Bubble Training

A busy day again today in some ways. I say in some ways because this morning's seminar - which wasn't really a seminar in any sense of the word that I have ever heard, had about forty minutes of actual content (from a two hour time slot). The first thirty - forty five minutes were spent faffing around with the projector. After spending half an hour trying (and failing) to get his laptop to connect to the projector, they resigned to using the provided computer - which worked straight away. Then we found that there would only be two presentations instead of a possible four (because of module swapping) and so we got to leave fifteen minutes early. Unfortunately, both of the presentations were really good, delivered confidentially and coherently which now makes me even more nervous about mine. I was hoping that at least one of them would be really nervous or really boring so that I would feel slightly more optimistic about mine but it wasn't to be. I will just have to hope that someone is really bad in the lead up to mine - preferably some on the day of mine as well so that I can look good in comparison. I may also have to step up my game a bit and spend some more time making mine quite good. Just in case.

The two hour lunch break was taken up with TSC training and I can now officially work at the union nights! Every time I go to something they have organised, the job seems more and more fun and even though today was primarily health and safety and general familiarisation, they somehow made it fun. It will be interesting to see just how much fun it is when actually on the job and although I'm hoping it will live up to the expectations, I suspect that it may be a little boring for the first few nights whilst we get into it properly. There will be a lot of stuff to learn in very little time but come Easter when we get the more advanced training, and then again in the summer when we can be trained as "seniors" I imagine it gets a lot better.

Today also saw the start of the new TV show the Bubble. Basically, three 'TV Personalities' for want of a better phrase - I would have gone with celebrities but they aren't really - are locked up in a house for a week with no access to any media. They are then taken to the studio and asked questions about the weeks news. A sort of Big Brother meets generic news quiz meets call my bluff. They are asked to choose between real and fake news stories based on real and fictional newspaper articles and news items. Amazingly, the BBC have decided that none of their news reporters can be involved in the creation of the fake news stories so as not to jeopardise their reputation. Instead, the show uses content from Sky and ITV instead which presumably they have to pay for - so it seems a bit cut of your nose to spite your face.

I'm not even sure they needed to bother with locking them away for the week. I was trying to answer the questions and got most of them totally wrong and I read the news everyday! They did pretty badly - unsurprisingly enough - but the questions were very difficult and whilst often when you play these sorts of games and you have the difficult choice between the logical answer and the so random it must be true answer, in the first three rounds only one point was scored. My only real criticism of it is that the pace is a little on the slow side - as if they need a bit more material to fill the show with. Perhaps that's just because it's the first show and they were slightly inconvenienced by the BBC's decision on their reporters. Other than that, I think it's brilliant both as a concept and the show and I look forward to next weeks episode.