directions, and it’s finally sunk in that the ground floor and the first floor are different floors. But still unsure on what a “toastie” is, and someone complimented my “jumper” the other day and I was utterly lost.

Now for some photos:

Awesome food trucks in Brick Lane:

Basia Bulat performing at Rough Trade:

A sort of flash mob of musicians who jumped on our tube and played a song for the duration of the time it took to get from one stop to another. They were very talented (for video of them go here):

Some American patriotism. Apparently this coming weekend Regent St. will be closed to traffic and there’ll be American food and celebrations?:

The great Beatrix:

The neighbourhood:

And the outside of our flat. Stay tuned for pictures of INSIDE next time:

Trafalgar Square:

Art Installation:

Canada!!

Phew! I think that’s it. Hope I didn’t inundate you with photos!

Love Meg

PS: It hasn’t rained here in a WEEK! Touch wood. It’s basically a drought.