"helping"

When I am overtired I tend to become a little bit silly.

My flatmate A. and I were asked to help with with some of the organisation of our campus church's camp this coming weekend, in beautiful Wainui. It involves allotting rooms, and making welcome packs that include some sort of sweet treat.

A. and I have had rather busy weeks, and by the time we sat down on Wednesday night to make a start, we were exhausted. I had just been shopping with the 5pm crowds at Pak'n'Save to buy ingredients for the coconut ice and Russian fudge; A. had made dinner.

It didn't take much to set us off. Flatmate R. said, "Allie, could I ask you a big favour?" Immediately, we started cracking jokes until we were basically splitting our stomachs laughing, unable to stop, in much pain, while R. sat waiting for it to stop.

Then there was the fact that our coconut ice turned out like this:


... and our Russian fudge like this:


I don't understand it because we were cooking at exactly the same time, using exactly the same ingredients, taking exactly the same amount of time: and somehow, my fudge AND coconut ice never set all that well, and A.'s fudge and coconut ice set a little too well. This in itself was hilarious.

Then we set about packaging our sweet treats (below). This was hilarious because my fudge was almost all unusable, while Anna's was crumbly, and we amused ourselves thinking of excuses (other than the fact that we're not very good bakers, evidently). And because we didn't have enough fudge, some of the beautiful little packages actually just have fudge crumbs, and this was hilarious too.


Then this morning, after not enough sleep, A. met me at university and we divided the list of those going to camp into bedrooms at the YMCA camp in Wainui. THIS was hilarious, because we put all the "Chris"es into the same bunkroom. Ha! Ha! It still makes me laugh to think of them in their bunkroom, and one of them says, "Hey, Chris?" and all four others reply, "Yeah?"

We're never going to be asked to help again!

and the winner is...

[Before you read this, see my last post, the Honours Room murder mystery]

The murderer is... Bella.

After a stash of skewers was found in her second desk, which was not originally searched (the police aren’t really all that smart), Bella confessed to the heinous crime.
“That b**** stole my coffee” she thundered. “A crime of that magnitude cannot go unpunished.” Psychologist Dr. Phil has diagnosed a nervous breakdown, due to caffeine deprivation, and Bella will spend the rest of her days at a spa in the Maldives.

Liz went on to be highly successful in her career as a P cook. George is one of her best customers, due to the shock of finding out that the unnamed man Liz and Allie were fighting over was in love with him. (Amendment: George has just gone on a killing spree…cue Murder Mystery No.2 ‘Why did George Finally Lose It?’)

Eric is now fluent in German, and has found, in contrast to Dr. Phil’s beliefs, that bat heads and heavy metal can cure cancer. He is a multi-trillionaire, and lives on the moon, because the acoustics are better.

Posthumously, Allie’s half-finished thesis has become a best seller, and she has been awarded a Pulitzer, a Booker Prize, and a Nobel Prize for Peace. The movie version (staring Tom Cruise as Stalin, Tom Cruise as Churchill, and Tom Cruise as Roosevelt, and Produced by Tom Cruise for Scientology Productions Ltd.) has been given an Oscar for best screenplay, but bombed at the box office, because people hate Tom Cruise.

Michael and Tom are on trial for the murder of Gillian, who took credit for Allie's thesis inspiration.

Allison has changed her name to Helga after she was denied copyright of the names ‘Allie’ and ‘Allison’.

Nathan has published a 30,000 word rebuttal on why Wittgenstein is not a load of c***. It has been critically acclaimed, and is written in post-structuralist form.

Tim was spotted by the CIA outside the engineering library, in Switzerland, and possibly on the Moon, visiting Eric.

Andrew now has dominance over the pie market.

who killed Allie?

This blog post is the product of:

- boredom

- all the detective novels I've been reading lately

- my tea tasting odd, leading to the obvious question of "who has poisoned me?"

- my friend Bella (not her real name), whose gracious permission has been given to publish this product of her boundless imagination.

The Honours Room Murder Mystery

Characters*:

Allie

Students: Bella, Liz, Eric, Allison, Nathan, Tim, George

Historians: Michael, Tom, Andrew, Gillian

* Most names changed

Crime:
At the end of a long, dark, rainy day (its Christchurch in the winter, after all), Gillian went down to the Honours Room to speak to Allie about how wonderfully she did in her essay, and to offer her a life time job as an academic… But, oh dear, she found poor Allie dead over another 700 page book...

