Post-Formal Friday

[ No Comments ] Posted on 11.15.08 in 2008-11-14 Post-Formal Friday

Later after the formal I probably gamed till like 2am just to actually end the day having some sort of fun. And woke up early on Friday because I had a fair amount of stuff to do. After I had vacuumed the house, which I now have to do since there’s no more school for me, I went out to school to attend Soul Purpose. Kenny had asked me to sort of find out why Soul Purpose was getting smaller; so that was my duty for today. Nevertheless since I’m no longer a “leader” I won’t post this under the Soul Purpose category:

Senior Soul Purpose Term 4 Week 5

Once again they’ve decided to split the groups back into juniors and seniors to see how things would run. I joined the senior side anyway just to see how the year 11s were doing. The number of leaders wasn’t overwhelming as we had been but there did seem enough to run the group. Bek opened in prayer and Kenny took over a with a half impromptu game of charades. One thing that was strange about his game was the overly long phrases people had to act out. I mean how are you meant to guess “Proposing for a marriage with a big engagement ring”? Or “Being attacked by a shark while fishing”? Someone actually guess the latter one word for word which was quite good haha.

The talk today was by Joseph, on Colossians 4:5-6? Can’t remember exactly the reference. It was the “let your conversation be full of grace, seasoned with salt…” and the verse before it. It was interesting to use that topic right before the Spring Fair, where Soul Purpose is trying to do an evangelical thing. Encouraging the people to like be confident and careful in telling their friends about Jesus in light of next week was a good idea. Furthermore, Joseph gave a good 10-minute talk with no notes, nothing written down. Of course his expression was a bit obscure but for a lack of notes he did great. Me and Kenny were both intrigued at his potential; he’ll make a great leader for next year.

They ended 5-minutes early for today so they just went over the “game plan” for next Friday, which actually is still being planned. I was glad that people actually recognised me when I came; it was a nice feeling. Stella and Carina came up to me to say hi, haven’t seen or talked to them for a while ever since the HSC so it was nice to catch up with them. Funny how Stella still remembered our church camp from last year, so 19 months ago, and how me and Jackson sort of abused her in Uno; ah those were good times hehe. But yeah it looks like they’re doing fine for year 12, albeit being afraid of the workload, which you should be; but as long as you consistently stay on top of everything, you’re set.

Attendace: 34

After Soul Purpose me and Kenny had lunch at Castle Towers, where we chatted like for a good 1.5 hours over nearly everything which I suppose you could call my “ministry”. Seems that I\m going to have to come back to school as a Soul Purpose leader for next year and the rest of this term because there aren’t enough people helping on the junior side. Well, that means no retirement for me, no “veteran” status yet. But oh well it will be fun since I am in touch with the juniors more anyway; so it’d be easier on me to help.

Apart from that Kenny discussed his plans for me at church next year; so much stuff to do. I don’t mind the extra work load he set for me but I do wonder where he gets that sense that “I can do it” from. I feel like I can but I don’t think I’ve shown him that I can, so I’m not sure if he’s actually making the right decisions and pushing me so fast into all of this. But yeah we’ll see how things fair for me next year, eh?

After lunch Kenny took me back home and I went over to Jacky Wong’s house. It was his birthday today. And since it seemed likely that no-one would actually see him today, I decided to pay him a visit. Might as well; had to pick up my Hana Kimi back from him. We played Magic for a few hours; don’t know why he wanted to play that game; probably because he wants to beat me haha. He did once or twice, but yeah whatever, it was all for fun.

So that’s my Friday, the start of a busy week, a busy few months and years to come. ANd so my post-high school life begins, all for the purpose of God.

Year 12 Formal

[ No Comments ] Posted on 11.15.08 in +School, 2008-11-13 Year 12 Formal

Ugh, really tired at the moment not sure if I can recount the formal from last night all too well. Anyway long story short our formal was held at Oatlands House like all other years, and from other people I heard it wasn’t exactly a good place for a formal, which is a shame. We might’ve topped other schools for the year 10 formal but unfortunately for year 12 we have probably nearly the worst formal of everyone.

This time round the formal was also shorter, starting at 7pm rather than 6:30pm. Let’s bring forward the fact at this point that the formal cost us $100. Let’s see if we get our money worth, and if we actually had enough fun for the night. I’ll evaluate each part as we came across it in the night. But before that let’s have a run-down at my expenditure for the occasion:

Ah yeah the hair thing was a bit of a doozy. Had it done yesterday afternoon, but it wasn’t done well. My dad just drove me out to Carlo Village and I just got some random to cut my hair; wasn’t the best organised eh? Hmm, but I guess we can leave my bad hair day experience behind and just continue on, yeah? What do you expect for $14 anyway?

