Why We Hate Jane

The soccer finals were yesterday, and the title probably tipped you off that we were a little less successful that against christ. So, girls lost 1-0. I honestly don't have too much to say about that game, the loss of Lisa, Victoria, and Alex were a problem, but getting Kieva was really big. Maha and Emily played really well too and Heather did a great job as keeper, but it just wasn't enough. Jes and Kieva almost dying from asthma attacks didn't help
Guys game was what you could call very frustrating. We should have scored the first goal, it was in, past the keeper, and they're only good defender bicycle kicked it out. Credit to him it was fantastic, but also GO TO BACK HELL YOU DEMON OF THE ABYSS. They scored a goal because we got sloppy, we shouldn't have let it in, but no reason to assign blame. End first half, second half they score a bull shit goal. One of our guys kicked it out and Gav caught it at the line to not need to chase it. ref said he caught it in and gave them a free kick from essentially the goal. they scored, poor defending it on our part again. We were unprepared for free kicks and wall. Birdy then scored a beautiful goal from maybe thirty meters out, and we were back in it. Good plays happened, opportunities were missed, we lost. Upsetting, but survivable. The reason I hate Jane is that one of they're guys took a throw in, and decided that the best place to take it from would be the top of Jes' shoeless foot. After a five hour wait at the hospital she finds that its fractured. she's even more crippled than the lumbering blonde giant she's dating. so we're going to need to kill that jane kid, or at least break a few bones, most bones.
ANYWAY, other things. Jason dropped a nice little mess with me prank, not a full scale one. my mouthguard has apparently been sitting in my freezer all weekend surrounded in ice. can't wait to put it in during practice later

So helpful, he thought it was dirty and tried to clean it

International Beer Night

Isn't that an innocent title? Well yes there is beer involved, but it must be a celebration of the different cultures that have been brought together at college. A night allowing everyone (guys only) to share something universal across the world: beer.
...Not quite. The first sign that this imagined utopian night might be a little different than casually sipping away at frothies came with the selection of the beverages. The policy was: pick the cheapest thing possible. This became apparent when i saw that chang represented Thailand. no one likes chang, singha is infinitely better, but apparently the extra two dollars weren't worth it. also from america they got Dundee. never heard of it, and with good reason, it was terrible. Probably the best beer I ended up having was the dutch beer which started with an L, or Lucky Beer from china. Lucky had the greatest bottle I had ever seen

That is Buddha on the bottle, look closely

Much of the rest of the night will rightly remain a mystery. It is a private ritual, involving trying beers, at varying paces and with various accoutrements. One of the highlights involved all freshers locked in the closet for a bonding/drinking session. Ira made sure we all stayed entertained, maybe too much so for Aaron. Interesting movie choices, thanks to Weapon apparently

Lumberjacks

Sorry about not posting for a while, life (laziness) got in the way. The least recent thing worth mentioning is that we had a campfire thursday. Choppa had been keen for one for ages, and finally was able to convince everyone to come up and enjoy the nice fire. It was right after soccer practice, around 9:00. Birdy and Paddy played guitar and generally serenaded us. It was pretty fun and one of the highlights was four of the guys, led by Bruce and Jason, murdering a tree. It was in the way and ruining their view. At least two of them nearly fell down the hill, but everyone came away generally unscathed...except the tree. I went back down pretty early, around 10:30, because i had a giant assignment for plants tomorrow. There went the rest of my night. I was until about 6:30 writing a decent draft. I had until 5pm, so once i started making progress and finding some sources, courtesy of bowdoin not UTas, never really figured out how to use their sources. I got a couple hours of sleep before going to class, and then finished the assignment. Then I slept all day until food shopping date with Gav and the group of girls that follows him around.

Bonorong Zoo

I went to the ZOO!!! Now most people over the age of six wouldn't have been quite as excited about this as I am, but that's not my fault. So when I say zoo I don't mean zoo like the bronx zoo or some lesser zoo (any), it was more of a wildlife park like the one we went to up at mole creek. It was still awesome. It was threatening to rain for most of the trip, but we were pretty lucky. We heard stories about an elitist frogmouth who wouldn't sit with the others and didn't know to be scared of birds of prey because he was hand raised. Another event that should be mentioned if the harrassment of Bob the Galah.

