2003-09-18 - 4:21 p.m.
#123: No Need for The Last Entry Written in Auckland. Possibly Forever.
Note to self: Is there a conspiracy going on or am I just getting horrendously paranoid? Everywhere I look, whether it's reading webcomics or watching some random show on TV, I see characters LEAVING. It's like the big season for major characters to leave the show because their job description's changed, or the season is over, or they're dying of cancer and only have three more episodes to live, or they just plain DIE, or (most likely) their contracts run out and the studios decided it was too expensive to renew. I noticed these things before, but now it's just become so.... PRONOUNCED. Like all these things are getting my attention by screaming, "Hey! Wissen!". It's only just ever so marginally depressing. And then there's the whole Septemeber 11th thing just a little over 4 days ago. Someone must be getting some kind of sadistic glee over this.
Well, I'd be writing up a report on what I did and what was done to me at last Saturdays AAC Pre-Armageddon Cosplay Party (there's a mouthful) but I'm rather pressed for time at the moment, seeing as this is my last day on this computer and I have about ooohh.... Five hours or so before I pack this computer away ready for shipping because I'm leaving for Wellington immediately the next day. Deep breath. So here's the little post I made on the AAC Forums about that day. And then I want to talk about other things. Mainly about packing.
The fact that I walked away from this party without a pair of identical set of teeth marks on the palm of my hands indicated that it was a good day. Hurray for Alex-chan for not assaulting me too violently this time! Though she was far too psychotic for that sweet flower girl from the slums AKA The 5 Gil "Lady".
I'm going to die for sure now.
Well my thoughts.... Cosplay was great. Really, really, really great for this years party. Astra and Alex knocked out the competition with their Saber Marrionette J Lime and Final Fantasy 7 Aerith costumes. A lot of work had obviously been done on them, especially Astras Lime! Like, wow. I was shocked when I first saw her costume. It really made all the other costumes at the party pale in comparison. I mean, she had a big red ball attached to the side of her head! And plushie feet! How awesome is that? I wish I had taken photos. I wish I had a camera. That polaroid camera idea is beginning to sound really good....
And Aerith was very nice as well, though the demeanour of the cosplayer (as mentioned before) left something to be desired. It didn't help that she had a big stick, and insisted on prodding, poking, whacking and generally sticking that implement into several uncomfortable and hard to reach places. She also attacked me with a flower. I got beaten up by a girl with a flower. Who's also short and once got horribly savaged by a koala. I feel ashamed.... and yet strangely satisfied at the same time. @_@ Ahem. In the end, Astra and Alex won first and second prizes for their efforts (respectively) and third place went to Midnight Blues (I think? I'm sorry if I got it wrong!) female Ranma from.... Ranma 1/2, obviously. I see you managed to find some temporary red hair dye to colour your hair.... Great job! ^_^
The planned party events for the party went well, and I think the Human Bingo went off particularly well, as did the Name That Tune Competition?, especially considering they were first time party events and all. I think we set the difficulty of the NTTC a bit high though, as I hovered around some of the newer members (and non-members) of the club and dropped hints and song names just to even up the competition a bit. I think next year, the NTT competition should restrict its titles to what has been released on R4. And since a LOT has been released on R4 recently, that shouldn't be a problem. It's one thing trying to recall the song from memory, it's another thing entirely not knowing the song at all because you're not ahead in the latest R1 or even R2 and fansub releases. Needless to say it was a longtime AAC member who won: Michael. *coughs* RIGGED! *coughs* RIGGED!
The Otaking competition was by far the most disappointing aspect of the whole shebang; and when I say that, keep in mind that as I was paying close attention to all the things that went wrong before, during and after the game, as a measuring stick for what could be done to improve the game when it reached next years Armageddon. And there was much to be done. It took way too long to go through 20 questions first of all (approximately 15 - 20 minutes per team), which meant the room getting restless after a while and it interrupted the party for an entire hour (which is KINDA what we want happening at Armageddon.... the competition lasting an entire hour, I mean). I put a whole lot of new people into one group and a whole lot of more "experienced" members in another. I gave the inexperienced group the hard question set (technically they chose it themselves, but.... eh). The music stopped and stuttered halfway through the match. The Hamilton club didn't want to join in and I didn't take into account the fact that some people may not WANT to do the Otaking competition, even as a group team, so I had to pull in some people who had previously bowed out before.... Including Daniel Berry. God, I hope he wasn't too miffed at having to take part in the competition. @_@ And so forth and so forth and so forth. I was getting a mild bit cranky towards the end, the Otaking competition lost its impact being dragged out for so long and I really, really, really apologise for that. On the otherhand, this means we know all (most?) of our problems now with the new format we're planning and the Otaking-gumi can prepare accordingly for next years competition! Banzai!
