Assignment...or at least I was anyway...

I was SUPPOSED to work on my EIL assignment today but... I didn't. Damn my laziness! Aaah. Now I have only Monday and Tuesday left. The only worthwhile thing I did today was read "The Thief Lord" for English Lit. I guess this can be counted as exam preparation since the lecture and tutorial for the book was like in week 10 but I didn't read it cause I fell behind. So I'm reading it now. Yes I know people, what a fun way of studying. It's fun but it annoys me still that I have to read all these books, lol. That and I have nothing else to study with for the exam? This is why I can't easily ever get high grades in English Lit. I mean, I really don't know what to read or do at all. Unlike other subjects where you can generally say that more study of your textbooks/notes = better grades.

But yeah, I woke up at like 8:30 since I couldn't get my ass up any earlier. Did pretty much nothing for the day. Felt better then yesterday though, and Amanda's call cheered me up substantially. Now to spend tomorrow worrying about my EIL assignment. But I'll enjoy myself for GFN tomorrow though. Amanda said to play Twister if the DDR mats are broken. Yay, Raine, Drue, Chris and Bernie will be there. Heh. Only two more GFNs! Nooo. That means my last 3 weeks for semester 2 will truly suck. The only thing I have left that gets me in contact with people is MCAC (since we have social lunch gatherings even during exams, actually last semester was funny, more people showed up during exams probably because of stress and lack of social life). I don't really know or talk to the people I live with very much unfortunately. And I pretty much don't have ANY friends in ANY of my classes. With the exception of Raine and a few others (who aren't particularly close whatsoever), lol. I just know people, but I never consider people I just know as my friends. There has to be a bit more meaning behind it, you know?

Tulip Festival

And today was.. the Tulip Festival. I didn't have much people to walk with, and I sat on the bus by myself for both trips in isolation. I kind of began to regret going actually. But <3 <3 to Izzati for her attempts to try and integrate me into her group of friends. And for caring for me about whether I'm happy or not. You're always watching out for me since I'm not exactly the most stable of people. And you know I get easily depressed when it comes to loneliness. Thank you, dear~. I feel bad for being so damn annoying and troublesome. Eh, I really should say sorry and thanks to people like Izzati, Ieja and from the past... Serena and Magdalene for always watching out for me, since I'm always causing them problems and going from one moment happy to next moment bat shit emo. Well in the case of Mag, that was over 2 years ago so I guess it shouldn't be an issue anymore....

That said, today was the first time for quite a while since I got that lonely feeling I had almost all of last semester. I hate that feeling so much, I've been on and off it for the past 3 years, I've been trying all of this semester to get rid of it completely. You know, to be a bit more optimistic and happy with life. I was a bit disappointed I relapsed today. So yeah, I was a bit indifferent to sour to depressed today. Cheered up a bit after getting random messages and cons on msn from Chris and Raine though. Anyway, no worries. Some sleep and I'll be fine. Even if I'm not okay tomorrow, Monday is GFN day. Seeing Amanda, Tsan, V and some MCAC people who are coming (Drue, Raine, Chris and Bernie hopefully) is all I need to cheer me up. Heh.

The Tulip Festival was nice however. Lots of pretty flowers everywhere. I didn't get a chance to walk around the other places though, since we didn't spend enough time at the festival. After the festival we went to the William Rickett's Sanctuary. Which is an Aboriginal sanctuary. It was a very tranquil and spiritual place, I felt sort of out of place. The cold weather didn't help either. I slept on the bus back to the Halls (which was around 3 PM).

Next few days will be spent on the EIL assignment which I must get done by Wednesday. And my Education presentation on the animal nursery at the Melbourne Show. And to work on the MCAC website. Oh and reading those damn English Lit novels that I haven't read yet... aaah... when do I start studying for exams. I still need to do like... every reading for Media Studies which I haven't done since week 2. T.T

Paintball Part Two

Bruises, bruises and even more bruises! Today was Paintball again with MCAC and the Mauritian Dodo club. I got up at like 8:30 AM, did absolutely nothing for most of the time and at 12:45 Vu picked me and Aaron up at the bus loop to drive us to the paintball centre. We got Sharon, Bernie and David at Huntingdale station also but the centre is like a 3 minute walk away so I thought that was a bit redundant. It seems Vu was a bit too excited with coming early, we were like an hour or so too early, lol. So we just hung outside while Vu was trying to sell us his contraband... I mean show us the sizes for the MCAC t-shirts. Lots of other people came as time went on of course, Lee, Nazri, David, Tim, Tam...etc.

We waited indoors for a while. Random stuff happened like Tam's hair was supposedly extremely flat today, to the point that no one could recognized him. I didn't either but I only met Tam like... once before this so I kind of forgot his face. And kept grabbing Vu's hat, unless you couldn't tell, Vu ALWAYS has a hat on (well almost anyway ...). Tam told me that he lost his hat once and went out to buy the exact same hat. Other random things... well, David forgot my name and called me Casini. T_T Well he didn't forget since after that he realised I was Celine... I told David I would get my revenge but in the end I was on the same team as him. From MCAC, there were only four girls, me, Sharon, Bernie and her friend (who left early) so we stuck together. The Mauritian club only had 2 other girls also.

So yeah, we finally got in, did the usual paintball stuff. Sign documents, get clothing and gear. I bought an extra 200 paintballs this time, so I had 400 paintballs to waste. Heh, me, Sharon, Bernie and her friend bought like a 900 paintball pack, each of us took 200 except for Sharon who wanted another 300. Alex came over to the paintball centre also as a spectator, so he took videos and photos of us.

The first field we were in was that car and tire one. Where we played Highlander and some other games. Unlike when I went with GFN there were more game variations this time. Besides Highlander (push opposing team to the bunk) we also had another one where your timed and you gotta take out the other team (who have one life). I was only yellow team again this time, where most of the MCAC members were actually. Only a few were on the other side (Sharon, Vu and eventually Bernie 1 for starters). In the beginning, I took kind of a leadership role. I mean we were playing Highlander so I was telling everyone to just charge in rather then go for slow and steady pincer attack. It didn't go as well as I would of liked.

I forgot to say, MCAC and Dodo Mauritian club are A LOT MORE aggressive then the GFN group. The charging didn't work, they also charged and we were shot to bits and pieces. I took like a couple of shots here and there (arm and leg I think). But apparantly everyone began to like charging in. The next game we still sort of charged in, can't really remember too well what happened. During defence time, I hid in the back lol. And didn't get hit at all. So yeah, yellow team won all the games in the first round. Go us!

Second field was the wild west one. OMG, I got the most injured in this one. So we did that plushie game where you run to get dolls in the middle. Then we did another one where there are money bags in the money house and you have to run to get that. In the first game, it was pretty funny. When we started me and Bernie ran to this home and I had a AWESOME time sniping everyone who was trying to take out our members getting the dolls. Getting people off guard is so much fun, I was shooting through the door and no one saw me being all busy shooting the windows. Didn't get hurt here.

But next game, ouch ouch ouch. The money one, while our team was still finalizing our strategies the guy was like BARRELS OFF, SAFETY OFF, START! And we were all in a mess. Everyone still had their safety on and we were shot at and ran in different directions all messed up. So much for our strategy. I couldn't get any closer to the front (I was at the back by the wild west houses) since when I tried I was shot at. Eventually there was this guy at the door way near me, I appeared, got shocked and BAM BAM BAM. 3 shots under 8 metres to the thigh. I was like DAAAMNNNN SHIT SHIT SHIT FUCCCCKKK OWWWWWW!!! Do not get shot under 8 metres people. T_T I dragged myself back to the safety box after this.

A break and then we went to that inflatables field. I hated this one. So we had the flag game. I didn't do much but the strategy our group used was funny. By this time everyone seemed to enjoy going trigger happy and suicidal. So our group strat was basically to use meat shields to get the flags. Everyone literally clumped together ran out like suicidals and the first line of defence (made up of David, Tam and one other MCAC member) served as shields for whoever was behind him, so if the person in front got taken down there was still people behind to grab the flag. When it was our turn to grab the flag everything happened so fast I didn't even do anything before the game was over. T.T

I remember one game where everyone ran to the centre, and so did the other team. Everyone started yelling out SURRENDER!!! since it was too close to shoot. We had another game here also where it ended really early because the other team was disqualified? Apparently the referee caught people cheating, even after getting shot they still continued charging forward when they shouldn't.

According to Alex it was really funny to watch on this field with our strategy. As the other team used pincer attack while ours was charging through in a clump. So we fell for their attack since we all stuck together and would just end up surrounded in the middle. Not that everyone seemed to anyway. David was hilarious in this one. Since he was the meat shield, he ran around literally waving his arms to everyone to get people to shoot him. So that people behind David could get the people who took him out. The guy got like waaay to many shots to the chest.

