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19/4 - Reporting Back

     Ah, the Easter holidays have been both eventful and productive for me. In the first weekend I went to a party and a LAN (last article). I spent the first week watching the entire Futurama series (all 5 seasons), which is probably one of the most entertaining thing some one can do without leaving the house. Yvonne was away on camp that week and no one fail to notice relative silence that the house hold lay in at that time, but I fear such tranquility will not be known to me again for a while as she does not have any other trips planned.

     On the second weekend the holidays, my and my cousin's families (grammar: is that right? I am always slightly dumber at the end of holidays that I am at any other time of year) minus one loud and irritable teenager, went on a road trip to the Victorian and NSW boarder. During our stay we had a couple of barbeques and visited a wildlife reserve. As usual I have returned with dozens of digital photos making my grand total 1500 photos since a reformat last year, where my pervious collection was accidentally destroyed. We went home on Monday

     For the first half of the second week of the holidays I entertained myself with a copy of battle zone two I purchased for $10 at Big W. On Thursday I went to Matt house where he had planned a night in watching DVDs  Because five other people he invited had simultaneously cancelled I found that I was the only guest there, but later that night will dropped by to subtract from our loneness. At about midnight, as it had become a traditions at sleepovers that will and I attend, we started scavenging through Matthew's kitchen for ingredients to created a death syrup. This time it wasn't as disgusting as at Will's sleepover but I can't exactly remember as the mind filters traumatizing events from the memory. I left early hat morning as Will was getting acquainted with the "Family Guy" series, a cartoon that no fan of Simpson's style humor should go through life without watching.

     On Friday night I watched an incredible French movie on SBS about Louis XIV and the baroque composer Jean-Baptist Lully. This movies re-sparked my  passion for composing. I have been composing every waking hour for the entire weekend and I have a lot to show for it. There are two new songs in the music section. One, a short jazz waltz I wrote in 20 minutes when experimenting, and the other, a short song I wrote from my play which I am rather proud of. A third , much longer piece is on it's way. It's a string quartet based a a rather nifty chord progression called "La Folia".

8/4 - Happy Holidays

     It has be a rather eventful two weeks since my last update. I found out that I got a part in the school play albeit a small one, the competition was tough so I hope to do better next year. I am to play the character "Joe" and Will got the part of "Edward", now any Gilbert and Sullivan fan would have immediately said "There is no Joe or Edward in the Pirates of Penzance". Well you are correct, there is no Joe or Edward in the original script, a few new roles were made up for those who auditioned well enough to get a main role but missed out. Some people were very disappointed to get these made up roles but me and Will took it quite humorously. We have started writing our own musical, a squeal to "Pirates of Penzance" where the entire plot is centered around us and the other people who missed out on main parts. We have already worked out the main story line, Will's job is to write the script and my job is to compose the songs. Of course neither of us are skilled enough to create a serious production so it's just going to be a casual comedy that will never be preformed on stage but rather filmed and made into a tape.

     On the last Friday of term I went to a huge party Heather organized. We saw the movie "The Butterfly Effect", it was the weirdest movie I had ever seen in my entire life. I went to Heather to complain about it and she thought I was seriously angry at her. Ah well some people don't get my sense of humor. After the movie we walked back to Heathers place all the way from the glen. As soon as we got back it was almost time to leave. Michael wanted to Ignite a can of butane (it is his trade mark to create "fireworks" at all the parties he goes to), but in the end decided not to because there were too many people there that were not accustomed to his tradition. Also perhaps right after seeing "The butterfly Effect" he developed a new respect for explosives (don't ask, it was a very freaky movie).

