SYC - Day 5 [My Final Day]

Day 5 - Friday 11 January 2008 [The Departure]
So here we are, the final day of SYC. It begins like any other day, I slowly wake up, body clock woke me up naturally, I still had my headphones in my ear, it wasn't 7am yet so I took advantage of the headphones in my ears and played music to give me a good start to the day. Part way through my alarm goes off in my ears "The vengabus is coming...", I turn it off, back to Muse it goes and I continue to rest my eyes. But alas we have to get up and clear the rooms and pack our bags, which I get to and do pretty quick, all while Daniel Hastie laid asleep, or as asleep as he can be with everyone talking making noise and Nelson coming by with his laptop blaring Survivor by Destiny's Child while telling people to wake up and probably saying it was 30 minutes to 8am. And it was quite fitting, I did feel like a survivor, I got through the week without giving up (although I had a minor thought during day 1 or 2) or being completely demoralised or anything like that, a big part of that was probably the youth I got in my dorm, so thank you guys!

We clear the room and move our bags to the hall then head off to breakfast which I guessed was bacon and eggs, only because we hadn't had it during the week, it was inevitable. The bacon was real, the toast was real, but the egg was not disappointingly but understandably, in a non-caring-its-last-day-of-SYC kind of way. I eat then go and prepare the last powerpoint slides for Chapel and listen to the band practice. We had extra time to practice today while the youth do a clean up of the grounds, so thank you youth! We went through all the songs and the last song "Your Grace is Enough" was especially cool as the band rocked it out so I was looking forward to seeing the band play for the youth and have an awesome rocked out ending to SYC.

Chapel Time looked at Revelation 20:11-15, the last book in the bible. And I suppose we were all faced with something that everyone knows about, jokes about, cries about, thinks about, talks about and goes about trying to avoid...death. We all know that in the end we will die, we don't know when, we don't know how but we like to think that it would be when we are old and supposedly 'ready', but we all know better, even though we don't want to, things happen and we can go just like that. This passage however, looks at what happens after death, which presents you the question of, where will you go? Will your name be in the Book of Life, allowing you to go to Heaven or will your name not be there, leaving you to endure a second death, in Hell? Some people think about it, some people don't, some respond, some ignore. People often have the mindset that we have one life, and so we should live life to the fullest, having the most fun you can have, earning the most money you can, buying the best you can buy, just getting as much as you can out of life for yourself before you fall over and die. But we don't have just one life, we have something after death, an afterlife, or post-death life, a 1up with a twist, and when you use the 1up, where will it take you? Heaven or Hell? You might not care where you go, as long as you have fun now, in the 80 or so years on this Earth, but all I know is that eternity is a lot lot longer than 80 or so years, and if I can have a good time for eternity, I'd go for that (that's not to say I can have a good time now of course). So how do we get to Heaven? If you've been reading my past blogs (I hope you have been) you should know that it is only through Jesus that we can have eternal life in Heaven. We submit to Jesus as our ruler and rescuer, and we start by praying to him. Praying being how we talk to God, we pray for God to change us, to submit to Jesus and our ruler, and to rely on Jesus for forgiveness for our sins and for eternal life. And it would go a little something like this...

Dear God,

I know that I'm a sinner, I am sorry for my sins.
Please forgive me for sinning against you.
Thank you that you sent your one and only son Jesus to die on the cross to pay the penalty for me. Please come into my life and help me to live with Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.
Amen

So what now? If you prayed the prayer let someone know! Don't keep it a secret! Throw a comment, email, whatever, just let someone know so we can further help you.

Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to end with "Our Grace is Enough", which was somewhat disappointing but we survived with the memory of the rehearsal. Following chapel time was our final small group question time, which ended up being a good long talk with Cam Phong, so I didn't do much. And soon it came time to take photos to remember our time here, and who came and all that. We took a picture of the youths first...


Ah, classy

Then added a bit of leaders...

Good flavouring [Stolen from Kitty's Facebook, better quality photo will be up eventually]

Mix and you get...

Something Mucky! [Same as before, better quality photo will be up eventually]

We took the details down for youths who wanted to buy the SYC DVD, featuring the talks, concert night, and other videos taken throughout the camp. So that should be a fun watch when it gets done. And then it was time for the youth to go, but before they went we took a photo of our dorm group, for memory sake...


Such awesomeness, if only I looked at the right camera/time

And then we decided to send them off the best way we leaders knew how...


And they're off!

And just when you thought that was all, there's more chase scenes!


Tired much?

The leaders re-grouped and had our debrief, talking about what worked and what didn't work, which only made me look forward to the next SYC all the more. We then took a group photo with the leaders, first the normal photo...

My attempt at an S fan, more like a Z fan though...

Then the muck up photo...

Cards Everywhere! [Thanks to Bryan for these photos]

There's like a bunch of photos of this muck up scene, each depicting the various stories it tells, that being Victor shooting the super soaker, Alistair throwing water (you can see what he's about to do in this picture) and my attempt at throwing cards in the air, plus other poses!

We then packed our cars and like Day 0, I tetris'd as much as I could, and this time I took a picture...


So many lines cleared

Then off we drove, I avoided the potholes one last time and 4WD'd the grassy sides then slowed to a crawl as I waited for the others to catch up. Then we followed Cam's car to McDonald's for lunch, I ate healthy because I didn't want to get an upset stomach driving and had the Chicken Ceasar Roll thing and a bottle of water for the drive back. But then water wasn't that great of a drink when you're having McDonalds, I wanted a coke, and with my VIP card I bought a hamburger and got a free coke for $1.75, bargain! My thirst was quenched and I had a burger in case I got hungry during the drive. We then drove to Kiama to visit the blowhole, so the drivers could take a break, unfortunately we only drove around an hour so the rest wasn't all that needed, but it ended up being worth it, despite not going to the actual blowhole...


How little?

Very little actually, so much so you could go down and look inside the hole in all its glory. I didn't go down though, getting wet wasn't part of my plan, and neither was getting my car wet. Others however, were more brave and went down and played a little game called Blowhole Chicken, when the blowhole goes and you run, you're a chicken (obviously). And here is a video of the game, courtesy of Bryan's camera...

Little Blowhole eh... [Thanks to Bryan for the video]

People dried off and then we drove off again, Dewey was in Ian's car, giving Aaron and Claire space to sleep and sleep they did...


Good to know they still had their seatbelts on

At one point I felt sleepy and my eyes were starting to close its blinds, fortunately Jessica was in the passenger seat, providing entertainment, listening to my random comments and complaints about anything and everything I saw, just to keep myself awake. Watching Ian weave in and out of lanes, not accomplishing much was amusing too, and the one time where I overtook everyone just for fun and to see how they were going before they all overtook me back. I prefer to stay in the back anyway, with a 4WD I act as the marker that all cars are here. However, we went from have 6 or so cars to losing Bryan (took a wrong turn), then losing Andrew Ha (drove too slow) then a few others as we got closer to church (different paths taken). But soon enough, we got back, it was 6pm, my hamburger remained uneaten, so I ate it at the church. I un-tetris'd my car, bummed around a bit and said goodbye to everyone. Tired out I drove home, noticing the car was covered in dust/dirt/brownish yellow particles and therefore in need of a shower but would leave that until later. I got home, unpacked and did what every Asian does when they're away from home for a long time, log online...Day 5.

