first day of work

I wish that I could send everyone individual emails and all sorts of different stories but the reality is that internet cost a pretty penny for a guy like me who has no fixed address and faces a lot of difficulty using the metallic keyboards at the free internet place.

Today was my first day of work and it was quite amazing. I guess about once every few months they have these things called staff induction days where you get a full intro to the musuem... it was perfect!

The director of the Museum gave us the full history of the museum and the building (it was especially neat to hear it from him because although the museum only opened in 2002, he has been working on the project since the early 1990s). The museum's history starts way back in the1980s when John Letts had the idea to found a museum that would show britians impact to future generations when the country had lossed a lot of power and become just a small island nation... he thought about the impacts of Britain (language, industrial revolution, and the effects of the empire) and realized that the latter of the three was rarely ever address in museum and school curriculums... thus the idea was born

It's such a cool story, but i'll save you all the details... but it really was amazing to hear about all the struggles the Museum director faced during the final years of the museum's establishment... from facing opposition in trying to create a museum that addresses very faux-pas topics, to the buying the old dilapidated Brunel train station and working through almost three years of renovations to get it going (this was even before the Museum had any artefacts or collections of its own)... it truly is an amazing story.

The director took us on a whole tour of the building, which was the first purpose designed passenger train station in the world (ie. a train station built to be a train station), which was really neat because one of the things I'll be doing right away is developing a tour of the building to be used as a trial tour in the next few weeks, later to be put to use in the Brunel Anniversary celebrations in 2006.

the Museum is quite remarkable... one of its major focuses is Oral history. In fact, when it was first being developed its first collections came out of 1000s of interview done of british citizens and citizens of other countries from the empire. Those interviews served as a basis for the museum, and the artifacts that many interviewees insisted be donated started off the physical collections. One section of the museum exhibits plays an ongoing set of video interviews which portray different experiences of people from the empire... one of whom is a woman who moved to London from Trinidad just after the war!

Another cool thing about the museum is that it is totally privately funded. In addition to funds from donations and visitors, it makes a great deal of revenues from renting out the old passenger shed platform part of the station as a multi-purpose banquet hall, and its boardroom for meetings and conferences. Also they rent out the kids areas for birthday parties and the cafeteria offers really tasty catering services for all on-site functions -all those endeavors make up for over 1/3 of its operating costs (about 1/2 million pounds). Also the Education department makes education kits for use outside of the museum inlcuding dvd rom sets and curriculum expansion units, which are sold or rented to teachers and school boards thus funding the programs more. They have some really ingenious ways of sustaining the museum.

Finally what is really great about the museum, is because of its contentious nature they attracted a wide variety of academic figures in its development, all of whom served as advisors during the 12 month period when the director and staff were rushed to create the entire permanent gallery. As a result, they are more connected to higher learning than any other museum and have linked with local universities and also universities all over the world.

sorry to go on, but it really is a remarkable place! it's really neat to see how things are organized at a large museum, especially that is organized so uniquely.

For my teacher type or museum savvy friends, check out the link on this site to the Museum, go to education, and look at the pdf guide to the learning journeys (their basic marketing tool for teachers and schools)... i think you'll find some of the workshops and also some of the ways that the programs are presented really interesting,




In other news, I followed lindsey's advice and went to Tesco to buy my dinner tonight. In an email she turned me on to the prepared food section, and I was able to buy a egg salad sandwhich, a chicken ceaser salad, a roll of fruit pastilles (my new favorite candy), and a bottle of apple juice all for £2.60. Definitely one of the best deals yet, though I bought a HUGE falafel pita for about the same from a kiosk in the harbour yesterday.

I'm currently debating between two places to live (matt I totally forgot to check for the blue duck thingy)... I lost a bit of sleep last night tossing and turning, but have bought myself another night because I just want to think a bit more. Both places seem really eager to have me... the long and short of it is that one is cheaper has a large room but is a bit further/not as nice an area, the other has a small room, is a bit more per month, and is located exactly where I want. ugh. also the people at the cheaper place smoke, so that's a factor. They are both having someone else to see it tonight, so I'm still looking up places in case they both dump me... but it seems like they will wait to hear from me before offering it to another person.

All in all that is what's going on with me. I'm really ready to move out of the hostel, though I think i could last a few more nights if I needed to... a bunch of loud/crazy guys where checking in this afternoon, so I'm hoping none of them will be in my room, it was only 5:30 and they all seemed a little drunk... so I thinking the hostel will try to put them all together (there is only one or two open beds in my room).

That's it... and oh yeah, in the post I wrote about the under 25 in clubs, I meant that the signs say "Over 25 at the discretion of the manger" meaning that they like to keep the clientele young and hip. sorry for the mistake

- Chris

p.s. i love brit-talk, this afternoon when my boss was talking about the right way to approach certain people for funding grants, he was talking about not giving them too much info or two many separate proposals at once so that they don't get all frustrated and cranky... and he warned that "...pretty soon it will be teddies flying out of prams" which I thought was a great expression!