So, off I headed to Shoreditch yesterday evening. (Perfect location for it, full of hipsters.) Bus as usual - you'd have to take one at least part of the way, anyway. Google Maps (when it finally decided) sent me up to Oxford Street to catch it - via a tangle of backstreets that I'm just getting used to navigating. Nothing like practice..
I had a choice - ended up on the 25. Eventually got off at Adler Street, back, and next right up Brick Lane - my, it's an age since I'd been here! Can't remember whether that Indian arch was there the last time.. anyway, probably because it was a Monday, I was nearly at the venue before I was invited to try someone's restaurant!
Good thing I was here before - Cafe 1001 is a little tricky to find, since you can't see it from the street. Signs at the venue itself were helpful, though - and this time, the person checking names was all the way inside, so those signs were needed. Oh, and it seems that since I was last at a Funzing talk, they've come up with loyalty cards - he asked me whether I'd been to a talk before, I said yes, and he asked whether I could remember the name of the talk. "Eh, Fly First Class for Free"? I've been to more than that, but couldn't remember off the top of my head. Anyway, this earned me an extra stamp, and when I have three, I can have the fourth talk for free.. whee.. now, how that works with booking online, I'm not sure. Maybe you have to buy your ticket at the door!
I really don't like this venue. It's deliberately grungy - which is ok, but the seating is eclectic, and mostly consists of stools and converted boxes with no backs. By the time I'd got a drink, it was 10 minutes to start time, and the place was packed. I ended up with a stool, near the back of the room, with a huge pillar right in the middle of my view of the screen. Well, what can you do? Meantime, I noticed vouchers scattered about - picked one up. WELLBEING30 gets you 30% off for 45 days (44 now, I guess). I see they have the EnjoyFunzing10 code on the website again too, for 10% off for a limited time - really, they inundate you with these codes.
Well now. This talk is, of course, about psychedelics. And it's given by someone who knows his stuff - senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Greenwich. As the talk progresses, you discover just how much he knows about it - lacking test subjects for one experiment, he just tested himself.. 20 times.. Now, it's a fascinating subject, but just thinking about the structure of the talk, he'd have been advised to get into the juicy stuff earlier. He does eventually, but the very beginning is a bit dry. After all, this was a non-academic audience.
Some interesting topics are raised. He describes the effect of psychedelic drugs as a decrease in "convergent" thinking (the ability to perform everyday tasks), but an increase in interconnectivity and "divergent" (creative) thinking. And he has the stats to back him up - although (for you statisticians out there), I had to chuckle at some of the p-values he's finding statistically significant - but then, social scientists have more relaxed standards than, say, physicists. (And some of the p-values, even physicists would be happy with!)
He speaks at length about South American tribes, with their drug-inspired art - he's spent a lot of time out there. During the Q+A afterwards, he was rather coy when asked what his list of best drugs was - but a lot of mention was made of DMT, although he explained that even that has three different variants, and the effect is different with each drug anyway, so he didn't want to compare. (If you're looking for its natural origin, the Amazonian indigenous peoples apparently get it from something called ayahuasca - which he mentioned usually made him throw up..) Someone at the back brought up the thorny issue of a couple of people he knew who committed suicide on the effects of psychedelics - about which the speaker was duly respectful, but did point out that that is quite rare, and probably indicates an underlying propensity for psychological problems.
Yeah, interesting talk, for sure. Oh, and I did sympathise when - after someone had finished drying their hands, having used the toilet - he thanked them. When the dryer finally stopped, you see - it's ridiculously loud, and drowns out whatever's happening in the bar / talk area. That was the only time it happened.. This talk is repeated on 3 April, if you're interested. Afterwards I headed straight home -
Google Maps had told me "Stop E" but it was actually Stop D, as I discovered - where a whole host of buses would take me home. I decided to get on one to Tottenham Court Road, so I could swing by the shops and grab something to eat - the bus ended up terminating just shy of there, but no biggie.
Tonight, I'm with London European Club (LEC) for Carradine's Cockney Singalong, at Hoxton Hall. Had some fun with this a few weeks ago, when I noticed another group member had confused it with something at a different venue, and thought it wasn't now happening..
Tomorrow, I'm headed with LEC again - with a different organiser - to see 2 Cellos in concert in the London Palladium. Cool - never seen them before, never been there before, and I can probably walk there! Unfortunately, I heard a couple of days ago that it's one of those steep venues.. oo-er, I'll just have to manage somehow.
Thursday was another Funzing talk, with the same three groups, on The Science of Hypnosis. And then, wouldn't you know it, Henning from the LEC advertised.. Hypnosis - Altering Consciousness! With Pint of Science. (What is it about that day and hypnosis?!) Anyway, I do enjoy events with Henning, and I can cancel Funzing up to 48 hours in advance without penalty. So I did, and booked the other instead. And then it's back to Ireland for the weekend again.. Not sure what I'm doing next week, as someone in our team at work is visiting from another office, and we might be doing something with her. Watch this space..
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