Speckled Green

Well, today is going to be mostly uneventful, except that later tonight I’ll be going to a party with some friends from church for the new year. I’ve been listening to some of Relient K’s older songs, and one I think is really interesting is ‘Mood Rings’.

Mood Rings – MP3 file 4.54 MB

Here’re the lyrics:

we all know the girls that i am talking about
well they are time bombs and they are ticking
and the only question’s when they’ll blow up
and they’ll blow up; we know that without a doubt
cause they’re those girls, yeah you know those girls that let their emotions get the best of them

and i’ve contrived some sort of a plan to help my fellow man
let’s get emotional girls to all wear mood rings
so we’ll be tipped off to when they’re ticked off
cause we’ll know just what they’re thinking
cause what they’re thinking…

she’s so pretty but she but doesn’t always act that way
her mood’s out swinging on the swing set almost every day
she said to me that she’s so happy it’s depressing
and all i said was “someone get that girl a mood ring”

if it’s drama you want then look no further
they’re like the real world meets boy meets world meets days of our lives
and it just kills me how they get away with murder
they’ll anger you then bat their eyes; those pretty eyes that watch you sympathize

and i’ve contrived some sort of a plan to help my fellow man
let’s get emotional girls to all wear mood rings
so we’ll be tipped off to when they’re ticked off
cause we’ll know just what they’re thinking
cause what they’re thinking…

she’s so pretty but she but doesn’t always act that way
her mood’s out swinging on the swing set almost every day
she said to me that she’s so stressed out that it’s soothing
and all i said was “someone get that girl a mood ring”

cause when it’s black (it) means watch your back because you’re probably
the last person in the world right now she wants to see
and when it’s blue it means that you should call her up immediately
and ask her out because she’ll most likely agree
and when it’s green it simply means that she is really stressed
and when it’s clear it means she’s completely emotionless (and that’s all right i must confess)

we all know the girls that i am talking about
she liked you wednesday but now it’s friday and she has to wash her hair
and it just figures that we’ll never figure them out
first she’s jekyll and then she’s hyde….at least she makes a lovely pair

mood ring oh mood ring
oh tell me will you bring
the key to unlock this mystery
of girls and their emotions
play it back in slow motion
so i may understand the complex infrastructure known as the female mind

[speaking:]
heh…that’s terrible

I thought, you know, that’s probably not a bad idea…

On the Seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 7 swans a-swimming, 6 geese a-laying, 5 Golden rings; 4 calling birds, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and a partige in a pear tree.

After Church today, I we went to pay a call on one of my mum’s best friends, my ‘Aunt’ Amy. They’d only just come back from a holiday to New Zealand (aparently, for their daughters, 5 days was long enough…), but they invited Kenneth and I over for a swim. We also borrowed a few of their pirate DVDs off them (they got them from China). After the swim, I phoned up my mum about staying for thier annual Christmas/New year party they have. Aparently someone had tried breaking into my dad’s shop earlier that day, but luckily nothing was stolen.

Afterwards, after helping my ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’, the other guests started arriving. Unfortunately, I don’t know the other guests that well… there was Anna’s (oldest daughter of my ‘aunt’) friend Michelle and her older sister (can’t remember her name… but I’m sure I’ve seen her somewhere before…) and their parents and Annie (old school friend) and her older sister Fiona (how old is Fiona now?) and their parents. A small gathering, smaller than a previous one I remember, but still fun. We were there, all talking, the mothers preparing food, my ‘uncle’ showing everyone pictures and footage of thier holiday in New Zealand (they went to the south island), my mum ended up getting me to cook the food (the food that needed cooking on the electric bbq), then came the eating (I skipped over the prawn…) funnily, despite the having knives and forks, almost everyone ate with thier hands. Afterwards it was talking, watching movies and doing other stuff for the next few hours. All the girls went off and did their own stuff, so Kenneth and I sat down watching movies, while the dads sat there talking and drinking and the mums were in another part of the house talking like they always do. If I could actually understand chinese, I would’ve probably hear a few interesting things about what ever the dads were talking about. As far as I could tell, the topic started off with the fish in the tank, then went off to something about technology, and pirate movies, and then I wasn’t even trying to understand what they were talking about anymore. Finally, at a late time, everyone decided it was time to go home.

