must be toros in the atmosphere so this past weekend i went to play in the Stampede (v2.0) in Bathurst. at the risk of using a hyperbole it was pretty much the coldest place that any one has ever played any ultimate frisbee. my calves objected to me playing by choosing to cramp up at the same time.

on day one we made it thru to the semis undefeated.. but lost on golden point after i literally crashed out of the game. i managed to run into my own teammate whilst (successfully) attempting a D. it probly wouldnt have been too bad if i hadnt had a similar collision on the previous game. i stopped by the hospital for the usual blaise doctor telling me to take 2 tablets and call him in the morning. useless.

the party was ok. i was kinda floating on a rather toxic mix of panadine forte, sambucca, citrus vodka and melon snaaps. it was pretty fun i spose im still no fun at parties...

day two was the hat. where my team lost on golden point in the grand final. boo. i played pretty badly.. but i did get a big hand block which got a few cheers from some onlookers. the prize for winning was a case of Crownies.. and i ended up sneaking a couple anyway so i dont really care that we lost. there were special rules for this hat, with girls scoring 2 points. as well as layouts and greatests.

i made the terrible decision to play league on monday. my ribs are still sore from the weekend's multiple collisions.. and we won both games so easily that it wouldnt have made a difference if i played or not. especially since the points i played i was pretty much just mucking around and not doing anything particularly productive.

in another amusing story. I sorta had a car accident, where i ran into the back of another car at a traffic light. it was this old lady who was maybe, and we both get out of our cars to inspect the damage.. to which she decides that ive removed a fair bit of paint from the rear of her car. i dont argue, then she goes back to her car .. at which point im assuming she is getting a pen and paper to exchange insurance information. but instead she just drives off. wtf? so i was thinking "uh.. i hit you, you arent supposed to do a runner". i dunno what she was thinking.. unless it was like a stolen car or something, but then why even get out to have a look?

Labels: accidents, driving, frisbee, injuries

i dont go to parties baby, cos people tend to freak me out so i finally won a hat tourney this. like 4 years ago i played in a hat final and lost on golden point.. and since then ive never really gotten close to winning.. so its nice to finally win. we managed to go undefeated all season with our rather stacked team.
i played like suck in the grand final.. but luckily my team played well to make it look like my terrible throws were actually ok. my forehands throws were all over the shop.. i wouldve subbed myself off.. cept we had no subs due to none of our beginners ever turning up.

however i did score a ton of freebies that nite. giant straw hat for winning the hat, nationals wine cooler for designing the logo, a frisbee holding backpack and a water bottle from a botched jersey ordered like 9 months ago. not bad =)

indoor started this week.. and i managed to squeeze in a pickup game before my 2 back to back late games. we won all three although the pickup game was actually a forfeit. i did the stupidest play ive done in a long time in the last game. we were up by a lot and in the last 5 seconds of the game i tried to make a ludicrous layout D. on the play i not only fouled the guy, i corked my thigh really badly.. on a meaningless play. there wasnt enought ime for either of us to score.. so the only possible result from that play was the end of the game.. or.. me injuring myself. this was compounded by the twisted knee and jarred pinky finger i sustained in the pickup (also a meaningless) game... so so stupid.

other than frisbee i had a rather busy friday last weekend. on top of a family dinner at this ramen place in eastwood.. i managed to make it to 2 farewell parties and also a birthday gig. how unusual for me.. id normal jsut pike on one or all of those cos i cbf turning up. also im so socially awkward, at some point in time i got sick of small talk.. which doesnt leave much at parties where u dont really know anyone... its all like.. "hey a person i vague recognise from uni 5 years ago, but was never really frens with"... "oh, hey.. i havent seen you in years.. are you still working at that same place?" ... *look around the room* ... *attempt to sound witty with esoteric reference but end up sounding smug* ... ... *explain what ultimate frisbee is* ... *absorb mocking about it* ... *attempt to sound interesting with other topical banter* ... *get a beer* .. *stand around looking at a painting or vase or some other inanimate object* .. *try and find an opportunity to leave* ...

luckily this time i actually did have somewhere else to be. i went to see Chris Duke and the Royals at the Excelsior. and i got there jsut in time to for the start of their set. although they rocked out the crowd was mostly ppl they knew (i think) and the dancing wasnt the normal skanking u get, but some weird shoving moshing instead. how odd. also they removed the reference to frisbee in the frisbee song.. but i did get mentioned in a shout out before the song so w00t for that.

