lunar.soliloquy

So it's been about a month since I've posted on here, and it seems my blog gets more attention when I -don't- post anything for a period of more than more than 2 weeks than when I'm say, blogging every few days. It's hard to tell how many people actually read this since I never hear anything about my blog both on the web or irl unless it's to ask "why haven't you been posting lately Jeffrey?" According to the stats tab I have approximately 30 followers but I don't entirely trust it since I often access my blog from multiple places and all that traffic could simply have been me checking to see if anybody's been leaving any comments and sometimes reading over my own posts again. I'm surprised at the unexpectedly large number of people who actually read this thing since I feel my life isn't particularly interesting, and less so with me being in Rotorua and all.

So what's happened in my life in the past month? Well if you must know I got the OK from my dad to put together a computer for him and I spent most of the Christmas break doing that. By that, I mean researching parts, searching TradeMe for them, and waiting for them to arrive while reading up on things I should know before assembling a computer. Annoyingly, I spent about a week running into various problems which sure as hell tested my patience. I initially was working with some old parts I was trying to salvage from dad's old pc but it turned out that there was very little I could actually use from it so ended up having to order new ones. The only thing I managed to reuse was his old IDE hard drive which the new motherboard still supported, which was good since it meant I could keep all dad's files. Initially I thought I'd be able to use the same case but I painfully discovered that it wasn't ATX format so I had to order a new one. In the meantime I thought I'd assemble the rig without a case just to see if all the parts worked, and they did, after many many attempts of reseating the graphics card which I suspected to be a bit faulty.

The big problem I ran into was when the case did arrive, and after putting all the parts in, realising the graphics card was playing up again. Thinking to reuse the same method to get the card to go again, I reseated the card a couple of times, and after a couple of tries a huge spark exploded in my face and I immediately realised I'd broken something. And yeah, I did. The CPU fan stopped going and the mobo was making high pitched beeps meaning the CPU was overheating so I turned it off quick. Defeated, I sent the rig into town to get it fixed - at a cost of $90/hr for labour I was lucky they managed to find out the problem (broken motherboard) within just an hour. They ordered in a new mobo and graphics card for me and got everything up and running as smoothly as it should have been had the graphics card not been faulty. Argh, bung graphics card ended up ruining my first computer building experience =( but some good lessons learned for my next computer building project which will be for myself when I get back to Auckland. Sure, getting set back $200 for something silly like that hurts (I had to pay for the parts I'd damaged, of course) but if you think about how much you'd spend for a computer that good - 2.67GHz x2 CPU, 2GB RAM, 512GB dedicated graphics RAM, 160MB HDD - being able to play Starcraft2 for that much isn't too bad. Of course, dad did pay for most of it but it's his computer anyway lol.

Work's been pretty steady with not too much happening but I've been kept quite busy which has been good. I think I've made a bad name for myself among a few of the patients here for missing their veins for venepuncture. There was this one guy who raged pretty bad at me for missing him twice but it's not my fault if his veins are crap. My hit ratio's gone up to around ~90% now so I'll only miss, say, 1 in 10 patients or maybe 2 max on a bad day.

Ah, dad wants to head home now, I'll continue on with this post tomorrow (no internet at the farmhouse T.T). Laptop's running outta battery too. Sigh, last day of work tomorrow. Can't wait to go back to Auckland next Tuesday.

One must have patience. And a lot of it. One of my more recent jobs has been to go through some old handwritten patient card notes and transfer the data into the electronic medical database. As I've mentioned previously, I liked to think that patience was one of my better qualities but this job's really testing it. Seriously, what the hell is the point of writing notes if no-one can even read them?? Might as well save the time (and a few trees) and not bother, if your handwriting's going to suck so damn bad. /rant

So I realise I haven't really been updating this blog as much as I should be, I guess I just haven't been bothered lately. Not that anything interesting has really been happening in my life worth mentioning. Work goes on, days off are spent at home with parents, and boredom slowly accumulates. Three weeks of this and I'm beginning to feel the boredom biting at my sanity. I should probably get out more and stuff, but the city life in Rotorua just isn't the same as in Auckland, and most of the time my parents have plans of their own for me (such as helping out with visitors, of which we've had plenty over the past few weeks), so that makes things difficult. A significant portion of my time is spent attempting to play SC2 at 1 fps with my friends in Auckland on my 3 year old laptop, which usually ends up in utter fail with me lagging everyone else in the game and generally having very poor quality games. My dad gave me $400 to upgrade his 8 year old computer at home and I've ordered a few parts which should be here by Christmas, so hopefully I'll be able to have a decent game on that. I'm still contemplating on the parts I should get for my own computer I'll be building next year and hunting down deals online. According to one of my friends, $1000 is about the optimal amount to spend on building a computer.

