There will be blood… well… paint.

I realise that I haven’t written anything in a while – it’s  a result of my borderline laziness and lack of time. At the moment I’m waiting for the electrochemists to finally show at work (it’s 9.58am) so I decided that instead of doing something useful in the lab, I’ll update this blog.

For those who wait for another instalment of the Little Asia series, I must disappoint you. This one is about me I’m afraid. So you’re excused from reading it, as it’s not going to be as wit and sarcastic as usual – I can’t really be mocking myself, can I :D.

So, this weekend I went paintballing with guys from Weight Lifting and Thai Boxing clubs. This was my first time, so I actually was quite excited (no one could probably tell, as I had to get up at 7am, on Saturday), but I was.

So when we finally got there, surprisingly on time despite some organisation issues (read - total lack of organisation) we’ve discovered to be the oldest people there, most of the others were kids and some teenagers (that didn’t really stop them from beating in the rankings). We were divided into teams, our orange team consisted of Weight Lifters and some teenagers, our opponents, white team were Thai boxers and some random guys. Equipped with our armour and helmets and shiny new paintball guns we’ve rushed towards our first battlefield, just to discovered that’s it’s full of mud, water and even some remains of snow and ice. Thrilling :S

First game  was ‘capture the flag’. The flag was hung on a bridge in the middle of the grounds. Basically it was a suicidal mission – there’s no way that someone could get the flag not getting shot. One guy tried – got hit probably by 50 paintballs and the flag was dropped into the mud – no one else was trying to get even close to it. Besides capturing the flag wasn’t the end of the game, you still had to bring it to the middle of the enemy territory (by the way – as we used Union Jack for the flag – I’m pretty sure there is a law against dropping it into the mud). Our team lost miserably anyway. Quite soon we’ve discovered that guys we have in our team quite like to hide behind the nearest cover and stay there for the rest of the game. So there was only few guys that actually went forward trying to do something (or to get shot, like me most of the times). White team on the other hand seem to have worked together quite well – so most of the times they had no problem kicking our asses. There were 6 games overall – two capture the flag, one defend the fort, one defend the general (one guy was chosen to be general), one invasion (invade the village, capture and defend as many huts as you can)  and one elimination (kill everyone who’s not on your team). Can’t say that I enjoyed the first three. But later I stopped really caring about mud and getting soaked – and started having more fun. The elimination was the best one – there was only seven of us against sixteen (the random guys took a break) so we were allowed to re-spawn after being shot for the first two minutes of the game. So basically, what we did was run forward and shoot everything until you get shot and then run back and start over. I got shot so many times in my head that I couldn’t see anything anymore – my goggles were covered in orange paint and my attempts to wipe it just made it worse. One of the marshals told me to use some snow to wipe them clean and finally helped.

I’m generally not an ‘outdoor’ guy – so wallowing in the mud didn’t really get me so thrilled. Especially that as I discovered being big and clumsy isn’t really an advantage while paintballing. There was always some spare part of me visible from behind of the cover just waiting to be shot. But still I must say I did enjoy it. It’s so easy to go trigger happy and shoot everything you see. The only problem is most of the time you don’t really who are you shooting at. I was shot few times by members of my team when they couldn’t see the orange tag on my arm. And I’m pretty sure I’ve shot a marshal few times. So if you planning to take revenge on someone at paintball, forget it. Everyone looks almost the same wearing black overalls and helmet, covered in mud and orange paint. If you however looking for some fun shooting others and getting shot and you enjoy being soaked and bruised than paintball it just for you.

For those who wait, the next episode of award winning series; “Little Asia and the Crystal Palace” is coming soon…

Slumdog Millionaire, Score! and Wine lecture

One of the disadvantages of having a blog, was a realisation that I’m a boring person.

I don’t really have anything to write about, because almost everyday of my life looks exactly the same. Wake up, shower, breakfast, cycling to work, work, gym, cycling back, dinner, sleep. Wow, I’ve just summarised last two years of my life in 13 words. I’m not impressed. Suppose that explains why sometimes I need to go to the Score! and get smashed. Most (possibly everyone except me) of the people in there are not PhDs, therefore they not miserable. And besides I’ve been a diligent student during my undergrad, so I haven’t really used my drinking quota. Time to set it right.

So, what have happened this week that makes it different from the others? My research seems to be finally going somewhere, after almost two years. Despite that, I’m not really allowing myself to get excited – there is still thousand of things that may go wrong. My boss, however is not so restrained, his grin when he saw my NMR was probably visible from the moon. He’s even finished my research meeting with him after like 5 minutes, so I could get back to work. Quite unusual, as he always have millions of ideas and those meetings tend to take ages.

On Wednesday I went to see the Slumdog Millionaire. I was pleasantly surprised that in spite of many Oscar® nominations it’s actually a really good movie. As I usually criticise everything, I’m finding it difficult to comment on that movie. I’ve found it really enjoyable, the story is fast and absorbing like in an action movie, but at the same time it’s not a action movie at all. Tragedy is carefully balanced with comedy resulting in really immense experience. Music as well is a strange, but not repulsing mix of traditional Indian music with Indian pop and electronic music. The whole effect is completed by the excellent performance of all the lead actors (three for each character; child, teenager and adult) and the compulsory for Bollywood movie, dancing scene at the end of the movie. The effect it unequivocally (working on my vocabulary) worth seeing. It’s definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen lately.

Thursday brought another excitement, a RSC wine  lecture. As opposed to the usual lectures this one was ticketed event combined with a wine tasting. As I’m not a big fan of wine, I decided to go and see if I can find something up my alley. The lecture started a little slow, but it soon got much more interesting as we got the wines for tasting. Taster volume was only 25 ml but as our postdoc soon discovered, you can pour more if you tilt the bottle so the wine is flowing over the little measuring bulb on the top. Besides some of the academics weren’t ashamed to have a second and third helping of some wines. Hmm, really classy. Surprisingly or not, I’ve found out that I’m not posh too and enjoyed two of the cheapest wines served this evening; Australian Chardonnay 2007 (that was a year ;) ) and German Riesling 2005. The older and fancier wines I must say I’ve found revolting. What a blow; I’m not only boring but also cheap and seedy…