Tuesday, August 12, 2003
Sorry for the lack of updates yesterday -- I wanted to update, really, but I completely forgot. Oops.
Lots has been happening since I last blogged, so let's go through them in chronological order...
• The "interview" went well, and I got the job. I say "interview" because it was hardly a serious job interview at all -- more of a, "are you sure you want to do this?" And despite this meaning I will not write any stories for the International Herald Tribune and rather than working in their newsroom I work alone with their senior correspondent... I am. Incidentally, ex-KGVers may be interested to learn that the previous intern, who finished last Wednesday, was also a former KGVer: Lina Tornquist.
• Got home to see a new package of magazines from the US waiting for me. I actually completely forgot what I wrote about this month, so there was more than one surprise there. Also in the package was a new Star Wars game for Xbox: Knights of the Old Republic. I'm still at the beginning, and it's slow going so far, but it's kinda fun. And rather than the glut of games set in either the time of the Classic Trilogy (Luke Skywalker, etc) or the Prequel Trilogy (Anakin Skywalker, etc), this is set 4,000 years before both... so you're getting your Star Wars fix in while exploring a totally new environment. Also, though combat plays a central role in the game, you can get quite far by doing other things, like talking your way through (JEDI MIND TRICKS!) or hacking computer terminals to do your dirty work. Oh, and on your path to becoming a Jedi, you can choose the light side or the dark side of the Force. Which is just too damned cool.
• And speaking of cool, I then got a call from HMV telling me that the second season of 24 was out on DVD. I rushed over there and bought it ASAP, despite having every single episode right here on this hard drive. There's a ton of extras (commentaries, featurettes, deleted scenes) but ultimately, 24 is one of my favourite TV shows of all time. It just had to be bought. Much like the third season of the Simpsons, due out on DVD at the end of August.
• Roll on work the next morning, which was... awkward. It definitely wasn't what I expected. All I had to do all day was:
1) Go out and buy printer cartridges -- a task rendered unnecessary since the printer had ink.
2) Find a picture frame for an A4 certificate... which is no big deal, unless you're stuck in the ghetto of Sheung Wan, where they seem to exclusively sell nuts, herbs and spices.
3) Type up a two-sentence letter to twelve people, and address them. This was the day's biggest task, taking as it did all of 15 minutes.
4) Stuff the letters into envelopes and mail them.
That was it. In between there was a lot of reading (of magazines and newspapers; whatever I could get my hands on, really) and staring blankly out the window. I couldn't even access the Internet, since that office has no broadband and dialling up to check football news would mean taking the fax machine offline (which I imagine to be a bad thing). On the bright side, realising that I had done nothing all day and that there was nothing to do anyway, I was let go at 3 with a vague promise that some sort of plan of action for me would be in place tomorrow. That's a good start, I guess.
Still, I'm hopeful some good will come. Firstly, this internship is only a month long. Secondly, it's wildly different from CNN, and not just because of the rather enviable fact that I was "one of them" at CNN and here I'm effectively an assistant. At CNN, all our stories were -- ultimately -- rewrites of someone else's story. Original content did exist (I penned at least two totally original stories in my time there, which was more than a few other dot-commers), but the focus was on just getting the news out... never mind that you're basically polishing up and fleshing out a Reuters/WSJ/Bloomberg story. Working with a correspondent for the IHT is different because he has to create his stories from scratch. He has to firstly filter out everything coming from HK to find and extract the most relevant story for the rest of the world from HK, find an angle, and then tell the world. And often this comes before any word hits the wires or any of the other papers. It's more front-line investigative reporting, and I figure I can only learn from the methods employed... because I honestly have no idea how the process works.
• Since I got off work early, I met my family in Dragon-i (that's the SIXTH TIME since I got back). Why were they out? Because we decided to get a new dog, apparently. He's a golden retriever and his name is Max. He seems to be getting along fine with fellow puppy Bobo (a miniature shnauser) and queen of the house Gucci (a mongrel, cross between labrador and retriever apparently). It'll never be quiet in this house again.
• And lastly... I made more phone wallpaper, this time of super-cute Katie Holmes. I've always found her excessively beautiful, so I'm somewhat surprised that I hadn't made any phone wallpaper of her before. Normally, when I make wallpaper I start with 5-6 images at a minimum, edit them to fit the phone and remove some colours (saves on space; the phone can only display 4096 colours anyway, why waste the space displaying a 16.7 million colour picture when it looks the same?), and then I test them to see how they actually look on the phone itself. When I'm all done I usually end up with three images at the most that I like and keep. This time I started with five Katie Holmes images and I finished with five. They all came out great! Download them now!
Posted at 11:50 PM