Work's been meh. Still poking people's arms with needles and doing the occasional BP or CVD assessment while my boss piles me with the monotonous computer work amongst other stuff. It's been a while since I've actually missed a vein but I somehow managed to miss 2 today for some strange reason. Perhaps the novelty of phlebotomy's beginning to wear off and I'm starting to lose interest in what I'm doing. Guess I'm that type of person who's not easily interested in things, and gets bored with things easily. Ah, I need to find something to amuse me again, life's just getting too boring.

At the moment one of my Dad's late friend's wife's yoga teacher from Germany is staying at our house as part of her tour of New Zealand. I don't really mind having random visitors in my home but I won't deny that things are easier to do when they're not around. For example, playing DDR. Our visitor is staying downstairs at the moment so I'll certainly cause a lot of noise for her if I play at my usual time before breakfast. And since there's only one TV in the house that just means one extra person I'm sharing it with too. I would get a TV for myself and play in the basement but since I'm only home for one quarter of the year I'm not sure it's worth the investment. That's one annoying thing about living in two homes rather than one, you can't furnish your place as well as you want to since you're only getting to use it for a limited portion of the year. There are lots of things I'd like to get for my room, like maybe a surround sound system, a big corner desk, a nice desktop computer (I'll be getting that soon) to list a few. I know I'm just being picky and I should just appreciate the fact that I do have my own place to stay in during uni (I do) but I guess I just like to enjoy myself too much sometimes. Anyway I'm going way off topic.

So yeah, we've got this visitor and Mum and Dad are going out of their way to show them around a bit. Which means they tend to leave me alone more, which is one advantage of having her around. Yeah I know I should make the most of my time with my parents but I do like my alone time too and sometimes they do invade into that. I also don't really like gardening that much. Oh, it looks like I'm heading off now. I'm still at work atm and we're gonna take a patient to the hospital in Rotorua cuz he's poor and doesn't have any money for transport and my dad's just being kind. Sigh, the demographics of this place sometimes make me wonder what these people do with their lives...

Don't ask me why I'm blogging at 4am in the morning, cuz I don't know either. I guess analyzing computer components at night before sleeping was a bad move. The complexity of computer architecture is so ridiculous, my head was literally buzzing with them all through the night and I had a terrible amount of sleep last night.

I suppose the main motive behind this new venture of mine is due to my simple annoyance at the fact that my $2300 laptop I got 3 years ago can't run Starcraft 2, even on the lowest quality without lagging the hell out of everyone in the game. Yeah, sure my Toshiba P200 meets the minimum requirements but those are the -bare minimum- for even running the app and that's still on lowest quality. Now I don't mind running SC2 on crap quality but what actually gets me is the LAG. 128mb dedicated graphics is the minimum, 512mb is the recommended. Guess how much I have. 256! T.T; And that was top notch 3 years ago. For a lappy, anyway. I won't ignore the fact that my motherboard broke on me two years ago but I didn't find it affected it -too- much in terms of gaming. My laptop's just simply out of date, and I need something I can play my Starcrafts on, and with Katherine's Intel i7 930 nVidia GTX 470 out of reach, I'm feeling the pinch more than ever now.

So those are my prime motivations for looking into a gaming rig. I just received a pay rise at work so I'm feeling I can be a little generous with my present for myself this Christmas and could probably part with $1500 for the purposes of building my machine. But no more. I know how easy it is to go over that limit with the endless numbers of computer components that are out there on the market now, and how you could get that extra "oomph" for just $50 more or so. But that's not going to happen to me. I'm going to strictly adhere to my budget on this one, and not oversplurdge on something ridiculous like the monster of a machine my sister has. Of course, getting the latest tech out there is sure as hell tempting, but I'm not a hardcore gamer as such, so spending extra money for a hobby I really don't have a lot of time for would be a waste of money in my eyes.

