Another BIG MOVE!

Feels like it's a while back now (in fact over a month!) but hope you all had an awesome new year. Fantastic! I had an excellent Christmas back home in Ireland with my beautiful family. This was my first time going back home since I left in September 2012, which also means I hadn’t seen my friends in over a year. It was like a reunion, it was great seeing everyone again. Now it’s back to reality!

Did I forget to mention, I now live in Poitiers in west central France (I know you’ve never heard of it; its south of Paris). Yes I moved again. From Lagos to Abuja to Dublin to Galway, back to Dublin, then to London and now I’m in Poitiers. I really need to settle down lol I’m beginning to get tired of carrying my whole life around with me. I need a permanent postcode! I’d actually love to get a job in France so I can stay and perfect my imperfect French. It’ll be so handy to speak another language. I have a Cameroonian friend who speaks Mandarin (apart from French and English), I mean she’s the coolest person to me right now (OK maybe not, but you get my drift).

Anyway back to Poitiers. I must confess, I was quite depressed when I first arrived here two weeks ago (even though I absolutely loved my 24 square metre studio flat). There was no internet and I was close to being broke. Could life get any worse? One couldn’t even get a sim card without having a bank account. There was just so much protocol I couldn’t stand it. Everyday had all sorts of things happening that were annoying. But, I am happy to say now that I am getting used to the quiet lifestyle in this country. Thank God I understand a little French or I’d have been totally lost here. Surprisingly, a lot more people than I imagined speak English here. The food here is of better quality than in London too. The only problem I have now is I can’t find a Church to fellowship at. I guess it’s just me and God in my flat then :(

Here are a few things I’ve discovered so far about this little town:

It is tiny! You can walk around nearly the whole city.

The male and female toilets are not separated (super awkward!!!), okay maybe just at the business school.

You need a passport to change your currency and it’s only the post office that can do it. They charge you €5 to change from sterling to Euros on top of the exchange rate. You cannot even exchange your travellers cheque except you open a bank account (I’m not sure how it works in other countries to be honest).

Nearly everywhere is closed on Sundays. Some restaurants may be open.

They have two hour breaks from 12pm till 2pm, except restaurants obviously. At this time most shops and banks will be closed.

The zebra crossing means absolutely nothing here, just a waste of paint! You may die if you don’t know that and just decide to cross the road as freely as you do in London. The drivers here are mental.

The city is really clean, you’d hardly find any litter on the floor but will find lots of dog poo everywhere it’s disgusting.

Most of the buildings are ancient.

French people love meat, fish and dairy. It’ll be difficult for vegetarians here.

Till next time,

Toodles!

Epic Fail

Hey guys so I tried to dye my hair again. Oh wait I didn’t even tell u I tried to dye my hair twice before. Silly me! Ok I’ll start from the very beginning.

So I asked a few ladies with natural afro hair like myself who had dyed their hair previously and I was told that dark and lovely was the best as it had no alcohol in it. I was trying as much as possible not to put chemicals in my hair. It seemed to work for everyone else but me. I was so annoyed after all the stress I had gone through researching and all that. I later found out from this random blog on google that I would have to bleach my hair first before dyeing it as my hair wouldn’t normally retain dye; which means chemically treating my hair (errr no!!!). I did not cut my long luscious relaxed chemically damaged hair to start bombarding it with chemicals again. I worked too hard to keep my hair looking pretty, it is not about to be messed up! 

They also said that I could use henna instead of having to bleach my hair as it is a natural dye and is also healthy to use on natural curls a.k.a my fro (or maybe I read it wrong). Anyway I bought the henna at the beauty store in Lewisham for 99p (delighted) and also bought some lime from the fruit and veg store in Lewisham. The guy at the hair shop told me that if I wanted to dye my hair I should mix henna with egg (haven’t tried it but I have used egg as protein treatment before with avocado, yet to try cucumber, also cucumber apparently is good for you face, ok moving on). So I went home and prepared my hair remedy, no measurements (maybe that’s why it didn’t work). Safe to say, my hair is still black! But then I discovered that henna excellent for deep conditioning your hair. So maybe something good came out of this whole dyeing hair process. I really wanted to rock red hair :(

Check out the results of my henna application. Before and After. My fro has never felt this good.

