Psychology, Pizza, House Music: this week on Meetup

On the blog this week: A piece on smartphones and memory, something about the government and a tattoo convention. 

Thursday night: I really wanted to run another Psychology Social meetup. I think the topic I’ve picked – a specific book about modern science and traditional eastern practices – hasn’t gone down well as I’ve tried to run it twice and got no RSVPs both times. But who knows. It might pick up over 4 days. I have other ideas. 

Friday night: who fancies free pizza? Meetup group WeRoad are providing at their Taphouse Social event in Circle Square. 

Saturday night: my mate Paul Smith is once again DJing in Ashton’s Nico Ditch for Connect, a night of house music. There’s a meetup too! 

 

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Halina Rice in New Century

Meta – Facebook and Instagram – were determined for me to go to see Halina Rice, a London-based house music producer and DJ. I’d never heard of her until a few months ago when the adverts were popping up continuously. Very electronic tracks accompany trippy, journey-like CGI visuals behind the stage. Rice herself responded to my request of a track ID, which turned out to be the progressive, haunting Terrain. 

A few other of her productions were right up my street, so I put together a meetup on Manchester Nightlife. 

A group of 4 of us – 3 new members – bought tickets early and met in the bar in New Century, then got into the adjoining club for 8pm. 

A strangely early event for a club, but the atmos and music were so on point that you forget what time it is. New Century Hall is a little like if Oldham’s Queen Elizabeth Hall and the old Sankeys Soap nightclub had a baby: 70s retro chic – wood panelling and grids of bulbs mixed with pulsing strobe lights and a raw, dingy club setting. Appropriately, the clientele were of all ages too – some older than me, some younger. 

Halina’s set began at 10 to 9, til close at 11. A great meetup. 

 

 

 

Rainbow Tabbouleh

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Next up in Rukmini Iyer’s The Green Roasting Tin, this blend of roast and salad from the Levantine region of Lebanon and Syria. 

It turned out I had exactly the right amount of bulgar wheat left from previous recipes. Instead of 6 small vine tomatoes, I found a box of Piccolo (cherry) toms. That sufficed. I also bunged in a whole pack of radishes, not just the 6 required. They were all sliced thin anyway so it blended right in. When else would I use them? It for some reason took me 1hr 25, not the 35 mins suggested. Hulling and chopping the radishes was a factor. The pomegranate also took forever to cut open, scoop out, and segregate the white bits. 

Tasted good hot and, later, cold. Wouldn’t say it was a favourite, but that’s veganism (this was actually done in January) and me: I’m doing it for health reasons.

House Music on Friday - Book Now

Friday night sees tech house producer Halina Rice play at New Century, the new music venue in Manchester centre. Manchester Nightlife has a meetup running there. Expect electronic vibes, trippy CGI visuals and your regular warm Manchester house music crowds including, at present, 4 of us from the Meetup group. It’s an early one, starting at 6:30pm. 

We still need a meeting point. Any suggestions?

UFC in Brotherhood

I left that Adopted Family group chat. Not my kind of people, plus have my own group to develop. 

Still haven’t met with the original Manchester Social group that they left. 

Ran my own meetup to Brotherhood bar near the Town Hall, to watch UFC. Taking place in London, this time the main card was on at a reasonable hour and a handful from Manchester Nightlife showed up to watch the fights. Disappointing night for Brits as both Leon Edwards and Molly McCann were beat. The latter retired. Good venue and crowd. Some familiar and new faces from the meetup group. 

In other news, Katrina Bowen from Tucker & Dale vs Evil liked my photo of her.

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I just spent a month learning nunchucks

What are nunchucks? They’re an eastern martial arts weapon predominantly used in kung fu and karate. They’re ‘two sticks (traditionally made of wood), connected to each other at their ends by a short metal chain or a rope. It is approximately 30 cm or 12 inches (sticks) and 2.5 cm or 1 inch (rope). A person who has practiced using this weapon is referred to in Japanese as nunchakuka (ヌンチャク家, nunchakuka).’ - Wiki. 

I guess I’m a nunchakuka now. 

A month ago I explained I was going to practice the basics, and upload a video of the results. I’ve dug out a pair of Decathlon foam covered training nunchucks and spent a month dabbling around with them, following Youtube instruction mostly from Florida-based sensei Matt Pasquillini. 

I’ve learned a few basic moves like the Outer Orbital, Down and Up, the Bruce Lee Triangle, the Hand Pass, Figure 8, Underhand Pass, Deflecting Strike, Rip Roll, Under Arm Catch and a combination of a few of these. I made a demo of the things I learned, in which I predictably forget several of the moves because I for some reason didn’t copy them all down. The ones I missed out are basically warm-up moves. What’s included are the things I needed time to develop. 