On the Sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 6 geese a-laying, 5 Golden rings; 4 calling birds, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and a partige in a pear tree.

So, today, I went to a small coastal town down south called Kiama, with some friends from church. Apart from the long and mostly boring drive (I knew it was going to be boring, so I burned a CD of music, which was finished half an hour before we actually got there….), the morning was ok. When we actually got there, it was lunch time, so we went to get some fish and chips, which was a mistake. They wern’t that good. We should’ve eaten at a cafe…

Afterwards, we went off to see the blowhole. It was kinda pathetic really, today. There wasn’t a high enough tide and the wind wasn’t strong enough, so there wasn’t much to be amazed about… besides, I had already seen it before. Once we had enough of the blowhole with the blow, we went off to a beach near by. Apon setting up, I promtly started to dig a whole for me to lie in… till my brother filled it with water… he and his friend Daniel were digging up trenches and building sand walls to see how long till a wave would breach them and come up to where I had dug another hole to sit in. Later, I was bored, so I started digging a small ditch in the sand, which I quickly then made a trench, then a gorge, then I started digging a tunnle at the end of my ever descending ramp-into-the-gorge. Then I did the same on the otherside. I ended up with a gorge, with a tunnle under a strip of sand, then out into another gorge. When we were getting ready to leave, my brother wanted to smash all my ‘tunnles’. So he decided to walk on one. What surprised us is that despite me digging a large hole under it, the sand still held up my brother! That was till he jumped on it though… still, it was fun to make, and fun to destroy! actually, the best part was probably admiring my handy work, THEN destroying it.

Anyways, soon we had to go home, what a shame, made even more a shame that it was another long drive to get home! At least they built the M7, really cut down the time. So it was home, home to the computer, home to the good food, home to the sitting about and doing nothing, till I had to have a shower and help my mum…

On the Fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 5 Golden rings; 4 calling birds, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and a partige in a pear tree.

… my brother and I were so bored yesterday, that we decided to set up our computers to play StarCraft with eachother over LAN. Then today, I was so bored, I decided to connect the computers back up to our internet router. Turns out that the router acts like a network router in the first place! All that work unpluggin and replugging cables, just to find out I didn’t have to do it in the first place!!!… at least I had something to do…

thinking about this though… why didn’t I relise I could do this earlier?! ARGH!

On the Fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 4 calling birds, 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and a partige in a pear tree.

So, today I went to Castle Towers to watch a movie with some friends. The only catch, I had to go with my mum early (like 1/4 to nine?) to help her with her clearance shopping (carrying what she finaly buys, thankfully not much today). So, I’m there for about 2 hours helping her shop, then we have lunch (actually, she had lunch, I wasn’t that hungry) before we go off to quickly buy groceries. Druing the shopping, we had gone to David Jones (waste of time, there was nothing worth getting there), then off to K-mart, where I first saw Jolene with her mum. Next it was off to deposit the shopping off at the car, and on the way there I once again saw Jolene…. must be a small shopping centre. The place was pretty crowded by then…

In the food court for lunch. Just a can of coke zero for me, and a little bit of some bread of some kind… as we were leaving, we met my old scripture teacher from years back (I can’t remember her, I was only 4 then…) and then I ONCE AGAIN saw Jolene…. only this time she had ditched her mum and was with Sandra and Yeli. After quickly helping my mum with getting some fruit, I met up with Anthony (Liang), who was looking for the girls. So we went looking for them. Turns out they were at a sushi place in the piazza, aparently ‘fob hunting’ or somthing similar to that… when they found us waiting outside the cinemas, they called Anthony a fob… (as I’m not quite sure what defines a fob, I can’t say that he is or isn’t…). Anyways, we got tickets, went walking around, I got a drink, and we ran into Sean and his friends 3 times… oh, and Sandra, if you’re reading this, Sean said to tell you that he ‘broken-heart you (Jolene, Yeli and Sandra)’, what ever he means……

When we go back for the movie, Deva FINALLY turns up… and then after waiting for the girls Boost drinks, we went in for the movie. We watched National Treasure 2… the story line was a bit weird… but then again, it was still interesting. And the end was interesting. As I haven’t yet seen National Treasure (the first one) I didn’t quite understand all of it at first.. but who cares? So, after the movie, I go home… on a late bus… that I had to pay with a $20 note… and the ticket was only $1.60!…… anyways, I finally got home… and now I miss being with my friends again..

