Future?

Everytime someone asks me what I want to do when I've graduated I respond with a reflective silence or a mere shrug which suggests my indecisiveness. At first, I was unsure if working for a newspaper was what I wanted. I thought I'd much rather enjoy feature writing and while this is still a future goal, newspaper journalism is definetly growing on me. The idea of being out in the field excites me and having a busy lifestyle will keep me motivated.

I was reading a blog by Martin Moore about the Orwell Prize. It is a pre-eminent British prize for political writing. The winner is the shortlisted entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art". That's what got me thinking about the future. There are so many different things you can write about within a newspaper. There's business, entertainment, politics, crime etc. If writing about crime means being on the scene of a homicide or serious car accident, I am admitedly scared. I don't stomach those things very well but I guess I would get used to it. Afterall, you need to be thick skinned to be a journalist.

I would like to work in England one day. I've wanted to go there ever since...forever. Everyone goes there for overseas experience and I can certainly see the appeal. I think I would be good at writing opinionated articles. I'm quite passionate about some things. When something gets me going, I won't rest until my point gets across.

People keep telling me that I should know what I want to do, that I should have a plan. In one of my classes, I was told that apparently if you write down what you want to do, you will most likely achieve it. Well let me start a list then..

-First things first, I want to get my writing published. I want to relish in the glory of seeing my own name in print. I mean, I've seen it before when we've done magazines for classes but that's not quite what I had in mind..

-Secondly, I want to go to England (as I've already said). I would like to work for the Telegraph. I wouldn't want to be away from my beloved New Zealand for too long though, I know I will end up here whatever I do.

-Thirdly, I want to write a book. I don't quite know what it'd be about yet. But I don't think I'd do an biography. Who am I to say my life is interesting? That my life is worth paying $34.95 to read about? I'm not saying biographys make a person sound self-absorbed, I'd just be afraid that's how it'd come across.

I''ll keep you posted...

Beijing Olympic disaster (among other things!!)

I'm a bad blogger. Look at the amount of time between this entry and my last. I suppose I was never dedicated to begin with but I want to change that. While I never held blogging in the highest regard, numerous lectures from those more experienced than I, have taught me that it is important. What's also important is spelling. Okay, so I'm an average speller but punctuation? Nope. Not me. If you find comma's in all the wrong places in this blog it's because I never understood the concept of comma's very well. If that sounds stupid then yes, I am admitedly stupid.

I used to think this blog was about our class since it was for our class. Then I realised that we're actually free to let our minds wonder. That's a bit broad for me because without restriction, I could get lost in a sea of my own words. But are they meaningless? If they mean something to me then surely they can't be. But is a blog for me or for my audience? Intriguing questions.

I've always liked debate and blogs always seemed like a place where opinions could be voiced, opinions that might not always be well received. I like stirring people's emotions, enraging them when they discover I was right all along. Does that sound conceded? I guess it does. I hate it when I'm wrong though, I hate it when smugness seems to enlarge someone's face and I just want to slap them, even if it's someone I love dearly. I have a tendancy to be brutally honest but at the same time I keep a lot of my feelings buried. But moving on now...

The Beijing Olympics have been a complete diaster in this bloggers somewhat inexperienced opinion. This disaster did not come as much of a surprise with the olympic torch relay debacle sparking fears that the Beijing Olympics would be about politics, not sport. China was extremely adament on protecting the torch, which only invited more chaos than necessary. The Olympics also seemed to mean that the issue of China's treatment of Tibet should be repetively mentioned. Other concerns leading up to the Olympic games included the air pollution causing one athlete, Haile Gebrselassie, to pull out of competing at the August games. The lead up to the Olympics and the constant presence of China in the Media, honestly made the 2008 Olympic World Games pale in comparison.

When the Olympic games started, things continued to spiral out of China's control. Beijing thought they could get away with faking parts of the opening ceremony. However, it wasn't long before the whole world knew about the stunt, that the fantastic fire work display was faked on television. This is because the people who were filming it feared they wouldn't capture it all live, so while the fireworks really were there, people watching it at home and in the Bird's Nest stadium, didn't see the real thing but only computer graphics inserted into the coverage electronically at exactly the right moment.

It's also been discovered that Lin Miaoke(left in the picture), the 9-year old who apparently sung "Hymn to the Motherland", was actually lip syncing. The real singer, 7-year old Yang Peiyi (right in the picture) was "considered unsuited to the lead role because of her buck teeth". That's when I got angry. So allow me to be an angry blogger for a few moments. They said it was for the good of the country. Pathetic. What's more pathetic is that the actual singer is being called ugly in newspapers all over the world while the one that lip synced is considered ''a rising star''. These Olympics have been crowded by scandal after scandal. Isn't it ironic how China went to all this trouble to make themselves look good, when in actual fact, they made themselves look bad?