At $1500 I believe I'm looking at the mid-range of performance computers, so it's not going to be hitting the fps on Crysis HQ max anti-aliasing etc, unfortunately. But I don't care, so long as it runs Starcraft 2 with NO LAG I'm happy. Apparently you can build a decent rig for around $500 if your sole intention is for it to play SC2 but I don't want my rig to be outdated so fast to the point its going to be obselete next year (when they release Diablo 3 and god knows what else) so I'm quite keen on getting something that will last a while. Building a computer is serious business and being my first time at ever looking at a computer beyond the specs in the shops it's a little daunting. Luckily for me the internet exists, with its wealth of information (although can be a little subjective, as all media is) and I have friends experienced in such matters. I will be sure to pick their brains about this, as computers have never really been my forte since the only thing I used to do with them is play on them, lolz. Didn't really take them apart or try and put one together, it all seemed like too much work for what it was worth. Wish I could've learned a little computer architecture in high school.

So onto the parts themselves...

~Processor/CPU
So far I'm leaning towards Intel rather than ATI atm since from what I've been reading, Intel's chips are where it's at today in terms of gaming and overall performance. ATI's chips are a little cheaper and the specs do look good on paper but in practice, Intel makes the superior gaming chips. In particular the i5 series seems to be the favourite chip for budget gamers such as myself and the i5 core 750/760 was agreed by several reviews to be the one to go for. It's a little expensive at $309 (all prices are from PBtech, where I'm probably going to be buying it from) but the CPU is important and I'm willing to spend a little more on it, but if the budget disallows it, I'll probably go for something a step down. I'd still like to run a quad core, though. Interestingly, Intel's releasing their new chipset line early next year, so I'll probably wait til then and see what the i5 line has to offer with the new "Sandy Bridge" or whatever you call it technology. If I was going for an AMD chip I'd probably go for the hex-core (!) Phenom II X6 1055T but according to a number of reviews the hex core technology they use is still based on an old AMD chip or something and somehow it's not as good for games, but is better for multi-thread apps, whatever they are.

~Graphics Card
nVidia or AMD? >< too many decisions. I heard ATI makes better cards but nvidia makes better drivers, so the verdict's out there of which of the two is actually better. I think in terms of bang for buck AMD cards are top on the market, but if you're looking at high-performance cards, nVidia beats AMD hands down with its GTX460 series and above. Since I'm a gamer on a budget, I'll be leaning more towards AMD on this one. I looked at nvidia cards but the ones I wanted were too far out of reach for my budget ($300 and upwards) whereas with the AMD ones you could get a similar performance for 2/3rds the price. The AMD Radeon HD 5770 seemed quite popular among gamers on a budget with the nvidia GTS450 close behind. Both cards were around $230 which seems a reasonable amount to spend on a graphics card for a gaming rig.

~Motherboard
So I'll need a motherboard that fits nicely with the two options I've chosen up here. I'll be waiting for Intel's new chipset to come in so obviously this may be subject to change, although I've looked at what I need and what's on the market. Gigabyte seems to make decent gaming motherboards and are cheaper than the EVGA ones so I'll probably be getting one of theirs. The Gigabyte H55M-D2H looks to be within my price range and has all the support I need including support for ATI CrossfireX technology in case I decide to purchase another graphics card in the future to keep up with the play. All for a reasonable price of $160.


~RAM
The architecture of RAM components didn't seem particularly as important compared to CPUs and Video cards for gaming rigs, so I just decided to go with something generic - the Kingston HyperX 6GB 1600MHz C9 DDR3. Any 6GB card with DDR3 should be okay to use, right? That's another $199, not much more than the 4GB ones, so I decided I may as well got for 6 gigs of RAM.

~Hard Drive
Idk, anything that will fit all my anime and junk, and won't break the bank or lose my stuff. Western Digital seems the economical choice, with 1Tb for $109.



~DVD/Bluray Drive
A Bluray drive would be nice but I'm not spending an extra $100 just for that. The LG GH22Ns50 seemed economical, at $45.

~Network Adapter
Need something that works. And wireless too, please. The Asus PCI-G31 was only $38 and seemed like it would do the job.


~Power Supply
Prefer something not too noisy. The Great Wall 550SEL boasted good energy efficiency and ultra-silent running for only $79, and that seemed reasonable.