On the Third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 3 french hens, 2 turtle doves and a partrige in a pear tree.

Well, it’s the day after Christmas. Boxing Day. And so what starts? A Cricket Test match, and the Sydney to Hobart yatch race, and me thinking “I still don’t have anything to do these hols.”…

While I’m trying to fix that problem, I’ll be lamenting over the fact that I’m too lazy to go to a library and that I’m running out of books to read… Anyways, today we had a couple of guests over: an Aunt and her son. So, we had lunch, the son played games with my brother, I played table tennis with my mum, then my aunt, then my mum, then my dad (he’s worse than me, only played it a few times in his life…. oh well). Then a bit of talking. Just a small affair. Nothing much. Otherwise, my day has been rather uneventful. I’ve taken to playing a pirate copy of StarCraft off my USB so that my mum doesn’t object to it being on the computer or me playing it or what ever excuse she normally comes up with.

On the Second Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: two turtle doves and a partige in a pear tree.

Lets all say a Very Happy Birthday to Connor Hogg.  And happy hols to all you people who are going on/are on holidays.

In other news, for Christmas I got a new watch, Artemis Fowl the Graphic Novel, and Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthey Reilly. I also wanted Six Sacred Stones… but I can wait. Also from my relatives I got a little bit of cash.

Hope you all got some of what you wanted for your Christmas.

On the First Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a partige in a pear tree.

Hey All. Just wanted to tell you all to have a Merry Christmas, and A Wonderful New Year. Hope you all have fun druing the Christmas break!

On the First day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: A partige in a pear tree….

What are these days off that we call holidays? Oh, wait, I just described it…

I can barely believe that it’s now the holidays… I’M GOING TO BE IN YEAR NINE NEXT YEAR!!! I’m not going to like my classes next year for a few weeks… not because of the subject, because I’ll have almost no friends in all of them! I’m going to have to make some more friends, somehow……. this might be hard. At least in all the classes (I think) I have at least one friend or person I can easily talk to and work with… I think……

Well, something different from my constant whining of my classes. Its the holidays now, which means that I must’ve done something on the last day of school, doesn’t it. Well, what I did was go to school. Nerdy? Maybe, but I’m going to a school of nerds, and I had nothing to do at home, so… there we watched movies all day, played cards, and walked about a bit. Anyways, it was fun. From our class, only Deva, Dinusha, Kapilan, Jasmin and I stayed at school, everyone else didn’t even come to roll call, and just went to towers, or parra. All day, Jasmin was trying to stick stickers on me without me noticing (she managed it several times… but I know half the tricks in the book, so, I sorta knew what to expect…), and Kapilan was always trying to go over to the english block to try and watch a movie. Even druing maths and tech he tried (to no avail). The movies I watched were Tim Burton’s ‘The Corpse Bride’, most of ‘Jonny English’, and we also watched a bit of Scrubs while we were playing stip poker (some of us have some very bad luck sometimes…. others seems to have enourmous luck *cough* Jasmin *cough*).

Maths was odd, as they were setting up for the teacher’s lunchen in the maths block, so we were all put into one room, where they immediately started playing indoor soccer. So some of us stayed in another maths room, playing Big 2. At one point in the day, Dinusha and Deva were asked to do school service, so for half they day, they were missing out on the movies, and doing random work for the people in the admin block… After lunch Deva got Kapilan to come down, where he promptly returned and conned Jasmin and I to go down instead… we were soon back and back to play poker. Soon though, it was time to go, but before that, in crashed Shirley and Anthony… and then was the talk about what we had done through the day, and what classes we were in for english next year (if you managed to procure it from the english staff, we couldn’t, but Shirley managed to.) Oh, and to everyone in general, but Sean Baker especially, Mr. McNickle is not taking Yr. 9 in 2008! NOOOO!!!!!

