The new (BBC) me

First day!

It went along swimmingly for those of you who are on the edge of your seats. My commute was WAY to short for the not-one-but-two papers I bought to read during the time.

I had checked and rechecked the route from my tube stop to TV station at the BBC. It didn't seem clear. I walk north and THEN cross? Low and behold you could see the MASSive buildings from the escalator that brought me safely to ground floor. I needn't worry.

How the hell do you order a coffee in London? I tried twice today and both times was received by curious looks. I thought it must be my American peeking through so I tried the order again with a faint british accent, which really just ends up being a long "Pleeeeeeeese" at the end. But still - all blank face. Then I'm inevitably forced into what I'm obviously trying to hide - "OH," says the girl "you mean an Americana." Yes, yes, fine fine. (bitch).

Today was actually not my first day. It's sort of a pre-first day. It's a computer training day that was delightfully easy. It's all just false promises though. I'm going to grow confident and casual before the big blow on Wednesday. When we went around an introduced ourselves (there were five others. I am, however, the only sucker not being paid) I said I would be working on the Specials Team. A woman dressed in head-to-toe navy asked, "what's the specials team." Good question, I thought. I suddenly found the hem of my shirt very interesting and the question was diverted to the teacher (BER-nahd) who literally gasped. "Oh," he said, "they're they piece-de-resistance (at which point I began unraveling my fallen hem)." He went on to tell Navy that 'we' put all the 'crazy' stuff on the site - interactive maps and graphics - "if you want something exciting done to our story and don't know how to do it, you send it to them."

The room spun around and starred at me, this suddenly brilliant computer wiz, and I smiled politely and gulped loudly.

BUT. That excitement will come and smack me in the face later. For now, it's still intro. And intro is, gloriously, easy. I was so PLEASED and shocked to find that I had been well-equipped to, say, write a news article (helloooo inverted pyramid), if that were my assignment. Or write a headline or a photo caption (add something, don't repeat). Then, the entire afternoon was spent on photoshop. We were given the keys to the online database of photos (fabulously endless celebrity sightings...and other things I'm sure). We were told to find certain photos and crop and set accordingly. Blah blah blah.

Then we were set free! Allowed to look up whatever we wanted. Sure, I tried to play it straight at first, Gordon Brown here, Becks and Posh there, maybe a little Eddie Izzard for my sauce, but when we were asked to put together a three-block photo set of any theme I went by my old standby - PUPPIES! Oh the database was FULL of them. you'd be surprised. My final photo looked, ohhhh, something like this:



And with this photo I was welcomed into the class anew. Navy pulled out here camera and showed me a pocket-sized puppy of 4 months in a hamper, on a bed, rolled in a towel. Once-stern progammer in the back flipped through a pug-tastic slideshow on his iphone, suddenly all smiles.

Ah, puppies. I unites us all, americanos and brits alike.

xoxoL