This is Bob

It was said he could talk, so Amy and Emily just stood on either side of him harassing him and trying to get him to talk, succeeding in scaring him more than anything else.

They each took a side and harassed him

Finally the cockatoo sharing his cage yelled at full volume to scare us away. It was painful. After we did all the learning stuff we were allowed to wander around and plan how we were going to smuggle animals out. We ended by feeding kangaroos. One mother actually had a joey in a pouch, it was amazingly cute, not sure I'll ever get over it. We were not allowed to steal it.

Joey, all baby kangaroos are named Joey. Not too creative on the kangaroos part

Got back to college and then played squash with Schmidty. It started really well, I was just kicking his ass, 11-4. Then it got closer 11-7. Then it got terrifyingly close 12-10. He started using my own tricks against me, it was a little upsetting. At that point I suggested that we call it a day so the trend wouldn't continue. It was fun to get a some exercise in though.

Street Walking

Monday's are always tough. Have you ever tried to fall asleep, and been absolutely exhausted, but still unable to actually fall asleep. Story of my life. Still, I made it through plants pretty easily. Shockingly our prac did not involve sectioning plants and making slides. As we have literally done that in every other prac so far this year. It got old about 45 minutes into the first prac. It was an almost exciting relief and change of pace. It also only took about an hour to cut a slice out of seeds, put hormones in the hole, and then plant them. Rest of the day casual work and napping until rugby practice. I was actually really happy with rugby practice today, last week i felt pretty sluggish and out of it. We did some normal touch and warm up stuff then we practiced scrums. This helps explain the title of the post. The middle of the front line is called the hooker. No not because he pleasures clients off the street after practice, but because in the scrum he hooks the ball with his foot and kicks it back to his team. The experienced coaches (Schmidty, Brady, some guy from last week) thought my body type was appropriate. It seemed to work pretty well, plus i dont need to do too much of the pushing part, more getting the ball. Brady gave us the ringing endorsement that he'd seen much worse.
We also did some actual game play. the side i was on did really well even though the two largest guys were on the other side. I even got a tackle, or at least part of a tackle on branchy. We were able to overpower the otherside during ruks and steal the ball. It was fun
Then got back to fisher and made myself dinner without burning the wooden spoon. Yes I was pretty proud of myself. Then we watched Game of Thrones. It was better than the last two weeks. So a good day, and tomorrow I get to go to the Zoo. it will be awesome unless there's too much rain

Soccer: Suck it Christ

Today was the day we had spent just over a whole week preparing for. Both men and women had a semi-final match against Christ. Ladies were at 12:30 and Men were at 2:30. The ladies started the game and both teams used a similar strategy. This strategy is called swarming the ball. At most times of the  20 (excluding keepers) players on the pitch, a dozen or so were within 3 meters of the ball. Christ scored first, and honestly I don't really remember the goal. We then scored three times before the half ended. Christ had no subs, and were getting a little tired, so the refs agreed the second half would be shortened to 30 minutes rather than 45. so they weren't really halfs, but thats ok. Christ scored again, leaving us to win 3-2. Well done ladies. Great play all around, especially Liz, Maha, and Victoria. A special moment should be taken by all to congratulate Hayley on overcoming her fear of the ball.
The Mens game started right after, and I'd like to say that we were not swarming and generally played at a higher level. With that in mind I have to acknowledge that I got a goal...for the wrong team. Whoops (sheepish whistling). That was the first goal of the game. Things were eventful even before that as Zander's knee was pretty badly twisted after about 13 seconds of play. Luckily Dr. Siejka was there to save the day (help him limp and give him ice). Yun scored our first goal, which I honestly thought he missed, but he didn't and so my mistake was covered. Right before half time the blind ref awarded Christ a goal, but after Tommy D tackled him to the ground and yelled in his face, he consulted the line ref and gave a corner instead. The half ended one all. We played lots more blah blah blah, until Timmy hit a beautiful shot from outside the 18 yard box, putting us up 2-1. We had a couple more opportunities to score, but bad luck got in the way, and similar things happened to Christ. We ended up winning 2-1. Suck it Christ. Great play all around on our side, especially Eddy on D, Gav in goal, and literally everyone on offense. A little more luck it would've been 6-1.

