Lunch with the Team

Got invited out to eat lunch with the Rubber crew so I got to know them each a little bit better. While I still feel like the 'new guy' I am slowly trying to make myself known within their circle. Came up with a pretty solid ad pitch today that went down quite well, my boss and I are going to absolutely smash it tomorrow though and come up with a damn-near bulletproof pitch by the end of the day.

New Day, New Job

First day of work and it was a moderate success. Got in early doors so I could be briefed on the office and the building along with the various spaces and meeting rooms and all that good stuff. I was assigned a laptop to use there which was really cool, and on top of that I was given several logins and emails stuff etc so I could really hit the ground running. After most of the paperwork was done and sorted I was given a handful of briefs to be cracking on with, basically I'm trying to come up with creative concepts for web adverts. I have already filled up 10 pages in my notebook with good ideas to throw around and sometime tomorrow I'll be pitching a few of my best ones out loud.

Big shout out to Rebecca today too as she had another job interview, this time with Foyles. As part of the interview she got to dress their shop window and after seeing her photo, I think she did a damn good job. Both of us did some really brave things today and I am super proud of both of us. Fingers crossed that Rebs gets some good news and I hope that tomorrow goes even better than today.

Busy in Brizzle

Rebs and I took a spin into Bristol town centre to be touristy. We went via my new work so I could smugly point it out to her (its in such a cool spot in the city that I couldn't not) and then moved on towards the museum. So after gawking at the surprisingly good taxidermy and art exhibits we got a slice of cake and a drink to cool us down, it was scorchville this afternoon and a nice milkshake was just the ticket to keep me chill.

Mentally prepping myself for a day of firts tomorrow: my first real job after coming out of uni! Fingers crossed that it goes well, I already have the outfit planned, so I'll look the part whatever happens.

Facing Foyles

Took a brief trip into Cabot Circus to recce Foyles with Rebecca. She has recently bagged an interview there so she wanted to scope it out and get a feel for the shop, once she came out she was dying to get the job. Returning to Mark and Lucy's I introduced them to Gwent and we watched a bit more of Stranger Things which is beginning to shape up quite nicely. I'm sticking around for the point where it become 'excellent,' at the moment it is still in the 'very good' phase.

ExCel Trailer Madness

Took the train to London early doors to get to the ExCel centre for the new Hungerford 2 trailer. I was strapped on with sound recording duty but the whole thing was over in a snap, in and out within two hours. Curiously, all of the crew for the shoot got hit really hard with tiredness just afterwards, probably because we were dressed in preparation for a thunderstorm as the weather predicted, btu in reality, it was another scorcher. Get back home to Mark's pad and he crashed for two hours while I took it easy too, we are both gonna sleep very well tonight!

Hunkering in Bristol

Got myself all tucked up in Mark and Lucy's spare bed, ready to camp out with them for the next few weeks. Mum and I took Mark out to lunch for a rather good bacon bap and an early thank you for taking me in. I've just prepped all the stuff we need for filming tomorrow along with Mark. We are headed to the Excel building to record a trailer for Hungerford 2 which should be a nice little day out for us. Looking forward to strapping my sound gear back on!

Packing my Bags for Bristol

Finished off the remaining part of my EU quiz for the people coming over to Newbury in September. Hopefully it won't come across as a 'death by PowerPoint' thing, it certainly felt like that making the quiz, but I think it'll go down alright. Beyond that though, I begun packing for the big move. I'm heading down to Bristol for the next two months to start my internship at Rubber Republic at the start of next week, and I'll be living with Mark and Lucy in the meantime, and I am so grateful that they have allowed me to camp out with them. Should be a fun few weeks!

Goodbye Grandad John

Got a message sometime this afternoon from my parents to let Louis and I know that our Grandfather passed away. We all knew he was very ill and was losing time, but none of us expected it to be a sudden as this. While it is a very sad thing, I think most of us knew it would happen soon and had already said 'goodbye' in our own, personal ways.

