Daily Archives: January 3, 2012

Jan3

New Years 2.0 party

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“Its almost time!”

“Hush! Get ready!”

“THREE…”

“Wait, already? Man! This was a quick year!”

“TWO…”

“Wait, is she here yet? Damnation, I need someone to kiss, quick!”

“ONE!”

” WOOO! HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

 

And so, for the second time in as many days, I rang in the New Year with a cheer and a glass of scotch. How did this happen? Thankfully for me, I share a flat with a most excellent woman named Storm (not, not the X-man, but almost as cool) who, 8 years back, had a horrible New Years Eve. Thus, New Years eve 2.0 was pioneered, since “well, the first time sucked, so lets do it again!”. Thinking about it as I sit in the 4-person Spa (Ed note: Again, Spa = Jacuzzi in New Zealand) with 11 other people, I’m quite ok with the idea of having a second chance to party over New Years.

The night started quite worse off than the original New Years, unfortunately, when I realized that my steaks had rotted in the fridge, instead of waiting patiently for me to grill them. I tried tossing them in a brine to bring them back from the brink, but it wasn’t to be, and instead of delicious steak and potatoes I had Fish and Chips with Spanish instead. Definitely a good dinner, but a bit of a letdown when you were expecting Steak, I have to say.

The party itself technically started up right at the official facebook start time when a few people started showing up, but it only really started for me when Nick and Harriet showed up and we started chatting about a Capoeira trip that might be coming up. We relaxed outside on the driveway with all the lawn furniture spread out around us, chatting and going over a few of the moves that I keep getting wrong… I’ll admit that I nearly got a solid kick in the face from Nick, but thankfully he pulled it back when he noticed that my esquiva (the basic dodge/deflect for Capoeira), but other than that it was quite a fun time, heh.

Once the party did finally reach critical mass around eleven or so, we started having the real fun – between the spa being full of people and almost every room in the house being full of random excellent conversation ranging from high-altitude rocketry to the way to disarm someone in a fencing bout. The best technique, if your interested, we learned was to use mind bullets to destroy your opponents sword… a method that I employed by accident when my partners sword broke before we even started fencing. Totally my mind bullets, by the way, and not the fact that his sword was a cheap plastic costume piece. Totally mind bullets.

Aside from that… typical most-excellent party evening. By the end of the night the empty bottles had filled a full trash-bin, most of the water from the spa had been sloshed out by our attempts to break the record for most people, and the flat itself was… actually quite clean, thanks to some last-minute work by Storm and someone named Jacob. I believe that I finally fell into bed around 4:30 or so, after helping a whole group of people make the heart-rending decision as to whether they should stay on our couch, or walk the 200 yards or so to their own flat. <sigh> Life in a small city is so tough, isn’t it?

Jan3

New Years Eve V1.0: A Very KAOS New Years Eve

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I don’t personally have any photos of the following events, but fortunately the party that I went to had a resident photograher who has generously posted pictures online. The shots are mostly PG, but be warned that these ARE pictures of a New Years Eve party.  They’re not bad, but it might not be advised to open them at a work computer.  That said, enjoy! 🙂

http://marsden.smugmug.com/Events/KAOS/2011-12-31-New-Years-party/20839226_87f5M6

 

 

“Its almost time!”

“Hush!  Get ready!”

“THREE…”

“Wait, already?  Man!  This was a quick year!”

“TWO…”

“Where did she go?  I need someone to kiss, quick!”

“ONE!”

” WOOO! HAPPY NEW YEAR!”

 

Honestly, it was a bit less intense of a change-over than I was expecting, but I always build things up in my head to a point that reality can never truly match up. This transition point between 2011 and 2012 found me a world away from home, in a garage packed with couches (and people sitting on them), talking with people I had never met before about assassinations and club elections. A strange combination I know, but if you had been there, you’d understand that it wasn’t quite as unexpected as one might imagine.

The day had started out quite well for me; a lazy uninspiring afternoon capped off by a quite excellent dinner of ribeye steak, marinated in a perfect brine and slow-cooked on the open grill. Once dinner had been consumed I had lazed away the rest of the time before the party reading in the spa (Ed note: “Spa” is the Kiwi term for “Jacuzzi”), reading about the heroes of the Warhammer universe on my Kindle. A good day, and definitely an acceptable way to get myself ready to end 2011.

The party that I was attending was a party that my flatmates had invited me to, a KAOS event – a group from the University of Canterbury that stands for “Killing as an Organized Sport”… not literally killing, obviously, but they run huge games of assassins – where each person is assigned a “mark”, and you get “kills” with squirt guns, pine cone “grenades” and lots of other rather sneaky tricks. As soon as I heard about their games I knew I wanted to hang out with the group, and this party would be the first real KAOS shindig that I’d been to. I’m honestly not sure what I expected, but looking back I don’t think I was nearly prepared for how insane and fun the party would end up being.

I met up with Carla and her friend Mikey on the way over, and we all rolled into the flat together – stashing our bikes out front and making our way into the main area. The night itself quickly blended into one long string of awesome, but a few highlights would be:

  • Hanging out and mixing drinks with the bodyguard of the dictatrix. When we’re talking about a club focused around large-scale games of assassins, it just makes sense that the president of the club (dictator or dictatrix in this case) would be a juicy target. And thus, would need to be defended. John was that defense, and a few times during the night he was called to jump up from his drinks to “catch a bullet” for the fearless leader. But instead of a bullet, they were “poisoned drinks”… I don’t think he minded the extra shots, heh 🙂

    Unfortunately for him though, New Years Eve is when a new dictator is elected… which in this case means the elected person performs a “hostile takeover” by killing the bodyguard and dictator. Unfortunate for John, but fortunate for the rest of us, since we got a cool show when, during the current Dictratrix’s “happy New Year” speech one person snuck up behind John with an airsoft pistol, shot him, and then “poisoned” the Dictatrix with a kiss.

    Yeah, I think I like this group… their perfectly insane for my tastes.

  • Smaller thing, but a good party should always be accompanied by a good playlist of songs. And this party had a quite excellent mix – Rage against the Machine, Lonely Island, Killswitch Engage, and everything else that I tend to like.
  • My Christmas present to myself this year was a bottle of Laphroaig Scotch – bought at nearly 40% off thanks to my work at the Liquor Store prior to Christmas. (Ed note: See the entry “A two week contract”). It made for a quite excellent first drink of the new year.
  • Most importantly, I got to meet a ton of awesome new friends, and we talked, joked, danced, and sang for hours on end. The dancing may have been uncoordinated and the singing was most definitely off-key, but that’s ok. It was most excellent, and I have to thank all the Kiwi’s that I partied with for being so friendly and inviting.
  • A note of warning for any American’s traveling to New Zealand for a holiday like New Years Eve, where drinking is traditional: New Zealanders know how to drink. I was playing it light and not going overboard (since I had to bike my way home), but these people drink like fish, and if I had tried to keep up I would probably still be drunk.