11/14/2006

Survival, Daggers, Antarctica, Prose & Donuts.

We made it! My brother and I survived 3 parentless days. I think we fared reasonably well for ourselves too.

  • The house isn't a mess,
  • We don't appear dishevelled, dirty, or malnourished,
  • The car still goes,
  • The birds are still alive,
  • And there are no blood or vomit stains on the carpet.

We even managed to cook for ourselves! I know, I was slightly alarmed at the idea of myself and my brother being around kitchen appliances unsupervised too, but thankfully it all turned out ok. I found it quite amusing how as soon as mum got home she carried out a quick inspection of everything trying to be surreptitious. Good on ya mum. :) They enjoyed their little getaway and ate more takeaway than we did! Now THAT is weird.

Our Saturday was actually pretty tame. We just hung around playing playstation and nintendo, and I forced him to study a little for his (year 11) exams, before driving him to basketball at about 5.30. He finished at 6.30 so I waited the hour for him in the carpark, reading one of mum's books that I hurriedly grabbed off the shelf before we ran out the door. It was one of those period books about people in the early 20th century. Wasn't the most captivating read I've ever had, but it did the job. Unfortunately his team lost (18-20) but he got over it. We swung by Video Ezy on the way home and picked up two dvds to watch after dinner. Cooking dinner was uneventful - I even left Mark to do most of it himself when I got a phone call - the end product tasted pretty damn good and didn't result in food poisoning. Score! :)

The dvds we got were The Ringer and House of Flying Daggers. Hmm... Can you guess who chose what? We watched The Ringer together and it was actually pretty decent. It was light, funny and not as distasteful as I thought it would be (since Johnny Knoxville was in it, and it's about scamming the special olympics!). When it finished we proceeded to eating a lot of ice cream and putting my new Ministry of Sound CD on. Dancing around the house was pretty fun! I was actually surprised that none of the neighbours complained (we have complainy neighbours) as it was like 12.30 and we had the music really loud. (I love the CD so much... I've listened to it almost religiously since I got it a week or so ago. Highly recommend it - it'll make dance music lovers out of you all!) Sunday was spent tidying up and stuff, and more studying by Mark.

Got to watch House of Flying Daggers on Sunday night. I'd been wanting to see it or Hero for a while. Something about the artiness of them really appealed to me. Like, the elegance and choreography and overall cinematography or something. Haha, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to use the word cinematography because I know very little about film making... Oh well! Anyway, I got all excited about the idea of watching a film with subtitles only to find out that it had been dubbed in English! As the film played out though, I was actually thankful for it, and the dubbing was almost believable. Admittedly a few things about the film were a little confusing, but it was definitely a beautiful movie to watch, and the themes of the film were universal. Love, betrayal, sacrifice, friendship, the quest for happiness were all central to the story. The fight scenes were breathtaking, and not ridiculously overdone. If you haven't seen it, maybe give it a look sometime for something different.

Last night I had to go down to the tennis club and umpire two other teams playing against each other, because we didn't make the finals. Lord was it cold! The joy of sitting up in those high umpire chairs - always wanted to do that :) - was ruined by the icy cold, unrelenting wind. And of course I was wearing my jeans with the hole in the knee, so my right leg was particularly frozen by the end of it. When we'd finished our umpirely duties (and ate the supper the teams provided) we thankfully left and I drove Luke home. But guess what? As I pulled into his driveway and he was getting out of the car, he noticed that there was a lot of steam coming out of the bonnet of the car! I took the risk and decided to drive home - I could smell something burning which was a little scary - but I made it. After poking around the engine with Dad late last night we discover that there's a massive oil leak. So this morning I risked life and limb and drove it to this mechanic with mum driving in the unproblematic car behind me. Well maybe I exaggerated the risk to me, but you never know. The engine coulda blown up or something... :P

I'm starting to get serious about attempting to write something these holidays too. I've been brainstorming ideas, and putting a lot of effort into planning everything. I'm re-reading some of John Marsden's Tomorrow series for inspiration.

Lastly, I've got a group interview at Krispy Kreme this Saturday! It seems I have no trouble impressing potential employers with the on-paper me, but I somehow fall short in person. Hopefully this time it will be different!

Dale.

5 comments:

Jesicka309 said...

lol ur brother studied?
is he that bad at indo? haha
good 2 see ur being a responsible big brother and making sure he passes hehe

Paul said...

Hazaa for not looking "dishevelled, dirty, or malnourished". Thanks for the update - although you have much to learn about car troubles....

Good luck for your interview!!! i must say i had to laugh a little when i found out about Praveen getting a call back for village and not u..

Movies soon with chung, was supposed to be today! But you know how work is, ow wait no you don't. Ow and luke, me, jason, sara ect.. are going out saturday night, you to come!

Anonymous said...

HAHA I like the name of this blog, but where does the Antartica fit in, is that the ice-cream bit?

For a moment from your previous blog, I thought your brother was like really young, but year 11 is okay, my sister is the same too.

HOORAY for the survival. Kitchen appliances unsupervised?? Are you two that bad?? Should of held a house party or something, but that could of been too much for your parents to come back too.

Hey I got the Ministry of Sound CD too, just today, it's SO awesome, thou some seem repeated, suppose it's still a hit from previous years, what bugs me most, is my sister hates that type of music, so she's always blah blah blahing about it....I don't care

Gotta say trying to force someone to study is real hard. My lil sis did it to me when I had exams and now I'm doing it to her, and she goes "why does this sound so familiar?", but it doesn't work, she falls asleep on her books and doesn't get up again till she is fully rested....as least your method works(hopefully)

I've never seen either of those movies, I don't normally watch idiotic films, but House of Daggers sounds interesting, but there are too many HK films to watch.

Tennis, you should of brung a blanket or better yet knee pads LOL

The car doesn't sound all too well, sounds crapier than the one I drive, but at least you didn't have to drag the car behind the unproblematic car with a rope behind it, coz I've seen that done before, but yeah scary stuff.

All the best for Krispy Kremes...talk about how much you love donuts or something. Don't overact thou, just be yourself. They normally look for cheery people...so be cheery!!!!!!

Cheers
Wendy
P.S. I normally like to respond to everything someone posted, sorry if this is too long

~shan said...

i know i dont actually know you, but if you get the job at krispy kreme, could u score me free doughnuts?

Anonymous said...

The tomorrow series was cool (although I stopped reading it after The third day, the frost). You should also re-read the dark materials trilogy before the first movie comes out. I'd love to read what you end up writing. (And not just so that I can to check the spelling and grammar.) :p