A break then we went onto the last field, the J.F. Kennedy one. When we were trying to get their J.F. uhh... it didn't go too well. We were at a standstill. I was stuck behind a tire before I got shot in the knee and shoulder, after that I hobbled to the safety area and had trouble running back into the game. Cause the second I ran out of the safety area I could feel paintballs flying by my head. When we had to defend our J.F. Kennedy, well I took out some people and didn't get shot at all. Big mistake, by the time I was shot everyone was almost gone except for me and a few others. So I put my leg too far out behind the tire, everyone pointed their guns at me and bleh, 3 shots to the leg and arm. X.X

Anyway, everyone still had paintballs left so we played Highlander on this field again. I wanted to use up my paintballs (Bernie still had over a 100) so I went a bit trigger happy here. The highlander didn't go too well though, we were at a standstill again. I got a head shot here, ran back and went back in but it was almost over then.

Lastly, for all remaining paintballs... the Mexican shootoff. I deliberately didn't take part in this at the GFN paintball sesssion because I didn't want to. The Mexican shootoff is where we like stand pretty close to each other, point our guns at each other and shoot until there are no more paintballs. No moving, no running behind cover or anything.

When the guy said to begin I immediately went %$#%%!@!!$#%#OMGWTFBBQ@$#)%$!!!%)# X_________X X_________X

People like Bernie were lucky, apparently no one really shot at her. (Although she and Sharon had fun pointing a gun at this guy who was like a rag doll with the amount of shots he got hit with) Yeah, I was shocked because I got like 4 neck shots at least (in the same spot), head shots, arm shots and chest shots (which don't affect me luckily). I immediately just pulled the trigger, surrendered and ran to safety. Didn't even know what was going on, I couldn't see anymore since my mask was covered in paint.

Anyway I was tired so I was glad it was all over. I deciding whether to take Alex's car to Bernie's house, where we were to drive over to Sophia's for dinner, or take Lee's car back to the Halls of Residence since he was driving Nazri back. I decided not to shower, so I went to Bernie's house to DDR! Hahaha. I really sucked, either I was tired or I relapsed? But yeah, only MCAC would have the energy to DDR after being shot left and right in paintball. Raine, Drue and Chris messaged/phoned us on our way back, heh. Anyway, we left for Sophia's at 6:45 PM, we were starving. I didn't get any lunch either (well I ate a can of sardines and some biscuits).

The first and last time I came to Sophia's was O-week of semester one. Since Roberts Hall went there. I remember eating a plate of 3 different pasta's with Grace and Eugene. This time at Sophia's we had me, Bernie 1, Bernie 2, Vu, Lee, Nazri, Alex, Sharon, Tim and a new member, Mootian. We all decided later on to call him Moo. At Sophia's we had.. 2 plates of the 3 pasta's on a plate, there was ravioli, vegetarian lasagna and spaghetti carbonara. And 3 pizzas, vegetarian one, some Mexican one and the special (with everything on it almost). At dessert Alex, Bernie and co. ordered this large bowl of assorted gelati and this huge ass slice of Tiramisu. O.O We had problems getting that finished...

As Chris and Drue kept messaging us to ask whether we were doing anything after dinner, well... people wanted to play pool so I suggested just heading to Roberts Hall since the common room with the pool tables are probably free (holidays + friday night = free). So yeah, we went there! Me, Bernie and Sharon stopped at Coles at Brandon Park on our way to the Halls to buy some drinks. We had a nice little time in the common room, lol. It was a bit weird to see people like Bernie 1, Vu and Lee in the common room though. Everyone went home fairly early, but I think Drue, Chris and Bernie stayed out a bit longer. I was tired by 12 AM so I went back to my room. Have to wake up in time for the Tulip Festival afterall.

The Royal Melbourne Show

So I went to the Melbourne Show today with V, Tsan, Brian and later joined up with Han Lin, his cousin, his friend, Winston and his friends. The show was... interesting, I guess. I woke up at the usual, we originally planned to meet at the bus loop at 9:30 but it was too early. Tsan didn't wake up with enough time to get ready. So V said he would pick me up at like 9:45 so we could leave at 10. Problem was that we wanted to leave from Clayton station but we didn't want to get a zone 1 and 2 ticket (since it's like $3 more). So we got Brian to buy the tickets for us and validate it (he was like one stop ahead only at Huntingdale station).

We unexpectedly met up with Amanda and Jia Chee at Huntingdale. They were going to the city also to meet their friends and watch Rush Hour 3 with Sharon, Stan and co. Anyway we headed over to the showgrounds area which is north of Melbourne.

The Melbourne Show had a lot going on, it looks fun but you need A LOT of money to enjoy yourself. Basically no money = almost nothing to do. We spent a lot trying to get those stuffed animals from the rip-off games and stuff. There were rides also but I didn't go on any. It was like $7 per ride. Bleh. And the showbags! Showbags are like... bags full of goodies based on specific themes that may have the total value of like $80 of the goodies but is only $20 or less. So yeah, get stuff you want for $20 or less when it is worth more then that if bought separately. Specific themes like a Hello Kitty showbag I got, girly showbags based off of magazines, Simpsons one, chocolate ones (like Kit Kat or Cadbury), any other cartoon you can think of, costumes, scary stuff, other nice stuff. If only I had the cash... but yeah, in the end I wanted at least one showbag. So I went with a Hello Kitty one, although there was another one called Pipeline that I wanted.

First impression of the Melbourne show~

Some rides...

And more rides (see the tall one? Brian, Winston and his friend went on that...)

Prizes....*___*

Rollar coaster...

Example of showbags like the Garfield one...

Some many nice goodies...

I want....

I bought the Hello Kitty set above... I also wanted the Pipeline one though (bottom left). Tsan bought the Girls Only one (bottom right) for her sister. My set was worth around $40+ (but I paid $18.50) while Tsan's was worth $60+)

So yeah, we first began our time at the Melbourne show walking around looking at what is available. I needed to go to the animal Nursery because my education partner, Debbie is working there and we were gonna do a upcoming presentation on the nursery. So yeah, we went around there, Tsan and V entered the petting section. Heh. In the end, Debbie agreed to do all the work (collecting data) so I said I would do the actual analysis and stuff to make it fair. So I had the day to myself! Yay.

The Melbourne show had a lot of random things.. arts and crafts centre, pet shows, animal nursery, fashion show, bazaar, super cheap book sale and this huge tent full of food. Lots of wonderful food with free samples and stuff. I ate like free samples of peking duck, honey yogurt, chocolate and licorice (BLEH). We then went to buy some yummy REAL ice cream. Not that freezer stuff I don't like.

V looks comfy with his koala...

After the food place... uhh.. we wandered a lot. Eventually Han Lin, his cousin and friend joined us. And the guy tried the "test of strength" thingy and won a pony for Tsan! Not that it was a test of strength, more like of aim since the most important thing is to hit the centre.

Hit~

After that our money spending craze hit us as we tried to win those stuffed animals. We did so many things like... crossbow gun at balls (Han Lin's cousin won me a lil' kitty, yay~), air gun on paper, throwing these super bouncy balls into the bucket, Black Jack (trying to get an odd number to make 21), lucky number draws and so on and so forth. It was ridiculous actually. Me and Tsan spent forever in the showbags hall also picking out which one we wanted. In the end, I went with the Hello Kitty one while Tsan got a "Girlfriend" one (full of magazines, a bag and some cosmitics) and another one for her sister (with like 3 different bags, make-up, jewelry and stuff). We got really bored eventually... and did stuff like watch people cook in some contest and act like cam whores (a.k.a. taking random photos).

Cooking~

Taking photos at the cooking place (my head is wonky cause I took the picture)

Monster truck...

Us at the monster truck place, haha~

Eventually Winston finally came with his friends. And they decided to go on that one scary ride no one else wanted to. Where you spin in the air high up and stuff. While they were waiting, Han Lin's friend.. (uhh I dunno how to spell, Loy.. Loi.. was it?) went to that Black Jack 21 thing and got an odd number. So Tsan got a cute HUGE orange dragon. Just look at the pictures below to see it. Hehe. After Winston and co. got their ride, we went around wasting more money on games, then buying random shitty food (couldn't get outside unfortunately), I got a chicken fillet burger... while waiting for the fireworks to start up. We went early to the place but it was monster trucks and free style cyclists so yeah, we had a nice time watching them. And the fireworks were cancelled. T_T

We sat on the stairs since there were no seats....

Damn you, fireworks. It was kind of cold, so yeah.. made our way back home. But before we go! I wanted some last minute group photos.

