Dublin, Genius, Jobs, Diets...

Toy Story 1 & 3: Both with a cranky Woody

Top of the mornin’ to ya!

This weekend I spent in Dublin, and if any of my Irish friends had actually heard me utter the above phrase they would not have been at all impressed. The city of Dublin was lovely, especially the arty Temple Bar area. Saturday was particularly fun with a tour bus guide with comedic ambition and a guided tour of the Jameson distillery. The only guided tour I have ever left slightly giggly with a certificate saying I was certified as a whiskey taster.

As an animation student you would not be surprised that also this week I very much enjoyed Toy Story 3. It exceeded any expectations I may have had, it was absolutely brilliant and just shows you how far 3D animation has come since the nineties when Toy Story 1 was pioneering. It’s great to see that people have such passion to make such progress but the most important thing is that the heart of any movie is the story and this one was great.

I feel very lucky at the moment that I still have two years left at university as a lot of people I work with are graduating and looking for graduate jobs. With the job market at the moment this is not the easiest task. My sister graduated from her MSc Computer Science in March and has just got her first “real” job and started this week. I worry that some of these intelligent and effective graduates will be sitting around desperately job seeking for several months. I wish them all the best of luck; I would hire any of them!

I’ll admit though, although it is a tad embarrassing, one focal point of my week is what I jokingly call “fat club”. I have been a member of slimming world for two months now and am ten pounds the lighter for it. So I may give you Bridget-Jones-esque updates now and again, yes I did just resort to making up a word to try and make it sound interesting.

Have a happy week.

Working for Uni

This week I have hit the ground running back from a holiday in Spain. I love work so much I was there just ten hours after landing. Check out Bryony’s blog for some pictures of some very cute monkeys! I’m not very much of a sun seeker though, so I was quite relieved at the cooler weather when I got back to Blighty. A bit of rain is also good for my vegetable box on my balcony; I am growing Spinach, Basil and Sweet peppers. I can’t wait to put an ingredient in a dinner I grew myself, I think I won’t expand past my balcony though, I hate spiders!

I had an “I love my job” moment before I went on holiday. I worked at the Hop Farm Festival, it is a good day when you get paid to represent the university during the day and we got to roam the festival at night. I saw Blondie, Van Morrison, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan all live on stage. I also enjoyed the comedy tent where I saw some very funny (and some less funny) comedy acts, the only one you might have heard of is Lee Nelson of BBC3’s “Lee Nelson’s Well Good Show”.

At the moment I am facing the eternal student question of accommodation. Should I stay or should I go? I’ve been living in a lovely flat for a year with my flatmate but it does have shower issues despite its other good features. Now we want to cheapen up our bills and expand our brood, but will where we go be better or worse? Or maybe we should apply to go back into halls, or just revert back home and face the horror of public transport to reach our lectures. It is something most people have to worry about when they are at uni and it is never perfect. My best advice would to try to be chilled and easy going but on top of the paperwork (now I just have to remember that).

My little achievement of this week has been dipping my toes in a little dressmaking. It’s something I don’t do too often in case of stress overload. But this weekend I sporadically purchased some material from Chelmsford Market and made myself a skirt. I do like it when you can actually see what you did with your time as it so often seems to disappear. Whilst I stitched I watched my Adventureland DVD for about the third time, I do like that movie. Overall a relaxing weekend.