Earlier I went to Serendipity (which I continue to misspell) with Cathryn and Naomi then met up with Stef and briefly Bailey and Jackie. This isn't for those of you who went since I can't describe all of the chaos but only remind you of it. This is for those back in the States. Or it could be a teaser or warning for anyone going tomorrow. I have no idea who will actually read this, so if anything it could just be for my own later recollections.
Serendipity was in Maes Glas between 11 and 15 (3pm) today and will be again tomorrow. It is spread between two basketball courts and a hallway connecting the two. It is where students go to learn about the fifty-five clubs and societies at Bangor Uni. Clubs are more physical activities and societies are academic or social, but when I say clubs I mean either.
This was my understanding of it before going, but they failed to mention the crowd, the noise, the odor and temptations. What Serendipity really is is twenty-five or thirty clubs packed into one gym, each with their own table, each with two to three members or supervisors manning the tables, another member walking around jerking you aside and pointing you towards their table, and about three hundred students overwhelmed by all the pictures, pamphlets and demonstrations so they can't move faster than a land tortoise.
Serendipity is really a chance for clubs to entice you into joining. The Mountain Walkers Clubs had pictures from last year of their members posing on top of mountains, straddling ravines and looking like typical badasses. Most clubs had pictures of some sort.
The Canoeing club also did this, but at their table they also had a very attractive girl in a wet suit. Wet suits are form fitting, and she had form to fit. But they weren't the only ones using sex appeal. The Bangor Uni Women's Hockey Club had a calendar of their last year members. Most of the members were naked with only a hand-bra or their bodies pressed to the grass. I nearly signed up right there as an equipment manager. (It did make me wonder who they were trying to attract, since the majority of who they did attract couldn't sign up for the same reason as me. Maybe they figured lesbians would play better hockey.)
The basketball and Gaelic football* and pretty much every other club with an attractive woman in it had her working the table. Sometimes she didn't even do the talking, but she just sat there and smiled. The solid rule of advertisement is just as prevalent here as in America. Sex Sells.
Some of the clubs used humor to pull you in. I can't say for sure that this was the club, but there seemed to be a "Mascots club." That's what I'll call it. They dress up like the guys at Disney World, or as their favorite team mascots or just a cute animal like a penguin and walk around harassing folks. It was always to the amusement of the crowd.
The Ultimate Frisbee club had chocolate (white and milk) frisbees with sprinkles on them and taking one meant you had to check out their booths. Some athletic clubs were there in full uniform and looked quite intimidating and cool, like the American Football guys. We later saw them play in a field and not one of them could catch or throw better than me. I think five of our Americans joined the club, so they'll have a better than usual team I guess. One club had a beach volleyball bouncing around the gym. Other clubs made no effort to grab you, but sat at their table looking friendly (or sometimes awkward) hoping you'll drop by so they can bore you with some trite speech about how you should check out the taster session.
Taster sessions are where you go for a meeting or practice and maybe pay five pounds to rent equipment. Others were free and you could meet the members and potential future members and just see what a great time it would be if you joined that club.
A lot of the clubs were ones you'd see in America. American football, football (soccer), basketball, hockey, literature, music, volunteering, a stress hotline, cooking, first-aid preparedness, mock trial, etc. Other clubs were what you'd expect from the UK. There was fencing, rugby, Gaelic football*, historical re-enactment (similar to our civil war re-enactors except with swords, halberds, armor and the mindset to enjoy the brutality of the battle without necessarily remaining historically accurate) and there was some sort of polo club. Whether this was regular polo or water polo, I can't say but I don't think it was a club for guys and girls to gather in their best polo shirts and look like preppy morons.
Some of the clubs you might not expect were Jiu-jitsu, Herpetology (I was dying to show them the xkcd comic), Capoeira, a role-playing war game society, paintballing, air rifle club, DJ society, law, sea angling and others. Here is a full list.
There was plenty of free papers from the clubs, but in the hallway connecting the clubs to the societies were people advertising. They were grown people, people living on their own and certainly not students. There was someone from O2 cellphone company. There were Dominos employee. I got coupons from them for free pizza, and I can't easily use them because I have an American phone. Someone was handing out cook books and measuring spoons. Their only job was to fill your hands and pockets with more crap.