Look at Tsan's dragon, hehe. And no I dunno what Winston is doing with it. The large bag Brian is holding is my Hello Kitty showbag. The horse on V's shoulder is the first one we got. And the cat on top of V's head is the cat Han Lin's cousin won for me.

Better shot of the dragon when we were on the train...

Waiting at Flinders for the train... dunno why those two suddenly wanted to read papers...

Got back to the station. It was raining and FREEZING cold. I was shivering. We were all shivering (okay, Wins had it worse wearing only a t-shirt). V went to get his car, and we literally squeezed ourselves in because it was just too cold for anyone to walk back. We headed over to Tsan's place, where they all copied my photos and stuff. And yeah, V drove me and Brian back to the Halls.

Tomorrow, Paintball with MCAC. Ahahaha, unlike the GFN one I decided to be a bit more aggressive this time. Less of a coward. So yeah, I will allow myself to get bruised and shot a lot more. Or so I say. I may run away in the end after taking a couple of shots.

Assignment finished!

Yay, done with my media studies assignment, finally! I wanted to wake up at like 4 AM but I didn't get up in the end until 6. The day was pretty short. I basically worked on the essay until like... 3 PM, where I went to uni to hand it in. After that I went over to Amanda's place, talked (or bothered more like) with her and Jia Chee and Izzati for a bit. Ehehe. Cooked a quick dinner, which was basically like nothing but carrots with a few other veggies thrown in. I had no actual meat, so I threw in chilled shaved chicken.

Chris told me to update the MCAC website more often (I'm the webmistress for it) since our potential sponsors will now be looking at the site. So I decided to start working on remaking it so that the design is more user friendly, utilizing or logo and so that others can update it with me.

Around 8 past, Amanda invited me to eat dinner/supper (for me anyway) with the group at Farrer. As Jia Chee made soup for everyone in the afternoon. So yeah, had a nice pleasant time eating with them all. Stan and Sharon ovened these sausages and shared them with everyone. I felt kind of guilty with how I came over eating everyone's food. Must make up for it... maybe I will make something on Sunday. Izzati came in a bit later also back from Roberts/Richo. We watched this retarded game show on TV called "Are you smarter then a 5th grader?". This woman was winning $75'000 for answering dumbass questions like "Name the first 4 odd numbers". WTF.

Anyway, will sleep soon. Tomorrow at 9:30 I shall be heading to the Melbourne Show with V, Tsan, Han Lin, Winston and Brian. I hope... I can win one of those huge plushies. Hahahaha.

GFN + DDR

Yay, I got up at like 4:00 AM to do my assignment. Or more like 4:30 since I didn't actually get up until half hour later. Chris was online and like PMed me on the MCAC forums asking what I was doing up so late. More like up so early, lol.

Worked on assignment until GFN meeting at 10 AM. At 9:45 AM Mitze suddenly phoned me, I thought I was late or something. So I went ahead and I thought I was late cause like... other Halls people (Amanda, Sharon and Jonathan) were nowhere in sight. Turns out I was early. Really early. Meeting didn't really start until 10:30.

The meeting was pretty interesting. We did some cross-uncross activity that emphasized the importance of body language. Had a game where we seperated into different segregated groups (first off, male - female, then glasses - contacts - no glasses then nationality). Where we discussed the problems in communication and friendship that may occur due to these different groupings (like how we tack on stereotypes and generalizations almost instantly). And stuff like nationality, well how minority groups may feel left out. I liked the point made out in this part the most. Most of the volunteers are Malaysians (almost everyone is Malaysian, with one Bruneian, me, 2 Mauritanians, a few Chinese, few Singaporeans and one Sri Lankian and Bangladeshis. Although I have no problem hanging with Malaysians since Bruneians are hardly any different from them at all (we aren't really, except for some minor differences like what kind of celebrations we have, I know Malaysia for example takes pride in celebrating their Independance day, while Brunei has like a huge celebration for the Sultan's bday and stuff). But yeah, as a constant minority you can, and I have, felt incredibly lonely.

I'm glad GFN went ahead to address this problem. This problem of exclusion and how to avoid it, like how people start talking in their own language. This immediately excludes everyone else around you. Mind you, I've already accepted how a lot of people do that to me (talk in their own language), I spent most of MUFY bearing this problem. But I guess MUFY was all I could take, language problems have caused such a huge wound in my heart I don't think I can function right anymore around people who don't speak English....

We then did this activity where you answer some choice questions then use it to assess your personality. Like whether you are aggressive (competitive), passive, compromiser, collaborator. I scored the most in compromiser. Passive and competitive are generally seen negative, since passive = doormat basically while competitive you can lose a lot of friends only thinking for yourself. Collaborator is the best but difficult to reach such a stage. Compromiser has a bit of everything (which fits me, I'm competitive, I wanna win all the time and I think of myself a lot yet I'm also passive occasionally).

Then free pizza lunch! We hung around taking photos and stuff too. I was waiting for the time to reach 1:45 AM as I was to meet Alex and Aaron outside the Education building since Alex was driving us to Bernie's house for a MCAC DDR party! Nat was supposed to be driven but she went by bus with Owen in the end. Amanda decided not to come to DDR.

So yeah, met Alex and Aaron. We went there, Bernie wasn't even home. Met her brother Gabby, which turned out to be one of Aaron's classmates (lol, odd revelation... what, my classmate is a fellow club member's brother?). Then Bernie came. DDR was a lot of fun! I totally sucked at it, but I picked it up fast and got better since I guess I have played it before a long time ago in Brunei. And we do have a DDR mat at home. But I still sucked. People like Natalie, Drue and Nazri had never played DDR in their lives and did pretty good (and got better a lot faster). Bernie and Chris were like pros, Bernie especially. They said they would go to GFN next week just to play the DDR there. (Hopefully Drue and maybe Owen will come to? I mean GFN is always going on about needing more white Australians...)

We had 4 mats, 2 outside which were Bernie's and 2 Chris brought along in Bernie's room. Chris's was pretty cool, he had anime songs on them! I've never seen them before, it was cool. But they were really hard and dancing in Bernie's room was impossible with the carpet. The mat kept sliding, so everyone was bad on it. So yeah, generally stuck to the outside one.

DDR we had me, Bernie 2 (female Bernie, the host), Bernie 1 (the tech guy), Alex, Aaron, Chris, Owen, Drue, Natalie, Vu, Raine and Nazri over. Vu, Raine and Nazri left pretty fast. Vu left first (well Bernie 1 didn't come until past 5). Then Raine and Nazri left at 5-ish. Then Owen and Natalie left before dinner. So we had PIZZA dinner again, that is the two Bernies, me, Alex and Drue. The pizza was really good though. It was huge!

Bernie 1 brought over his Wii, so we ended up playing Wii sports first. During boxing, LOL! It was funny. I pwned Natalie extremely fast, scaring everyone off (OMG Celine is aggressive @_____@). Then I KO-ed Bernie 2. Then I KO-ed Bernie 1. Then Chris came along and defeated me in the third round. Then we played Mario Party! It's a four player game so me, Drue, Chris and Alex played that. Uhh.. it was pretty fun. I was losing for a good part of the game, but in the end I won, lol. Out of sheer luck. Then they played this Mario soccer game and then some killing game. But I was asleep or more like I closed my eyes on Bernie's couch for the duration of that.

At 10 AM, Alex drove me home because I wanted to sleep.

Yay, sleep time, will get up at 4 AM tomorrow to finish my assignment. I have until 5 PM tomorrow, heh. I'll probably relax for the rest of tomorrow. V, Tsan and group I think are going to IMAX theatres, but I probably won't finish my assignment in time to join them.

Paintball and more!

Didn't make a post yesterday. And you'll find out why. Anyway, I went paintballing with the GFN group. Got up at around 8 AM, did some reading for my assignment and then at 1 I went down with Amanda to the bus loop. We all took the bus to Huntingdale where the centre was.

We had to walk down this long stretch of road at Huntingdale to get to the centre. Me and Tsan ran the way as a warm-up, heh. I even forgot my ankle was sprained. When we went into the centre the first thing that stuck out to me was how everyone in the front hall was male. Although it turned out there were other females around. We signed some random documents and then got the clothing we had to wear for paintball. It was this fugly blue thing. We all looked like guys. T.T

The helmets were a bit clumsy for me. They weren't really good with my delicate frameless glasses. But yeah, when paintball first started, well I couldn't aim for shit first off. And I straight off the bat got a shot to my hand. OW. I was like "SHIT!!!" @____@ #%$#%$!#. The first time I got hit by a paintball. People told me it hurts so I was always curious how much it hurts. Now I know, lol. I started avoided charging out after that. Since we had to conserve our paintballs I tried to save mine also and didn't really do much at first. It was pretty fun but I wished I charged out more instead of hiding in the back. Boo. And I wish I could shoot more freely.

