nerdlinger in a blue suit

Well, London is now over with, which means my practicums are done. DONE!!! DONE!!! Thank god. I'm feeling kinda burned out and am now looking forward to 5 weeks vacation. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the practicums. They were fantastic experiences that may turn into paid work later down the road… Don't want to jinx myself, but the BBC is a possibility.

This week at the BBC was excellent. I met most of the Information Architecture staff and got to learn a lot about what it is that they do, what projects they're working on, why the BBC is a great place to work, etc. I even got to demonstrate my taxonomic skills by controlling some vocabulary and other things (you don't need to know what that was about). I sat for a couple of hours with the guy they've brought in to name the genre and subject categories for the new media player that the BBC is developing. Very nerdy stuff, but people are paid good money (better than librarians) to do it. And who wouldn't want work that compels you to ask questions like: should it be labelled 'cinema' or 'film' or 'movies'??? Remember, paid more than librarians. For those of you who are not asleep, i'll briefly mention that i got a tour through the content management system and checked out the new software they're using for content object modelling. Isn't that exciting. And I drank so much tea there. Fair trade stuff – only the best for Beeb staffers. And i was taken out for lunch at the BBC canteen, where the food was perhaps the best low-budget food in all of London (seared tuna on salad fo £4.50). Though it didn't match the quality or splendor of TimeWarner's cafeteria.

All in all, the BBC was a great place to spend some time. And it certainly would be an even better place to work. Everyone I met was friendly and very gracious. Great hosts. And tea.

I spent a lot of time wandering the streets of London during my stay here and I covered a lot of ground. My longest day started in the Docklands, which is designed to look as bland and soul-less as any large North American city's downtown. And when buildings had names like Canada Wharf Place, I could have sworn I was in boring ol' Vancouver all over again. You know how it looks: large steel and glass skyscrapers, wind funneling down the streets, a sense that people inhabit the space, but you don't actually see any of them, cliched little pubs and cafes along the waterfront… ok, so i didn't spend a lot of time in the Docklands and i'm sure it's a great place to visit, but it's a sad and ironic sign of what's to come in London. Especially with the redevelopment that will be (and is) occurring in East London in preparation for the 2012 Olympics. Now that's not to say that i'm a lover of Quaint Britannia, characterized with enough victorian gothic architecture and little brick buildings to last a life time…

After the Docklands, I took the tube to Westminster and checked out Parliament, the Abbey, Big Ben, and the London Eye. I didn't have to walk more than 100 metres to take photos of them all. I wanted to take a picture of Winston Churchill, but a bunch of Azerbaijanis were protesting in front of the statue, impeding my ability to get a good shot. How inconsiderate. Especially given the fact that Britain has nothing to do with Azerbijan and its allegedly repressive regime. That is, this is what i overheard an American (or Canadian) couple moaning about as we stood near ol' winnie. How inconsiderate, indeed. I walked down Whitehall, checked out the militarized Downing Street and saw some people taking photos of mounted horse guards. I crossed the Waterloo bridge and visited a used book fair adjacent to the BFI's National Theatre and a French market. The food looked amazing, herb-crusted sausage, garlic chevre, and chocolate. Sadly, the market was very expensive (£ x 2), so i kept on strolling down to the admission free Tate Modern. The museum has an eclectic collection of modern art, and i was there just in time for the exhibition of pieces that have been sitting down in the basement for the past decade or so. As with all modern art, some works were better than others. Stand-outs include the works of one photographer (don't have my notebook) who uses a long lens from a helicopter and shoots photos that are blurred around the edges and make people look like tiny figurines. It's hard to tell whether his photos are models are real. After the Tate, crossed the recently-repaired Millennium Bridge (which was closed for a while cause it swung too much), through the bank district with the intention of seeing Richard Rogers' Lloyd's Bank Building and Norman Foster's Gherkin. Wow. Much more inventive and creative than any of the buildings in the Docklands. Rogers' building is famous for wearing its innards on its exterior (pipes, elevators, etc.) and Foster's building is slightly controversial because it looks like a giant penis in the landscape. Oh well, can't win them all.

Since moving to Paddington on Sunday, I've been able to enjoy London a lot more. I've gone on many relaxing walks through Hyde Park on the way to work, seeing the Royal Albert Hall and Albert Memorial. I walked to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see a comprehensive exhibition on European modernism. I went to the British Library to see the Magna Carta. It's old. And I walked and walked around other places too. But now I'm tired, so i'm outta here. Hope I'm not boring y'all stiff. Next up: Amsterdam.

I've been in London for the past week and a bit and have been spending a lot of time commuting and walking the pavement which has led me to be somewhat negligent of the blog. But this promises to be a large, lurid posting full of intrigue, gluttony, and overpriced sandwiches from Tesco Express.