               


Toodles!

That time of the year…

I didn’t think I could do it but I did. All thanks to God. That communications theory assignment was something else. I did two all-nighters at the Greenwich library; how I did it I don’t know. I stayed there all night from like 6pm till 6am. On the day this coursework was due I stayed there from 12pm till 11am the next day. And don’t you dare say I left it till the last minute because I did not; it was just extremely difficult but I did it! *sigh* the “SUITE” life of a masters student. Now I have three to go but at least I have a bit of content for those already so hopefully I’ll be fine with a lot of concentration and of course prayers.

The best thing about these library sessions though, I get to see my crush nearly every day. I am not obsessed. He just doesn’t know he loves me yet but he will soon, hopefully not after I would have moved to Poitiers! J J J

So last week and this week, parts of the university resembled parts of Russia, it was really cool; and to think that on one of these all-nighters I missed a great chance to meet Ewan McGregor and Johnny Depp who were in the middle of filming parts of their new movie Mortdecai on our dearly beloved Greenwich Maritime campus. I could have been famous L L L. However, I did get to see a cool scene being shot; I was quite excitedJ.

http://www.womaninblack.com/#/trailer

It’s been really amazing studying on this campus though especially since most of my lectures have run till about 9pm; this is the time when they film most of the movies. I think I’ve seen nearly five different films being shot so far (that’s a lot more than seeing none at all!) since I started in September and apparently parts of the sequel to “The Woman in Black” will be filmed here on Monday; something to look forward to. I wish I had seen Thor when it was being shot as well; seeing the handsome Chris Hemsworth would have made my year.

It’s been a good year so far. I can’t wait to go back home to Ireland for Christmas, after a whole year away. I will leave you guys with an “inspirational” Christmas video I saw on Facebook the other day:

WestJet Christmas Miracle: real-time giving

 

Have a great Christmas…

Toodles!

 



THE STORY SO FAR

It’s been a month since I became a year older. What can I say? I feel err older? Lol I don’t know how I feel. I did promise to show y’all my birthday cake though, didn’t I? It was specially made for me by a lady at my Church. Here it is; my giant cupcake…

But anyway it is now December and the first part of my masters is nearly over (9 months to go yay!). I have no more classes (haven’t had for the past two weeks); I’ve just been attending group meetings for the pitch presentation I did yesterday. It went surprisingly well (thanks for asking!). I think we impressed the ‘judges’ hehe (well I hope we did!).

I’m pretty sure a lot of people who live in London have heard of Yo-sushi? Of course you have! The ‘Yo’ brand do way more than just sushi, they also have hotels and other things going on. I won't go into a lecture about the Yo brand now. So basically we had to conduct research on Yotel (google it!) and come up with a communications strategy for the opening of their new hotel in London. It was all make believe but taken very seriously, we even got to speak with Jo Berrington, the marketing director at Yotel. It was an amazing experience as she seemed to love the job she was doing, she spoke about it with such passion. I certainly want a job I’ll be able to speak about with love. I’m not entirely sure if this is how it’s said but I often hear people say: “If you have a job you love, you will never work a day in your life”.

Now that the almighty presentation is out of the way, I’ll have to complete my 4500 word essay on the research we conducted for Yotel which is due next week, another 4500 word essay on the strategy which is due in January, a 3500 word essay on Young Consumers and a 4500 word essay on the research methods for my dissertation which are both due next week. I will try not to complain about all this work. I try to work extra hard so I can have an exciting future.

Take a look at this beautiful Audi e-Tron Spyder, my motivation! So anytime you think of quitting school, think of the beautiful things you can get with good money when you graduate and eventually get a well-paid job.

Toodles!