[Special Feature Easter Egg Suprise Extra]
So thats the end of Summer Youth Camp, in a nutshell full of words and not nuts, which isn't that great of a nut if you think about it (can't really eat it) but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. Apologies for taking so long in delivering this final day, life has a way of making sure your priorities are straight, but more on that in a later blog.
To me, SYC was quite the awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed it, the talks, the youth, the activities and seeing everything come together and just working was just sensatio. I also realised after I got home that I left my skipping rope at the campsite, which I'll probably never get back. So in the mean time and until next time, here ends the SYC Series...


Group photo from Day 0, I would've looked at the camera but you know, driving.
[Courtesy of Jessica's camera]

SYC - Day 4 [My Lasting Night]

Day 4 - Thursday 10 January 2008 [The Concert Night]
I half woke up with my headphones still in my ears, still hearing music, but it wasn't from the headphones, it was from Man's DS, still playing music, all through the night. Our bathroom light was still on as well, but thats not important to the story, or is it? Probably not, I checked the time, I saw something that resembled 6:30am, so I still had a bit of snooze time, so I went back to sleep.
Ian burst into our room, waking me up,
"I think we're late for the leader's meeting"
"Wha..?"
*checks time*
"Crap, its 7:45am"
Apparently the time I saw earlier was actually 7:30am or something like that so I ended up missing the final leader's meeting, great start to the day. I went to breakfast, had whatever it was then set up for chapel time.

Chapel time looked at the passage Mark 15:21-39. Which looked at the crucifixion and subsequent death of Jesus, which was more than just a person dying, but an act of ultimate love. The kind of love where someone is willing to die for you. And you may think, what's so great about that, people die for people they love all the time, well not all the time but you know what I mean, we see it in movies and news reports. But this love and death is different, where people die for people who love each other, here, Jesus died for those who didn't love him, but hated him, rejected him and despised him, a real love for his enemies. So who are enemies of God? Essentially we all are, because we rejected God, by living our lives our own way, making ourselves the ruler, but ultimately we fail at this (just look at our world for proof). So we are punished for this rebellion, destined to face judgement and death. But God is of course a loving God, and thus doesn't want us all to die a horrible horrible eternal death. So while we were still enemies God sent his son Jesus as a sacrifice, taking our punishment so that we can be right with God again. So Jesus is the one who can make the unclean clean again, and its only through trusting him and putting your faith in him that we can be made clean. I don't think people often stop to think about big a thing it was for God to send his son to die for us. I'm no father (yet) but I know that if I had a child I would never ever give it up to save anyone, and yet God did, and that shows us how much God loves us! Shouldn't we respond to that? I think we all should.

Activity time came, my youth went to low ropes, I wanted to rest, but was allocated swimming pool duties. I wore a vest saying water watcher, so thats what I did, watched the water, and it was blue and swashy, with humans flailing about. Eventually I wanted to be one of those humans flailing about in the water, so I went to my dorm, got changed then took my time to get into the water, which was cold at first, but like all things you end up getting a bit comfortable with it. The youth were playing Marco Polo, but replaced Marco with Cam, and Polo with Phong which was amusing. I got to see Rachel (one of the leaders) do her apparently trademark Captain Cook look, which is to be seen to be awed at. We played bullrush with the youth in the pool, which was very easy because people move slow in the water (I was in, so I owned). The boys mucked around with the pool and attempted synchronised swimming to results that only boys can achieve...


Such timing...

When they failed at gracefully entering the swimming pool, they got in the only way boys know how...


Splash Damage'd

Then we had to get out as lunch time was a coming, so I got changed and had lunch which you don't care about (neither would I). Now we had free time, or as the booklet says Free Time/ Relax. Afternoon Tea, but everyone knew better than that, no one was going to relax because it was time to plan and rehearse for concert night. Our group stayed in our rooms to talk story and specifics, with me as script writer, jotting down the scenes. Then we found a room to practice in, which went well, I was even more suprised by how much my youth were into it, wanting to rehearse parts here and there just to get it perfect and to make sure they know their parts well. So with confidence, I'd say we were ready. We had an hour to spare until dinner so I went and re-wrote the scenes so that they were readable, just incase anyone wanted to read over. Walking around afterwards I saw other groups practicing for their skit which was cool. Then I bumped into Kevin, he was playing chess if I remember correctly (if not, meh), we wanted to discuss the random act that we were going to put on...

[Minor Backstory Time]
On Wednesday when we went to the beach Bryan and Kevin were talking about doing something for random acts, which I should've explained first in this backstory segment but neglected to so I'll do it now instead of deleting all this text and starting over as if none of this never happened, but I've already typed this much, why go back now? Exactly! So anyway (that took a while!), along with each dorm/cabin room putting on a skit with an allocated fairy tale/movie and genre there was also the option to do a random act, where anyone can perform anything they want. Got it? Great, lets go back to the beach. So Bryan and Kevin were talking about doing something for random acts (which you now understand) and I overheard them talking about and expressed my interest in partaking, Bryan opted out as he didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do either, but wanted to do something, and Kevin didn't know what to do either, but wanted to do something. Kevin came up with the idea of doing the Umbilical Brothers, who are a comedy duo drawing their funny from their sound effects, I'm sure you've heard (get it?) or seen them. I was up for it, but Kevin said he couldn't do sound effects, which defeated the purpose of him suggesting Umbilical Brothers in the first place! (Speaking of the Umbilical Brothers I saw one of them at that burger place on broadway near UTS, it was the one with the long hair, I had a $5 burger feast. Pro tip: It wasn't a feast) Then we decided to brainstorm ideas the next day and proceeded into the cold waters.
[End of Minor Backstory Time]

So yeah, random act. In truth we had discussed our random act at lunch, well after lunch but before free time. I only remember now as I think back because usually at lunch, I forget what happens. So major minor backstory time I guess. Kevin wasn't feeling great about sound effects so we were thinking of other ideas, Rachel overheard us talking and expressed her interest in partaking. Soon enough, someone said "hands" (I forget who) and then I came up with the idea of going on a date with hands. Hands being that one person puts their hands through the underarms of another person, thus acting as their hands, you know what I mean? But there was only three of us, but good ol' Rachel went and got Jo to partake, regardless of her interest. We then talked minor specifics but nothing major, and thus ends the major minor backstory time.

So yeah, random act. You know what it is, this time we got all four of us together and practiced a bit, which was me flailing my arms pretending I had food in my hands and whatnot. The real food was for the real thing and I was excited to do what I decided to dub the "Double Date" (if you don't get, think of something punny). So for the rest of free time we just bummed around, not doing much, socialising when we could and stuff until dinner time. Our last dinner, we had Chinese noodles done western style which is always a treat, if you like sub par food. I didn't eat much, I think the butterflies in my stomach were getting to me. I tend to get very nervous in situations with performance, which is probably why I like being in the background, controlling things without people looking at me, though at times, when I'm in control, I like to be in front, which reminds me of Jo telling me to do a random act song/guitar thing, but I didn't have a tune nor words nor time to make one up, maybe next time.