Labels: angst, frisbee, injuries

everything was going perfect until..... last nite was the div1 final at hills league.. and boy did we play woe at the start. we kept dropping easy ones and were down 0-4 in about 5 mins. but we stepped it up after that.. out scoring them 8-2 the rest of the way. i managed a few good D's and another greatest! thats two in three days =p

i havent won a league since we won the first 2 of the first 3 seasons i played (thats a long time ago), so this was pretty exciting. although i did get cleated badly on my already blood blistered big toe.. causing a rather painful/icky mess in my shoes. bleh.. it probly did it some good though.. cos that toe is much less bad than the other one now..

Labels: frisbee, injuries

This is no Bridget Jones! I've done nothing much except play frisbee since last post.. so my shoulder/knee/calves/feet/toes are all telling em that i need a day off =p My toes are actually the worst.. both my big toes are suffering from a weekend of playing in new cleats. They both have a horribly bulgy blood blister under the nail which threatens to cause some sort of gross toe killing explosion.

anyhoo.. regionals was disappointing.. we didnt win a game and finished in dead last. Which was in some ways quite predictable.. but i was clinging to a small shread of hope that we'd rise to the occassion and topple one of the teams which we supposedly had no chance of beating. while we werent winning anything on the field i did manage to get thoroughly plastered at the party.. as the numerous facebook photos will illustrate. My streak of 10 solid years of drinking without chucking came to an sorry end... as the bathroom in "pub across the road" said hello to the previously lost Hogsbreath ribs and steak..

on monday night was the first week of the NSL Hat.. my teams won both games.. partially due to the fact that two of our absolute beginner girls dropped out. i didnt really contribute heaps except a waist high foot block and a contentious (arent they all contentious) greatest.

in other news: if you have a chance, go and check out the Wombats, theyve got some pretty cool songs.

Labels: frisbee, injuries

..woke up with hope and only found tears... gah!! i passed on a whole day of overtime (at double time its worth probly $600) to go to regionals this weekend.. but it looks like im not going to be able to play anyway =( at training on tuesday i layed out and landed badly on my right shoulder.. and now my right arm doesnt work properly anymore! gah!!! i think i might be doomed never to play in major tournaments. before mixed regionals i had minor tear in my quad.. before mixed nationals i managed to tear a ligament in my left knee.. and now its open regionals.. so ive apparently pinched a nerve in my right shoulder.. which doesnt sound that bad.. except it means that my right arm doesnt really do what i tell it to do. which makes it quite hard to throw and/or catch. not to mention to ridiculous pain everytime i move.

*sigh* welcome to my life..

in other news: i went to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show last nite at Starcity. it was pretty cool, but the sound engineers kept making stupid misakes like accidently turning off a mic.. or doing something which resulting in heaps of feedback .. bleh.. we had pretty awful seats but it was still pretty cool cos we were close at least.

Labels: frisbee, injuries, musicals

Sharing the Love so i played in my first tourney of the new year. an opens one dayer. we finished 5th which is ok, but we only lost one game the whole day, which is mad. i played terrible in the game we lost, but pretty well in other games. my backhand has totally fallen apart, im not sure what to do about it. it works fine in practice.. but just disappears during the game. *sigh*

at the end of the tourney, a batch of pizzas turned up really late (after most people had left) so the few of us remaining were taking home whole pizzas and more. i also scored a box of corn flakes for the office =)

on the way home i stopped off at RPA (and no i didnt injure myself, someone else did) and we saw Tetsuya of the restaurant in the emergancy room. he sat next to me whilst waiting to see a nurse and i offered the lady with him a seat. but she declined.

in other news: i finally purchased a wireless router for my macbook air. also ive named him Air McLovin =p


.. this just in.. it looks like i need to work during Regionals.. gah. i guess i can get someone to fill in.. but its 8 hours at double time for watching a disaster recovery test. thats a lot of money to lose for a tourney....

