Dinhternet

So another Word­Press user is doing some­thing pretty inter­est­ing… he’s putting up a lot of his used tech items on his blog. When a hun­dred peo­ple have com­mented on it, he’ll ran­domly chose one com­menter to give it to for free! Ship­ping should be cov­ered by the adver­tis­ing on his blog, I believe, so it should be com­pletely free for the lucky win­ner. For your chance for free stuff, check out TakeMyTech.com.

And speak­ing of Word­Press, Kim P has joined the horde, so check out her blog on Wordpress.com now! (Yep, with Word­Press.com, you get all the cool fea­tures of Word­Press for absolutely free! The only down­side is that you’ll have a sub­do­main of Word­Press.com for your URL instead of a top-level domain like mine or Jimmy’s.)

So mov­ing on to Sat­ur­day, the high­light of pledge retreat…

Woke up at 6:30. A lit­tle after sun­rise, but it was still nice and low and red in the sky. And it was over the water… some­thing we didn’t get at Sun­set Beach. Wan­dered over to the camp area to see how food and fire was going. The fire in the pit had died out, and I was too lazy to go scav­enge for more twigs. Some peo­ple were start­ing up break­fast, so I helped out with that. We started out mak­ing scam­bled eggs (huge batches of it in a wok), steamed rice (in pots), and fried chopped hot dogs. That didn’t go that well, though. Tommy made a cou­ple of omelets for peo­ple, and I saw that was a much bet­ter idea than the large batches of scam­bled eggs, so I kicked him off his own fry­ing pan and made omelets on an order basis for a while. In the mean­time, the steamed rice wasn’t cook­ing as well as expected, (some batches were too watery, some were too dry and all were get­ting burnt on the bot­tom) so we turned it into fried rice, com­bin­ing it with the eggs in the wok. That wasn’t that great tast­ing, either, so then turned that into ghetto paella by adding ketchup, cheese, and some other stuff we had lying around. Paella v.1 actu­ally moved, and we got ideas to make v.2 even bet­ter. Such as salsa. Oh, and the whole time, Drew was going around offer­ing peo­ple con­chas he had bought in San Jose. Not many tak­ers, though… pos­si­bly because he called it Mex­i­can bread.

“Man, next time, I’m going to call them Chi­nese sugar buns, and every­one will be wrestling over them!”- Drew.

I have to admit… it sounds like a good plan. When has APhiO ever turned down Chi­nese sugar buns? Oh, and I for­got to men­tion that Ken caught a fish out of the reserv­ior, so some pledges made chao ca (rice por­ridge with fish), too!

After break­fast was just chill­ing and free play. I helped Matt and Kim plan some activ­i­ties for the Pledge Olympics. It was so fun to sit there and bounce ideas off each other until some real­tively sim­ple games at first evolved into com­plex won­ders of mod­ern sci­ence. OK, maybe not THAT com­pli­cated. But they cer­tainly grew from the ini­tial seeds, nur­tured into fruition by our as-close-as-possible-to-hazing ways. Took a break after that for lunch. The pledges got a choice of PB&J or ham sand­wiches. Aaron L didn’t like those odds, so he took Elyson and me to Carl’s Jr in town. I used the time wisely, nap­ping con­tin­u­ously in the car. Didn’t even feel like eat­ing at the place… just want to sleep more.

Came back to catch the end of lunch. AKA the interview-a-thon. Every­one had their binders out. Had a quick “active meet­ing” to go over all the help needed to run the games for pledge olympics, and then it was time to start! First Matt and Kim had them get into small groups for “mow the lawn” and “make a ham­mock,” which they would ran­domly yell through­out the day. Then the first real game, and one of my “babies” — Steal the Bacon. Except with seven teams, one “real” bacon, five “fake” bacons, and a dodge­ball. Then it was time for my next “baby” — the Dragon race. We had the teams tied up wrist-to-wrist, and they had to drape a sleep­ing bag over the line and run around col­lect­ing items from check­points around the field and end­ing up at the grilling area. Then let’s see… Cedric had his “Pass The Hat” game. Then the Grilling Ques­tions game, but with the twist that you had to make a human pyra­mid, and the top would have to answer. Then Simon Says. Then Matt and Kim planned for the biggest game — “APhiO Inferno,” but it was already nearly 6, and the pledges were cold and tired and hun­gry, so they cut that one off.

Time for cook­ing magic! Actu­ally, first I started another duraflame log because the wind was pick­ing up and it was get­ting very cold. Col­lected branches for days. Got a stove going with a pot of water for the ramen, but I couldn’t find a lid that fit, so it took days. Then I helped the grillers on the big grill mak­ing hot dogs for every­one. Went back to help Peggy, who took over the ramen cook­ing, and finally found the right lid for her. That helped things a bit. I also tried to fix her stove, and ended up almost killing every­one in the camp. Oops! Sorry, guys. But yeah… I fixed it in the end. It didn’t feel like we did it that long, but we cooked for hours, because before I knew it, it was 9.

