You can guess what he’s famous for…

Had another Navs night last night. Twas another introductory night to give new people an idea of what we’re about. They also awarded the prizes for the car rally, with our car winning best jump photo and each being presented with a skipping rope. Will post the photos as soon as I get them. Just between you and me, I think we probably won all the categories, but they wanted to share out the prizes…

In other news, I think this is an accurate reflection of the browser market shares at the moment

It’s Emily’s birthday today. Got up at 7 this morning to find our house full of people cooking us breakfast. People usually meet at our house on a Thursday morning at 7:30 to pray (this is the 2nd week) and I’ve completely forgotten both times and woken up as they are all arriving. However, this week they were early on purpose so that they could make breakfast. Maybe we should make this a daily thing…

Last night I talked to my sister on the phone while I was cooking and eating tea, with the upshot being that I’m going down to visit her in Queenstown on the first weekend in April. I get to go on the shotover jet for half price which is pretty cool. - She gets on for free… there are advantages to working in the tourism/hotel industry.

Also, the photos from the car rally are up here.

I’m quite looking forward to the weekend. Going to the rugby on Saturday night. The mighty Chiefs vs the Umm, what was that team again, oh yeah the crusaders. One could say that I live in hostile territory, but there’s no way I’m supporting the crusaders.

The social club put on a fantastic afternoon tea yesterday afternoon, with pastries, savouries, cream filled things and sandwiches from the Village Bakehouse - recommended. This was followed up by tea at the Beavon’s in honour of Emily’s birthday and then the mammoth task of putting everyone at navs into a small group, which went reasonably smoothly. I did notice (in the form of a headache) that I forgot to have my coffee in the afternoon, which is possibly not a good sign.

Just piked on the rugby due to a lack of interest from others. - Our work social club was giving us a discount on tickets, but only a couple of others signed up, which kind of takes half the fun out of it.

In other news that I forgot to post, I bought a DVD player yesterday so no longer have to lug my computer to the lounge when I want to watch a DVD.

Friday night I thought I’d have a quite one because I was really tired and didn’t feel like doing anything. Everyone else in my flat was off to another flatwarming, but I thought I’d stay home and watch a DVD and go to bed early. So I chucked the DVD (The Long Kiss Goodnight) in my new DVD player and it started playing. Well, it kind of started playing with a skip every few seconds, which was really annoying, so after a bit of fiddling I decided to watch it in my room. Twas an enjoyable watch, with some classic lines like “everyone knows, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of “u” and “umption”" Then Emily came home and I went to show her the skipping problem and it didn’t happen, but then it started happening again when she went out of the room. Then, I was about to go to bed, checked my cellphone and found a message from Tim telling me that him and Leah were having a flatwarming, so I went round there till just before 1am - so much for the early night, but I enjoyed it, including the game of charades our team cleaned up. Another evening of much food too with pizza at work to start, followed by lots at the flatwarming.

Saturday was a fantastic day with awesome weather, and I did my washing and went out and did the groceries and picked up the plastic hose I need to help me fix the heater in my car - not sure when I’m actually going to find time to do it though. When I got home there was lots of people around, watching the cricket, getting haircuts, studying Indonesian and praying in various parts of the house. More food as well Saturday night we had takeaways for tea - I had a bacon burger, a crumbed blue cod fillet and two potato fritters. My flatmates went out to watch a friend play in some band at some place and I went to bed early (just after 10)

Sunday, I met up with Craig first thing in the morning, then went to church and then had a picnic at the botanic gardens with my navs small group from last year, which was great. We were all there, and enjoyed more good food and good music - from my musical chilly-bin. We also saw a rat in amongst the bushes and the others named it “Randy Leper”. I’m not quite sure what the thinking behind that was, but apparently Randy is a gender neutral name because they didn’t know what it was and Leper had something to do with rats carrying disease (I think). Then, went home played THPS3 for an hour or two and then had Mike’s fantastic pizza for tea. Then I rang my mum (It was her birthday - happy birthday!) and then thought I’d try my DVD player with another DVD - The Good the Bad and the Ugly which started playing ok, but is in 2.35:1 widescreen, which the DVD player decided to chop the sides off, so I watched that one on my computer as well, interspersed with more pizza and talking to flatmates. I ended up going to bed about 12:30.

