Side Quest

Surprise I'm still alive. Lol yeah well just haven't blogged in awhile. Was just bored for along while so just watched a lot of television.

Anyways this weekend had a church camp at Mount Evelyn. Really close campsite just out near Lilydale. Quick drive up. Was a bit frustrated though because Chinese group did a botch job of organizing and just push the responsibility to the English group at the last minute. Being in the AV coordinator I had to throw together random stuff together from the English equipment which is lacking because the budgets all done by the Councillors and they are all Chinese group people. So now I'm going to have to tell them off for not giving us a budget ... again.
It wasn't all bad. First night getting there we just messed around with games and running around. Sleep was pretty terrible though. One of my roomies kept rolling on the top bunk and the beds had those tough covers that make those scrunchy sounds. So everyone else in the room went to the next room and family guy and wait for the noisy roomy to go sleep. We watched a few episodes and came back to find he was completely awake. So he kept me up some more. He apparently couldn't sleep so got up a few times which kept me up even more. To make it was by the time it was five he went and took a shower which could be heard within two rooms. So guess desperately tired isn't the best way to start a camp.

This was a church camp so didn't expect to have to much mucking around fun but it was still good to hear messages from a reverend who was effected by the fires. The day events were decent but the timetable was pretty mucked up. The night was was the fun time. Played a bit of mafia. If you don't know mafia it takes too long to explain so just assume secrecy and citizen versus mafia with a few special characters. First game as usual I was dead in the second round because no one trusts me and what's worse was I was killed by both the mafia and the vigilante. Second game I actually survived to the end where we had the usual who won because people were falling asleep and not sure who pointed to who or killed who. So we decided to change to playing spoons. If you don't know the game it's basically making four of a kind by quickly passing around cards and then grabbing a spoon from the middle. Everyone grabs one after anyone completes their hand and whoever misses out gets a penalty. Whoever gets three does a dare. That was the fun part. It got pretty competitive and a girl even broke a nail doing it. Went through three pretty cool dares and surprisingly I wasn't the person doing them. Got one of the dares on video so that was pretty funny. Got told off for laughing to loud but that's expected of me. Pretty tired from all that so slept a bit better.
Next day was basically like another church day but we were already there. Summary for the camp was a bit sleep provoking because all these Chinese ladies wanted to share and translator didn't get time to translate before all the Chinese people would cheer for some unknown reason to me.

Overall camp wasn't a complete disaster. Had its moment.

The Controversial Holiday

I was thinking of just blabbing about mX's excessive articles on blogs and the physical and mental damage of smoking but its the first day of the Australia/Chinese New Year long holiday so I thought I'd write something about this event.

Box Hill decided to pull all the stops this year. They blocked off a section of Whitehorse Road for more stands and even set up an amusement park in a carpark at the back of Centro. I didn't get to Box Hill till the evening but the sun was still out because of summer so it was still alright to move around. However it was still crowded and if that didn't make it hard to move from one stand to another there were lots of prams and strollers ramming into the back of my heels. One parent even continuously ram me and seemed to have no idea what he was actually doing with his stroller. There were lots of kids and at these events that meant lots of balloons. Every time you look up you could see a lost balloon floating away and hear the crying of a child.
The stands were the usual. Lots of food stands that are overpriced for Asian food that I've probably had at home but I guess it's the convenience of having them all in one place. I had some food using my money sparingly but ended up buying a double beef and cheese from Maccas instead XD. There were also the usual Asian Christian, Asian DVDs, Lion Dancing, and the Arts and Craft stands. There were a few different ones like ice cream vans, NAB booth, Toy vans, and some Whitehorse council runner with the name Blake I think. Didn't go into the amusement park section because I assumed it would involve me losing a lot of money. I was glad to see that they finally put bins every ten metres apart around Box Hill just for this event. They filled up pretty quickly but if they only have the regular bins then we'd be in trouble.

Round the middle of that paragraph I was interrupted to go see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans which turned out to be pretty good. Still lately been interrupted a lot so my blogs get pushed further and further back.

But actually came back to Box Hill at midnight for dinner and found it still lively with a healthy dose of crowd still left. Some stands were closed and others opened to take their place but the night seemed to be wrapping up for most people. There were still some lion dancing and drumming which were loud enough to bug some people in the Box Hill residential area. The next morning it was like nothing happened XD.

And for some reason I am burnt again. I did go to the beach but it was partly cloudy and I had a shirt on the whole time. Thankfully this time wasn't as bad as last time. SOMEONE said it would be impossible to burn with the weather we had yesterday ... damn you ><. Wah didn't even get my point out because writing up this blog over and over. Australian holidays means people having days off and everything is closed. Chinese holidays means shop open to take in more customers who have the time to shop and eat. So how's a day that's both an Australian and Chinese holiday meant to work?