Rodeo ride

Went to Phil's 21st B'day party on the weekend - kind of crazy coz she had all these carnival rides. She had the jumping castle, sumo wrestling, rodeo ride, horizontal bungee, clown, fairy floss. The craziest ride was the rodeo bull ride. Basically, you sit on this bull and it moves around and ride it as long as possible. Easy right? Not quite! The bull is not the easiest thing to sit on plus you can only hold onto it via this little 15cm rope protruding from the back of its neck. The guys can only use one hand, while the women can use two to hold the rope

Btw you have to step into the "ring" which inflated and has padding, giving you a somewhat soft landing. The bull is controlled by the ride co-ordinator and everytime you handle a stage for about 25 seconds, the controller increases the ride to the next stage. The bull has a number of tricks to throw you off. It can rise straight up and go straright down, spin clockwise or anti-clockwise, rise at a diagonal angle. Trust me, it's very difficult to hold on when it gets to the hardest stage. I managed to stay on for 10 seconds on the "expert level" and won the prize from phil for "not staying on the longest, but trying the hardest" . Perhaps the try hard prize?? LOL.

Every time I went on, I was intent on breaking the record. There was just this fire inside of me that said "I am going to conquer this bull!". The skin on the back of my knuckle ripped open slightly cause I was holding on to the rope so tightly. I think it was because when i was falling off the ride, I didn't want to let go and fall. I was constantly trying to pull myself up.

3 days later and I am feeling so sore after the ride. My forearms and hands were killing me. I could barely open a car door that nite and had great difficulty using the can opener. My inner thighs were also killing me. I just didn't feel like walking most of the time and really struggled to get out of a chair. My guess is that the vibrations and the violent rocking motion of the bull caused it.

Although I have endured pain and soreness (trust me) I still want to go on that ride again. I have to beat 14 seconds.


New Job @ Tiling company.
After a week of bludging around watching old dvd's and the 2004 NBA finals, I managed to score a job! Its a casual job for 3 days in total doing filing and admin, and arranging and cleaning tiles (not really sure what that entails). Mostly its paperwork/admin, so i'm happy. I get to get off my butt and do something, instead of nothing each day, so I'm excited. Although won't be too excited when I have to get up at 5.30am to go to work at crows nest. During my studies, I haven't worked that much ( part time jobs but they have only been casual). I want to pay my own way through uni (although I've only got 1 semester to go) rather than bludging off my parents most of the time. So hopefully, the money from this work will go towards a good cause eg. textbooks or more likely movies, food, transport, going out!.

One sleep to go - State of origin
Hopefully, NSW will win. Home crowd, Freddie, and Phil Gould's last game should put us over the top. Queensland shouldn't be underestimated though and are riding on the strength of the win from two weeks ago. With almost the same side, they've at least got some continuity and familiarity in their team. On the other hand, with six new faces in the NSW camp and several players lacking a bit in match fitness (BK, Ryles, Trent Barrett), this may cause a problem. I'm rooting for NSW, although QLD may easily snatch the game from us if the boys aren't on their game. Scoreline prediction NSW 22 Qld 18.

Greeks win Euro 2004
Congrats to the greeks! The euphoria and the celebrations have just been crazy from the Greek community in Australia. As one commentator puts it, the greeks aren't "quiet achievers". Its a wonderful thing to see how passionate they are about soccer - especially all the greek flags flying from the car windows and the constant beeping in the street. Now I think I'm gonna hear it from every greek that I come across about the win !.