Avoca and Volleyball

Woah it's been a while since I've written on this thing. If you find a series of typos, that's just because I've forgotten how to type.

Well lets see, what did I last write on this blog? I could probably just read my previous post, but that'll be boring. I'll assume I haven't told you guys about Avoca or this new sport I've gotten myself involved in.

Ok ok so Matt Gates finally managed to organize a trip to Avoca. About 15 people showed up and it was awesome. There was plenty of food, beer and sun. The view was tremendous too - it really made me think of how awesome it would be live by the beach. I honestly don't think I could ever get bored of it. Towards the end of he weekend however, we noticed a bunch of blue bottles washed up on the shore. In case you don't know, blue bottles are the scorpions of the sea - they're jellyfish that act like little blue mines that bob up and down in the sea. If you touch one of their tentacles you can get an extremely painful sting. I witnessed from afar an Asian woman who was confidently marching over thousands of these dehydrated blue bottles without a care in the world. She was either confident as hell or completely color blind.

I recently (well, like 5 weeks ago) joined the volleyball team for UNSW. It's quite nice. The people are very friendly and welcoming and I'm learning some good skills. It frustrates me a little bit that our 'coach' is a 22 year old volleyball veteran who can barely play volleyball himself, but it's not a big deal since we still get to play for a couple of hours after training.

I also recently signed up for a 1/2 year membership to the CBVA (Coogee Beach Volleyball Association). This gives me access to join training sessions and play games with other members 4 days a week. I played for 3 hours yesterday which was heaps of fun. God mustn't have wanted me to join though because my face is now painted a light red.

In other news, I've had 0 progress with my website. My website designer guy has decided to go AWOL, taking all code to my website and also $100 with it. Not the biggest loss, but it's still a nasty set back. I tried to teach myself entrepreneurial skills via YouTube in attempt to motivate me to keep going. Sadly however, YouTube is filled with unhelpful crap in this sector of online education. Every video I clicked on (and this includes videos from top tier Universities) offered no useful advice. Most of them just stuck to overused sport related cliches - "you've got to want to succeed in your company as bad as you want to breath!" and "when you look in the mirror, you should see success!" were two of my of my favorites. I guess entrepreneurship is too broad an area to learn via YouTube.

I've been desperately trying to get Nepal organized. It's not easy though because my friend, Matt, is infamously hard to organize. The recent snow storm that killed 54 (I think it's 54) people recently is no doubt going to cause more indecision. Either way, I'm going to go. As practice for high altitude climbing, I've decided to try and breath less on a daily basis. I don't think it's working though, I just feel dizzy most of the time.

Last week was a very strange week for me because one of the PhD students had their computer catch fire over the weekend. About 1/4 of the office was drenched in water because of the automatic sprinklers which went off. Unfortunately my desk was in that area of the office covered in water. It turned out to be a good thing though because it gave me the opportunity to work from home which was a refreshing break.

International Roommates

Jonas and Alberto have been gone for a few weeks now. The house is no longer stained with dirty bowls and cutlery, but it's also a whole lot more boring. Jasper and Lachie usually work in the evenings and have very independent social lives so it's as if they're not really living here. In an attempt to jump start the social life of the house I've taken it upon myself to invite everyone to 'Double Steak Tuesdays' at the Doncaster Pub or buy a blow up pool for Summer! It's not really catching on though because sadly my Australian roommates aren't as excited by things like 'Double Steak Tuesday' as I am - it's their loss really, it's awesome value.

Ah well, I'm glad I taught Jonas and Alberto a little bit of Australian culture while they were here. They learned that no one wins the Australian game of drink, not even Australians. Hopefully I'll be able to meet up with Jonas in February next year in Germany as part of a spontaneous trip I'm going to eventually organize in January.

Jonas described to me a whole bunch of German drinking games, but we never had the people or resources to play them. It'll be really rewarding to learn these important life skills first hand. Strangely enough, Lachie and I invented a drinking game earlier today while he was waiting for a program called "steam" to install on his computer. All you have to do is drink at the same speed as the application being downloaded. Because Australia's internet is so bi-polar this makes the whole thing much more challenging than you think. Also, if you screw up then you have to Skull your drink. Now that's a 21st century 1st world drinking game if ever I've heard one!

Lastly, I just came back from a village party I managed to get invited to. I left early once I realized that a few first-years I tutored last year were there. Man I'm old!