Okay moving right along, our group decided to meet up at 6:15pm so we could be early for the formal. As I arrived, I only saw Charlie and Joseph, and then Matt later. I was on time but these guys were early. Oh buy the way photos of the formal will not be posted here, I haven’t even taken them out of my camera yet so please check Facebook instead like after a day or two. So the four of us just took pictures with some of the other people that were there early as well. It took our group another 20-30 minutes to fully arrive. So we took group photos and all from then on. It was a good 45 minutes time.

Also people did arrive in limos as expected. Some limos were good looking, others looked mediocre. Okay, the first bad thing from Oatlands House was the so-called “red carpet” that people were disembarking on after they got off their limo/transport. The carpet ran across the pebble driveway over to the grassy area; only that it didn’t come close to reaching the grassy area. Like seriously what the hell? What’s the point of a red carpet that’s covered in dirt and doesn’t lead anywhere, absolutely pathetic haha!

It took us a long time to get inside, in that we probably stayed outside until like 7:30pm, just to add to the lateness. Some waitresses were walking around with a platter of drinks. I decided to take advantage of their offer, only problem later was that they were nowhere to be found when I had finished and wanted to return the glass. Some of us were complaining out of hunger; and already we have seen that their service was a bit bad, it was going to get worse when we got inside.

One last thing before we got inside was that the photographer for the night was really pathetic. He was sort of taking pictures of the people coming out of the limos and stuff. And then he proceeded to moving around and taking pictures of everyone. He was doing a bad job because he kept skipping us and going for the Caucasians; racist.

When we got in we found that the room was quite small, and the dance floor was small enough to rival the one we had t the yr11 formal. We found our table quickly and sat down. Actually we had used maths to figure out the number of permutations for seating arrangements. One condition was unfulfilled tonight: “Joseph must not sit next to Kelvin.” Haha! We had a range of utensils tonight, several forks and knives, unfortunately what we would’ve preferred were…yep: chopsticks haha!

It took a while for everyone to sit down and even longer to get the entree served. Again really bad service on their part. We were like the last table to get served and by then some other tables were finished. I was meant to take the menu but I forgot at the end of the night, the entree was either some were spinach roll with melted cheese, or chicken or something with jasmine rice. I had the rice which didn’t taste anything special, quite plain. The spinach roll smelt better. Main course was either striploin or pork chop fillet, 2 slices for each dish along with some vegetables (broccoli and carrot). The striploin also came with “chat potatoes” which looked and probably tasted like the way it should be pronounced in French. Once again it took a long time for the food to get to our table. Finally, desert was either a nice slice of chocolate something-or-rather, forgot the second half of the name, or fruit flan. This actually tasted quite nice. Funnily enough Matthew chose the fruit flan but took off all the fruit, therefore simply eating “Flan” haha! Need I say the service was bad again here?

After we had finished we had like another half hour to dawdle around; so we got up and tried to get a group photo taken by the photographer hired on the night. Another group was there and so we waited patiently. When the photographer was done with them, he just walked out into the night, knowing that we were standing there; what utter nonsense is this? When he did come back, the MC person (who was just utter noob) told everyone to sit down.

Our school captain came out the front to present random awards and from this so-called “ceremony” I realized that our grade has less Asians than expected. All the awards went out to caucs and curries; very little recognition of the Asian side of the school. Good thing was that Chris got an award for being a successful rapper and dancer haha so that was at least a plus amongst all those weird awards which personally don’t seem to have any sentimental significance. So after we had another half hour wasted, the DJ/MC? finally asked us nervously to come out and maybe enjoy some dancing.

As I said already the dance floor was quite small; the year 11 one was about the same size, quite small haha. And the lighting was just pathetic, embarrassing. I can’t remember what happened the next hour, it was really boring. We finally managed to get a group photograph taken, although our group got split up into 2. Also when he asked us: “Are you just going to have a formal photo? Why don’t you do something funny.” Then Tim just lay on the table in front of us: “Like this?” And the photographer was like: “Yeah like that.” Clearly this guy was a gay paedophile, full stop.

I cannot even begin to stress just how crap the music was, he played like “alternative techno” music which was just crap; can you expect us to dance to stuff like that? I mean we aren’t exactly proficient at dancing but the music really wasn’t helping. At best he played like a couple of Rihana and Chris Brown songs, that’s it. It was such a boring night, one shit track after the next. I know I might be a deep fan of J-Pop and hell I would’ve gone up to the DJ, smacked him down and then just plugged my iPod into his crappy sound system and even that would’ve been better for everyone.

