Tuesday, 24 April 2007

A special new friend

On my third day, I was at the British Museum by myself. I then sat down outside and thought, "Hmm.. what should I do now?". Literally 3 seconds after that, I made a special new friend where I give him piano lessons in exchange for him being my tour guide.

British Museum Questionnaire person: Hi do you have 5 minutes to do a survey?
Me: Yes sure (I sometimes love doing surveys)
He asks a few questions about the British Museum and in the contact details section...
BM: Where do you live?
Me: Australia
BM: Oh! Australias a lovely place. Have you heard of a show called 'The Bill'?
Me: Yes of course! Why?
BM: I helped write an episode for that, was quite interesting
Me: Cool! Are you a writer?
BM: Yes I am but am stuck in a rut a bit now because I have too many ideas but haven't sat down and produced anything lately
Me: What are your ideas?
BM: One is a novel about this woman who finds a child in a river and brings it up as her own child. She becomes obsessed with educating him as she aspires for him to become president one day. He then does become president but is an unemotional, power-hungry leader who has the brains but lacks the emotion and starts causing destruction and then dies.
Me: So its like a modern version of Frankenstein?
BM: Yes
We start talking about his other ideas. He also wants to build an economics museum... he had too many ideas so
Me: This may be a strange concept but I come from a business background and I think you can apply some business principles to your writing/ideas. You need structure. Some of the best pieces of writing are structured very well although we may not realise it. And you need structure on which ideas to focus on
I taught him some business principles and he is now working on his major piece of work based roughly on a business process I taught him
Me: I'm assuming you like music as well?
BM: Yes I'm playing guitar at the moment but would really like to learn piano
Me: I play piano!
BM: Can you give me piano lessons??? I work at the Barbican library as well so can give you access to their beautiful big grand piano
Me: I can but I haven't played for awhile...
BM: What will you charge? Or can we do a swap of skills instead.I can be your tour guide and show you some of the cool places to go
Me: Ok sounds good. Done deal.
BM: Also, would you like to get paid to give your opinion on new exhibitions at the British Museum?
Me: Ooh that sounds great but I'm not an academic or anything
BM: That's fine, sometimes the exhibitors want to get the general publics opinion. You get paid 40 pound
Me: Brilliant! You don't happen to have contacts for casual short term work do you?
BM: Yes I do, here you go... I can give you a contact of this Australian girl as well who does odd jobs called Sari. She used to be on Home and Away
Me: haha ok! Cool you're my new friend.
We then hung out after his shift and talked about all sorts of random ideas. We ate at a cool British pub overlooking the Thames and St Pauls (last pic). I also took these photos when I went for a wander around London that night.

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

IM SO ON MY WAY!!!

Unknown said...

that photo of the purple ferris wheel is amazing!

such artistic skills mel! haha!

Monica Tan said...

That is hilarious and so fantastic.