hooray armadillo™

I had to keep a journal for my internship this semester in order to get credit for GC. For the 15-week internship I had to have a weekly journal in addition to an “abstract” that was a general overview of the entire experience. I finished it up my last week in London and had a read through the whole thing before sending it off. It was nice to see all the great stuff I was able to do when I was there. While it wasn’t a really structured internship by any means I really can’t complain. I was living and working in London for 15 weeks! I can’t think of many people who can say that (except all the interns I met at Parliament) but there were lots of other aspects of being in Europe for the whole semester that made this an even more incredible opportunity.

The fact that I got to go visit all of my family and my beautiful girlfriend while over here made the beginning of ‘09 really special. I knew I wanted to get to visit everyone while I was over here, but I never thought things would work out so perfect. First, Melissa was able to come visit me in London. Then I got to go spend a week with all of my family in Scotland. Then all of my family came to London for my birthday. Then I was able to go visit Melissa in Granada. Then we had a wonderful “spring break” together and I got to see my parents in Germany. As if this wasn’t enough I had a last minute trip to see my sister (and Scottish fam!) in Madrid.

When I got back to London for my last week and was recapping all of my “work” in my journals I was also looking back at all traveling I was able to do. I realized how fortunate I was to not only have had such a terrific and truly unique internship experience but also all the time I was able to spend with everyone I love. I can’t thank everyone who played a part in everything working out the way it did enough, you know who you are.

Life seems almost too good to be true right now. But I’m trying to be as thankful for all the great opportunities I have because I know not everyone has them and that they won’t last forever. :)/:(

Drinks and Tapas (not pictured)

Last weekend I visited Melissa in Granada. Before going, I had been told by many people how beautiful and truly awesome Granada is. I was not disappointed. The city has SO much history and such a unique sense of culture from the merging (and subsequent separation) of the Moorish and Spanish peoples making it easily one of my favorite places I’ve ever visited. Melissa was an excellent tour guide, translator, everything…it was such a wonderful weekend. I want to go back…now.

This semester has taken its time and has also flown by at the same time. I only have four weeks left and only two of those will be at Parliament. I really can’t believe I’m almost done!

With that in mind I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do post Spring Semester ‘09. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not going to rush to get out of college in December ‘09. There are plenty of factors that made me decide that that is not what I want to do. I won’t list them all here. Now that I’ll have two semesters left at Clemson means I can easily spread out the remaining classes I need to take and therefore not really have to do any summer classes. TOP SCORE!

With my senior year figured out (for the most part), I need to backtrack and have some idear for this summer. After leaving Parliament I’m heading back to Germany on the Eurostar. F*** you, Ryanair. My sister’s year of working and living in Madrid comes to an end shortly after I get there. Time for family vacation! After that Aileen and I plan on visiting Portugal — one of the places in Europe neither of us have ever been. I don’t know how feasible it would be for me to stay in Germany for the whole summer. So I’m thinking of job options in Clemson for at least part of the summer. What do you think?

Leaving that borefest behind, I’ll move on to something more interesting. While I only have four weeks left in the UK, I still have loads to look forward to the biggest being the Euro-blitz Travelpalooza ‘09 with Melissa a.k.a our spring break.

Not to brag…but to brag, this trips includes:

• Meeting up in Florence, Italy and spending the weekend exploring the beautiful Italian city
• Flying to Paris for a night and day…Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Arch de Triumph, crêpe, other French stuff
• Leaving Paris by train to Luxembourg to tour the city by night and find a nice Luxembourgish Thai restaurant
• Heading “home” to Germany for the rest of the week to relax in the slower-pace part of Europe

Needless to say, I am really really looking forward to this trip. I can’t wait to see Melissa again and enjoy exploring a little more of Europe with her! Not to mention all the Chianti, Champagne, and Riesling to be had.

…looks like I got to #3 on my list from my most recent post sooner than I thought.

For this week and next I’m working at the ad agency BBH. They don’t have an intern position per se so the best I could do was a work experience for two weeks. However, getting some exposure to the industry is a plus and the ability to make some contacts is never something to turn down.

For the most part, the kinds of tasks I’m given are not very demanding in regards to my graphics background. I knew the most beneficial part of this work experience would be the fact I get to talk with people from every department, not necessarily the actual work. So I’m keeping that in mind and just enjoying the change of scenery and opportunity to network. The majority of my tasks include image searches for various pitches that go on in the Production Department. Interesting image searches thus far:

• People holding large puzzle pieces

• British Airways plane on the runway at dusk

• A profile shot of people going “shhhh”

• The concept of sharing

I’m quite enjoying it so far and like the people I’m working with. It’s just me and another guy here this week doing the work experience program. Not sure about next week, though. The BBH office is in a super cool part of the West End. Just off Regent Street near Carnaby Street — a famous shopping district in London. We get sent out regularly to get things. For example: coloring books, photos of sandwiches on shelves, DVDs, and a Greek or Turkish language version of Vogue. So it’s nice to get to explore a new area of London…just as long as I don’t venture too far into Soho and the sex shop district…

London is still the awesome. A friend of mine from last summer in NYC who lives in Ireland is coming to London this weekend. ‘Twill be fun to deplete the supplies of Guinness in the city. I’m going to Granada to see Melissa in a couple weeks (March 20th) and I can’t wait to see her! Everything I hear about Granada makes me really excited to go check it out. Although it’s in Spain, it’s got such a different culture than the rest of the country and indeed Europe from what I’ve heard. Excited. EXCITED. EXCIIIIIIITED!!!

