Adventure in the wet

This is gonna be a long entry. However, it will document what has happened from Friday till Sunday, of the weekend
just gone by.
It was the day of Friday. Everything was fine and dandy. Work was fairly easy, it was a near end of month week,
and I managed to get everything finished before 4:30. So I said to my supervisor I will go early, he agreed and
said I can leave when it was quiet. So, it was quiet at 4:45 and I left. Nothing bad happened on the way home, I
got my stuff and then dropped my bro off at the station. It was weird that I was fighting traffic on the opposite
way from work though... people must leave work early on a Friday I guess. I stop-started for about 30 mins then a
good run, then stop-started the rest of the way. Arriving at 6:30, there were plenty of cars in the carpark at
Naamaroo, but I managed to find one space to park. And so the fun begins.
Dinner was a lunchbox. There were two flavours, one was 'ru ro' (baised pork), the other was 'pai gu' (pork steak).
Immediately when we got there, I almost had a bond with several guys there. They were in the same boat as me,
being told to come here and no questions asked. So they were as 'what the f*** am I doing here' attitude as me.
One of them was Jimmy, and the other was Tom. They are both very funny... Like 'funny c**t' funny. We basically
just hung out through the rest of the camp. After the dinner, we got told to sit down and they told us what cabin
we got to live in for the duration. I was in cabin 4, with Jimmy. We were separated from Tom. Still, that doesn't
prevent us being smartasses in the camp The cabin was basically 4 sets of 4 bunk beds, 16 beds in total. Our room
contained 9 people max, the other would only have 12 people max, but with the people that didn't turn up I think
they probably also had 9 people as well. After that, we got back to the hall, and played the 'lets get to know each
other with 1 minute each time' game. Essentially, it's speed dating, except there's 21 (supposedly) guys and gals
and the time is much shorter. It became a shouting match because everybody was trying to chat with everybody, and
then swapping to the next person. So that was pretty fun but hectic. And repetitive as well, since you repeat what
you say essentially 20 times. But sometimes the girls didn't seem to be interested, and well, that's disheartening,
but hey that's life. I wasn't interested in most of them either, but I tried my best to make some friends. After
that, we played another game called 'Guess what'... It involves you writing your name on one piece of paper,
location on another, and an action on the last piece. This can have either weird or strange consequences. I was
REALLY out of it. I got second last, and it was singing. I don't sing. So I got forced to do a pole dance, except
I didn't want to pole dance. So I really made it a bad impression. But remember, I didn't really want to be there
in the first place. So I think I put the nail in my coffin. The next event was another guessing game, except this
time there were only 10 guys chosen. 5 guys in a row, all masked by Batman, but blinded. Looked really cool,
because there's different colors for each guy. Then there's 5 girls, who are gonna massage the guys, and the aim is
to massage the guy you're assigned. And the guy has to guess who massaged them the best. The first 5 had 3 guys
guessing right. Then I got chosen to go into the second group. Now, I had not known which girl was which at this
stage, so it was difficult already. Then the massage begins. Now, 3 girls were actually nice to me. One ticked
me. One was ABSOLUTELY EVIL to me. This girl basically slapped me hard. Like *smacked* hard. Also I got punched.
Almost as if the girl was out to get me. I nearly died of shock because I was being smacked so hard. Then she got
swapped so I was spared. None of us got it right though... and there wasn't another round after that -_-". I asked
around to see if they remember who slapped me, and NOBODY can remember! Geez... talk about a bad start huh. We then
got separated into groups for next day's activities. I was in group 3. We had 4 girls and 3 guys, since one of the
guys had to leave... So for supper, we had to think about what we're doing tomorrow, which was saturday. We had to
think of a group name, and a catchcry. Well... the second nail was in place, we couldn't think of anything cool.
So we chose "JJ". Why? because we happened to have both of the guys (excluding me) named Jerry. Hows that for
planning, or lack of? The girls couldn't think of something interesting either. So it was pretty bad. We were
doomed to fail. Of course, winning isn't everything. It's just some movie tickets. That you can go with your
group. I didn't need to go watch movies with people, since well, it's not something that you would do in a group
situation, with people you hardly know. It would be better in, say, a dinner or party situation. But that's the
prize. Anyways the catchcry was rather lame as well. Compared to the other groups, they really put a lot of effort
into theirs.
Anyways, our camp coordinators were called Caroline and Michelle. I don't know if they are actually sisters, but
they act like it. Also there were another sister group in the camp, but I didn't realise that till later. Caroline
