Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Having said all that, I didn’t watch a lot of the Olympics mainly because it just annoyed me. We seem to have been a bit too happy, smiley, everything is fine with China. Let’s review a few of the news stories that came out during the games.

The fireworks were pre-recorded.

Nobody turned up so they rounded up groups of students to make the stadiums look full.

To construct the new venues they bulldozed people’s houses with compensation.

People’s families suffered due to the people being involved in the games being taken away to camps so they couldn’t look after their families.

The fancy trains that said “made in China” on them were actually made by a company in Canada – who were ordered to de-badge them and put “made in China” on them in an attempt to stop people associating said term with crap quality. When in fact, of course, it is, hence why they went to Canada for their trains.

They spent a third of their GDP on the games, rather than feed their people.

They decided the young girl who was singing was too ugly so they hid her behind a curtain and put a better-looking girl out there miming.

They managed to perform the closing ceremony without using any amplification on the drums.

They had people carrying “nothing to see here” boards on standby as seen when the Hungarian weightlifter bent his arm back.

Their no doubt equal and fair selection process for the hundreds of people dancing in the stadium somehow presented any overweight or even slightly imperfect people from appearing.

Finally, the coordinator for the ending ceremony of the Olympic games said the western world couldn’t do amazing ceremonies like China did because…

• We respect human rights
• We have no dicipline and stop every 15 minutes for coffee breaks
• We only work 4 and a half days a week
• We aren’t willing to suffer enough
• However he does complement North Korea on their ability to stage such performances.

Did I miss anything?

There are a few things I want to talk about here. We need rather well I thought. Russia beat us to 3rd place in end but but 4th for Britain is really good, after all if there is one thing we are good at it is losing at sports.

Anyway, syncronised diving. It’s not a real sport is it? I mean seriously, you’r just jumping into a pool at the same time. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It’s very good to do at some kind of swimming club with 7 year old kids but an olympic sport? Of course not.

Also, London 2012, how are we supposed to follow this? Well anyway it’s irrelevant as we’re not even going to try. There is already talk of how we are going to hold a more “intimate” games, which basically just means less impressive.

And what was our closing ceremony about? It did have some rather nice features but it was spoilt for me by the fact that the big red bus we had, turned up on time. I don’t really feel that sums up British culture. Oh and the commentator accidentally called Leona Lewis a “superstar.” Finally, in case we hadn’t lost all self respect we ended it with “here’s David Beckham, he’s not going to say anything we’re just showing off.”

Finally, I just want to be clear that the man we sent to represent us in front of the rest of the world – was Boris Johnson. Kept him away from Britain for a while I guess. It’s good to see I’m not the only person who actually uses my jacket pockets.

Good stuff.

I went out on Friday for John’s birthday at which there was also in attenance quite a few people I knew from high school. Sometimes you really don’t appreciate your life and what you have achieved until you meet up with your former peers and compare. There is just something nice about being able to take a deep breath and think to yourself, “I am such a better human being than you.” Good times :D.

Friday saw our long time coming (though possibly not so awaited) house warming.

I never really put much thought to it, I’m not even sure I got round to inviting people and was quite suprised when quite a number of people began to tell me throughout the week that they would see me at the party on Friday.

Still Friday having arrived it was all but dead until 10:30. Still with Kieran having turned up all the way from London, a few other select guests and there being plenty of alcohol in the house, we had sufficent company and drink to make it a good night anyway. Not that it was a problem was once the night drew on the guests began to flood in.

The party ended up going on till around 5am before the approaching daylight sent us running for cover. Not too bad for a group of suburbian based OAPs ;).

Nothing happened.

I went down to Leeds’ Cafe Scientifique last night to check out what it was all about as it comes highly recommended by Paul. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s basically a monthly event where you can go for a coffee/beer/etc and there is a talk and discussion on some kind of scientific topic.

It’s all very laid back, the topic of yesterday’s meeting was “psychotherapy – science or religion?” which involved a 25 minute talk, an interval so we could get another round of drinks in and then a general discussion session where people could ask queations.