I saw few people dancing that night, but as usual Arthur busted some rather professional looking moves which were good to see. [Ynot] began stripping like some f***ing s*** and also another string of swear words or so, it was disgusting. *sigh* He even wore his “hooker boots” to the formal; what the hell? Oh no you don’t want a picture of that I can assure you.

Well after what seemed like a never-ending crap concert, we had some live performances thank God. Vanessa, Ryan and Francis gave a good performance to a song I didn’t recognise. They had good harmony and stuff, shame the microphones were bad. See, crap equipment fro Oatlands House haha! After those three, we had umm…hmm…those guys, forgot who exactly was involved but yeah a group of people performed like 5 songs in succession, some good old classics. Those guys definitely have potential to be like a house band or something, quite talented and such. That was a good 30 minutes I suppose although by then everyone began to sit down because there was less action, not that there was much to begin with.

Eventually the night just wasted away into boredom and I was glad to leave. By the time we got back to our tables at the end of the night, we had no refreshments. How disgusting is that? No refreshments, man what is this? They even said they’d provide us with soft drinks throughout the night and yet we couldn’t even get a single drop of water. And lastly the staff rudely kicked us out of the venue with shouts and yells; seriously you haven’t entertained us at all in the 5 hours and you expect us to cooperate. We paid them $100 for a crap night.

So all in all the night was really boring, shit service, shit everything, even the food was part shit in terms of what we paid for it. Shit DJ, shit music, shit photographer. Formal was not even emotional in the least; had the DJ played an emotional song at the end things would’ve turned out a bit better. Oh but not, shit from start to finish haha! The year 10 formal was unquestionable better because it took nearly a whole week for me to forget about it. But even now on Saturday, 1.5 days after the night, I can’t remember a thing about it because it was just that crap haha. Well so much for ending high school in style.

HSC Exam 7: Japanese Extension

[ No Comments ] Posted on 11.14.08 in +School, 2008-11-12 HSC Exam 7: Japanese Extension

It is Friday morning 12:42am and I have a lot to catch up on here. So first off let’s recount Wednesday’s exam. Ah finally the last HSC exam. I wondered what the feeling of finishing all exams would be like, it’s sort of emptiness really rather than a sense of achievement because it doesn’t really count for anything. School sucks huh?

Anyway I barely studied for this last exam; just too tired and sick of studying. It’s not that I was mentally tired, I just couldn’t bring myself of looking at a textbook or stuff like that; it’s like your mind automatically tells you: “Ah this crap again, last time you looked at this stuff you went completely blank afterwards.” So naturally your mind wants to steer you away from working.

But an exam is an exam and I still did my best to prepare for it. I’ll have to admit, my timetable has had both positive and negative points. What I thought was great was that it was easy to study and prepare for one exam per week; so much time it just makes studying sure a leisure activity. However, I would never have realised that having exams over a 4-week period puts you in that mood where you go: “Bah, another 3 weeks of this?” It was more an endurance race for me rather than bursts of mental powers.

Nevertheless here’s how the exam unfolded:

Part 1: Comprehension

The comprehension is worth 15 marks, of which I expect to get 13+. Basically we get a book to read throughout the year and also some specific parts we have to study thoroughly in both English and Japanese. The exam will pick about 1 or 2 extracts and ask questions on them. Some questions do refer to “techniques” in the Japanese language; you could probably imagine what that would look like. Other questions would be like referring to the meaning of the extract, and then also about the book as a whole. This part isn’t exactly hard but you should be careful in knowing “how” to answer the question and also to fulfil the requirements of the question; which parts you refer to in your response.

Estimated mark: 13/15

Part 2: Writing Response to Text

After that there is a 10-mark question asking you to write a 400 composition on a question related to the book. Usually it forces you into a persona and then you write something to another character or something like that. This year the question asked us to pretend we were the protagonist’s mother writing a letter to the protagonist as they enter high school. So a typical scenario and then a 400-character response in the form of a letter. One of the hassles for this question was “how” to name the son, the name we should give him. I was really happy with this question because it felt easy. I went for the "sentimental approach and I just made the mother write all this sappy stuff to her son. Other people actually referred to parts of the book in their letter and that might’ve been a better approach so that kind of limits how good my response can be.