hates me from the start, because I didn't put 100% into participating. I can't blame her tho, she's already
engaged, and she wants everybody to have fun. I tend to not have fun in these kind of situations... By that time
(midnight) it was raining, and we went back to our cabins. Except nobody wants to sleep. So there was a big game
of cards. Of course, some guys were already tired, so they tried their best to sleep, and succeeded in one case.
They played some games that I didn't know, then it got bigger, even some girls joined in. One of them got my
attention... but I was too tired to join in the fun. One of the games was "Snap", which each player gets a stack of
cards, and if the number in sequence was the same as the card put down, you had to slap the card, and the last
player gets the cards. The one who has to most card loses. The girl who got my attention was very funny, she kept
slapping even though she lost. The girls didn't like getting slapped that many times and their hands were red to
show to the guys... hehe expecting sympathy of course :) I was on the top bunk just looking down, because I
actually worked really hard during the day and have no energy. I think they finished around 2am. Then they left
and we tried to go sleep. Except two guys in the next cell (each 4 bunk beds = one cell, each cabin has 4 cells)
decided to talk about female anatomy and facial features for the next hour or so. We (me and Jimmy) didn't get to
sleep because we were trying hard not to laugh... those guys (James and Jerry) are also funny. So, after they shut
up, we slept. Till 4 hours later when we were woken up.
Saturday. 7:30. Damn it's raining and humid. AND COLD. And the lack of sleep isn't helping. So we got up, and
used the amenities, and then had breakfast. The free time after breakfast was used to think of what we were gonna
do for the catchcry. Ours was just to scream it out. But even that's lame. So we had the games straight after.
The games is the process to get scores to get the prize, which is a movie ticket. That doesn't interest me at all.
That means I actually have to find time to use it. And then to get to the cinema. And then watch the movie. When
all I have to do is... um... look it it from a different alternative.
The thing about this camp was that the girls are a bit perverted. They want people to pole dance. "Tiao gung wu".
And the first event was to see which group can pole dance the best. Except that there's no pole. The guys (and
girls) are poles, and they swap and dance. Again, our group was the lamest, because we had the least people. One
group, who had James, was the best. James basically did a flip and had Stephen spin him around (while he's upside
down) so he actually looks like he's spinning down the pole. Except the funniest thing happened. His pants
actually pulled down (rather, he slid out of them), and then his underwear too. The girls literally screamed
because they can see his a$$. Hahaha I think everybody laughed. They got full marks. Then the catchcry came, and
well... it was bad as well. Ours I mean. We got that out of the way... and then played some games.
There were 6 games originally. One game got cancelled because it was deemed too dangerous. Holding a spoon in your
mouth isn't good, OH&S wise. So there were 5 games. 1) Pick up rubber bands with a toothpick. 2) Step on other
people's balloons. 3) Three-legged race 4) Mime-Guess and 5) Blow ping pong balls. 1) was easy, just try to
manipulate the toothpick to pick up the rubber bands. 5) was to blow ping ping balls on a bed of flour (nasty) and
try to land it to the next bowl. To get points. 4) was to guess what the person is miming. The best one was our
group, Jerry can really mime. He got spiderman down pat. Of course, the guessers were good as well. 3) is self-
explainatory. 2) was the event where I hurt my leg. I have been hobbling along for 2 days now, my foot still
hurts. Of course, I don't whine too much, but it does hurt when I walk, and I walk alot in the warehouse. Needless
to say, each competitor has a balloon next to their foot, and the aim is to pop the opposing team's balloons. We
won, by 3. One team was so good that they survived with 6 balloons. So it was a fun but rather suicidal game. We
were jumping around and stomping, it was that crazy. Thats why I hurt my foot because we stomped so much and so
hard. But it was fun. Our team, after the score tally, came equal last. Then it was Lunch time. Then we had a
presentation about posture and etiquette. Pretty interesting stuff. Then it was a short discussion about why we
were getting married later and if we were for/against having a de facto relationship/having sex before marriage kind
of thing. Most of it was boring, but you can see who thought what. Some were straight laced, others were casual.
It's interesting. Then after that, we had dinner. I'm telling you, there's like 5 meals a day here. Too much food
and it's fattening. After dinner, we had 1.5 hours to get dressed for the main event. Dancing. Taught by some
parents who goes dancing. The difference between guys and girls are... Guys can take 10 mins shower, and 10 mins
dressing up. And is ready. So we literally were waiting for 20 mins before 7:30 before we went and showered and
changed. But the girls... well they literally took 1.7 hours. Shower, and then dressing up/makeup. All the guys
