Blog: A Nosey Around

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On Tuesday night myself and The Rooms In My Building went to another one of the "Your Neighbourhood Talks" events over at Here East, the COLOSSAL building over on the other side of the Olympic Park (where we live, have I mentioned?) which used to be The Media Centre during the Olympics (which happened here, where I live). We have been to several of these events, partly because it is vital to be an active member of ONE'S COMMUNITY, and also because it is a great way to have a good old nosey around in places you otherwise wouldn't be allowed into.

Getting to Here East is also a good excuse for a stomp across the PARK, which is always a DELIGHT, and we arrived just in time to snaffle the last remains of the BUFFET which they always supply. Last time we went, when it was over at the POOL, we WOLFED down about 17 metric tonnes of sandwiches, but this time we were there a bit later and were disgusted to find that SOMEBODY ELSE had eaten them, leaving us with only a few cakes. The nerve of some people!

The main "marketplace" for the event was inside Plexal, which is one of these co-working areas that are so funky at the moment. I've been to a few of these for WORK purposes and found them to be Quite Swanky and usually full of FREE, DELICIOUS, posh coffee, but this one was something else altogether. They had basically built a LEGO CITY inside a huge futuristic WAREHOUSE, with STREET LIGHTS down the middle and a GRASS area. It was actually quite nice - in such a HUGE space some of the mini-offices were bound to be away from the Actual Windows, so having it in a street like this meant they could have windows INSIDE, looking onto people passing by. The only disadvantage, according to me, would be that you'd probably still need to do some WORK while you were there. For all the fancy trimmings and cool fixtures, I did see quite a lot of fed-up looking IT GUYS scattered around, still glaring at screens at 7.30pm.

The MAIN thing we were there for tho was the TOUR around the UCL ROBOTICS LAB. I was slightly disappointed that this did not involve ACTUAL KILLER ROBOTS, but apart from that it was Quite Interesting. They have built a lecture theatre that is also a classroom, several meeting areas, a viewing platform and a BLACK BOX for Performance Testing, which we roamed around pointing at Innovations. There was also a Mechanical Engineering area which was doing its best to look MODERN but was still very much like the Mechanical Engineering areas I saw at Leicester Poly 17,000 years ago when I would visit Dr N Brown there during our student days i.e. FULL of SOLDERING IRONS. They even had a synthesizer there that someone was repairing!

It was also EERILY QUIET there - the students had not yet returned, and you could FEEL the staff GIRDING themselves for their arrival. I know the feeling - at my own workplace we are currently enjoying the golden period when the STAFF are all in but the STUDENTS have yet to come and mess the place up, which is very inconsiderate. Universities are for STAFF and, very occasionally, concerned local citizens who want to have a nosey around!

posted 20/9/2019 by MJ Hibbett

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