INAS-FID 2005: Canberra

This week my workplace was privileged enough to host the 2005 INAS-FID 5th Athletics World Championships! INAS-FID is somehow supposed to stand for International Sports Federation for Persons with Intellectual Disability. Maybe that's in another language..? I'm not sure.

Anyway, it was a great week! It was literally impossible to notice that the vast majority of these people were actually mentally disabled. Nearly everyone (of course, there were some people in whom it was obvious) was completely normal!

They came from all over the world - Australia, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Spain, France, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland, South Africa, Japan, Hong Kong, Portugal, Sweden, and the Netherlands. I work in the dining hall of the hotel that all the athletes and their coaches stayed at, so over the week I have seen these World Champions 3 times a day.

Believe it or not, it was GREAT! I had a great time working and talking to these people. Granted, many of them could only speak broken english (and some not at all!) but it was so much fun! So many of them had such great attitudes and were just awesome!

However, some of them were real rude bastards. ESPECIALLY the POLISH team! Curse on you! Not only were they extremely rude, arrogant, dismissive of everyone else and had been caught trying to steal our food over and over again, but apparently there are suspicions in the INAS-FID organisation that they don't actually even HAVE an intellectual disability! Bastards!

The Puerto Ricans generally looked a bit shady, but many of them seemed fine. The Swedes had the classic Swedish blonde-hair/blue-eyes combo that characterises them. The South Africans (by far the most friendly) would sing traditional African songs and dance around! They gave us many little trinkets as gifts!

The French ponced around as is their wont. The Japanese were extremely shy and kept trying to organise things beyond reason. The Hungarians were fairly non-descript except for one girl with an absolute killer smile.

The Great British were fine. They didn't rub in the fact that we lost the Ashes too much. One friendly old chap there used to be an English policeman, but then retired and now works in Buckingham Palace. Interesting!

Anyway, tomorrow is the last day that they are here. Believe it or not, these people are actually the World Champions! So it is something of a privilege to have them here.

Now I'll post some pictures!


Some of the South African team, with member of staff Adrian. They had just sung us a song that ended up becoming the theme song to the entire week, with lyrics along the lines of: "For your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends; The more we are together, the happier we are!"


Andrew, Paul and Bruno setting up for the massive barbecue (made to feed over 500 mouthes!) held just before the closing ceremony.


At the closing ceremony. My damn camera phone doesn't work well in the dark :(


Me and one of the girls from the Netherlands. She was so weird but so friendly! Haha she seemed to fall in love with me straight away - this morning she literally grabbed me and pulled me outside and was just walking around with me! Haha! I don't even know her name!

Anyway, I'll see them again tomorrow. Maybe I'll be able to get more pictures.
So, until next time!

P.S. My one question is, what qualifies someone as being mentally retarded? I mean, it was obvious enough in some people but the vast majority appeared completely normal?! It is called "intellectual disability" for INAS-FID. So what's the difference between that and mental retardation?

... anyone?

filling the gaps in society

Hopefully, this will take off.

1337 h4x0r update

There is (finally!) a new picture in the 1337 h4x0r competition. Click the link to the right and scroll down to see.

a year to forget?

On October 25th, it will be one year since the day I hired a van, picked up all my stuff and moved into my own house. It has been a year of ups and downs, and many interesting things have happened.


This is the house that I and the inimitable Steve moved into.


"I love cock!"

So it was my first time that I had to share a house and, by association, a life with other people around my own age, but with no real connection to me. A student share-house.

Well, it had it's ups and downs. It being the beginning of summer, the first few weeks were filled with nothing but sitting on the deck drinking beers.



This was pretty enjoyable. And I was fairly excited about the prospect of beginning a new life - one away from parents. Making it on my own. We soon enough got others to move in and there were four of us living here. Things were fun. Beer flowed freely and we enjoyed summers playing backyard cricket and many other ways of celebrating the fact that we were free and life was good.

Within 2 weeks of moving in, Steve and I had persuaded two different girls to strip for us on consecutive nights.

We cooked on the barbeque every night. Everything was good!

Some of the highlights included:

1. The night we flame-throwered the wasps nests

Nice balaklava, Steve.