We may look like fools, but we won

Another funny moment came when Ira and a christ kid were running towards the ball, and Ira yelled to scare him. Christ was awarded a penalty, but it was still hilarious and even the ref laughed. Next week we kick Jane's ass, then we're champions. sounds like a plan

Revenge

I think I should have a career as a contractor. Today I took it upon myself, without being payed or even asked to, to insulate Jason's room for the oncoming winter. After class and a power nap to regain my strength I brought my tin foil to his room and got to work. The windows are normally the place at which where the most cold air can leak into the room. So I kindly started there. With the help of packing tape I was able cover all of his windows. They can be seen from outside and are nice and shiny. The room will also be nice and cozy, so your welcome Jason. I still had some extra supplies so I decided to be even kinder and insulate some other objects. Like his pillow and his footy. His speakers also looked like they might get cold so I covered that too. At that point I ran out of supplies.

On a side note I also was kind enough to give Jason timeline. He deleted his facebook. He'll get bored in class and reactivate it

Not a Wasted Night

Yesterday was a bit of a rough day. It started around 7:30 when i got up and ended my short story draft. i had to go print a ton of copies and then hand it in during class. I did that, gulp. We'll see how it goes. I read some other peoples at some point and meh, mine was more story than two of the four, but that doesn't necessarily mean its better. Anyway I also had a bunch of history to do and did that. It was not very eventful and i was pretty tired from getting up early. Then we had rugby practice which i was pretty keen for. it didn't go great, i wasn't getting the tackles i should have and I just felt a little bit off. Got back to Fisher and took a shower, then started making dinner (pepperz was closed). i borrowed a pot and a spoon from Jes and started making pasta. Ziggy, Jes, and Jason were all down there cooking already, and Ziggy was using two stoves so they were hot and ready to go. I put my pot on one when he finished, but he left both on because he didn't know which knob went with which heating pad. At one point i was waiting for the pasta to cook and put down the spoon...on the other really hot plate and now there is a nice black mark on it. it did not catch on fire like last time...my bad.
So we all ate and were happy, and then headed back up to C floor to put away our supplies. I was planning to go and study after, or at least pretend to. Jes realized she left a pan down in the kitchen (on A floor). Jason and I sat down in the hallway. We stayed there until around 12:30, around 3 hours. Firstly, it was really comfortable, secondly it was a very social thing. Jes came back and joined us and James was walking to his room and stopped to chat. He was also summoned to fetch a flip flop. Then we wondered if Tom was around, we were right in front of his door. So i kicked it a couple times and he answered. He came out in the bathrobe he used for the Alphabet party. It was scandalous. After a few minutes he went to take a shower. Jes soon followed suit, but was very reluctant to go because she is quite paranoid. She thinks anytime she leaves Jason and I will start doing something fun and cool. She threatened to steal something from our rooms if we did. She left and we stole a sign from Tom's door and turned it into a (really crappy) paper crane and a paper airplane. Smithy arrived a little after this, after working at Pepperz until 10:30 (much later than he should but staffing sucked that night) and also sat down with us. Tom came out of the shower and saw his door, sighed. He sat down too. This meant that Jes got to parade by four guys in only her towel. She was pleased. She was even less pleased by the fact she wasn't involved in the crane making and now has declared she will steal things. Smithy left after maybe an hour, and Tom put some clothes on, but came back out. He eventually got so delirious and out of it he just started staring into space and at his door. Jes gave up on us and left. And then Will, one of the guys who works at admin, who had stopped by earlier and laughed at us before going to take care of a noise complaint on d floor, stopped by again and told us someone had complained about us. so that broke up the party and we all went to bed...at around 12:30. An incredibly fun night, yay delirium