     Last Sunday I went to Max's LAN, only six or so people showed up but we had fun anyway. Max planned to play a game of red ball in the valley but due to lack of players it was called off. Matt showed up with the can of butane Michael brought to Heathers. At 3am everyone went into the valley to set it off, I stayed behind as usual but this time I was the only one not to go. My only company was the comedy channel but that got boring after ten minutes so I just took out my sleeping bag and went to bed. I woke up the next day to find out that they never set it off, they were unable to find a safe place to do it. We played a few more games and went home at noon on Monday. On the way home I spotted Will, Tom, Lincoln and a few other walking around Mount Waverly. Will was suppose to be at the LAN with some software I lent him and the twenty dollars he owed me. I gave him and menacing glare as I drove past. The holidays have been entertaining so far but I have boredom  has started to build up. This weekend I am going away with the family but after that I have nothing to do so I may host a LAN in that time or perhaps to over to Will's house so we can work on our musical. There has been something bugging me though, contrary to every other school holiday I've ever had I am not dreading the return of school. In fact I may even be looking forward to it. I'll post another article when I find out an explanation to this phenomenon.

25/3 - Great Week

     On Monday I presented a speech to my English that I wrote to demonstrate the use of propaganda. I love giving speeches and that one turned out great, I also found out that many other people in my class were great speakers. Matt was after me and did not fail to keep up that standards. Next was Adam who spoke powerfully despite sounding slightly casual. Lincoln and Will were very impressive, probably because of their background in drama (and also debating for Will).

     On Tuesday Will and Tom decided to merge their back to back singing lessons together so they would have one long lesson to practice for the practice for the audition for the school production of "The Pirates of Penzance". They also invited Lincoln and I to come also, (gathering the best male vocalists of year 11 in one room, except for Michael but he doesn't count because he's bold) it was quite an enjoyable experience and I managed to improve my performance of the songs a lot.

     Today Will and Myself had two free periods to kill (err... could any teachers reading replace the latter with "Use Effectively") so we went to the practice rooms to sneak in some final preparations for the play audition. I play the songs on piano when he sang through them and when I was my turn to sing I suggested that we go though without accompaniment but he said he could play the piano and persisted that I let him. Finding where they keys were was probably the extent of his ability at first, he did get a hang of it in time but could only manage to play one line with one hand in the songs with no key signatures. Ultimately it was a good practice session, he gave me some advice about singing and I pointed out parts where he was going off tune.

     I got my audition rather well, I had a couple of slip ups like everyone else but nothing major. Will however cracked under the pressure, he made many mistakes during the songs and completely forgot one of them. However, I think he still did a good enough job to get a main part in the play. The teachers already knew that he was a fantastic singer before the audition so they probably brushed the mistakes off as being simply being a result of the pressure.

     All things considered, it has been a great week for me. We only play two lunch-time games of red-ball (for the un-informed red ball is a ball game played among year eleven students, mostly basted on tackling) this week. But both were rather enjoyable, I got in some very good tackles in today's game. I even managed to stop a two man charge for goal, tackling both men, unaided. Additionally, on Wednesday, In a fit of inspiration (probably from a cola I had drank), I singed myself up for pretty much all the events (about seven events in all) in the upcoming house athletics. And lastly,  my volleyball team won it's first game Wednesday afternoon, mostly due to an excellent performance by yours truly. Perhaps scoring 11 points in a row and probably about 20 in the whole match almost makes up for an entire season of shotty playing. Ah happy days.

14/3  - Will's got a new site

     Will has uploaded a new site! He has all his best Photoshop images and flash movies up and also some amusing news articles. He is still persistent about having his files at unreasonably large sizes for quality the human eye cannot even see so email him a complain, if enough people do it he'll break. But if you look past the draconian loading times it's a pretty cool site, be sure to watch the acid rat movies they get funnier every time you see them. Here is the URL http://www.dataphoenyx.cjb.net it will also be added to my links page.

     In other news, last Wednesday I parted with my entire savings and bought myself a top of the line USB flash disk the MSI Mega Stick 256mb.  As well as being a great portable storage device it's also an mp3 player, FM radio and sound recorder with built in microphone. It can play mp3s for twelve hours on a AAA battery which is ten times as efficient as a Discman because it does not have to run a laser or motor. I'm quite content with the purchase but now I'm completely broke.