Dinner ended and everyone was giddy, girls were getting their hair done, guys already had their hair done, people were getting props, costumes, last second rehearsals in before the beginning of Concert Night.


Ready and Waiting

Our dorms skit was on third last so that gave us time to enjoy everything else beforehand. Our "Double Date" was on fifth though, so we had to get ready for that. I helped with groups song and powerpoint requests for their skits, although letting me know a minute before they start performing kind of kills any prep time I needed. So apologies right now for screwing up your skit! I don't remember too much from the concert night in terms of specifics but I'll jot down what I remember, whether its in the right sequence of events or not.
The first skit was Rachel and Jo's group's skit, that being Mulan done Kung Fu style, which was an easy mix. It went well in my opinion, with Kung-Fu Fighting playing during the fight scene with Mulan and Genghis Khan, although Kelly wearing a skirt and kicking probably wasn't the best wardrobe to have. Beauty and the Beast was done by Kevin's dorm (I forgot who his co-leader was! Sorry!), featuring Kevin as the beast with my mask, and guys dressed as girls (there was a lot of that during concert night). Tara (one of the leaders) and her group did Dragon Ball Z in the style of horror.


Arrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhh!

Matching horror with a show whose main contribution to kids society being to scream louder and longer to get stronger plus the fact that a girls group was doing it, we were sure in store for a loud skit. And loud we got, not only did the girls powerup scream but once the "killer" Lisa, or Linhkachu came onto the scene it went from screams of power to screams of death, and went from scary to funny and back to scary again.

Victor and William's groups had Ugly Duckling done in the style of wrestling. Which was funny, not only for the moves but for Victor's acting as well. Our youth even played a part, kidnapping the referee so that the ugly duckling could win the match. Though the original plan was to kidnap one of the youth without them knowing, though I don't know how the youth would have taken it.

At some point it was Double Date time, though it wasn't announced as that unfortunately. We brought out a table, with two bowls of noodles, two mugs, a water bottle, two custard tart and two bananas, let the date begin. Kevin was the guy, I was his hands, Jo was the girl, Rachel were her hands. We hadn't rehearsed anything and wanted to go through it ad libbing, which was how I preferred it. We started off greeting each other, then did a prayer done by Kevin, which suprised me, but made use of my hands. We had chest hair for Kevin, which Rachel was supposed to play with, but she couldn't reach with her hands so I played with her hand while playing with the chest hair to make it look like something was happening. We had noodles, feeding each other, which was interesting, before feeding ourselves which gave me the opportunity to own Kevin anyway I could, meaning face full of noodles for him. Next was water, which I think both Kevin and Jo needed. So I poured the cups and let Kevin drink, all the water he wanted, and then some more. Next was the custard tart, which I could have went about two ways in my mind, miss and get it all over his face, or hit the target and get it ALL in his mouth, I chose the latter. So with Kevin unable to speak, Jo trying to eat her tart as best she could, this allowed the crowd to digest what was happening. I was fortunate not to be infront of Kevin seeing what was happening because with my weak stomach, who knows what I would've done. Sensing Kevin needed water, I picked up the whole bottle and let him drink. Then Kevin decided to drink water again, this time feeding the other person the water, which to felt like going backwards but oh well, it was funny. By now, time was ticking and we felt our 4 minutes were up, so we wanted to move onto the proposal, but Kevin wanted to eat bananas, but Jo, Rachel and I made him move on. I threw the banana for comedy effect. And then the time to propose came, Kevin got on his knees, requiring me to get even lower (not an easy feat), and I put the ring on Jo's (Rachel's) finger, wrong finger though, for comedy effect of course. Oh yeah, we even had kisses done, much to the displeasure of Jo, I should've seen this and stopped Kevin with his own hands, that would've been funny. But yeah, we finished off and amongst the applause I could hear people gagging, gross out comedy at its finest!

Humpty Dumpty was done in the style of action, with a nice twist having Humpty Dumpty saved by the Terminator. The kid playing the Terminator was a riot, needing to only utter trademark Arnie lines to get the crowd's approval. It worked superbly. The silent movie with Adeline's group was a casualty to my poor powerpoint and music cues, but the message of the story was understood in the end. Dewey and Phil did Pinocchio, western style, with Dewey as Pinocchio, wearing Claire's overalls, which looked like a tight fit. The skit was funny, Lawrence's pants falling gag never fell dry and Dewey can act, as always. Bryan and Alistair's group did Aladdin, adventure style, and with the help of Anthony, the cute, quiet kid as Abu, Bryan was onto a winner. Bryan's wardrobe change got screams from the girls that saw him (not the good kind) and Alistair's appearance as the 6th monkey was a nice ending. There was a commercial skit which I wasn't able to see all of, running around preparing for my skit I think. Also there was an opera based skit that was miscommunicated as soap opera, so lack of singing GET! Jack in the beanstalk was done, in the style of kids show with Chris's group I believe (I hope I'm not wrong), there was a talk show, but I forgot the fairy tale so apologies!

Jo Lo and Kitty's group did The Little Mermaid in the style of Bollywood, which was the star skit of the night. From Kitty's bollywood rendition of "Under The Sea" to the well done Indian accents by all (especially Rebecca) to Jo Lo's impersonation of Bryan to the advertising of Bryan's restaurant and the bollywood music with Libby and Shirley singing "Bollywood Bollywood" walking around. Which caught on with people, and soon got old. It ended up taking first prize.

Ian, our youth and I went up for our skit at some point, I took control of the laptop, doing music cues and narration as best I could. I ended up feeling a bit lost during the whole thing, trying to remember what to do next and stuff. The guys danced ballet as best they could, and as girly as they could. Ian was the witch who was jealous of Snow White (Haste) and Man was the Prince, Prince Cam Phong leaving Jason to be a dwarf. So we had to double up, Ian, Man and Haste acted as dwarves in the scenes where they weren't playing their own characters, which might've confused the crowd but oh well. Dancing ballet to Tetris remix was interesting, and so was the battle dance between Ian (witch) and Jason (dwarf) to the Mortal Kombat theme, Jason won and chucked the girliest pose ever, it was awesome. I came up with the dwarve's song with I liked, as it included the use of a mug and a cheap shot at Cam. It went "High Ho, High Ho, It's off to work we go! With a mug in hand, we don't like Cam! High Ho High Ho...". Of course, in the story the prince kisses Snow White to wake her up, meaning Man kissing Haste, which during the days prior they were both joking about how close they would get. Of course, they weren't going to kiss, but they sure made everyone believe they were going to kiss with Man moving ever so close, close to the point that if Haste just puffed his lips, well, he would've become a Man (horrible joke I know). The ending was that Haste just woken up by water being splashed on him, finding out Cam saved him, then proceeding to eat Shimcup (noodles, as opposed to apple) rendering him unconscious again, getting a good reaction. Prince Cam would then scream "Nooooooo!" and I would say "And no one lived happily ever after...", before playing my own version of the Vengabus (as done by radio show Get This! They're cancelled now though) and having everyone dance like nothing ever happened. To me, thats always a great way to end anything, with everyone dancing! "The Vengabus is coming and everybody's running, from north to Ibiza, to the Mediterranean Seaaaa!".

