Lights, Camera, Action?

What do you get when you add a carnival/festival centered around Christmas Lights, a booth selling baklava, an anthropology museum in the dark, six days left on a Final Cut Pro trial, and Megan's scattered brain?

This:



Apologies on the lack of museum footage. I ran into friends, and I was too embarrassed to keep filming.

On a brighter note, my friend Phoenix and I ate A LOT of baklava and rode spinning teacups. We also seriously considered trying to bribe our way onto the tiny car ride. And we had hot chocolate with brandy. Props go to Jonny for filming us on the swings. =D

A Benetian Thanksgiving

A lot of the halls and colleges in Oxford decided to serve a Thanksgiving dinner for their formals yesterday night. My housemate invited me to his hall's Thanksgiving Formal, and you know that Asian stereotype where you always take pictures of your meals (especially when going out)? Well, I took that stereotype a step further and decided to film my meal, because I am a dork and need raw footage to make my last 11 days of my Final Cut Pro trial worthwhile. Never-mind the fact that the American students gave lovely speeches to explain the origins of the holiday and what it has come to mean in the US, clearly I thought the food was the more important subject to film. Besides, what better way to show off this English "family's" take on a American holiday?



Happy Thanksgiving, Americaland!

Row, Row, Row Your Boat

It's that time of year again. Wintery fairy lights are hung on and between shops, a giant Christmas tree is put up in the center of town, the temperature drops overnight, and at one point you find yourself in the library going, "My God, it's seventh week..." For rowers, this realization finishes with "...and I'm going to be on the river for 90% of the week..."

Yup, it's the week of Christ Church Regatta, a rowing competition for novices. Usually, in this regatta the boats race side by side, and the winner is whoever crosses the finish line first. This year though, because of all the lovely English weather we've been experiencing, the first few days of the regatta are a "heads" race, which is basically a time trial. Boats with certain times are then bumped up to the semi-finals and eventually finals, which are side-by-side races. I thought I'd vlog the experience this year for no good reason at all:

Day One




Day Two

Racing was cancelled for the day due to fast streams and a very high river. It was also violently windy. Seriously. The wind almost knocked me into a car while I was cycling home. Wind is evil...


Day Three

Racing was cancelled today as well. River conditions have been marked "red flag," the dangerous flag. Apparently, my housemate and I also received a flood warning for our house. Fun times in England, no?


Day Four

The final day of racing was cancelled too. The river had flooded and was considered waaaaay too dangerous to boat on. It was a bit of a let down, but the post-regatta celebrations went ahead anyway. On the plus side, everyone's now psyched and eager for next term's outings and racing.

Pre- and Post- Election Day

Well hello.

I've decided to give this thing called vlogging a go, since I like editing in Final Cut Pro. Did I intend to rhyme there? The answer is no.


Some background to these "vlogs:"

The 2012 American Presidential Election was this past Tuesday (November 6th), and after downloading a trial version of Final Cut Pro the day before, I decided to make a "Go Vote" video as a test run. A "few" glasses of amaretto and coke along with the usual fit of late-night funnies may have also been involved in the decision-making and film-making/editing. The final project, cleverly titled "Vote, please?," ended up looking like this:



Approximately three or four days after Election Night, I stumbled upon a dessert with American flag packaging in our local Tesco, a grocery store chain in England. Anyway, the dessert looked pretty...catastrophic, so I opted for two slices of cookie dough cheesecake, which was on sale and also wrapped in American flag packaging. My curiosity satisfied and my stomach growling, I headed home. A few moments later, my housemate came in with his own Tesco bags, exclaiming "I've got things for the house!...limes, a bottle of tonic, a bottle of lemonade, a bottle of lime cordial, and this, which I found intriguing." Lo and behold, he unpacked that disastrous dessert. And that's when I decided to film us trying out this monstrosity and led to this second "vlog:"



I hope you enjoy them, and until next time, cheers!