Today at work was fairly slow. Probably the biggest thing I acheived was constructing a cube out of 72 of my old business cards, as I got new ones today. I’m quite proud of the cube. Here is a photo:

Went round to Rachel’s flat for a BBQ tonight which was yum and now I’m typing this and I’ve written plenty so I’m going to stop now.

Ok, apparently the rat wasn’t given the last name leper because rat’s spread disease, it was because lepers wouldn’t notice if rats were eating them because they have no feeling in their limbs. Thanks Judy for clarifying that…

A more productive day at work today. Also first small group night for navs which was cool. I’m not sure if the confidentiality rules within the group allow me to tell you that we had lots of good food including Chocolate muffins, popcorn, lollies, and fizz, but I’ll risk it just this once - We had lots of good food including Chocolate muffins, popcorn, lollies, and fizz. Our group leaders must be fantastic. Thanks Paul and Rachel. Note - Paul, if you read this, the fact that I just put a link to your blog means that you must update it…

Also the first game of pool I’d played in ages. Let’s just say that foxes are bad at pool and I played like a fox, although I improved somewhat later on. - much like these foxes which are also being “improved”. And yes I do want one.

Went out to Andrew, Deb and Mike’s flat for tea last night, which was awesome pizza with some ok chocolate mousse for dessert (I made the mousse and it wasn’t totally succesful) - twas runny in the bottom for some reason.

I’m currently having a play with various Content Management Systems for the purpose of constructing the national lifenet website. I installed PostNuke today which looks like it could be the one we end up using. I’ve also had Drupal installed for a few days. I was having some annoying permissions problems with PostNuke, but I appear to have them sorted now. I got distracted in the middle because everyone wanted to watch a DVD and I ended up watching it with them (Dangerous Minds) which I have seen before, but was worth seeing again. On the plus side I can now say that I’ve watched a whole movie on my DVD player, although there were a few glitches.

Going on a Navs camp tomorrow, so you won’t hear from me for a few days.

Drove to work this morning (lazy) and it is definitely time to fix my car heater. Windscreen fogged up something chronic, despite having windows open and the sun was at just the right angle to strike the window and make it pretty much opaque at certain points, which made it quite scary to drive. The main blind spots were turning right out of my driveway onto Main South road, and turning onto Riccarton? just before countdown. (The place where I once saw a car parked on it’s side and where there is frequently car debris lying around)

All of that aside, I was cold.

I will post about my weekend tonight, which was fantastic by the way, but I just had to mention that I’m on a bit of a high today, after finding out that the Chiefs won! Which means that I picked the winners of all 6 games correctly this week, lifting me up to the top of the table in our work tipping comp on oztips (with 7 others.) You get an extra point for getting them all right, which gave me 7 points. All I can say is that I really feel for the 18 people who would have got 7 points if only they’d picked the Chiefs… Haha

Here comes my fantastic weekend… Our Navs camp was at Wainui, so we met outside R&R to give people rides etc. and got a map and lollies along with some suggestions to spice up the trip. These suggestions included such pearlers as do a Chinese fire drill at the first set of traffic lights, which resulted in me not driving the rest of the way to Lincoln where we picked up Paul as I returned to my door and found my seat occupied by a Merodie. Others included writing a song with the word sheep twice and another kiwi icon, and counting all the oncoming cars… I have to say that our estimate was actually quite close to the rigourous count that one of the other cars did. I include the full text of our song below for posterity:

Rugby rugby rugby,
Sheep sheep sheep
Rugby
Sheep
Rugby
Sheep
Rugby rugby rugby
Sheep sheep sheep.

Some of the other cars came up with some awesome songs with instrumental backup and all.