8/3  - I've wasted my long weekend

     Firstly some updates before I rant on a bit about my weekend. There will no longer be a shout out box because no one is using it. From now on all but the latest five articles will be archived to minimize the loading time of the main page. And lastly I am going to put the road-snake animations in the flash section incomplete (page 6 and 7) because the project has been abandoned (I've lost inspiration since the untimely death of road-snake). Also soon I will be moving this site to paid hosting and me and I also plan to make a new site altogether as a combined project with Will, we are going to have a forums which will hopefully take the place of the fallen Empyre forums. This will hopefully be a great site since Will and I are the best Photoshop flash and web designers in year 11 and probably the entire school and I have proven myself to be the most devoted webmaster investing more time into my site than everyone else in the school put together.

     On Saturday I went to sleep over at Will's place to watch "Pirates of Penzance" and choose a part to audition for, even though when I got there he told me he couldn't find the video cassette or DVD at any video store I thought there may still have been an opportunities to use the weekend productively. It turned out to be a complete waste of my valuable time, but I still had a lot of fun.

     When I got there at 6pm with a 800 gram block of cheddar cheese, it was time to cook dinner. Tom, the other guest was already there, we planned to re-create a concoction Setha came up with on camp, he mixed alfredo pasta with fried rice and cheddar cheese much to Will and I's disgust but when we tasted it we couldn't he but admit it was one of the best thing we had ever tasted Will quoting "This is the food of the gods". Will added the packaged alfredo pasta and fried rich to already boiling water, I cut a small block out of the cheddar cheese and started cutting that block into small slices so it would melt more easily, when I moved the cutting board over the saucepan I was terrified to find the rest of the block of cheddar I purchased floating in the meal un cut (It was approximately a 10cm by 5cm by 5cm block). I put down the cutting board still with the sliced cheddar in it and shouted at him for a few minutes before leaving the room. I went away and watched Tom play Crusader for a while before we heard Will proclaim that dinner was ready. I went back into the kitchen, Will had already set up three bowls on a candle lit table complete with naked stone torso as the center piece.

     We didn't get a good taste at first because it was so hot, it cooled down a bit and we found it to be every bit the meal that Setha made on camp with the exception that it was a lot cheesier. However after a while it cool down more and solidified, Will and I stopped eating after this because it was making up sick but Tom finished the entire bowl before proceeding to eat what remained of Wills. After dinner we watched Rollerball, a movie Tom and Will had to watch for a French SAC, I watched too, it wasn't bad for something made in the 80s.

      After Rollerball, Tom played me some of his compositions on the computer I I played him a couple of mine, shortly after that he went home. As soon as Tom left I returned to the kitchen and tried mixing random ingredients in hopes that I would make a food greater than Setha's alfredo pasta and rice or "Forlocalart" as it known. I mixed the remaining cheddar cheese in milk turned on the stove and added coke, coffee, grapes, and a stock cube. As expected it was the most disgusting thing I had tasted, Will swallowed some to try and appear manly but I saw tears form in his eyes. Later that night Will and I started plotting a flash movie we were going to make, I reveal no more than this as we are using it on the debut of our site and we want it to be a surprise. When we actually started working on the movie I was appalled but how slow him computer was running, he had several very potent viruses complimenting each other and I had to use the next half hour convincing him to reformat. He finally agreed that he'd let me reformat his computer the next day, we went to bed at 4am that night.

     We woke up the next day at 11 and after I failed to teach him Bach's toccata and fugue on piano (he couldn't manage the basic skill of playing with two hands at once) he tried in vain to teach me Bach's double violin concerto. After that I reformatted his computer and reinstalled all the drivers. His brother came over un expectedly with his partner and Will offered them a slice of the VERY thick custard he made they were disgusted to hear of all the cooking we did the previous night. At 1pm we walked to the station to catch a train to Glen Waverly, whilst waiting I dropped 20c which rolled under a tall fence. Will, being the poor and greedy bastard that he is climbed over the fence despite the fact that he saw our train approaching, I got on and watched Will search for the 20 cent coin from the train window he finally found the coin and climbed back over jumping on the train just in time. I stared at him with a shocked/confused look on my face as the train left the station and he just smiled, filled with job by the fact he just made 20 cents. At Glen Waverly we purchased some bubble tea and lunch. After that we were planned to deliver the Rollerball DVD to Max, the next four hours were a pointless waste of my life.