The final act was a random act, which was a trance dance complete with lights out glow stick on string action. That was interesting to watch, since I could never do anything like that myself. Being lanky and trying to dance doesn't look that great in my opinion. And riddled in between each act were little random acts, showing ways to use a mug (besides the obvious way). As the theme of concert night was Clean and Unclean and needed the use of a Mug, to get maximum points. I probably forgot some other acts that were on, of which I apologise for but they're all going to be on the SYC DVD, which you can see all the acts, except for my groups one because the memory ran out half way through ours (which totally bummed me out for a bit). So for those reading that have no idea what I just talked about for the last bunch of paragraphs, watch the SYC DVD, the leaders should have it, and I know I'll have it!

After concert night it was supper, which this night we had a lights out of 11pm as opposed to 10:30pm. We ended up having a little dance party in the hall, which was funny and a kinda cool end to our last night at SYC. But since I wasn't dancing I went to the dining hall and searched for noodles, which Benny had, so supper was served. At 11 we got kicked out, very slowly, and then I headed back to my room to find my own personal highlight of SYC, seeing Man, Daniel and Jason all reading the bible together, which I found encouraging. Not wanting to disturb them I took a shower and when I got out David Ha was there, talking with them about the passage. So if anything, that proves I got the best room haha! Knowing that I would be driving the next day for 2-3 hours I wanted to sleep, but knew this was not going to happen for a while, people came in and wanted to party, which I was fine with as I'm a cool leader (lol). People played DS and cards for hours, I had my headphones on listening to Muse to calm myself and drown out my insomnia so I could sleep. Eventually people went out and I drifted off to sleep, at around 2 or 3am? The last night sleeping at SYC...Day 4.

SYC - Day 3 [My Tiring Day]

Day 3 - Wednesday 9th January 2008 [The Wet Day]
Ian woke me up thinking it was nearly 7am, I checked my watch and told him it was 6:30am and that he was wrong before sleeping for another 15 minutes before my alarm went off, then I went to the leader's meeting which went through the passage for today, to be spoken by Alistair. Then we went through debriefing and other stuff, including travel to the beach, which needed drivers, so I had an inkling of a feeling that I would be needed to drive, which I was prepared for. I took my time to get to breakfast, chatting with Jo (D) about the youth. After breakfast I once again whipped up the powerpoint for chapel time.

The passage was Mark 10:13-31, which looked at the Rich Young Man, which was about coveting (something I did not originall know), which is wanting things that other people have, then going after it, kind of like stealing. The basic gist is a rich young man comes to Jesus asking how to get eternal life, showing that even though he is rich and young and essentially has it all, he knows there's more to life and knows Jesus has the answer. Jesus questions him, and if he has followed God's commands, which the rich man says he has, though all except one, coveting! The man couldn't give up his possessions to follow Jesus, seemed like he wanted more and more stuff, stuff that didn't belong to him too. I really like the verse at the end. Mark 10:29-30 "I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.
Following Jesus will gain you more, not less (not more materialistic stuff). Following Jesus does not mean we give up everything in our life like some people perceive, we all still have our family, friends and whatnot, but we have a new path in life, a path that leads to eternal life, and I like where I'm going, hopefully, you reading this are coming with me too.

Question time was primarily about money and priorities, this time we got to relay these questions to Cam Phong which really helped the youth in understanding and answering their questions. Morning tea followed, which as always is just more time to chat and socialise before the first activity of the day. I was planning to just stay back and hang out at the campsite, though one of the youth, Geordie decided he wanted to do abseiling after the abseiling group had already left, so I was instructed to take him there. Having never been to this campsite before, and not knowing where any of the locations for activities were, this was going to be hard. The only direction I got was "Go left", so Geordie and I went left, we soon reached a slight obstacle, that of a sign saying "Authorised Personel Only", beyond that was a path that went up a hill, standing there I wasn't sure if I was going the right way or not, until I heard something. In the distance, up ahead I heard the wailings of a girl, who I assume was probably Shirley as it sounded most like her. So I was going the right way, "Lets go up here Geordie", the walk up was more tiring than I had anticipated, and my shoes were not fit for this type of terrain. As we headed up and reached more forks, I stopped and listened for voices to determine which way to go, and soon enough we caught up to them and Geordie was able to go abseiling, and I was able to take a rest from my tiring walk. Where we were for abseiling was filled with cicadas, and it must have been choir season or something because they were all chriping incessantly, threatening to destroy our ear drums. Fortunately I had my jacket, which I had to take off half way up the walk, which i wrapped around my head to lower the volume. I didn't abseil though, as it would've costed me extra, and I'm cheap, so I became a human clothes rack, carrying the youths jackets and whatnot.

After abseiling we trekked down what was hard to walk up hills but now were easy to slip down hills so we had to take careful steps. Then we had lunch, which I remember this time, they were sandwiches with mini hamburger buns so they were healthy and quite tasty from memory. Soon it was time for the beach, which we had around 35 spots for youth. Hoping not to drive I waited to see how many youth were going, and at one point I didn't need to drive, but then leaders wanted to go too, and so did a few other last second pop up youth so I gave in and decided to drive as well, plus I needed to fill my car up with gas to ensure the drive back on Friday was possible. So I changed into swimming gear, got allocated 4 youths then boarded my 4WD and followed the leader on the way to the beach.

The beach was fun, and since I hadn't been to the beach (nor swimming) in a very long time I took the opportunity to go into the water. Splished and splashed here and there, trying to catch a wave but to no avail and breaking the rule of not going past the second wave, though without really realising it. At one point, Kevin, Jo Lo and I went out seemingly a bit too far, it seemed like the waves got quite tough and we were pulled out more than we thought we were. Having not swam in a long time I was none too happy about this situation and proceeded to try and get back, I swam until I was tired and took a rest, which is hard when you're in water, so every so often I'd sort of dive down to see if my feet could reach the floor...it couldn't, which only made me feel worse. Kevin, a competent swimmer and overall crazy person went to the life guard and asked to ride on his giant board thing, Jo Lo and I pressed on, she seemed cool and calm, slowly making her way back. I was just tired and wanted to get to shore. We continued swimming, stopping to try and touch the floor but never touching it, which probably was a stupid move as it would only have dragged me back further. At some point I felt like giving up and looked at Jo Lo and uttered the words "I think I need help...", I don't think she gave me much of a reaction which was funny in hindsight, but I kept swimming anyway, fortunately we managed to catch a wave, which helped immensely in pushing us towards shore. Once I touched ground I was relieved and walked in to where little water would be and collapsed on the ground, taking my time to rest my weary legs and catch all the breathe I could catch. That'll learn me to try something like that again.