After we arrived (9:30ish) we just kind of hung out for the evening, played a bit of cards etc.
Saturday was awesome. We went to Akaroa with a packed lunch and split up in various directions - one group went shopping, another played soccer in the park and we decided to go swimming and jumping off the wharf. This was a fantastic idea, right up until when we wanted to get out and found that the ladders were encrusted with razer sharp barnacles and were quite hard to get onto - The fact that it was low tide didn’t help. All 6 of the people who jumped in got cut somewhere, but Mark H took the prize, needing two stitches in his toe. I just got some relatively minor gashes on a few of my toes and a few nicks on my hands. I start to understand where the term “cut to ribbons” comes from though. Due to the lack of climbability of the wharf and Mark’s need for medical attention, we left the wharf and those of us who weren’t taking him away headed off to the soccer game. We then proceeded to spend the afternoon at Wainui beach, where I got a little bit sunburnt and had a lot of fun.

After tea we played Storm the Heights on the hill behind the camp, which got a little feral in some places, the prime example being Merodie ending up with blood on her mouth after biting into Tony’s arm. More exercise than I’ve done for a while.

This was followed by our own Wild foods festival to coincide with the one in Hokitika, with each group having prepared a wild food to bring along. Someone from each group had to sample the wares of the other groups. Our offering was Eye of Groper. I actually ended up eating some of everything except the hot Chilli. So I ate a little bit of ox kidney, a sheep kidney, a chicken foot, half a plate of chicken hearts with chickweed and violets (all the leftovers) and three of our eyes. There was one each, but we had a couple left over which I thought I’d just polish off. I think there are photos somewhere which will emerge in due course. More cards and talking followed. Sunday morning we had a cooked breakfast! and then Amy presented a bit of a talk about the masks we all wear and then we spent some time discussing that as a group, which was really useful. Then Adam said that it would be awesome if people cleaned the cars they came in to say thanks to the drivers. - I wasn’t complaining We did get told off by the camp staff as they pay for water and ended up getting buckets from the stream, which was fair enough.

Then we had lunch and cleaned up, a few people played some more soccer and then we left and spent the afternoon at the beach again, where I got a little bit more sunburnt and also swam a lot further than the previous day. An impressive sand formula-one car was created by a few people too. I made a rock and seaweed wall to protect Merodie and Rosalie’s sand castle from the sea, which actually worked quite well until the water went round it…

Then stopped for ice-creams in Little River and blobbed in front of a movie (Ronin) after we got home and had tea. (Another success for the DVD player - maybe I just had to break it in…)

All-in-all, a fantastic, relaxing, fun, multiple, adjectives, weekend. Thanks to Adam and co. for organising it. Also, I haven’t said too much about it, but the food was fantastic, especially considering the whole weekend was only $30.

The other thing I experienced, along with a number of the other drivers, was the reduced braking power of my car after descending a large hill, even with engine braking, although I got a lot better at that throughout the weekend, to the point where I tried to avoid using my brakes altogether. I could still stop at the bottom though and managed to make the turn into the road up to the camp. A few people actually overshot it.

Flickr words:

I’ve been trying to not turn on my computer again after 10pm, which has meant I haven’t been doing the last thing post routine. Anyway, highlights of the last few days… Got awarded a prize for being the most impressive eater at camp at navs on Tuesday. Two bags of lollies, which was quite lucky as I had just been told that I had to provide food for our group on account of not preparing for the study.

More good Lost and Scrubs action last night. Also got up at 6 this morning and went for a run - no, really it’s true, and then came back and did the dishes. It’s been almost a year since the last one, which was about a year after the one before that, so hopefully the trend doesn’t continue and I can motivate myself to go a little bit more regularly. I plan to work some swimming in somewhere too.

Staff BBQ at work today at lunchtime, which should be good. Happy Saint Patricks day! Yes, I am wearing my fluoro green t-shirt.

Well, another weekend, another camp. This weekend it was our church camp at Woodend, which again like the camp last week was a fantastic relaxing time to hang out and get to know people. Helped set up a big army tent on the Friday night, which had a few engineering challenges to overcome, but we got there in the end.

