Trivia Night in Cronulla

6pm - Wednesday

Well we had fun at the course today. They seem to have run out of things to teach me. One of the dudes had about 40 movies on a portable HD so I copied a bunch of them over to Jr. Then I realized Jr, being still a baby, did not have DivX codecs so I downloaded some of those and a converter and a nifty ripper while I was at it. Then I had pizza for lunch, the other choices being quiche (yuck) and curried sausages (yikes). Then I wrote some machine code, that is code which CNC machinery understands. CNC=Computer Numeric Control, so this is code which controls machines like the robots you see on assembly lines and various other manufacturing machinery like saws and routers and metal milling machines. I do not mean to imply I have learned everything about CNC, just everything I came down here for. Still got another day to go so we’re going to have a look at another program which does really cool stuff like design 3-D objects which can be carved out on, say, a 5-axis machine…throw in a block of aluminum and out comes a carburator, a block of plastic and out comes an Exile Action Figure with a cape and wizard wand.

The pub seems to get rowdier as the week progresses, music didn’t shut down until 2am last night and things seem to be ramping up already tonight. The music is tolerable though, mostly 90’s stuff. This is how room service works in the Taren Point Hotel.

Go out door, walk 38 steps through beer garden and into pub’s bistro.
Order and pay for food, receive table buzzer which goes off when food ready.
Walk 38 steps back to room and wait for buzzer to go off.
Walk 38 steps back and exchange buzzer for food.
Walk 38 steps back to room. Eat food.

Sure I could wait in the pub but there’s nothing sadder than a man sitting alone in a pub, not drinking and not there for any other apparent reason. The pretty office girls tend to start nudging each other and pointing. And just like when I was 16, giggly pretty girls make me nervous and unable to perform many higher brain functions. They smell nice though.

I missed dinner last night, but so far the food has been 2 for 2. Very excellent pizza on the first night and tonight a chicken burger with fries and salad which was entirely satisfactory. If I wasn’t so cheap I could have had steak or lamb chops or tonight’s special Salt ‘n Pepper Squid. Tomorrow we might try a nice cannelloni or maybe a steak burger. Bit wary of the steak burger because I could be disappointed. A steak sandwich here can vary from a nice bit of sirloin on French roll (as you’d expect) to a paper thin piece of flank steak that was beaten to death then run over, served on plain white bread. The latter is the more common offering. I have no idea what to expect from a steak burger. Well, I do, but what I expect may not jibe with what I get. The wheel of life.

The cricket (that’s a game, for US readers, like baseball on valium) must be over because the jukebox just cranked up – Neutron Dance (Pointer Sisters)…what did I tell you…office girl central …ahh now its You Spin Me (Right Round) …it’s the soundtrack to the Wedding Singer…oh wait…

Oh SHIT…it’s fucking trivia nite with Karri and Lorna! THIS WOMAN HAS A LOUD SPEAKER AND IS GOING TO CONDUCT A TRIVIA GAME…25 fucking rounds she says. Oh god. Oh dear god no.