The update blog continues…

I’m now back in Seattle, and therefore I have more time for updates…!

Once again, let me just note that these updates aren’t going to be anything intellectually stimulating or awe inspiring… I simply thought I should fill you all in on what I’ve been doing recently – so read on if you want to know!

I’ll start where I left off last time… What was I saying? Oh yeah, LA was amazing, but lacking a bit in the rain category…

Here’s some highlights from LA:

— My internship! I interned at the Burbank Bureau of NBC News. I got to do a lot of things, helping out with stories for NBC Nightly News and the Today Show. One of my main tasks was to make affiliate checks, which consisted of calling a bunch of the NBC affiliates on the West Coast and seeing if they were covering stories of any national interest. It was really interesting and educational to hear all the news of the day all across this side of the country. I also helped out the NBC producers and reporters by logging a lot of tapes (typing up exactly what is said/shown on the video) of interviews and B-roll (video not of interviews, like the video that is shown over a reporter’s voiceover in a package). I also researched stories, pitched stories I found myself, and even got to go out in the field with a producer and cameraman a couple of times! It really was an amazing experience – I learned so much and met so many people who all taught me about the business and gave me advice for entering the business myself in a year…!

One highlight of my internship was waking up at 2AM to go to the 2010 EMMY Award Nominations, hosted by Sofia Vergara (from Modern Family) and Joel McHale (from The Soup and Community)!

— The beaches. I was a lifeguard the 3 summers before this one, so I definitely need a lot of tanning and swimming time for it to feel like summer…! I was a bit surprised when I first got to LA that all the beaches are about 45 minutes away from LA, but my friends and I still got to explore lots of them. We went to Santa Monica, Malibu, and Venice (pictured below). All of them were nice for different reasons. Santa Monica has the pier (it even has a roller coaster!), which is beautiful and fun. Venice has the best people-watching for sure (so many crazies!), and Malibu – well, I guess it was too cloudy when I went for me to really appreciate it, but I’ve heard it’s beautiful!

Jumping over waves at Venice Beach

— The San Diego County Fair! I hadn’t been to a fair in a while, so when one of my friends mentioned the option of going to San Diego for the day to go to the fair, I was super excited! And I was not disappointed once I arrived… after fighting through traffic and getting lost trying to find a parking lot, we walked through the fair gates and were immediately overwhelmed by all the giant rides and more fried food stands than I have ever seen in my life! Of course, we were curious… so between all of us, we got fried Oreos (I always thought that sounded disgusting, but they were actually really yummy! – picture below), fried avocados (mmm!), fried artichoke hearts (my favorite – picture below), corndogs, and mini donuts. I felt so fat and American, and had way too much fun feeling this way…! We also went on the ferris wheel, which had a beautiful view of the sunset! And there was even a chairlift, which we rode from one end of the fairgrounds to the other – it felt really weird being warm and snowboard-less on a chairlift, but it was really cool!

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— Jay Leno! The Tonight Show with Jay Leno tapes in Burbank, right across the lot from where I worked this summer at NBC News. One of the perks as an NBC Universal employee is that you get discounts on a ton of things related to the brand (including things at Universal City Walk – like IT’SUGAR, where I bought a WHOLE POUND of discounted candy…). This, of course, includes getting tickets to Jay Leno. So the other NBC News interns and I scoped out who the guests were going to be during my last week at NBC, and we found out that the one. The only. ZAC EFRON was going to be on the show. Naturally, we reserved tickets for that day – duh! What straight girl would not want to stare at Zac Efron for an hour-long show?! The show was really fun – it was really cool to see that the show is live-to-tape, and Jay does not stop during the taping to redo parts (though he did go back at the end to say “Steve Jobs” a few times, after saying “Steven Jobs” the first time). Jay Leno went to Emerson, so my friend from Emerson came along to the show, and we ended up getting to take a picture with him before the show started! I also got a souvenir – the cue card with the names of all of the day’s guests written on it!

my souvenir from the Tonight Show

NBC News interns (+ friends) with Jay Leno!

— In-N-Out Burger! I know this is clearly a very typical thing for Californian newbies to mention… but really. It’s so good! It has every aspect of a good restaurant for a college student:

1. it’s cheap.

2. the food is good.

3. there’s a secret menu! If you go online to their website, you can find different things to try that aren’t on the menu in the restaurant – try Animal Style (on the burger or the fries) – it adds a ton of stuff to your burger… for free!

