NYE 2010

At last the end of the year has arrived. This year CBS Commerce has managed to set up their NYE hideout at Andy’s place in Killara. I was able to meet and thank Andy’s dad today after church at Carlo Court and I still felt kind of sorry for the noise and mayhem they had to put up with on New Year’s Eve. But other than that, we were really glad to have found a place to hold our NYE party.

 

Through much collaboration we were able to organise a tonne of food (though it was limited by our budget) and games to fill the night with much rowdiness. I arrived in the afternoon with Cherie to find Jacky and Brandon, and other people preparing food. So we just prepared food and helped clean the kitchen while people continued to pour in. The highlight dish for the night was sashimi, which was also the one with the highest risk of food poisoning and turning everything that night into a “night”mare – haha get it?

 

I think we had trouble starting the barbeque again; it was probably my fault for not using enough firelighters, but then Elon said you didn’t need to use an entire box. I only used a few blocks but Andy suggested overkill by using the whole box in one go. According to some YouTube videos, you can easily light up coal by just burning newspaper, will definitely try that next time we need to barbeque something. Commando Lam, AKA Daphne, knew how to start a fire from her training as a cadet; so she went around Andy’s front yard and foraged a bunch of twigs to start the fire, but there wasn’t enough and she gave up some time later. The fire was eventually started later, somehow.

 

By the time we were ready to eat, somehow I assigned myself to the gas barbeque probably because no-one was manning it. That turned into me cooking all the meat for the next hour or so. Actually for the number of people that were there, there wasn’t much meat to cook and I was able to retire from the barbeque sooner than expected. Brandon later explained that they were over budget with the food because of the cost of salmon.

 

After that, I retired to the kitchen to help with washing up. A lot of the girls came in surprised to see only guys in the kitchen, as opposed to all the jokes us guys normally make about the girls belonging in the kitchen; quite ironic. But at the same time it did seem loving (perhaps I’m not the one to talk though) of the guys to take charge of something we would normally (respectfully) expect the girls to do. Sadly, Jacky is a complete noob at washing up and I fear that we, or he, did not wash things up properly which may lead to food poisoning for Andy’s family in the very near future. We’ll find out soon enough.

 

After dinner everyone sort of kept shuffling around the house joining in on different activities; whether it was playing music with the guitar lot, playing card games, the Wii, or StarCraft II, which became my prominent activity for the night after midnight. At about 11:30pm we gathered together and as a Christian group, we broke off into small groups to pray for the things that happened this year and to pray for things this year. I’m glad we still kept Jesus somewhere in the program and that as Christians we still tried hard to encourage one another to continue living for God even though it’s so easy to slack off in the holidays.

 

At midnight we watched the fireworks on TV and then we went outside to play with sparklers. We managed to get a nice photo of “CBS 2011! =)” using the sparklers – yes, and that also included the exclamation mark and the smiley face. The photo is on my Facebook here:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=491583638189&set=at.491578363189.269370.621608189.508477361
Soon after that everyone just settled into a passive post New Year’s mood; most people just sat around to chat and pass time or to sleep.

 

This was the time where all the guys started their StarCraft II campaigns. We played for pretty much the whole night, but with only 2 computers, we sort of took turned but most people just watched. The awesome points of the night were when we got the girls to play. We made Bec play two full games and Cherie to play one with Bec. The one where they played against each other with no help at all from the guys was hilarious. All the videos of notable games are on Facebook as well as my YouTube account – the YouTube ones will be posted on this blog later as well.

 

We played up to 5am where a lot of people left to drive off to a beach to watch the sunrise. I felt it was too far to the beach and that I was too fatigued (from gaming) to drive so I stayed at Andy’s house with a few other people, who were sleeping or still gaming. Played Modern Warfare 2 for a couple hours until they came back around 8am. Sadly, we didn’t have plans for breakfast and so there wasn’t much food left for the morning. I can’t believe they left my beautiful dessert for breakfast that morning. Still, people enjoyed it and I was happy that my food was enjoyed.