Labels: frisbee, macbook

something's in the air so most of this week has been work and frisbee. i played 3 games over tuesday and wednesday which went ok knee-wise. although i did get sandwiched in div3 on tuesday and took a rather hard bump to my left bad knee. i had to sub off, which was probably better for our team, cos i was sucking badly that game. pretty much every forehand i threw was a throw away.. or ended up going to the wrong person. *gah*

wednesdays games went a lot better. i scored a Callahan in the first game.. and in the second game i was on a totally stacked team so i didnt really need to do much to look good. i played in the cup for msot of the game and my knees seemed to handle it pretty well, although we didnt have many long points so i cant say it was a really good test.

in other more exciting news... ive pre-oredered a Macbook Air! yes it is an impulse buy.. and there are already problems with it.. but it is sexy.. and i never buy stuff =p

Labels: frisbee, macbook

one step closer today i found out that ive got an interview for the JET Programme.. so im one more baby step towards japan.. yay me. it also makes me scared of being returning home to some kevin rudd created recession.. instead of in a comfy govt job in 2 years (meep)

on the weekend i was quite busy. saturday involved yum cha at eastwood with some frisbee ppl.. it was ok. frisbee ppl are very white.. and they didnt really know what they were doing at yum cha.. which is kinda hilarious sometimes.

the rest of the day was futilely trying to depend a few patches on the Domain for the Jazz that was to be there later in the day. we were trying to retain a spot for about 20 ppl but for the first 4 hours we only had 4 ppl to hold off neighbouring picnic rugs who were slowly encroaching.

during the actual show we were squeezed in due to lack of rug space.. and i was too wasted thru most of it to know what was going on. i had this rather horrible drink which consisted of red wine, apple juice, coke and port. i dont recommend it. we also stopped for one of Harrys famous pies. mmm, good for sobering up a lil bit.

sunday involved waking up with a hang over.. and frisbee training. at the start of training it was painfully hot.. but later on it was pouring rain. so in the end it was not a very productive training session at all. the good news is that my knees are feeling better.. not quite ready for high level competition yet.. but theres a few tourneys in 1-2 months which im feeling good pretty good about now.

Labels: frisbee, injuries, japan

why do you build me up buttercup
bleh.. im exhausted from a day of oversleeping and slowly vegetating on the sofa during my first RDO of the year. i have no energy to do things nowadays.. and im eating lots of crap.. resulting in a rather roundly new look to the 2008 model.

last nite we had a frisbee team dinner at some jap place in Crows Nest. twas a good turnout for a frisbee thing, usually everyone just pikes =p the food was ok, cept the tonkatsu was a tad overcooked. we had about a dozen people and got a bunch of various dishes.. but our ordering pattern was very ad hoc and we werent really sure if we'd over-ordered or under-ordered. im always quite suprised how little japanese food people have tasted.. some people have never tried it! how does that even happen?

it seems to be tradition to end a team dinner some sort of ludicrously late finish due to sitting/standing around talking about stuff which may or may not contain a D&M. luckily i had an RDO today since this one made it till about 6am. it was mild on the intensity scale although i almost cried at one point. i wont go into the details here because itll be a story thats been too may times on this very blog =p

Labels: dm, frisbee

I got 99 Problems, but a bitch aint one..
hrm.. no posts for more than 2 months.. i think thats a record.

i totally cant remmeber anything thats happened much the past while. a large part of that time was taken up by Mixed Nationals for frisbee.. and training multiple times a week for mixed nats.

i probably did some other things in there.. i think i went to see Powderchair at some point.. and Hairspray.. and Stardust.

oh and i tore a ligament in my knee. *hobbles*
the doc said itll heal in 3 weeks.. that was 5 weeks ago and im still limping.

also i need to do my tax return. its ludicrously complex now cos i have an ABN.. and multiple forms of income.. i dont know what to do.

my new short term plan is to move to Japan next year.. then move to Brazil after that, which apparently has the largest japanese population outside of japan [citation needed].