     We caught the train to Mount Waverly and walked ten minutes to Max's house, after ringing his door bell for ten minutes we concluded that he wasn't home. I tried to convince Will to leave the DVD under maxes elephant statue and call him later, Will said it might get stolen, I told him that Waverly was a peaceful community populated mostly by old people unlike the dump he lives in but he wouldn't listen. He suggested we walk to Jack's house and ask him to give it to Max so we walked to Jack house, we we go there we realized we had walked to the back entrance of his house and we would have to go for another long walk to get to the front, after twenty minutes Will realized we did not know where we were so we turned back and went all the way to Max's house, we rang on his door bell some more and I took my shoes off to get the pebbles out, then Will, just to be a bastard, took my shoes and ran off with them I tried to go after him but the rocks on the side walked ripped up my feet, I returned to Max's house and waited on the doorstep for the next hour. When Will came back with my shoes he said he checked the front entrance of Jack's house and realized he wasn't home then he checked Heathers house and remembered that Heather had gone away with Jack and Emmalyn for the weekend. I stabbed him in the thought with my bubble tea straw and we walked back to the station.

     On the way back to his house at every station he told me we were getting off there and walked to the door waited for me to get off then laughed at me and sat back down. We we finally got to the right station he walked to the door and I followed, when I was about to get off he laughed at me again so I slapped him and when back to me seat, he waited for the speakers to signal that the doors were closing and got out just as they started, I jumped out just in time. Yep, they don't come much more bastardly than Will.

5/3  - Work work work, so much work

     It's 12:07am and I've got an IT project due at 3:45pm that I haven't started. I just finished my English and Music assignments which at also due. I guess the teachers just wanted to mark the projects over the long weekend so they chose today as the due date. Also an over abundance of Chemistry and Physics homework is also proving an annoyance. Ah well nothing I can't handle (hit ctrl + f and search for 18/8 :P), I've had suffice experience and handling insane work loads.

     In other news I've going over to Will's house on Saturday to watch Pirates of Penzance, the school is putting on a production of the musical this year and Tom, Will and I wish to audition but want a better idea of what the characters are like. I'm always teasing Will about being poor (just for fun, he really isn't that poor) and  I've never been to his house before so I look forward to getting a lot of new material as I am almost out of jokes :P. Also I'd like to say "The Empyre" has fallen, as I predicted when it went up, Pat could not manage to keep an ongoing web presence so I still hold the record of being the year 11 student with the longest standing regularly updated site. On the subject DC has just gotten his site up also (http://PhoenixNet.propel.to), I give him 2 months to lose interest but hope that he'll prove me wrong. All the best of luck with the site Daniel.

29/2  - I'm Back

     I just got back from Huntingtower's famous Broken Hill camp yesterday and I have so so much to say. Broken Hill has been one of the most memorable experiences of my life, for the uniformed, the Broken Hill camp is the final of about seven camps that Huntingtower students from years seven to eleven will be challenged by. It is also the most praised camp boasting that not one student over the many years it has been running has ever gone home unsatisfied with the experience, which before I actually went on the camp (and during the the first half of it) seriously questioned. How could anyone (let alone everyone) enjoy hiking across 70 kilometers of unpathed and hilly desert carrying a 20 kilogram pack on their back and holding a 10 kilo water bag in their arms? The city of Broken Hill is not actually when the bulk of the camp take place, in fact it isn't even in the same state as the desert we hike in. Broken Hill is the city in New South Whales closest to Plumbago Station in South Australia where the camp takes place. Plumbago Station is a large privately owned property in the outback home to 12,000 sheep. I don't truly know why the camp was named after Broken Hill and not Plumbago.

