Mr. competitive… you can call me that sometimes. In fact, I don’t think there is any sport or game that I don’t play to win. If I suck at that game, I still give it all I got. I don’t get people who play games just purely for fun, even if it means tossing the game. I mean of course when I play games, I play for fun as well but the ‘fun’ in the game comes from winning or playing my hardest, ie playing to win I guess. I can’t see their point of view ay. I mean I really cannot see how they find it fun to play half-heartedly. Hmm actually playing with friends is quite satisfying as well, when you see the smile on their faces when they win etc. So maybe there is another way to play games…but that’s not my point. So actually my quote “I play to win, so what do you play? Play to lose?” was not an arrogant statement, but a puzzled one just because I didn’t understand how to play without winning. I think its just me, its just my nature to be super competitive, and sometimes other people don’t get me either…

Haha I remember the good old times, even in primary school I was ‘this’ competitive. In standard 1, I remember 3 of us having this who can write faster competition. I can say that the bump on the side my middle finger came from that. Then there were other competitions where my whole class (ie all my friends as my whole class was filled with students who skipped a year, so I practically knew everyone) would be given like 5 pages of maths to do. And we always have a race to see who can finish fastest while making the least mistakes. I was pretty quick…but was very careless as well. Oh and even this was evident in exams, we always went into an exam to see who will get the higher mark… while finishing the exam the fastest. So every time someone finished, you can hear this big ‘ahhhhh!’ or maybe a bang on the table, or ‘drop your pencil on the table so loudly that everyone could hear’. To be honest, I was pretty quick doing those tests, but my marks were in the middle of my group of friends. We did this during maths as well, our group of friends always finish the homework we were given in class cause as soon as we could start doing, we did it (as fast as we could).

Then we played invaders, oh my favourite game at that time. I look forward to extra classes because of that, and also all the stupid competitions we have in that class. It was always before extra class (to catch up on standard 4 work because…we skipped that year =P) where all of us used the whole school as the boundary and played invaders. Think of it as tag sort of, but when your tagged, then you are ‘converted’ to the other team. The game ends when everyone was tagged. So it usually starts off slowly, but as soon as someone got tagged, then it finishes very quickly. During those times there was a type of hierarchy, everyone knew that Han Yang (he was one of the 2 that was in my class since standard 1) was the fastest, so he is usually the last to be chased. I was the top 3 fastest I can say proudly, but I couldn’t run as fast as he did although I kept trying every time he chased me or I chased him.

Magic the gathering! Man those were the days. I didn’t have a deck so I borrowed other people’s deck. I remember how we used to have these massive tournaments in class and we even have rankings going. HaHa ohh I remember the Magic vs Mech warrior game! That has got to be the funniest game I saw. 1stly because Mech warriors have life points in the thousands and magic have creatures with attack and life of up to 10 usually(there are some exceptions). And to beat a mech warrior deck, you got to make the opponent deck out, while magic, you only have 20 life. So imagine how we changed the rules so we could make the game work. I proudly say that Magic won that day =) Good times, good times.

Continued…

I actually learnt the guitar at Kuratau. So hey, so not the whole ‘Kuratau experience’ was about booze and partying. Steve taught me how to play the chords for Oasis – Live forever. Then other songs that I could play with a limited ability to are Greenday – Wake me up when September ends, stand by me, smoke on water by deep purple and nothing else matters by Metalica (3 of them taught by John).

Oh living in a house with cricket mad people does have an influence on you. Since I am a sports mad person, sooner than later I began to enjoy watching a bit of cricket on TV. Although, I still don’t find cricket a sport that I can watch for hours. I can do that with basketball though =)

The locals at Kuratau are a bunch of friendly people. I didn’t really meet a whole lot of them but at new years, when we walked past them, they all wished us a happy new year and waved at us. Also they seem to have a thing for lowered, bouncy cars with crappy horns. The lancer guys in particular. Haha they were a total crack up and we always mocked them when they drove past. I am sure you can get a concussion by just sitting in that car or even a bruised brain. Then there were their friends, who owned this car with a crappy sounding horn that sounded so bad it was funny. Oh I remembered, the lancer guys did stop by at our place 1 night to ask us to come to a party up the street. None of us turned up to the party but boy I’m sure we missed a lot =P

The security… ooo we mocked them as well. On the 3rd or 4th day when we were playing cricket, they came up to us, in fact to Steve and told him that there was an alcohol ban. He gave us a warning and told us to put away all our booze. After that day, every time we see the security van drive past, we always wave at them. JJ even got a photo of the security guys.

Other highlights include:
Matt thrown into the paddling pool by Steve and Cam. In doing so, they almost pulled his pants right off. That was such a funny sight.

Mad wrestling matches. I had a wrestle with Steve, once just one on one, another I was double teamed by him and Cam. (My support ditched me that night). I had about 2 wrestles with Chris, cracked my neck during 1 of those ones. Then the major one with Cam, which started as ‘playfighting’ and ended up into quite a serious fight. A foot to the throat and a kick to the head later, the fight stopped. Gosh, it must be testosterone.

Shaving cream paranoia. Sleepless nights for some, but I wasn’t that worried. Although I did take some precautions, such as sleeping on the other side of the bed. Dom, Nick and Cam got creamed while sleeping. We almost got Jenna, Nick got his brother and Chris ended up with a face full of cream. Even Steve’s car got creamed. No one was safe….