Estimated mark: 8/10

Part 3: Writing

This final part is worth another 15 marks and this time the question is a bit harder and also based on the themes we studied throughout the year (did you think we only studied a book?) which are: “Impact of Technology”, “Overcoming Personal Difficulties” and “Group vs. Individual”. We are given a choice of to questions. The first was related to caring for old people and the second was saying that technology is a waste of time (a “big” waste, to quote form the question). I chose the second one because I;m more comfortable with the technology questions anyway.

My only regret for this section was that I missed the 600-character limit. I actually fell short in the previous one and went ahead to this question which was worth more marks. I stopped at 500 because I had just finished a paragraph and I went back to finish up my letter. Oh by the way this one was an “essay”; the hell we write an essay in Japanese? I somehow managed and at 500-words I had an introduction paragraph and two body paragraphs. I don’t know how to write a conclusion especially since I’d be repeating myself from the introduction paragraph and hence wasting character space. My main arguments were that students come home from school and use their comp all arvo and all night. But if they finish their homework in like 3-4 hours everyday, then what are they doing all those other hours? Of course nothing productive, right? The other point I made was that some technology you have to keep attending to, such as a Tamagotchi, which die if you don’t watch for like an hour or so lolx!

Estimated mark: 12/15

Estimated Total: 33/40

Add my estimated speaking mark of 8/10 and you get:

41/50

82%

I really hope I get around there, getting less than 80% is embarrassing and I’ve just been doing crap in Extension all year round. And there you have it, the hSC is finished. It’s Friday night now and I’m tired; I have two more posts to put up. I might reflect on the HSC at a later date haha.

Kelvin’s 18th B’Day Party

[ No Comments ] Posted on 11.09.08 in 2008-11-08 Kelvin's 18th B'Day Party

Aha checking back now, we actually had Kelvin’s last party three days later last year, so kind of interesting that it would be organised around the same time, but also the underlying fact that we’re celebrating Kelvin’s birthday AFTER the actual day itself, which is kind of strange. Reading back to last year’s post, wow I really on aimlessly didn’t I. Okay so this time I promise I’ll post something more informative and stuff. And yes, hopefully I can upgrade my blog with the addition of photos! Took like 283 photos today; how did Nick and Yit manage to do that with my camera?

Though everyone may have finished their HSC exams, me and Kelvin both have 1 more; Japanese Extension. But for the sake of our friends this was perhaps the most appropriate moment to have a party. Chris, Nick, Tim and Yitian are off to Taiwan shortly in the next week or so; thus this would be about the last get together for our entire group (nearly) until next year. Kelvin’s party this year almost followed the same pattern as last year but this time round being one year older lets the party be full of surprises “as you shall soon see enough” (random quote from Bruno – Elite Four, Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal). Don’t worry I still promise I won’t ramble randomly.

Kelvin had tried to organise the party to 8am but Matthew complained and so we set the time back to 10am. Me, Tim and Chris were the first to arrive; and arrive early we did as Kelvin demanded. Nick showed up about 10 or so minutes later, with a TV in his car. Back at school Kelvin sort of joked about Nick bringing an extra TV to compensate for the number of gaming consoles we would gather today; but somehow Nick still kindly offered his TV and so that’s why he brought one. We helped him lift it to Kelvin’s room, where it was placed next to his computer, which would seem the only place available in his house. But on that matter, can anyone’s house of “that” size accommodate 14+ people? It’s hard and even considering my house I think I’d barely be able to handle it, but of course having 14 people in the same house has it’s own problems, again explained later.

As time progressed we began to set up gaming consoles everywhere and other people eventually arrived. And of course to other people here was our second surprise, if you count Nick bringing his TV a surprise. One of the odd things you could at a guy’s party is…invite a chick (the word “girl” sounds to immature so bear with it). Kelvin forewarned us he would invite this “Sophia” chick from James Ruse, of course personally I target the school not it’s students so lets let the “I hate Ruse” thing slide. Sophia is a friend of Matthew and Kelvin, whose younger brother goes to our school, funny that. Anyway, this would be the first time me, Tim and Joseph get properly acquainted with her (“introduced” doesn’t seem to work here) while other people wouldn’t have a clue about who she is. One thing I sort of concluded today is that Kelvin makes friends with some weird people, I of whom am also not the least.