My helmet fogged up completely also in round 2, so I didn't absolutely nothing cause I couldn't see anything at all.

We had a number of games. The first one was some getting the flag thing, which I never understood to the end. Second was this president thing where Han Lin (our president) had to move every 15 seconds and we had to protect him from getting shot. We had only one life for that, after a short while I got shot in the shoulder (I remember yelling out "SHIT!!!" once again since the shoulder since to hurt more then the hand for some reason) so boo, I was out of the game soon after. When it was our turn to attack the opposing team's president, I uhh... had no idea what I was doing the entire time since I couldn't see what was going on. Never saw the president at all, I obviously didn't go forward enough.

Third game was my favourite. Basically both teams must push the other team by force to one corner of the room. Han Lin pretty much directed everyone on our team to just charge forward as much as we could and we did that and won quite easily. It was funny, the referee was telling us he only saw the closest was that they had two players before out of the corner and then we went ahead and won pretty fast. Maybe he was just making that story up? Second round my gun broke down (actually it broke down by first round but that was at the end so I didn't notice). So I didn't really take part. By the time the guy got my gun working again I ran ahead to the front but there wasn't much else to do before time went up.

Then break. Uhh.. everyone ate food and chocolate. Drank water, bought more paintballs. I still had a full shell (like around 100) which I saved.

Final round, it was kind of boring actually cause there wasn't any purpose. But yeah, I just went crazy and tried to shoot everyone. And then ducked under the wooden building like thing cause we were getting pelted with paintballs inside the building, one move and you got hit. I didn't really get hit though, my hand just a bit. Used up all my paintballs. The last thing was some Mexican shoot off but that was just for any leftover people with paintballs left.

I only got hit like 3 times in the end. I'm going to paintball on Friday again with MCAC (I wanna go and I'm scared at the same time). I might try to be less of a coward this time and charge forward a bit more often. Even though it means getting shot more. I don't really wanna end up like V with 36 bruises and his hand bleeding continuously though. I'm kind of wondering how Winston was in the end considering how in the last round he like ran to the center of the field where there wasn't even much protection, like a sitting duck...

So yeah, took some photos at the end, got cleaned up and a group of us went for dinner at Clayton! We went to this... uhh.. Chinese restaurant. The waitresses made a mistake with the order, from 4 plates became only 1. The hungriest person on our table almost ate last. I didn't actually like what I ate either. Tasted funny when it went cold.

Since it was a sunday... we missed our last bus back to Clayton. So.. ahhh... we had to walk back. We stopped by Tsan and Han Lin's place for short while then made our trek back to the Halls (well a bit farther for V).

I took a shower and thought I could sit down to do my assignment. But nooo! Guess again. I was on msn and Chris and Drue were bored. Drue was at uni using the internet there, and they both talked about abducting/bothering me at this time of the night (it was like 11 PM!). Then they said Nazri was near me too so they could bother him as well. So I suggested they could come over if they wanted and we could stalk Amanda. And then Bernie wanted to come over. So then I said to phone Raine also since she lives in front of uni (Halls is at the back in a way). It was hilarious.

It's Bernie's bday today so I asked Chris to buy a cake and stuff so we could celebrate. Sadly it was way past 12 before everyone got together. Chris went out to buy the stuff, pick up Bernie then Raine. The fact that Raine came... well, we almost used force. Everyone continously tried to convince Raine on MSN, while I at the same time was on the phone with her telling her to come, lol. Poor Raine and Amanda, they both had to run off and shower and change quickly cause of us all. In the end, Raine never said okay but since Bernie and Chris were at her door she came along. She mentioned wanting alcohol and Bernie even brought some along, LOL.

So yeah, everyone came to Roberts Hall and we took over the common room and pool table which was empty! Yay, hooray for holidays. Me and Bernie went to Nazri's room and knocked on his door to get him out. It was kind of hilarious.... our spontaneousness!

*Nazri's opens the door and is a bit shocked at seeing Bernie's face*
Nazri: O: O: D: D:
Celine: Hey! The MCAC people are here in the common room, wanna join us?!!!

Raine was wearing this EXTREMELY oversized man's shirt (I wonder where she got it...), it was cute... but funny. Looked like Bernie dragged her outta bed or something. So yeah, we ate cake, talked random things and at 2 AM I wanted sleep so me and Amanda ran off leaving everyone outside at Roberts playing with those sparkly firework thingys you carry around.

Anyway spent all of Monday today on my assignment. Didn't get much done, it's hard. Dammit. I'm really confused on how to set it out logically. Decided to stay up the entire night to get most of it done so I can attend the DDR party tomorrow with MCAC.

BBQ, St. Kilda and birthdays!

Today ... well, more like yesterday since it is past 12 but screw that, I'll still say today! Had a lot of activities. Tiring day. Tried to wake up at 5 AM but it didn't work, so I got up at 7. At 9 AM I went to Brandon Park to buy some food, I had like a time limit of 1 hour, since I came back straight away at 10:30 so that I could walk over to Raine's place by 11. My first time to Raine's room! (Since last time I was at the South East Flats for group work I just hung at Morgane's room all the time) Raine is... as messy as me actually. We're a bit messier then normal in terms of messy girls (I know Amanda insists her room is messy but it doesn't hold anything compared to mine or Raine's room...)

Alex drove us to Albert Park for his BBQ! Problem no. 1. The BBQ pit we wanted was taken, so we got another one further up with no shade. Alex then left us alone (me, Raine, Bernie and Hiromi I think it was...) while he went to get more friends. We clumsily began to BBQ things but it didn't go to well. During that time, Raine and Bernie's phone went off continously as Vu, Drue, Chris(TOPHER) and his friend (the Iron Chef guy I dubbed him) had trouble finding their way. Aaron soon came after. Yeah, the three mentioned before eventually found the place, it was kind of funny how the BBQ was basically these few members of MCAC in the beginning. Alex came back, a few people I dunno came along here and there and the meat wouldn't cook. Alex invited like people from 4 different organsations he's affiliated with, that is, MCAC (the anime club), the Japanese club, MUISS, Church friends and random people/friends of friends.

I BBQ-ed stuff for the first time in my life! Didn't know what I was doing, and the electric BBQ thingy sucked. Didn't like standing in the sun either or there for hours. It was goddamn cold. The weather looked good but the wind ruined it all. Vu was once again suckered into BBQ-ing. Drue burned himself quite a bit and was the taste tester, eating so much random crap we cooked up. Uhh... so yeah. People were hungry since it was like past 2 and things didn't really cook very fast. Increasingly more people came also. Around 3-ish Amanda, Sharon, Stan, V and Tsan came, and the MCAC group ran off. We wanted to see the opening of a new shop in the city called OzAnimeMart. I think we wanted to try to get them as sponsors. Since the club is so damn poor. Chris had already gone to the shop (and got some nice free posters) and mentioned sponsorship, but we decided to come to introduce Vu (the president) and Raine (our vice-president a.k.a. the shadow king).

Amanda and company were gonig to St. Kilda so I agreed to meet with them there after checking out this new store in the city. The store was small, and was like on the 7th floor of a building. So it was pretty out of sight. They'll probably need promotion as only people who know it is there will go there. So points for us I think? I saw a poster there I thought Amanda would like so I bought it for her as a present. Aaron bought some stuff also. We then went to Minotaur after just for the hell of it. I left eventually to meet up with Amanda and co.

Our timing was great! By the time Amanda and co. went to board the tram to St. Kilda, it was the same one I was on. So we found eachother on the tram. At St. Kilda we ran into Alex and his friends (from the Japanese club I think). We froze our asses off and took lots of photos. We then ran off for Jia Chee's bday celebration in Caulfield.

At the Chinese restaurant, we were in our own room and ordered a bit of food. There wasn't really much for 11 people, but most of us was full from the BBQ. And there was a party back at the Halls full of junk food also. We had... me, Amanda, Jia Chee of course, V, Tsan, Mun Jone, Sharon, Stan, Jonathan, Jay and Syahir. We ate, took lots of photos and people... danced in the room, lol. I was kind of sleepy by this time after everything that happened today. I mean I BBQed and stood there for like 2 hours or so, walked around everywhere and froze to death. Took the 9:58 PM bus back to the Halls, where we RAN back from the bus loop. Amanda and Sharon wanted to get ahead to warn everyone else back at the Halls that Jia Chee was coming and we need to surprise! So yeah, there was a lovely cake and lots of food.

We hung at many different people's rooms during the time. Like Amanda, Sharon and Izzati's. Anyway I was really drowsy by this time (it's like 12 AM!) so off I went back to the Halls. It's 1 AM now, just waiting for my hair to be a bit dryer then off to sleep.