4. free stuff! The drive-through guy gave me and my friend hats once (see photo below)

me looking really attractive while eating In-N-Out by the pool

In our sweet (and free!) In-N-Out hats!

That is all for this update… the last and final part will be coming soon, and will include the pinnacle of my trip down to the warmer part of the West Coast.

All I can tell you for now is, I lost everything but my dignity in Vegas…

— CQB

The inbetween time… (between the Olympics and Paralympics)

One of my wonderful YouTube subscribers, danntire, suggested I vlog to let you all in on what I’ve been doing since the end of the Olympics! So here it is. This time: I haven’t been doing much, but I did get to see and get autographs from 6 Washington 2010 Olympians!

It’s Over?!

So the Olympics are officially over. And I’m home. In Seattle.

Now, normally I would make a video blog (or vlog) about how I’m feeling and what I’m doing right now, but that will have to wait, because I have the biggest bags under my eyes, and I look like I haven’t slept in a month (which is kind of true). I doubt any of you would want to see me in front of a camera at this point…!

The past month has been amazing in many ways. And it has also been the busiest month of my entire life. And, if you know me at all, you know that for me to say it was the busiest month of my life – that’s saying a lot. I am always a very busy person – I love being busy. I love the feeling of going from one thing to the next, and surviving solely on adrenaline. But the Olympics brought a whole new meaning to that!

In the past month, The Whistler Sliding Centre (where I worked during the Games) has hosted 13 days of competition, including 30 competition runs, and over 48 training runs. Combined, that’s about 100 hours of events. Add to that 15 minutes of Mixed Zone time for each athlete/team after each run, and then an hour for the press conferences after every medaling event… That’s a lot of time.

here's the Whistler Sliding Centre at its most crowded

There’s more clock time I could add to that tally, but I think that’s enough to give you a sense of what the past month of my life has been like.

In one word – it’s been wonderful.

Right now, I have swollen glands in my throat, a terrible headache, I’m dizzy, my ears haven’t stopped ringing/throbbing for 2 days, and I’m more tired than I’ve ever been. But I’m not complaining. I’m loving it. To me, my physical and mental state right now just shows how hard I worked.

I did work hard! I learned so much, and met so many great people in the journalism industry who gave me some great advice. My coworkers are all great people whom I hope to stay in touch with (maybe we’ll even see each other at future Olympics!). I met many broadcasters and print journalists from newspapers and television stations all over the world, and they all had something different to say about the Games and the journalism industry.

Here’s a few of the things I learned:

1. How to take notes fast – I’ve been typing on a computer since I can remember, so I haven’t been hand-writing anything much lately. But in the Mixed Zone, I did not have a voice recorder or a computer, so it was up to my hands, a pencil, and a notepad to get quotes from all of the sliding athletes. My first day on the job, I had a very hard time writing down quotes quickly. And on the really cold days at work, my hands couldn’t still couldn’t accomplish the task very well. But, cold or not, by the end of the Games, my brain and hands learned how to get quotes, and write them down fast.
2. Be someone people want to work with – now, I obviously already knew this; it’s common sense. But the Olympic Games reinforced this. People in the Mixed Zone and the Venue Media Centre who weren’t nice to work with, frankly, weren’t as successful at their jobs. And in a situation like the Olympics, you’re working with the same people for 17 days straight, and if someone is unpleasant to work with at the beginning – you can be sure it will affect the success of everyone’s jobs by the end.
   

   this is how crowded the Mixed Zone is -- everyone's squeezed in together!

3. Never be afraid to talk to someone – whether it’s interviewing an Olympic athlete, breaking the ice with a shy coworker, or networking with a professional in your career field. As long as you approach people prepared and with a smile, it never hurts to say something or ask a question. Oh, and on the subject – I also learned not to be star struck by athletes, oranyone else. The athletes I spoke with at the 2010 Olympic Winter Games were all so nice and down to earth. Some of them had a bit of an ego, and others had only started their respective sport 18 months ago and were in awe of all the talented athletes around them. Some of them may have been even more nervous about talking to me (and the rest of the media) than I was about talking to them!

Since I am extremely tired, as mentioned above, I should leave you all with those words of wisdom, and head to bed. This next week, before I head back up to Whistler for the Paralympic Winter Games, will be the time for me to sleep, sleep… and sleep. I need it.

Because, in the words of my dad, “[I] worked [my] frickin’ butt off.”