Post The Three Hundredth

It's come a long way, readers, but this is the 300th post in AB: A Blog! Comments may have declined, and posts procrastinated upon like crazy (sorry about that in advance), but the blog goes on, and I really enjoy doing these milestone posts, because I get to reflect on the past few months. So I'll do what I usually do; I'll go on about my day, and then I shall do the reflection/celebration part. Now, with that out of the way, let's get to it, shall we?

I woke up at around 7:30 (which seems to be the average time for getting up on weekends), and after the chores that I had to do, I quickly got into blogging. With the problem being, of course, I had a lot of posts to do, limited time to do it, and a tendency to get distracted. This, my friends, makes for a very shoddy way of trying to get up to date in posting (so, yeah, this is late. Extremely. Which is, for me, essentially unforgivable in milestone posting. I'm sorry.). So for a few hours, I attempted to post, and didn't get anywhere in particular. Bloody hell. Eventually, though, I had to get ready for a hapkido Christmas party which it seems I have not mentioned in previous posts (or at least, not that I can find. What it pretty much is is a get-together held where anybody from a few local dojangs and their relatives can meet and just see each other and talk outside of hapkido.). Well, I had to get ready for it, and at around 11:30, I left for it.

When I got to the venue (which I think was Bankstown Sports Club), I looked around, and I found Amadeus, and I talked to him while waiting outside the ballroom. When the doors opened, we went inside, and I went to go and sit with Amadeus (just a little side note here that I have no idea where else to add: I haven't seen Nick, that short orange belt, in a while. I hear he's quit.). After we sat down, a whole flock of kids came and found seats. And left them, and new ones showed up. This continued for a bit, until it all settled down and Amadeus and I were the only adults (as in, people in the adults class) on the table, although Amadeus's sister is advancing to the class now. We talked for a bit, and we were given sheets that were a bit of a hapkido quiz, just to liven things up. After all that, at around 12:30, the buffet opened and we got our lunch. And it was delicious. I had pasta, chicken, coleslaw... suffice to say it was very good. I also took some chips from the kids' buffet. Later, too, we had dessert, and I had cake. Cake and ice-cream (also from the kids' buffet.). It was a mouth-watering meal.

After all of that, they did some auctioning of hapkido weapons (I didn't get any), and then they gave out the Spirit Awards, which are sorta like the best and fairest for hapkido. I wasn't nominated for any, but Dylan got one. Once that was done, Grandmaster Geoff unveiled the preview for the new hapkido DVDs. And it looks like, no exaggeration here, the trailer for some kickass video game (here's the Youtube link, if you want to have a look. Just watch it and disagree with me about the video game thing. I dare you.). He then announced something else: the founder of hapkido, the person who came up with the whole thing, is coming to the mats at our dojang next year. Damn, I want to be there. We then had a big hapkido party picture, which I hope to be getting soon.

I got home from the party at around 3:30, and I spent the time after that doing some blogging. Also, when Dad asked me how the party went, I got a chance to quote Tom Lehrer, and replied with 'We ate, we drank, and we were merry,' which I've got to admit out of context must have been at least a little confusing (it actually comes from the song 'In Old Mexico,' which I, of course, have memorised. The next line is 'And we got typhoid and dysentery,' so of course, I didn't say that.). So I blogged for a little bit, and soon, we all went to a family movie, which was '2012.'

I have seen the ads for this movie, so let's just say that I did not go in with high hopes (example: it had waves flooding the Himalayas, in the ads. Need I point out the fact that the Himalayas are 8000 metres high? Where is all the water coming from?). But, I did attempt to watch it, and if you cut out all the stuff that doesn't make sense, it does make for a good movie, although I'm a sucker for a happy ending (and they barely mentioned the whole Maya calendar crap, so kudos there.). However, like many movies, once you start thinking about it, you notice a flaw here and there, and then another one, and eventually it loses a bit of its lustre. I was going to go science nerd rant here, and complain about many things that just didn't make any sense. However, I realised I would be going on for a while here, so I just want to point out one thing that really annoyed me. At one point it said neutrinos were mutating, thus gaining physical properties, presumably mass, and heating the Earth's core (in the first 5 minutes, in fact). This, as a physics lover, irks me so much that you have no idea. If you'll allow a bit of a rant here: Particles don't mutate, they decay. I don't believe neutrinos decay, but even if they did, they would lose mass, and thus lose physical properties (in the sense that the makers of the movie intended. It doesn't make all that much sense, but I'll let it slide.). And if these 'mutated neutrinos' did have the ability to heat something up, why the core? Why not the crust, the thing it would hit first? That's my thing there. There are a few more bits, but if you're not a physics nerd like me, it really doesn't matter all that much. Anyway. The movie itself was worth watching, I think, though probably just once. And when I got home, well, that was it. I went to bed.

And now... the celebrations! 300 glorious posts, each of them a memorial of a day past (well, once I did two posts for one day. But, that was in the earlier posts. Anyway.). There are over 210,000 words so far in this blog, and after this post, there shall be over 215,000. Putting it into scale, that's... well, something like 500 pages in a decent size novel. In this, the commemoration of 300 posts, I would like to remember some things that have happened in the past 100 posts and 100 days, stretching all the way from post 201. So, without further ado, let us look at the memorable events of the last 100 days, in chronological order and with links, to better remember them.
*First kiss: I'm not sure if this is embarrassing, but it's certainly something important that happened. It was just platonic, but I shall remember this.
*AFL Grand Final: This one isn't too personal, but it's still something big, and I watched essentially the whole thing. It was a great Grand Final, and possibly one of the greatest, if not the greatest, games I have ever seen.
*Promoting to Orange Belt in hapkido: My first belt promotion in hapkido, and something I'm certainly proud of. It was, with no exaggeration, one of the biggest achievements I've made in anything sport-related, and that feels good.
*Yearlies and the School Certificate: I can't really link to all of these, as I would be linking to something like 10 posts. But they start here, with the Drama Yearly, and end here, with the Computer Skills School Certificate. They were many exams, and I did pretty well in the Yearlies. I haven't got the School Certificate results back yet, but I hope I did well.
*Britney Spears Concert: It's been something I've been waiting for ever since I got into Britney Spears's music, which was about a decade ago (wow...). So going to the concert was most awesome. It was a great concert.

With remembrances over, I'd like to make an official apology for the immense backlog of posting. I know it's annoying, but there has just been so many things getting in the way, and being a serial procrastinator doesn't help. It really doesn't help. Anyway. I will try to get back up to schedule very soon. Stay tuned.

And now we turn to the comment replies section, with 2:
*Anon: Thanks for the reminder, anonymous random guy who is apparently up past midnight looking at my blog!
*Shafi: Hope you're having fun in Bangladesh, Shaf, and glad you agree with ARG (Anonymous Random Guy.).

That was my day; it stands as written, and it is (trying to make a last paragraph work here. Don't judge me.). Finally, I post, and, well, I've already made my regrets and condolences for late posts. So, what do I do here? Give up writing a closing paragraph, probably, at least for now. Happy 300th post!

300 down, with a cornucopia of posts to come,
AB