2. The housewarming party - despite moving in in October, the party was in March. That was an awesome night. I can't find any pictures for this at the moment. But it was fun.

3. Getting the table-tennis table in the garage. This changed my life, as over the winter months rarely a day went by that I didn't play table tennis.

(this picture snapped from a video...)

4. Other random parties. One was recently that just materialised out of nothing. Steve got kicked in the balls this night, and i loved it.

Miles (left) and Alex (right) at said party.

But it wasn't always good. Soon enough, things about my housemates annoyed me. I became a recluse - hardly left my room just because I didn't want to see anyone. The social lifestyle that I started with became a solitary one. The more social activities like cooking for everyone in the house or sitting around talking disappeared as I got more and more annoyed. My environment was becoming discouraging, and it is hard to change yourself without changing your environment. It was fucked.

The last few months haven't been the greatest. Tensions were raised and friendships were destroyed. I recall being warned before I moved in: "You'll end up hating your housemates." How true.

But you know, it wasn't all that bad. This sad ending isn't without a faint glimmer of hope. In truth, living out of home for a year was a great learning experience. I learnt not only to take the responsibility of managing a household and the rigours of keeping it in good condition, but also I lived with three completely random people while I did it.

It seems to tie up this life I have led here in Canberra. It started well, years ago, but has gradually worn me down. And now it finally feels like it's nearly over!

In fact, everything I am doing these days seems to indicate that now is the beginning of the end. Soon I will move out of this house and at the same time, graduate from university. Then I can work, pay off my debts and afford all the things I want... especially clothes! God! And an ipod. Oh how I have waited! And then, hopefully mid next year, a move overseas and a new life, a new environment.

I am looking forward to it so much. It feels like I have paid my dues. The hard part is over. Student life is coming to an end. Summer is coming. The new era begins. The renaissance is imminent. And I couldn't be happier!


Sakura at ANU after rain - a sure sign that summer is coming.

So, let's look to the future! The past is over. The time has come. Get some of that Summertime Healing!

bye bye, instant shit!

Say hello to my little friend.



God only knows why it took me so long.

globe2 pop/rock lyrics

Thanks to Sho for searching long and hard through various Chinese sites and finding the lyrics to this new album!

Finally we can understand what they're saying when they try to speak english..

Example: From "Back 2 Be", what sounds like : "back back bessy! bekusuru gen gi! (which is meaningless) actually was "Back Back Basic, Breakthrough Again and Again!"

Could've fooled me, Keiko.

Read them here!

breakfast.

Excuse the bad quality of the photo. I couldn't tell until it was too late.



A cup of coffee, a braised steak and onion toastie, two multivitamin pills and a Mega C tablet. Yum !
(I would've had a banana as well but they're not ripe yet.)

re-dye

I hadn't done it for a while, so I spent half an hour today re-dying my hair - back to black.


Now just watch the girls go crazy!!

the gods have intervened

Weird, man.
If you see the previous post, you see that my keyboard was completely FUCKED after i spilt all this beer all over it.

Well, i was talking to Sho on googletalk only a few hours later when all of a sudden, the connection dropped out.

"Hello? Hello? Are you there...?" said I...

No response.

Eventually he typed something.. something like: "are you there? i can't hear anything."

I typed back expecting my text to be an unintelligable mishmash of crap, when i discovered that it was FIXED!!

What!? How did that happen!? No explanation. Except.. THE GODS.
They must've intervened and fixed my keyboard, but while doing so they accidently killed the phone conversation.
Weird! Oh well, saves me buying a new keyboard.

Anyway, here are some cool pics of a Kasumi PVC doll to colourise this blog entry.

i xs/pi.lt xsomne bveer omn mny keybvoard

>LO>L!

Oh mno. I a,c,cidemnta..l.ly xsp/i.lt bveer omn mny keybvoard juxst bvefore.l
I thought it wou.ld bve ok bvut it'xs ,comnp/.lete.ly xstuffed!

mnow i habve to get amnother omne tomnorrow!! hahaha i juxst thought i'd write thixs xsi.l.ly b.log emntry to remnemnbver the fa,ct that i ,comp/.lete.ly xstuffed it.

