A Saturday in Pictures

When I get to have a weekend off, which is rare, I try to catch up with my friends. Two weeks ago this happened on a Saturday AND Sunday, which is even rarer.

I started off with meeting Anna (top left), which was more of a meeting about her current project, but also a short catchup. We hadn't seen each other since her last performance in the Cochrane Theatre at the beginning of March, so we were catching up on recent events and decided when to do the editing.

Then I met Jess (top middle), a friend and also director who I've produced a film for in 2007/08. We met on Newington Green (bottom left) - yes it was a beautiful day which makes the Green even more beautiful - in a Café. Again partly to discuss her new project, a music video, which she asked me to produce, but also to catch up on life in general. This is when I found out that I am not the only one being fed up with life in London, or the current job situation. Jess felt the same way, but at least she's still in work. She's about to buy a flat, which means she needs a secure contract as well. I was surprised that she is also willing, like me, to take on really any job that would come along. It feels many people have come to the point that trying to make it in the film industry is not on the main agenda anymore. Although nobody wants to give up there is only so much determination you can keep up. I don't know maybe I'm wrong.

A few bus stops down the road I met my friend Tim (bottom right) - in Angel. We sat outside on the balcony of the Tinder Box. Very nice, but maybe a bit chilly in the shade. Tim had just finished his job at the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival and bought a new iPhone. So I first got the lowdown of the iPhone - he literally showed me all applications he had downloaded - and then the LLGFF lowdown. Very entertaining and good!

For Lunch - yes we are only talking 2pm here - I went to Camden Town to meet Vlad. So he gave me his view and lowdown on the iPhone, then how to shoot with cameras. I had my new stills camera on me so after we had eaten we took some pictures outside. Then we went to a small Portuguese place to have an espresso and typical cake from Portugal.

Around 7.30pm I stumbled home, exhausted from all the meetings and talking all day. Sunday I was expecting a friend from Bristol who I also hadn't seen in months. I knew I would have to talk much more that weekend.

My niece and nephew in March 2009

I can't believe I am blogging about something that just happened a week ago. Could somebody acknowledge that please! :)

So in between my 8 days (spread over two weeks) of interviewing I went to Bad Oeynhausen to see my sister and her family for the weekend. It was time to visit because my niece wouldn't recognise her aunt on a photograph shown to her by my sister just before my visit. I arrived really late on the Friday night cause I was interviewing till 7pm, and it took over 3 hours to get to my sisters place. So the kids were of course long gone to bed by the time I arrived. My sister, my brother in law and I sat down for a while and went to sleep pretty late. My sister also casually mentioned that Tim, my nephew, had turned into an early riser, but she had told him not to wake me up before 8am. Well that didn't happen, and prompt at 7.30am he woke me up both days, Saturday and Sunday.

Then it was kids full on for 3 days. The only time without them was when my sister and I went to our brother's house about an hour away. I didn't expect that to happen, so it was a pleasant surprise when we managed to go there. It's very rare that the 3 siblings get together just by themselves, in fact, it must have been the first time ever. Our parents were in Egypt far far away :)

On Saturday we went to Tim's first outdoor football match. Anna was playing with my sister and myself while Tim managed to shoot an own goal to make the final score of 3:3. The devastation was huge and the own goal was not to be mentioned again for the rest of the day. Luckily I had bought him a box of Lego Star Wars stuff, so he couldn't wait to get home and play with that.




Perfectly timed my niece also developed the chicken pocks that weekend. So anything in the area of 20m could have been terminated by her. Luckily the rest of us all had that as children. I told my sister, if I would have gotten ill that weekend my employer would have killed me. But also the downside was that we couldn't take her anywhere public anymore. In the short clip I am posting below she says: Mummy, I have never looked like this before! - Oh my god, she is so cute and adorable.

It was great seeing the kids although they were hard work. As I said Tim woke me up really early both days, and their mouths don't stop until they go to bed at 8pm. So when I got back to Hamburg on Monday evening I actually felt like having been hit with a hammer against my head. And I couldn't believe that I had to get up really early again to get ready for talking about laundry detergents again!