     The year 11 class left last Saturday on two busses at seven am, the bus trip took all of Saturday and half of Sunday with stops at various towns for meals. We all managed to keep ourselves entertained during the rides by having varied convocations (most about camp) and singing many songs with "Yesterday" by The Beatles being a favorite. On Saturday sight we camped out in an open out back area near a salt lake, it rained horribly that night and everyone got very wet myself being the worst struck. Tom, Lincoln, Will and myself decided to team together to build a rain shelter from our tarps, I had the great idea of digging irrigation which did nothing but direct water straight under my sleeping mat, I had to change and move to another shelter because I was so wet, the camp did not get off to a good start. On Sunday night everyone got first taste or the desert walking we were about to undergo, it wasn't hard only six kilometers in cool temperatures with no pack or water bag, that night it rained again but a more effective shelter meant that I got a relatively good sleep that night.

     Monday was our first day of intensive walking we fitted our packs and were issued water bags. These bags were designed to leak slightly so that they would cool in the breeze and keep the water cool but the canvas they were made from made the water taste terrible but everyone knew they had to get used to this taste fast because no one could make it without water. We walked for about eight hours with a break every kilometer or so and got there at about 4pm, my group made it to camp about half an hour earlier than the other group so we all had a much needed nap, when everyone woke we got straight to work on shelters to cook dinner. After dinner we climbed to the top of a small hill to see an amazing sunset (I've got pictures I may post up later), that night proved to be another wet one but I got an ok sleet none the less.

     We got up at 5:30 on Tuesday to prepare for the longest day of walking, an 18 kilometer walk climbing two mountains left many of us more tired than we had ever been in our lives. That walk followed by another nap, but after that I realized that I had gotten to know many of the members of my group a lot better, I brushed this off as nothing abnormal. Tuesday night was our first dry night, aside from the fact that I did not get wet having no clouds in the sky also meant that we all had an incredible view of the stars to fall asleep to, I'd never seen the sky at night without light pollution before and it really was a marvelous view.

     On Wednesday we had a short 8k walk and got the camp at around 1pm. This was the day that we were to go out into the desert alone for four hours to ponder upon life camp and whatever we wanted. I spent my time thinking of how close everyone had gotten to each other during camp and wondered why, I realized then that the walking had a point to it aside make us push ourselves to our limits. We we were all struggling we had to help each other out by giving tips and support to people we don't usually talk to, also when stuck in the middle of nowhere without modern forms of entertainment such as TV and video games all you can do in talk to each other. But overall, I think the main reason everyone bonded was because stranded in the outback we realized how much we all depended on each other, even with all my food and water I wouldn't last long without others, know that your life lies in the hands of a group of people really helps you get to know them a lot better. After the solo everyone returned to camp to eat and enjoy some free time before a group meeting in which we were to discuss our solo experience. After food I talked to Cameron a bit and he told me I had become very charismatic, although what he said my have bore little significance to him it really got me thinking. I had become a lot more open, I had a look at the people around me and realized that more than ever I could approach these people and have a convocations about almost anything I wished and not feel uncomfortable. For a bit of fun I walked up to Will, one of my best friends and one of the most charismatic people I know (he convinced someone one he hardly knew to give him a fork and a teacher to give him some chalk to draw pentagrams in front of the student center for a protest whilst she truly knew of he intentions) and challenged him to a competition of persuasion. We organized task for each other each progressively harder, Will's first challenge was to get Tristan to run 100 meters into the middle of a field and back and he did so with little effort, I followed by getting cam to balance a spoon on his nose we went on for a while without failures. Then Tom joined in, he got Cameron to take of his shirt and I got Justin (real tough popular jock type bloke) to give me a hug. After each of us had proposed to and gotten engaged to about 5 people each we declared a draw and made it know to everyone what had been going on. Then the meeting started, I talked of my thoughts on the bonding that had been going on and then listened to the thoughts of others to hear everyone thoughts really inspired me, afterward we all felt closer than ever we all sang song and went to bed happier than we had been all camp.

