Adapting to British Word and Phrases

Here are my lessons learned with the lovely British language, or as one of my professor's says, "the right way to speak, not like the American's who steal our language and then change it around however they please"

"Do you have a fag?"- Correct translation: Do you have a cigarette?

"Are you off to Uni?"- Uni or university is what they refer to college

She began her protest ON Monday, not, She began her protest Monday

They spell program-programme, center/centered-centre/centred, favorite-favourite. There are many more where the z is changed to an s but these are the ones that frustrate me the most.

Speaking of, you pronounce the letter Z (zee) as (zed).

Quid is slang for pound, like how we would say buck.

I love when British people say "bollucks" (no good). Technically is means testicles. My other favorites include: rubbish and dodgy

I won't be explicit, but "fanny" is not your behind, it is the exact opposite.

Oh, the hardest one to adapt to is how they refer to dates. It is 24 October, not October 24th; and of course time is said in military time. I am writing this at 19:26.

I plan to continually update this list

Also,
I have to share this image. I find this extremely hilarious but in accordance with the other American students in my class, we are trying to combat these stereotypes.

Image from: Bored Stop

New Blog

So, after debating whether I should shut down this blog I have decided to keep it running.
I will use this place to keep you up to date on my personal progress in London. Therefore, this blog serves as a place for friends and family to get information about me rather than what I am writing.

If you would like to see my journalistic articles, see my professional blog:
http://inluce.wordpress.com/

Sunshine

It was an absolutely perfect day on Sunday...and what I really mean is absolutely perfect for London. The sun was shining, there wasn't a dreary cloud in the sky and there was a soft breeze. Naturally, I needed to be outside, like everyone else in the city. So with a friend I walked Kensignton Gardens and Hyde Park, ate ice cream while lounging in the grass, and visited the Peter Pan statue as I carelessly floated through the day.
Funny enough, the weather was typical of any other day in Santa Barbara, yet while my time there seems to prove that I didn't take advantage of the gift, I was in full appreciation in my new city where every other day is predicted to be a wet one. Yet today in this fantastic weather something really odd happened. I was extremely giddy, hyper and you could almost say...delirious. I had ridiculous amounts of energy and my mouth hurt by the end of the day from smiling. I had about as little sleep as any other night this week but, according to my theory, it was the miraculous sun that changed me mentally and physically.
This all made me think of Seasonal Affective Disorder, and while I am not making any serious self diagnostics, I do believe I was affected by the the season. I am a firm believer in energy influence and I do believe that beautiful sunshine after a spell of gloom can have true healing powers in body, mind and soul. Whether it be a sunny day, a warm smile, loving words of encouragement, endearing thoughts from a friend or a moving piece of writing, positive energy can work wonders in our lives if we let it and more often, without our consent or knowledge.
Above I have posted some beautiful pictures from my day for your enjoyment which I now personally keep as my pockets of sunshine.

Today and Tomorrow

I almost thought I was in dream. I woke up early to get ready for class by 9 and my day never stopped. From one class to another, from a lunch break consumed on my email to running back to campus, from campus errands to errands around town, I was running running, running. After a light dinner I set in to finally "do work" and the next thing I knew it was 11:30pm and I had not even finished everything on my to-do list. Now I knew I just needed to take the gulp because tomorrow was simply going to be: rinse and repeat. So I say I ALMOST thought I was in a dream, only because it was all a blur. Then I realized this is no dream, this is a form of deja vu because guess what....I am back in school. I am back in business and reaching high when life politely said....welcome to your masters program.

So far this has entailed a constant push to improve in everything I do, a relentless need to stay on top of everything and everyone I meet, and the need to make plans for a future in which I will one day be skilled enough to apply for.
That is the most interesting part. I have peers who are already applying for work when they get out in a year and others taking on part time work or internships, if they aren't doing it already, in order to prepare themselves for our graduation in August. It is daunting to think that you must be confident now that in a year you will be accomplished and prepared. As for me, I am getting by pretty well, but with this future in mind, I know that I am only growing because of an amazing friend I have met.