,c.laxsxsi,c.l

1337 h4x0r c0mp37i7i0n

I have decided that, for some fun, I will start a competition on this blog for the best occurrence of the numbers '1337'.

As any 1337 h4x0r knows, this number pops up randomly every now and then, be it while looking at webpages or maybe it's a score in a game, whatever. The point is that it gives the 1337 h4x0r a little burst of satisfaction, or "haha i know what that means and you don't..." kind of feeling.

So, next time you see the numbers 1337 pop up somewhere (and it must not be deliberate, like you've just typed in a calculator or something..), take a photo/screenshot/hd video or whatever, and send it to me at this address.

Now that there are a few of them, I will put them in order from newest to oldest.

23rd Sept. 2005: Yet another from Alex, while playing online poker.


21st Sept. 2005: From Alex, after he played poker machines...


9th Sept 2005: Also from Alex. This is pretty 1337!


I came across this one after Sho started talking about Gitanes cigarettes...


More pics as they are received.

voyeurism has gotten worse

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

you can't be serious

Petrol prices in Canberra are now 139.9 cents per litre.

Fuck!

tee hee

Two fish are in a tank. One says to the other: "You man the guns, I'll drive."

similarly...

Two birds are sitting on a perch. One says to the other: "Can you smell fish?"

heh heh i love those jokes.

what's wrong with the sony ericsson z800i

As far as I can tell, there are two problems with this phone.

One is that the buttons are too spread out. As you can see in this picture, there are weird horizontal bars between each row of buttons. And because it's a clamshell phone, the buttons don't stick out very far ! It is taking some getting used to as you have to use a smaller surface area of your finger to press each button. I am getting better at it but it doesn't feel as nice as the Nokias.

The other problem is that you can't turn off the shutter sound for the camera! I know they probably did that on purpose so that people couldn't use it voyeuristically, but it just sucks! Even on silent mode it makes a very audible ker-chunk sound. Why punish everyone because of what a minority of people do anyway?

My ratings for this phone:

Menus: 7/10. Nice and colourful and fairly easy to use. Lacking in a few settings though.
Camera: Quality - 9/10. The pictures, especially day shots are very clear.
Shutter Sound - 0/10. Fuck you Sony.
Buttons: 6/10. All buttons but the number keys are fine.
Features: 9/10. This phone has everything - video conferencing, bluetooth, plays mp3s... everything.
Aesthetics: 9/10. Not too big. Almost the same size, when closed, as my old Nokia 8250.

Overview:
Well, I really do like this phone. It's a nice size, it's smooth, the screen is big and bright, the camera is easy to use and transferring files between it and my computer is easy. As I said before, the buttons take some getting used to and the shutter sound is unsilenceable. Apart from that, it's great!

Final score: 8.5/10.

holy moly

Tonight I think I learned something. I have been shown something. In fact, not just tonight, but I am pondering the reasons for getting to know one single person, who I shall henceforth refer to as "the possum".

As those who know me well already understand, the possum is awful. Imagine a guy who is completely lacking in any social skills or discretion at all. A complete social misfit, a man with such low self-esteem that he will put his whole persona on the line in an effort to impress someone. When meeting people, he's not at all mysterious or charming, he instead relies on arguing violently with people until he can rub in their face the fact that he was right and they were wrong - but of course, they are just not interested in continuing. His voice is obnoxious and every time he speaks it is in an overly loud voice in order to attract attention - yes, that's it - he's an attention seeker. Of course, those with extremely low self-esteem usually are. But I have never before seen a case this bad. It is positively unbelievable. Think David Brent from The Office. The similarity is astonishing.

Tonight started out as me, the possum (whom i live with) and a friend of his, P. We three began drinking in the afternoon. They invited one other person, who turned up a bit later. Meanwhile, I was invited out for drinks at a classy pub down the road with people from jujutsu class. I hung with them for 2 hours, and then came home as my friend Alex was coming over. The jujutsu people, after eating, decided to come too. They invited other people as well until we had about 15 people around, sitting on the deck drinking beers and chatting.

