i think my dried fruit went bad

:-(

2007 Survivor Beach Hat Tournament

i was waiting for pictures to publish, but meh, its been too long.

i've survived my first TD experience.

• our columbia sponsored shirts got cancelled. instead of shirts printed with the tourney logo, we bought white shirts and made ppl paint them in their tribal colors (or not, depending on their mood). the columbia sponsored water bottles were awesome.


• fewer ppl showed up sat night than expected. more ppl showed up sunday than expected (==> financial fiasco). more organization from me would've helped. we managed to sneak 8 extra ppl into lunch (we'd only paid for 40. i have no morals, i know, but neither do the restaurant owners. they claimed the buffet lunch of chicken, fried rice, fruit, french bread, pasta salad cost $180 a head).


• we didn't get to do a lot of our survivor challenges, but our buried water idea turned out beautifully (we dug holes in the sand and buried trash bags with ice wrapped around 5-gallon jugs. we used electric pumps (meant for petrol, but completely new) to pump water up).


• some cable tv channel showed up to film.


• nobody got seriously injured, so our team of 6 paramedics (3 male, 3 female--who knows why they separate their teams into male and female ones) got pretty bored.

i also survived the weekend, despite some serious set backs:

• jon, alicia, and i rented bikes on saturday to venture to the nearby supermarket. little did we know that the road to the supermarket was a MOUNTAIN road. i was heaving and hoing all the way there. and my back brakes didn't work, so careening wildly down wasn't really an option (especially with all the construction trucks and buses coming the other way). and then we had to heave and ho all the way back (uphill both ways! downhill both ways!). and then my pedal fell off. luckily, we were pretty close to home by then and the road was flat for the rest. i rode it one footed using the push-pull method. i would raise the pedal with the top of my foot and then push it down again. i lost my shoe in the process.


• kevin made a pipe out of a coke can. it worked much better than the aluminum foil one we were using before.


• sat night, one of the guys started blowing fire from the tikki torches. and then he swung fire from the ends of ropes (like at that waterfire festival we went to last year). in between flaming feats, he'd walk on his hands. turns out we had a circus performer amongst us. awesome.


• no one actually got naked for the glow-in-the-dark game of disc, but i'm ok with that. there was a huge hole in the side of the field. christina ran straight into it and face planted. her wig went flying. did i mention that i love slapstick?


• when we went to find our tents, we found a cow. maybe it was a water buffalo. anyways, it was standing between two tents. what was it doing? you guessed it: pooing. it left a huge paddy right in the middle of the path, next to a lamp that wasn't working. we chose tents on the other side of the grounds.


• apparently, other ppl found the tents super hot (i thought it was quite nice). they moved to sleep on the beach, right before it started raining. whoops. and apparently, the sex noises from one tent kept the dogs howling all night. i was oblivious to it all.


• and then sunday went swimmingly. one ruffian tried to sneak past me without registering, but i tracked him down (i had to tackle him to the ground and stick my knee in his mouth). nancy, you should really teach your brother better manners.

following the crowd

ditto on the johari window:

http://kevan.org/johari?name=makazooer

gridlock

The jazzfest saga, part deaux:

in preparation for my marathon flight, jonnie charles elliot and i breakfast'd at the flying pan. (if i call him by all his names, it sounds like i have more friends).

and then i was off...to spend all eternity stuck in ORD airport. my connecting flight to boston got cancelled, and i was supposed to get on the next flight, except the customer services lady gave me another huang's ticket. as such, they kicked me off the flight, refused to hand me the ticket back (it was the only proof i had that i was supposed to get to boston eventually. they claimed it was a security risk, even tho they had already let me on the flight as the imposter huang, and the flight had already left). my only recourse, it seemed, was to stand by with a bazillion high school kids (also from boston, also coming from hk). the next seat for sale wasn't for two whole days. so daddy booked me a hotel room and talked his agent into changing my flight into a direct one for montreal the next morning. i called cchu who called keister who stole my bag from the boston airport (no security issues at all) to bring to montreal for me ("uh lilz, is your bag the one with the donkey ears inside?"). the silver lining? daddy booked me a king sized bed and a complimentary breakfast. AND, a giordano's was waiting right around the corner. i consoled myself with a whole stuffed hawaiian pizza and all the sitcoms i could watch (welcome home!).

and then the next morning, i got in the domestic line (cuz you know, i want to go to the state of canadia). and then they told me i couldn't get a ticket from boston changed into a ticket for montreal. and then they tried to tell me i had to stand in line again (for the third time). and then i cried. so they told me to speak to a supervisor. who left before i could speak to her. so i made them call me a supervisor. but they refused to pick up the phone when it rang again. and then magically, a supervisor popped out of nowhere, and i sobbed my story to him, and he clickedy clacked on his keyboard, mm-hmmm'd a couple of times, and let me on my flight (FINALLY!). apparently, it's not that you can't change a flight's destination (even if that destination is in a different country). it's that you usually can't do it for free. but they dicked me over, and my dad flies a lot, so eat my shorts, united. next time, i will try REALLY HARD to fly thru san fran. ohmigod cuz life is too short, and i have important things like this to get to:

at jazzfest, smitten lost in the finals to storm (whom we beat in the finals last year). we ran out of legs, and i gave up on a couple of deep discs. the last turn was a run thru d on me :-(--she laid out right past me. over the course of a year, i've gained a few things and lost a few things. i've traded 1) my will to cut continuously and 2) my backhand huck for 1) a better read and 2) a better flick. ah well, maybe my lack of intensity means its time to take a break.

the drive back from jfest consisted of sleeping and eating (for me). first we picked up some roadside strawberries (and then i fell asleep), then we visited the cabot cheese place, where i learned that i CAN eat cheddar and other aged cheeses cuz the lactose all gets digested by the process (proccess, you are my hero). if anyone knows of any non-cheddar aged cheeses, lemme know pls so i can start consumption post haste. and then i fell asleep. and then we were at the beer place. the bottling process is pretty phenomenal. stuff like that always makes me want to be course 2. and between naps, we went to 2 more cheese places (one of which sold yummy chocolate). the next time i woke up, we were in boston and atong had stuck some sour patch kids on my face. oh, and somewhere in there, atong managed to lose a bet about how to pronounce the double-l in peru, which meant she had to chubby bunny a 700 calorie chocolate muffin that had been sitting in the sun all day. it was mighty sweaty. moohaha.

while i was in boston, i generally hung out with smite a lot and ate a lot, which is par for the course for when i'm in boston. otherwise, i:

• had a picnic in the commons with kdob during which i made marshmallow taffy, ate foodtruck food, and beat atong+meryl at flutterguts (yang is REALLY good).
• bought matching hats with laura and yelena.
• 
yelena's so beautiful
• ate at the northend
• (both plates are mine)
• ate at soundbytes (where we learned of the soundbytes strife
• 
• slept thru the fireworks (which was quite the feat cuz it was cold and rainy and loud)
• slept thru ratatouille
• had a marathon eating day where we started at 11 with lunch at veggie planet, had mochi and boba at tea stop, test drove a prion(?) to finance our second lunch at border cafe, walked back to tea stop cuz cchu wanted some too, walked to christina's cuz ICE CREAM!, walked to tosci's cuz MORE ICE CREAM! and got home in time to get take out from red bones. phew.
  

AND i found this poster that described me perfectly (it says: I'm Lilly! I am the queen! I like EVERYTHING! (to eat)). That thar next to it is a daisy.

that was quite the mouthful. also also, i just wanted to say that i'm doing phone interviews at work. whoa the responsibility!