 

We left Andy’s house soon thereafter and went to Chatswood to have breakfast at a Chinese restaurant. It turned into brunch really, but the food was really for lunch. The day turned very hot so we just went home, well I did anyway. Went home, showered, slept and tried to last the rest of the evening for New Year’s Day.

 

Okay, so my blogging literacy is declining very quickly so I will end the post here. Our New Year’s Eve was pretty much a bunch of random activities one after the other, all of which would take a while to get through even from within my memory. But they’re not anything special to mention, other than it was more opportunities to spend quality fun time with friends. New Year’s Eve was again quite fun this year when spent with a large number of friends. Hopefully many more good things are to come this year.

 

In the meantime, I will think carefully about what I want to blog about in my reflection post, and also to make more StarCraft II videos. I still find it funny that most of the guys in Commerce CBS play SC2, and so now the guys all have something common to bond over haha!

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

Hatsuka

When it comes to counting age in Japanese, the only weird number is the one for 20 years old: “hatsuka” although in kanji it is still written the same way in Chinese. Nevertheless, this post will be one to reflect upon the day that was my 20th birthday party and on my thoughts and feelings of the things that led up and happened on the day.

 

I’ve never been one to care much about my birthday, let alone my birthday. It’s not really a day where I care about how I’ve turned a year older or about what type of presents I would be receiving that year, if I was receiving any. As such I guess I prefer letting my birthday just pass by silently, without anyone noticing and making any sort of fuss over it. I really do still wonder how it is that I eventually organised a birthday party for myself, and how so many people were invited and actually came. I suppose at the end of the day I should care about my birthday because it was a day where people showed that they cared about me.

 

LAN

In the morning I had organised LAN although I never forced any RSVP on it; and that was because there was no need to book for LAN, nor to find out exactly how many people were coming. After all, you can game with as many or as few people. However, at 11am I would never have expected no-one to come. Apart from Jacky who accompanied me to the city, there was only Andrew and William who was there. Jacky ran off with Brandon to organise my present while I camped in City Hunter for three hours playing games with the other two. I think it was a pretty fun 3 hours; I mean, these were two people I haven’t gamed with much and so it was good to spend some time with them. We played Left For Dead 2 for a while and then Team Fortress 2; yeah that took up 3 hours. I wanted to play Black Ops or Modern Warfare 2, but our cheap $2.50/hr computers didn’t have them haha!

 

After LAN the three of us went to Subway off George St because I was still suffering from a stomach virus, which I now don’t believe was food poisoning but in fact an illness I caught off my brother. It caused a very dismal Christmas for me. Soon after lunch, people started arriving for karaoke. But throughout the morning, I was already being spammed with a lot of text messages about where people were, and whether they were still coming or not. Honestly, it was very hard to keep track of where people were.

 

Karaoke

Many people were either late to karaoke, coming for dinner only, or weren’t able to make it at all. I guess that was a bit of a disappointment having people say they were going to come but in the end changing their minds and such. Nonetheless, there were still a fair number of people who came. The bad thing today was that there was a surcharge (stupid Christmas being on Saturday) of $2. But funnily enough, the 15% birthday discount reduced the price back down to $12 ($11.9166666) to be exact. Because people weren’t here at 3:30pm, they let us sing for half an hour and then coming back out to pay at 4pm. By then we had about enough people to fill our one whole room and maximise the discount. But at that time as well, many late people had also come and it was difficult for me to count the number of people who were now here. It was also hard for the staff to keep track of this number as well; and so when it came to paying I believe not everyone was charged. What none of you saw was that after I gathered $12 from everyone and paid, I actually had $16 left over. It was as if I didn’t pay my share AND made a $4 profit haha! Worry not, I kept that in mind for the rest of the evening.

 

The two karaoke rooms were split into high school friends in one, church in another, and CBS people constantly mixing around in both as we always do. Both rooms doubled up on songs, and I had to keep jumping back and forth between rooms to catch up with everyone that had come. Mandy at the last moment had decided to come to karaoke and of course I was especially fearful of what would probably happen at karaoke; dinner was a separate issue as well. Nevertheless, I think I took enough preventative measures to delay the inevitable, and I was glad the room she seized was the one with fewer people, and the one where nearly everyone knew what was going on. There were a still a couple of confused and worried faces but everyone did their best to provide support.