The Great Debate

There are a number of Inter-College Competitions every year. mostly its sports like cricket softball rugby soccer tennis, table tennis. there is also debate. last night was the semi finals of the debate. as the defending champions, fisher has a bye until the finals, so Jane and Christ debated. The topic was whether social networking is beneficial or detrimental to our health. Not the greatest topic, but whatever. It was in pepperz so a group of fisher people went over to watch. Christ was saying social networking sucked and jane said it was great. As the first speaker from Christ spoke one of the Jane speakers kept making point of informations. I was very tempted to make the point of information (even though i wasn't involved) "why are you such a dick." i did, and neither did anyone else. i thought about debating for fisher, but didn't realy feel like it, and i think it's the wrong format for me. i'm more an argue with you, not drawn out speeches. Plus when people tried to make points of information the speaker sometimes said "no thank you" or waved them away. I'm pretty sure in their situation i would just stay "fuck off." The funniest part was the adjudicator announcing the winner, he inserted a couple of jokes. Jane won by a point so Christ got to pick the topic for the finals and in their usual fashion they picked something dumb. The debate will be over whether Tasmania should succeed from the commonwealth. Dumb topic, luckily we're arguing against it, the much better topic

More on Pranks

One thing that any Fisher residence would know is that leaving laptops in the common room is a bad idea. I do this all the time, but usually return quickly enough to divert any disaster. Getting food last week I was no way near quick enough. Only one small thing was done: now i have timeline. Choppa is evil. On a similar topic, Kim left her laptop in the common room with me and Jason. She warned us there was a password so we shouldn't bother. We bothered and found she did have a password. I tried Sweden (she's swedish) with no luck. The password hint was in Swedish. I tried password: bingo. We got on changed her desktop, and wrote a nice status on facebook explaining how kind and sweet Jason and I were. We also told everyone her password. So in case your wondering, I am now officially an expert hacker
Now, as to the war. The second shot was fired last week with my mattress and sleeping bag being used to barricade my door. My planned revenge has been spoiled some, as Jes cannot keep a secret. I will still probably follow through with it though. It involves aluminum foil and maybe zip ties. Another note on pranks is that there was a small war with Jes over the visitor guide to Mona. We each tried to dump in on the other, it was eventually taped to doors, and finally she taped it to the inside of my door, which we agreed was victory. I really need to start locking my door...not that it would matter with an all access card

ICC and Bros Night

I guess I can update you on some of the parties too. Friday night was the ICC. I didn't feel like drinking too much, figured it wasn't worth, plus i had stuff to do the next day (mona). the point was for the three colleges to mingle together and be all friendly and nice. Meh. I didn't spend too much time with Christ people and literally none with Jane (we dont like them). Probably the most exciting part was Ira giving everyone names. He had dubbed himself batman and his facebook is currently Bruce W Ayne, they wouldn't let him be Bruce Wayne. Lots of names, i wont list all of them. I'm Steve Rogers (Captain America), probably the best name. Jes and I tried to walk back from Soho. She was barefoot. We caught a cab from Metz
Bros Night IV: Redemption was monday night. unlike ICC i did drink lots. mainly during the power hour. Actually bailed out when they were playing kings, couldn't handle it. I crashed out pretty early to try to make it to class but apparently the night became pretty wild. branchy had some fun with a fire hydrant, and took it upon himself to decorate most of D floor with it. I saw the results this morning, it was quite funny. I also did not make it to class this morning. I got up at 8:30, got dressed ready to go, and realized that was a dream and it was 9:17, too late to go to class. oops. (Parents, I listened to the lecture and am all caught up). There was also a poll put on facebook to see who Ben would fight. Sneans won with 10 votes, I was second with 8, himself was third with 4. Answer was no one, but at the time it was hilarious. he also didn't know about the poll adding to the comedy