I arrived in London last Saturday afternoon, after a gruelling hour and a half trip in NY rush hour from Williamsbourg to JFK airport. The trip normally takes 20-25 minutes without traffic. My cab driver was great. He had his cell phone glued to his ear getting the latest info on routes that were less congested than others. The flight from JFK to Amsterdam was superb. It was one of those fancy new 737s with TVs built into the headrests. I watched 3 sitcoms and scanned through 4 movies while eating rubber chicken dinner at 3 in the morning.

Arriving in London was a breeze and I headed out to the far east, Essex county, to stay with family friends in Romford. Romford is a nice place, I'm sure, but it's so far removed from London that it felt more than a little isolating. The commute into London proper is about 45 minutes. Tack on another 30 minutes getting to the BBC which is located in west London at White City.

Monday was a bank holiday, so I set out into London, wandering around in the West End with the masses who were all shopping like crazy on Oxford Street. As you've all heard before, the cost of living here is steep and virtually impossible for those of us who earn our living in Canadian and, yep, even American dollars. It's not that bad that a sandwich costs £3.30 in Tesco's (especially the Healthy Living series, which is different from the Unhealthy Living Series by the amount of mayo: 2 dollops rather than 3), it's that the sandwich converts to $7. And fish & chips are £6.95 = $15!!! For one piece! Not to mention the fish & chips at Go Fish near Granville Island (as recommended by the NY Times) are far superior – they could teach the English a thing or two about batter. So, costs are high for we poor canucks. The cheapest food in London continues to be McDonald's, which I have so far narrowly avoided, but how can i say no to a 99 ice cream cone? mmmm, a flaky cadbury flake jammed into a soft soft serve cone for the quite reasonable price of 49p. hmmm, maybe after work i'll go. the crisps are top notch as usual, though i'm not sure what are my favourite style: there's regular chips, there's hoops, and then there's mini-Pringles (without the crazy flavours, though). by far the best flavoured crisps are Walker's Sensations, which include the blog title, as well as Oven Roasted Chicken with Lemon & Thyme; Slow Roasted Lamb with Moroccan Spices; Gently Infused Lime & Thai Spices; and Thai Sweet Chilli. Yow! Nothing like 4 or 5 bags of crisps for dinner with a tall cool crisp bottle of Fanta to wash it down. For desert, of course, there are McVities Jaffa Cakes. Yep, life is sweet and the food is delicious, if not nutritious, here in London.

Now on to the BBC. Showed up on Tuesday and ran into a couple of glitches. First, there was no computer for me to sit at in the Information Architecture department. So I had to sit at a temp computer one floor away, on the other side of the building. Then, my supervisor was busy in meetings all day, so I sat on my own staring at documents and websites for the majority of the day. Wednesday didn't get much better. Thursday they had me working on search log analysis, which was actually quite interesting. It's amazing how many time in the last three months people have used the BBC search engine to search for google and amazon. By Friday I was sitting in the IA department and got to meet a few of the people working here. In some respects, it was too little too late, as I'm only here til Thursday June 8, but better late than never. This practicum is much different from the one at CNN, where things were much smaller-scale, and while everyone was busy there, they were still able to accommodate me. Here at the BBC, there seems to be an endless amount of meetings and deadlines which has resulted in a lot of self-guided work. To be fair, the work is less process-based and predictable as it was at CNN, so sitting with people and watching what they do wouldn't be terribly interesting. And I have been involved in a couple of those meetings and doing some actual work (rather than the hypothetical kind) to demonstrate my skills. So all in all, I'm enjoying the BBC. But to be honest, my mind is on getting my butt over to amsterdam cause that's when the vacation begins.

Back to Romford for a second. I've just got to say that everything they've said about Essex girls seems to be true. In my journeying back to Romford, i've had to wait at the Romford station bus stop for up to 20 minutes and a constant parade of essex girls seems to march all through the streets in the evening. According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, essex girl is "used to describe working class teenagers and young women from Essex said to be sexually promiscuous, loud, vulgar, scantily-dressed and of low intelligence." And how. So bloody obnoxious. Not that the essex boys are much better. Talk about binge drinking and falling all over the place, puking and fighting. Ah, the pride of English youth. The most telling moment is when i saw a couple walk by, clearly too young to be married but they were stuck with a kid who looked about three. The kid was pushing her stroller that had a 12-pack of Stella sitting in it. Way to start them off young.

That's the end of London, part 1. In the next installment, I'll tell you all about how world cup flag-mad Londoners are detrimental to the environment and gives the appearance of supporting the proto-fascist British Nationalist Party. Or not.