The talk wasn’t bad though I wasn’t overly impressed. While most people there seemed to have a fair grounding in psychotherapy, I felt a bit lost not knowing a whole lot about it. Having said that, it was fairly glossy, which is to be expected in a 25 minute talk but I thought there could have been a lot more complex detail for some of us to try and get our head round if we so wished to try.

It was all very middle class though the age range wasn’t too bad, there were plenty of “young” people there (people aged below 40 shall we say). It is hosted by 7Arts in Chapel Allerton which is a lovely new building that, I noted, would make an excellent venue for a fledgling Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that needed to hire a venue until his noodliness blessed us with huge amounts of finances.

Camping having been cancelled, it was down to Chris the wonder kid to throw together some kind of A-Soc event to ensure we did something over the weekend. So, us now having a dining room and all we throw together a dinner party for those of us that were still around over summer.

In the end it turned out rather well – we managed a full seven courses as well as offering people a choice with several courses and best of all, nobody died. Nobody at all. There was a turn up for the books indeed. So given I haven’t really cooked for like a year or two now, I’m going to chalk it down as a victory.

It also presented some interesting experiences. I gave the port a try, which I didn’t find very drinkable but there you go, it wasn’t particuarly good port anyway, and some of Norm’s fancy Brazilian coffee which I did manage to stomach. I think that is a sign of me getting old. But should be good for all nighters I guess. Not that anyone is going to be pulling out a cafetiere during such times.

Can it really be? Has it really been three years since I arrived at university as a young fresh-faced student who had a good idea of what awaited him due to the amount of TV he had watched?

Apparently so. Last Friday was the last day of term of my third and final year at university and despite the cheeseyness where else could it really end except for Fruity? Especially given it was the last Fruity of the year and cheap entry.

We started the night at Danny’s house party which involved lots of burning things which was fun. Then just before 1am we headed off to hit Fruity. It was an excellent night as it was fairly empty with many students having gone home; you could comfortably dance and get straight to the bar yet there was enough people in there to give it some atmosphere – the perfect level.

We ended up getting home about 4am and retired for a well earned night’s sleep. Except Liz who was up being “just friends” with George till 8am :P.

This year the union are running a “Skint” fortnight which means that instead of offering free entry to the last two Fruitys like they normally do, they are charging £2 entry. It still proved a tempting enough offer last Friday however.

I seem to be even more of a light weight within the past few weeks. We got to the pub about 5 past 10 and by 11 I was struggling to finish my 6th drink. It’s clearly been far too long since we were doing regular Bondi Beach Bar trips, that was like the first 15 minutes “back in the day.”

I recon we did it the right way though – hit The Old Bar first, then head up to Terrace when The Old Bar kicks out and finally head into Fruity when Terrace kicks out, that way Fruity is already warmed up and playing ultra-cheese by the time you arrive.

On saying that maybe it was a bad idea to get there in time for B*Witched. We seemed to scare Rosie’s housemates off by bursting into song. I mean, it’s not that strage a couple of mid-twenties males screaming their hearts out C’est La Vie. Right?

Friday night saw the long awaited Summer Ball. 9,000 students, 7 massive arenas and 12 hours of madness promised to be good night and it being my final year I figured it was something I should definitely do before I graduate.

The entertainment lineup wasn’t looking particuarly good before the event but once there it actually turned out to be rather good. We spend most of the night in the Fruity arena where a band called Huge really kicked things off at midnight, I found that I actually recognised some of the songs by headline act as Mutya Buena and as predicted, Booty Luv put on a good performance at which we were able to get really close to.

I was amazed at how many people I ran into that I haven’t seen since my first year or similar timescales which was really nice as well as plenty of people from computing which was good as it is the closest thing we’re going to get to a computing ball. Nicola ended up coming to find us as well so we spend some time chatting to her and much to Michelle’s delight she also bought a round of donuts :D.

All in all, a really good night and one I’m glad I went to before I graduate.