Stood around the fire for a while after that. Bao tried to get peo­ple to play Ten Fin­gers again, but got shot down. I swear… what is it with him and camp­fires and Ten Fin­gers?! Played tien len for a while in a floater tent. No really, it was a small one that was con­stantly float­ing around because who­ever set it up didn’t bother to stake it down.

Then the wind picked up some more and every­one wanted to go home early. Scram­bled around help­ing peo­ple pack up their stuff and take down their tents in the dark and 40ish mph winds. Fun stuff! After all the excite­ment died down, so did the wind. (A bit…) Stayed up with some actives wait­ing for mid­night so Bao could eat Clayton’s left­overs from the “good camp.” Oh, and some pledges were wait­ing for rides to arrive. One person’s ride couldn’t find us, so I drove a car of them out to where he was on the freeway.

Came back and chilled some more. Then the food was gone and the fire was dying, so we decided to call it a night. Wan­dered over to Clayton’s huge tent, and set­tled in as best we could. Clay­ton and Michelle propo­si­tioned Wei Li for a good fif­teen min­utes to get between them and me in a spoon chain. While she did even­tu­ally move between us, she refused to spoon. I knocked out after that.

Woke up a lit­tle before 7 on Sun­day. (Actu­ally a lit­tle before 6. Stu­pid Spring for­ward!) I didn’t want to move from the warmth of the tent, but I had to pee so bad. Saw that Eric was up, so I went to keep him com­pany. Tony joined a lit­tle after that. The three of sat and talked for a while. Then I built another fire, Tony offered us food and drink, and Eric built a make-shift wind­break. Chilled as we waited for every­one else to get up. Went around and woke up every­one at 8. Packed up camp and cleaned up around the area. Made sure no one and noth­ing got left behind, and then we were off.

Dropped off Drew in San Jose, and then took the long road back to Davis. Well, it felt long because I was kinda tired, and every­one was passed out. I won’t tell you exactly how many times I scared myself almost falling asleep on the road, but it was more than zero. Jeff was up to talk to me from around Vacav­ille back, though, so that was cool. I agree with a lot of the stuff he had to say. Pledge Retreat is a great expe­ri­ence because when you force every­one out of their nor­mal envi­ron­ment, you can break down the bar­ri­ers between cliques (real or per­ceived) a lot eas­ier. I mean, you’ve all got time to kill, might as well talk to some new folks. Peo­ple that may never have talked to each other in Davis due to not know­ing the same peo­ple, or con­flict­ing sched­ules, or what­ever could become good friends.

… Oh, and Jeff said Steal the Bacon was the best game. What can I say? I’m an atten­tion whore (I had every­one in camp pay­ing atten­tion to me at least once each night), and a sucker for flat­tery. No, going on retreat was def­i­nitely a great thing for me. I don’t think my opin­ion of any­one went down in par­tic­u­lar, and I got to know (and like) a lot of pledges more.

After we got back and I dropped off Jeff, Kris­tianne, and Quyet, went back to the apart­ment. First thing I did was to take a long, hot shower. It felt amaz­ing. Too bad I couldn’t sleep after that, like I planned. Went online and checked up on my email, com­ments, and of course, all the Xan­gas I missed while I was away from key­board. Chat­ted, too, of course. Yesterday’s quote goes to Amber -

“Ew! You licked mom’s hand and [did some­thing bad]?!”- Amber, ran­domly IMing me.
“What?! How did you know about that already?!”- Me, not think­ing that word would have spread. At least not yet.
“Peggy came over last night and was like, ‘I’m tired. Dinh [did some­thing bad.]’ “- Amber.

And so it begins. I won­der how long flat out denial will work.

Any­ways, I also watched the lat­est episode of 24. Napped for about an hour before BComm meet­ing. Went to that, it was pretty straight­for­ward. Spent most of our time at Peggy’s watch­ing Com­edy Cen­tral. Oh, Linda gave me a key­chain with my Chi­nese zodiac sign. It says, “You’ll be good after you learn to accept oth­ers’ faults” or some­thing like that, accord­ing to Peggy. I think I’ve done pretty well in that regard already. Drew’s Mon­key one said, “You need to be less crazy.” He insisted on trad­ing with Peggy. Wanted to eat, but no one wanted to eat with me. Went to Jackie’s to pick up some stuff, then back home. Joe M came over to steal some animé. Online for a bit more, then pass­ing out time once again!