Home, finally!

I had planned my flight back yesterday evening with VLM from Rotterdam to City because, for the same price as an Easyjet ticket, things would be so much smoother, easier, more comfortable and simply faster. Plus I was lugging over a suitcase and some fragile Christmas presents...
Arrived nice and early in Rotterdam airport (this time!) and went through to the departure lounge (if that's what you can call what is effectively a waiting room with a shop :-)-all was well.
But...
Just as the previousl flight to LCY was taking off, the announcement was made: blah blah apologies blah blah cancelled blah blah fog! :-(((
To cut a long story short, managed to get onto the delayed KLM flight to Heathrow, getting home 3 hours later than expected and missing Beth's Christmas party :-(

Well, at least I am here now and very much looking forward to a break and NO FLYING for the next 2 weeks :-) Getting the festive feeling...
Still, I have not had a mince pie yet...anybody have any left over?!

In the meantime, have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and I'll be back before the New Year :-)

Crazy 3 weeks part 3: filming in Holland

After getting back from Tallinn completely knackered, I had a few hours at home in London with Matthew before falling into bed early, and off on the Monday morning red-eye back to Ams.

Monday was rather hectic, with a presentation on Thursday and Technical Meeting in Tunis next week to prepare for...and Tuesday and Wednesday written off!

Tuesday saw me hopping onto a train to Schiphol wih Paul Wood, early again (ouch), to meet a couple of film directors flying over from the UK. Ta-dum! No, not quite that exciting but basically I was going to be filming some features about being a geologist in the oil industry, for the re-opening of a geology museum in Scarborough :-)

Poster girl to the limit...so, there I was panicking about my presentation and my generally awful appearance due to sleep deprivation, sitting on an awful Dutch train (don't do it! - outside of Ams-Rotterdam section, ugh) for 2 1/2 hours all the way up to Groningen. We went through my questions (unscripted...hhhhhh) and finally arrived at the rig (yep, yeehaa, we made it to the real world). Set up, preparations, slight confusion as this rig did not look like the ones I've seen before...then, action! It was freezing cold and pretty tough going for the unscripted straight from scratch, and I felt I might have performed better with a bit more sleep, but we got loads of material and by the end I was getting the hang of it.

The drillers were sniggering a bit though the DSV just seemed to be resigned to the fact that women were taking over the world...I couldn't resist winding him up about his lego beautiful controls :-)

Here's one of "my crew": Paul, the two directors, gaffer and cameraman

Wednesday was day 2 of filming, this time in Rijswijk in the visualisation room and the core lab.

I caked on a ton of make-up (the train back had taken its time, and I was working on my presentation, so got home quite late and couldn't get an early night...) and went for it. This time, most of the work was scripted, reading off an autocue. I really enjoyed that part, especially after an hour or so of warming up, and they did a lot of re-takes of other things in the core lab as I was feeling a lot more relaxed and "natural" in front of the camera.

I learnt a lot from this experience, and really it isn't as easy as it seems! Unscripted is really tough as you need to think of an easy straightforward way of saying things that you cannot come back and elaborate on. When you start off in front of the camera, people just say "be natural"...however, that isn't quite right as you really need to be aware of, and control, your movements. Staring at the camera with a fixed smile for a little while after you have finished speaking isn't what I would call natural! But if you don't quick movement looks really odd and it is very hard for the guys to edit the footage.

Anyway, it was great fun despite the circumstances and I look forward to seeing the result!

Crazy 3 weeks part 2: Tallinn

After coming back from Bosnia I spent a bit of a mad 48h, which consisted of: manic work-salsa-pack-sleep-shower-manic work-russian lesson-more work-airport-London-repack-sleepabit-taxi-Stansted-easyjet again-Tallin!

I have come to Tallinn to take part in the IYDU Council Meeting, which has proved to be interesting so far in many ways.

Arrived around lunchtime yesterday after taking the red-eye over from London-about 1/10th of the price of flying from Amsterdam!
It was pretty nice weather here yesterday afternoon, clear skies and not too cold (just above zero) so after lunch, I headed into the Old Town with Donnie to have a bit of a look around and do a bit of shopping. I really regretted not taking the camera as some of the houses here are pretty colourful and the afternoon light was lovely.

Had a mooch around for about an hour then headed back to the hotel to check in, unpack, have a nap and a shower before kicking off the conference. The first event yesterday evening was a meeting with the (Mrs) Speaker of Parliament, who turned out to be a rather interesting character: phD in astrophysics from Moscow University about 30 years ago, very outspoken in her opinions against dictatorship/pro democracy (celebrating Chavez defeat-hear hear!) and ordering us to get drinks! The snacks were a bit sparse so some of us headed out for dinner at teh Beer House, which serves a range of Estonian beers (including honey beer-yum) a nice local fayre. After which we headed out to a club-bit of a late night.

Today, sessions started at 10am with a presentation about the e-stonia and how and why the country is so advanced in the computer age (wi-fi everywhere, all business incl cabinet meetings conducted using the internet) - interesting and very positive in a way, although the Big Brother aspects of this made me rather uncomfortable. And the vulnerability of relying entirely on the internet for business was recently showed up by Estonia's beloved neighbours: Rossiya...

Must go now, reception to celebrate Finnish independence being held at a former political prison-more tomorrow.