God, I hope we don't screw up next year.
Other things.... The food provided was sufficient enough to last us the entire party, since it was only about 4 hours or so long. Next year, we might have to think about extending it to 6 hours or so. Maybe? "we"? "next year"? Well, I'm not going to be here so erm.... Whatever. But the important thing that we were missing was.... drinks. We didn't even notice we were missing drinks until an hour into the party when we looked around and thought "Hmmm. I see plastic cups but no drink. How can this BE????", so thank you Wong for rushing down and away into the afternoon to grab us a couple of the bottles of the stuff. It was a godsend. And thank you GNC for providing us with the space to get all messy in! And especially thank you for the cake! We weren't expecting that, so that was a lovely bonus! And on a personal note, thanks for the gashopon goodbye gift, as well. I seem to be the biggest FF8 fan around here (Well, the one who dislikes it the least, anyway. O.o) so thanks for the set!
My final thoughts: I hope everyone had a good time, because I was fairly fine coasting around the room. It was a short time, but I hope we filled it with enough activities for people to enjoy (sorry for the bulkiness of the Otaking competition) and that those activities were fun. Nork, you left a bit too soon so somebody probably walked off with your portion of the Gashopon prize. Erm. Sorry about that. And once again, the AMV VCD I made specifically for that day was ignored but I should have organised its showing better anyway. Besides, it was made up of mostly AMVs seen before (just not necessarily in a completely AMV VCD) and I was possibilty creating a social blackhole by attracting so many people to the viewing room when it was on. Conversations disappear entirely to the magical dancing light of music and video. O.o And boy, this entry is getting long and it isn't even a journal one, so I'll stop here.
And now, my finally final thoughts: WHERE ARE MY BALLS?
.... Incidentally: Amy, please erase that incriminating video. Or I may have to find ways to hurt you. Thank you.
So that's the AAC party in a nutshell. Phew. That saved me about half an hour of writing. But anyway, today was supposed to be my day to relax, lounge around and type up this entry at a leisurely pace and grandly proclaim it to be my "last entry in Auckland. Possibly forever" like the title says. Unfortunately, I had to do a lot of last minute box packing this morning (well, midday. I woke up late, given that I was packing boxes all the way into the night as well) due to the fact that I didn't give myself ample time to think about what I had to pack. Plus, it didn't help that on Tuesday (two days ago) instead of trying to get more packing done, I decided to go out and purchase my very own copy of SimGolf, which I'd heard from reputable circles was quite a fun and addictive game, despite being based on the rather iffy premise of opening and maintaining your own golf park. Plus it was only 10 bucks. Anything that packs in great entertainment at 10 bucks is good entertainment. So I fired it up, and indeed, despite falling over a couple of times with the menu system it was indeed quite fun. And then it was 3AM in the morning and I hadn't gotten any more packing done. And I was on a tight schedule. So I packed it in for the day and decided to try packing the next day (that is to say: yesterday) hoping that somehow the packing would somehow manage to be unardous despite the fact I was trying to do two days worth of packing in one day. it wasn't so, as you might have guessed.
And it didn't help either that I was trying to pack "miscellaneous" items; all the stuff I'd gotten in my years of living in Auckland (and some from Australia, too) that I'd stuffed into my drawers and completely forgotten about because they were out of sight and out of mind. So once I emptied all those drawers out, it was like several years of forgotten history coming at me at once. They couldn't be classified as "books", so they couldn't go into the "books" boxes, and they couldn't be classified as "boardgames" so they couldn't go into the "boardgames" pile. It was just some of the most mismatched miscellaneous pile one could possibly hope for after a flea market. So rather than being able to scoop them up and put them into nice, distinct piles of stuff, I had to go through my drawer pile and classify EACH and EVERY single item I picked up, first seperating the useful from the useless (not an easy task, I assure you) and then seperating the useful into sizes: small, medium and large; and then further subdividing those into "things that share a common theme". Like say... colour. Or something like that. I was desperate to get these things into order and into the right boxes. In the end, I did manage to get it all done (today. and discarded about a treesworth of paper in the process) and I've even got a whole new Bag O' Crap!(tm) to distribute amongst the AAC next time I go to a meeting. I just had way too much stuff. In fact, looking at some of the stuff in the drawers that had probably been in there for several years I wondered to myself, "What the heck did I intend to do by keeping all these?". I mean, I'm sure I'd left them there for a reason, but what was I think of? What motivated me to keep seagull feathers? Or Christmas Cracker jokes? Or small plastic coinbags? If my past self was here I'd give him a good clip over the ear and say, "Stop shafting me with all your crap!"