I healed up (rested), we took group pictures, which I'll have to hunt down then drove to the shops so people could buy stuff and withdraw money. I used this time to find the only gas station I spotted while driving and filled up on gas, and bought a drink to quench my thirst. Returned to the shops, which was only an IGA, loaded up on youth then followed the leader with what was around 7-8 vehicles, of which I was at the end of. This changed once we reached the final road towards the camp (the road filled with potholes), as I used my 4WD capabilities to drive on the grass, overtaking 3 cars before catching up to Andrew Ha's car, attempt an overtake, failed as a road sign was in my way, tried again successfully to get a good parking spot. It's things like that that make you want to sing like Marge Simpson, "Canyoneroooo!". (sorry for potentially obscure joke)

I returned to my room to change out, and found my room's bathroom floor completely drenched, moreso than it was usually. I assumed the guys must've went swimming and that was where most of the water came from. I later found out that our room, and a bunch of the other rooms were used as loading stations for waterbombs. I failed to notice the water balloon scraps on the walls and floors, must be getting old. Waterbomb skirmish is something that I think both youth and leaders look forward to each SYC, and I was ready to do some damage. So after dinner, which our dorm served so I remember what we had (Pies, Wedges and Vegetables) we set off down the hill to the designated waterbomb area...


Towards the battlefield...

Each team (youths and leaders) had two bins full of waterbombs each to their disposal.


The Youth


The Leaders (look, its me on the right!)


Bomb's Away!


Boom Headshot!

There's a whole bunch of other pics I could put up but I'll put them up elsewhere so look out for them! After the little skirmish, of which I got bucket'd (someone poured a bucket of water onto me) and I got some other people pretty good too. We had a firing squad for 3 youths who apparently weren't playing fair. Afterwards, the leaders got into a line and the youth were allowed to fire at us ala firing squad. Not wanting to get anymore wet I stood with the girls where it would be relatively safe, as opposed to the guys who were prime targets for the youth. And it worked, for a while, I ended up getting hit on my left leg at the end but that was alright compared to others.

After getting wet, we all dried off and wore dark clothing for our upcoming game, which required darkness. So we played King Karacticus first, and it was loud, too loud but fun to watch. Then we got to capture the flag with glow sticks, where we had three teams, and those three teams try to steal other teams glowsticks, the first team to get one from each team wins. The twist was that its night, and the leaders have torches, so youth have to sneak past us, if we spot you and shine our light on you, you freeze, then continue moving when we turn our torches off. It was fun watching the youth crawl on the ground, stopping every few seconds, then moving off again as they head towards enemy bases. The game ended fairly quickly, in just under an hour which allowed us to run on time.

Supper time was interesting this day, as some people found out that one of the leaders, Howard, had never had Dosirac, a brand of instant noodles. This blew out of proportion fast and it became Howard, who had never had instant noodles. Suffice to say, I got the moment he finally got to taste the noodles on my mobile phone. A word of caution though, girls are loud, very loud...



Following the festivities was time to sleep. I took a shower, the boys were already in the room, doing their usual thing. We waited for Ian as he hadn't come back yet. People came in and out to play DS or chat or whatever and soon we found out Ian was looking after Nelson's youth while Nelson attended to a matter. With concert night the next night, we discussed what we were going to do for that. We had to do Snow White in the style of ballet, which was an interesting challenge for a room full of buff youths, but would result in something funny. We chatted, and soon got tired and went to sleep with Man's music playing in the background, and my music playing in my headphones...Day 3

SYC - Day 2 [My Trivial Night]

Day 2 - Tuesday 8th January 2008 [The Packed Day]
Leaders had a meeting a 7:00am, my alarm went off at 6:45am and I spent a few minutes trying to wake up Ian without waking the others up, this involved me whispering "IAN! IAN!" and loudly as I could whisper, and poking him with my mobile phone. Eventually he got up and told me he dreamt about how me poking him made it into his dream, then he woke up the youth.
I put on a jacket (neglected to bring a jumper) then headed towards the hall for our meeting. It's fun looking at how tired and restless everyone else looked, I'm sure I didn't look any better myself (I never do). We had devotion time, going through the passage for today then prayed, had debrief of the day before, prayed some more then headed for breakfast, which was a meatball and toast, which was sufficient for me.

After breakfast was chapel time, which was the passage Mark 4:35-41, Jesus calms the storm. This passage showed us who Jesus was, he wasn't just a teacher, a prophet or some random guy, he was so much more, he is God! So while the disciples were all afraid on the boat when the storm was rampaging, Jesus remained calm, seemingly in control of the situation. So we should have faith in Jesus, for if Jesus is for us, who can be against us? I suppose the basic gist was to show what kind of person Jesus was, which makes sense, we should know who we are following, its fortunate we are following such a powerful person!

After chapel time was question time, which took a while to start off, but once we started, it was good and we had questions from the youth. Priorities are always a cause for concern with people, the whole putting God as number one above everything can be tough for people to do. Maybe people see it as once you have God as number one you can't be devoted to other things? Putting God as first priority is not a bad thing obviously, but I suppose its the process of having Him as number one that's hardest, especially with family, studies and whatnot happening, but you won't fail your studies just because you have God as number one (unless you don't study) or lose your family just because you have God as number (unless you ignore them).

11am was time for the first activity for youth to do, ranging from canoeing to abseiling to archery to swimming to whatever. I was tired so I stayed back at the campsite and hung out with the other leaders who stayed behind. Can't remember what exactly I did though, but whatever I did I did it until lunch time, then afterwards was the second activity for youth to do, some of which went to volleyball, so I decided to go down and take a few photo's, videos. There was quite a crowd for volleyball too, which was pretty cool.

Air David (Ha)


Volleyballin'

After volleyballing for one hour we headed back up for refreshments, to keep the youth entertained Bryan played our youth group's Oscar Night videos, which drew quite a crowd, if only to see what was being shown. This worked well in getting the youth to one place so we could explain the next game to them, which was Ultimate Frisbee! We joined our eight teams to make four teams and had them face each other. The basic idea of Ultimate Frisbee was that you pass the frisbee to one another across the field, then throw it to one of your teammates past the 'goal line'.


Competitiveness amongst all

One highlight was one of the teams, called Beautiful Girls decided to put all their girls on to play, and they went on to win their match. In the end we broke the overall winning team back into their individual teams and had them verse each other. We played with an 8 minute time limit and the goals were even all the way through up until the last minute where one team scored a deciding goal, leaving the score 4-3 I believe. So that made for an exciting last round.


Will's daily struggle (sorry Will :p)

After Ultimate Frisbee was dinner, which I can't be bothered trying to remember what we had so I'll skip on ahead to Evening Activities. The first activity was newspaper mascot, each team had to dress one member in newspaper to create a mascot of sorts. Then at the end there's a catwalk of sorts to show off their 'mascot'.


Cut and Paste Them Newspapers!

All teams produced something quite awesome, but I didn't want to put up 8 photo's so I'll just put up the two photos that came out non-blurry.
From the team Beautiful Girls...


Dressed to uh..win!?