were down there practicing the first dance for 10 mins before the girls rocked up. Then we danced for 1.5 hours,
had 3 kinds of dance, and then it was supper. Except it was so boring that we all left the centre and went to the
city. Except the straight laced people. They stayed behind and played cards, or went to bed early. Jimmy however
had to work on Sunday (like wtf man, why work on Sunday??? crazy mofo). So didn't catch him later. I was with the
group that went into the city to drink and dance. I had my first hard drink. Scotch and coke. It burns your
throat but after a while you'll get used to it. And I don't get drunk as well, which is weird. First I don't get
awake with coffee, but tired (and some of the guys has the same effect at the camp, I'm so relieved that I'm not the
only one) and now I don't really get drunk unless I drink a lot of hard liquor. Except that's what happens to our
family. My grandfather apparently can finish a bottle of the stuff and not feel anything. That's either strong or
weird. Anyways, after that, about an hour later, we came out and I was nearly deaf. Couldn't hear a thing. After
that we went to Wolloomoloo (sp?) and everybody except a few had hotdogs and pies. I wasn't hungry and one of the
guys actually slept in the car because he was tired after dancing. But the time was 2:30am, there were around 50-60
people around this place, called "Harry de Wheels". There were also seagulls awake at this place, because they can
eat the scraps and not sleep. Or maybe they can sleep during the day. Being nocturnal. NOT. After spending half
and hour, we went back and got to sleep. For 4 hours. This time, it was raining and I got woken up by the rain.
Sunday morning. 7:30 am. Lunch finishes at 9:30. I got up nearly an hour after waking up. And had a quick brush of the teeth and wash of the face and I was the 4th guy in the dining hall/kitchen. 1 guy already had 1 plate of breakfast, 2 girls just starting. "Where's everybody"? "Sleeping" was the answer. I got a plate of food and sat down. Then one of the 2 girls gave me a present. I was surprised to say the least. Because of the games, we had to buy a present for the opposite sex. This was a thank you present, because you're supposed to look out for your guarded 'name' on the paper when we first arrived. I think I talked to her once at the intro, but didn't get to talk to her much later. But she obviously knew who I was... so I thanked her and rushed back to my room and got her present, because she wasn't staying after breakfast. After that, about 9:20am, the girls all came in. Then the guys. In the end, it was 9:40 and then we were supposed to have another presentation about 'life' in the hall. 10 mins already gone by, and he didn't have so much pressure to tell everything he knew. But it was an interesting talk again. It's about how to make your world a more interesting place. I got asked who (girlwise) I liked in this camp, and I said nobody. I think I got more people to not like me... which is ok I guess. Tom though I was pretty evil there too... Which is funny because I thought I liked some girl... but they weren't that interested in me. So after that, we had to pack our stuff out of the cabins and into our vehicles. And then we had lunch. Originally it was to be a bbq, but then it was raining, so they bought some food which they cooked at home (they = parents, and the women's association who arranged the camp) and we had a chat and ate. Then it was time to go. My bro actually got dropped off by his gf, because they live close, and since I was that tired, I let my bro drive. So I got home around 1 and then unpacked, and surfed the net etc. Then crashed out for a nap, waking up around 8:30 and taking an hour to eat dinner because I was telling my parents generally about the camp. Overall the camp was pretty good, but I think they could've organised it a bit better. Somewhere remote would've been funny because we wouldn't be able to sneak out and party. But that means you'll be spending more time with people that you might not be interested in. But the main purpose of this camp was for them (the same definition as above) to find bfs for their daughters. I think maybe not this year. Better luck next year. Meanwhile, I was thinking about this girl who got my attention, but I didn't get hers. Even the girl at work knows her and how she is a christian and stuff. She's defiantely not in my list to chase after now :P The more I hear of her, the more it seems like there's more things I don't like... like my bro knows her sister, and that their mum wants a doctor to be her bf/hubby. Well being a doc to chase a girl seems like something stupid to me. But then I'm not gonna chase her so it's alright... She might be a nun or something in the future...
Monday. Back to normal. Or not. It seems like one of the casuals is heading back to HK for a holiday, and I will get put into his position, which was my old position, more than 10 months ago. John will be put into my position, and Bruce will stay in the same position. Therefore, it will be hell when it gets busy. But apparently it won't be too busy, so it's alright.
And it's raining hard now. 12:12 and I'm still awake. Damn I'm so stupid to start this marathon blog so late. Oh well. Till next time...