Anyway we spent the 2-3 hours from 10am just gaming, a few of us on the Wii in the lounge room playing SSBB, while some others playing Sing Star and Matthew alone in Kelvin’s room playing DotA; not the best game to play when you’re around company, as in it is very anti-social. Oh I forgot, let’s have a run down of the people that attended:

Me, Tim, Chris, Nick, Brandon, Andrew, Sophia, Matthew, Yitian, Jonothan, Joseph, Charlie, Andy – in order of appearance according to my memory, which was alright until for after when Matthew, Andrew and Sophia arrived. Shame Eric couldn’t make it again, this time in Hong Kong; we always seem to be missing him when we have our socials. And now I might as well get to the presents bit. This year we hadn’t really planned a present for Kelvin. He had asked for one like last year (which you just can’t do) but we refused this time due to price. So Me and Tim went down to the city after Chemistry on Thursday and we got him presents: We got him an Ulquiorra anime plush toy (from the anime Bleach), and some books on Psychology. Also Charlie bought him a smallish violin thingy, and we all decided to split the cost, ie. I paid for the gifts and am now demanding for money back from everyone else, some of whom are stubborn to pay up. There is a long story behind our present buying which I can’t be bothered starting a new post for. So if you want to skip it just scroll down past the next section:

Buying Kelvin’s Presents

Tim actually made this decision on the day we had the Chemistry HSC exam. He was wondering from the morning if we should actually get him something. So he suggested that we should go to the city and see what we could pick up there. I was up for it but no-one else was so it was just me and Tim in the end. One of the major problems we had was actually getting the money to buy the presents. Between me and Tim we had about $70, remembering that some of that money had to go towards travel expenses and lunch. So Tim went around asking people for money. We managed to get $50 off Yitian and $10 off Nick, bringing our grand total to $130. At this point we were convicted that we couldn’t spend more than about $80-90 so there’s our price range for presents.

After the exam me and Tim set off to catch a train to Parra but instead caught a different bus to the City directly. Let’s just make it clear I hate catching buses because I suck at catching buses because I don’t catch a bus. So this whole concept of concession cards was quite confusing for me; since when was every student eligible for one? Yes, I’m usually uninformed on these things. Anyway, those were just minor problems. Since catching a bus from Baulko TAFE straight to the city takes a long time, it was around 2pm when we finally got there. One of the reasons why Tim wanted to go to the city was that he wanted to eat at Pepper Lunch; was this your doing, Kelvin? Anyway he didn’t know where it was exactly and frankly I had forgotten where it was; last time I went was the day of Animania in March. Having been there once, without paying attention to direction, I clearly cannot remember where Pepper Lunch was. So I was really surprised when we actually found out about 2 minutes after getting off the bus, what good luck!

Pepper Lunch changed their bonus services for customers. before they used to have this weird raffle system where you could win prizes just for eating there. Can’t believe I forked over a free salmon pepper lunch to Kelvin with the words: “Meh take it, I’m probably never going to eat here again anyway.” How ironic. Anyway this time they changed their system to a customer’s card. Eat ten times get a free pepper lunch and eat 15 times (5 more after your first 10) get a free pepper steak main course meal thingy. The only problem here was how we would manage to stack up 10 meals here; and at that fact, within 3 months? That means you’d have to come out to the city like once a week to max out that card. I suppose it would be easier next year when we’re in university.

Tim concluded himself that Pepper Lunch isn’t really something great; it’s interesting that you sort of cook the meal yourself but the taste wasn’t unique and stuff. Afterwards we went off in search of a present/s for Kelvin. As it would seem clear at this point, we had not figured out what to buy for him; we had a whole bus trip and still couldn’t come up with an idea. But Tim still wanted to stick to his joke idea to get him a novelty comb and brush so he could, I dunno, brush his hair like a chick or something, Tim’s weird ideas/fantasies.

So the first place we went to look for such items was Paddy’s Markets. They sell so much random tourist junk in there. Finding a comb and mirror seemed a bit unlikely in there so instead we tried to find things that we interesting to buy. I found a “I <3 Sydney” T-shirt for $10 which would be a great joke present for Kelvin. But because it was in a “girly” stall, Tim refused to go near to buy and I suppose I couldn’t either. We walked around for a while, seeing if we could actually find the comb and mirror. Eventually we stumbled into a random corner of the markets and I found some anime stuff. Obviously at this point I got distracted and I went to check out what merchandise they were selling: plushies. I’m still sort of trying to gather up a collection of anime plushies but with my current financial state of “bankrupt” it’s hard to actually buy anything nowadays. One thing I did find was an Ulquiorra plushie which was of fair quality and size, as well as price. Seemed like a good present for Kelvin, give him something to hump at night haha! And yes I still stand by that statement. I also took the chance to buy myself a Shippuuden Sasuke plushie, also for the same price; just can’t resist anime stuff I just had to buy something.