Two weeks of laundry detergents

After two months being out of work I finally went to Germany to start working on this market research project that was suppose to be starting in January. A small market research company based in London were looking for a German speaking Filmmaker - me! :)

The research involved going to Hamburg and interview 16 people about laundry detergents. It was qualitative research - I had to spent 4 hours with each person in the interview! So needless to say that I felt shattered after each day talking, filming and generally looking interested in laundry detergents. On the first day I thought I must die. The thought of doing this for 2 weeks didn't really appeal to me. So the first few days I thought of the good money I was making from this. But then it was actually ok. All the women and the one man I had to interview were really interesting. It sort of made me think about what I will buy as my detergent of choice in future.

All of them seemed to have done market research before, and obviously loved to talk. Maybe just a couple really seemed to have enough after 4 hours, the rest really didn't mind. I also had to ask about their lives and what makes them tick. Probably the oddest things was a lady passionately telling me about her husband's various jobs, like working in a sex shop on the Kitz, now being a shoe maker for transvestites and a body guard for a dominatrix. But all of them were really cool in their own way, many of them I would have loved to have a coffee with and talk about life and other stuff.

I haven't dreamed about detergent yet - phew - but that might change after having logged and digitised the 26 tapes I shot over those two weeks. I now have to log and digitise about 5 tapes a day. Today I managed to do 1. :/ But then I was still collecting the harddrive and deck for doing the work. Any excuse counts. Wish me luck.

ps: I also heard from those women that Klementine, the face of German Ariel advertising, died recently. So this is a tribute to her too.

New Home - first pics

2 weeks ago Alex and I left the relaxed vibes of Stoke Newington and moved to a lovely one bedroom flat on Hackney Road. It's living on a main road as well, but the house is a bit away from the road, and it's definitely less noisy than in the old flat. And we even got our own street lamp in the yard!

Our friend and now landlady Eleanor came on the first day to get the dishwasher fixed. She brought these flowers, and as you can see, the light in the living room is just to die for when the sun is out. Looooove It!!!

The main thing to move when it comes to my possessions are my books. After heavy moaning of the two men who had to carry my boxes - Alex and Jonathan - my apologies again! - this was also the first thing I put in its place. My book wall. And I love every single one of them :)

The one thing that comes second is of course getting connected. So on Monday the Virgin guys came. - that sounds a bit strange... Anyhoo, it took them a while to sort everything out, so I thought I'd catch the moment.

Back to last year's impressions - Mongolia

Coming back to my travels from last year, here are the impressions of Mongolia.

I flew from Beijing into Ulan Bator, or Ulaanbaatar, unfortunately by night. I wish I would have had a day flight because the view would probably have been amazing. Instead, I landed at 1am at night, and was picked up by Noreen and an elderly man who was the father of one of the girls at the Youth Hostel. He was our taxi driver basically. So we got into the car what seemed in the middle of nowhere and drove to the city. It also seemed we are going over a field while driving into the city. Here I must probably mention that there are only a few main roads in Mongolia, the rest is dirt track or no track at all.



Ulan Bator again has only a few main streets. For me there was a Russian feel to it, mainly because of the lettering on posters etc. The characters are very similar to the Russian ones. Well for people who know Mongolian probably not, and I've noticed you have to be careful what you say on your blog or you will be corrected immediately. Anyway, I felt immediately more comfortable than I did in Beijing because I could at least read the characters. Reason being - I learned Russian in my East German upbringing.

I was shocked at the mad traffic that presented itself in the middle of the city. I am never afraid to cross a street even if it has 6 lanes. But in Ulan Bator with only 2-lane streets I was convinced I would get killed. Zebra crossings also don't mean much, and you have to be really careful.

Foot paths were dirt roads and generally I have never seen so much dust and sand. My beige travel bag turned dark grey until leaving Mongolia. It looked very poor and a lot of beggars were about as well. This was in contrast with the fashionable Mongolian women with their fake Gucci bags from China and their hair down to their bottoms, as well as the newly high-tech looking buildings and electronic bilboards, welcoming the new capitalism to this still quite un-touched and innocent country. I'll pray to the higher power (if there is one) that this will not be destroyed completely.

A higher power or sheer Luck?

People always say that there is a higher power, and you get a surprise when you don't really expect it... I don't believe in God and am not sure whether there is a higher power. I just know that everyone has to make their own life as happy as possible - whatever that means in everyone's own perception. Lately, I have been out of work not being able to spend any money really at all. I have also not been very high spirited because all that applying, and contacting people, and more applying, and getting your hopes up, and writing more applications, and getting rejections etc - that can take a lot out of you. Last Thursday I decided not to be too worried about not having a permanent job in sight. After all I am starting some freelance work soon.