Paintball with GFN tomorrow. Ahahaha~ bewarned V .. and others. I will.. try to get you. :P No, my ankle isn't 100% yet but I did manage to run today out of the cold.

Mid sem break!

Yay, the break! Woke up at 7 AM, went to class at 10. Was sleepy the whole way through. Spent the two hour break sleeping in the Menzies (tried to read but fell asleep). While wandering around I saw Tsan, Han Lin and Aya. Uhhh... after class at 5 PM I went back home. At like past 9 PM I went to Amanda's place to say Happy Birthday to Jia Chee, and we had a good time just talking and stuff.

I have my media assignment for Wednesday I haven't done at ALL... it was due last Wednesday but there was an extension. And now I haven't done it. And so many activities in the break, I should of did it earlier. Ahhh. Regret, regret.

Mid Semester Break Plan
Saturday: Alex's BBQ and Jia Chee's Bday celebration.
Sunday: Paintball (GFN)
Monday: Do Assignment.
Tuesday: GFN meeting/training then DDR Party with MCAC at Bernie's place.
Wednesday: Assignment
Thursday: Hopefully Melbourne Show
Friday: Paintball (MCAC)
Saturday: Tulip Festival (MRS)
Sunday: Nothing~ rest? Or do other assignment for week after...

Anymore activities and I will just miss out on stuff since I just can't go to anymore, lol.

Missing out.

Geh, Thursday! I hate Thursdays. 9 AM two hour seminar for EIL. Dragged myself there, surprisingly even Raine managed to drag her sick self to class. At 11 AM went for usual MCAC lunch, but like no one was there except for Bernie and her friend. The committee was away for some workshop thing and Drue came the second I left. Apparently everyone came the second I left, so says Bernie. T.T

I left lunch at like 11:45-ish for the library since I was bored. Went to class for English lit, that was really boring. Came back to the secret hideout and behold, Bernie, Lee, Nazri and Vu were there watching random videos from Manifest. Sharon came soon after. Everyone really did come. Booo. I'm always missing out! I've been missing out on msn cons online also. Sharon accompanied me to the book store but I couldn't find the book I needed for English lit, then we both bought some moon cake cause... I wanted moon cake, lol.

Spent the afternoon doing nothing once again. Just cooked dinner and crap. One more day of class tomorrow then it's mid semester break! Yay. I fell over and sprained my ankle again during lunch. It had better heal for Sunday's paintball (it should...).

Chaddy again!

Aww... man. I wanted to try and blog everyday but I'm too lazy now. Screw it. On monday I went to Clayton to buy food. Nothing much happened except that I saw someone get caught for having a concession card for the first time. And I bought a trolley to carry stuff instead of always breaking my shoulders. At GFN, we had an Australian theme, a BBQ (where we ran out of sausages) and bush dancing. I was on game duty which was boring, but luckily I got some dancing chances thanks to Han Lin and Winston who sat in my place at the games table. After that, we had cake and stuff at our usual meeting to celebrate Han Lin's bday. Seems we have paintball on Sunday now and our monthly meeting next Tuesday.

I did absolutely nothing on Tuesday. Should of done work but... I didn't. Boo.

Today, well.. I have no classes on Wednesday. At 12 I went to the MCAC secret hideout and ate with Raine and company. During screenings Amanda phoned me and told me the GFN group was going to Chaddy for some VIP shopping special thing. After like over an hour we finally made our way to Chaddy. A lot of MCAC people came here and there, but Drue, Nazri and Chris (He's now CHRISTOPHER!) ditched us for the MCaulfieldAC AGM. So me and Nat went around with Amanda, Brian and Tsan. Han Lin and Mun Jone and whoever else also ditched us, lol. I bought a tube at Jay Jays. And uhh... we sat at Koko Black for a bit. First time ever, had a yummy iced chocolate. It was expensive but great. Although it made me get a bit sick of chocolate (shocking! I know). Decided to skip dinner cause of that.

Eventually me and Amanda returned to the Halls early. Well, it was past 8 by the time we got back. Sleepy. And I didn't do anything again today. I really needed to start on that media studies assignment (it would have been due TODAY if not for the one week extension... and I haven't even started).

Manifest Day Two

SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!!%$#@%##%$@#%$!!%#%$#!!

What a horrible start to a morning. I was supposed to meet Raine and Nazri at the bus loop at 7:20 so we could get to Melbourne University at 9:00 for dance practice. Guess what happened? Raine phoned me and woke me up.

Raine: ... Celine, where are you?
Me: .. huh... w-what...?

*looks at the time*

It's 7:20. It's the first time ever I overslept. *sobs* I panicked. Raine told me there was another bus 30 minutes later or that Alex could pick me up a bit later. But I changed right away, packed my bag and didn't do anything else, just ran out the door and took the bus 30 minutes later. Considering it takes me like 20 minutes to walk to the bus loop, I think I did pretty good in waking up in 10 minutes. It was a horrible start to a long day though. While I was running to the bus loop, it started raining also. Stupid rain.

So from a pleasant morning train ride with Raine and Nazri, I ended up riding public transport by myself. Even worse, the train that was supposed to come at 8:06 AM didn't come! Bleh, it was 15 minuntes late. In the end, I arrived around 9:15-ish, which was pretty good considering I took a bus half an hour later. Raine, Chris, Drue, Damien and Nazri were already there.

Dance practice was the usual. Drue and Chris eventually changed into their cross dressing costumes. Nazri looked good in his Shiba stuff. And so did Damien in his Hei costume. Terence and Owen eventually came along. We were practicing in this conference building at Melbourne University. It was HILARIOUS. I mean, there is some conference going on with everyone all formal in suits, or high school kids walking about in their upper class looking uniforms and what do they see on the ground floor? Two cross dressing men and other weirdos in funny costumes/clothing.

We spent the morning just preparing for the dance competition. They changed locations for it, to a hall that no one knew where it was. The dance competition.. was.. interesting. We lost, but Jason, our spy sitting near the judges said the judges mentioned that we were nice. But our weird cosplays made it strange? Although first and second place were good (guessing we were like third but that isn't mentioned). First was the Deakin people though, a some of us grew dislike for the Deakin guy. There was this HUGE fat guy dressed up as Haruhi doing the dance also. It was funny but scary at the same time.

After the dance comp. we took some pictures and returned outside for the giant Hare Hare Yukai dance. Umm... hung about as all the Bleach cosplayers began to gather for their skit, and for a HUUGE Bleach cosplay picture. Then the giant dance... well it was interesting. Everyone spent some time yelling at the large crowd of people around us to join in. Then Yoshi got spotted (not exactly hard to see) and everyone started chanting "Yoshi! Yoshi! Yoshi! Yoshi!" and the poor girl had to join in.

After Hare Hare Yukai, well some photos were taken and stuff. Then the line for the cosplay competition began. I decided to stand in line this time, so we could actually be in the cosplay competition room, rather then a shitty feed, especially with how Nazri, Sharon, Casini and Lee have their Bleach skit. Waited one a half hours. Bernie bought me some food (which I haven't paid her back for yet...). Random things happened like this guy would sing or dance for Pocky. Chris, Jason and Drue eventually came along also and we all got into the cosplay competition room. The seats were still too shitty though. Maybe I should of chosen closer seats. Although most of the good seats were taken by the actual cosplay competition contestants.

I enjoyed today's cosplay competitoin. Maybe because I was in the actual room? The Bleach skit was pretty good. Other group skits I liked was a Code Geass one and a One Piece (everyone with their awesome costumes...). Then another awesome Kingdom Hearts skit came on (although I still liked yesterday's waaay better, I wish I have the videos for these Kingdom Heart skits...). Highlights of today's competition? Well remember the Totoro cosplayer from yesterday? Normally you can't enter the competition for both days but the Tororo came again. But he wasn't Tororo, he was Totoroth! It was the most epic win of a costume ever. Tororo was cosplaying as Sephiroth. Everyone laughed their heads off at this.

After this, we went to the traders room again. It was past 4 PM already so most of the good stuff was already gone. Bernie eventually went home, so did Nazri and Jason. Got seperated from Nat and Max also. In the end I was with Sharon, we ran into Chris for a bit but he want to the Iron Chef judging. I went to buy chocolate marshmellows and candy floss (mmm... sugar) then me and Sharon went to the Iron chef also after she changed. The entries were pretty good. The entries needed those Naruto manga scans, and some people came up with ingenious ideas to integrate it in. My favourites was one guy who made the AMV out of nothing but the scans, and another where she placed some parts of the anime onto the scan (making it look somewhat natural). It was pretty funny. Everyone else either shoved it in the beginning or the end, or used some special effects.