At the end of the day, the canteen was selling the leftover food (hot-food) for a dollar each. There wasn’t much left, so it didn’t really make much difference to me, also we had to catch our busses, which were leaving early… so some of us nearly missed the bus….

anyhows, that’s my last day of yr 8… and a very interesting day it was.

1:30 am: what’s the time? … aw man…

3:20 am: let me guess, sometime before six…

5:50 am: why do I wake up so early?

Roll around in bed a bit, listen to my iPod, read a book… geezz, 6:30 seems so far away. When it finally came, up I was, brush my teeth, get changed, pack my bag (I was bored, really bored). Breakfast, once again, one of the first in line, breakfast was early today. After the hearty breakfast, we went to finish packing our bags and to get ready for the ‘Eco-challenge’. Funnily, the Eco-challenge had little to do with anything environment related. It was a challenge for the activity groups to do as many activites as they can to score as many points as they can.

We started off with the rope climb. You had to climb 10m of a narrow ‘rope’ ladder (it was made of steel…) and reach the top and touch the supporting beam. To get the points, 5 of us had to climb up it. First went Edmund, who climbed the traditional way, hold it side-ways and climb up. After a slow start, and swinging around a bit, he got to the top at ‘average’ speed (what is ‘average’ speed anyway?). Next was Benny. Halfway up, he must’ve either started getting tired, or looked down, cause he started getting a bit jittery, and took longer to go up, despite doing what Edmund did to get up. Simon, always being different, decided to climb up it straight on, like a normal ladder, and quickly got to the top (he was the fastest person in our group, no surprises).  Quickly after him was Mitch, who followed Simon’s example, and quickly scaled the ladder. I also followed suit, and was quickly up there. It surprised me how easy it was to get up there, and how much the ladder would swing around. And climbing up 10m, and then looking down when you’re at the top of the ladder, it can look a bit far down. It reminded me of the leap-of-faith we did at Vision Valley.

Next, we rushed over to the Balancing beam, where we spent over half an hour trying to balance ourselves on a see-saw which was in lengths of 1:2. It was difficult, and we had several attmepts, both times having people sit ontop of each other to try and balance the weight. In the end, we had us spread evenly across the beam, with Stuart sitting on the logs in the middle and Deva sitting on him, and having Sandra on the end as a moving weight to make it all balance.

The wall was next, and once again, we did it very quickly. Skipping over to Nitro, where we once again all got across. Simon almost got us a bonus point by giving the instructor there ‘A Whole New World’ on his phone, but then he must’ve forgotten…. I think… cause we didn’t get that bonus point. Archery next, and we got a few bulls-eyes (thanks to Piranavan and Nicole, mainly, I think…. I can’t remember, but Piranavan got a few, I know). Ben, Simon, Jasmin and I were sharing the same bow, and with 4 arrows at a time, it was once shot a turn. I must’ve been the only one there to remember all the rules that they ingrained in me about saftey with archery (They were really concerned about it when I was at the SAGALA camp…. that’s the Salvation Army for you), but we still had fun. Simon wasn’t that good (he couldn’t see with out his glasses, not a target that far away…). Most of my shots hit the target, but my first one wasn’t powerful enough (I’ve forgotten how much effort you need in archery!), which I think is a good achievement for someone who’s only done archery 3 times in their life…

Next we went to the puzzles, where we took a whole 2 minutes to work out how to seperate 2 metal ‘rings’. Half/most of the group was trying this and that, and Stuart then just walked in, and said “here, let me just pull this up like this…” and, there you go, one puzzle solved! We were going to do another activity, but then our 2 hour time-limit was up. After all this, our group came 4th, with 18 points. After lunch, we all boarded the busses, and began the hour and a bit journey home. This time round, some people were more inclined to sleeping, and I did that for a short while, before pulling out Simon’s book to read for a while, and then talking to people around me. Half way through the bus ride, Jasmin stole my hat…. and so I stole it back. Then she stole it again, and again, and again…. after all this, I finally got my hat back, but it had a small rip where a seam had come out…. (so at home I repaired it…) Then was the hard part of saying goodbye to everyone, and having to go home, giving Prosha a lift on the way… and picking up my brother.

All in all, it was an enjoyable camp, and I thank everyone who help organise it and run it!