Fresher'[1]s fair.

[jack]

Due to "being asked complicated choice tree questions at the last minute" I left work for the fresher's fair a bit late. The journey I think would be filmed as a parody of old films with chases through cardboard sets. Benny-Hill-esque background chase music. I wouldn't be on my real bike, it'd show something with mini wheels and my legs pedalling at 10x real speed to show haste. It would cut between shots of me, obviously pedalling in front of a blue screen, to scenes of road chaos and rush hours. Two large cardboards lorries would be shown veering together and then apart, nearly squishing a little model of me.

Then I got to KK[2], went in the stallholder's entrace -- again no-one checked who I was, though I'm assured they do sometimes -- skipped up the stairs, and trawled the room for naath and eni silhouettes. Then I stand for an hour repeatedly offering people fliers.

I wander take a break to wander round the fair and see who else I know and what might be interesting.

* Almost of poohsoc all doing different stands.
* A giant LARP-treasure-trap-diplomacy-assassins-cusfs-jomsburg collective of half a dozen stalls.
* I am invited to join larp by the only guy on the stall I don't know.
* People in corsets and bikinis and who stroke my hair wander past to (a) be ironic at shows that spice the episode up a bit with that sort of thing and (b) to spice the episode up a bit
* The *conservative* party are wearing bikinis. Fair enough, but somehow it doesn't seem to stand for the sort of things I thought they were supposed to champion.
* A row of a dozen christian societies, a few christian music societies, and a lone "Christians in Unity in Cambridge" stall on the end.
* A girl from the amnesty stall I exchanged fliers with *last* year as well. She promised to come to poohsoc at last. I promise to go back to amnesty more.

People keep jumping out at me. It's a strange sort of flirtation. I glance at the stall, eyes go to fliers, posters, paraphenalia, and briefly stall-holder's faces in case I know them, and they (or we) pounce and make eye contact and ask "Why *don't* you want to join Canoe Club/Pro-Life/Officer's Training" :)

All in all though it was laid out fairly well. There was much grouping of societies in fairly logical ways, like sports societies in the side rooms -- this makes sense, you know whether you want to go first or last, you don't think "Well, I'll just do the main hall, there won't be anything interesting there". Xians and other religions together. Sciency things together. Advertising people together.

Of course, there's some orphans. OTOH, on the whole, I'm sure there were fewer stalls than last year, you could *nearly* walk down the aisles.

[1] Hey, another optional apostrophe!
[2] Kelsey Kerridge sports centre. Despite my haircut, I am no KKK.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I got some pictures of the gun the OTC recruiters had outside on PP... Though I was annoyed to notice that I'd done more than half my lunchtime photographic meander at ISO 1600, which wasn't at all necessary in the conditions. Hopefuly they won't look too noisy when scaled down a little though.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah. I came straight from scipark, so missed everything on PP :(

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Gun. WTF?

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I like the way they have all the religion stalls in one place. I walked into one end, assumed an expression of abject horror when I realised where I was and walked out again, and nobody religious bothered me again, except ISoc who were at the other end and hadn't seen the first time.

I also got yelled at by everybody on the LBGT stall when I walked past and didn't hear them sedately saying hello. Good thing I'm not easily embarrassed.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Of course, I know lots of people inclined to man those stalls, so go to see who I know if nothing else.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

The role of 'pushiest bastards' previously occupied by CICCU seems to have been taken over by the Union Society, formerly known as The Union [aka ho ho let's see how many new students we can trick this year], who posted people to stand right in the doorway and let everybody smack into them before they can get to the rest of the fair. And a casino employing the same tactic, to whom I should have donated my ice cream in liquid mess form.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

And the point I was going to make was, that's clearly your friends who've improved the religious bunch, that is.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, right. Yes, the religious people I know tend to be lovely, I don't know.

For myself I'm almost less bothered by the Union, because I know who they are, and can nod "no thanks" quickly and move on. The awkward ones are when I'm gazing at the stall trying to figure it out, but don't want to get anyone's hopes up.

The casino was random. "Do you want to play poker with people you don't know?" As a policy, no, actually :)

naath and eni silhouettes

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I was trying to take a Naath silhouette the other evening actually, though the result wasn't particularly great.

Re: naath and eni silhouettes

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL.