Scaramouche, scaramouche!

Every now and then, I come across a song that makes me unbelievably happy just listening to it. Last week it was Rufus Wainwright - Instant Pleasure; this week I present you Queen - Good Old-fashioned Lover Boy. This may sound obsessive, but I suspect I lost 2 nights worth of sleep because the Queen song wouldn't stop playing in my head and I couldn't stop humming and giggling delightedly over it in bed. Now I'm just lapping up Queen's Platinum Collection, generously provided by bittorrent. I suppose I have Aditi to thank for this, O Aditi, provider of all good music, I worship you. Maybe not provider, but introducer. All the same.

Semester reopens on Monday, and I'm rather looking forward to it. I refuse to admit that I've been bored this holiday; the stubborness is inexplicable. I'll concede that I've been a tad restless this week or so, for certain reasons, but once semester starts no doubt I'll be quite happily distracted. This has been one of the most enjoyable holidays so far, not long enough to drag, and not short enough to leave me unsatisfied.

I've read 2 of Fry's books, which were both wonderfully poofy, witty and fun. Reread The Fountainhead, which was very fulfilling until I reached the end where I discovered that the last 6 pages were missing and scrambled desperately on the internet looking for an e-book copy. I watched Crash, a very confronting, vignette-style movie about racism twice. It was good, very well composed, and provided a lot of food for thought. I got a little terrified thinking about the firearm laws in the US, and how anyone could live at ease knowing the next person on the street may have a gun is beyond me.

I abandoned American Gods halfway through. It's uncharacteristic of me to not finish a book, but I didn't have the stamina for it. I've only a limited appetite for the fantasy genre, and American Gods just failed to draw me in. Admittedly, I started it during that period of restlessness, where watching TV was the only thing that could hold my attention long enough to make the time pass. So I watched the news channels a lot, which didn't help the situation, because of all the depressing stupidity and stubborness going on in the Middle East. Where is the UN in all of this, for god's sake?

Anyway, that about sums up this holiday, and ultimate's part in it goes without saying of course. This update has come a little late; it's me being lazy again. I hope all is well back home, and to those who've left or are now starting to leave for uni, all the best!

Southern Uni Games

WHOOOOOOO! What an AWESOME week!!

I am back from cold, wet and windy Ballarat, which can be succinctly described as a basin with a perpetual overhanging rain cloud. Everything is also unsurprisingly named with either 'miner' or 'eureka' as part of its name (it was an ex-gold-mining town, see) - Miners Retreat Motel, Minerdome, Eureka Lodge, Miner Eureka Park Bench...

However, we were lucky enough to receive rare sunny weather for all three days of SUG. There were 12 teams competing, but 6 real competitors/threats, according to the senior players. The experience was gold. It was three days of excellent company, great spirit, great matches and some of the most beautiful playing I'd ever seen in my 4 months of ultimate. Not long, I know, but even the old players who've been in and out of tournaments admit so.

On my part, it's been precious learning from the very best of players and being able to watch them in action. I caught a few goals, held up pretty well on defence (made a coupla great Ds and handblocks!!), found my calling as a deep (a position responsible for making cuts far downfield near/at endzone) threat, and basically, playing some of the best ultimate I've ever played.

Admittedly the draw was somewhat lopsided, with most of the threats in the other pool, but we fought hard nonetheless and aimed for 120/120 points from the total 8 matches we played across 3 days.

The week at a glance:

Monday

Gathered at Barrie's (president) place in the morning for some team bonding and strategising. Ate muffins and Teevee snacks, bagged the other teams, went through VFDA rules, laughed and did stupid things with the whiteboard and magnets. Went in two cars for the hour plus drive to the 'rat.

Checked in, went out for dinner and - here's the fun part - went back to the motel and played drinking games. Half of us chose not to drink, but it was good fun anyways. Made individual goals for the tournament, some serious, some not. My serious one was to maintain my focus throughout the game, cause usually by the 3rd point I forget to concentrate and...what am I playing again? My not serious one was fun to make but with my limited skills impossible to pull off. I wanted to catch a goal from behind and through my legs. I've seen Johnny (he is brilliant, just brilliant) do it a coupla times. He had just made his goal, which was to break a defender by faking to the side and passing the disc up right through the defender's legs. At this point, Chuck (our coach) chipped in and said if Johnny made that pass to me and I caught it behind and through, he'd buy everyone drinks. Chris Freise said he'd retire from ultimate cause he'd have seen it all. John and I high-fived and said we'd get up early tomorrow morning and practice that pass. (We didn't really =)

Tuesday

A highly successful day, with everyone going into the games with full batteries and no major pre-existing injuries. Defeated University of Tasmania 15-2, La Trobe Bundoora 15-1 and La Trobe Wodonga 15-6. Wodonga comprised a team of ultimate newbies wanting to party at unigames before they graduated from uni, but had a genuine enthusiasm for the game. We played all sorts of whack plays with them, like cup-o-saurus, stop-drop-roll, Raid, Braveheart and American football offence. My favourite was Raid, where at the call of "Raid!" everyone on the team save one drops to the ground on their backs with floundering limbs, like roaches sprayed with Raid, and the one person standing is supposed to receive a huck (long throw) at the endzone to score.

Whack plays are extremely fun, but only if played in the right context and in good spirit, where both teams would get a laugh out of it. Cup-o-saurus is a trademark Melbourne Uni defence which never works, where everyone on the team circles the offense player holding the disc, and one person, usually the shortest (i.e. me) goes deep-deep. The thrower managed to break the cup and I D-ed the disc, beating the remaining 6 offense players around me, which was absolutely unbelievable and inspired Freise's atrocious "There is a hway!! There is a hway!!" pun which everyone will groan at forever. (Hway as in Hui, but usually pronounced 'whey' by the Aussies)

Wednesday

Sore limbs, free physios and more great playing! Defeated arch-rivals Monash 15-5 and Deakin 15-1. At this point, we were determined to let Wodonga, the most inexperienced team score the most against us, and so far, we've held up with Wondonga leading the score count with 6 against. Blazed our way through the quarter-final against Swinburne a.k.a. Swinnie, beating them 15-2 followed by a warm-down game of Survivor Ultimate, where everyone gets on the pitch and gets eliminated one by one.

Had a team dinner at Johnny's huge house (his family lives in Ballarat) in the middle of nowhere Ballarat. He had a pool table, a spacious kitchen and one of those long dinner tables, which fit all 14 of us nicely. Discovered Jagermeister, and had two shots, one in the form of a Jager-bomb (a glass of Red Bull with a shot glass of Jager dropped into it and drunk up as quickly as possible) and the other straight. Chuck was the undisputed champion of the Jager-bomb; before the starter's mouth had completed the 'o' of "Go!" he had dropped the shot, gulped it and thumped down an empty glass.


Chuck, 2 years ago. Most pix are still on other people's cameras.

Thursday

The tension was tangible as we prepared to battle Flinders in the semis, who beat us in the finals at SUG 2005 to win the gold medal. The more points we scored, the more frustrated they got, and the worse they played. We fed vicariously on the cracks and in-fighting that were beginning to surface in their team, and fuelled our own team morale to an all-time high. Flinders did not handle the pressure well, and finally crumbled to give us a 15-4 win.

The finals was against Adelaide Uni, which was a fantastic, focused, good-spirited team deserving of all kinds of respect. The game was close, as exhaustion began to take its toll and blunt our edge. We took the lead but Adelaide pulled back impressively, scoring the last point at time cap to end the game 14-8 to us. They were the only team to have prevented us from scoring a maximum of 15 before the time cap and the only team to have scored more than La Trobe Wodonga, ruining that record as well.

Cheers, hugs and camaraderie all round as Melbourne celebrated our gold medal and regained our title as SUG champs. The tournament virgins (i.e. me, Jess, Chris and Dave) had Vegemite 'Vs' painted on our cheeks and a pixfest ensued. Every girl on the team received at least one MVP point during the tournament, and 4 members made the inaugural SUG Merit Squad for excellence in playing. We packed up, prepared to head off to the medal ceremony and then back to Melbourne, while I tried to convince Johnny that I'd left my pool table at his house. Until I get better photos from the rest of the team, here's a snapshot of the people that made this week what it was:


Frank Simmons, 6'8".


Left to right: Frank, Liz, Johnny, Jo, Alica, Chuck and Dave.

Friday

The Three Rs - Rest, Recovery and Results. Did much better than expected, however, the results were not indicative of effort invested. I got H1s in Intro Micro and Managing People and Organisations, a H2A in Quantitative Methods 1 and a H2B in Accounting Reports and Analysis. When I logged on and saw my results, I giggled for about 5 minutes. It was the kind of giggle that happens when you've successfully hoodwinked everyone and got away scot-free.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to another great semester, armed with a better understanding of what to expect and a better feel for the system. With effort and resolve, hopefully I'll get that string of H1s, although it doesn't matter so much anymore as long as I've got ultimate, FMAA, badminton and a host of other activities to complete the uni experience. Also, I've decided to treat myself next sem by dropping a commerce subject and taking up a philosophy subject instead. I'm really excited about it since we don't get that much flexibility in Commerce (compared to Arts anyway) and Chuck, who is doing a PhD in the Phil Dept was able to tell me where the good stuff was.

That's it for now; this post is starting to buckle under the sheer weight of words and I'm sure you are too. I have 11 weeks to get more in shape for the Australian Uni Games in Sept, 2 weeks left to spend in languorous relaxation and one heck of a week to remember for a long time.