After Iron Chef, met up with Amanda. Uhhh... Raine suddenly needed to return home because she fell ill, so Alex drove her back. I was contemplating whether to hitch a ride with Alex, but we haven't had dinner yet and I have no food in my room. So we stayed behind. Me, Sharon and Amanda went to China Town to eat dumplings. Drue joined us for a short while (came just to see us) although he didn't eat. Didn't see Chris in the end who went to eat with other friends.

And yeah, we went back home. Mistake! For not going back with Raine and Alex. Didn't realise that the bus ends early on a Sunday. Me and Amanda had no bus home at Huntingdale Station. And it was freezing cold. It was even worse then yesterday! There were other ranodm people in our predicament too. In the end we phoned a taxi and shared it with this other girl (who was a stranger) to reduce taxi cost. Although everyone had no change and I ended up paying for all of the taxi. T.T The girl gave me like $3 and a 2-hour metcard (should be paying $4). Ah well. The taxi driver tried to rip us off also. I clearly said "Monash University" and he drove way past it. In the end we got off a bit farther from the uni since he couldn't turn so easily without going down another road (and throwing another $10 onto the taxi). Bleh. It was a long and cold walk with Amanda. It even started raining... like this morning. The rain is laughing at me!

Anyway, this ends my eventful weekend and my first anime con. Heh. Next year, I will cosplay! And take part in more competitions. It's more boring if you don't.

Manifest Day One

OMG Manifest is so damn awesome. This is my first time to a anime convention. It's a lot of fun! I'm wayyy too tired to post pictures (it's like 11 already!) so I'll just say what I did generally.

I should say what I did on Friday first. Well yeah, Friday of course was usual class. At 5 PM I went straight to Huntingdale Station to get to Manifest (day 00 in a way). There wasn't much going on since it hasn't officially started but it was still pretty interesting. There was the Fruits fashion show which was a costume competition for original designs, some panels and the fan traders merchandise (stuff made by fans). There were a couple of good cosplays, but I didn't get any pictures in the end. I came pretty late, but met up with Amanda, Bernie, Natalie, Max, Sharon and Jason. Chris and Raine was around also but I didn't really get a chance to talk to them (Chris was easy to find though... with his pink hair).

After whatever few events there were, everyone wanted dinner. Around the same time, Tsan and company were already at Lygon to celebrate Han Lin's birthday on Saturday (dinner then clubbing at Lavish). Me and Amanda was a bit lost around Lygon but we eventually found our way. We had a nice little dinner at Universal Pizza again (the place we were at the previous week after our St. Kilda outing). I spent most of the dinner, and a good amount of the night fussing over how and when I was gonna get back from the place at night. Since I wanted to sleep so I could get up for Manifest but at the same time I felt bad leaving early considering I should stay to celebrate Han Lin's bday. I didn't intend to stay over at Han Lin's cousin's place like everyone else, and didn't want to go clubbing just cause it would be late and I wanted sleep. I was, and am, one troublesome annoying person. Please forgive and bear with me people. My personality isn't gonna change anytime soon.

When we left the pizza place, V's car broke down and we sat a good amount of time waiting for people to help us get the car to start up. And we went off to Han Lin's cousin's place to chill out since it was too early for clubbing. Their house is so big and nice! Spent most of the time at the house fussing but got over it. In the end I went clubbing. V offered to drive me back but I felt pretty bad dragging him home early just for me. The city isn't exactly close to Clayton. Had to wait for an hour and a half or so to get into the club. Umm.. danced a bit, although I didn't really as much. Everyone drank except for me. I don't know jack about drinks but whatever they had must have been really strong. Everyone either was a bit drunk, saying random things or sick with headaches (almost instantly). I could generally remember. Mun Jone, Brian, Amanda and Han Lin were all a bit sick with headaches or whatever and generally stayed quiet because of that. Tsan and V were relatively hyper. And I won't even mention Winston, lol. Anyway, we left at like 3 AM, I gave up on going home since V was in no way safe to drive me that far home. So I stayed over at Han Lin's cousin's place. I was a bit sad it meant I had to not shower, brush my teeth and having to wear the same clothing for the second day to Manifest. But oh wells.

It was 5 AM by the time I could sleep. And I had to get up at like 9. I was in one of Han Lin's cousins' room with Tsan, Winston, Han Lin and his cousin (and also Amanda who didn't move to the room in the end). In the end I got this one huge bed to myself, I was supposed to share it with Tsan and Amanda but both of them wouldn't move to the bed from wherever they already were. Everyone was generally out cold, with the exception of V and one of Han Lin's cousins who directed everyone to make sure everyone had somewhere relatively comfy to sleep. Obviously I was perfectly fine, just tired.

I woke up suddenly at like 8 AM (yay for three hours of sleep). I'm pretty sure it was Han Lin that woke me up, since he either woke up really early or didn't sleep at all and was walking around doing stuff, making a bit of noise here and there in the room. Anyway, I sneaked out of the house at 8:45 (going against V's insistence that he would drop me off at Manifest on Saturday morning). I was a bit lost in the morning on where I could find a train to get to the city. But luckily I vaguely remember Han Lin's directions from the night before so I found it eventually.

And now for Manifest! Got off at Melbourne Central to meet the MCAC group. Or uhh.. Bernie's syndicate group anyway. So yeah, met up with Bernie, Sharon, Rachel, Vu, Owen, Jasmine, Casini and company. We went to Manifest and I spent the first part drooling at the greatness of the Traders hall! So much stuff I want... no where near enough money to buy it all. I eventually settled upon getting two big Mario pillows and 4 pins for my bag in the fan traders place. I wanted this One Piece flag but it was like ... $45.. and before I knew it, it was already sold. O.O

After this, it was already nearing lunch. I missed out on events already, oh well. I watched some AMVs from the competition and heard the requirements of the Iron Chef AMV comp. This is where contestants are given one day to complete an AMV from specifically chosen anime and must include a special ingredient or requirement. One of Chris's friends was a constestant and the special ingredient was hilarious! Their AMVs MUST contain Naruto scanlation manga! Ahahaha. How the hell can you put badly scanlated Naruto manga into AMVs of shows with such high quality art like 5 cm, The Girl that Leapt through time and Murder Princess. XD

After, I wanted to enter the hall where the cosplay competition was, but the line was like a mile long. I gave up on it and just went for the feed. After the AMV, I got seperated from Chris, Bernie and co. just disappeared and I spent some time wandering around the place with Drue (who I ran into out of nowhere). We bought some sandwiches for lunch at the food stall, but it was ridiculous. First the stall ran out of eggs, so their sandwich with eggs didn't have any eggs in it! Then, they ran out of bread. They gave me bread crusts instead for the sandwich. T_T

Oh right, we saw Damien today also but he didn't register yet and had to wait in that mile long line to get his pass. Yay for Bernie for getting our passes yeterday.

We eventually found Natalie, Max and her brother so we all went to the cosplay feed together. We were in the free video games playing room before that, so we were a bit late. Even the feed room was almost full so we had to sit separately (booo). The cosplay comp was okay. There were a lot of boring skits and questioning times that I would rather not listen to. And the feed sucked, it constantly had technical problems where the blue screen of death came up, and you couldn't get pictures from the quality of the screen. Me and Drue were bored to death half the time, as it went on I almost fell asleep. We wanted to leave but we were mainly sitting and waiting for Nazri to show up. We saw Ranna, who looked awesome and wayyyy hot in her costume. Just as I was about get sleepy, the most awesome Kingdom Hearts skit came up. Which turned out to be my favourite skit with a Sora cosplayer being my favourite cosplayer. She was just plain awesome. And she seemed nice when I later asked her outside for a picture. The skit was great. Instead of talking some cheesy crap like all the other skits, the cosplayers used songs for their words. It was just funny. I was laughing my head off when songs like Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" came on.

Other awesome cosplays I saw. Ouran's Hani-senpai. Then Hani's Usa-chan (how did someone make a bunny costume?!). A Yoshi! A Totoro! I want to know how these people make these huge fuzzy animal costumes. I mean normally when you're a human character it's just cloth to make clothing but... an animal costume...

And then Nazri came on in the cosplay competition. His costume was pretty good (sadly no bells) but his reply to the question the commentator asked him was hilarious. Instead of replying, he said he needed to put on his glasses since he can't see or hear without them (glasses and hearing..? LOL) Right after Nazri left we ran off since we couldn't take it anymore. It was pretty late already after the cosplay competition, since the event went over time by like one hour. There wasn't really much left to do. We thought about staying for Anime Idol, but it was delayed and instead we had this retarded game. Everyone got annoyed and left the room.