 

Presents had also begun to stream in and so I kind of just dumped them all over the place since I was more engaged with talking to people than securing my presents into a single pile. My voice was somewhat more dead than usual that day; it died before the three hours was up. Everyone made me sing Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You” by myself, with my cracked voice. I do wonder whether people were laughing at me or with me the entire time. But yes, everyone sang happy birthday towards the end of the three hours, and I mustered the courage to stand and face my friends at that moment. I already said before I didn’t like making a fuss over my own birthday and I really do have difficulty accepting any sort of “special treatment” for that day. By this time most people had arrived; there were several late comers who were just early for dinner.

 

Again, I want to make clear that I refused to give a speech on that day for the reason that I had no words prepared and in order to give a proper speech regarding all my friends, I really do have to sit down and take time to think things through thoroughly.

 

Dinner

Everyone went ahead after karaoke to go to dinner. The reason I trailed behind was to help Mandy, who struggled to walk. I would definitely have been a bad host and friend if I had just gone ahead and not waited for everyone; it’s definitely not my style to neglect even one person. The funny thing was that I had to keep relaying orders to the forward group to tell them to eat, even though by the time we got there (which was 15 mins later) my table was still the first one to order T.T”

 

We went to Kobow which isn’t too bad a place as a Korean restaurant, but there were many that were better, but perhaps not cheaper. Again because of my stomach virus, there was a restriction on what I could and could not eat. Rather there wasn’t anything I could eat, but I had hot pot anyway, it was probably the safest option. Halfway through dinner, people made me go around to each table to have them toast their drinks to me; this is definitely something I would never do by myself. The bad thing about the whole ordeal was that I had a shot glass with Korean shots poured into them at each table. I stopped at what I believed was the second shot, but everyone else said it was my third; definite signs of getting drunk there. So thank you guys for trying to get me drunk. There were many things I did which even I was aware was due to the influence of alcohol. I had about a third or more of a bottle of soju (funny, I played some guy on StarCraft with that name) which apparently approximated 3 standard drinks; that’s probably more than what I would have safely tried for my first time drinking (properly).

 

I went around talking with as many people as I could again and despite Mandy getting into trouble with the people around us, there was still a pretty good vibe amongst everyone. I was glad to have been able to catch up people I haven’t really had a chance to speak with for a long time, as well people I haven’t seen for ages as well. It turned into a pretty good night and we stayed for quite a while even after we had all finished eating.

 

Dessert

Again my stomach was not in the mood for any sort of dessert; but luckily neither was anyone else. So instead, I took everyone to George St McDonald’s near Town Hall and I used the surplus I had obtained from karaoke, to buy a bunch of soft serve cones for everyone. And with the help of Leslie’s employee’s card, I saved 20% off for 22 soft serve cones. The staff were kind of puzzled at our order and it took them a while to churn out all 22 cones. Some people *ahem* Sharon were a bit impatient in waiting for their free soft serve cone but eventually everyone was satisfied. To be fair, even after buying everyone ice cream I still had a bit of a surplus; oh well.

 

We lingered outside McDonald’s for a while afterwards again, nearly blocking pedestrians as we normally do. Eventually people started going home, and I thanked everyone for coming.

 

All in all, I really enjoyed my birthday party that day, even though my self esteem kept from feeling up for it. I guess I’m still touched, though not emotionally as much as I should be, by everyone for their company and their kind thoughts. But this point will be further reflected in my proper reflection post  coming soon. In the mean time, thank you to everyone who did come, or who tried to come. Though I haven’t pondered much on the presents I received, I am still very thankful for even the smallest of gifts. To close things off on a decent note, here is a picture of all your birthday cards to me sitting above my desk:

 

God “Calls” Nat

This is directly related to a video I posted on Facebook (no link here, sorry).