International Trips

A friend of mine from Texas is currently in Australia. He arrived last week and is currently staying in a hostel in Kings Cross. I picked him up from the airport on a Monday morning at 6am before I had work and as a gift he had got me a bottle of fine whisky from the duty free. I think I noticed him holding onto the bottle a little too tightly as he handed it to me - clearly some regret was forming in his mind once he realized alcohol is 23 times more expensive in Australia. That Wednesday, we went drinking at the Wanderer which is a great pub in Central to celebrate his birthday. The drinks were cheap (because my roommate was working there), the company was good, and the music was awesome. Sadly though, I think I'm kinda failing at my responsibility to be a good tour guide to Australia - I'm at work on the weekdays and he wants to go clubbing on the weekends. It was actually kind of disappointing to find out in the car that he didn't want to do any cultural activities in Sydney - he just wanted to get wasted every night. I dunno, my policy when I travel to somewhere new is to do the touristy stuff in the morning when you're sober, then fill in the gaps of time with alcohol.

This reminds me, I'm planning a trip to Indonesia early next year. I'm planning on meeting up with my Spanish friend who recently got a job in an embassy in Jakarta!  I really don't have the specifics sorted yet. Actually I don't have the over arching picture ready yet either. But at this point, I'm thinking of hitting S.E. Asia first, then heading to Qatar and maybe a few carefully selected places in the Middle East, and finishing it off with Eastern Europe. I've been guilt tripped into experiencing Istanbul by a work colleague of mine. We'll see how awesome it is. I really wanted to fit Canada or California in there somewhere, but they're just too far away :( Why can't the world be shaped differently :(

Ice Bucket Challenge

On the 19th August 2014 I did the ALS Ice Bucket challenge. It's a challenge spreading like wildfire through Facebook. A person nominates 3 people and they have to either donate $10 to the ALS charity or pour ice water over themselves and nominate 3 other people. The decision needs to be made in 24 hours. After contemplating in 'the thinker' position for a couple of hours, I decided to walk down to the nearest BP station and buy a $5 bag of ice. I'm an evil person.

The procedure only lasted 3 seconds, but felt like an eternity. My heartbeat slowed and I felt every bone in my body chill and crack. My breath got fainter and fainter and for a while I didn't think I was going to make it. In my delirious state I played this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMqfWoFjgto) through my head a thousand times to give me the mental strength I needed to push through the ordeal.

The deed was done.

Hunter Valley

Did you know that there is a word in German for the specific type of pain you get when your left earlobe hurts? Why don't we have a word like that in English? We should have a word which describes that pain! After living with international students for a while now I've started to learn how dreadfully inefficient English is. 1) Some words sound the same but are spelled differently (like "no" and "know") 2) We have silent letters jammed into other words (like "know") 3) sentences whilst clear and easy to understand can still technically be grammatically incorrect (like "You know I no like chocolate"). Now I know I definitely haven't mastered the English language, but from what I do know, I can tell ya it's pretty limited. In my personal opinion, I think we should all abandon English and switch to sign language and grunting. Or if society won't allow me to do that, then fuck it, I'm learning French.

I just came back from the hunter valley today. It was awesome sauce. The food was awesome. The company was good and the bike riding was adventurous. About a week ago, I didn't think "Adventurous" would be the word I thought I'd use to describe what I thought would be a relaxing day of cycling between wineyards and trying different wines. But when you see the News title "Rain-magedon" the same day you drive up to the Hunter you start to change your expectations a lil' bit. It did rain quite a lot on Saturday, but not enough to close any wineries or roads. The plan was to ride a full loop around a bike trail, but one member of our group (let's call him "Tom Mayfield"), despite having weeks of warning, decided that now was the time to tell us that he couldn't ride a bike. God complimented Tom's timing by unzipping his pants and pissing down water at the exact same time. Fortunately, things did get better. Over time the rain got less severe and Toms bike riding got better with more wine. Even though we only made 1/4 of the route we were planning to ride around we still managed to enjoy a shit tonne of wine. Mission complete! In the morning the weather was much better so Jonas, Alberto and I rode the entire bike trail including a good lookout just to make the most of our bikes before we had to return them by 12. Then, after we checked out we visited a few more distilleries and wineries. Yep so it looks like everything worked out after all. Oh, except for the part where I rode my bike into a wall of barbed wire and got slashes up and down my right and left arms. EXTREME!