Anyway, since I feel like sharing, I'm just going to go through a small list of what I found in my multi-drawers of unusualness. It's not everything, but it's just some of the items that made me pause a little and think about some of my past. Man, I must be old.
Baby teeth I stashed my baby teeth in a small diamond plastic case in my drawer. I'm not sure, but I don't think that's a usual occurence amongst people, even if they do keep their baby teeth. Man, I had really long incisors back then.... I mean, these things were LONG, almost vampire-like. I've always found the thought of vampire kids creepy. I mean, a picture of a small child with bloodied sharp teeth would send me shivering underneath my bed. Argh. Now I'm getting flashbacks of the manga Hell Baby. That was disturbing.
Congealed water colour paints I'd completely forgotten that I'd taken up watercolour as a hobby, once. Or was it some sort of requirement at school? Anyway, I thought it was kinda neat still having the paint around, but they've probably all dried out so I threw them away. I don't think I even know how to paint anymore, much less mix up the paint properly.
Blank notebooks I was absolutely crazy about collecting notebooks back then for some reason. In fact, I took one of the blank notebooks I found and wrote this list you see here. I mean, to be in my collection it didn't even have to be a good notebook, just that it was bound like a small book and I could write in it. I think I had the inkling that if I ever became a detective I'd need these books to write down notes. Or I was going to need them for some kind of profession, anyway. Or I needed to stockpile the paper in case of an emergency paper shortage. Erm. Right. Anyway, they went unto the paper recycle pile.
Novelty crap from Christmas Crackers Amusing, but ultimately useless. I must have picked them up from a party when I first saw Christmas crackers and was amazed at the little prizes that lay inside (what is essentially) a toilet paper roll wrapped in christmas paper. I was amazed by a lot of things when I first came to a western country out of Malaysia, so I must have kept these cracker treats all the way from Australia. It's funny how these things stay with you. Chuck.
Suicide note from God knows how many years back Whoa. Now that was over-the-top melodramatic crap. Reading it now is an exercise in pain. It's like trying to read goth poetry with a straight face. It's so excrutiatingly bad and embarassing that I'm glad at the amazing improvements my writing has made since I wrote that suicide note. I think at the time, I was writing that note with the firm intent that my parents find it first before I did anything drastic (yeah, one of those self-pitying "call for help" kind of suicides) so obviously a bit of melodrama had to be expected but... yikes. Talk about overboard. It's definitely a keeper. If I ever feel down, all I'll need to do is pull this out and laugh. I wonder if that's being cruelty? O.o
Old German Vocabulary file A file of all the German words I had to learn when I was in highschool (as well as verb conjugation). Given enough time and a German dictionary I could probably construct a paragraph of readable German, but right now, the only thing I say is, "Mein Kopf ist kaput". And that isn't even proper German. That's "My head is broken" in English. 4 years of learning a language and the only thing that really stays with you are the stupid things....
Hotel stationary I'm sure I'm not the first person who, upon entering a hotel/motel room, immediately thinks to themselves "Time to raid the free hotel stationary!", right? Right? .... Don't answer that question. Anyway, I'd almost thought I lost this set. It has stationary from when I was staying in Darwin, Singapore, Brisbane and The Gold Coast as well as many others in between. It may be a stupid hobby but it's an easy one to upkeep. Plus, it allows me to think of all the happy times when I used to travel a lot and was a loveably cute deadweight instead of an ugly, university dropout with no future prospects deadweight. Sigh.
Newspaper Clippings Not a lot of them, and most of it is of inconsequential stuff (like a "rare collectors item" poster of the Star Wars rerelease). However, just to show that I wasn't a completely vapid idiot, there was a clipping about the huge Auckland CBD blackout, in which the entire city centre had a blackout for TWO MONTHS thanks to several main lines exploding. Anybody from Auckland remember that one? I had some of Australian newspapers as well, which included a section with the results of all the people who passed the SATAC test (sort of a University entrance test) in which I'd cricled my name proudly (ha!) and there was also an article about Pauline Hanson being a biggest, fattest bitch in the whole wide world which goes to show that people who operate a fish and chip shop for a living shouldn't go into politics. I am so glad she's politically dead in the water right now. Keeping this lot for future prosperity (and laughing at 90s haircuts. Like, "ha! Did they really have haircuts like that back then?" sort of thing).