We got a group photo before heading off to dinner in the city. We ate at a Indonesian restaurant. I wasn't used to eating dinner with like 20 other people. After that we lost some people here and there, and the remainder of us went to Bubble Cup. Next to Bubble Cup is the shop with goth loli and lolita costumes, Raine went to try one of the outfits on. Sadly none of the other guys saw it, only just me and Nat because the shop assistants wouldn't let me snap a picture. Nat wanted one of those photo stickers with all of us earlier, but 20 people isn't gonna fit in a box. Anyway, we all went home after this.

In the end, it was just me and Raine arriving at Huntingdale Station (since Nazri went back earlier and Amanda didn't come today). I hated walking back to the Halls by myself. Scared me to death when groups of guys went by me. I'm tired, so time to sleep! Gotta make up for the past few days. I mean, I think I only slept for like 3 hours last night at Han Lin's cousins' place. Gotta wake up early tomorrow for dance practice also. Yeah, day one of Manifest was pretty fun! Looking forward to tomorrow.

Amaranth

Amaranth was pretty good. I don't have anywhere near enough time to blog with pictures, but may as well say what happened. It was a Thursday so I went for my usual class then lunch/dance practice with a few MCAC-ers. We've gotten a lot better now. That was our last practice, people still screw up occasionally (including me) so I hope things will go well. Then I went to my final class then ran back home to get ready for Amaranth.

Makeup, hair and stuff was kind of a disaster but oh well. Yeah, dragged myself to the bus loop to get the bus with everyone else. Jasmine reappeared again! I didn't see her since the winter marathon. She was looking good. Raine was just beyond cute. And the guys... wore suits and stuff like usual, lol. Yeah, it was nice seeing everyone dressed up. So yeah, travelled to Flinders with Raine, Jasmine, Lee, Nazri and Owen. Met up with Drue and Chris at Flinders where we took the tram down. My heels killed me having to walk in it at the city.

Amaranth itself was... really different. Quoting Jasmine, it was a night where we associated with people who would not.. normally associate with. Firstly, it made me really want to cosplay. I wish I did now. Manifest will probably make it worse. Just cause you know... to normal people you're probably some freak, dressing up with costumes and wigs. At Amaranth and Manifest, looking normal is so boring no one gives a crap about ya. I'm gonna go home during December and sew a costume myself!

Jules and Casini (who thought Amaranth was on Saturday) unfortunately didn't come to Amaranth despite paying. So we had two empty seats at the table. We also had a stranger there, and we were really wondering who it was. We figured it was a female from the name 'Michelle' but... OMFG, when she.. or uhh... he.. it.. walked up to us we were all like...

Us: O_____________________________O

Yeah, our stranger on the table was this huge western man (like over 6 feet) cross dressing in this large dress and has hair reaching his waist. Now, we are all pretty accepting people when it comes to cross dressing (heck, Chris is cross dressing and he's one of our closest friends), we're MCAC afterall, we're like made up of people with weirder hobbies from societies norms, but even this guy was a bit.. too.. hardcore for us.

The food was... pretty shitty if you ask me. Entree was this bread and sauce. Main meal was chicken with pretty shitty sauce (OMFG Nazri's was terrible... I feel bad for him, he had the vegetarian meal cause Amaranth doesn't have halal meat) and dessert was okay with the cake although it made you sick after eating too much of it.

Entertainment was a mixed bag. The dancing was alright. Since I suck at dancing I generally just got pulled along by Raine, Jasmine and Drue. Drue was teaching me how to waltz at one point. Me and Chris have agreed now to take dancing classes next sem (although I was always going to after being inspired by Syahir like 6 weeks ago). As Jasmine put it, the ideas were good for this ball but the execution was poor. They didn't stick to the schedule. But it was a first try and I would say a pretty good one.

People's costumes were interesting. Some noteworthy ones I like were xxxHoLIC/TRC's Yuuko, Code Geass's Euphemia, KKM's Conrad and the Transformer guy! Yeah, Amaranth finished, Raine was going about trying to find whether there was an afterparty (it ended at 10!) but we just decided to go home in the end. I think some of the people in my group were disappointed without drinks (Amaranth was open to 16 year olds, thus no drinks). Drue disappeared while waiting for the train though (think he ran off somewhere in the city).

Dunno if I will go again next year. Didn't really thin it was worth $55. I mean costumes I can just go to Manifest to see. I might if Chris, Jasmine, Drue and co. are still going next year (sadly Raine won't be around....)

Lombards!

I went to Lombards today! I got up at the usual time (7 AM-ish) although I had no class. Did laundry and stuff, then went to pay for my airplane ticket back home. The tax went up more then I imagined and I didn't have enough money to pay by cash. So had to use my credit card also (which means extra charges). I have like no money left, lol. After that, I ate lunch and waited until 12 PM to meet up with MCAC people for dance practice.

MCAC has now a new 'secret' hideout. The cellar room! Haha. Today we had me, Raine, Chris, Damien, Nazri, Owen, Bernie, her friend, Sandreep and Arun. We've gotten a bit better now! I'm bruised on the knees though (and so is Raine) which doesn't do good for us considering we have like.. Amaranth tomorrow and I need to wear a dress. Aaah. Then went off to screenings where we did the dance again! I like this video even more.



If you're wondering what me and Raine are doing, well, we're gonna hold these signs with "I love MCAC" on it. The other sign will have our club mascot and logo. You can see the signs at this video, Nazri made the signs. Natalie and Max drew and coloured it in. Yeah, after screenings we were practicing on the wooden boardwalk thingy in front of the manga library at the Japanese Studies Centre. And got lots of stares but we're kind of used to that now. We mainly just chilled out and messed around though. Nazri sat around doing his assignment.

Nazri, Drue and Chris sitting around...

Drue was gonna take us to the costume/party shop, Lombards after so we waited for Raine to finish class first and Chris to go to the doctors. So yeah, off to Lombards we went at 3:30-ish! Natalie and Max decided to tag along (in a seperate car) while Drue drove me, Raine and Chris.

In Drue's car~

Natalie and Max stalking us~

Lombards is pretty cool. It's full of awesome party stuff, masks and costumes. We were looking for masks to wear to Amaranth tomorrow (it's a masquerade ball). We took load of pictures as we messed up and wore everything. I even got this forbidden photo of... *coughs* some cosplay policeman guy on guy action between Drue, Chris and Max. I won't post that here though for everyone's sakes. ^^;;

Witchy Raine~ It really suits her! XD XD

Warrior Drue~

Pirate Celine~ Arrr~

Chris: Nooooooooo~~

Chris: Oink.

Uhh... ROFL.

Drue letting his pet spider eat Chris (with Natalie and Max in the background).

I was really wondering whether to get a mask or not. Since I can't wear them because of my glasses (and no, I don't have contact). In the end I got one of those ones you have to hold up. Raine didn't get a mask in the end cause she was afraid the mask would mess up her eye makeup (I have no intention of wearing eye makeup lol).

After that, at around 5:30 PM, we went to eat at Maccas (McDonalds). Natalie and Max left earlier, and yeah, not much happened there. This pretty much ends that mini outing (to one shop, lol). But it's the first time I've actually gone out with Drue, Chris and surprisingly... even Raine. O.O

We were playing with Raine's wig before walking inside Maccas...

At night, Steven asked if I wanted to go downstairs for cafe night at the Mess Hall. So yeah, I did. Izzati was there, and Arun came along too. Met Carrie and this funny American guy, Daniel, there. So much for me doing work tonight. :D :D

Oh and today at MCAC practice, it was the first time I've seen Owen with his hair down. He has nicer hair then I do. I want nice hair. T.T

More Chaddy goodness!

I set my alarm for like 6 AM but didn't get up until 9. I was too lazy to go for my 10 AM lecture on a book that I didn't even read. So yeah, at 11 I went to uni to meet up with Tsan, Mitze and V to go to Chaddy but they weren't there so I waited for a bit. Well... 20 minutes or so. Then they came and we sat down and waited for another half hour since Mitze had just woken up. We went to Holmesglen for lunch at a Korean restaurant. The food was nice!

After that, to Chaddy! Uhh... one of V's friends, I probably won't be able to spell her name at all, but something like Paskaline (I'll just call her Pas here) came along with us. We walked for a bit and then at a bead jewelry making shop Mitze helped her to make a gift for her friend. It took an incredibly long time since she decided to use some difficult beads, Mitze had to go, and V and Tsan went off to do shopping. So I stayed with Pas for like one and a half hours or more helping with the beads. OMFG, making bead jewelry is obviously not as easy it seems. The bracelet was nice though.