Oh yeah, a little bit of tension has been building up in the house recently over the mess that has slowly been piling up in the sink. I've suggested public whipping to the person that doesn't clean his/her plate. My idea was down-voted 0 - 6 (even I down-voted it). But now that I've put more thought into it, I've realized that public whipping could be a great way to bond 5/6ths of the house together and make the house cleaner. Bring back the whip!

City2Surf

I ran the City2Surf race yesterday. I'm still out of breath. I woke up at 7:10am for a 7:55 start in the red group. It may have been optimistic of me to think I'd be able to get there on time, but it was definitely stupid of me to press the snooze button when I heard my phone alarm go off. I had sprinted down to the bus stop and was waiting impatiently for the bus to get to its destination (Hyde Park) when I heard the gun go off. By the way, Red group is at the front of the 70,000 people, and it's usually filled with mostly super fit athletes and a small mix of unfit and unprepared idiots like me. I got off the bus early and sprinted down oxford st to join the Red group before it was too late. I approached a side entrance where a crowed control officer was filtering out runners from watchers. I was already so tired from sprinting from Oxford st that I could only manage to wheeze out the words "I'm.. in.. red.. group.. can I get through.. (deep breath) please..?". After sharing a glimpse of disgust and sympathy, the guy pulled the gate open and let me through. Almost all the runners had already crossed the start line at this point, so I was the last guy to cross the start line while panting furiously with the camera pointing at my face. The race itself was good though. I somehow managed to run the whole thing and got a final time of 1 hour and 15 minutes. I think this is my worst time yet, but I'm not too surprised. After all, your dignity isn't the only thing you lose when you sit down 7 hours a day in an office.

Life is a video game

Day 234234

Reinforcements have arrived. Today we got our dishwasher fixed. Finally the cutting boards, bowls and cutlery that served as the breeding grounds for the cockroaches will be swept clean. We can finally take back what was once ours - a kitchen free of infestation. Our first assault will be at 0900. My roommates are resting for the day ahead, God knows they'll need it...

In other news my hunter valley trip is getting nearer and nearer. I'm very excited. This weekend off will be the closest thing to a holiday that I've had since the start of the year. It's just my roommates and a friend of mine from Pymble driving up there for a few days of good ol wine drinking and site seeing. We're actually bringing up German food as preventative hangover cure. Most of it I'm guessing will be German sausage so I guess the weekend trip will be a sausage fest in more than one way.

Hanging out with only my roommates and a few select friends from up north all the time really gets me thinking about my deteriorating social life. I'm seriously one boring Saturday night away from Googling how to make friends. But my track record for doing research through Google for school / uni projects makes me think I'll inevitably end up watching YouTube videos of Pokemon or reading an mildly interesting Wikipedia article about Vegemite.

I know I keep hammering on about this every blog, but I really wish there were more post uni activities for people fresh out in the real world. Perhaps something simple like 'international onesie week' would be a refreshing way to meet people. I think it'll be really cool to have a African American friend who's not actually American (just black). I think I'd get so much street cred without even trying - it's like the cheat code to popularity.

So I'm sure I must have mentioned at some point in a previous post that I view life kinda like a high graphics video game that's more boring than GTA but more interesting than Tetris. I still cling to this world view by the way. It keeps me super vigilant about the possibility of a zombie breakout.  Which reminds me, why do people in Zombie films write fancy dramatic sayings like "The End Is Nigh" or "Muuuurrrdeeerrrr" across the wall in blood? Why wouldn't you communicate something more meaningful like "Food this way ---->" or something. Also, why do they write in blood? This is a zombie Apocalypse we're talking about, not some world wide shortage of pens. And if they're so rushed to write a message that they're forced to write in blood, why don't they just run? I dunno, these questions and more I think will never be solved :(

But alas this is not the only time I've been confused by the actions of a computer. I found myself typing on Microsoft word yesterday and a word I had typed up had been underlined in that squiggly red line we're all familiar too with. I was sure the word was spelled correctly so I right clicked to see if I could get rid of that red underline. Instead Microsoft word insisted I "ignore once". WTF Microsoft? What's with the ambiguous threat? What if I want to ignore it twice? Bring it on computer, game on.