Saturday we played some minigolf and spent the afternoon at the beach, which had actual waves, which was exciting. Only very minor sunburn. Also, shock, horror, I went for another run in the morning, down to the beach and back. How many times do you have to do something before it comes a habit?

Went back into town with Jeremy, Eoin, Michelle and Kelly after tea to Cam’s 21st, which was fun, with a few games and an awesome dessert thrown in. When we got back to camp, we caught the second half of The Terminal, which I actually quite enjoyed. Daylight saving came at just the right time, and we were served breakfast in bed at 8:30am. Then got up for second breakfast. After cleanup after lunch, Kelly, Matt and Me went back to the beach for a final swim and then headed home with Matt’s bike on my roofrack.

I have been sleepy all day, but not really in a bad way, just in an overly relaxed flop kind of a way, which is fine when you don’t really have to do anything.

p.s. Kelly, you still have my hoodie

On re-reading my post I have decided that it’s coverage of the fun-ness of camp and the stuff we did etc is woefully inadequate. Possibly due to the sleepiness mentioned in the title. I don’t think I’m going to try again, but you can pick some of it up from Kelly’s post-camp report here, although I didn’t really participate in a lot of the stuff mentioned. I was the instigator of the starfish slap though. It started out with me attempting to imagine how a starfish would swim/move through the waves, which involved falling over a lot with arms and legs spreadeagled - I think that might be the right word. It then moved onto doing the same thing in close proximity to others while spinning around. Thus the slapping.

All of the floor (that isn’t covered by furniture) in my room is now visible and even vacuumed!

Hanging washing while feeling the first few drips of rain starting to fall is somewhat depressing.

After I got home from work on Tuesday, I decided to sort through all of my old photos and put them into an album. Well, I actually decided that on Monday, giving me time to get the album on Tuesday before I came home. The main time period the photos cover are from when I started uni, till I started working, so about 3 years. After that I got my digital camera and the printing of photos kind of stopped. I’ve kind of rectified that too, by selecting about 113 digital photos from my collection on Wednesday, to print and add to my album. Anyway it was kind of fun to look back at what I’d been up to.

One of the things that struck me the most though was that there was a lot that I didn’t take photos of, like us rollerblading till 2/3am most nights in first year. This could have something to do with the incompatibility of skating and taking photos and also the fact that it was dark, but I still don’t have a single photo of any of us on our blades. I also don’t really have any photos of church or youthgroup things from that era, apart from one tramp we went on.

All of this could have something to do with the cost of film and processing to a poor student or that I was having too much fun to take photos, but I guess I’ll just have to manually remember all the good times.

More Scrubs and Lost last night, with the worthy addition to my verbal repertoire of “So’s your face” as per the following section of Scrubs:

J.D.: So’s your face.
Elliot: That doesn’t even make any sense.
J.D.: “So’s your face” always makes sense.
Carla: J.D., that’s stupid.
J.D.: So’s your face! I’m on fire! Helloooo!
He leaves victorious.

Well, it was a long weekend, and as such a long time between posts, but I’m back now and did plenty over the weekend, so in theory I should have lots to post. The only disadvantage of the delay is that I have to remember all the way back. For people in countries with different public holidays than NZ, we have Friday and Monday off for Easter.

Emily’s brother Patrick and his friend Sean stayed for most of the weekend (late Thursday till Sunday afternoon. I spent a fair chunk of Friday attempting to fix my car heater, with a little bit of assistance from Sean (who happens to be a mechanic) toward the end. I think I have been mostly successful. The main problem once I unblocked it, was removing all the airlocks from the cooling system, as the heater core is above the radiator. I went for a blast around the block and actually felt hot air come out intermittently, which was an improvement. However, I wasn’t entirely satisfied, so I repeated the process on Monday, as well as replacing the thermostat - probably didn’t actually need to, but not expensive and replacing the antifreeze that had been severely diluted on Friday. The heater works much better now.