~Case
Something stylish that would keep the goods nice and cool. Everyone who builds custom rigs seems to use Coolermaster these days, probably because they have the best ventilation. Even the ones at the net cafes back in Auckland use them. Must be good. I pick the most stylish looking one, the Elite 430 mid-tower.
So I think that's all the hardware I'm going to need to build my new gaming rig. I'll wait til next year for Intel's Sandy Bridge and see what's new before jumping in, of course. It's pretty exciting, the prospect of building something like this (abeit a bit nerdy) since I've never done this sort of thing before and I'm expecting to get some good results out of this thing. I have absolutely no experience in the art of computer assembling whatsoever (unless you count the time I replaced a broken 64mb graphics card with a 128mb one on our 8 year old bomb of a desktop in Rotorua many years ago) so I'll have to get someone else to do it.

Let's see how much this is going to cost me altogether...

Intel Core i5 760 2.8 GHz Processor - $309
Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 5770 Graphics Card - $229
Gigabyte H55M-D2H Motherboard - $160
Kingston HyperX 6GB 1600 Mhz C9 DDR3 RAM - $199
Western Digital Blue Edition 1Tb Hard Drive - $109
LG GH22NS50 DVD Drive - $45
Asus PCI-G31 Wireless Network Adapter - $38
Great Wall 550SEL Power Supply - $79
Cooler Master Elite 430 Mid-Tower Case - $171

Total comes to $1339. I know I have a little leeway to upgrade 1 or 2 things if I wanted to and still stay within my budget. I still haven't decided on a monitor yet either. My sis asked me if I wanted her LG LED one for Christmas so I might just use that, although I still want to have a look around to see what's on the market at the moment. I'm more than open to suggestions if anyone who's bored enough to be reading this blog can suggest anything in the way of parts cuz i'm utterly clueless about these things and I just compiled the list above in 1 day on a quiet day at work. I'm all for value for money so I'm after the parts that will give me the best bang for buck, not the ridiculously expensive ones that are going to break my small collection of savings. Thanks for reading, feel free to comment (I think I removed the restrictions on profile requirements for comments now so you shouldn't need to sign in anymore).

A random kitten paid me a visit at work this afternoon. Being such a hot day the receptionists had left the back door open to uninvited guests, and despite being uninvited, this little guy made my day. I mean, it's not every day you get a little kitten stroll into your room at work, jump up on your lap and have a nap, and stay there for an hour. All the while, making soft little kitten noises and squeaks, of course. And combined with the warmness of its little body vibrating gently with the purring, it was certainly a delightful experience to be had. No-one had any idea who it belonged to or what it was doing there but apparently it wasn't uncommon for people at work to take home stray animals who turned up there. I've always wanted an animal at home. A rabbit, a cat, or even some fish would have been nice. Never even bothered trying to convince my parents though, especially since I've essentially moved out of home and probably wouldn't have the time to look after one in Auckland. Not that the apartment allows pets, anyway. Ah well, I'll just hope more of these little guys show up at work xD


In the end one of the doctors ended up taking her home. She got her immunised, de-flea'd and cleaned at the SPCA and now she has a new home. This little kitten certainly knew where to look to find herself an owner who would treat her well. Clever little thing ^^

So yesterday and today I've been taking people's blood and have been having about a 80% success rate so far and rising. I think I've been starting to get the hang of it. When I started I forgot really stupid things like taking the needle out before loosening the tourniquet and causing a big mess =X. I always feel real crap when I remove the needle and blood spurts out like a fountain everywhere and the patient looks away and you just know you did something wrong. Hey, it doesn't happen so much anymore, I swear I've gotten past that stage ><. Practice makes perfect, right? Although phlebotomy isn't really something you can practice at home (unlike piano, etc) ... so before I reach a level where I'm competent enough not to screw things up, a few people are going to have to get hurt >< gomen kudasai... I just can't stand hurting people. Even when people say it's OK I still feel bad because know if I was in their position I would say I was fine even if it hurt. Guess some people are more honest than me, but still =X

This weekend my dad's got some garden work lined up for me, probably involving mowing the lawns and weeding the vegetable patch. Gardening, haven't done that in a looong time. Not that I miss it too much, heh. So long as the weather's good I'm not complaining. On Sunday some people are coming over from Tauranga to visit the Redwoods along with some of our family friends here. I don't know many of the people coming so I guess it'll give me a chance to meet some new faces. Rotorua's pretty goddamn boring at the moment so I'm just sticking to whatever my parents are doing, not that I have anything better to do anyway. I do DDR it out on the Wii occasionally when I've got the energy but usually I'm so tired after work I just couch potato in front of some anime or manga. Of course, I don't have any internet or DDR in Murupara so that's pretty much all I do after work anyway when I'm staying out there. It's a good way to wind down, anyhow. I haven't had much of a chance to watch anime all semester so now I'm just catching up a little xD. I just finished Code Geass R2 yesterday night and it was fantastic. The ending caught me off guard but only a little, since a certain SOMEONE happened to spoil it for me right from the beginning T.T. I'm wondering which one I should start on next, maybe I'll take a look at Dark Angel ^^.

