Posts Tagged ‘Leeds Atheist Soc’

Tuesday saw the Atheist Society AGM. It was very well attended, probably due to the offer of free pizza but then that was the plan so we’re not complaining. Congratulations to everyone who got elected, especially Sophie our new president! I was elected vice president and I would also like to thank Norm for nominating me for honory life membership 🙂 .

Well that’s it kids, Rationalist Week 2009.

What a week. If nothing else it has been incredibly tiring, I arrived on site at around noon on Sunday and didn’t leave until 2am Wednesday! Not to mention it ended in a 22 hour shift on the Friday. I haven’t had time to catch up on sleep yet and given it’s now 1:30am and I have to be up for work in six hours and still have loads of work to do first it doesn’t look like that will be happening any time soon.

In terms of attendance we probably hit the same numbers as last year, the weather was great which was really nice in terms of keeping us warm and be able to setup and take down in nice sunny conditions but probably didn’t do us any favours in terms of attendance.

Unfortunately the week was tinged with an ugly side as members of Leeds Islamic Society mounted a campaign of hate, violence and attacks against us but beyond that the week passed by with no major problems.

I will probably blog more about the various events we ran throughout the week but for the moment I would just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped out during the week to make it just a fantastic week!

With the final Tuesday of the Easter holidays seeing the union closed, we headed off to The Library for the final RW planning meeting. In the end we got a rather good turnout, something like a dozen people or more eventually showed their face including the long awaited introduction of Zoltan’s girlfriend. She looks quite mature for a 15 year old.

Last week myself, Norm and Nicola went down to the Yorkshire Evening Post to do an interview as they wanted to do a feature on Leeds Atheist Society. It came out in Thursday’s issue and was good coverage for us – very positive compared to the stuff we normally get (which isn’t saying much as we normally just get attacked in the media but it was geniunely good) and it was a full page piece too.

If you missed the paper edition you can read the article online on the YEP website.

Continuing the ongoing efforts to get the technical set ready for Rationalist Week I’m currently busy installing software and configuring the computers that will be used during the week. As such they now have matching wallpaper so they look nice and pretty 😀 .

Speaking of Rationalist Week preparations, our lounge is now home to a large selection of food products, as per the picture below. Interesting this is just one of several big piles of stuff which is now ready for the week though I think both I, and my housemates, will be glad to get out of the way next week.

It’s hard to believe that it’s only 17 days until Rationalist Week 2009! I don’t really think it has fully sunk in yet just how soon it is, especially given the planning started over 6 months ago now.

This year’s events timetable is more packed than ever and the event is going to be unprecendeted not only with using previous weeks as benchmarks but measured against every other awareness week on campus too!

You can find a second by second countdown as well as a full events timetable on the Rationalist Week information page on the A-Soc website.

Having got the wrong month in February, we finally headed down for the long awaited karaoke social at The Eldon. It was in theory a joint Jazz & Blues and Atheist Society social but I’m not sure anyone from J&B actually turned up. Luckily, even with it being the holidays, A-Soc managed to put out a decent turn out and provide most of the musical entertainment too.

I signed up for to sing but ended up leaving before it was my turn so unfortunately everyone missed out on my Cerys Matthews impression to the tune of Catatonia’s Mulder and Skully but we did get Zoltan singing Rick Astley’s timeless Never Going To Give You Up so who can complain?

Our traditional final round of planning meetings for Rationalist Week which take place over the Easter holidays kicked off last Tuesday. We managed to keep the meeting under two and a half hours which isn’t bad going for this time of year.

Zoltan’s train had been delayed but he finally arrived back from his jailbreak and joined us in The Terrace around 10:45 for a well earned drink. He managed 150 miles in the end though by road that is actually 260 miles travelled which is pretty damn impressive.

This morning (well probably yesterday morning now) at the ungodly time of 6:15am myself and Sophie turned up to see Zoltan off on his way for his jailbreak to raise money for Rationalist Week. Armed with only £10 and his wits he had to get as far away from Leeds as possible, the more miles he got, the more money he earns.

Afterwards I headed over to Kirstall to get some breakfast and found myself outside of work by 6:45. Knowing Gaz wouldn’t be there until 8:20ish to open up I decided to stretch out along the back seat and grab some much needed kip. I can confirm that the back seat of a 2001 Astra LS is rather comfortable 😉 .

Norm having asked the BHA to provide a speaker for the Humanism session of Perspective he seen got an email from the BHA asking him if we would be able to speak at an A-Soc event at the university. He stepped up to the plate and agreed, so there was our Humanist speaker sorted.

While it was of course BHA brand Humanism it was never the less an interesting session and we got to test the catering urn so given how bad attendance could have been given it was the last day of term, I was quite impressed with how it went.