MONA

In an effort to culture the barbaric American, Jason and Jes brought me to Mona. The Museum of Old and New Art. As some of you may know, i'm not really the biggest art fan. I haven't really taken advantage of MOMA or the Met even though I live in new york. I'm more of the Museum of Natural History type of person. So we head out saturday around noon, which gave me a good excuse not to drink very much on friday night at the ICC (inter college cocktail). We invited Kim too, but she was not that functional post party. Got on a boat to get there, and resisted the urge to sing i'm on a boat. Get to the museum and have to walk up stairs. jason's knee is dislocated so that took a while. We still overtook some people though. Then we got to the actual museum part and they gave us ipods where we could read about and rate the art. Some of it was pretty cool, you held two bars and a light bulb started beating in time with your heart. mine was very slow. There was also this falling water that would spell out words. Then there was the red curtained rated r part. that stuff was weird and I will not deign to write about it. a family with a toddler behind us on the stairs said lets start at the bottom, where the red curtain stuff was. we did not warn them...the mummy was cool as were some of the other things, but overall it was art. shrug. fun time though because i was with fun people. the most memorable moment was when we were outside waiting for our bus. we were lying on bean bags and a cat walked by. Jes immediately got up and sprinted to catch it. The scene became even funnier because an 8 month old had the same reaction at the same time. Jes was faster. Later on the cat was walking by us again and jes sprang up to get it. it had the look of "oh god not again" and turned to walk away. too slow. the cat was dubbed Apple Sponge. Don't ask me why. So an interesting day, with animals. passover ended in time for dinner, so yay pizza

This Means War

Wednesday morning I was sleeping peacefully around 9 am when a pounding sounded on my door. Knowing the answer, I asked who it was. Jes having just gotten back and being bored. She wanted to do something so I suggested trashing Jason's room. As an explanation, when I returned from Orford a little while ago I found my room in a sticky situation due to Jason taping it. He got back late yesterday and found his in a similar state. Granted it wasn't done as well, he had masking tape while I (with the aid of a bored Jes) used bad imitation duck tape. Now both parties have attacked the other, and war is official. I woke up this morning to find all the shoes I left outside my room tied together and hanging from a door handle and a facebook message asking me if I planned to go running anytime soon.
As a side note Jes is involved by having let both of us into each other's room with her all access card. I also stacked a bunch of boxes in front of her door yesterday, so I expect she will soon be involved in the madness. Jason is also currently in a knee brace (dislocated it wrestling a crocodile while riding his pet kangaroo)

DC, no not the Capitol

It's easter break right now, and most people went home and have been relaxing and doing other fun things. I have been at college. There was the hope that I would actually get things, like work, done with my freedom and isolation. I can happily say that there was some work done on every subject except plants, where I need the most work. Part of the reason of the distraction is DC. I have known about DC since my arrival, but only was able to figure out how to join and access it less than a week ago, lets call this technical difficulties. For those of you (everyone) who has no idea what I'm talking about it is a giant accommodation services wide file sharing network. Literally everyone in accommodation services (500 people) has access and can share files. To quote Jon Ryss: "That sounds legal." There are terabytes of data on there. I've downloaded a few movies (real steal, zoolander, mr popper's penguins, ice age 1 and 3, trainspotting, transformers 3) some stand up (rowan atkinson and chris rock) and tv shows (hamish and andy's gap year, (look it up and watch it, hilarious) band of brothers, blue planet, walking with the dinosaurs, and the penguins of madagascar). As you can imagine this has slowed my progress. I have not watched nearly all of this to any parent reading this, so don't worry too much, i've done a significant amount of work too, i promise.
As my jewish readers (family) would know, it's passover. here's the problem with passover in Tasmania. according to research (dad on the internet) there are approximately 150 jews in the state. That is less than at Bowdoin or Hackley. That means matza is hard to find, nae on impossible. Thus I am sifting through dinner menus trying to figure out what to eat. Also no beer allowed. Life is hard. Because Pepperz wants to taunt me tonights dinner featured pizza madness. yay.
It's been very quiet otherwise around here. I could literally run around in the halls and would upset much fewer people than usual. People are starting to trickle back in though, which is nice and I still have another day off from classes. I also intend to get horrible revenge on Jason's room in the near future. Though giving him a cold may also count as revenge, biological warfare bwahahaha

