Some idiots have been using my domain for sending mass email forwards, just opened my inbox and there’s 766 new emails, about 30 which are actually personal ones. Bloody hell!

Anyway, how’s the rest of the world been? Wanganui has been really really busy lately, so many people turned up for design camp this year. It was really fun!

Day 1, the whole school went to the beach for the day to make robots with whatever materials we could find. Our group turned out to be a little uncooperative, so we ended up making little ones of our own and forming a little ‘robot’ community - turned out alot better than we expected, and mine was carved out of pumice (someone stole it at the end of the day!) The other groups were way more ambitious, one group carved it on the side of the cliff and another made a giant one about 20 meters long.

Day 2, we were supposed to take our ‘concepts’ for the robots from day 1 and make them fly. It had to be airborne somehow for 30 seconds at least, and the Devil Robots were judging them at 3pm, but I left with Greg to the Putiki Marae and helped out with the preparation for dinner and snacks for the Waikato students who were arriving at 6pm. I heard only one group managed to make their robot fly, and alot of others crashed and burned.. some even used fireworks and kites

In the evening, we went out and got some booze and I brought out some shot glasses, and we drank the Waikato students down. Go Wanganui! Hehe!

Day 3, start of presentations - I stayed with Greg at the Marae and got some footage of the Hangi preparation (traditional Maori meal cooked in the ground with stones) in the morning, and watched the second half of the presentations and speeches (everyone go check out hitlab.org because they are absolutely amazing) but we got an early night because I was really tired out from drinking the night before..

Day 4, bout some books from the vendors fair, Harvest by the Futurefarmers (great book!) and the Praystation Hardrive (IdN was giving us half price books and toys!) and hung out with the Devil Robots and Ali from Nofrontiere (Austria) and it all ended with the costume ball, which was really good because most of the people really dressed up. I just bunged on from black eyeliner and went gothic, didn’t feel like dressing up much!

The after party at Vega was much better - music was excellent and everyone was just going nuts. I actually fell sick on Day 4 and had a fever, but I tried my best to recover in time for the ball, which meant antibiotics (which really means no alcohol!) so it’s a change being stone cold sober for once while the whole crowd was going absolutely nuts. Chicks were flashing their tits at the camera.. nice!

Will post somemore pictures soon. I’m so dead tired I can’t even do any work today and school starts tomorrow.

Hey Tiff, if you’re reading this, how long are you back in KL for? I’m gonna call you real soon. Same mobile number?