Labels: frisbee, tax

you are the bluest light
hrm. so i havent posted in a month. i guess that must mean im either really busy.. or really boring. actually its a bit of both.

this weekend that just passed was all late nights .. gah! im too old for this.
friday: retro (4am), saturday: bloc party + shelby (6am), sunday: burger rings and wii (2am), monday: frisbee + Mannequin (3am).

bloc party was so insanely good i cant even explain it. despite being an all ages gig full of the skankiest teeny bops this city has ever produced, it totally rocked my world like never before. This was better than the gig i saw in Vancouver.. although a lot of that was because we werent in seats this time.

i went to retro, bristol arms or shelbourne three times in a week =p my knees didnt really appreciate it though. theyre becoming very retro actually.

on monday (Bank Holiday) i decided to bake some peanut butter an choc chip cookies to take to frisbee. they went ok, not great cos i didnt really know what i was doing at all. the first batch i undercooked.. and the second batch i overcooked =p so half of them were chewy and half were like rock cakes.

i also saw the movie Knocked Up.. which was ok.. but a bit of a chick flick.
im sure i did some other things in the last month, but i totally cant remember what they were. probly frisbee.. and drinking.. and Istana.. and something else...

Labels: baking, frisbee

why do you build me up?
hrm.. posts are becoming more scarce lately. but thing interesting is happening really.

last week i went out to our disaster recovery site, which was pretty cool. its in the middle of nowhere, as these things tend to be.. so its rather desolate. it was mildly interesting to experience what it would be like to work out of the city. i dont think its for me.. too quiet.. feels like im some post-apocalyptic movie.

i also caught the Transformers movie.. (may contain spoilers) and i was only mildly disappointed. i mean it was bad.. but not much more so than i expected. it suffers from tons of cheesy dialogue and cliches, as well as its share of plot holes, but the CG is totally awesome.

The story is not like the original cartoons, i.e. no energon cubes or space bridge. After watching it i found out that the whole All-Spark concept is from Beast Wars, and so it was not totally made up out of no where. but if u never watched beast wars then u will probly be thinking "wtf? is this?". however it isnt all that bad if u can get over the unfeasibility of it all =p

what i was most annoyed by was the dialogue.. it was terrible.. almost Phantom Menace bad.. almost. just awful. so many ppl rated this as like 10/10 or 5/5 and im like it was ok.. but surely this must knock it down at least one star.

Labels: frisbee, movies

say goodbye, itll make me wanna kiss you
on friday we had outback steakhosue.. mmm.. and then we went for a play date with Tiffany. with some games as the plastic food game.. and a curious card game which goes something like this "these cards are yours, these are mine, i win!". but sitting thru Bratz and Hi-5 dvds were all too much and had to lie down. quite awesomely, at the end she proceed to clean up the millions of toys scattered around the place and put them in boxes and stow them away. since she is like 3 some of the things (like toy ovens and cars) were taller than her =p

at frisbee training today we had this vertical jump test where u jump up and grab a disc at different heights to help judge when u can get it. i got 290cm from a standing start.. and i also got 290cm from a running jump.. which is quite strange. i wasnt feeling that fantastic though. i easily got 300cm last week.. so i dunno whats going on.

i went to the swans game last nite.. which was fun.. and they won convincingly. i got to sit in the SCG members' area, which id never done before. but annoyingly you need to have a collared shirt to sit there (unless ur a girl). i was however, wearing a tshirt and a hoodie, so i went back to the entertainment quarter to try to impulse buy some shirt which cost less than the price of just buying another ticket ($29) =p i ended up with a $25 brown polo from espirit.. so even if it never wear it again it saved me $4. hehe

lastly heres an amusing conversation from car park elevator:

drunk kiwi: haro haro!
k: dood. not cool.
kiwi: *slur* can u speak new zealand?
k: um.. baa baa black sheep..