Below I'll leave a small, and familiar poem called 'Footsteps.' In no way is this meant to be a mawkish thing, the meaning of the poem doesn't reflect my Grandfather, nor does it reflect my opinions on death and the afterlife. Rather, this poem was hung up in the toilet of his house and I often took the opportunity to read it whenever our family went to visit him because I enjoy the story. And for that reason alone, I thought of him whenever I read it and it's my own personal way of remembering him:

 

Keyflower

Took the evening off to play Keyflower, Louis' new board game that he has been dying to play all Summer. The game plays out a bit like a cuter version of Civilization and its all about town and resource management, which is exactly what Louis is into. While its a really high ranked game online, I'm not wholly convinced by the power of it. Don't get me wrong though, I still enjoyed it, but the endgame feels a little underwhelming at the moment and your efforts just kinda feel a little bit empty. Perhpas we need some more experienced people playing for it to reach its potential.

Twin Town Meet-up Planned

While my PC still isn't 100%, I've put in my old graphics card so I can still do a lot of things I'm used to getting up to now, but nothing looks anywhere near as pretty as it used to. Planned out what needs to be done for the September Twin Town meet-up this evening. Basically we agreed on a way to make the topic of the EU a fairly interesting for 17-25 year olds, just need to do it for the sake of getting funding really so this ticks a few boxes more than anything else.

Mon Oncle

Even after 35 hours, my total PC backup is still chugging along. I would estimate that the progress bar is at the 80% mark now so it should (hopefully) be all done by the time I wake up tomorrow, then we can continue with the diagnostics to the rest of my machine and hopefully get it up and running properly. In the meantime, I though it would be good to watch some more films, so I got through Sullivan's Travels which was decent, if awkwardly paced. It really pulled it out of the bag in the last two minutes though as it delivered a really heartwarming message that resonated well with me, shame it just took so damn long to get there.

Mon Oncle was the next one, and for the life of me I couldn't get into this one. Watching it was an exercise in endurance for me, I'd never seen a 'Hulot' film before, and I can probably live without seeing any other ones as the comedy was just boring and did absolutely nothing new. I'm sorry to say, but it all just felt like a poor man's Charlie Chaplin film and towards the end I was just begging for it to be over. While I kinda smirked at a few oh-so-french quirks in the first 15 minutes, it just kept going on and on and on. Maybe its because I'm not French?

BIOS Muck-Up

Dabbled once again with my computer, trying to sort it all out. At one point I actually made it all worse and messed around with my BIOS in such a way that it wouldn't boot properly. Luckily, we managed to reset it by literally taking the battery out and leaving it for 5 minutes. Now at least I can start it, but my graphics card issue still hasn't been resolved. As a precaution, now I am doing something I have never done before: a total system backup. And it's taking its sweet, sweet time doing so. With no real ETA to work with, I am assuming the whole process will take just over 24 hours, with all that time on my hands, I even got around to tidying up my room a little bit, its amazing how productive waiting can make you.

Return from Poland

I'm back from the land of Poland! I'll be doing a write up of my travels sometime this week so stay tuned for that. But for the time-being I am recovering from several late nights and many glasses of vodka. Woke up with the full intention of doing literally nothing to get myself working at 100% again, and that usually calls for some gaming. It was not to be though, as my computer is refusing to boot and is giving me grief once again - guess it wouldn't be a Summer break for me without some part of my computer dying on me. So instead of kicking back, I spent most of today huddled round my PC with Louis, praying that I don't have to spend more money on this thing to get it working again, it was a real bummer and we still don't know what the exact root of the problem is.

Bristol Interviews

Did my 'Bristol and Back again' journey starting early this morning. Travel was no issue whatsoever thanks to my City mapper app that took me swiftly through London and to my interview which went rather well! We mostly just sat down and chatted about social video and where I could fit into the company, they were really nice people though and it was in a lovely part of the city so I really hope that I get the job now.

I am off to Poland tomorrow so blog updates may not happen until the 19th now. But stay tuned for many,any photos when I return.

