Home.

After the many tiring days of sports and making sure things are right with the ACT contingent, I'm finally off duty and home free. Now I'm able to sleep late and be obligation-free. No more people to call me regarding train tickets, no more people to call me regarding registration, no more people to call me regarding times of sports, no more people to call me regarding times of events. Sometimes I feel like I'm acting-VP of the committee, rather than just a plain treasurer.

Well, anyway, enough of complaints, I shall now enlighten you with what happened during my very eventful MASCA trip to Melbourne.

Now, on the first day, I already had a negative outlook on the entire trip. For one, I woke up late. I was supposed to be at the bus station at 7.20am, but I woke up at 7.10am with a bunch of things left undone. I had to run to the bakery to get the foods that I ordered, and I had things to print. Not being able to print, I just ran the life of me to the bakery, grabbed the food and ran all the way back.

Got back home, grabbed everything and ran to the bus station, where I was late for the gathering but luckily still on time for the bus. Then we had a late person, who the bus driver waited an 5 extra minutes for him to get there, which he didn't. So, we had to leave without him. He told us he'd find a way to get there. (By the next day, he told us that he was too lazy and ended up not showing up at all.)

Travelled the very long journey to Melbourne, 8 hours in total, 4 on bus and another 4 on train. Got some rest, though not much.

Got to Melbourne, found my way to my backpackers, where a great surprise awaited me. I booked the 4 bed dorm, and lucky me, there were already 2 people in my room. 2 people who were a couple to be exact. Not that I have anything against couples, but this was one heck of a bad one. Well, for one, they're sexually active. I have no say in their sex life, so I shall leave that at that. But the female actually had the nerve to give me a curfew!

Before Ter Lee and I left, to meet up with Kelly and the rest for dinner, she asked us "Erm, will you be back late tonight?", and so I said, "I don't really know.". She then proceeded to say "Oh, because we plan to sleep by 9 tonight and I was hoping you won't turn on the lights when you get back cause we have to wake up at 5 tomorrow.".

I smiled and reply "I'll try.", but I was thinking "Wah lao, who are you to tell me what to do! It's a shared room so deal with it la."

So we left for dinner, then later that night, I found out Miss Tan had a whole apartment to herself, and I asked her if I could move in with her, and she said "Sure!" and I said "Yay!". So for the rest of my trip, I stayed with her, away from sexually-active-curfew-giving couple. I paid for my backpackers though, I didn't get a refund though I lied about my having to return to Canberra the next night. Blah.

That night we went to Crown Casino, and there was this Greek shop Greco which seemed to have a lot of customers buying their desserts, so I joined in the rush and bought myself a Kataifie. It's some meehoon pastry on top of lots of nuts, drenched with honey. Totally sweet, totally high, totally interesting, totally expensive, totally never going to eat it again.

Throughout that first day, I also saw a fist fight, 2 police cars, an ambulance, 2 fire engines, drunk people running away from police, gangsters also running away from police and got screamed by a drunk while walking on the roads.

And that's it for day one. Very eventful for a very short period of time.

Day two. Even better! I spent the morning walking around Chinatown, seeing as I had free time till registration at 1230pm. Had yummy egg tart and yummy brunch/lunch. Then I headed to St Mary's College where I was to register for my NCG.

Here's the nice part. But before I tell the story, I need to tell of something I did in the past. You see, previously I sent a 'hate' mail to MASCA Victoria complaining about their indecisive ways of dealing with the NCG. They couldn't decide on a price to be charging us and me being the liaison between MASCA and the participants had to endure the updating each and every participant of new changes and had to endure their complaints about the constant changes. Of course, the mail was strongly influenced by my very dear roommate who was equally as frustrated. So you see, because of this mail, I was very very famous with the entire MASCA Victoria committee.

So, before I even signed up, I was famous. I was in the line to register and I had the President and the Vice walk up to me and saying "So you're Xin Yi! Very honoured to finally meet you!". And then other committee members could be heard hushing "So she's Xin Yi! That's Tan Xin Yi!". (For a very brief moment, I felt like a celeb.)

So then I registered and I also expressed interest in the tour that they had planned. Turns out their tour was a complete failure. For one, they had nothing planned, and the tour guides knew nothing. Another, no one else, like really NO ONE ELSE, was even remotely interested. Miss Tan and I ended up being the only ones nice enough to humour them by going. But haha, the Vice (Hazwan) told his tour guides before we left to "Make sure she's satisfied.". I heard it and found it totally hilarious.

Well the verdict was that I wasn't satisfied la, cause they knew nothing, and I felt like I was more of the guide, cause I knew a bit as I went last year and walked around a bit.

And then as usual, my P destroys my day, he makes me do his work, cause he wants to go kai kai with girlfriend, but too bad I went for the tour, so I had a valid excuse to escape from the job.

That night we had dinner, which was okaaayyy la. And then we had a briefing which was started off with a "Everything in the programme booklet that we have given you is wrong." How dumb right.

That night was pretty much uneventful from then.

I shall spare you from so much to read and tell more stories about the remaining two days in another post.