Hobart by Firelight

This post and story takes place on Thursday. During the day I saw Gav leading a group of international students up towards the gym. I went up to the gym to steal some weights to press my plants (which I should have done sunday, but lets not get into that) and saw that they hadn't stopped there and were continuing up the hill. I shrugged and assumed it must be a nature walk of some sort. Later on I asked him about it and he mentioned they might be having a campfire up there during the evening. Sounded interesting. Later on he let me know that they were heading up around 8:30, so he I and two of the girls headed up. Gav and I grabbed some firewood on the way. The hill was actually a pretty good hike, pretty steep and a little dangerous at night. We made it unaccosted by drop bears or devils and Gav and i set up the fire (lets give him most of the credit for it though). We hung out there for a while, and a bunch of other people came up, though some struggled with the hill a little too much. It was good fun, and then Jes, who was at some church dinner, texted me and I told her to come up. She needed me to go fetch her, so needy, and showed me her costume, maid marion/forest huntress. I of course had to take a picture, during which she shot me with an arrow. we headed up to the fire, and got there just as a large portion of people were leaving. There were about six of us left and it was just a very pleasant time, with a nice warm fire and a great view of the full moon and hobart at night. headed down around 1:15, someone starting to smoke was the cue

Reality TV

A week or so ago, Branchy came up with an interesting idea. In response to how crappy reality tv is, he said that making a sitcom about our common room would be more entertaining than most things on. We thought about it for a while and figured that he was right. It would be creatively called "The Common Room." The main characters would be Branchy, Ira, Me, Aaron, Ben. We could probably drag in Kim and or Shani as main characters as well even though they spend less time there because we need female leads. There would also be recurring characters like Zander, Gav, Dylan, Bruce, etc etc the rest of Fisher. Then there would be guest stars like Clinton, Weapon, Zankee. It was a funny idea and every time anything worthwhile happens i think of it, example the tape escapades of last week.
Ira came up with the brilliant idea of having a segment called Aaron's arguments. It would be maybe a weekly segment. The reason for this is that Aaron makes possibly the worst and most poorly thought out arguments I've ever heard. It would just act to highlight the comedy.
Funny idea, it'll probably keep coming up

To Superbarrel and Beyond!

I hope the Toy Story reference was not in vain. I decided it was about time to update both of my readers on Tasmanian life. Not too much that anyone would call exciting has happened, but I'll tell you all about it anyway. Wednesday was the last day of school before Easter break and there was what was called the "Superbarrel." A barrel is a party hosted by a society (med, engi, geo, etc) and five societies banded together to make a seven hour party and according to facebook over 1000 people were all set to come. It was from 3-10, and most people were going around 4, started pregaming around 3, 3:30. I had class at 4, a tutorial so I really couldn't miss it. I went back up to Fisher for dinner, and was slowly convincing Jes and Jason to go with me for the last few hours of it when people started to come back up from it. (it was around 7, 7:30 at this point) They all had similar stories about how it kinda sucked. Shockingly we didn't go for the last couple hours of it. Instead we watched a movie while the partiers went to Metz (last time i went to metz ended with the hangover of the century). It was called Charlie and Boots, an Australian movie, pretty entertaining. Tom stopped by for a while. By this I mean he came back from the barrel and passed out on the couch, beer still in his hand. Gav moved it before it spilled. We had a whole crew watching at first, but by the end it was down to four people, Jes and Jason cuddling on a couch, me on another, and kurt sitting at the table a little awkwardly. Jes was asleep so we left her on the couch for a while. Bored, we also watched the Castle

another Australian movie which was pretty funny. This was interrupted when Saras offered us hot chocolate. We went and played pool to pass the time. Nobody won, including jes who played on both teams.
The reason we were all still up is that Jason had to leave to catch a plane at five, so we decided to stay up with him. We sat outside pepperz because it was nice out and chased possums. We also got to see drunk people struggling back in, fun times. Crashed around 4:15