Hot Saturday

It's hot today. After a couple of days that were cool, it's been hot. Lately I've been playing Need For Speed:Most Wanted demo, and it plays fine, because my computer is cool. But then when I played it today, it rebooted my machine. It simply put my comp's temperature (inside the box) to above 60 degrees. The average temperature in there on a normal day is around 37 or so, but when I played NFSMW, it got around 60 and basically the computer just couldn't handle it, and rebooted. I need better cooling I guess.... but I turned up the fan in the computer, still that couldn't take away the heat? Strange. So I won't play the game during the hotness of the day I guess.

This is the weekend before I will be going to a camp. Needless to say, it's gonna be a weird experience. Will they expect me to be able to understand all the chinese/taiwanese spoken? Or to speak chinese/taiwanese? I have no idea. I can speak mandarin and listen to taiwanese... but both aren't good at all. And the camp is for volunteering... ah... I wonder what will happen to me.

Last week Saturday, my bro got engaged to his long time gf... I think they were going out for less than a year but got told they were going out for more than 3? Is my memory really that bad? I remembered there was another girl in that bro's life, and that wasn't more than 4 years ago. Or has time really gone by quickly? Anyways, the ceremony was that we got there at an auspicious time, showed them the pressies (that my bro and his fiance bought together, of course) and then had a tea drinking ceremony (can't drink all of the tea...), then they put rings on each other's fingers, and then the opposite parents (my mum to her, her dad to him) gave them pressies as well. Matching watches and etc. Then after that, we went to a restraunt. Just before the end of eating, we left without saying a word. It was pretty weird... We just stood up and left. It's meant to say that we're now officially together as a big family, and thus no need to say goodbye or anything like that. Of course, the guests (around 20 odd people) also got told of this before the day, so they were pretty quiet when we left... rather cold I must say, but then again, this 'big' engagement is rather weird. Most people get engaged without pomp and ceremony, and have a big wedding, but chinese have a big engagement and they can have a small wedding, if they want. Or a big banquet/traditional chinese wedding. I don't know what they'll do tho. It's just weird that they want to have a big ceremony.

Work has been very quiet lately. It seems to have died off this month. Next week is still not EOM, but the week after is. Now EOM actually ends on the ACTUAL date of the month. Not the weekend. So it shouldn't impact my camp in anyway. I told my supervisor already. He can't force me to come... and I can't come anyways, with the camp going over the weekend. However I got to tease my colleague because he's been giving rides home to a girl that has managed to crash her car, trashing her radiator and perhaps the engine or something. He's gotten sick of it, but I haven't... This week he's given 3 rides, however he didn't give a ride on Friday arvo. I'm dissappointed. However, I believe that I'm such a nice friend >:D He told me to give her a ride, but with her living the opposite way away from work, no frigging way. Petrol prices aren't cheap. And I have the camp to look forward to... even my colleague thinks I should take one to the xmas party. Hm... would that be too soon? I don't know, it seems like I'm going ahead of myself too much. From nothing to something... it takes time.

