2001-07-03 - 3:08 a.m.
#78: No Need for AAC Meeting (kinda) at My Place: Part 5!
Note to self: Okay, when your arms starting shaking from fatigue after carrying a load of groceries, you know it's time to start thinking about regular exercise again. @_@ Also, spending 20 dollars on snack foods and drinks and coming away with less than a dozen items is probably an indication of my general inability to shop and get good bargains. ^^;;; Eheh.
Well. Saturdays marathon meet was a bit of a disappointment. I mean, in terms of attendance and the amount of actual HK stuff shown. I guess I shouldn't have scheduled the day so close to the start of the holidays (both university and school ones), people are invariably busy with finalising.... things. And work too, I guess. So I shouldn't be disappointed. Afterall, attendance was fairly good.... For an evening session. And I do live far away from what is considered a centralised area. And we DID have fun afterall. Yeah. In fact, I'm pretty sure a big group would have just bogged us down too much, so it's good we had such a small group of people attending. Yeah. I'm not bitter, nosireebob. I have no reason to be bitter, afterall. It's not as if I spent a lot of time preparing for this event. Why, if I'd done something foolish like that, I'd have plenty of reasons to be bitter. So since I didn't, I shouldn't be bitter at all. No harm done. I'm sure I won't be upset by feelings of personal inadequacy and broken trauma which will affect the development of my psyche and explain the excess of crippling neuroses later in life. Nosiree. If I were really bitter, I'd just go relieve my frustrations by spanking my monkey for a while, that's all. Did you know that excessive abuse to ones primate is one of the first signs of developing the personality of a psychotic serial killer: one who canibalises his victims for organs, bodily fluid and hair as a means to make up for his own shortcomings on those areas of physical growth? It's true. SO IT'S A GOOD THING I'M NOT BITTER AT ALL, ISN'T IT????
....
Okay, guilt trip over for those who didn't attend, now time for the detailed account. ^_^
Woke up at 5:15AM, which is never a good thing when you're trying to host a half day event. @_@ Tried to get back to sleep, but gave up at about 6AM and wandered over to the kitchen to make my mother and I some omlettes for brekkie. Which surprised her quite a bit, considering the amount of times I've actually cooked for her. Boiled up some tom yum soup for the meet (it's amazing what a pot, some water and two big spoonfuls of that magical paste can do ya) and settled in to wait at 8AM while watching some Saturday morning cartoons. At about 10AM, I realised that just sitting around waiting for a whole 5 hours to starting time was probably a dumb idea, so I went to look for something to do. Besides, I was still in my plaid jammies, and no one wants to see Edwyn in plaid jammies. Though some didn't have a choice, heh.
Got all "illegal trader"ish in my outfit, played around on the computer for a while, and then sat in and waited some more. And some more. By 11AM nobody had turned up, and after Fergus' assurance the night before that he and a platoon of AACers were coming early, I was getting slightly worried. Just a bit before 12, Matt turned up first, and just 20 minutes after 12, so did the rest of what was 2/3rds of that day's attendance: Chris, EB, Fergus, Finn, Josh. Apparently, the bus they had caught had been late, which implied that they would be too. Not an exactly auspicious start to the event.... Especially considering my monitor died earlier that morning. Before it was the CD writer and now it's the monitor.... Can you detect the pattern here? Well in any case, it was good to see Finn finally managing to make it to my house after countless of missed oppurtunities before.
So we settled down to some serious HK action stuff at 12:30PM. In hindsight, starting it off with the original Once Upon a Time in China was a bad idea. While it does have Tsui Harks trademark highly kinetic wire fu, it was also a lot slower moving in comparison with the rest of the OUATIC series, and the fights were few and far in between. Unfortunately for most people there, the story was just as important as the fighting and the subtitles tended to disappear at some of the most inoppurtune moments. ^^;;; Being unable to read about the not so subtle commentary about the Wests wrangling of Chinese culture, that is; as well as the closely connected fates of both Wong Fei Hong and the Iron Cloth technique master (forget his name at the moment) who had to learn to adapt to this new culture, or risked the danger of being left behind. The Iron Cloth technique master gave in to taking money from those working from the west, and ironically (ha ha) intended to use it to start a school of his own: an old dream from the old era of China. Wong Fei Hong stands fast by his own morality, a pillar of the old Chinese community, and yet he obeys and understands those laws set by the Western government. Which one has adapted better in the face of change? Who can say? But in any case, the story and its more subtle aspects more or less flew over most peoples heads there. Plus, it was still early in the day for stuff like this. I should have put something with an easier story structure and more hitting of people. Yes. Hitting is good.