They dressed Phil up as what you would probably call a Beautiful Girl.
And from the team whose name I've forgotten (mainly because I can't remember which team he was on) Man and a Spartan warrior!


For Sparta!!

Originally we were supposed to play a capture the flag game in the dark with glowsticks, but with the weather raining up we had to postpone that game until the next day, which meant moving my trivia game to today. So I had to get my stuff ready and fast! I really liked how I planned trivia, all done on powerpoint in as fun a style as I could make it. Five categories with five questions, 'Let's Get Physical', named after that song, and of course involves physical challenges, all created by Bryan. Musical Substitune, at attempt at a pun, where you sing a song with words from a different text, and you have to guess the song. Hybrid Handicap, something I made up to throw in five random questions that I wanted. Seeking SYC, another alliteratory attempt, involving SYC related questions. Screened Scene, television and movie related questions, with a bad title. Every team went for physical challenges first, which was suprising, maybe because they didn't know what to expect from the other categories. It was fun watching Dewey do a perfect handstand, the guys duke it out in a pushup challenge (which David Ha won), four girls do a crab stance with the support of everyone when they finally beat the 1 minute mark, Man and Jason beating up Haste in order to make him cry (he didn't), only to have a girl shed a tear winning 50 points and finally...

The Showdown

Watching Bryan try to hold off Ian for 2 minutes, but to no avail. Musical Substitune took a while for people to understand, but was fun nontheless, singing Close To You with the words from the SYC booklet was funny, and finding out some people (girls) didn't know Wannabe by the Spice Girls or I Want It That Way by the Backstreet Boys, make you feel old, but then I wouldn't want to know those songs either.
Seeking SYC and Screened Scene were least picked, I suppose because straight out answering questions isn't all that fun or something. Hybrid Handicap was fun (because it was my own category lol), which involved people trying to beat me thrice in Scissors, Paper, Rock, attempting to guess the number I was thinking in my head, skip rope and do two criss crosses, solve a riddle and eat a raw egg (which was done easier than I thought). Apparently trivia turned out better than people had thought, based on previous trivia's, so that was a pleasant suprise. But I ended up losing my skipping rope. But thanks to Joyce and Bryan for helping me out there, and Kitty for her egg!

After evening games was supper, I took this time to take a shower before sleeping. The boys in my dorm went off to Nelson's room to play poker, Ian went to 'supervise' so I was left alone, which I took advantage of and tried to get to sleep before they got back...they got back and I was still awake, but was listening to music on my mobile phone, so that helped drown out some of the sound and soon enough I drifted off to sleep...Day 2.

SYC - Day 1 [My Sleeping Buddies]

Day 1 - Monday 7th January 2008 [Their Arrival]
Bryan woke up at around 7am to take a jog, I know this because he woke up me, apparently not only do I take long to sleep (slight insomniac) I get woken kinda easy, though only in my lower levels of sleep. I stayed in bed and tried to get as much eye rest as possible, eventually everyone else got up, I continued to stay in bed. Nelson came by blaring music out of his laptop, declaring it was "30 minutes until 8am! 30 minutes until 8am!", as if he was the only person at camp with the time. I stayed in bed a little longer, but knew stuff had to be done, and I would be the one to do it, so I got up, washed up, got changed and packed my bags so cleaners could come into the rooms to clean.
Took my bags somewhere, I think the main hall (my memory is already starting to waver, not good) and had breakfast in the dining hall. Not feeling that hungry I had a bit of Sultana Bran, that was the last time I ate cereal at SYC, too cold and never in the mood for (bland) cereal. We had a few meetings here and there, I think we had music practice (not me, the band) and soon enough it was time for the youth to arrive, and as the phrase says, 'a picture is worth a thousand words', then a video would say a lot more words...1,704,000 words to be almost exact for the following video which depicts the EXCITE of the leaders as the youth head towards the camp site, needless to say the attempt at a cheer squad welcome was marred by the inner workings of a bus, not sure what I mean? Watch on..


S-Y-C! S-Y-C!

People exit and we welcome them with cheers and open arms and more cheers, and proceeded to help them unload their luggage and have them register.


Nametags! Get Your Nametags!

Not long after, the second bus came, which carried people from Hurstville (the first bus had Cabramatta people) so both leaders and youth came out to greet them. One such youth tried as well, but the difference between a door and a window was lost on her. Even though I didn't get it on video, I got what I could and its better left for the video to show than for me to explain...


Bumpity Bump Oww!

Finally and eventually everyone registered and we were all seated and given a quick orientation by Cam Phong and Nelson before we were given our dorm rooms. I was partnered up with Ian so we were co-leaders you could say. We were supposed to have 3 youths in our dorm, but two of them didn't show up, only one did, Jason. This then gave the opportunity for Man (Do) and Daniel (Haste) who didn't have a dorm nor leader to change into our dorm room. So three year 12 youths who all know each other and also know their leaders (somewhat), I knew right then and there sleep was going to be scarce. We dumped our stuff in our room (room 11) and soon enough found a spider on the wall. Man freaked out like a girl, screaming to get rid of it. Haste got rid of it, and then Man proceeded to Mortene the whole room to get rid of anything else. Man had the wrong name growing up it seems...


Youth and Leaders sitting together

We soon got into the swing of things with activities to get to know each other better, involving drawing on each other (I stayed at the powerpoint to avoid being drawn on, not a fan of ink on skin) and hitting each other with a pillow. At some point it was lunch time, I think we had a sausage roll. Eventually we had 'get you tired' games, which were designed to get the youth tired, this involved a game of Fresh, or Clean and Unclean as Cam made us change the name. The game was slow to start as people didn't understand the game, but after a helpful demonstration by William we got the ball rolling and roll it did! After Fres-Clean and Unclean we played Bullrush, a game everybody knew and quickly got tired from. I think Amazing Race was placed too, but I wasn't there for that as I took Ian into town to see how his car was (it was still sick), so we took the car to another car fixing place and things looked fixable, which was good, then we proceeded back into camp.
Oh wait, before we returned to camp, Claire asked if I could buy some medicine, something called Neprogesic, apparently period pain medicine. So being the nice guy that I am, I did. When I had the chance I visited the chemist while Ian went to check on his car, I walked around for a while trying to find it, unfortunately I had forgotten the name of the medicine, thinking it ended in 'zyne' for some reason. Eventually I gave up and had to ask the lady for the checkout for help, but I waited until everyone in line had left.
"May I help you?"
"Yeah, I'm looking for some period pain medicine, but I uh forgot the name, I think it ends in 'zyne'.."
"Um..okay, let me take you to the section"
"Thanks"
"Alright, do you see the medicine?"
*Spots Naprogesic*
"Hm..I think this could be it"
"Hold on, let me get help...hey, this guy is looking for some period pain medicine but he forgot the name of the medicine"
"I think it could be Naprogesic"
(wanting to get out now) "Yeah, Yeah, this is it, I'll take it"
Suffice to say, I shan't be forgetting Neprogesic anytime soon.
Dinner time arrived and I forgot what we had, unless it was a sausage roll. See how forgettable camp food is? After dinner we had our first chapel time of the week, which involved songs, announcements, a talk and question time. Just like I do nearly every Sunday I did again at SYC, which was run the powerpoint. With only 15-20 minutes to prepare I had to format all the songs to suit the projected screen (church screen and SYC screen are different, and so require different formatting), so while it was a bit annoying in the beginning to receive a songlist 20 minutes before chapel time, I ended up seeing it as a challenge as to how fast I could do things.