Okay, it's getting close to 11 so I think I'll quickly wash up and head off to bed, thx for reading =D

So I just arrived back in Rotorua yesterday night. I do wish I had better memories of this place, but some things can't be changed. Perhaps I ought to make some new ones. Even without being in the high school environment there should be opportunities to expand my world here if I just look hard enough. Yeah, Rotorua's not so bad, it was just my attitude towards life that was weighing me down all that time I was here. Living away from parents for three years doing a degree as hectic as med makes you grow up, and fast. I guess if there's one reason I'm glad I chose to do med, it could be that. Meh, however that happened, I'm glad that I did make it in, somehow.

First day of work in Murupara today, joy. Spent the entire day doing some super-boring auditing for the doctors as part of their quality control thingie. Almost fell asleep at my desk this afternoon. I'm glad nobody saw me, falling asleep on the first day of work is never a good way to make a good impression on your employers. Anyhow, that job should be done by tomorrow I think. After I'm finished with that job I'm going to do a phlebotomy course with one of the labs in Rotorua to gain some venopuncturing skillz and go back to the clinic and puncture some veins ^^. I'm hoping I won't cause too much mess for the nurses to clean up and actually be of some use, heh. I never was good with anything practical, besides maybe piano, if that counts.

Ah, so lonely out here in the rural town. I'm staying in Murupara overnight so I'll be relying on my laptop (filled with anime from Masaya's hard drive, of course xD), my DS and a few books for company tonight. No point in going out in a place like this, honestly. Even if you did somehow manage to get out without getting raped/mugged/assaulted there isn't anything here at all anyway. At least K Rd has places to go (and no, I don't mean brothels, either, if that's what you're thinking). Oh well, time to wind down with some Code Geass R2 for now, too tired to think of anything else to say here.

I wish I had them back in high school. But that doesn't matter now, all that matters is that I have them, and what's in the past doesn't matter anymore. I have to keep telling myself this, otherwise I'll never stop thinking of the high school life I could have had, the memories that should have been made, the people I should have met. Stop it now damn it, the past's gone, and the future awaits.

I woke up this morning feeling a bit under the weather for some reason. Probably I should have spent Sunday resting after going on a six-day long road trip to the Coromandel but instead I went and hung out in town. Meh, not the smartest decision I've made in my life but I sure as hell don't regret it. Time in Auckland is running devastatingly short with my parents coming up on Friday and taking me back on Sunday (with work commencing immediately on the following Monday, gah ><). When you want to spend time with people in a limited timeframe, you have to work around their schedule and to do that sometimes you have to make a few sacrifices, and that's just how it is. At the time of writing I've just received a text from a friend who's organising a get-together dinner before I head back to Rotorua for the summer. I feel truly blessed to have this opportunity to say my goodbyes to my friends before I head off. Thanks for organising this, you know who you are =) I saw the facebook movie yesterday. It wasn't a super-epic movie I'd have to say, but it was interesting nonetheless since most of the events were based on what happened in reality. It was a little heavy on the business and political side of things, but that's to be expected of any film involving large amounts of money. I did like the Harvard university setting, it's always nice to see what other kinds of university life are like across the world.

Coromandel road trip was epic. Although the accommodation wasn't quite as cosy as the ski lodge last time it was still pretty adequate and the facilities were good. Not having to bring sleeping bags on the bus is a definite plus, the beds were pretty good for a backpackers and there was some nice solid water pressure on those showers. The soundproofing could have used some improvement, the walls may as well have been made of paper for all the sound that carried through even while just having a normal conversation. i admit, the amount of noise generated during games of Pictionary or Monopoly are probably a bit above normal conversation level but for the noise to carry all the way through 2 doors and a corridor? Seems a bit dodgy. Perhaps because the building wasn't as insulated as the one at ski since at coromandel people usually come during summer, and the building needs to let in some ventilation? Lol, I'm thinking too much again xD.

