Unibuds Bodhi Nite

2010-08-28
I'm still dizzy from yesterday haha, no Dizzy is the (nick?) name of a guy in the buddhist society of unsw, Unibuds. Last night was their anniversary, they always put on a wonderful show with dhamma talks and choir songs. The show may only run from 7pm to 10:30, but there is a lot of preparation that goes into it. This year I came back as part of decoration department.
I was supposed to arrive at 9am, but some ill advised birdie force fed me alcohol last night! (actually the alcohol just went with the movie.. something about the rape of Nanking in b/w. The ending that I saw before going back upstairs to play SC). Then I played Star Craft until 2:30 am, with my brother watching me for the last hour or so. I kicked ass as both terran and zerg. I'm honing my terran skills because they are of course the race that I identify most with, and it's so much fun to live out my fantasies of every sci-fi book in the form of a human army.
I arrived at 11am, with lots of work to do. We pinned the gold cloth to the altar and arranged the buddha with flowers and candles around on top of it. I tended to get in the way most of the time, so I held back and let the girls do most of the work, even though they didn't know why I wasn't helping... argh miscommunication ho.
The funniest little drama happened half way through pinning the black cloth to the boards at the front of reception. We were using some of the gaffer tape and Jia Yin wanted to help. I was about to start tearing off strips from the roll of tape when she gave me a strange look 'what are you doing?' so I just gave her the entire roll of tape and figured I'd find some other way to help pin the cloth. She then, with one small piece of tape that I had torn off for her on her index finger, tore off another bigger piece and gave it to me!? We were both really confused. It was irresistibly cute and overwhelmingly awkward!
Everything looked nice, it was time to open the doors. I stood in front of the message board and offered people the pens to write messages. I met a guy called Victor in a white jacket with gold flower patterns, a long woolen scarf, fantastic beautiful wrinkles, and a camera. He was looking for interesting faces to take pictures of. He showed me a couple of convincing shots and told me to go to the state library for a photography competition that is being displayed there at the moment. I also met Mrs Lim, the wife of the founder of Unibuds. She was very nice to me. There were many other amazing people everywhere. All the while I couldn't help smiling (manaically?) I don't know how other people keep straight faces around so many other people... This is me exploring the boundaries of my social awkwardness.
Lillian, Adeline and Amy were there too, I met a guy called Jack again, we both knew eachother's faces but couldn't pin down where we had seen eachother before. Alex was helping out in catering as well, he asked me for 'innocent anime movies' and I just laughed at him ha ha ... ah. Julian (one of the only other white guys) on the piano told me about his family and how he had somehow managed to rope in 8 relatives to see the show.
I finally had a chance to get to know Ivy, one of the other members of Deco. Unfortunately Melody was practicing with choir all day and I barely had the chance to say hi... Melody is incredibly beautiful in a unique way. I like her lots. And that's all I'm willing to write in my blog about her!
After the great show, with some very inventive scripting and interjections from the little babies in the audience who laughed at all the right moments, we all went out to supper! At a place called Super Bowl (although the sign says Super Meal - the chinese speakers translate it directly from the chinese as bowl). I sat next to a senior member, Eugene, who had worked in commercial real estate. He taught me some chinese words (cantonese) that I should have known from regular interaction. Shi Ying joined us, everybody had a good attempt at eating the loads of food but we were already stuffed from the lovely cake and delicious tofu at dinner (6-7pm). It was already past midnight at this time. We took photos and made lots of noise while toasting with tea.
The night ride home was enjoyable. Nobody made too much noise, or were too crazy looking. I sat next to someone reading a book and read my own in quiet. My feet were killing me by the time I arrived home. It was nice wearing good clothes yesterday, but forgive me if I don't immediately jump back into them.

Is it over? Can I open my eyes now?
I know Tommy Dean will join me in blind ignorance of the Australian Federal Election 2010. He said so at the special TGIF a few weeks ago. The only thing I noticed and love the thought of is that the seat of Melbourne is now secured by a greens candidate.

I made great coffee this morning (either or my body is craving it exceptionally this morning). I also have donuts, that could be a factor in the mix.

I am talking nonsense, let's start the blog post now.
Last night I drew a picture of a tree, with lots of branches. It looks stunning and is a tribute to the phrase 'practice makes perfect' wrt drawing. All I need to do now is drift further away from my anime-roots and start distinguishing people's faces and styles to make characters and be able to draw preliminary comics / stories, which I guess is where all of this is headed. I came up with a good idea last night. It's one of those things where the story all falls out simply by analysis. In this case I considered a personality type, that of the mathematician / ideologist (which is rare, since I kind of am one and usually the closest things go unnoticed) and something that a guest speaker at my Professional Issues and Ethics course said about them. They are notoriously poor at communication skills. In fact you could easily call anyone with that sort of one track mind 'stupid'... Aaaand I forget where the story goes from there :P That's probably for the best, it always feels a bit wrong when you tear a page (or chapter) out of your own book. Better to transform and rewrite the bits that you know.

Last night I discovered music blogs xD Compilations of rare music, stylistic things that don't sell, all the classics that I should learn by title and artist, etc. I wish we had the bandwidth to download some of them !! I wish I had the time to go out and buy some video games too!