After that we roamed around other places to find another present, something much larger. At this point we were sort of juggling between a video game of some sort or…A Blue-ray DVD or…nah that was it haha!. Went off towards Myer in search of stuff to buy. Came across GAME, the store, wasn’t sure what good games there were to buy but frankly I thought we should’ve bought Kelvin something more tasteful than a video game, something more useful. Anyway if it had to be a game, I thought maybe Trauma Centre would be a good game; it is interesting and fun, something which really does suit the Wii. Their price was $79.95 but before we bought it we checked our funds. Apparently we were down to $85 between the both of us. And yes Kelvin if you are desperate to calculate the price of the plushies use your math skills with this new information, it should be enough for an estimate. Anyway if we had bought the game that would’ve left us without enough money to catch the train home, which of course is no good. I thought maybe we could’ve done a “Hi, the two of us are on an Amazing Race around Sydney, can we have some money for the train.” Ah, actually sounds gay after I type it. So we had to pass on this option at the time.

Went up to Myer and had a browse around. Wasn’t much interesting, tried the games section again. Best we could find was Stars Wars: Forces Unleashed….priced at $110.00; ultra no good. So at that point it seemed games was out of it. I did have the idea of bargaining with the guy in GAME, he was Asian, seemed friendly, so he might’ve given us a $5 discount no questions asked; but we still wanted a present that had more meaning than that of a video game. Still tried to think some more. Thought about what might aid Kelvin in the future, and then the topic of “Psychology” popped into my mind. It wasn’t a sure career path, but the topic does interest him that’s for sure; so why not?

Went over to Dymocks and grabbed two books simple as that. Needed some help though because we weren’t sure what books we should actually get. We went and asked the people there, apparently one of them was from our school x years back and the other was doing psychology at uni, good for him. So they gave us some tips, which weren’t too helpful but we ended up choosing a good book, and a funny book. I’m sure Kelvin knows which one is which.

So there you have it. We left the city shortly after blowing all our money, it was around 4:30pm by then. Long day, heaps of walking. But the only thing that remained unresolved is me getting my money back; which to this date I still have not received. And of course let’s not forget the debt I owe to Yit and Charlie; I don’t think I even have enough money to pay them back AFTER I get $9 from everyone. And later on Saturday night I had a re-check of my funds and for some reason after calculations, I seem to be like $17 short T.T” I have no idea where it disappeared to. That sucks bad.

Okay now where we we? Anyway there wasn’t anything entirely exciting in the morning before lunch. Mostly just gamed the whole time, not too many highlights. Well there was that period of time where Matt was sleeping on Kelvin;s bed (in the morning?) while like cuddling his plushies, otherwise known as Kelvin’s “children”. Here is a photo of that moment:

Followed by this moment:

You can write your own 1000 word stories for both haha!

Other than that it was funny getting Sophia to game with us. Some of us already raised the question: “Does she even game?” And turns out the answer was yes, but of course not to our exaggerated degree. Actually the funny thing was that she was either secretly hiding the fact she was good at gaming OR she was just very lucky; because she actually faired the best out of all of us against Kelvin in Smash. There was actually periods of 30 seconds or more where Sophia was metaphorically “kicking” Kelvin’s ass, never really know if that’s actually happened in real life of course.

It was nice of Sophia to agree to go pick up lunch for us; wasn’t like she was having much fun anyway. So the rest of us just continued to game on. Matt, was getting his ass pooned on Bored Aussie, Andrew wasn’t fairing that much better but it’s good to see that people like Brandon are taking an interest in non-DotA maps for Warcraft. He plays Castle Fight now so at least I’m not the only out there trying new things haha!

One of the things that are memorable when we gamed was when Kelvin won. Well it’s not like we had much of a chance playing against Kelvin on his home turf. So when he’d won he’d let out one of those World Cup “YEAH! GOAL!” type victory screams which would reverberate inside his house. All you could do is give a =.=” expression and simply shake your head lolx! You could also see Sophia just wince and back off slowly from Kelvin haha! Bad impression much?

This post is getting a bit long and I’m afraid I’m not even half way finished. So let’s bring on lunch time. Sophia and Kelvin’s parents returned with pizza and a large tray of sushi, plus a cake. I thought that this would easily feed the 15 of us or whatever but apparently the food got drained fairly fast. Well take a look:

Actually nah just check the very first photo.

