Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

On Thursday, I met Elina’s mum.

She and her boyfriend are currently over in Leeds visting Elina and with it being her birthday, we decided to go out to dinner. We ended up at Las Iguanas because I presumed Elina was joking when she told me to sort out a restaurant, which was apparently a silly mistake lol.

It was always going to be an interesting evening as I don’t speak any Finnish and Riitta doesn’t speak any English, and as you all know, Elina isn’t the most chatty person ever 😀 . Still, a bottle of rioja later and things were fine.

We also found some common ground on our love of vodka and Riitta’s boyfriend told me about his career as a ship designer. So all in all, an enjoyable dinner and only slightly more awkward than introducing Elina to my parents.

Recently, we headed out to Revolution for a work social. We started with a buffet dinner, which was very nice, but then I really hate buffets because, as a Yorkshireman, I have to eat until I can eat no more to get my value for money, and that is quite frankly, uncomfortable. Never the less it was quite a good night though starting tailing off at around midnight so we headed home.

On Thursday I finally got up with some old friends who worked with me at The D.

It was somewhat disappointing that Elina didn’t instantly fall in love with Nando’s, but we had a great night away heading up to the much loved Cuthbert Brodrick afterward and finished the night at Revolution.

On Wednesday, I received a letter from the company that runs my car park.

It stated that some permit holders where parking there on a Sunday even though their permit did not entitle them to and if this continued, they would get their parking enforcement company to start issuing tickets.

Now, I have no idea if they sent this to everyone or not, but I do know that I am pretty much the only person who parks there on a Sunday. So I can’t help but feeling a little bit victimised by this.

Apparently, even though I have been parking there for two years now without any problems even after explaining to them when I first signed up I would be there all the time, the standard permit I have only covers Monday to Saturday and if you want to park there on a Sunday, you have to pay extra.

This is despite the fact that all council car parks are free on a Sunday and nobody parks there anyway so it isn’t like they need the space.

You could of course argue that this is just a company trying to pull as much cash as it can from every available orifice but pragmatically, it’s just them being wankers. They make virtually no money out of having this separate pay extra policy because no permit holders park their on a Sunday anyway, so the only person they are getting extra money out of is me. Their price gouging brings them little reward, but plenty of angry blogging.

Last Saturday saw the final of the 2011 Indian Premiere League. The two teams who were fighting out were the Chennai Super Kings and the Royal Challengers Bangalore.

The Super Kings made a fantastic start, reaching 205 runs by the end of their innings. This left the Royal Challengers with a huge hill to climb and when Chris Gale fell in the first few balls, you knew it was all over.

The cricket was followed by the UEFA Champion’s League final between Manchester United and Barcelona. Man Utd played reasonably well but were ultimately completed outclassed by a team with mirrored the superb play of the World Cup winning Spanish side.

The biggest surprise of the day however was that I actually spent some time watching sport. Could it be that two years working in the sports betting industry has finally got to me? Is this s a sign that the rapture is on its way after all? Only time will tell…

With Viki pretending to be ill to avoid paying for breakfast, like the cheap Mackem she is, and keeping George firmly under her thumb while at it, it fell to Norm to fire up the grill for this month’s post-Wendy fry up. He didn’t disappoint.

We decided to celebrate the rapture not happening in the traditional way – by having a Wendylicious party before heading out for everyone’s favorite night. Good times.

Last week I headed down to York Brights for their monthly meeting. It was the second time I had been to the city in a month, having visited North Yorkshire Humanists two weeks prior.

The topic of much of this week’s discussion was Derren Brown. Derren has done amazing things for reviving the art of magic, but it always a divided opinion in the skeptics community because although he says it is all magic, he then goes on to pretend a lot of what he is doing is real.

Take the example, when he correctly predicted the lottery numbers. Of course, he didn’t, it was a simple camera trick. But be started the show by saying “this is all magic” and then took you on an hour long journey about the wisdom of crowds, which is of course nonsense. I spoke about this at Skeptics in the Pub in 2009.

One of the group members, Michael, went on to explain just how much of Derren’s material relies on this. Take for example his TV show Trick of Treat, although he claims to use no actors, they almost certainly did, partly because some have been identified as actors but also because you just can’t morally do a lot of that stuff to unsuspecting members of the public.

You could argue of course that that is part of the show though. When we watch fiction or magic, we suspend our disbelief for the purposes of entertainment (deep down, we all know there probably isn’t a man traveling around space and time in a vehicle disguised as a blue police box but it’s fun to pretend for those 45 minutes), and maybe it’s just part of that.

Last week we headed over to Elbow Room to shoot some pool.

It’s a great place to play as they have plenty of room (as Norm pointed out – the name is probably derived from the fact you have enough elbow room to play) though they are American pool tables which means the pockets are massive and so the chance of you potting the white quickly becomes more of a when than an if, even if you put some thought into it.

In the end myself, Norm and George all came out three wins to two defeats, most of which were won or lost on the white following the black into the pocket lol. Fonze played well also, beating George in the last game, though he did have the advantage that he wasn’t drinking.

Earlier this year, when Oli and Jess got together, Norm made a start on the usual paperwork for a possible new application to The Circle. This resulted in us having to schedule a house party for some induction training – it’s a hard life, but you just have to get on and do it I guess.

While unfortunately neither Oli nor Jess actually made it to the party, it was a great night none the less with the party raging until around 4am and a strange hour in which everyone decided to try and pick everyone else up.

Indeed, the night ended up so heavy that Norm was unable to eat his recovery steak at the next day and I just collapsed out in front of the TV for most of the afternoon.