Day: 20 November 2011

Poll: On the first date who pays?

On the first date, who pays? My Qriously poll

For those who can’t read the poll, 100 people answered from around the world via Qriously the question of who should pay on the first date? Something I talked at length about before.

60% said the man should pay on the first date, 27% said the woman and only 13% said go dutch (thinking I should have put split it instead of go Dutch, to avoid any language misunderstanding). Yes the man should pay is the number one option but what totally surprises me is the small amount of votes for going dutch?

I didn’t tweet the poll and to be honest I forgot to change it because it was meant to be part of the Leeds ignite talk I was going to give on the 15th November. This has now been put back to early next year…

The Insight…
60% (60) people are in favour of The Man (Top Geographies are United States, United Kingdom, India)
13% (13) people are in favour of Go Dutch (Top Geographies are United States, Thailand, India)
27% (27) people are in favour of The Woman (Top Geographies are United States, Spain, Chile)
The poll was answered by 46% Female and 54% Male and the average sentiment is strongly towards The Man
There was 100 Answers and 2,963 Views over only 18mins uptime, not bad for a first time without any additional push from myself.
I will run it again during my talk at Leeds Ignite and change the “go dutch” note and focus it on just the UK and maybe Europe?

 

 

The Circus House in Ancoats

Theres quite a bit of things happening to the retail park right next to New Islington… But someone clued me into a new venture called the circus house which started just 2 days ago.

The Circus house is the embodied dream of Owen, Alex and Sian; three Circus performers with 10 years teaching experience. One day whilst having a moan about the lack of circus training space in Manchester a light clicked on….and The Circus House was born.

The Circus House is a Community Interest Company – all profits go back into the company to buy new equipment, produce shows and pay for top quality professionals to come and share their skills.

Anyone is welcome from beginners to professionals looking to train daily, and anybody in the middle too! There will be weekly classes, one off master classes, free training and space hire.

We aim to be affordable and to offer storage space for equipment. To run inclusion classes and to reach out to not only the circus community but the wider communities of Manchester —and beyond!

Of course I’ll be checking it out very soon, because frankly all the other circus skills places are in south Manchester

The secret of luck or the richness of life?

derren brown

Derren Brown isn’t a household name outside the UK, no idea why… but he recently did a excellent show in the conclusion to his experiments series…

In the show he slowly convinces a town that a statute in a local public garden it might be lucky. Through a series of other activities and press attention, people start touching the statute more and more over the months. But where it gets interesting is when he tries to find a person who by the end of the show will bet a huge amount of money on a roll of a dice. So convinced he might just be lucky.

What Derren is proving is the power of the mind… Something I’ve seen long understood from my time in hospital and afterwards. To be honest it was one of Derren’s best ever shows and something I love about his style… Unravelling some of the more complex mysteries of life.

The secret to luck is opportunity…

If you take the opportunities you will make more human connections, gain more experience and feel more lucky… (Roughly)

Its something I’ve become very versed in recently.

Opportunities are there for the taking… When you understand this, your world is your oyster.

I was trying to explain this blog entry on the train to Tim Waters who I hopefully didn’t bore to death between Liverpool and Manchester. I used the tale of the Japanese lady on the train story to explain taking opportunities. Its very easy to just stick your headphones in your ears and ignore the world of opportunities which are served up to us everyday… I personally don’t put my earphones in my ears when going to work till I get out the front door of the apartment I live in. Why? Because I’ve had some fascinating conversations in the lift with people (yes and some of them are lovely woman).

For example once I got in the lift and the lift went up a few floors and stopped. Doors open and a woman gets in wearing PJ’s and fluffy sleepers.

It could have been easy to ignore her and stare at the glossy silver lift doors but instead, I couldn’t help myself. “So, sleepers…?” *big grin*. She smiled and said “…well you know their all the rage now…”

There’s plenty more I can say about this but seeing how I’ve had this blog entry open for a good few weeks, I think its best ended with a vague reference to social objects mixed with opportunities…

Maybe luck actually feels like the richness of life…?