You can guess what he's famous for...

Well, Thursday to Thursday it’s been quite a busy week. Thursday night we had basketball after work. I decided to bike to work that day (which I hadn’t done for a wee while) which meant that I had to bike to basketball, which would have been pretty cruisy except that I was trying to keep up with Baz resulting in me being severely stuffed by the time we got there. However, I recovered enough to play in the end. On the way home I was thinking about going to bed early to get up for work, when I suddenly realised that Friday was a day off!! This was quite a revelation really, considering I’d known all day, but it didn’t actually sink in until that point which kind of made my day.

I spent most of Friday playing games (Dawn of War specifically) which was a fun way to spend a day off, if not entirely productive. A group of us watched Pride and Prejudice in the evening which (despite the mockability of this statement) I have to say I enjoyed. As Adam put it – it is very well done, but about such a stupid subject. 5-6 hours about girls trying to find a husband…

Saturday was good too, a reasonably relaxing morning (sleep-in followed by a bit more gaming and then talking to flatmates (and Adam)). Then Megan left, never to be seen again until next week and then I went to our class reunion, which consisted of a casual game of soccer (I was goalie for quite some time, allowing me to lie in the sun for most of the game) and then a delicious spit roast dinner, which I ate a lot of, – this was helped by the relatively small number of people who turned up.

The large dinner was quite fortituous as Sunday was our Navs oversight team planning day for which we had decided to fast, so stocking up the night before was definitely a good thing. It was at the sister Eveleen retreat house in Sumner, which had some fantastic views out over the sea. The funniest part of the day would have to be when Ayley, Tim and Me were waiting by the car when we were leaving and I mentioned that it might be a bit difficult for Lynton to get his car out from where he was parked and Ayley responded by saying that the people walking up the hill looked like they were leaving which would be bound to make it easier. This probably would have made it easier if it hadn’t been Lynton and Annette. 🙂 When I got home I decided I wanted fish and chips so ate way too much of them, feeling sick afterwards. Dave actually refused when I asked him if he wanted me to get him some, which came as quite a shock.

On Monday my new mouse arrived. I have to post a few pictures…

Photo of mouse taken with flash

Photo of mouse taken without flash

Photo of mouse taken in the dark

Tuesday was halflife 2 day, which ended up costing me an extra $80 due to me absent-mindedly speeding down Riccarton Rd. on my way to Baz’s place to get my copy. Good on the NZ police for their vigilance. Once that was all sorted I headed back home to play it, and yes it really is as good as they say! The graphics, physics and story are awesome. The people are very cool, as they have realistic facial expressions and you can see the glisten in their eyes and sometimes they even blink (something I noticed yesterday). Oh, I almost forgot… Megan (at work) came back from her holiday in Fiji and I almost recognised her.

Wednesday we put on another “cake” day at work for our team, which went off well, especially the vegetables, which the vegetarians were very appreciative of, – given their absence in the past. I should probably explain that we have converted cake day into more of an assorted yummy food day. More halflife 2 in the evening, where I was introduced to the joys of the airboat.

Today we had our quarterly company BBQ at lunchtime, and some more basketball fun in the evening.

Daily diary signing out 😛

But a little game called halflife 2 which has just come out means that I have no time to tell you about it all. I will, later.

Week 5 is the current week and no I don’t know why there is a big gap at the top

**update** I got rid of the gap! The key is to put all the code for the table on one line, otherwise there will be a newline added for each line of the table.

Well, it’s been a wee while since I updated, as various people have reminded me, so I thought I would write something despite being well past my bedtime. (For those laughing, I will be getting up at 6:20). The most stand-out thing that happened this week was going to the beach yesterday, which was fantastic, with awesome weather, soccer, swimming and I didn’t even get sunburnt. However I did manage to obtain a rather large gash in the bottom of my heel, courtesy of a large chunk of glass that I stood on when I jumped out of the car to go grab Baz at his place, resulting in large amounts of blood, mostly on his floor. We repaired the damage with a kitchen towel and some electrical tape, which lasted till we got to the beach (Taylor’s mistake for those interested) at which point it fell off. I decided to ignore it, which resulted in the cut filling up with sand which I then had to attempt to wash out once I got home (mostly successful). Anyway, you’ve probably had enough of me describing my wounds in graphic detail, so I’ll stop…

I got a bigger swiss ball on Saturday too, which I sat on all day at work today and don’t feel any worse off, apart from it rubbing most of the hair off the back of my legs.