Old Chinese New Year Red Packets I searched through these in the faint hopes that some of these still had money in them. They didn't, so I felt sad for a little while, cursing my past self for not leaving me some "rainy day" money. Actually, the reason I kept all the red packets was because I remember being told that it was unlucky to throw them away, so I didn't. Then later on I was told it was an absolute filthy lie. With that in mind, I proceeded to throw away all the red packets I had stashed away in my drawers. I just hope the part about bad luck really isn't true, otherwise I'm going to be visited by a backup of 20 years worth of bad mojo. Aie.
Old Birthday Cards Some of which came from people I didn't even remember I'd forgotten about until I saw their names again on the card. That's kinda creepy. It's like having a past you can't remember, and it's filled with blank spaces that doesn't make sense. Kinda like Dark City, in a way. I was going to throw the cards out, especially the ones that just said "Happy Birthday! From, [persons name here]", but in the end I decided to just bundle them up and keep in. After all, you'll never know when you need spare paper! *snerks*
REALLY disturbing pictures drawn when I was young Whoa. Talk about severe brainwashing. This is some freaky Christian stuff. Mere words can't describe just how.... totally, totally, TOTALLY devoted I was to Christianity when I was that small which resulted in the pictures mentioned. There's nothing like the drawings of an 8 year old me to put me on edge, nosiree. Yikes. Keeper, definitely.
My First Letter from Papa My first ever (and possibly last) handwritten letter via snailmail from my father to me, back when my mother and I first moved to Adelaide and he had to still keep working in Malaysia for us. I didn't read it. It seemed sacrilegious somehow. And I didn't want to think about what would happen if I'd read it and didn't react in any way at all. That would be horrible. So I bundled up the letter, along with other snail mail letters I'd ever received (which isn't that many, what with the internet and all), and put them in a packet next to my birthday cards. Maybe someday when I'm feeling brave, I'll read them.
Pen Collection Not so much a proper collection but rather a gathering of pens from various sources while I was in University. In other words, I nicked them. Almost everytime I entered a lecture hall there was always something left behind that could be useful given the proper context. A pencil. An eraser. A ruler. A compass. A rubber. But most of the time, it was pens. In my almost 4 years of university life I'd never had to purchase a pen thanks to the luckless people who left behind and lost theirs while busily moving from lecture hall to lecture hall. God bless those poor saps. Of course, now that I only have one pen I really like using, I tossed all the others away. There goes THAT collection.
Book of prayers I found a notebook that wasn't blank (which was a surprise) and it contained what was obviously meant to be the beginnings of a "prayer book", ie everytime you had a prayer request, you wrote it down in the "prayer book" and you kept praying about it until it came true. I did it back in '91 when I was about 11, and like most things one did when one was 11 it quickly fizzled out. In fact, the "prayer book" only lasted for one days worth of prayers. Oh dear. I find it interesting that one of the prayers was "Please help me make friends next year." Awwwwww. Innit cute? A good belt over the head should cure all that! I'm feeling rather aggravated right now. I don't really understand why.
Whew. That's a lot of stuff.
.... And now I don't know what else to say because I'd only really thought about writing about what I packed and what I found interesting while packing. I suppose I should say something about the move, but since it's 3 weeks or so away I find it hard to say any "final words" because I really don't have any prepared yet. I'd say.... consult the last two or three entries and get a feeling for what I'm feeling right now. I'm sad, yet happy. Depressed, yet hopeful. Ultimately, I'm a two faced kinda guy. But whatever happens, I think it'll be okay. Really, okay. So for now, until I get a computer to write more entries on when I'm either in Auckland or Adelaide, Australia: This is goodbye.
And now I've got to write a whole buncha emails to people as well as go on instant messaging services for the last time before I have to go to sleep early and catch an early morning flight to Wellngton (and maybe get in a few rounds of Sim Golf, too!) arrrrrrrrrrrrgh.... Why did I leave doing all this until the last day??? I need food too! I'd be rolling on the floor right now with indecision if that wasn't wasting what previous little time I have left! Damn!