The talk was on Mark 7:1-24, Clean and Unclean, which was to be the theme, essentially of SYC. Not a physical uncleanliness but a spiritual uncleanliness is what Jesus is talking about. We are all unclean because of our sin, and Jesus is the cleaner, the only cleaner who take take our sins away, so we have to trust in him to be clean, and to go to Heaven with eternal life. Don't we all want to go to heaven?

Silly me, at some point during the day I realised my car keys were missing, usually either in my pocket or on the desk with the laptop and projector but this time they weren't. I slowly retraced my steps and soon enough found them where I last left them, in the car ignition...fortunately we were at camp and not elsewhere so the car was safe.
Evening games involved breaking up into teams that the youth were allocated into, and creating a Warcry for their group. So with eight groups in total, we had eight team names and eight warcries. Which were all different and interesting and fun to watch. The judges thought otherwise and gave most teams low scores for their warcries, which was fair enough. Bryan has a video of the warcries, so I'll have to get it off him and maybe I'll chop them up and throw them on here.
With the team names settled, it was time to face them against each other, in the ultimate test of asian skill, the M&M game. Eight bowls filled with M&M's, eight pairs of chopsticks. A colour is called, one team member must, using their chopstick pick out the called colour and put it in their hand, then eat the M&M. They continue until a different colour is called, teams switch players and we keep going until a team finishes all their M&M's. It was a fun game to watch, with teams cheering their players on, complaining about other teams cheating, then cheating themselves. I have a bunch of video's but the video of the final run best sums up the game and how frantic it is, and just so you know, the colour called out was 'all colours'...


Gobble Gobble Gobble

Kevin, as seen in the video gobbled up as many M&M's as he could, but what he couldn't do was contain them all in his mouth, so what does one do when they can't handle anymore?


They spit it out...

Soon games ended and supper time started, which was basically time to snack, shower and get ready to sleep before lights out at 10:30pm. I helped clean up and when I returned to my room I found the place rearranged a bit...


Man's Sister's Pink Blankey

The boys decided to take three mattresses and dump them in the middle of the room so they could sleep together, and so they could avoid the creepy crawlies on the walls. I slepted on the bed on the very right of the picture, right next to the window, next to the door, so if I happened to roll too much and fall off the bed, I'd land on Haste, thats how close our cabin was going to be, too close...
But I suppose the best way to get to know each other would be to sleep close to each other? I can't remember what time we slept, but it was somewhat late, listening to the three guys chat and Man's trancey, technoey music I soon fell asleep, I think some people came in for a bit of a party...Day 1.

SYC - Day 0 [My Drive Up]

Over the past week I helped out as a leader at Summer Youth Camp (SYC), a Christian camp for high schoolers that our church (Cabramatta Anglican Church) runs every year. This year we ran it with another church, Hurstville Anglican Church and a bunch of leaders from a bunch of different churches so I got to meet a lot of other leaders and get to know them better.
SYC can be best described as a small scale RICE that runs for a whole week non-stop, making it quite large scale.

Also, caution in advance as this entry is going to be large scale and epic, and will come in 6 parts, each part focusing on each day, so without further ado lets go back to Summer Youth Camp...

Day 0 - Sunday 6th January 2008 [Our Arrival]

We had church, of which I unveiled a new powerpoint design for the new year, but thats not important to this story, or is it? Probably not. Moving on, after church I return home to pack some more and at 6pm get to church to load stuff onto the 4WD. Anyone who has seen the car I drive knows that I have a big boot. Which is where the good ol' game of car Tetris comes into play, much like Homer Simpson in that Tetris sequence, I was twisting and turning blocks to fit as much as possible into the car. So if memory serves me correct, I had 3 speakers (the big kind), 2 luggage suitcases (neither which were mine), an ocean scooter, one giant Pooh bag, 3-4 backpacks, 4 or so drum kit stands, 2 luggage backs, 6 sleeping bags, a bunch of newspaper, a pillow and 4 other humans who were Claire, Jessica, Dewey and Aaron. I should've took a photo but my camera was in my backpack which was in the boot somewhere. I took one for the way back though, but you'll have to wait a few paragraphs for that.
We left for our destination at around 7:30-8:00pm, packing stuff onto the car just took so long. The drive up took even longer, but was eventful, stopping at McDonalds along the way for dinner, listening to music ranging from rock to r'n'b to Sailor Moon, attempting to take a group photo with driver included (don't think that turned out well, but will have to get the photos to check), all the while complaining about how slow we were all going. With an hour left in our drive Aaron uttered the words any long distance driver dreads to hear, "I need to pee". Fortunately Aaron said he would be able to hold it, but as we got closer to our destination, the more jokes we started to make, the more uneasy Aaron started to feel. It got worse when we were just a few kilometres from the campsite, as the drive involved rocky roads riddled with potholes. Bumpity Bump Bump went the car as we drove over the potholes, and Aaron's bladder felt worse and worse. The final stretch was a long road filled with potholes, being a 4WD I drove onto the grass to avoid the potholes, and hoped it helped Aaron hold it in just that little longer. We got louder as we got closer, Aaron grew more anxious, I drove as fast and as safely as possible, we got to the campsite finally and I drove up and parked right outside the toilet, Aaron open the door, and rushed into the toilet, relieving himself, and we all breathed a sigh of relief, for the car for safe and dry.
So this happened at around 11pm, we unpack, debrief and meet the other leaders, sang happy birthday to Aspen, set up the sound system, got into our teams and worked stuff out like what games we were going to play on Monday when the kids got here. At around 1am, or was it 2? We decided it was time to go to sleep, so we picked a room to sleep in then headed off to check out where others were sleeping. Returning to our room Bryan and I found a spider on the wall, then proceeded to change rooms. We ended up sleeping in a room with Howard, Benny and Kevin, which was cool because I didn't know them well, so sleeping in a room with them guarantees instant friendship points, so we chatted a bit before drifting off to bed. Other rooms found chatting to be boring, opting to place their mattresses on the floor and proceed to wrestle each other. I took a while to sleep, as I always do (slight insomniac, or insomniac period, I'm in slight denial). I heard we could sleep until 9am, which I intended to do...Day 0.