Well, OUATIC left a bitter taste in our mouths, so after a brief interlude of watching old Bruce Wayne kick some ass in Batman Beyond (that old guy still has some cool moves... And a mecha suit, to boot!) we went on to watch Joshs offering of Operation Scorpio, which had neither operation or scorpio in it at all. It had a guy in the film doing scorpion technique, but it wasn't the action movie about drug trafficking and police officers it sounded like. Which was good, as it was actually entertaining, funny and had people beating each others heads in at a more saturated level. It featured a manga artist (kinda) who dreams of becoming a swordsman in ancient China, and learns martial arts from a cook at a noodle restaurant which involves washing pans and learning to deal with high temperatures. And in the end, a protracted fight sequence in which this newly raised martial artist takes on the one with the scorpion style with.... Flopping Eel Stance! As you may or may not have guessed, this was a very silly movie and got people in the right way. ^_^ And Amy and James turned up somewhere during the start of this film, too! More people is good.
After Operation Scorpio it was about 4 or 4:30PM, so we decided to drive on down to Botany Downs to have a looksee and maybe pick up dinner. With the occasional live demonstration of the Scorpion stance by Finn. O.o After a bit of wandering around the various shops (settling longest at the local Electronics Boutique, where I had the hardest time resisting from buying the recently released add on pack to the Baldurs Gate II saga) most of us decided to settle on buying some Nandos chicken for dinner. Which was perfectly peachy with me. ^_^ Mmmm.... A whole chicken and EXTRA hot. Yummy. Saw EB off at a nearby busstop (wow, so there WERE buses running from there now. Neat.) went in to the local branch of Blockbuster video because Fergus said so, and then we went back home to settle in to some more HK goodness....
But first! We had a small viewing of the Daikatana intro and intro level, which most agreed looked pretty bad. Well the atmospherics were nice, which I agreed with, but the in game cutscenes were pretty much uninspiring, yes. Wandered back to the living room after that where we feasted on either Nandos chicken products, or the tom yum soup I warmed up (or both) and watched the two parter episode of Batman Beyond: co-starring the future version of Superman. Once we finished up our meals, we went on to watch the last title of the evening: The Killer, one of John Woos best works (if not THE best) which featured not only highly charged gunfight scenes and bloodbaths, but also an excellent story that works in such a way as to enhance the action sequences, and not simply as filler material as most Holywood action sequences would have it. It probably wouldn't have done so well if I'd shown it first, but as something to end the evening, it worked out pretty well.
Some Giants: Citizen Kabuto cutscenes viewing followed after that, as well as Sam and Max (the game AND a bit of the cartoon) and some random game demos including Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare and Jekyl and Hyde. It all went down quite well, especially the cutscenes for Giants, whose unexpected sense of humour seemed to have caught most of them off guard. O.o We managed to finish the night at 12:30AM in the morning, and after shooing everyone away, I started on the task of cleaning everything up spic and span. Managed to produce two bags of garbage and five empty bottles of soft drink with that, and finished the entire cleanup process at about 1AM in the morning: using the dishwashing really sped up the process.
And so the evening ended on a positive note. Next morning though, I had to go with my mother to Botany Downs (again? fate seems to draw me there....) in order to try to apply for a job at the local Warehouse, since my mater knew the manager who worked there. O.o Well, I didn't get a job on the spot, but I did get an entry form to fill out.... So I guess it won't be long where I'll actually get out of the house more. ^^;;; Wowee. Took a look around Botany Downs again, because I wanted to torture myself a bit by not buying that expansion pack I spoke of above (speak not its name, heathen!) as well as a real copy of Black & White. Ah well. When I get a job, when I get a job....