Other than that, I spent a good day attacking the lifenet website (by attacking I mean working on rather than attempting to hack) and am starting to get my head around PostNuke a lot more, although there is much left to do. Currently I am trying to make a page that scales well to various resolutions, while incorporating the curves suggested by the graphic designer. Unfortunately, scalable vector graphics are not natively supported in many browsers yet. I think that most of my curves will include straight lines…

We also spent a lot of time watching movies, with my DVD collection being extensively utilised, as well as a few TV movies and one that the boys rented, which I can’t remember the name of and really don’t want to recommend anyway.

We were planning to go to Riccarton mall on Saturday afternoon, but after the 6 of us shoehorned ourselves into Sean’s skyline and got there just after 4, we found out it was shut and went to McD’s instead. I got a boss burger combo, which Mike tells me contained over half my daily calorie requirements. Fortunately it was one of only two meals I had that day (the other being waffles), so twasn’t really a problem.

Then Em headed back up to Nelson with Sean and Patrick and I decided to go see Million Dollar Baby, which was an awesome movie. I won’t spoil it for others wanting to see it, but it does make you think. The big question really is whether you can look back on your life when you are about to die and say “I did alright”. Also, I almost laughed out loud at the following exchange:

Frankie Dunn: Father, that was a great sermon… made me weep.
Father Horvak: What’s confusing you this week?
Frankie Dunn: Oh, it’s the same old, ‘one God-three God’ thing.
Father Horvak: Frankie, most people figure out by kindergarten that it’s about faith.
Frankie Dunn: Is it sort of like Snap Crackle and Pop, all rolled into one big box?
***
- Can’t find the script for this bit, so I’ll adlib.
Father: Did you just compare the holy trinity to a box of cereal? Answer: just one God.
Frankie: So what about the Holy Spirit?
Father: manifestation of God’s love (can’t remember exactly here, probably misquote) and Jesus is the son of God
***
Frankie Dunn: So is Jesus a Demigod?
Father Horvak: There are no Demigods, you f***ing Pagan!

Anyway, the acting was amazing. You’d never guess that Clint Eastwood was 74.

Yesterday afternoon we played some soccer at Jellie park and then went back to the Castle to watch the end of the day’s cricket - depressing and for tea. We made the biggest meat pizza ever. We used scone dough for the base, so for a start the four of us were eating 4.5 scones worth of base each, let alone any toppings. On the pizza we had mince, luncheon, tomato relish, onion (except Adam) token garlic, sausage, lots of cheese and bbq sauce. Adam took photos which I’m sure he’ll email me to add to this post. To quote Mike - once it was cooked and we’d cut it into quarters and started putting one slice on each plate: “The full gravity of the situation is only just starting to become apparent.”

**Edit** Here are the photos:

We then proceeded to eat aforementioned pizza. I polished off my bit reasonably quickly with Mike following a wee while later. Adam finished his with a bit of a struggle and a lot of determination, but Tony unfortunately failed to cross the finish line. So the ease of finishing appears to have been inversely proportional to body weight… I probably shouldn’t mention that the four of us ate this very manly pizza while watching The Princess Diaries.

Today I went back to work and finally got around to taking my plate in to get fixed at lunchtime (approximately 20 months after I broke it). I had to leave it there and will go back for it tomorrow. It’s the first time in ages that I’ve eaten without it in my mouth, which is actually a really strange feeling. The roof of my mouth is quite sensitive. - I wonder if having the plate contributes to the speed that I can eat… The dental technician asked me how long I’d had the plate and I realised I’d had it 5.5 years which seems like a really long time.

Also got my photos today, so put them into the album. Most frustrating part was continually skipping pages by accident and then having to shift all the photos back a few pages.

Anyway, that should keep everyone going for a while. As an aside, you can no longer complain about lack of updates if you haven’t updated your own blog since I last updated mine. That means if you don’t have a blog you can’t complain at all.

New link in my sidebar to the blog of the Charming Indonesians… (Cam, Haussmanns, April, Rachael and Merodie) who have headed off to Indonesia for the uni holidays.