Hey there Sinisterites, As my little old camera went to heaven a few weeks ago and I haven’t got around to getting a new one yet so this ‘ink polaroid’ will be text only - use your imagination! It tells you a little of what I get up to during the weekend.... VSO TODAY The major part of my weekend was going to the VSO Today - Northern region conference in Manchester. Many of you won’t know what VSO is - it’s a charity that is involved in international development - it aims to reduce poverty, improving quality of life through using skilled volunteers. Anyway, the conference was all about where the charity is going in the future, a time for us supporters and volunteers to have our say in forums etc. There were lots of really informative workshops on during the day including ones on asylum seekers, HIV/Aids, using the media to promote the work we do etc...... So what is my involvement with the charity? Well, I’m going on one of their youth schemes after I graduate from uni. in the summer. Whilst their main scheme wants people with at least two years experience in their profession, the beauty of the youth scheme is that it gives young people a chance to get experience of international development work before they go in to their profession. In my case that will be environmental engineering. I have to sort out my own project for next year and I’m at the very early stages of sorting this out so I don’t know where I’m going or exactly what my project is yet but is going to be in the sanitation /environmental engineering/education sort of field. Many hours are going to be spent in my local development education centre using the resources there to sort myself out. CHINESE NEW YEAR IN CHINATOWN... After the conference a few of us went into Manchester’s Chinatown for a very lovely meal in ‘The New Emperor’. The food was lovely. Warning - the starters are large - they could almost constitute a main course in themselves... The decorations were lovely in the whole area - it was heaving with people and the atmosphere was really cool - this was only quite early in the evening as all of us needed to get trains do our own thing..... ....I went to visit an old friend from my ‘Year in Industry’ - I haven’t seen much of him since he came back from his year in Japan..... DANCING TO ECLECTIC TYPES OF MUSIC.... Well, it was Offbeat’s 6th Birthday night on Friday and I was there bopping away to indiepoppunk music and eating cake - mmmm. For the first time ever I actually left early - not because it was bad - no way! I got a message on my mobile saying that an old housemate had made an impromptu visit back to Sheffield. By this point Offbeat had long sold out so I had to go.... I ended up at Urban Gorilla, which is a breakbeats night - two extremes or what?! Yes, I did get some dancing action here too although not as much as at Offbeat. Whilst I do like some breakbeat music it is in a bit of a sparse manner. SPORTS SHENANIGANS... Sadly the only exercise I got this weekend involved walking around streets and dancing as opposed to more hardcore winter walking, kayaking, my usual yoga routine etc. This is because I fell down the stairs a couple of weeks ago and bruised my coccyx - I would like to point out that I was not drunk it also means I’m not getting any either (sorry for lowering the tone). Thanks to Brian for pointing out my Freudian slip when spelling aforementioned body part in an email to him. It all goes back to those biology lessons so long ago when you spell it incorrectly once your brain sometimes slips back into it! Don’t worry - here comes the signing off bit.... Well anyway, I’m enjoying finding out more about what you all get up to over weekends. I have to admit it isn’t often I get chance to read all the posts (which is why I hardly ever post myself). I’m using them as short revision breaks when I’m doing some of my work on the computer! Take care all.... ...Amy (There are several Amy’s in Sheffield so I’ve been asked to clarify that I have quite large curly fair hair) P.S. Plug/List Abuse: - If you are interested in finding more about VSO other than what I have said you are all net wise so go to: - http://www.vso.org.uk ....any nurses, social workers, mechanics, engineers, teachers, the list goes on ...... out there - you are needed!!!!!! P.P.S. If anyone has any tips on breaking up the message without using rich text (thus not being allowed by Honey's computer then please let me know! _________________________________________________________________ It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! http://messenger.msn.co.uk +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. 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