happy place

I'm the busiest I've been since I started my management course right now. I'm having to schedule writing job applications and reading in between dances at rehearsals. I gave a presentation in class this morning having had a video-interview at the crack of dawn, and now I have a couple hours homework time before I'm off to a 4-hr rehearsal again this evening. If you live in Cambridge and you know me you BETTER HAD COME TO THIS SHOW. So when I got back from class at lunchtime I let myself retreat into my happy place: watching Momma June talk 'bout her love with Sugar Bear over a bowl of Heinz tomato soup. I also indulged in some Kinder Schoko-Bons (these sweets caused many arguments between me and my sister..so we will always love them) as Lent is coming up (2 days left help me) and I'm planning on not eating chocolate for 40 days. (Apart from 14 March: 14 March is day of indulgence in the Girton calendar). Back to my Innovation coursework. Let me know if you'd like to do it for me.

emerge

I spent my whole day today at the Emerge Cambridge conference. The conference was conveniently in my department so the plan was to plug away in the Library all day and occasionally pop out for the highlight talks of the day. There were a few people speaking who I've been avidly following on Twitter for a couple years you see. Ended up going to EVERYTHING at the conference and doing zero work. Oops. The fact I have an all-day rehearsal tomorrow bodes well too. The conference was on Social Enterprise and where the sector's going in the future. If you know me at all you'll be aware that I'm absolutely nuts for this stuff. I've been involved with Social Enterprise for 3/4 years now and think it is ultimately where I'm headed. I had a great time: I was tweet-conversationing in real-time with people at the conference during each talk, so good! I actually ended up winning the conference's photo competition with the above shot and received a prize in front of everyone in the final keynote! The book's a signed copy of 'The Rise of the Reluctant Innovator' by Ken Banks, and comes at a very convenient time as my 'Business Innovation in the Digital Age' coursework paper is due in a couple weeks. So that was a £10 ticket and day off uni work well spent! I'm as happy as this husky:

bengali cooking

I've got three imminent coursework deadlines, too many dance routines to practise (don't ask), presentations to give, conferences to attend, and work to plan for a charity, and so obviously I decided to spend my entire Thursday night this week preparing and cooking a Bengali curry. Very smart. I can't even justify it as a de-stress activity because cooking instils an extraordinary amount of dread/fear/anxiety and raised blood pressure in me. I do however feel a sense of achievement: I've never cooked a curry from scratch before. The whole reason I went about this was because my pal Ella is half-Bengali, and her Grandma has a cool website full of amazing recipes here. I tried the Main Course-Chicken curry recipe and it wasn't difficult at all. Ella kindly gave me measures of the spices I needed for the recipe (me & the boys' spice rack extends to salt, pepper and ready-grated parmesan). Admittedly I was a bit heavy-handed with the extra-hot chilli powder but we survived, and if I do say so myself it was a pretty damn tasty curry. I took some action shots but gave up trying hard when I realised that this was probably the least photogenic dish I've ever made. Nevermind. Have a go at the curry though!! And peruse the website it's full of wonderful stories as well as recipes.

http://www.anita-pal.com/

Tip from Ella: make sure the onions are really brown and softened - this can alter the quality of the curry sauce.

And this was a lil thank you present from Jenny who came back to visit last weekend. (How sneaky is this bird). She kept saying she felt like she was on holiday here and to be honest I felt the same even though I still go here. KEEP COMING BACK JEN!

warm

A warm thought for your morning. I'm tucked away in my house relishing my electric heater while I squeeze out a job application. Fingers crossed because it's kinda the only one I want. Slipping out later for a quick Starbucks with a friend but I imagine I'll be straight home back to my best friend 'Heatstore 75' (Iloveyousomuchneverleaveme).

plug tips

Some awesome work/study/'plugging' tips from this girl here. (You may have to get chrome/explorer to translate the page for you - it's in Swedish). She's so great. She makes me want to live in Edinburgh and casually holiday in Sweden. I had Jesus Green to myself again yesterday morning, such a beaut doesn't it look like a watercolour? And a shot from this weekend: proseccos at Borough Market. We sent my friend (Beth) off to Japan for the year over the weekend and I blubbered and blubbered and blubbered. Tips for how to get myself together would be much appreciated. 

my year

I shared this a couple weeks ago on facebook and I wasn't expecting the huge reaction I got from friends&fam. It's a bit strange not catching a second of footage each day but also glad of the break, and might do another one for 2014-15 (also shaping up to be a big year).

megan mclaren 1 second everyday 
23-1-13 to 22-1-14 

2013-14 was one of the biggest years of my life, and i didn't want a single day to be forgotten. for the whole year i recorded a second of footage from every day to make a 6-minute video of my year. rather than purposely manufacturing exciting 'seconds' to film, i wanted the video to be a true representation of the year (however dull/exciting each day was). it was hard work and sometimes i forgot (hence the little messages here & there), but in a short video i've managed to capture: 

scotland > barcelona > nyc > vegas > california > massachusetts > rome > trinidad > tobago > dubai 

starting my dissertation > college ents > life in cambridge > beyond profit > theatre > finishing my dissertation > funerals > sitting my finals > cambridge may balls > bed club > getting a 2.1 > manchester > cups of tea > finishing the whole of gilmore girls > moving mairi to uni > starting 4th year > engless trips to london > working at sc > christmas in trinidad 

way too many cats 

and most importantly, some of the best people i've ever met (those of you not featured were most likely right by my side at the time) 

song choices are excruciatingly cringey and i'm proud of it. 

i recorded my year using the 1se app (1secondeveryday.com) on my iphone. the app made enormous improvements during the course of the year and so the video is a bit jumpy between formats, but is now running smoothly and available on ios and android. i highly recommend doing a 1se video yourself. i am an extraordinarily lucky girl. 

2013 never forgotten.

antlers

I'm on postsecret.com every Sunday without fail. Today this one really resonated with me: I've had a slight fascination/obsession with the Actaeon character from Classical mythology ever since I saw the Metamorphosis exhibition at the National Gallery, and then studied the story as part of my course reading Ovid's Metamorphoses in my final year. No denying I'm a nerd. I could talk about the story for hours, and my poor tutor at university had to mark essay after essay on the same exploration of the hunted vs. the hunter, the duality of the self etc etc (whatacambridgetoff). As a result I've been secretly brewing an idea for an antlers tattoo on me somewhere..is this tacky?