 

Context

Essentially the idea came about while a few of us were mucking with Bec’s phone (wonder if she’s noticed yet?) during MYC. Leaving your phone unattended during dinner is a no-no (just like with leaving your Facebook open) and sadly Natalie was victim to perhaps one of the most creative pranks I’ve been a part of so far.

 

Me and Ben both changed our names on Nat’s phone to “Jesus” and “God” respectively. Then we decided that I would send Nat a text (so she gets a text from Jesus) and then Ben would immediately call her (so she gets a phone call from God). I decided to send the text: “Natalie, have you read Matthew 28:18-20?” which was in relation to Jesus’ Great Commission, what Carl will be going through in CBS this week.

 

In the video, take careful note of Nat’s phone; the text gets sent while I was conversing with her and Charlie. I honestly wasn’t sure if the text would be sent well enough so that she would immediately notice it. Meanwhile, you can see Ben disappearing downstairs as he calls Nat, and viola, “mischief managed”.

 

Consequently, Nat doesn’t pick up the phone call from “God” despite him calling several times.

 

Note

Despite the context and the nature of the prank, there is a somewhat more profound meaning in tonight’s little shenanigan. There are times when God does try to tell us something or try to make us understand something. But often we ignore that particular moment when God does have something to say to us for hardly justifiable reasons.

 

We always need to be ready when God calls on us for something. We mustn’t put off that call just because we don’t want to hear His voice at particular times (when we’re distracted). As Christians we must always be ready to hear His word and respond to it.

 

Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before:
   "Today, if you hear his voice,
      do not harden your hearts."

- Hebrews 4:7

Holidays Are Over (Part 2)

Holidays are definitely still over and there definitely isn’t a chance to bring them back this time round haha! Apologies for the bad layout of these last few posts.

 

Monday

I had originally planned to watch a movie on Monday of the second week of the holidays but I had forgotten that we had a youth group social that afternoon. Nonetheless, having watched Toy Story 3 on Sunday, it was satisfactory enough. I didn’t really get time to organise anything for this social so I pretty much rocked up and let William and Ken do all the organising.

 

This was our first super long holiday program which went from 3pm till 10pm at night. A 7 hour program is extremely tiring. We had the church set up with a projector and some sound equipment. William had the leaders help set up games, all of which were interesting in a sense. We had a game where we had to balance coat hangers on one another, there was another game where we had to transfer cotton balls using whipped cream on our noses as an adhesive. Then there were other strange games like trying to flip metal spoons into cups. I forget the games that we played but the youth were all very into it. A handful of photos:

 

   

   

The last photo was for a game where pretty much you slide coins over the table and try and get it as close to the King as possible. My note here was that all the coins were Galaxy World tokens. William had a whole bag full of them…strange.

 

And to sum the rest of the program, we mucked around afterwards and the youth just played whatever games they wanted to with each other. Some of us looked at past church photos and all. For dinner we made pizzas using Coles ingredients and some flat bread or something like that. It took quite a while because the kitchen wasn’t big and we had quite a large group, more than 30 or so youth in total. After dinner we made the youth watch “Up!” and after that we called it a night. So I suppose the last couple of hours weren’t too bad but we still had to keep watch over everyone; it was sort of like a daycare thing once the youth started getting a bit more wild.

 

 

Friday

Despite the fact that it’s a four day gap, Tuesday I went out grocery shopping with parents and then had a youth group leaders’ meeting at night. So that was a full day too. Wednesday and Thursday were my days off to relax and do some stuff that I otherwise couldn’t have done because of going out everyday. Friday I finally took care of some university stuff. Went down to university with Jacky and Brandon to get textbooks and so transfer my swimming pass to Brandon since I honestly don’t have any time to use it, last semester and this coming semester. It was more my mistake of buying it prematurely without having planed things properly.

 

Haven’t figured out all my textbooks either, but for now I’ve managed to ascertain that I need at least 1 book and 1 course pack. There were a couple of other textbooks, some prescribed, some recommended but I honestly am trying not to buy too many of them, particularly for maths. I bought a Calculus textbook last semester that nearly doubled up on the one I used last year AND I didn’t even use it last semester. Goes to show just how “unnecessary” prescribed textbooks are.