My Hybrid New Year

Thursday, 27th December 2007

Our church had a LAN, if you take it for the literal meaning that is Local Area Network it makes some amount of sense. But otherwise its a bunch of computers/laptops being networked together via cables in a local area, which in this case was our church building. All in all it was quite an awesome turnout with 20+ computers running at the same time, which means the church building heated up pretty quickly, coupled with humans breathing air, the need for fans and open doors went into demand fast.
So what happens in a LAN with all these computers connected? Well, when you have all guys (and one girl) you play games! Starcraft, Dota (Though that isn't a game per say), Battlefield Vietnam, Counter-Strike, Rainbow Six were played. I'm sure other games were played too.
The girls semi-joined us in that they had their girls day out, consisting of popcorn and watching movies upstairs, because downstairs where the guys were seemed too loud and intimidating?
I arrived at 9:30am, had lunch (snackpacks) at 2-3pm, had dinner at 8-9pm I think (McDonalds) and left at 10:30pm. Over 12 hours at church, pretty good, and tiring and unhealthy food-wise! Went home and slept at around 2am, watching anime to round out the day...

Friday, 28th December 2007

My house had a party, though unlike the day before which had a starting time of 8:30am, I had a starting time of 12pm, just so I could sleep in a bit. People slowly trickled in like ants finding out there's a piece of icing cack just around the corner, which to them is a giant corner. The day was mostly dedicated to Wii-ing, Mario and Sonic Olympics was the main game played. We watched Tom Yum Goong, a Thai Kickboxing fightfest movie, only because there were mainly guys around (It's a guy movie). Afterwards, more Wii ensued, they discovered the beauty that is Excite Truck.
Eventually more people came after making flowers (more on that later) and that essentially was when the party started moreso. We watched Billy's boxing video, we cheered when he was declared winner, Karaoke happened, and was loud no less, more Wii-ing of course, and dinner was served courtesy of Bryan's restaurant Bollywood and added giant cake from Leyna. The day finished around 11pm. I slept at around 2am, getting my suit ready and watching animie to round out the day...

Saturday, 29th December 2007

The day of Ken and Tania's wedding. The day before I decided to help the decorations committee in transporting the flowers they were making the day before (see, I told you I'd get to it later). Turned out they had a lot of flowers and my 4WD was big enough to fit a lot of them, that only made driving a dangerously wet feat, that I accomplished quite well. I woke up at 7:30am to get to church at 8:30am. We had McDonalds for breakfast, then off we went to the church. The slushing of water in the back of my car in the bucket holding the flowers made the drive up less than comforting, not because I needed to go to the toilet, but because I didn't want the bucket having its own accident, spilling water into my car. It didn't, fortunately and we got to the church just fine. Unloaded the flowers, then proceeded to decorate the church as best we could. At this point a photo of the church would make sense, but alas, I didn't have a camera, and didn't think to use my phone camera (it's not that great a camera). But it looked good, trust me, I helped decorate it. Finding parking in the city is annoyingly hard, and I hate driving in the city. Its a good thing I had a 4WD, otherwise I would've hit a few cars that day, fortunately smaller cars are generally scared of 4WD and only beep at you and yell things at you which I wouldn't be able to hear anyway, with my windows up, aircon on and cd player on medium volume (too high is too loud).
The ceremony itself was good, and seeing everyone from church in formal gear was cool too. My highlight of the ceremony, not involving Ken and Tania would probably be the food, salmon rolls, special spring rolls (don't know real name), prawn stuff. I just couldn't stop eating! Though that could be because it was 3:30pm and I hadn't eaten since 9am. Then there was ice cream! I had a calipo which I hadn't had in a long while and given the weather that day, calipo was very welcome.
After Ken and Tania went off in their convertible with us screaming at them goodbye we set off to clean the church, load the flowers back up and head to the reception place. Victor, Jessica and I went to Jess's house first, so Jess could change and Vic could cool down, I got changed too (changed shirts). The drive to Jessica's house involved two Harbour Bridge drives and asking the Toll lady which way to go, followed my following signs with a picture of a plane and subsequently a huge round about drive around the airport before reaching the M5 and another toll booth.
The drive to the reception was a bit easier, only involving a wrong turn, resulting in an U-turn followed by a lot of "Are you sure this is the right way?", "Positive?", "Sure!?", "Fine, you better be right!". And we were right, we got to the reception at Sylvania Waters, parked, unloaded the flowers, then loaded them back up upon discovering we didn't need most of them. From then on my work was done, it was time to enjoy the festivities and enjoy them I did. Lamborghini entrance for Ken and Tania showed us this reception was going to be no ordinary reception. Hilarious speeches by their respective parents backed this up, and the funniest wedding dance by Ken and Tania cemented the extraordinary wedding. I had good company, good food (ferrero rocher dome!) and a good time overall.
The drive home wasn't so good, I probably took longer than normal to get home and coupled with Billy's constant talking about nothing all the way home I was too tired and just wanted to get home. When I finally got home and checked my boot, I found the bucket of flowers had tipped, spilling water all over my boot. Great...just great, great in a pejorative sense (Who said you couldn't learn from The Simpsons?). I cleaned up where I could then went inside the house. I slept around 2am, watching anime to round out the day...

Sunday, 30th December 2007
Church day! A much tamer day than the ones preceeding it, but no rest for the wicked as yet. After the service our Music & Ministry Team (M&M) had our end of year outing at the Sizzler! I just had the salad bar. Afterwards we went to a park to share our thoughts on the year of ministry, which was encouraging and thought-provoking. So hopefully this year of music at church will be awesome and more glorifying of God! Everyone was tired, so instead of hanging out like we usually seem to do we went home to rest. The night involved planning New Years Eve. I slept at around 2am, no anime was watched (we watched it earlier in the day)...

Monday, 31st December 2007

New Years Eve! At 3pm we met at church to go to Garrison Point park for a bbq. We played soccer, lost an expensive cricket bat, played Taboo, took over the kids playground and ate sausages and kebabs. This went on till about 8pm whereupon people started pouring in my house like a busted hourglass spilling sand everywhere. Once again we played Wii, and sang karaoke. Both as loud as we felt like, seeing it was New Years Eve! We watched the 9pm fireworks, they were alright, then went back to Wii and karaoke. At 10:30pm we did a McDonalds food run, burgers, McNuggets and fries oh my! Then went back for more karaoke and Wii. At 15 minutes to midnight Claire forced the Wii to stop and we sat around and shared our highlights for the year, which I thought was a nice sentiment to cap off the year. I hardly remember much from the year, perhaps I'll try remember the year later. We counted down, and screamed and cheered for the new year that had arrived, we watched the fireworks, waiting for the good stuff to happen, which happened at the end. Calls were made to friends and family wishing them "Happy New Year!". Our neighbours made lots of noise, running onto the street, stopping cars from driving, screaming at the drivers, most likely wishing then a "happy new year!", we went back to Wii-ing and a bit of karaoke, though I think most people's voices were gone by that point. At 1am people left, and I think I slept at 2am that day, watching anime to round out the day...

Tuesday, 1st January 2008

I'm going to have to get used to writing 2008 as opposed to 2007 now, shouldn't take too long. People from church went to the beach, I would've went, but I was tired and wanted to rest. So I slept in and didn't do much that day. Went with family to eat pho, came home and watched television. Played games. I'm back in hybrid holiday mode, sleeping late, and waking late. But one can only do this for so long.
Have a Hybrid New Year my hybridites! (that's what I'll call you readers)