In the other gym were the societies, though I've described them with the athletic clubs. But that gym was a lot quieter. You didn't have to yell at your neighbors to understand them. You still had to talk loudly but it was tame, like the difference between a lion and an ornery house cat. It could've been because there were fewer people or fewer clubs, but I like to think it was because the people were of a higher quality. Typically they let their subject matter interest you instead of using sex appeal, humor or candy. But the Herpetology society did have live snakes that Naomi sped by and so she nearly missed her Psychology society's table. Stef actually ran by the snakes.
I got separated from the group twice. That's when I found my clubs. I joined boxing and then the creative writing magazine Pulp--formerly called Inkwell. I spent some time talking to members of each. The boxer said he was a beginner too and was quite excited that I was American. He was so excited he told the other boxer then told his coach. I imagine if he had his phone handy, he'd have called his mother and introduced me to her.
On my second venture away from the group, I met the Pulp prose editor. I'll probably be getting to know her, for better or worse, over the next few months. If she respects my brilliance or is brilliant herself, we'll get along just fine. But we might be bonding over the bloody corpse of my latest draft. (That metaphor reminds me of what Art Johnson said during his first massacre of my work, "It's only ink, not blood.")
I didn't notice it at first and I'll attribute that to the noise in the gym, but Pulp later sent me an email and I suspect she was the author of it. I had sent one the night before where I asked if being an American exchange student somehow disqualified me from submitting. She replied telling me just the opposite. That I was more than welcome and that I'd be right at home since there were two or three staffers who were also American, herself included. Now I don't know the prose editor's name or the name of whoever sent the email, but I think they're the same person.
Then I salmoned (I want to coin this verb) my way through the crowd until I found Cathryn, Naomi or Stef.
My first boxing practice is tomorrow at 9 pm. I'll probably run in the morning. I know that one morning run can't undo the past 20 days of lazy behavior but it can help, right? And I hiked three mountains at the Pentland Hills, biked across the Aran Island Inis More and have been going up and down hills every time I go to the grocery store, so I haven't been a complete sloth.
*Gaelic Football. Cathryn explained this to me in the crowded, noisy gym and it was explained to her only seconds before in the same environment so something might've been lost in translation. Gaelic Football is a combination of volleyball, football, basketball and rugby. I don't know how it works either. Google it. Also the girl at the table was cute and mute (for my duration there).
Serendipity was in Maes Glas between 11 and 15 (3pm) today and will be again tomorrow. It is spread between two basketball courts and a hallway connecting the two. It is where students go to learn about the fifty-five clubs and societies at Bangor Uni. Clubs are more physical activities and societies are academic or social, but when I say clubs I mean either.
This was my understanding of it before going, but they failed to mention the crowd, the noise, the odor and temptations. What Serendipity really is is twenty-five or thirty clubs packed into one gym, each with their own table, each with two to three members or supervisors manning the tables, another member walking around jerking you aside and pointing you towards their table, and about three hundred students overwhelmed by all the pictures, pamphlets and demonstrations so they can't move faster than a land tortoise.
Serendipity is really a chance for clubs to entice you into joining. The Mountain Walkers Clubs had pictures from last year of their members posing on top of mountains, straddling ravines and looking like typical badasses. Most clubs had pictures of some sort.
The Canoeing club also did this, but at their table they also had a very attractive girl in a wet suit. Wet suits are form fitting, and she had form to fit. But they weren't the only ones using sex appeal. The Bangor Uni Women's Hockey Club had a calendar of their last year members. Most of the members were naked with only a hand-bra or their bodies pressed to the grass. I nearly signed up right there as an equipment manager. (It did make me wonder who they were trying to attract, since the majority of who they did attract couldn't sign up for the same reason as me. Maybe they figured lesbians would play better hockey.)
The basketball and Gaelic football* and pretty much every other club with an attractive woman in it had her working the table. Sometimes she didn't even do the talking, but she just sat there and smiled. The solid rule of advertisement is just as prevalent here as in America. Sex Sells.
Some of the clubs used humor to pull you in. I can't say for sure that this was the club, but there seemed to be a "Mascots club." That's what I'll call it. They dress up like the guys at Disney World, or as their favorite team mascots or just a cute animal like a penguin and walk around harassing folks. It was always to the amusement of the crowd.