 

There was also a $20 transfer fee for my swimming pass which was quite annoying, the university gym is such a rip off I probably will never use any of their resources ever considering the fact that they don’t give refunds on anything even if you try to return it straight away.

 

Walked around in the city with Jacky afterwards. Had Pepper Lunch and then walked around a couple of Morning Glorys. Saw David Loon in one of them and we both we’re awkwardly like: “So…what are you doing here?” Kind of funny really to see him there of all places.

 

 

Sunday

The last day of my “holidays”was by far the most extreme day of them all, since it sort of extended over 3 days in a sense. Woke up early on Sunday morning to catch the 3rd place play off match; wasn’t a complete waste of time like the finals. But anyway, after getting about another 3 or so hours of sleep, had to wake up and deliver my camp luggage to Rebecca’s house who was going to camp early today and we needed to offload some luggage early for the other cars that were going to pick us up the next day. This meant I had to speed my packing up to last night; frantically figuring out what I needed to bring to camp. At the least I would bring my mahjong set, regardless of the circumstances haha!

 

After church, went off to lunch with church people. Most of that time was spent chatting with some of the youth. We reached some point in the conversation which led to playing those weird puzzle logic games (eg: Black Magic) that have those weird stupid tricks that some people just can’t figure out because they over think about the trick involved with those games. I showed them Aaron’s game from last year’s MYC with the counting fingers; won’t get into the details of that one. But the thing is that the youth had such difficulty in figuring it out. In fact they were torn between not playing the game and desperately wanting to figure out the answer. I was going to leave early to pick up some stuff from home so that I could head down to the city early to get a present for Chris’ party later that night. The youth continually bugged me to stay so they could continue figuring out Aaron’s puzzle and consequently I missed the train.

 

The strange thing about it all was that I caught the next train to find that Jono Wang was also on it, quite a coincidence. We chatted during our train ride; he was heading out a bit early to the city too to get some poster paint for his brother, from some hobby shop in QVB. I was meant to meet up with Tim, Sophia and Eric on the previous train that I had missed. The extraordinary thing that happened was that me and Jono came across those three in that hobby store Jono was going to. So we just merged groups and continued looking for a present for Chris together. We couldn’t really decide on that to get but we ended up deciding on getting a cheap PS3 game and a Gundam model thingy, for a total price of $110. Jono had to call up Chris multiple times so we could work out which Gundam model Chris didn’t have haha! So much for the surprise. We also went to Woolworths to get a $2 card for Chris. I never knew the Town Hall Woolworths had like 3 levels, such a strange layout for a supermarket.

 

Chris took us to Choga in Haymarket for $10 Korean buffet. Sadly there wasn’t much variety of food there, but that’s okay. Chris’ party reached about the mid 20s in numbers. We “got to” (or forced to?) sit in this elevated section of the small restaurant by the window that had some really low barriers; it almost made that section of the restaurant look like a zoo area or something, and we were going to be the main attractions haha.

 

Chris made us play a few interesting games which I do intend to steal for our youth group haha! He gave everyone a label with a commonly used word on it, such as “this”, “that”, “I”, “a”, etc. And the objective was to not say that particular; doing so would result in forfeiting the label to the other person who catches you. Player at the end of the night with the most labels wins. Chris had several cash prizes for his games, so it potentially was possible to win back the $10 for the buffet haha! Other games include some trivia challenge and a final challenge where the contestants had to eat a hot chilli, read through a list of colours writing in a different colour to the word being depicted; eg writing “Red” in blue; then finally strapping on a pedometer and shaking their hips to rack “steps” on it. Julian won it since he was able to continuously shake his “hips” without stopping for the minute or so.

 

After the party I quickly rushed home to get some rest to wake up for the FIFA finals. I was going to have had 8 hours of sleep over two days, not a good start to a 5-day camp especially.

 

And that’s my holidays over. After this comes 5 days of MYC which I know is going to be awesome, but somehow being tired from having so much on in the holidays really lowers the hype from what potentially could be the best five days of this year.