We arrived at Hahei beach at around half four in the afternoon, iirc. Lol I couldn't blog during the trip cuz the internet there was devilishly expensive ($1 for 10 mins? Come on...><) so I'm trying to remember everything off the top of my head now. I think we just checked out the place and unloaded all our stuff that day. I remember having some nice egg omelette with some other stuff (cucumber, probably) along with some suspiciously soft and squishy rice. Lucky for me I wasn't on dinner on day one, because I was pretty damn tired that day if I remember. Well, not tired enough that I couldn't participate in the poker that happened that evening. I'm always up for a game or two. Or three. It's amusing how over the course of the evening we got to know people's poker personalities and know who's bluff to call and which people raise big only if they actually have something.
I think we may have played something else that night (jenga?) but trying to recall events from a week ago is hard for intellectually challenged people like me so I'll leave Monday for now.

Tuesday was beach day at Cathedral Cove. Breakfast was cereal and milk and was going to be cereal and milk for the next five days. And cucumber, if you're into that stuff. Oh yeah, before I forget I'd better mention that we came to the trip with a supply of about 20 odd cucumbers. Don't ask why, we just had them. Hence the having cucumbers with every meal, I don't think I want to touch any of those long green sticks for at least another week. Anyway, cucumbers aside, we went for a bit of a walk to Cathedral Cove, think it took us about 1 hour 30mins to reach there including the random stoppovers to gemstone bay and stingray beach to check out the scenery those places had to offer. Didn't see any stingrays that day, though. Apparently Cathedral Cove was where the opening to the 2nd Narnia movie was filmed. I guess New Zealand does have some pretty nice beaches, I probably take these sorts of things for granted after living in this place for so long. I didn't find this particular beach too special, though. Probably since it was quite small. Even beaches at the North Shore are longer and vaster than this one, according to some friends who live there. At least the weather was good. Even with sunscreen on I think I got a little tanned from that day, for some reason I tan real easily under the sun. Probably due to that bit of Indonesian blood in me, heh. Dinner was pasta and more pasta. Pasta is surprisingly good despite the simplicity of its preparation, with the right sauces. I should make it more often at home, instead of haing rice day in and day out.

We went on a 3 and a half hour kayak on Wednesday with some tour guides who showed us the ropes on basic kayaking and the various attractions around Hahei beach. We pretty much just went around the same places as we did on Tuesday (Gemstone bay, stingray beach, cathedral cove, etc), except this time experienced it from a different angle (from the sea! lolz xD). It was cool being shown the different types of animals that hung around the beach and the sea. It's been a while since I saw a gannet skydive into the sea to grab a fish at 120km/hr and the first time I've seen a stingray up so damn close (yeah, we actually got to see stingrays at stingray beach for a change!). Haha, Shaochen and me were always speeding away from everyone else and had to wait for the rest of the group a couple of times to catch up to us. At one point, we were so far ahead of them that they didn't even bother to wait for us before starting the tour commentary and by the time we paddle back to them they had already finished. Lolz.

Dinner was vegetarian sticky rice dumplings (compliments of mum and dad) and potatoes with stock. Apparently someone didn't know the difference between stock and gravy but she does now ^^;. Oh yeah we also went around the place looking for fruit trees in the backyards of various unoccupied holiday homes. According to our tour guide on the kayak he and his wife often went around picking figs, peaches and loquat from the various fruit trees that grew in the area. Fruit at the convenience store was so expensive that we didn't get any and since fruit doesn't keep so well we didn't get any prior to the trip either. Unfortunately we didn't find any figs or peaches but we did find a lot of grapefruit, lemons and loquat, which was better than nothing. The grapefruit was a tad sour, though. Had a bitter aftertaste too. Ah well, fruit is fruit.

Thursday was our free day. Sleeping in ftw. Woke up at around 9:30am and I was still the first one awake. So I played my DS, lol. Played a few games of chess with two guys over breakfast while waiting for the rest of them to wake up. I think the lovey-dovey couple went for a romantic stroll along the beach while the rest of us geared up for some tennis at the local dive shop. My arms still ached from kayaking but nonetheless had a good few hits (and probably even more misses). First time playing tennis for me, lol. But it was all good fun. Came home in the afternoon and hit the mahjong again with junk food and cucumbers. I managed to salvage the dodgy-looking overcooked rice from Monday's dinner sitting in the fridge by turning it into fried rice with mixed frozen vegetables and egg, which I thought was quite a success by how quickly it went. The guys fired up the barbecue and everyone had their meat and sausages while I had my veggie patties and dumplings in the cool evening breeze. I think that day we ended up gossiping a bit about other people which I found a bit boring so us guys went inside and went back to the mahjong. Yeah, we played a shitload of mahjong that day, it was epic.


