I’ve just compiled my exam timetable and it’s not nice. I have exams on the Tuesday and Friday of the first week and then the Tuesday, Thursday and Friday of the second week. 4 out of my 6 exams are in the morning and get this – I have an exam on 1 June, the very last day of the three week exam period. Nobody else I know in computing has any exams that late.
Even more annoying is the fact that I have an exam on the morning of Thursday 24th. Which is really bad timing given I have an all-night party to go to on the night before. I’m not amused.
4 days without blogging, you can tell I’ve been busy!
Thursday resulted in another day of the tent being packed out when the talks were on. Then in the evening was the debate with the Christian Union. As of course we were always going to, we lost of the vote, but most people seemed to be saying that if they weren’t voting just because they were CU and not A-Soc (of which we had around 5 members there lol) they thought we put the better debate forward.
Afterwards we headed down to The Old Bar till kick out time and discussed some more theology. Plus it was great to catch up with loads of CU members that I haven’t chatted to in ages.
Friday was a bit down because of the weather but we still got some people in for the talks and continued it throughout the day into the all night debate which went really well. We ended up serving well over 100 hotdogs as well as loads of drinks and biscuits and chatting to lots of people and shifting a lot of leaflets. It was a long day though. Having been up at 8 to finish off some coursework we stopped serving at about 3:30 then finished packing up at 6:30 and then went for breakfast and camped out HSS so we could return the generator. I ended up getting to bed at 9am – 25 hour day.
I slept most of Saturday and then got up in the evening to go to the pub for my dad’s pre-birthday drinks (old people can’t do mid-week drinking sessions so we had to move it to the weekend before). After that I headed to Wendy which was an interesting but short night (I gave up at 1 and went to get some sleep). B made a move on Sarann this time and Norm managed to get photographic evidence too.
All in all, Rationalist Week was a massive success and it’s all down to the amazing amount of work put in by Norm, Rich, Paul, Moz and Claire that the society will be forever indebted to. You guys will be going down in A-Soc history.
Rationalist Week is going so well! Today for our 2pm talk we had a full tent. A full tent! All the seats were taken, standing room only. It’s been getting steadily busier as the week has gone on and more and more people are coming down for some good old fashioned debate as well as some free biscuits of course :).
It’s doing a lot for the society too. We finished an entire membership booklet today! I had to run up to the Arc and pick up a new one just so we could continue to sign people up. We also have a lot of what has been done on camera so we will have able to make an excellent freshers intro video for next year, it’s amazing how it’s all clicking into place.
What is most amazing is how well it has pulled the society together. Norm has been absolutely indespensible and it’s safe to say the week couldn’t have happened without him. Rich, Paul, Moz and Claire have also invested lots of time too, not to mention everyone who has just come and sat round and joined in the debates.
After the week is over I look forward to building on the fantastic success that the week has brought to the society. Let’s just hope the success of the week continues for the remaining few days!
Sunday was setup day. We got the tents up without much problems and managed to test things without a hitch and indeed the generator actually ran which was awesome. Indeed worryingly few things went wrong. Not that everything went perfect, I lost a microphone clip (which I’ve now found) and we had some problems getting the generator to output power until we realised it was and we just couldn’t see that the LEDs were actually on.
Monday was an interesting daym the generator failed on us so we couldn’t do much although we got both of the talks done and got quite a few interesting people through. We also signed up another three people to the society. Then in the evening we headed to The Old Bar and then onto Bondi but that is a story for a seperate post.
Tuesday we were supposed to get a replacement generator – it never arrived. We’ve been promised it tomorrow. Signed up another two society members and got a big debate going – Rich’s talk on evolution went down really well and sparked a long debate of which we have about an hour of on video. The Beauty in Atheism talk didn’t get done in the end as I didn’t feel it was worth doing given the audience size and lack of a PA system to project it to people outside the tent. I have my big Why There Is Almost Certainly No God speech in like an hour. Eeppp.
Happy Gilmore on DVD for £2.97 – that is what I’m talking about.
Anyway, yeah, I made it! Came down ill that day and only just hauled my ass into work but I got through it eventually. Long night though, didn’t start feeling alright until I had finished work and I’m still not feeling great now. Now I just have to survive till payday.
It’s here! Yay!
Before I start, yeah! I well only have one more close to do. Tomorrow is day nine baby. Then the real world begins lol. Anyway yeah, back to my story, it’s here! My PA system has finally arrived. I only had a very brief period to set it up and play with it but it’s awesome. I woke up this morning (late) to find it filling up most of my hallway. Photos will follow once I can get decent ones but at the moment it’s all crammed in my room so I have no floor space left.