Birthday blues

So my birthday is next week Friday. What to do, what to do!

I absolutely love birthdays - not just mine, everyone else’s too (mostly my friends). I love buying gifts for my friends. If I was invited to a birthday gathering of some sort, be rest assured I’ll be buying a gift. I don’t understand how people come to parties without gifts, like seriously!

Anyway, back to me. It’s taken me a very long time to decide what to do for my birthday. It was almost like a project I was starting to get stressed out about.  All that was in my head was CAKEEEEE!!!

Let’s not even go into how much I love cake. The plans started out as a party then dinner at my house then party again. I finally decided to have dinner at a restaurant because I weighed out all my options and decided this was the cheapest way to go (not that I don’t have the money or anything but I’d rather remain rich after). Ok decisions made, now where to have dinner? Another problem, I don’t know London very well therefore I do not know any fancy restaurants or where to look for that matter (which is quite disgraceful on my part as I've been here a full year already).  I was definitely not going to end up at Nandos or even Burger King!

To cut the long story short, I found one. Yay! I was randomly walking down the streets of Blackheath and there it was. It was perfect. Don’t worry I’ll tell you all about it after.

I always make sure I celebrate my birthday each year just to appreciate the awesome things that God has done, and continues to do in my life. I’m really looking forward to spending time with all the new friends I have made in the past year who have made a wonderful impact in my life (and my crush hehe).   

  

P.S. My birthday is on the 1^st of November in case you were thinking of sending me any gifts. 

LOL.

Till next time, 

       

Toodles!                                                                                                                                                           

Memoirs of a masters student

So it’s week 6 of the new course. What can I say? It’s been absolutely fantastic so far – a lot of work but still a wonderful experience. I learned so much in just 2 weeks of the course than I had learned in my 5 years of science put together. If that’s not saying something to you, it certainly is to me. MA Strategic Marketing Communications was made for meeeeeeee!!!! Hehe…

So I’m taking three core courses this semester: Advertising and Marketing Communications, Contemporary Issues in Marketing Communications and Communications Theory. I’m not going to babble on and bore everyone about the contents of the course! I just want to share with you guys some of the interesting things I have learned from my course so far (interesting to me anyway).

The first and most important of all – The Business School in Greenwich is absolutely amazing. All the lectures are quite interactive. The help you get from the lecturers is immense, and to top it all, we get freeeee food (sometimes), now what’s better than free food?

I have also learned that advertising is a form of marketing communications (I never knew this). It goes way beyond what we see on television, on the internet or in magazines and newspapers – the meaning and the purpose is never obvious. Advertising gives us elements of something we might recognise and asks consumers to do the rest of the work, maybe to get them more curious about the product or brand.  Marketing communications isn't just about promoting or selling stuff, it’s a cultural avenue. Most of the adverts we see would have gone through extensive scrutiny before being put out, so as to accommodate people’s different background and beliefs. In other words, they don’t want anyone to be offended.

This course has certainly given me a new way of looking at different types of advertisement and having a deeper understanding of what each brand or product is trying to convey. I’m just going to leave you guys with a few random things I have come across in the past 6 weeks.

Quick fun facts

• Starbucks aimed to make their coffee shop the “3^rd place” – not home, not work, just a place to chill and hangout.
• Reebok started off in England before 1960.
• Johnny Walker scotch is a very successful brand because they have maintained the same logo for years.
• There used to be cocaine in Coca-Cola, it was removed in 1929.
• Most inorganic wines are filled with preservatives. The bottles are washed in sulphides before the drinks are put in.
• 1 in 3 primary school leavers in the U.K. are overweight.
• 1 in 5 Americans die from obesity.
• Sainsbury’s is the only one of the “big four” supermarkets that is making a profit. The rest are at a loss (obviously). The Big Four supermarkets include Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA and Morrison’s.
• In the U.K., companies are not allowed for marketing communications to target toys to a specific gender.
• The U.K. has the strongest anti-bribery act in the world.      

Toodles!