This friend talks me through my bad days. Like the one where I all of my news leads crashed into dead ends just before my deadline. The day where all the polite people were on vacation and all the rude ones were available for interviews. The day where I was yelled at by random strangers and was phoned back only minutes after I handed in a less than satisfactory piece of copy. Oh yeah, that day. Well, that was the day we met. She told me that it will get better, she told me that one day I will be a fine journalist and writer who will look back and laugh at this memory. She told me that I am strong, courageous and tough. I am quick witted, talented, smart and while I may not be successful my life is purposeful.

It was that day I realized the friend I met was my future self. For some reason this horrible day had turned for the better because instinctively I knew that each of these things would one day be true about me. Yet I also knew that they could never be true if I didn't believe that it was me to who was pulling myself through it. The connection was the important part. It was as if my grown self was pulling me into life so that it could exist and yet without believing this connection, it could never come to be. As odd as it sounds, there is no rhyme or reason to this revelation, it is what it is and for some reason I believe it to be true.

As if to confirm it all, on this very frustrating and painfully depressing day I was told that I had been accepted into the specialism I had applied for. World Faiths.

I will get to study key beliefs of the major world religions and explore how their values describe a world view. I get to explore the cultural, religious and racial differences that often present misunderstandings and volatile mixtures of politics, culture and religion.
I am told that my tutors are Pratap Rughani (an award winning writer and documentary film producer/director with BBC who has an MA in religious philosophy and one in journalism as well) and Ruth Gledhill (the Religion Correspondent at the Times). I am also told we will be given the opportunity to have a week's work experience at the Times and write and blog for them as well.

Needless to say, I was ecstatic with this news. So as I take on this new school year, I prepare myself for long days and restless nights but more importantly, I am making way for a path shaped by the future to come.

Julian Assange

"A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives." -James Madison




This was Julian Assange's opening remark at the event "Too much information? Security and censorship in the age of Wikileaks" hosted last night by City University and Index on Censorship.

The Oliver Thompson Lecture Hall was packed. Writers and reporters came from all over to hear Julian Assange debate David Aaronovitch a correspondent from The Times in London. Alongside writers in the area, I met journalists that had traveled form Japan to cover this debate, and later found out that the Associate Press had even covered the event.

The stage was set. On one hand you have Julain Assange, the founder of Wikileaks responsible for the leak of 90,000 Afgan war documents(its most recent and well known disclosure) that has spurred opposition from writers like Aaronitch who respect the public's right to knowledge but believes that those like Assange need to become accountable for information that can put society at risk.

I found the entire debate extrememly interesting on many levels. Not only was the subject matter engaging but the passionate anger and excitement of the audience, speakers and journalists kept the night an interesting one.

Personally, I understand Assange's philosophy, if only in theory. For journalists, factual information should be disclosed in order to inform an educated public. Yet this issue is way more complicated than that. This is a universal journalistic dilemma. Privacy, security and truth all walk a very fine line together and everyday we have to think about the consequences of what we write. Yet here is where things got fuzzy last night....

While Assange has been accused of potentially having "blood on his hands," he explained that the Pentagon has not found anyone who has been directly harmed by this information, and surely they do have the motive and means to hold him accountable. Yet my question is, what about obtuse consequences of the future? Now any country in the world can access this information and have intelligence on our military, where as we would not have the same information about them. Sure, we may never see a direct connection but there is an unfair advantage and danger with this information being released.

He claimed that his accountability was to the public that supported him financially. He exists because of donations by "us." Yet later in the evening we found out that for the purpose of remaining objective they do not actually know who their donors are, it is anonymous. What I wonder is, how do you remain accountable to a public that is not public? Couldn't it be possible for one large donor to simply give money in different avenues? If this were true, would you be accountable to one organization that would love to see secrets like these spill out?

