Week 2: Day 4

This morning I finished editing on the train up to London, a lot of the pieces for Dia are very poorly written, but it can be hard for me sometimes because everything has to be written in American English for them.

I jumped off the tube at Embankment and walked down to Somerset House. Loving the warm, sunny weather but still hating early starts – although I know it could be earlier. I met Sophie from work in the masive courtyard, she’s in PR and came along to help out and just take some time out from working in Starbucks – our, now, permanent-makeshift-office. I also invited a friend of mine to come along, thinking the function would be pretty big with good goody bags, since the invitation said who organised the bags and offered all antendees free massages by Aveda. We all met outside before going in and then walked around, again, talking to people about the collections, took photos and picked up press packs.

Estethica is run by the British Fashion Council and is their organising for supporting ethical fashion. This is a very dodgy end of the fashion market, and idea that people are initially interested in and then quickly realise that it’s still a bit of a disappointment. There were some good collecions there, but a lot of it is rubbish and now I know why Wafa told me not to get too excited about it. On a perkier note, Somerset house is really very beautiful and I’d like to go back at some point and check out all the other great exhibitions and functions it oftern holds.

I left Estethica at around 11:30am and travelled over to High Street Kensington to work at Dia. I spent the afternoon finishing all the subediting for the online magazine and editing images and creating thumbnails. It was all a bit tedious but good experience none the less. My piece on the new tea label in Lebanon is now up on the site and is one of the first links for the blog part of the magazine. Some reader has already commented on it too – it’s great to see this whole participatory journalism thing in action and be on the receiving end of it – it’s a positive thing I think, mostly.

I also came up with some questions to ask an architect in the USA so Wafa can interview him and rearranged an slot for her to interview an author. Something I think is really nice is Wafa and Rasha (owner of Dia Boutique) often ask for my opinion on things to improve their website and what I think the message is from the site. They do value what I think and so far I have come up with a few good points and ideas with what can be improved. I got into a discussion with Wafa about the architect’s work and this helped me come up with some better questions, evidently I had been slacking and tiredness had gotten the better of me – I was being lazy and she could tell. You can’t be a machine all the time and come 6:45pm she told me to go home and get a good night’s sleep and come in feeling brighter tomorrow. She said, relax it’s the weekend. At least she realises that I am working hard.