Lava Reef Zone

So on Tuesday I'm off down south to Culburra Beach to relax before the beginning of my final year of uni and to forget about the current financial tsunami that is still sweeping the world. I'll be gone for 5 days to enjoy surf, sun and sand, then straight after I come back I have a wedding reception to go to at Maxims. It seems to be an unspoken rule that if you're Viet and you need a wedding reception place, then go to Maxim's. I can almost recite the menu from my head. (Fried rice was near the end wasn't it?)

Anyway organising this trip was a little more difficult and troublesome. Mainly because there was more democracy involved. A lot of time was spent asking people what they wanted and how about this or that. So I spent quite a bit of time sitting around waiting for email replys that may or may not arrive. Lesson learnt: Tyranny is the only option, don't give people a choice (or at most give them an illusion of choice). Kinda sucks as well that out of the original 16 people, only 9 can make it. It felt disappointing that after all these questions about "when is the next road trip?", quite a lot of people pulled out or were unable to make it. Lesson learnt: confirm people are going by taking as much as their money as possible early on, so they are committed for fear of losing money.

Still, the trip will be fun. I won't be taking the tried and tested Ford Falcon stationwagon, because it's has definitely entered old age and now suffers from a wide range of differing illnesses with mysterious causes. For example, the transmission occasionally leaks oil despite it being replaced with a reconditioned one and the workshop attempting to plug the leaks twice. The aircon died, and has not fully recovered because 1/3 of the air goes to the windscreen regardless of knob position, and causes engine overheating. Maye too tried and tested. So I'm taking the Toyota Landcruiser Prado, which is taller, but actually a bit shorter than the Falcon. It's going to be...interesting.

As always on such a trip, when we safely get to our destination I will have a suitable alcohol brevarage to consume. Unfortunately, the most interesting whiskey I've seen so far is unavailable in Australia.
A man's drink if I ever saw one.

It's Gone Now

So I spent most of the last days of January, mulling around my room, with capped internet and no money. Boredom starting to creep around, and I missed a few outing with friends due to what you could call 'a series of unfortunate events'. So when a message appeared whether I was up for some paintball, I couldn't refuse. Of course, I had no money, but some scrouging and borrowing, I had a small amount of cash and heavy in debt.

We had to be there at 7:30am for registrations and stuff, so I picked up some friends in Sefton at 6:30am then rushed over to Granville to pick up the other person. That took a bit longer, since she walked out in flats and we recommended her to get some sturdier shoes. And her mother wanted to offload some banh chung or something to us as well.

And then the drive to the paintball area, during which we spent a lot of time talking about conversation breakers and the dominating appearance of internet abbrieviations into common speech. Instead of actually laughing out loud, people ares starting to just say lol to each other. Weird and oddly terrifying in a way. Or breaking conversations where people say something, and you're at a loss on responding so you just bring up "I see" or "Is that right?" or "Yeah" or even just the dreaded "lol".

Paintball was fun as always. Our group was slightly smaller, so we joined with a few other groups. It was quite fun, and I ended up with a healthy set of bruises, especially two on my arms which look like cigarette burns. We were joking about explaining to some of our parents about what kind of party we had to go to at 6:30am in the morning and come home with bruises everywhere. I was joking about how I should tell my parents that I'd met a girl who gave me those burns. Anyway, it was fun. Sweaty, tiring fun.

After that we made our way from Blacktown to Yagoona to drop off some people, before winding our way up to Campsie to crash at a friend's place. Eventually we decided that some karaoke was the answer, so we made our way to the city, still having not showered after the paintball game. K was fun as always, but the machine added like 45 minutes of extra time and by the end I (and everyone else I think) was tired and had the energy sucked out of us. Still fun. The sights and sounds of Phuong and Julia screaming the song 'Gay Bar' was energising to say the least. They scored 100 as well.

Getting home and having a nice cold shower was a godsend. I took a look at my back and the bruises where much more numerous that I thought. Looked like someone had decided to stab cigarette burns all over my back. My mum gave me some cream that supposed to help the bruising heal faster, but 24 hours on, it doesn't seem to have done much.

Good thing uni is still a ways off. Those bruises would probably draw questions and unwanted attention.