p.s.
do u think its creepy if someone tells you that they had a dream about you.. but then then wont tell you what the dream is about? its happened to me a 3 times in a my life and frankly thats about 3 times too many =p

Labels: afl, frisbee

go away, give me a chance to miss you
hrm.. it used to seem like a long time between posts when i missed a day or two.. but its been like 10 days now and i dont really feel like i have anything much to say. certainly nothing that profound.

anyways.. last week in frisbee i did a 'greatest' =) which is like when you jump out of bounds and catch the disc, then throw it again before you land. i almsot did it twice in one night.. but no one on my team was paying attention to catch the disc again =p

i snuck in an extra frisbee session this week by going to hills training, which included the vertical leap gizmo. its basically this big pole with a disc attached to the top to test how high you can grab a disc out of the air.

this week frisbee was "rained out" which means not enough ppl turned up cos they were scared of the rain. we still had pick up games in the pouring rain which is always fun. there was some guy there who wanted to fight me for some reason.. and im like "dood, what are you? like in high school?" .. and most of the guys were like "yeh" =p some of them were up to 10 years younger than me (gah i feel old now)

on the way to frisbee i accidently left my handbrake on for about half the trip.. is that bad? it sounded terrible and im like "wtf? why is there no power" =p

in the world of java wev development, ive been playing with some new things lately like Spring Web Flow and a lot of different methods for building UI like pagination. sadly none seem to be that great. web based UI is always so buggy its so frustrating. and on top of that, most of the business user requirement ambiguity lies in the UI, which means lots of last minute changes there (gah). oh how id love to be in one of those places where a designer builds the UI and the coders do the backend.

yesterday was anzac day public holiday so some of us went around to hemas to discuss investing.. which was mostly the ever popular real estate vs stocks debate. i think stocks won in the end.. but it will probably continue at a later date =p we also went to see the movie Sunshine at Towers. it got a bunch of really good reviews from all over the place, which is pretty rare for a sci fi nowadays. but i have to say i was a bit disappointed with it in the end. whilst it looked cool and there were some interesting concepts in it, it kidna tailed off at the end. actually the first half of the movie was really interesting... but some exec probly said "this is boring" and made them put some stupid hollywood crap into the end to make it more "exciting" =p

on the tues nite before the holiday we headed to shelles to watch some Black Books and to consume large amounts of wine, cheese and leftover easter eggs. mm. it was a bit of a pig out session, but its been a while for me, so i wasnt too fussed as i scoffed down caramello eggs =p

Labels: driving, frisbee, java, movies

that boy's not right in tha head
so this week has been mostly filled with java coding and frisbee. ive kinda been tacked onto the end of a few projects at work just because we dont have enough ppl to finish them and i seem to be the best going around at writing dodgey hacks to make horrible projects look like they sorta work =p

we've started using maven instead of ant which is a new build system that no one seems to know how to use properly. theres a lot of "hey it works on my machine" going around when ppl cant use it. a typical conversation goes like this..

slave: i cant get this to compile
ian: uh. it works on my machine. see *points to screen*
slave: well none of us can get it to work, so it must be broken
ian: yeh either that or you all did the same mistake *points to blatantly obvious configuration error which couldve been spotted in less time than it takes to complain to me*

ive also been working on this CRM project outside of work, which seems to be dragging on for longer than id like. but it does give me something to do i guess. due to the rebuild mentioned in last post, i had to reinstall Java and my dev tools. and to test it out i started to write a hello world application, which soon turned into a mini text adventure game about a guy in a dungeon. its pretty fun even =p i might finish it one day if i can think of a good story to go with it.

i played frisbee mon, tues, wed and sun this week. and i considered going on thursday to mac uni training. despite all this frisbee i think im getting worse at it =p my forehands arent going anywhere good, and my backhand is bad as it always was.

on saturday i went to the Reel Big Fish + Guttermouth concert at the roundhouse at UNSW. it was pretty mad, i havent been in a decent mosh/skank pit for a while and this one was not too violent due to it being an all ages gig. one amusing this that happened was these 2 sweaty high school kids who thought it would it be a good idea by pouring the contents of a bottle they found on the floor over their heads. unfortunately the bottle was full of coke =p so the first one got coke all over his face and down his shirt, while the other one ran away laughing hysterically.

it also wasnt as loud as normal.. usually my ears are ringing well into the next day.. but they were fine even on the way home. either the concerts have gone soft.. or im jsut too hardcore.