I had planned to write a Pizza Etiquette article just for this occasion but that just makes the post longer. Oh well:

Pizza Etiquette (by divineiniquity)

I fell that there are rules when it comes to eating pizza with a group of people; just some simple manners that reduces conflict and maybe food poisoning haha.

1. The first rule is that you may only touch the slice of pizza you intend to eat; that’s just plain common sense.

2. You may not touch someone else’s slice of pizza; that’s also common sense. Of course ironically I had already broken my own rule today: Kelvin took one of my sushi so I stole his slice of pizza, which he would’ve already touched haha. Too bad my common sense died while I was eating.

3. In order to “open” up a pizza you should designate one person who can do it only by touching one piece. The difficulty here is that if the guys at Pizza Hut or wherever didn’t like separate the slices of pizza very well then you’re gonna have a hard time “opening” the pizza. I had hoped this would not be the case today and I ended up with half a slice of pizza instead of one.

4. You may only take slices of pizza from an “opened” pizza that have no more than one touching edge. By that it means you can only take the slices of pizza that are next to the one previously taken. This also means that you can only open a pizza once and by courtesy you should take the next available piece, clockwise or anti-clockwise. The only reason that you’d have to take a piece from the middle of the remaining pizza is because you want a larger slice, yes? Well that’s just being greedy and it’s too bad if the pizza guy didn’t slice the pizza up evenly. You can always time it so that you end up taking the largest piece when it becomes “available” but otherwise you mustn’t just take it from anywhere you like.

5. The one who takes the last slice must dispose of the box. This would just be a hunger vs. generosity situation: you can stay hungry or you can be generous and be rewarded, your choice.

And after lunch we come down to the cake. Kelvin’s suggested we might as well eat it now since the food was out. Oh we also did the traditional candle thing before we started eating. Sang the birthday song and all, but Kelvin’s parents only bothered to use one candle. Some of us tried to psyche Kelvin into missing the flame when he blew; that would be a foolish thing to do.

Anyway can’t say Kelvin has really applied his 4U maths skills into everyday life all too well. He didn’t manage to find the centre of the cake (a circle) and he didn’t realise that each slice needed to have an angle of 24 degrees at the centre. So people who had cake towards the end had abnormal-sized pieces, but the cake was ultimately rationed out haha.

We gamed for a bit longer to get the food digesting before deciding to go out and do some physical activities. It would be stupid to go out and do something physical after eating cake, but playing video games wasn’t helping either haha. Anyway I think it’s good that we’re responsible enough to game responsibly and actually get up and play some physical games while our eyes take a break from the TV screen or computer monitor.

We hadn’t really decided much on games except on Fresher – that just goes to show how much we enjoyed RICE Big Day Out in 2006. Don’t really know why Nick didn’t want to play; he was fairly into it last time we played. So we ended up with teams of 7 versus 6:

West Team:

East Team:

Haha just like in Castle Fight…never mind.

Actually it seemed a bit more 6v6 because Sophia didn’t seem all too interested in it; or all too aware of what was happening. But our team won within a matter of 15 minutes. We had caught half of the East Team and they just couldn’t make a come back. There are more photos of the game so please check my Facebook.

There’s nothing wrong with us playing games like these; they aren’t exactly kiddy-ish and even if they are, being this old allows us to apply tactics and stuff. I mean think back to me, Kelvin, Jono and Tim playing Mario Kart 64 all night long for seven bloody hours haha! We learned to hack the game and stuff…kind of lame but oh well. There wasn’t much we could apply to Fresher, except just play more competitively; which involves top-notch teamwork and stuff; well we tried anyway but as Andy said it is true that nothing happens in the game because we’re all so cautious, until someone makes a mistake and a winner should emerge immediately. Actually we lost Matthew first up but we still managed to turn the game around haha. But yeah for the first 5 minutes we were all playing it safe and stuff; need to find a way to break the pacifism at the beginning. Oh well, we have many more years to come. And also by tactics I mean something like this:

Of course this is just cheating, to go around the front yard to get to the other side

We stopped and then decided to play Bullrush afterwards. A simple game but one which would end fairly quickly because of the width of Kelvin’s back yard. It was quite interesting how many rounds people could survive since it had to be build up. By the time about athird of us were caught the rest should’ve fallen easily. And yet somehow there’d be like 1 or 2 people who’d survive and make it through alive…good for them. Can you believe that Joseph won for one round? Is he really that inconspicuous as not to be noticed? Bah!

We played many rounds with the winner being the next person in for the next round. It was nice and fun, the tactic applied here was by Andy, who slipped along the edge of the backyard and moving behind the odd tree and bush there haha; well if it works it must be a good plan eh? That was a good bit of running.

