On Sunday, I headed over to the airport for a second time, to pick George and Viki up as they returned from Portugal. As they regaled me with tales on the drive home, I was disappointed to hear they had not had honorary steak on Wednesday to make up for missing Norm’s birthday but then Norm probably ate enough steak for the three of them anyway.
On the plus side, George did bring back a game of shots roulette – it’s a roulette wheel and a series of shot glasses placed round the outside, each one with a number on – depending on what number the ball lands on, depends on what shot you have to drink. Genius.
Never being one to conform, Josh decided to throw a house party, but not at his house where you would expect, but rather on Call Lane.
He was joined by Rebecca who was also throwing a house party of her own at the time but decided to leave that to come into town as well.
So we hit SoBe, which is apparently short for South Beach and despite the fact that you can see it from the window of my apartment, I’ve never actually been to. Or heard of. But apparently it has just renamed, and I had heard of its old name.
It was an OK place, your standard small trendy bar in the Call Lane area type place, drinks were what you would expect in the area and service was surprisingly snappy for a busy Saturday night bar – if only that could be said for so many of the other bars in the area.
Having filled up on steak we decided to wander over to Oracle on the south bank for some drinks. Unfortunately, Oracle was already closed by 11pm, which is a pretty poor effort.
So instead we headed up to Call Lane and ended up in Call Lane Social.
I saw ended up, of the ten people that came out for the meal, only four of us ended up in there – myself, Norm, Jonni and Tom. After the first round, Jonni and Tom disappeared too, meaning that of the ten people left at the end of the night were the only two people in the entire group that actually have 9 to 5 jobs! But the important thing is, we showed those kids how it’s done :D.
Call Lane Social was pretty disappointing, their drinks range was OK, but nothing to shout about and service took absolutely ages and it wasn’t even that busy.
On Norm’s (almost) actual birthday we headed down to River Plate for a good piece of steak.
Having already pre-decided, Norm went for the 1kg steak! It covered an entire dinner plate and to be honest, I think we all had our doubts as to whether it could physically be eaten by one man – never the less, Norm stepped up to the challenge and defeated it.
I decided a smaller steak would be a good call – especially as I was having half a rack of ribs to start with! Plus having only eaten what could be considered two meals in itself, I still had some room for dessert.
Overall, however, I was somewhat disappointed with River Plate. It was excellent, but it didn’t live up to my expectations given previous experiences. The judge’s verdicts are in, and Blackhouse is officially the best steak restaurant in Leeds.
Because a certain group of people who wine a lot about Atheist Society always going to Stick or Twist, el preisdente James decided that the weekly summer socials should start rotating around venues.
So the final summer social before freshers’ week was scheduled to take place at the Slug & Lettuce, which the A-Soc oldies will remember as the venue for the first ever A-Soc Winter Solstice meal.
Unfortunately, the people who whine about it don’t actually bother to turn up – the week saw a total of four of us there, myself, James, Elettra and Will – whereas those of us that actually do just want to go to steak night at ‘Spoons every week, bravely stick by the society! Oh, the irony… :D.
As it happens, Slug & Lettuce was pretty rubbish. We waited an hour for service, which despite asking for never actually arrived, so in the end we walked out and headed over the road to Beckett’s Bank for a proper steak night. Good times.
I’m very dubious about this idea that every Wendy has to be adopted as part of people doubling up on their birthday celebrations with something on the actual day and then a Wendy as well – especially as I’m bitter about not being able to do this with Viv’s birthday being on what would have been my birthday Wendy and Halloween the weekend after.
Never the less, September Wendy was a fantastic night with the usual drinks starting at our apartment, followed by a bit of time in the Old Bar before heading in.
I actually felt somewhat guilty in the morning because I woke up feeling fine. Though any chance of that being a problem was quickly solved when we held the post-Wendy fry up the next day, once again cooked primarily by yours truly – and also included Yorkshire Puddings!
Unfortunately, my camera died soon after we got to The Old Bar, so I have a distinct lack of photos, so the ones from inside of Wendy were snapped by Norm.
Earlier this month, myself and George headed down to the Humanist Society of West Yorkshire social at The Adelphi for a few drinks.
James had a voucher for two meals and a bottle of wine – so we ended up having a rather romantic evening. Surprisingly as well, I found myself around the median age range – shocking for HSoWY! 😛
Having had to eat and drink at quite some speed in order to make it to Alea on time to register for the poker tournament, I was somewhat intoxicated by the time I left and ended up doing quite well – adding further evidence to the idea that I play better poker when I’m drunk.
Recently, my good friend George, decided to part ways with his then girlfriend. Sad times. Unfortunately, when it became time to make it official, by severing the relationship on Facebook, the status change attracted very few comments.
Now this clearly isn’t because George is simply unpopular. Nothing could be further from the truth – George is a witty, charming and sexually attractive man. I would go on, but what happened in Munich, stays in Munich.
The reason that such a status updated attracted few comments was that Facebook has decided that George’s updates aren’t that important. It never appeared in my newsfeed, it simply slipped by without me ever reading it.
Back in June, I blogged about Eli Pariser’s talk on online filter bubbles and how Web 2.0’s attempt to personalise its content can lead to blinding us to what is going on in the rest of the world.
This is a good example of this – Facebook has decided that George’s Facebook updates aren’t that relevant to me, even though I would consider him one of my closest friends (as well as living with him!). So beware the online filter bubbles, Eli was right all along.
My friend Stuart Ritchie, who is currently working towards his PhD in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, was recently involved in a writing a paper looking at the relationship between IQ and religious adherence.
While you will find a far more in depth write up on Stuart’s blog, the key points found that there is a correlation between higher IQ and lower scores in five of the six measured used to gauge people’s religious belief.
The only factor which did not see this pattern was people who just described themselves as “spiritual.”
Interestingly, another of my friends is currently researching this area, and the results so far suggest that there is a link between describing yourself as spiritual is correlated with bad parenting – but I can’t comment further on this until the research has been completed.
September 17th, 2011 |
Life
Since joining Facebook in 2006 (that’s over five years ago now – I genuinely don’t think I remember a time before Facebook), I’ve always had a policy of not accepting family members as friends.
There is good reason for this. Thanks to the innovative tagging features Facebook keeps introducing, your Facebook profile is full of photos, notes and status updates about just how drunk you where when you threw up in what you thought was a bathroom but later turned out to be something completely different. Nobody wants their family to see that side of their lives.
However, in the spirit of being more open, I’ve decided to rescind this policy. For better or for worse – I guess we’ll find out soon!