There has also been recent information about a member of staff leaving because of not having enough time to work through the documents. Assange said this was untrue but that employee had been suspended before this, yet refused to tell why. When asked if it was because that member of staff had told the media about the screening process he was able to avoid the question without answering. He would also not directly answer questions about the screening process of the 90,000 documents. He described a complicated computer system but would not confirm if an actual human had gone through and considered the documents. Unfortunately, even if an actual human did go through each document (rather than the complicated computer system he spoke about) his refusal to answer the questions only caused frustration and anger in the audience. One man even yelled out, "Just answer the question!"

He was elusive and extremely hard to pin down on any burning issue. He did not speak highly of the media industry and while very openly speaking of the need to reveal secrets and information, he would not reveal any of his own.

Despite my opinion, his philosophy is shared by many and as I have discovered, this is just the beginning of a complicated future where disclosure of raw materials must battle a media industry that filters and acts as gatekeepers. The topic is new and I don't think many of us know how to deal with it yet. With this new power of global dissemination comes a great deal of responsibility and at this moment, there is no international law that forces accountability. Therefore, by being the first of its kind it is opening doors and in some cases closing others.

Like I said, the entire experience and atmosphere was wildly fascinating!

Downey v. Huffington

Last week I attended the 2010 James Cameron Lecture which was hosted by my university and people from all over came to hear the award speakers and the guest lecture (all journalism students at City University got in free). Leonard Downie Jr., vice president at large of The Washington Post, gave the main lecture on the subject of "The New News."

While the speech focused on relatively familiar statistics regarding American news, it's angle for the future seemed to be pitched more towards news organization management with little information about what everyday journalists like myself could work on for working in the new world of online journalism. Yet the interesting part in his speech was when he addressed the Huffington Post and similar websites as "news parasites." The Huffington Post is a well respected award winning blog and website that is leading the future for news and blogging. While I am a fan of the Huffington Post, it was interesting to hear a different point of view.

You can imagine my excitement when my favorite news guru/speaker/commentator/ columnist and co-founder of the news, blogging and aggregation website, Huffington Post, Ariana Huffington responded to the statement the very next day.

"Once again, some in the old media have decided that the best way to save, if not journalism, at least themselves, is by pointing fingers and calling names. It's a tactic familiar to schoolyard inhabitants everywhere: when all else fails, reach for the nearest insult and throw it around indiscriminately...
The bottom line is that we need to stop pretending that we can somehow hop into a journalistic "Way Back Machine" and return to a past that no longer exists and can't be resurrected."

Ahh, she is lovely, check out her article here

Point being, somehow I felt connected to the whole situation since I was sitting in the audience when Downey organically spoke those words and, in turn, rubbed me the wrong way as I defended HuffPo. It was exciting to see the event in the news, Arianna's response and for the topic to become a matter of news debate. In all, as you can see as a journalism nerd I am loving the opportunities and experiences that I have been a part of so far!

Beautiful Accidents

1. So, I accidentally went to a Catholic mass that was solely in Italian. Apparently I had mixed up the English and Italian mass times, so once I had already made my half hour journey in the rain, of course I decided to stay.
So that was the accident, but the wonderful thing was that despite my mistake I was given a gift. I got to spend some quality time with the One upstairs, I got to listen to a beautiful language and I met some amazing people afterward that introduced me to the young adult community.
2. Due to technical difficulties I am using a pay as you go phone for two weeks until I get to use my iphone again. For those of you who don't know me, I am prone to get lost, even with the help of the navigation on my iphone, so you can guess how lost I initially felt without it. Despite it all, I have found my lack of internet via my phone and for a few days my lack of internet all together, very liberating. I have found that when under the right circumstances wonderful qualities emerge that you never knew you had in you. I know now that I actually can have a great sense of navigation. I now use my little A-Z map on long travels very easily, I can tell you what is N/S/E/W without even thinking and after a bit of wandering and wrong turns I have eventually navigated my way around Islington quite effortlessly. In fact, by accident of several tourists, I have been thought a local several times and people actually stop and ask me directions, and I can give it! I like to think it is the exuding sense of confidence I have as I walk around MY city!