So I have been really good with not spending any money, only on food, rent and bills. My boyfriend Alex bought me a lovely skirt for Valentines Day, which was so nice of him - to get something for me after not having bought anything for myself in weeks. Here I should mention though that I also bought some stuff in the same shop the same day on my debit card - bad bad Jana. I justified it to myself with buying clothes for interviews. Not sure whether that counts as an excuse. But when we came out of the shop I said to Alex that all I needed now was a new haircut. I could not possibly go to an interview looking like this! But Alex rightly said to me: 'Do you have £100 to spend on a hair cut right now?' I know... it's not quite that expensive, but for a good haircut, you are in with £60 at least (and that's without buying products). So obviously, I did not have the money to go to the hairdresser.

This morning I had a meeting at the London School of Fashion. As soon as I could get out of that meeting I went to Argos to buy moving boxes (moving this Friday and Saturday yay!), and was just about to heave those to the bus stop to wait for the 38, which was approaching, when a girl ask me something making me miss my bus. But it turned out she was from the Tony & Guy Academy opposite the street asking me whether I'd like a free haircut from one of the teachers at the academy. Now, I have been to the academy before, and obviously the teachers there are really good. Needless to say I did not say 'No'.

In we went, me with my huge moving boxes that caused quite a few raised eyebrows. It turned out that I would get a cut from an International Artistic Director from Tony & Guy - Sonja from Australia. They were not looking for any crazy cuts this time, so it was really what I wanted. I ended up having to wear killer high heels - I swear they were over 10cm high and made me like 2m tall - and go on a stage with two other models and sit in front of a bunch of Italians. There was a translator who took turns translating all three director's step-by-step instructions on how the cut was being done. In the end I had to stand in front of them while they were taking photographs. Then I was free to go, and it all just took 1.5 hrs, which is not too bad considering that I once was in there for 4 hrs because a student was cutting my hair.

Fazit - now I look like Cleopatra, and am contemplating about that higher power. Hmmmm...



Did I say Cleopatra? The second one looks more like Amelie!

Beijing Impressions 3

We got to leave from Beijing's new airport. It was still so empty as only a few airlines were flying in and out of it. You could have eaten your dinner from the floor - it was that clean and sparkling!

Beijing Impressions 2

Looking back at these pictures now it makes me realise how beautiful Beijing is. At the time I didn't appreciate it fully. I was a bit irritated by the constant spitting and rudeness of the Chinese. Noreen found it funny, in fact she loved it, and although I had heard about it, I must have been so shocked on the first day there that this didn't really leave me until we left the city the second time. Now I wish I could go back and spend more time there. Certainly I'd do more shopping!


I love these ladies!




And Winner of the contest 'Who can get the most stuff onto their bike' is...






































The parking spots for the antique market.

On the antique market.

They had tons of stalls selling posters. I really had to restrain myself not getting loads of stuff. In the end I got a paint brush which I still have to use! It's one of those lovely ones with real hair and for writing those beautiful characters. Not that I will use it for that... ;)

Impressions from Beijing...

I was hoping to see the Great Wall from the plane when flying into Beijing because I knew I wouldn't have the time to go out there. I was convinced I would as they say you can see it from space. I was pretty disappointed when I didn't. Maybe I was sitting on the wrong side of the plane...

This is in the Hutongs of Beijing where also our Youth Hostel was located - Saga International Youth Hostel - the best in Beijing, with its great location right in the centre of the city.















This made me totally laugh - an Irish week in Beijing with the yawning guard in front of it.









This was at the summer palace. I think it's very cute, even if that's not its meaning.










The beginning of our cycling tour through Beijing. By far the safest way to get through the city. They totally respect cyclers, unlike in London.


Pre-Olympics, March 2008. The city was in full swing of getting last works done before the Olympics in August. Cleaning up the Hutongs was one of them. We were in Mongolia for only one week and could clearly tell the difference when we came back. Much more work had been done. It was amazing seeing a city transform so quickly.









And getting to the birds nest was still impossible. But I was very happy to have just seen it live.









This was on Easter weekend. We went to the Lama Temple and saw Chinese people celebrating with lots and lots of incense sticks. Amazing! And what a smell!















Nor and I at the Lama temple - it was more to get a picture of the beautiful crafted buildings and roofs - not sure why I didn't take a proper picture of them...



Out and about at night...