Also, I followed a few healthy recipes and did cut out a lot of junk. Went from 78kg to 76.2. Sigh. Fighting cravings, learning and focussing on a new task, learning new recipes… all of these tie into psychology, hence this post goes up on #psychologysaturday. 

An interesting, fun and utterly pointless project. Looks good though.

James Bond Encyclopedia

 

The Name’s Kindersley, Dorling Kindersley. 

Encyclopedia Kings Dorling Kindersley turned their hand to the James Bond franchise in 2007, and in 2023 I found it in a 2nd hand charity shelf in Tesco. I must have started reading it in September at the latest last year and finished it this week. Alongside, I’d been reading other, more compact and physically lighter books that were better for travelling. 

Even so, The James Bond Encyclopedia is a large, weighty investigation into the movie franchise – very pictorial but also hugely expansive and well-researched. 

The book’s broken down into chapters on author Ian Fleming, who Bond is, his style, his role, villains he faced, women, supporting cast, vehicles, weapons & equipment and the movies themselves. 

I’m sure I’ve seen all the Bond movies but there’s so much in the films that I don’t remember, or hadn’t latched onto. It’s also surprising how a huge role in a Bond film doesn’t necessarily pluck an actor from obscurity. After playing the titular Dr No in the original Bond adventure, what did Canadian actor Joseph Wiseman do? Buck Rogers in the 25th Century is the only credit I recognise. So many Bond girls didn’t seem to make a name for themselves either. Shirley Eaton portrayed Jill Masterson in Goldfinger, famously dispatched by asphyxiation through gold paint to the body. Aside from a couple of episodes of the TV show The Saint, her filmography is very short and obscure. Also, did you know Minnie Driver was a talentless singer in Goldeneye? 

A must for Bond fans.

Absolute ‘mare on social media this week.

Was locked out of the Blogger platform so couldn’t blog. No idea why. Just managed to unlock it. Locked out of X on desktop, still works on the phone though. Locked out of Primary Facebook on desktop – I never managed to get on Facebook on my new phone, which I’ve had a few months. It was my plan to blog about moving over to Samsung, too. This A55 is serving me well, unlike my decrepit PC. 

Anyway, I’ve tried going through the verification process, sending my ID to Facebook as asked, but it’s asking me to use an ‘authenticator app’ which I’ve just downloaded. I’ve no idea what to do with this, though. Instructions unclear. It’s asking me to add an account and a ‘secret key’- is this a Facebook account? What key? 

FFS. And WHY is all this happening?! 

James Duval, Frank the Bunny from Donnie Darko, liked my photo of him from For the Love of Horror. 

Went to the new Louis bar in Spinningfields Friday. Doormen weren’t keen on my ripped jeans but the waistcoat and tie balanced it out so they made an exception. They placed a sticker over our phone cameras. No photography allowed, but notetaking was fine. A step above the opulence of your average Spinningfields bar, Louis carries a speakeasy 1920s vibe with lighting so dim you need your phone torch to read the menu. Pleasant staff served up whiskies that ranged between £12-£50. 

Ran a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to Spinningfields Saturday, to a quiet but scenic rooftop bar 20 Stories and ended in Peaky Blinders. I was shattered and left not long after midnight. Good crowd. Some familiar faces, some new. 

Saturday sees Monopoly Events’ Horror, Rock and Wrestle Fest – something to tide horror fans over until October when For the Love of Horror returns. I can’t say I’m that bowled over with the lineup, though.

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No meetups planned as of yet. Even Meetup booted me out on desktop as I logged into that through Facebook. I want to fucking scream. I’m still logged in on the app but I can’t upload meetups there. 

Saturday is the deadline for this absurd Nunchucks project. I haven’t done a great deal of it over the last few days but I was getting somewhere with a particularly complicated underarm pass. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload a demo video.

Burgers, Salads, Baos and Bars with Online Communities - Get involved

Saturday night: a group of 3 of us met at burger bar Super Awesome Deluxe in the Northern Quarter. Good burger and fries. Meetup with Manchester Nightlife that I nearly cancelled. 

Further updates on this online social group I joined, and the breakaway group from this affectionately called the ‘Adopted Family’ - I met met with them a week ago on Saturday and they all seemed like good people. I was conscious that I’m already building communities with Manchester Nightlife and Manchester Psychology Social, but I figured I’d spent that long in a WhatsApp chat with them that I might as well meet face to face with a few of the group on a night out. 

Sandinista was… Not my kind of place. I wasn’t sure I was really gelling. But I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. 