So, my lesson of the day, life may hand you lemons but it also hands you lemonade!

Lets Get Practical

So there I was sitting in class listening to a lecture on running stories when the head of my department came running into the classroom and, acting like a random-passerby, said that she just saw 2 of the London eye's capsules explode and she thought she would tell a local news center. Of course my professor just smiled and said, "I think you all have a story to report, check the board for your groups and I need the first copy of that story in my email in a half hour."

It was then I realized I was not at a UC school anymore. I was no longer in a school for research and overarching theoretical concepts, I was here to learn on my feet, and I literally did just that. What happened next was mayhem, all of the competitive and over eager writers like myself jumped up and ran to the board to see what groups we were in and each found our own unique ways to find our co-workers who we had never met before. From there, 2 of my mates stayed in the news room at a computer to do the writing and editing while I went with another classmate to do the interviewing and reporting.

You have to love the staff. Everyone in the department was in on the exercise. One room was dedicated to quarterly press conferences staged by some of my professors and others roamed the department acting as police officers, eye-witnesses and workers. We had three stories due over the course of a few hours and I had a blast running around the halls of my department interviewing people and competing side by side with my peers to get the best story out by deadline. Of course we had to juggle terrorist allegations, rumors and contradicting stories and, like little detectives, had to dig until we were given the final facts only minutes before the last deadline.

Needless to say, there was no attack at the London Eye, Prince Harry wasn't inside like we thought and there was no real bomb threat. Lightening had caught fire some excess oil and Prince Harry had decided to cancel his reservations for the day although one worker who had fire burns did end up dying (all fictional of course).

To say I enjoyed myself would be an understatement. The whole exercise was so stressful but so much fun and I could not help but smile and wait for more.

Fourth day at school and I knew I was in the right place!

The Catholic Girl from California

Yes that is my new identification.
"The California girl" was my first name that I got here. You see, over here it is not easy to hide that I am from the United States, the moment I speak/ask a question/introduce myself etc. the very next thing they always say is, "Where are you from in the United States?" Then of course once they hear I am from California I become the most interesting person, its quite funny actually.

Second, I managed to mark myself as the Catholic girl on the 3rd day of class. One of first assignments was to write our autobiography as a feature in 250 words. Our professor then went around and read a few sentences of each out loud and scrutinized them. This was the beginning of mine:

"Scandal appalls some people and yet can inspire others. For Megan Lucero, the media's aggressive appetite to expose the sex scandal in the Church became a defining factor in the direction her life would take. Milk-fed the Catholic Church from infancy, Lucero grew up under the strict direction of the Church's practice with little knowledge of what lay beyond. It was the uprooting of that stronghold that drove her to pursue investigation of the truth and ultimately a career in journalism."

After reading this to the class my professor gave me my feedback and then began asking me about my interest in religion and the Church. I thought that would be it, but then subtly throughout the next 2 hours of class he dropped about 5 Catholic jokes in my direction. One of my colleagues leaned over and said "you know that you will be the butt of every Catholic joke for the rest of the year right?" I replied, "I am not living this down huh?" "Nope" he said.

Journalism at City

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the Program at my school:

"The Department of Journalism at City University London is one of the world's leading journalism schools.

It is considered one of the best universities in the United Kingdom in that field of study as well as the nation's largest centre for journalism education. It is regarded as the "Oxbridge of journalism".

British newspaper The Independent praised its "legendary status within the media", primarily due to its practical approach to journalism and its unparalleled access to media facilities.