Current school/life plan:

1. Do one class during first summer session and then do something for the rest of the summer…like, you know, a job
2. Figure out how to spread my remaining classes over the last two semesters
3. Change my mind…

Parliament is on recess this week. So this week I’m up in Scotland in my MPs constituency office. Along with a light spot of working, getting to spend time with all the family up here is great!

I’ve been given a car to use when I’m up here to get to work as I’m staying with family in Stirling (which is about a 20 minute drive from the office). I couldn’t believe it when I was told, “Oh, you’ll be staying with your family, right? Okay, well we’ll put you on the insurance for a car that you can use up there.” I still find it hard to believe sometimes all the great perks of this internship. Perks aren’t supposed to come until you’re high up in your job…not when you’re an intern! Let’s just say, I took advantage of the business class lounge at the airport before I flew up.

Driving on the other side of the car and road and shifting with your left hand (lucky I can drive a manual!!!) wasn’t as hard to get used to as I thought. As long as I’m not driving late at night on some back road where I could pull out and completely forget what side to be on, by just following the traffic it’s hard to go wrong. The gear shifter doesn’t have the numbers on it so it was a guess on where reverse was. So far that was the only issue!

At the end of the month for my “birthday” my mum, dad, sister, cousin, aunt, and uncle are coming over, up, and down, respectively, to London. It will be a grand time. That’s the end of next week! At the beginning of March I’m working at BBH for two weeks. I’ll be away from Parliament for that time. I worked briefly with their New York office when I was working at thelab® last summer so it should be fun. And I’m trying to find flights for sometime in March to see Melissssa. I tend to think of things way far out in the future, but time is flying so far and I just have so much to look forward to.

Now that I’m thinking I don’t want to graduate in December ‘09 I was wondering what to do about this summer. If I take classes then I really wouldn’t have a reason not to finish up at the end of the fall semester. If I don’t take them then I could spread out my class load over both semesters. What to do???

Also, I missed a delivery deadline on the online game Trukz. No big deal, it’s happened before. But I have such a terrible driver rating and being late or getting speeding tickets just doesn’t help.  I’d like to see my driver rating get just a little higher. You know, something I could be proud of.

This past weekend was so wonderful. It was so great to see Melissa after a long long month. We are so lucky to be so (relatively) close to each other when we’re both so far away from “home.” Although time seemed to fly, we packed a lot into a few days and I think London did a good job. We couldn’t have asked for better weather either. It’s back to its rainy self now. I hope to get down to Spain in March sometime to see what this tapas nonsense is all about. I already can’t wait to see her again!

I’ve started using Twitter. I was on the Parliament’s Intranet the other day and one of the new “Going On” stories was that Parliament is on Twitter. It is kind of amazing to think that the UK Government is using a social networking site as a medium to communicate with people. I kind of like that, though. I’ve already found out a few things going on in Parliament because of UKParliament’s tweets. So, I guess their goal of getting in touch with the electorate is working. Recently I’ve been aware of just how connected everything is through Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Blogs, etc. and just how everyone is moving toward it…I mean Parliament? For real?! I don’t know how I feel about this near constant sharing, but for now I’ll do my part. 

Woah. I just blogged about Twittering. Is your mind still functioning?

Me at Apple HQ

So I’m sure everyone has read about Apple saying Macworld ‘09 will be the last Macworld they attend. Also, that Steve Jobs will not be giving the keynote address in this last appearance. Instead it will be Phil Schiller. Now, I love Phil. I think he’s really excited about Apple and that shows when he’s on stage. It just shows a little too much. Compared to Steve he’s just not polished enough. I’m having a hard time figuring out why he was picked over someone like Jony Ive or even Tim Cook. Maybe they’ll make mention of it in January, but maybe not. I’ve read some things about why Apple decided to pull out (trade shows aren’t really the most effective way to get their message out to customers anymore, etc.). However, the keynote addresses have been a mainstay of Apple culture for so long now. This is why I’m so nervous about what it all means.

I started getting concerned about Apple and their direction when they postponed the introduction of Mac OS X Leopard because of engineers being tied up on the introduction of the iPhone. I gave Apple some slack on this, though. While putting of the introduction of a major OS upgrade and seemingly neglecting what I feel is their most important product line, the Mac, getting the iPhone just right was probably worth it.

Then, the last week I was working at the Apple Store in San Antonio, Apple came out with the new Aluminum iMacs and new keyboards. Now people who know me know I complained about what was lacking on the new keyboards. The Apple icon on the Apple Key (command key if you’re a PC person trying to talk about Macs) and replaced it with the word ‘command.’ I was getting mad especially since I had just purchased one of the new keyboards to use when I have my laptop hooked up at my desk. All the blogs talked about how so many people were coming over to Mac from Windoze that they wanted to make it easier for switchers to know where the ‘command key’ was. Apple caving to PC users? Really?

Among other little things, like Steve Jobs letting Scott Forstall talk in public, pulling out of Macworld is huge. I know trade shows are losing their usefulness. But the Stevenotes are big. Really big. Apple could go to the Moscone Center, give an amazing brainwashing presentation, and head back to Cupertino…no booth required. All of this in addition to the effect this has on the media’s perception of Steve’s health which in turn has an effect on the stock price of AAPL. Wtf, Apple. I’m a loyal-ass customer/fan. I just hope this decision isn’t what it seems: a slap in the face to all Apple fans out there!

Look around on any college campus or anywhere really and you’ll see iPhones, iPods, and MacBooks galore. So I guess you can say Apple isn’t doing too bad for itself. I’ve been a Mac user since the Performa days (1994 for all you people who got their Mac after getting their iPod a few years ago) so I’ve seen a lot of changes. Still, what’s a blog if not a place to gripe about something probably not worth the time to type?