Musically, I've been listening to Jay Chou's "November's Chopin"... it's quite alright to me. I also like Younha's "Go! Younha" album. Other than that, the English market isn't quite as interesting to me.

Anime, Bleach is still going good. I also watched some others, like Animal Yokocho, Karin, Lamune (which actually supposed to be "Lemonade") and Ginban Kaliedescope. A healthy mixure of the weird and funny.

J-Drama, well, since Densha Otoko has finished, I decided to take on a new one which is also starred by the actress who played "Hermes". This time, she plays an older sister who's like an airhead, but enjoys life, to a younger bro who's cynical and doesn't know why she's there to piss him off. It's pretty funny to see the "serious" Hermes play a funny girl. Will be watching this one till it finishes, of course. Also, in DO, there's the evil girl who I called "evil sl*t" because she is evil and well, "eats" with anybody who's in a position of power. However, she also acted in a movie I watched sometime this year, called "Swing Girls", the story about a jazz band made up of nobodies. I got that movie out and watched it again, and saw her as a not so evil music teacher. However, she still has the weird evil smile. Guess she can't change that... But at least she didn't "ROAR" in Swing Girls.. Phew.

Ah one more week... then who knows what will happen??? HMMMM...

Aftermath

Um.. so what's new in the world of me? Saturday gone by, worked from 7am till 2:30pm, to stocktake. There were about 4 pairs of people there to stocktake, and the process still took that long. Last time we had 2 pairs and it was up till 5pm or something. The reconcilation of the stock against the system takes the longest time. Things have to be added and removed, and well, I wasn't the one stuck with the job this time around. It's been 2 weeks since I got my Creative Zen Vision - a deal which to me was pretty good. $660 including shipping. Considering that it costs $700+ in the shops, it's pretty good. The only problem I had with it was that... I took out the power in our house on Saturday morning. I left the charger of the Vision in, and when I unplugged it, it went 'poof' and a big spark jumped, and all the computers and shit turned off. Oh-oh, I thought, this isn't good at all... I turned on the lights, they worked, so I had to go outside at 6am and find the safety and turn it back on. Lucky everything turned back on. I think I'll have to find another way to charge my player. The charger is of the dodgy design. Made in China, what do you expect? It was making a loud buzzing noise before I unplugged it as well -_-".

With less than a week to go to my bro's engagement, my bro is still in the states at a dodgy conference (he said so himself) and I just find it funny that they have such bad organisational skills for an international gathering. But he seems to be ok, afterall, it's his second time there. I've never been to the states *sobs* and I have no reason to, yet. He'll be back on thursday, have friday to prepare and saturday will be the big day. Or whatever day. Sigh... no sleeping in that day either.

Today was a strange day to say the least. Not that I didn't expect it, but having both the pickers away (one had business, the other had to help pack up shit at a convention). So then I had no delivery to process till when they came back... And then when they came back, there was a heap of stuff... -_- Talk about weird stuff like that. There was also a big problem with one of our customers. We sent them a pallet of stuff for a show, and they've signed for it and everything, and they are denying that they've got it. After my supervisor's left for the day, he got called up 7 times. And each of the 7 times, he called back to the warehouse. I think I got fustrated after the 5th call -_-. He asked me about the connotes and all possibilities about the particular customer, what we shipped on the days surrounding. It was all good on our end. So I ended up a bit pissed off. But it was nothing compared to the end. We called up for our courier to drop off our convention stuff from the morning, and they literally came in late. After the finishing time. So I had to unload everything, and that made me OT till 6... sigh. Even if it was good money I wouldn't wanna OT in this way... Pain in the ass.

Hopefully it'll be ok tomorrow. The weather is getting cool... Weird isn't it... but it's nice. I washed the car on Sunday, and now it looks 80% already (meaning it's already dirty 20%). Parking under a tree that has birds on it during the day is not good. I really don't like taking care of the car, since it's not my pride and joy... my Vision however... it's my baby... Plus my computer of course ^^.

It looks like my Vision does charge via the USB port. I'm glad. :D