The Department is situated within City University London's Grade II listed College Building, which dates from 1894. The Department is led by Professor George Brock, formerly International Editor of The Times."

Yep. No big deal at all.
I am honored to be accepted to this prestigious school and to be among some of the leading writers in the world.
I heard a guest lecture from Leonard Downie, Jr. who is the current vice president of the Washington Post. I am in awe of every professor who has come to speak so far in my classes, their CV's are incredible. George Brock, my department head is absolutely accomplished and amazing. If you are interested in following a great blog, follow this:

I think the most interesting aspect of my program is actually my peers. I am in the international journalism track, therefore all of my peers are from around the world. I have made close friends from Italy, Spain, Ireland, the United States, Holland, France and Sweden. Every single one is a superstar from their own town and country and many of them are even flying back and forth when they can to continue working at papers and stations back home. I am one of the youngest students in my program so I have been privileged to see so many walks of life and of course the stories that come along with it. They all challenge and inspire me everyday!

Needless to say I am in a great place, with great people and getting a great education. I cannot wait to embark on a year of intense studies, I know I will be another person when I come out the other end!

Video of my Room

Here is the promised videos of my room and kitchen.

The Pope in London

With great timing, the Pope had a weekend visit in the UK on the very same weekend that I was exploring the city before my studies were to begin on Monday.

After a failed attempt to get tickets to his Vigil in Hyde Park I went with a friend to see if we would be able to get a glimpse of his procession. Sure enough (with my fantastic luck lately) I chose the right lane to wait by and the right people to stand by. We had been told that the Pope may stop in his popemobile on his way up to the event to bless a baby or two. We ended up standing right next to the cutest baby and the cutest young family. Sure enough as the popemobile drove by I was not only 20 feet away from him but he chose to stop right in front of us and kiss the baby next to us.
Quite a great experience. 2 days into London and I already saw the Pope!

Day of Atonement

Recipe for Making it Across the Pond

1. Receive a random act of kindness from a visa officer. This includes contacting the visa representative at my school, begging for her help and her making contact with the LA embassy. Then the contact at the LA embassy getting a hold of me and after some crafty persuasion on my part, allowing me to come and pick up my visa at the embassy, even though the office was closed, the printer broke down and normal protocol restricts students to come to the embassy directly!

2. Having an amazing family. After hearing I had a chance to get on my originally scheduled flight my family helped me finish last minute packing (3 very tightly filled suitcases) and errands and leave the house within a few hours. Then, after our car broke down on the freeway (on our way to pick up my visa) my uncle lent us his car and again we were on our way to LA!

3. Short but Meaningful Goodbyes. With little less than a moment to breathe, I hadn't really thought about the physical act of leaving my beloved ones for a year. Whether a blessing or a curse, all the trouble allowed for the final goodbyes at the airport to be short but sweet. They were brief but nevertheless will always remain a beautiful memory for me.

4. Networking. Yes, networking is great in the professional world, but guess what, it is great in the personal world too. Thanks to a close friend of mine, I came in contact with some family he had in London and in turn had a place to stay for a few days before my flat was ready. In addition, they knew a lovely man named Irvin who provided my car transportation for a decent price.

5. Meet incredibly decent people. This family I spoke of has now become my home base here in London. They not only gave me a place to sleep and yummy food to eat but they gave me their hearts, just as I gave them mine. We are now friends and have already made plans to cook together and of course have an English cup of tea. Just from my 3 days with them I learned a great deal of British culture and in addition, I became Jewish for 3 days haha!

6. Yom Kippur. I arrived just before the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur which is also known at the Day of Atonement. The timing of this coincidence could not have been more perfect. As they reflected and repented, I too was preparing to start anew. I was reminded in this beautiful celebration that I can put the craziness of getting here behind me and look to a new year. So I found the final and yet the most important ingredient for my new life to be atonement. Goodbye to the yesterdays of anxiety and hello to the tomorrows of a new beginning!