Yesterday, I was attending a second meetup with Wisdom Way, a group about mindfulness and awareness. An interesting discussion about a poem called ‘There is no There,’ which may have had something to do with American Gertrude Stein, perhaps something she wrote or was inspired by it. Pleasant folk and good vegan hot chocolate in Northern Quarter’s Hinterland, but a bit too spiritual for me. I’m more into the hard science of psychology. 

But anyway, I’d been to this group and was in town already, so figured I’d see this Adopted Family again.

At least the plan was to stay indoors this time (as opposed to freezing my balls off in Shambles Square), and get food in Home, the theatre and art exhibition in First Street. I got a pineapple juice, a chargrilled halloumi and double house salad, which cost me fifteen bastard quid. It was nice enough. The group were good people, well intentioned and everything. Some I’d met last time, some I’d seen come up in the WhatsApp chat. But I didn’t feel I had that much in common. The banter wasn’t flowing and I was fading into the background. 

Then I paid, ducked out, went home and had a curry night with my actual family. We ordered in a ton of curries, shashlik, breads, saag aloo and rices. Better convo, food and prices, more to the point. 

I’m still in this ‘Adopted Family’ WhatsApp chat, but for how long I don’t know. 

Big Brother’s Jess Impiazzi liked my story. I wished her happy birthday. 

So anyway. This is a Prospective Mondays post. What’s happening this week? 

I still haven’t actually met with the original Manchester Social group, despite all their controversy. I noticed that, on Sunday this week, they’re heading to Grub’s East Asian Food Fair. Touted as an ‘annual celebration of East Asian Street Food, the event runs from 12pm to 6pm and features food from Beasty Baos, Wok Bros and Mary’s Cakery Makery. I honestly can’t remember exactly how I got into Manchester Social, but I’ve managed to share a link to allow others to join. I’m not sure how long it will be active.I gather it's a ticketed event. I might go.

https://t.co/t9nBKvF9cU Manchester Social Discord Server. Social events in the city

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) March 10, 2025

Ironically, some of the people in this picture then went on to form the breakaway group that I later got invited to and went out with last night. But I’ll give this food fair a shot.

Before that, though - the night before - Manchester Nightlife meetup are out again, this time in Spinningfields. There are a handful of bars we've not been to there yet. 9pm Saturday, Oast House.

Wisdom Way, a Manchester Meetup

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New Meetup group Wisdom Way opened last month, using vegan bar Hinterland as a meeting place. I met with them on the 23rd Feb for hot drinks at their Reflective Conversation event. The group describes itself as ‘an in-person group for those wishing to explore and gently discuss the deeper aspects of our living experiences - our inner journey.’ 

I’ve never formally studied philosophy so it was new ground for me (as was the vegan chilli hot chocolate; also recommended). We covered stoicism (being resilient to misfortune), and how we can apply it to our lives. Really interesting. Good group of people. 

Next meeting is tomorrow, 9th March, 11am.

TrueEQ – Shortlived Online Mental Health Experience

New social media platform TrueEQ aims to compete with the plethora of new sites, all offering an alternative to Elon Musk’s X – formerly Twitter. This site, however, has a mental health slant. 

Things started out well on the site, before taking an odd turn. 

EQ, or Emotional Quotient, is different to IQ (Intellectual Quotient). ‘Emotional intelligence (also known as emotional quotient or EQ) is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.’ - helpguide.org. It’s a supply of ability in the brain, not dissimilar to Intellectual Quotient, or IQ. 

TrueEQ founder Brandon Bishop (whom I’d connected with) explains emotional intelligence, and his site, on the Toronto This Weekend podcast.  

Publicists Ascot PR informed me of the site some weeks ago, so I set up a profile on TrueEQ, and I was posting blog links there. The site organisers had left a few good comments on my profile here and there, which was nice. All of this was on desktop: there wasn't an app on the Google Playstore. 

On the home screen, I could see buttons for the connections I’d already made, the opportunity to find others, a chat function and ‘My EQ.’ This final section offers a form of scoring, which for me stood at 46 the last time I’d checked – I’m not 100% on what this is but I expect it’s out of 60. ‘My EQ’ was broken down into 5 sections: Self-Awareness, Social Awareness, Self-Management, Relationship Management and Mixed Pillars. These were each graded out of 12 for the interactions I had on the site, perhaps like an accountability measure. I never got any clarity on this. 

The site was a bit niche to become as popular as some of the other platforms, but as I write about mental health a lot it was possible I might have made a few connections there. There’s no app in the Google Playstore as of yet and the site was quiet, but as the general public talk about mental health more and more, it’s likely to pick up traction. I was also struggling to find the screen that shows my profile, what everyone else would see when they find me on the site. 