Our last game for the afternoon was sort of Marco Polo; didn’t pay attention to who actually suggested the game. The plan at the start was get a blindfold, blindfold someone and then get them to just grab onto someone. Of course it wasn’t a keep away type game, it was more: “Hey let’s spank the blind person” and if you got caught while “scoring points” then you’re in. The whole spanking thing was Matthew’s idea but eventually someone would’ve suggested it: it’s a guy thing.

You have to admit it really was funny just spanking the crap out of each other while they were blindfolded and trying to catch someone else. Even Sophia was in the mood, though of course she wouldn’t dare touch a guy’s ass, would she? She simply prodded people haha! Funny thing was that when she got in Matthew was like: “Aww damn, no more spanking…” that was the most hilarious moment of the day I reckon. Can’t remember who she caught but eventually it was my turn and I had sort of made up a game plan, so my tactics here. Oh but before I get into it I forgot to pointout that our “blindfold” was nothing more than…Sophia’s jacket haha! You have to admit it was nice of Sophia to donate her jacket to a bunch of guys who are just prone to sweat all over the jacket from their foreheads; very brave of her to sacrifice a piece of clothing. I wouldn’t trust the guys with any of my stuff knowing how defiled it can become. To be honest the closest thing that resembled a blindfold at the time might’ve been my Naruto forehead protector but I’d put my life on the line to protect my anime stuff haha!

Anyway when it my turn I had a plan. The thing Inoticed all this time was that everyone was afraid to take large steps (seriously are we that old and yet afraid to bump out heads into a tree?) So I just lashed and charged blindly across the backyard. But that only made everyone else more alert and cautious. As you can see here:

I was fairly lost because everyone knew to keep their distance. I tried pretty hard to calm myself down and rely on my other senses to track other people. I came so close on many occasions they told me. And at one stage I was actually so close to bumping my head on the pole of the…damn mind blank…what’s that clothes line thingy called (check photo above)? Anyway, yeah almost bumped into that thing; I charged in that direction and stopped barely a centimetre from it; very lucky for me.

Eventually we improved the game and balanced it by making it so that you could only move like one step every 10 seconds; that made it very fair and easier to play. The games were still very funny from that point on because you were still allowed to pivot on one foot and everyone did a Matrix-style dodge when they were nearly caught. Of course most of the time they got caught but there were a few people who actually escaped, and that was worth watching. Later we added an extra rule that you needed to identify who the person you caught was, otherwise they can escape for free. So it came down to running your fingers blindly all over the person and messing with their face and stuff. There were some brilliant guesses at times which goes to show how well we know each other’s appearance haha!

Of course at this point, wonder should be placed into Sophia’s case; shame nothing interesting happened with her. Jono caught her by the shoe and immediately identified it as belonging to Sophia; chicks have small feet right? Lame, Jono would’ve fully…yeah never mind. Anyway when she was in us guys had this interesting plan to like clump together so that when she caught one of us, she’d find like a few extra pair of legs and arms and stuff haha! But she kind of overhead our plan and got suspicious…way to spoil the game T.T” Eventually we scattered but we regrouped here and there haha. Yet she still kept giving up. Okay I’ll get off her case.

Also, our single step every 10 seconds became a leap, which then became a dodge role, and for Kelvin’s case, became a 10-step dash which again is clear cheating. Actually Sophia if you read this, I was wrong: Kelvin is a cheater, it’s just that we don’t take note since his schemes don’t provide much results, so it wouldn’t have mattered.

Eventually we went back inside the house and here’s the complication of having 15+ people in your house in one go, and also something I’ve learnt: Never let them back in after getting all sweatied up from physical activities. It took 10 minutes for the lunge room to stink like hell from guy sweat T.T” Can’t believe it took us only now to realize that this could happen.

One last thing before we end the party: Matthew’s hilarious attitude towards Wii boxing. Normally we’d think this is more something Tony would do but we get this hyped up Matthew who actually gets himself tired from the Wii haha. He just totally spazzed out for Wii boxing, I think a video would’ve been more appropriate here but oh well, maybe next time:

And he still lost to Kelvin, not that he ever had a chance of winning haha!

And there we go for Kelvin’s 18th birthday; what a marathon of a blog post. I count more than 5000 words here. Add the photos and then this blog post i worth more than 10000 words yay! Well yeah Happy B’day bro, look forward to seeing you throughout uni life.

This is where I rest my hands for a while.

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