Ooh, before I forget, Baz and me came up with the idea of a social club beach day/evening. (Take note Mark) or possibly even just a bunch of us going to the beach straight after work for a bbq. We were trying to figure out how to beat the weekend crowds, so we thought organising it for a Wednesday would be best. (The social club beach day that is).

Anyway, bedtime… And I may update you on the draughts results tomorrow if I remember, although they aren’t too flattering.

Yesterday was quite uneventful, which was kind of strange, being my birthday. I really must be getting old… Actually, I quite enjoyed the relaxedness of it all. I may have just invented that word… We had a romantic dinner for four (Spags) by candlelight, after which my Sister rang. After I talked to her I opened the present that my flatmates got for me which was very cool! – A sushi kit… Someone must have been noticing the copius amounts of sushi I eat my way through 🙂 Then the rest of my family rang up and I talked to them for some time. Possibly the most interesting piece of news was that my brother Frans who kept pretending that he couldn’t be bothered learning how to drive has been getting lessons in secret since Tony got his learner’s. Dad told him that he had to get 10 lessons with an instructor before he could drive with Dad and the first Dad knew about the lessons was when Frans asked if he could drive. After that I had a piece of very yummy carrot cake that Megan baked for me while I was on the phone (no Mark, it wasn’t bacon cake) and then went to bed. Oh, today is actually the day that I am playing basketball 🙂

Sunday was great. First I had church, which was excellent. Some of the lines in one of the songs really stuck out to me. The lines were “Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me” and “Restore unto me the joy of my salvation”, both of which stuck out as I have been rather grumpy and tired of late, and the grumpiness really isn’t a “right spirit”. Reuben recently wrote a post which used a lightbulb as an analogy for Jesus, and I made a rather cryptic comment at the time about taking light bulbs for granted. I think it is possible sometimes to take God for granted and forget how amazing he is, which I think is one of the reasons that we worship, – to remind ourselves. I think there are a lot of things that we take for granted, for example I am writing this post in a text editor, because blogger doesn’t seem to be working. I expected it to just work, but the link just wouldn’t work which I really wasn’t expecting before 7 in the morning.
Anyway, on to the rest of my day. After church, we went out out to the Martin’s place (near Prebbleton) and had a massive bbq. When we came back, there were some people I knew playing soccer on the Ilam school field, so I joined in, possibly the first exercise I’ve had in weeks. I’m writing this on Thursday but pretending that I wrote it on Monday, so it seems a bit weird to write that I’m playing basketball tonight, which will be my next bout of exercise, but I’ll write it anyway 🙂 because I am. Then I had a meeting with food and got home in time to watch CSI and NCIS. One of the highlights of the day was telling everyone who asked what I had planned for Monday “Nothing”.

Today (Monday – Labour day) I played Myst IV most of the day (small amount of progress) and then went to Rachael’s house with Megan and had a spa, which could have been quite relaxing… Then after tea I introduced Megan to the world of Arnie, in the form of True Lies.

**Update, I figured out why I had to write this post (and the next one) offline… “A major error was made in the network routing“**

I actually did quite a lot yesterday, looking back. I got up just before 7 (Yes it was the weekend) and went for a roller-blade, which I haven’t done for ages, which was fun and also some much needed exercise. A wee bit of boring stuff like tidying my room and doing my washing. I played the prince of Persia demo some more, which was not great, and I got to a point where everyone else has problems and the big monster gets stuck in the corner and you can’t kill him. Anyway, too much detail. Played a bit of Myst IV as well (very small amount of progress), re-potted my cacti, went to a meeting, watched “The Castle” – I’d never seen it before, classic comedy – recommended… Then watched some of the rugby which wasn’t all that exciting due to not having any teams I cared about, so went to the undies flat to watch another movie…

That is what this post is really about. The movie was “Lost in Translation.” This was possibly the most boring movie I have ever seen. Nothing actually happens, and it is about two bored people hanging out together. The only reason I didn’t fall asleep was that I was hoping that something was going to redeem the movie, but alas, no, nothing. We did watch it rather late in the evening which could have contributed, but I’m sure it can’t have been that big a factor. I decided to check out what others thought about it and looked it up on IMDB. I cannot agree… (See post title) This movie is ranked an 8/10 and is number 153 on the best 250 movies of all time. I’m not quite sure if we were watching the same movie, but I really didn’t see it. Anyway, enough ranting… I recommend this movie if you have absolutely nothing else to do for an hour and forty minutes and have seen all other movies.

Now, to end this post on a more positive note, I am going to post a photo of my cacti. From left to right: As yet unnamed, Shaggy and Spid.

In other news, The two games of Dutch Draughts played between the flying Dutchman and the crazy Scot on Friday both ended in a draw…