:: the music of this week has been The Fratellis and the Fort Minor mixtape =)

Labels: frisbee, java, music

so monochrome and so lukewarm
so i went to UTS frisbee training yesterday cos i had time to kill before meeting up with hoy and jjm to go to the all new Pancakes on the Rocks. which turned out to be not nearly as all-new as i thought it was going to be. it was closed to for ages.. and listed as "closed for renovations", yet it looked pretty exactly the same as before =p it was suggested that "renovations" was a code word for "pest control" .. since that place has been known to have the odd bug/rat around the place =p

Labels: frisbee

*bends space and time with mind*
gah.. another week! time sure is flying. but alas not much has been achieved in the recently passed week. yesterday i went to frisbee to pick up the Spirit prize, which was a rather average looking face towel with nice embroidery of NSL Spirit Winners 2007. i also managed to watch the Woebags go from a score of 5-1 down to 6-12 in the div 4 finals! a rather poor second half to say the least =p i played a lil bit of shoeless pickup (in work clothes), it was fun, although i could only play at about 60% due to my various injuries which just got worse as i managed to cramp up both calves.. despite not really running or jumped at all. *sigh*

we are getting ever closer to obtaining a grad (yay). my boss is very slowly trawling thru a stack of 66 resumes to get a short list of interview-worthy candidates. a whole bunch get thrown straight out of they arent permanent residents (which u need to be to work at the govt). one guy interestingly had "other" under "are you a permanent resident" which is never a good thing =p

on the weekend i managed to make an arduous trip into the city (which took forever due to cityrail woeness) basically i left my house at 2pm and arrived in the city at close to 4pm. at one point i was on a bus which somehow "forgot" to stop at martin place.. and went onward to kings cross without so much as a peep from the driver. like it didnt even go near martin place, it missed it by 3 blocks. needless to say the passengers (including me) who wanted to get off at martin place were none too impressed.

daily stock check: +$414

Labels: frisbee, rba

not a gay cowboy
so reckless layouts have finally caught up to me. im more injured than ever before after getting cleats to the hip .. and finishing the game with ambulance-worthy knee to the back. gah! normally i bounce right back up from such collisions, but my old bones dont spring back like they did when i was young =p

after waiting a million years at the hospital.. the doc says i should be fine with a lil bit of rest and a lot of bits of Nurofen. she says i can take nurofen 3 times a day along with panadol 4 times a day.. mm druggy. moni was nice enough to give me a ride home at 1am.. cos my parents accidentally left our home phone off the hook and my brother was too busy playing Zelda to answer his phone.

anyhoo im at home today.. not doing much get taking drugs and grimacing every now and then. also playing some guitar hero, which i suck at. you would think that spending all my days typing at a keyboard would make my fingers just a lil bit nimble, but theyre all just unco =p

.. earlier this week i went to see the new Bond movie with the work peeps. I was skeptical at first, but the trailer looked good and it started out ok. then they reached the texas-holdem scene.. or should i say river of endless scenes. once they reached the casino (which you can imagine happens quite early in a movie called Casino Royale) the movie spiralled into a hole of cheesy acting and long winded "drama" if you can call it that =p theyre were some limited action scenes not very subtled squeezed in, but frankly all the best bits happen at the start of the movie. the best scene involved some jackie-chan-like parkour scenes at a construction factory.. but even that wasnt the best ive seen =p it gets 6/10 from me only because ill probly watch it again and think it "wasnt that bad" as i tend to do with bond movies.

on a related note.. heres my list of fav bond movies =)

1. Goldeneye


2. Live and Let Die


3. Goldfinger


4. Moonraker


5. From Russia with Love

notably absent are bond movies with roger moore or timothy dalton =p

Labels: frisbee, injuries, movies