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)