Extras: Wine Tasting and Speed Dating

Hey guys, just a quick treat for you now as I’ve had a little help in getting reviews for things I didn’t attend myself last Thursday evening and Monday of this week.

Nick Townsend is a 2nd year BA Hons Journalism student and here are his reviews for Wine Tasting and Speed Dating.

 

“We want the finest wines available to humanity” demands Richard E. Grant’s title character in the student cult classic, ‘Withnail & I’.

 

For the participants of the wine tasting class though, they had to make do with the finest wines available to Co-Ops limited range of discount bottles. Maybe not humanity, but humane in the sense that the bottles of red and white were all Fair Trade.

 

I reasoned with the ‘Give It A Go’ volunteers that my lack of ID shouldn’t forbid me from participating (as I am and look 23!), by arguing the case ‘real wine tasters don’t swallow.’

 

As participants sat down, moderator and wine connoisseur Helen Gittins spoke of much wine varies throughout the world and how subtle the differences can be and how the qualities of the samples are judged and determined are set by parameters.

 

Using standards such as smell, taste, transparency and fluid density (referred to as leg) students were encouraged to guess the hidden ingredients inside each brand with a free bottle offered to those with the correct answer.

 

The samples of wine given ranged from the vineyards of South Africa, Argentina and France. By the end of the evening participants ranging from the non-regular wine drinkers to the fully fledged oenophile, were able to appreciate the process of wine production with a deeper understanding of its geographical origin…or maybe they’d just found out how much they could drink for their £2.50 admission!

 

 

 

The speed dating had the biggest turnout for a paid event on ‘Give It A Go’ with nearly a hundred participants in total.

 

The event invited a large spectrum of personalities to meet, befriend and woo members of the opposite sex within 3 minutes. This is the true acid test of the dating game. Attempting to sell yourself (personality wise that is!) in 180 seconds proved difficult for some but effortless for others.

 

Myself a participant – I began to tire of the same introduction patter of “Where are you from?” and “What are you studying”. To avoid this déjà vu of Freshers’ Week, I began to throw other questions within my intro such as, “What’s your favourite dirty joke?” or “Is the fact we’re both here an act of desperation or proof we want to meet other outgoing people?”

 

There was an American girl there who seemed more relaxed about the event than all the other participants, who I’m sure didn’t feel like she was just ‘giving it a go’ as her culture practically invented the format of speed dating.

 

Whilst the girls complained there were too many frogs and not enough princes (many also suspiciously claiming they were there just to offer support to a friend) the only objection from the boys was that the room was too dimly lit making the event seem overly romanticised. I even overheard one boy say during a break, “I won’t find my future wife here, but there’s plenty of totty!”

 

And who says romance isn’t dead?!

 

Now if any of you are currently thinking, “I’d like to have my review up on there” then send it into pfeatures@uclan.ac.uk and I’ll get it up on here too.

I’ll be posting up yesterday and today’s events in about half an hour, but for now, thanks to Nick and I’ll be back soon.

Em. x

Day Four: Chinese Language

Hey I’m back again, slightly sooner than expected, but still I thought I might as well let you know about today’s events.

The only activity I’m attending today is the Chinese Language Masterclass. Unfortunately, the Rugby 7’s and the Preston Cycling trip clashed with a lecture and I won’t be at the Wine Tasting as I’m off the SU Media Meeting, and I hope to see a few of you there too!

Right then, back to Chinese. Well, I’m glad to say that unlike Arabic, I managed to catch all of the class and unlike Arabic, Chinese looked slightly easier to pick up.

Firstly, we learnt that there are five different tones, which can alter the meanings of certain words. A – above the word means it’s flat, / is up, V is up then down, \ is up and nothing at all means it’s neutral. This is a pretty important point to learn because it really makes a difference with how you pronounce things, but apart from that the language is pretty straight forward.

Of course there are some letters that are pronounced differently and the word order of phrases is different, but to actual pronounce words is much easier than other languages.

This not to say that it was easy, trust me, it takes a while to work out which tones goes where and that’s before you look at the writing, which I’m glad to say we didn’t go anywhere near, but we learnt the basics and it certainly gave me a taste for more.

Along with basic polite introductions, learning how to count and order food, we also went on to learn some words from the Beijing Olympics, which was really interesting.

Sadly, the tutor left too soon for me to get an interview and I didn’t catch her name, but if I do I’ll post it up.

Right well that’s it for now. I’m popping all the photos up tonight and will work on the interviews tomorrow so keep an eye out and tomorrow I’m covering Futsal, Random Acts of Kindness, Getting Yourself Published and the Abseil so see you there.

Take care, night! x