The Ultimate Frisbee club had chocolate (white and milk) frisbees with sprinkles on them and taking one meant you had to check out their booths. Some athletic clubs were there in full uniform and looked quite intimidating and cool, like the American Football guys. We later saw them play in a field and not one of them could catch or throw better than me. I think five of our Americans joined the club, so they'll have a better than usual team I guess. One club had a beach volleyball bouncing around the gym. Other clubs made no effort to grab you, but sat at their table looking friendly (or sometimes awkward) hoping you'll drop by so they can bore you with some trite speech about how you should check out the taster session.
Taster sessions are where you go for a meeting or practice and maybe pay five pounds to rent equipment. Others were free and you could meet the members and potential future members and just see what a great time it would be if you joined that club.
A lot of the clubs were ones you'd see in America. American football, football (soccer), basketball, hockey, literature, music, volunteering, a stress hotline, cooking, first-aid preparedness, mock trial, etc. Other clubs were what you'd expect from the UK. There was fencing, rugby, Gaelic football*, historical re-enactment (similar to our civil war re-enactors except with swords, halberds, armor and the mindset to enjoy the brutality of the battle without necessarily remaining historically accurate) and there was some sort of polo club. Whether this was regular polo or water polo, I can't say but I don't think it was a club for guys and girls to gather in their best polo shirts and look like preppy morons.
Some of the clubs you might not expect were Jiu-jitsu, Herpetology (I was dying to show them the xkcd comic), Capoeira, a role-playing war game society, paintballing, air rifle club, DJ society, law, sea angling and others. Here is a full list.
There was plenty of free papers from the clubs, but in the hallway connecting the clubs to the societies were people advertising. They were grown people, people living on their own and certainly not students. There was someone from O2 cellphone company. There were Dominos employee. I got coupons from them for free pizza, and I can't easily use them because I have an American phone. Someone was handing out cook books and measuring spoons. Their only job was to fill your hands and pockets with more crap.
In the other gym were the societies, though I've described them with the athletic clubs. But that gym was a lot quieter. You didn't have to yell at your neighbors to understand them. You still had to talk loudly but it was tame, like the difference between a lion and an ornery house cat. It could've been because there were fewer people or fewer clubs, but I like to think it was because the people were of a higher quality. Typically they let their subject matter interest you instead of using sex appeal, humor or candy. But the Herpetology society did have live snakes that Naomi sped by and so she nearly missed her Psychology society's table. Stef actually ran by the snakes.
I got separated from the group twice. That's when I found my clubs. I joined boxing and then the creative writing magazine Pulp--formerly called Inkwell. I spent some time talking to members of each. The boxer said he was a beginner too and was quite excited that I was American. He was so excited he told the other boxer then told his coach. I imagine if he had his phone handy, he'd have called his mother and introduced me to her.
On my second venture away from the group, I met the Pulp prose editor. I'll probably be getting to know her, for better or worse, over the next few months. If she respects my brilliance or is brilliant herself, we'll get along just fine. But we might be bonding over the bloody corpse of my latest draft. (That metaphor reminds me of what Art Johnson said during his first massacre of my work, "It's only ink, not blood.")
I didn't notice it at first and I'll attribute that to the noise in the gym, but Pulp later sent me an email and I suspect she was the author of it. I had sent one the night before where I asked if being an American exchange student somehow disqualified me from submitting. She replied telling me just the opposite. That I was more than welcome and that I'd be right at home since there were two or three staffers who were also American, herself included. Now I don't know the prose editor's name or the name of whoever sent the email, but I think they're the same person.
Then I salmoned (I want to coin this verb) my way through the crowd until I found Cathryn, Naomi or Stef.
My first boxing practice is tomorrow at 9 pm. I'll probably run in the morning. I know that one morning run can't undo the past 20 days of lazy behavior but it can help, right? And I hiked three mountains at the Pentland Hills, biked across the Aran Island Inis More and have been going up and down hills every time I go to the grocery store, so I haven't been a complete sloth.
*Gaelic Football. Cathryn explained this to me in the crowded, noisy gym and it was explained to her only seconds before in the same environment so something might've been lost in translation. Gaelic Football is a combination of volleyball, football, basketball and rugby. I don't know how it works either. Google it. Also the girl at the table was cute and mute (for my duration there).
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