Shoe Shopping

Took a fanciful spin in Rebecca new car into Kingston for a mini shopping spree. Mostly it was last minute travel purchases for Poland, but I went out there with the express intent on getting some Summer shoes so I would fall more in line with Louis' fashion sense. Ended up with a really nice pair as a result so I am totally ready for this holiday in terms of footwear.

Mentally prepping myself for my informal interview with Rubber Republic tomorrow. Got the outfit shorted, now its just getting there and back again tomorrow. That means yet another whistle-stop tour to Bristol, but the most exciting one so far! I got my fingers crossed.

TFL

Been down in London for just over 24 hours and TFL has already sapped about £15 off of me. But, it was worth it in part for my first ever Chipolte experience which was delicious, and very cheap thanks to Rebecca's discount card. With full bellies, we rolled to the Museum of Childhood which was pretty good, they had a nifty exhibit on the Clangers which was nice and some cool Action Man toys too. It was basically a mini nostalgia trip, but it wasn't the best London museum I've been to.

Batman VS SUperman

Got invited out to a rather impromptu film night just as I was sitting down for dinner. SO I rounded off my packing and headed over to the home of they guy I used to do the Saturday shift with at the Community Furniture Project and we watch the new Batman vs Superman film. Now I know its popular to hate on this film, but honestly it's just exhaustively disappointing. Didn't help that we sat down to the 'Ultimate Edition' so that added up to a remarkably bland three hour superhero film. Not trying to call it or anything, but I think the Superhero trend is starting to wane a bit now, especially after I saw that Suicide Squad has been getting some naff reviews...

Ramsay's Toast

Tried to follow in Gordan Ramsay's footsteps while cooking dinner today and tried my hand at making toast using a skillet. Of course, I would only toast the bread after seasoning it beautifully, with salt, and pepper. Complimented the fry up breakfast neatly so it's something I will be trying out again. Following dinner, I was present for a Twin Town meeting in our dinning room. We discussed the upcoming get-together in Newbury with the other Europeans and it fell on me and some others to device a way to make the topic of Brexit fun and engaging for young adults for two hours. It's quite a tall order, and as a result we didn't actually come up with anything, but I'm on the case.


Just planning out my sudden trip to Bristol. The interview with Rubber Republic is something they understandably want to do before I head off to Poland, so I'm hopping on a coach the day before my flight to (hopefully) seal the deal.

Locke

Heard back from Rubber Republic and they have heavily implied that they want to meet me face to face after reading my briefs. While it's not quite a confirmed job, it is certainly a very good step forward! Very eager to meet up with them and discuss what could lie ahead.

Before that fateful email, I got a chance to watch Locke, the Tom Hardy film which is exclusively filmed inside a car. Effectively, the movie is a road trip and you are riding shotgun with Hardy, and only him, the entire way through. On paper that may sound boring, but in reality it was a lot more gripping and involving than many other dramas that I've seen this year. The journey is kept interesting through a series of phonecalls Hardy makes while driving, and the film periodically dips into each contact every ten minutes or so so we experience a developing series of conversations between the characters. These are basically 'scenes' in a more conventional sense so even with a single character, single location premise, it still has excellent pacing that is match by an incredible performance from Hardy (it kinda had to be for the film to succeed.) While I won't divulge any details of the plot, I can say, without question, that you will be sucked into the world of the film within the first ten minutes, and then you'll be along for the ride; warts and all.

Te Big Short

Had the pleasure of seeing The Big Short earlier on today and I was fairly impressed. They took a rather difficult topic (the housing market crash of 2007) and explained it neatly while remaining very watchable. I'm not going pretend that I understood all of the banking language in the film, but they made an honest and good attempt at explaining a majority of the terms, along with a hint of comedy.
Occasionally the humor felt a little bit shoehorned and it jarred with the serious subject matter, but again, I appreciate that they try to keep the whole experience informative and fun to watch. For me, some jokes were distracting, but they were never enough to wreck a scene. I'd recommend it, similar to Spotlight, to anyone with a vague interest in the recent economic crisis, and even if you aren't, you just might be after seeing this one.