Posts Tagged ‘norm’

Given both myself and Norm had a rare Saturday off for various reasons, I headed over for a bit of food and a few beers on Saturday night.

It’s mental really, I moved to the city centre so I could walk home after drinking sessions and I end up having to go all the way out to Seacroft. Still nothing makes you feel better than getting on a bus and observing the type of people also using said service – it makes you feel so much better about your own life 😀 .

Unfortunately X-Factor has now started again but once we got that out of the way we had some really good discussions as we sat and drank long into the night. What a Saturday night should be really.

On Tuesday we had a debate with the Islamic apologist Adam Deen. The man is a fantastic public speaker and even though I think most of us from A-Soc have heard all the arguments before, they were very eloquently put. Norm did a good job of speaking for outside, as did Sophie chairing a debate for the first time – not an easy one to start on!

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.

Last night saw the first A-Soc social of the holidays, regular meetings having been suspended until everyone gets back to Leeds in January. Given it was holidays, and indeed the 23rd of December, we did alright for attendance, I think we had a total of eight of us in the end.

I was a good night as I got to chat to Paul about some of my suggestions regarding the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire and we also battled with Facebook to try and sort it out as his new phone is geared towards Facebook but won’t actually let you register or anything.

In a highly amusing situation also, Norm got ID’d. Clearly the big beard is taking years of his look 😀 .

Liz isn’t drunk!

She wanted to stress this quite a lot last night.

Nicola however was far more open about her level of intoxication.

But let’s rewind for a second. The evening started with the usual commitee meeting to which Kate didn’t turn up to (because apparently she had bailed on London but was too scared to tell me or Norm face to face) nor die Rosie who apparently is putting her degree ahead of A-Soc (but not ahead of the pub, /judge),

The meeting went well given that Norm forgot his talk and indeed all of the A-Soc stuff, it was rather well attended which was good to see which both together was a bit of a shame as the topic really has a lot of potential especially given recent events. Still there was some good discussions, especially at the pub afterwards so all is good.

The talk was on discrimination against atheists which as we found out when we got into discussions is very wide spread in society which is already fairly evidence despite the fact that we actually make up the majority.

Becky bailed on the pub which was disappointing but both Brett and Nicola arrived, killing any rumour that they had eloped to Mexico together but we can’t rule out the plan being put in place for a later date. I left shortly before midnight with a few hard core A-Soc’ers still hanging on. As ever these days, a rather good night.

Having finally made it home just before 9 last night we setup for podcasting to have a rant about the evening events. After only two or three months of Norm saying he was definitely going to be joining us this week, we finally got him involved in the two shows we recorded last night.

The real miracle, and I think this stands testament to how annoyed everyone really was, was that we managed to stay on topic for the whole of the first show. Crazy.

Friday night saw the long awaited return of One Life.

We managed 13 people to the session which was a fairly respectable number and it was rather amusing to be just down the hallway from the Christian Union’s Friday Night Live (now re-named to Ignite I believe). The food that Norm cooked based on Sophie’s excellently prepared menu was excellent and we got some good discussions going. Another event to chalk down as a success I recon.

Having been invited down to Fonze’s church to do Alpha, myself, Norm, Paul and John went down this evening to check out a session. We arrived at the second week which was all about why Jesus died.

Having met Simon, the head guy, who was a nice guy as you would expect, we enjoyed a meal of rather higher standards than we are used to expect – I love it when the CU provide free food but they simply don’t have the resources to add the fancy touches such as a place mat full array of cutlery.

The session then took the form of a video lasting around 40 minutes which was reasonably interesting then we had a group discussion afterwards. It was good although it was no replacement for the speakers offered at Christianity Explored, it’s just not the same as an interactive speaker you can question on their talk afterwards.

We ended up heading back to The Terrace and got to know John a bit more who seems to be a really sound guy. He is doing joint honours artificial intelligence so we have some common ground and he also has excellent slogans on his t-shirts so it’s win win.

It’s not easy being popular. A-Soc had moved of meeting room 4 because we weren’t sure we could fit everyone in as it only holds around ten people. We were right. Especially when 45 people turned up to A-Soc last night :D.

We had a lot on, a committee meeting, Norm’s talk “Intolerance in religion”, Pro Life Through Pro Choice, preparation for the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire’s debate against Bradford University’s Islamic Society and a social and it really pulled in the crowds.

When we arrived in The Terrace for our social not only did we fill an entire row of benches outside on the terrace itself but we had to move a few benches onto the end of the row to fit everyone on!

It really has been a fantastic start to the year for the society and I would like to congratuate everyone involved on really getting stuck in and making it work. People are already focused on maintaining this strength as well, it has really got me excited about what the society at the moment.

Saturday night having come round again, Michelle and Norm’s joint party (that Norm didn’t have any say in and couldn’t actually come to 😉 ) had arrived.

Being unable to get the time off work I didn’t finish until late and given an unending series of problems ending with the building alarm refusing to set leaving us waiting around for the morning shift to turn up I didn’t make it to the party until gone 3am.

I was greeted by a rather drunk Moz who seemed rather pleased to see me. As pre-arranged with Nicola (who was passed out on the couch) I tried to take her up but she was a little too drunk to stay conscious for more than 20-30 seconds at a time. For someone who is such an outgoing party animal she’s quite a light weight (though to be fair she had, had a long day and is keeping up with me for hours at work at the moment).

The real winner of the evening was the amount of drunken stories that emerged that night and the next morning. Always entertaining.