 After a few weeks of using the site, my profile disappeared.

 

I tried to contact TrueEQ over other platforms to no avail. They seem to have no presence on any of the major social sites. Nobody seems to have even mentioned them. 

I asked Ascot PR, who first informed me of the site, why this might be. No response. 

A social media platform with an emphasis on mental health could do great things, considering a lot of mental health problems are exacerbated by online interactions. They’d have to run it a lot better than TrueEQ, though.

Come Get a Super Awesome Deluxe Burger

New burger joint Super Awesome Deluxe opened in the Northern Quarter last October to rave reviews. Based in the old Lono Cove unit on Thomas St, Super Awesome Deluxe will be ‘the first ‘takeout’ smashed burger joint in this part of the city. Burger fans can expect a '“slick, big counter service with a tight menu of three core burgers done well”. No reservations, no bookings, no chicken, just great quality smashed beef.’ So says Secret Manchester. 

Manchester Nightlife are going to sample a few burgers, chat, drink, enjoy the weekend. After that, we’re in a prime spot for trying a few local bars like Foundry Project and the like. 

Come join us! Saturday, 7:30pm onwards.

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‘Adopted Family’ – A Social Media Shaggy Dog Story

Decor in @SandinistaMCR good night meeting a new group pic.twitter.com/1o8SuacsoZ

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) March 2, 2025

Back in October I ran a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to Off the Square, to a night called Dissociate, a tech house event. See my writeup. One of the members, a young autistic lad, was quite open with me about his condition. We talked about house music and such on the night, but then I didn’t hear from him until maybe early February when I rolled into a WeRoad meetup somewhere. He told me about a new website called Manchester Social, a free platform designed to rival Manchester’s Meetup scene with events being ran throughout the week, and offering the public the opportunity to meet new people. 

I joined Manchester Social, and I was thrown into a WhatsApp introductory chat where the organiser explained the premise: one overarching WhatsApp group, with sub chats of different themes: event suggestions, sports, movies, unfiltered (edgy humour), gym and fitness, etc. etc. 

These seem to have been going reasonably well, but the organisers decide that the system would work better on Discord, a different social media platform. Think of Discord as a mix of Reddit – discussions with replies appearing in a little like a family tree-like format – and maybe X (Twitter). It takes a bit of time to get your head around, but eventually you can work out the different discussions and replies. 

There was an in-person event ran a while ago, but I was already running a meetup myself that night. It seemed that at this Manchester Social event there was a bit of a to-do between this person and that, and a breakaway WhatsApp chat was formed, not including the Manchester Social organisers. I was invited into this chat not long after this. A couple of weeks’ chatting later, we organised a meet for a Saturday night. 

That took place last night. I finally got to meet this group – sarcastically self-titled The Adopted Family – in Grade-II-listed Sinclair’s Oyster Bar, Manchester’s oldest pub dating back to 1720. We sat outside where people could find us. I wasn’t wearing a warm enough coat, sadly, but the group were all chilled out, clued up people and we gelled well. We moved onto Sandinista, a place I’d had on my list for a while. Not my kind of place – too rock oriented - but I had a good chat with people about movies and suchlike. Started early, left early. 6-11pm outing. 

Hoping to meet with The Adopted Family again. Hopefully get them involved in some of my meetups.

Sweet Dreams are Made of Greens

Fans of 80s synth pop and, uh, spinach, will enjoy this one from Rukmini Iyer. A very green, citric dish from The Green Roasting Tin, Sweet Dreams brings together asparagus, orange pieces and avocado for a quick roast. 

I bunged in a whole 240g bag of spinach, figuring there was no point putting it to waste, as opposed to the recommended 100g. My avocados were already going off despite having a further 3 days to the use-by date. The tahini my mum had to source from some obscure Saddleworth wholefoods store as neither Aldi, Asda nor Tesco had it. I wouldn’t have had a clue where to get it. I had to guess as to how much 25g was as my scales don’t really go that small. Part of the recipe asked us to mix the ingredients to ‘the consistency of single cream’ – I guessed at this as I don’t really do cream and wouldn’t be able to distinguish single from double. I’m equally oblivious as to how I’d ‘taste and adjust’ as I’ve never tasted tahini before. Also, I could have sworn I had quinoa in my cupboard from a previous recipe. Where did that go? 

Recommended overall time was 35 mins. Took me 39. 

No too bad. It tasted okay the first time. After a reheat, the asparagus was particularly inedible and the oranges had pretty much dried out.

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