     We all woke up in good moods on Thursday ready for a 12 kilometer walk that was suppose to be a piece of cake compared to Tuesday but little did we know what this day had installed for us. By 10am the temperature had reached the high 30s and the breeze that had accompanied us for the past few days stopped, after the first couple of kilometers I got a blood nose and felt as if I was about to faint but I recovered and kept going after four kilometers Shannon fainted from heatstroke and was to be evacuated on a support vehicle with Marika who was feeling faint and dizzy. We continued on but soon had to stop again because Kate felt really ill, while we waited for another support vehicles to arrive Brenton and Ben also started feeling sick. Justin and his friends were starting to take wagers on who would fall next (in good heart of course), my odds were two to one because I almost fainted before but I told him not to waste his money because I was going to make it all the way. But honestly at the time I was seriously questioning this, Mr. Mason had just declared that anyone who wanted to be driven back to camp could hop on of of the support vehicles I felt that everyone considered taking this opportunity at the time but I had already made it so far and did not want to back out just before the end so I refused. Michelle, Caitlin, Brenton (and maybe other I can't remember) hopped on the support vehicle but Ben had recovered and Kate wanted to keep going. We continued on and during the walk I regretted my decision to go on after two consecutive hills Kate had collapsed, I admire her for trying so hard even though se had felt sick she literally pushed herself to the edge of her limits. The hills had almost knocked me out as well but after I got though them there was only flat land between me and the camp. When I got there all the regret I had for continuing had disappeared, I was glad I pushed on. That night Tom Will and myself shared a tarp as usual and we had an in-depth discussion about the meaning of life and our significance under the stars, we did not come to any conclusions but it was a very nice talk.

     On Friday everyone was high on sprit there was only an 8 kilometer walk before we finished. It was a relatively easy walk, the people who had to be driven back the day before had recovered and walked also. The only exception was Shannon who had to be admitted to hospital, this news saddened everyone but we decided to do the walk in her honor rather that let this event discourage us. The sight of the busses waiting for us the Plumbago Station brought a sigh of relief to everyone, even though we all thoroughly enjoyed the camp we were happy it was finally over. I quoted Dickens "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and Will humorously replied "that has never been so true". We drove a nearby town for lunch then we all had a much needed shower and swim at a local swimming pool. After that we drove to Broken Hill for dinner but Will and I were so full from lunch we decided to use this time to instead pull a fun joke, I purchased some hair gel and a comb and we styled our hair up. Then we went to a clothes shop and purchased button up shirts and trousers, I even got a tie. Our intention was to be the best dressed people on camp in the photos everyone else would be in dusty and torn clothes looking as they should look after 70 kilometers of walking in the desert and we would look like we "just came from the opera" as Mr. Bowen put it. That night we slept in a hostel (luxury compared to the desert floor), unfortunately for me and the people in my room the people in my room that night the fly nets on the windows did not work and we all woke up with uncountable mosquito bites (there were not a problem in the desert because mosquitoes require water to breed).

     Saturday was relatively uneventful, we drove most of the day but the bus driver did let us watch some movies on the busses TV. We got back to school at around 8:30 and whilst waiting for our parents Will and I wandered around impressing people with our clothes :P. My dad picked me up at 9 and too me to a barbeque I got home quite late had a shower and went to my comfy bed for some much needed rest. In concluding my opinion of the Broken Hill camp has been completely changed I still believe it is the hardest camp ever, but it is also by far the best.

     After the long rest I woke up this morning and started writing this article which at 2,244 words is by far my longest entry to this site ever. I even read through most of my entries to be sure, my English seems to have improved a lot since the beginning of year ten which is great to know. I doubt many people will read the whole think knowing the impatience of my youth audience but if you did I'm glad I've given you something to do with ten minutes of your life. I would also like to say that I during the camp I've taken 206 photos and anyone who wants them can buy CDs of me at school for one dollar (I'm only really charging for the price of the CD). If you don't go to ht then you shouldn't really have the photos anyway, sorry.

-Archive-