The speakers are massive, probably bigger than the ones I ordered (they upgraded me to these for free because they couldn’t get hold of the ones I wanted), it seems to go fairly loud though my dad was dubious (this was with 4 of the 6 volume settings on like 50% though so it can go a lot louder than what we got it). It sucks that it’s 4am now as I can’t really start belting out music on them :D.
I got dragged away from playing with the kid to go back to uni though. I had to meet Paul who delivered some more stuff before I headed off to Roger Stevens to plaster every single lecture theatre and then headed down to media services to pick up the posters which was a bit worrying when they couldn’t find them but I was later informed that Claire had already picked them up.
Work was a fairly late one tonight, we got out at like 2:45 and headed down to Tesco. I really miss the post-work Tesco visits, I probably won’t get another one for a while given that they aren’t open Saturday or Sunday nights which is the shifts I work during term time. Anyways, I need to sleep so I can get up early, pick up the generator and fiddle around with the kit for a few hours before heading off for my final shift of Easter. So long.
Last night we had four closers rather than the usual week day. A benefit perhaps until you see who the closers actually were. Hence why we clocked out at 3. Fun.
It’s starting to kick a bit now. I drank a litre of Red Bull last night. That can’t be healthy. Only two more days to go though. Then the real work starts :p.
I thought tonight was going to be an early night. Guess I was wrong about that, it’s 5:30, I’m only half an hour away from going to bed the same time as last night.
Back at work again, it was well dead tonight but then we had no staff so it all worked out. By 7:30 we had only one person on who wasn’t part of the fairly small closing team after James Peat decided not to come in (or you know, let us know he wouldn’t be). Afterwards we ended up at Tesco having another rather deep conversation, or at least as deep as they get at The D. Found out some interesting stuff too.
“Push harder,” Sarann begs. George moans.
I am of course describing the actions of George pushing Sarann’s trolley round Tesco.
A day off seems a novelty at the moment though while I’m only working for a slightly extended two weeks it feels like a long time. I spent a good bit of time sleeping even after getting woken up at 9am by HSS and headed over to the A-Soc meeting. Afterwards we went to Pepperann’s for dinner which was cool as I’ve eaten nothing but D meals for like a week.
Once most people had cleared out and we were clearing up we ended up on the subject of food and decided to take a trip to Tesco given I had been planning to make use of the 24 hour opening anyway. So at 3am we hit Tesco Seacroft. They do major restocking on a night at that Tesco (more so than Tesco Garforth which I went to tonight) so it’s a bit of an obsticle course. I walked out with another 4 litres of Red Bull which should keep me going a while given I walked out with two litres a few days before that.
It was one of those evenings where you have really good talks with people. I don’t know whether it was because we haven’t seen each other that much over Easter or whether it was just generally one of those nights but I had some quality discussion with Sarann and George which was ace.
I found a place so safe, not a single tear
The first time in my life and now it’s so clear
Feel calm I belong, I’m so happy here
It’s so strong and now I let myself be sincere
I wouldn’t change a thing about it
This is the best feeling
Why am I still alone? Is it because my 80’s rock legend hair is unappealing to everyone other than myself? Is it because I work at The D? Is it because I’m a New Atheist? Is it because my holier than thou attitude leads me to turn down those that are interested in me? These are all great reasons.
Somehow, it doesn’t seem to make it fair though. Relating back to my earlier post I think it’s rubbing it in that I’m spending my time driving around in a big family car and parking it at my big family house.
Emo rant over. 4th close in a row tonight. I ended up doing dive for the first time in quite a while and while we were fairly dead we didn’t get out until 2:24 due to people not being particularly focused and we only got out then because we decided we were done and clocked out, much to the annoyance of Gary it seemed but there is more to it than that, details which I’m not going ro discuss here but ask me if for some reason you are interested (other than if you work there I can’t see why).
Need to be up at a decent time tomorrow for the final Rationalist Week planning meeting before the week itself. The PA system is still not on its way and it’s suddenly dawned on me I have less than a week to sort out 9 speeches. On top of that Debate Soc may be pulling out of the debate and HSS haven’t called me to sort out the generator. Add to all this my impending coursework deadlines and another marathon line-up of shirts starting after my day off, oh I also need to race over to uni to pick the posters up from Media Services on Friday which is a complete mission with the slip roads closed and I haven’t really spoken to Claire about all the plans because she’s in Japan. You’ve gotta love it.