By the time she finished, it was 5 and time to go (since everything closes). So V dropped Pas home then we went over to Tsan's house since I'm the only one who hasn't seen the place and I wanted to see. We dropped by unexpected, and uhh.. went in and Han Lin and Winston were happily sitting by the kitchen. Han Lin took one look, was like D: D: and ran into his room (to get a hat I think? lol). Winston was cooking and instantly said something about how he could of made food for us or something (I'm sorry but the first thing I thought when I saw this was... lol, Winston, you're such a housewife ahahaha, that and you spent the entire time washing dishes and what not). I took a spoon of Winston's mushroom.. soup thingy.. it was pretty good. :D :D Now I know I can safely eat his cooking~

V drove me home after. Haven't really done much else today. I'm so unproductive. I feel bad I skipped a lecture. I normally don't skip anything unless it is because of placement. Cause you know, I'm supposed to be some hardcore study nerd. >.>

Oh and I saw the practice video of Deakin's anime club! For the dance comp at Manifest. They are better then us (they're synchronised and stuff, compared to us who are a total mess). But we look like we're having much more fun (and we are!). But I don't wanna lose to Deakin.. or Melb U. Go Monash!

St. Kilda, MCAC and GFN

Long post today. Heh. Since I have two days worth of stuff to blog in which I did a lot of different things. So yeah, let's begin with yesterday. Uhh.. if I can still remember. I woke up at 7 AM, phoned V at 8 and we managed to get a plan on how to get to St. Kilda and places with a Sunday Saver bus ticket. Unfortunately, due to miscommuncation, we ended up missing our bus and we couldn't wait for the next one in 40 minutes. So instead of our original plan of heading to Clayton station with Tsan and company (well... only Tsan after we found out Han Lin and Winston weren't coming due to their hangovers or sickness or whatever from their weird drinks, refer to Han Lin's blog) Tsan had to head to Richmond on her own while we used the Glen Waverly line to get there instead.

So yeah, we finally met up at like 10 past-ish I think at Richmond. Then took the next train to Melbourne Central. By this time we were hungry so we decided to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant as recommended by Amanda! We had noodles and stuff.

On the left side, Mun Jone, Amanda and V. From the right is me, Tsan, Brian and Jean Marc.

After lunch, we wandered around the city a bit wondering how we were gonna get to St. Kilda (if we were gonna go, considering how much time we wasted in the city). Haha. Then we spotted a mind game shop full of puzzles and hung in there. Right next door was one of those photo sticking printing places. I've never done one before so we decided to go!

Our photo sticker, we had 4 different shots, I have two of em' here.

The photo sticker place had some interesting costume like things. So we had a bit of fun there.

The devil and the angel ~ my conscience XD XD I'm a bunny girl, it seems the devil is winning.

Aww... we're so sweet looking. XD

After that we decided to finally head to St. Kilda! So first things first, everyone needed to Boost (fresh fruit juice) so we went there.

Drink boost! It BOOSTS your health! Uhh... yeah. I didn't actually drink any boost, the one you see is Tsan's (which she gave me for the photo).

Okay, then we really went to St. Kilda. Some funny things happened along the way, like after Boost we went towards the Tram stop and lost Jean. And we ran around, stood around looking for him. At St. Kilda, we went into cam whore mode and starting snapping a lot of photos.

We are total cam whores. XD

Group photo!

More group photo (minus Tsan)

We went to Luna Park after this but decided not to pay and go on the rides. Didn't look worth it (I've been twice already afterall). We decided to go to the beach, and hang there. We uhh... sat down, talked, ate food and played frisbee (mostly the guys did that). Some New Zealand guy started playing frisbee with us eventually.

Beach~

Didn't bring the right clothes. I forgot my sunblock and everything. Eventually I couldn't stand sitting int he sun much longer so I brought out my umbrella. And looked like a freak holding an umbrella in the sun. There were these professional looking camera men and women taking photos of others and us... a lot. Of me and my group, with the umbrella and of the frisbee people. We got tired of the beach eventually, and decided to go again. We walked along the shore and went to the long pier to a cafe at the end of the pier. There, we had some afternoon tea (although it was like... 5 already). I had a "Chocolate Meltdown". It was yummy.

Doesn't that just look good?

Eating our yummy desserts~

After this, we went into cam whore mode again. It was nearing sunset and we were on a pier at a beach! So of course photos! There was a rocky area which made up the pier, so we walked around there. There was this couple in a quiet area that kept STARING at us, I assume angrily because we were noisy but everyone insisted on staying since it was a free beach. And I was a bit insecure and kept asking to go but that's just me and my passive nature taking over.

Rocks ~

Group photo! Along the pier.

Then we decided to eat dinner somewhere in the city (since St. Kilda looked expensive) before heading back to Clayton. I wanted Italian food, pasta! So we went to Lygon street. Which is a street full of Italian restaurants. OMFG, I had a terrible time there. Most of the restaurants had pretty expensive prices, and all these owners kept stopping us and pressuring/haggling us to eat at their place. With their various offers (which were still expensive). We kept refuse and making excuses but some wouldn't listen. And there was this one who was like....

Guy: What? Why not? Too expensive for you? Too expensive, go eat at McDonald's!
Me: ............................. #%#Q$#%$!!~!$%#@OMFGWTFBBQ$#Q$%#!~!~~!!

After we walked away, it seems most of the gang didn't hear that comment. But I did and I exploded. Tsan had to hold me down a bit, hahaha. We settled on Universal Pizza which had affordable prices (like around $10 for a plate of pasta). Tsan, Lisa, V and Brian also ate these burning oysters which looked nice but I don't like seafood. In the end, because of the cakes, I wasn't too hungry so I just shared my pasta with V. We ordered Chicken Milano (Mushroom, Bacon and Chicken white sauce) with gnocchi pasta (introducing everyone to the greatness of gnocchi!)

Oysters~

Gnocchi Chicken Milano!

One side...

... and the other side.

After dinner, everyone went to get some gelato! There is this one shop with fruit ice cream, where you can REALLY TASTE THE FRUIT. O.O And they had Durian ice cream. And it really tasted like durians. Although I don't like durians, I guess if you love it you would love the ice cream. But yeah, we were tired, and it was nearing 10 so we dragged ourselves back to Melbourne Central to get on the train back to Clayton. It started raining along the way. Luckily I have one umbrella.

Sleeping on the train (we're faking)

They're definitely faking.

When we got back, V's brother took us back to the Halls. There were more people then car seats, but everyone allowed me priority to get back since I had an assignment due today which I hadn't finished yet (yesterday night). And thus this ends the story of St. Kilda.

And now onto today! I was going to wake up at 4 AM to do my assignment (after sleeping at... 11:30) but ... I didn't! I must have turned off my alarm without waking. I woke up at past 6 AM instead. So I was in a bit of a panic. Luckily I finished my assignment but 11:30 AM, so I went to hand it in then join the MCAC gang to practice our dance for Sunday's dance competition at MANIFEST. In case you didn't know, MANIFEST is the upcoming anime convention in Melbourne, one of the biggest in Australia. There is a competition there for an anime dance in a certain show called Hare Hare Yukai. So yeah... we decided to enter. I took a number of videos of the MCAC's varous exploits. We had trouble finding rooms but we eventually settled upon and enjoyed dancing in the cellar room (where GFN is normally held every Monday night).

Don't laugh, lol. There are some mistakes, I screwed up in a lot of parts. Oh and there are some random parts in the video of other stuff I took that isn't related to the dance. Ignore that. We managed to practice that everyone can do the dance off by heart and we have most of the hand movements right, it's just synchronization now that is a problem. And we're lacking the time to practice (getting around around for hours today to practice was quite a feat!) Yes, we did dance outside in public! I was a bit embarrassed and reluctant, but it was fun in the end when everyone did it together. The outside people were Raine, Drue, Chris, Nazri, Sharon, Natalie and me.

In the end, before GFN started and everyone had to leave, we took one more photo. Haha, I hope MCAC gets another like this with our actual club president in the center.

Go Nazri~

Then GFN started! Raine and some anime club members hung behind but didn't stay. Cept for Nazri and Vu, who end up becoming a volunteer for GFN. O.O Tonight was salsa dancing and speed dating. So the focus was love I guess. I didn't take pat in speed dating, but it was interesting and worked fairly well. A bit fast and I had to yell a bit to get people to do stuff but I think my voice is too high pitch to be a good yeller. But yeah, random GFN photos we took.

Group photo~

The skull t-shirt people (Tsan, Amanda and me did purposely wear matching shirts which we bought at Chaddy last week)

Anyway, after speed dating, salsa dancing started which I DID take part in. We swapped partners a lot and I really suck at it but it was fun.

I was with Mun Jone during this time.

And here I am, blogging until 1:30 AM. Haha. I should head to sleep now, gotta get up early tomorrow for class (for 'The Thief Lord' which I haven't even started) then heading to Chaddy with Mitze and Tsan.