Weather was perfect, you couldn’t ask for better weather that week. It rained when we got there and when we left. In between, it was sunny the whole time. This though caused some massive sunburns. Everyone had a hardout tan line after a day out biscuiting or waterskiing. Ellen and Sarah were probably the worst sunburned out of all of us. Sarah even got blisters on her lips… ouch

Other notable quotes: “This is my disgusted face”, “I don’t eat this shit” , “I play to win, so what do you play to? Play to lose?”

Here ends my summary of ‘New years at Kuratau 2005-06’. Feel free to add anything that you guys remembered that I forgot on the forums =). Good times, good times…

Continued…

Our theme song was Numa numa. It was the first song we all heard on the way there, and we probably heard the song everyday we were there. It was the 1st song we heard in 2006 and it was the 1st song we heard on the way back from Kuratau. Steve was probably the only one (and Matt maybe) that heard the song before but everyone sang along to that song during the massive mosh at new years. That was awesome! 19 of us, all jumping up and down, singing along to the song (the only words we knew were numa numa yei but hey it was a great moment). The atmosphere was electrifying. Here is the chorus from the song (original title is dragostea din tei) and the translation

Vrei sã pleci dar nu-mã, nu-ma iei
Nu-mã, nu-mã iei, nu-mã, nu-mã, nu-mã iei
Chipul tãu si dragostea din tei
Mi-amintesc de ochii tãi.

You want to leave but you don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want to take me, don’t want don’t want don’t want to take me.
Your face and the love from the linden trees,
And I remember your eyes.

An hour or 2 before new years, Steven, Stephen and I kept starting random countdowns. Since everyone was quite drunk and didn’t have a clue of the time, they always join in on our little countdown. “10! 9! 8! 7!……2! 1! Yay!” *take a drink* Then someone points out, “Hey its only 11 o clock or hey its only 11.15!” We did those countdowns like 5 times before the actual one at new years and everytime other people join in and thought it was 2006 already.

Quotes and popular sayings from Kuratau include “Mr Burgandy, you have a massive erection”, “Moisture is the essence of wetness and wetness is the essence of beauty”, “ *gay cough* *gay cough* I think I got the black lung pops”, “ You’re my boy blue! You’re my boy! ”, ” I play to win! ”, “Coma estas bitches” “Gosh…freaking idiot! ” , “Eat your food Tina, you stupid llama” , “Are you drinking 1% because you think your fat? You’re not. You could drink whole if you wanted to”, "Awesome", " That is awesome", "*insert name here*- nator", " *insert name here*- maester".

Popular objects: Flashing Nemo, frayed knot, poker set, and shaving cream

Games we played (all before new years because after that we all got too tired and wasted to do anything except watch tv, swim, waterski and play cards. Poor Cameron, he missed all the fun). Volleyball, cricket, poker, jinrami (card game that took a billion years to finish), chess, scrabble, backgammon (I didn’t play that), othello, 3 man, various drinking games that was crap at the end, circle of death, ‘who can down their drink fastest win’, hackey, some kind of football, a variation of basketball, biscuit wars, last man standing at the pontoon (or something like that) and many rock offs. Plus mini golf at Turangi in the rain.

To be continued….

I’m back! And what a trip it was. So here it is, highlights, the sights and sounds of ‘New years at Kuratau 2005-06’.

8.45 was the time Steve was meant to pick me up. I got up quite early that day, I couldn’t sleep at all the previous night. This always happen to me when I’m looking forward to something. Like at standard 6 when my friend was going to teach me how to play Magic the Gathering or the night before the ball, and also the night before we went to Whangamata last year. Steve arrived at like 9 and I found out that the car was completely full with both Matt’s and his stuff in it. So I had to ditch some food and pack my bags all into the back seat of the car. Man Cam isn’t going to fit into this car I thought. So off we went to Cam’s house. And after some repacking we decided that there is definitely NO WAY we were going to fit 4 of us into 1 car. Cam then decided to drive to Kuratau as well. 1st stop, Rotorua. It was so crowded, we took 4.5 hours to take 5 luge rides. It was all worth it though. Many hits and crashes later (I crashed and fell off my luge, thanks Steve!), we left Rotorua for Kuratau. It was quite a scary drive there though. The rain was crazy. It was so heavy, we couldn’t see anything on the road except Cam’s tail lights. Steve was practically only looking at Cam’s lights to judge where the road was.

Quote of the day: while playing poker I said ‘I play to win!’ (and damn do I regret saying that haha, this would be the quote that everyone says in this trip).

Biscuiting was awesome! I was pretty afraid on the 1st ride though, cause I didn’t know what it was like but it was awesome. Then I had a go at waterskiing as well, man I was terrible at it. And talk about the lake, shit the water is cold! And it is cold 24/7. Almost got hypothermia when I swam to the pontoon and then I went waterskiing. Almost drowned when I swam to the pontoon as well too, I was so tired on the way back. Luckily, it was shallow enough for me to walk.

The Tirau experience… only eat pies there, do not attempt to buy anything other than pies. Matt bought an ‘egg’ sandwich there and it turned out to be a cheese sandwich haha. He then took all the cheese out and made it into a ball and gosh that ball of cheese was bigger than my fist! Then Steve bought a chicken and avocado sandwich. The chicken didn’t taste like chicken at all and the avocado was so rubbery, you could hardly bite through it. I would recommend the pies there though they were so good. On the way back, Chris bought a lolly cake; he ate half of it and then gave the other half to Steve. And midway back, Steve ‘had the shits’ and we had to make an emergency stop in the middle of nowhere. He used a random Korean restaurant toilet. Chris was not too far behind.

To be continued…