Of course, of those 15, 12 of them were my friends ;) I don't mean to brag, though... >:)

So, there I am chatting to all these people that I know. And if you know me, you will know that I don't like to make people feel insignificant, EVER. I believe I have a quiet confidence about myself when I meet people. I mean, I do jujutsu and i play the piano, for example - now i don't go around advertising the fact that I learn how to smash people's heads 3 times a week or that i can play songs on the piano on request, because it will make people feel like I'm "having one up" on them. Always better to be humble. As much as possible. It endears you to other people.

But the possum just doesn't understand.

He gives bad first impressions.
He doesn't focus on points of connection, rather, he focuses on disconnection. He finds points to argue about and then rubs it in afterwards.
It's as though he wants to make people hate him, and then try to impress them with cheap talk afterwards. People get the shits!

Every time he leaves the room, the first conversation everyone starts is: "what the fuck is with that guy? he is such a total cock!!"

it just oozes out of this guy. now i have to live with him. I feel like i effected small change but clearly nowhere near enough. You all probably understand what these people are like. Now imagine living with one.

Seriously, he was making jokes about beating women and 9/11, and just generally being a stupid bully. That's it, he's a bully - and like every bully, a coward.
He doesn't realise that everyone can see straight through his transparent layer of shit through to the core of total cockfacedness. When he left the room tonight, one guy summed it up perfectly by referring to him as "that guy that everybody seems to hate."

Anyway, i digress. You get the picture. I just find myself wondering these days "why did I move in with this guy?" In truth, he seemed ok when i only had to deal with little bits of it at a time. In some senses, he's gotten better - he used to be stressed out with work and was a total cock that everyone hated, but for some reason i was the first person to see through his transparent shit barrier and his cock personality didn't affect me. He has gotten more light-hearted these days but it is almost as bad as him stressed - just cos he talks a lot more - sigh !!

So why did i meet this guy? Is meeting him a message from the heavens of what I am not ever to become? It is an opposing example. "Don't Be Like This", say the gods. But why did I have to live with him for this long (since october 2004) to understand this? Every time it just gets worse and worse. Maybe I'm being forewarned about what not to turn in to.

Ah, some other things he does:

gamble, drink and smoke excessively
too lazy to get a license (he's 20), OR fix his bicycle (back tyre fucked for months now) so he can never get anywhere unless he guilts people into giving him a lift.

Then he had the nerve to come in tonight after everyone had left and say: "i was just double checking - but i think tonight went well and your friends liked me, what did you think?" (except he wouldn't say it with as much beautiful punctuation). Well, what am I to say? No one at all liked him. One girl even kicked him square in the balls and had him doubled up in pain on the floor. He deserved it, and it was hilarious...

Man, this is ridiculous. Why, gods, why did you make me live with him for so long? What are you trying to make me understand apart from "this guy sucks"?!?

So frustrating. But maybe only 6 weeks and I can move out. The finish line is coming into sight about .... now... Sigh.

Here's a picture of the ugly bastard:


UPDATE: After sleeping on it, I think I know what has changed since i met this guy. I think it has made my wit quicker, actually! To his credit, he is very quick at coming up with arguments for discussion. He can think of things to say very quickly, regardless of whether he believes it or not. I could never do this and it led to awkward silences when talking to girls. But now I see how he does it, and I have made my own version, which works even better than his does! Sure he's got the quickness but his wit is pathetic. He is also very cocky and I think that I now see how being cocky affects people (especially girls), but by knowing the possum I see what happens if you take it too far...

it's arrived !

Finally, it's here! My Sony Ericsson Z800i! Awesome!

It was a bastard though - transferring all my contacts over, and it hasn't changed over to my new number yet, but three mobile promises that it will happen soon.

Also, I can't send picture messages for some reason? Maybe that will change after the number is fixed up too.

Anyway, here are some pics that i took with it today! I thought they weren't bad for a 1.3megapixel phone camera. Pretty clear during the day...!


- a recently built building near my house


- avoiding staring at the sun


- "wow, that guy in the mirror looks so cool..."

notice the different hairstyles between photos 2 and 3 - that was because photo 2 was taken after my haircut today, and photo 3 was before... :)