On Friday we went to Hot Water Beach, supposedly one of the main attractions in the area. Despite it being a rather cloudy day the place was pretty damn busy and none of us realised exactly how small the actual thermoactive area was. We probably spent at least an hour poking around in the sand looking for a hotspot before finding a place near the tide where we started building fortifications to keep the tide out. Unfortunately despite it being low tide at that particular time we found our efforts to be in vain as our walls were constantly overrun by the massive tides that just washed all our work away. In the end we resorted to waiting for other people to leave their little hotspots and sniping their spots once they were gone. It was then I realised how damn hot that sand was, and why it was said to be used by the Maoris to cook people in. It was so hot that I would voluntarily let sea water in to actually cool it down to get it to the right temperature. I think I'll just stick to the Polynesian Spas in Rotorua for natural hot spas. God, if anyone stayed in that place for too long they'd surely get cooked to the point of being dinner.

After the beach we went on a short walk up around the various cliffs around the area where we took some pretty awesome photos of the beautiful scenery around the area. The weather wasn't spectacular that day but there was layer of mist covering the horizon which I thought was really pretty, in a mysterious sort of way.

For our last dinner we had rice again with some potato chips, egg omelette and those funny green sticks who's name escapes me at this moment - oh wait, of course - CUCUMBERS, duh xD. That night, six of us stayed up til 2am playing Monopoly which was epic. I went out pretty fast but still had lots of lols watching the rest of the game while retiring to the position of real estate agent and banker. Probably the craziest game of Monopoly I've ever played, oh the lols.

We had to gaps the place by 10am in the morning, so couldn't sleep in too much, unfortunately. They even kicked us out in the living and dining areas so we resorted to playing mahjong on the outdoor tables. It didn't last long, however as there were mosquitoes everywhere and people were getting bitten. So we packed up and headed to the park instead. Not really much to do around that area besides browse overpriced gift shops and hang out, really. Our bus came at noon, so we had a bit of time to kill. Probably the longest couple of hours in my life. At least the bus trip back was good. I was rather tired and managed to get some shuteye on the bus. All in all, a great trip with awesome people, I won't forget it. Well, except maybe the cucumbers. I don't really wana remember that Dx.

Thanks Lester for taking all those amazing pictures! U r da man =D

I woke up at 5am yesterday morning to make these babies. Took 3 hours to make them and were gone within 15mins at Ice's picnic at her house. I'm still pretty inexperienced at making these things (hence the long time it took to prepare) but I was pretty surprised at how well they turned out. My first few onigiri turned out a real mess, being the health-conscious person I am I ran the classic error of attempting to overstuff the filling (since I had plenty of real good vegetables in there), resulting in the rice ball pretty much exploding as soon as it was out of the mould. Now I know exploding onigiri might sound like fun, but trust me it isn't. Those which I tried to overstuff ended up in a huge sticky mess of rice, filling and seaweed which stuck to the chopping board, the table, to fingers, or pretty much any surface really. I was faced with the dilemma of wondering what the hell to do with such a big mess of fail onigiri, until I had the sudden idea of just pressing the big mess into the mould and wrapping it up with seaweed. Yeah, those 6 onigiri at the back were failures. Still, 9/15 is still alright, isn't it? That's exactly 60% success, which sounds pretty passable as far as I'm concerned. At least I managed to salvage those failures into something respectable-looking (and hopefully tasting), sometimes I surprise myself at my own ingenuinity, heh.

So, had some good times at the picnic yesterday with some good weather, good company and good food. I won't say anything about the unexpected tramp through the forest apart from the fact that I would have worn my walking shoes if I knew such an expedition was imminent. Not that I mind walking too much, at least it wasn't like muddy or anything. Played some SC2 afterwards at iPlay which was pretty fun. Almost won my first Raynor party, lolz.

Ah, looks like it's almost time to go. Today we're supposed to be meeting up for ice-cream at Giapo where they've got some kind of deal going on. I have to get the laundry out from the wash and hang it up before I go pick some people up from uni who need to get some stuff from my place for Coromandel. I guess I'll be going now.