Autopsy Report:
The primary cause of death was a skewer, stabbed through the back of the neck. Also present in her blood were high levels of sodium-methaline-something-a-rather, the most deadly poison known to man (created by the University of Canterbury Chemistry department, which was recently broken into). However, she was stabbed before the poison could take effect.

The Suspects:
Allie arrived at Uni at 7.30am, attended her 10am class on European History, had sushi and a bar of chocolate for lunch, went to her 1.20 class on New Zealand history, and then went to work on her marvelous, stupendous thesis at 3pm. She was found dead at 5pm. The autopsy-person was highly intoxicated and originally put her death at 11am; this has since been amended to between 3.34 and 4.45. Each of the suspects were quick to dob in each of their colleagues for approaching Allie's desk, however, none admit to talking to Allie after the last class.

Bella:

Police originally searched her desk as they had had a fight earlier in the day, over the use of kitchen items. Or possibly hand cream, priced at $12.99 (what, we’re in the middle of a recession, that’s pretty pricey…)

Liz:

It is well known that Liz and Allie were in the middle of a very large fight over the possession of a boyfriend (the fact he actually wanted George instead apparently doesn’t matter). Liz has a key to the Chemistry Department, as she is secretly starting up a P lab with one of the Chemistry lecturers….

Eric:
We couldn’t get a coherent statement from this young man, as he kept yelling in German and head banging. However a search of his desk revealed several bats with their heads bitten off. Psychologist Dr. Phil believes that this is because the evil metal music, and lack of meat, has gone straight to his head. “Y’all need to lock up your children now.”

Allison:
In amongst John’s German ramblings it has been revealed that Allie and Allison were in the middle of a dispute over copyright of the names ‘Allie’ and ‘Allison’. Both women have death threats in their desks from the other.

Nathan:

Allie was overheard telling Nathan that Wittgenstein “was a load of c***”. Nathan is reported to have had steam coming out of his ears. [For the uninformed: Wittgenstein is a German philosopher.]

Tim:

Tim is described as the dark wolf of the Honours Room. His desk is mysteriously empty, and yet he is challenging Allie for the title of Queen of Honoursland. “How is this possible,” Allie was overheard saying. “I spent 32 hours here yesterday, HE CANNOT BEAT ME.”

Michael:
Rumours are abound that Allie was about to disown Michael as her supervisor as she was about to publish her thesis, and credit someone else as the inspiration behind it.

Tom:

A message on Allie's phone from three days before reads as following:
“I think your thesis is awful, and refuse to have my name linked to it.” In response Allie began blackmailing him with the knowledge that he cheated his way into his PhD by bribing the external examiner.

Andrew:

There was only one pie left on campus… Allie got it.

Gillian:

She did find her, after all...

WHODUNNIT???

Vote now! The murder will be solved on Monday.

just too cool...

So, I'm in a small group that does Bible studies every week, and every now and then we organise daytrips or weekends away for the group. Because everyone's pretty busy this year, we decided to just have a daytrip/fun-activity, which was last Tuesday, and this is pretty much how we decided on a destination...

Let's go to Willowbank! [sarcastic] (Willowbank is a small zoo in Christchurch)
Hahaha! Yes! Let's go to the zoo! [sarcastic]
....
Well, why not?
[General consensus - we are going to the zoo]
Hahaha! Let's go dressed up as animals!
Hahahahahaha! [snorting] Yes, that would be funny!
...
Really, let's!
Yeah, it would be funny!

Only five of us ended up going; the rest couldn't get off work for the day, or, I suspect, were a little too insecure in their coolness to go to the zoo dressed up as animals. We, however, are so insanely cool that verily I believe we have started a trend. At least, all the mums and dads and little kids seemed to like us. And the zookeepers. The animals didn't really seem to care. Although I have a theory - in the kiwi house the cheetah and I were treated to a demonstration of kiwi procreation techniques. Surely they wouldn't feel comfortable enough to do that in front of normal people? A cheetah and a tiger, however...

Just so you can see with your own two eyes how cool we are:

Our cheetah poses. Look closely at the picture; I painted her face and I am very proud of it.
The bumblebee and the peacock. You cannot see it here, but our peacock had six peacock feathers stuck into the back of her belt. Very styly.
Our zebra.
Aaaaaand, me. To be honest, I'm not sure how cool this photo really is. But I am willing to risk humiliation for this blog.

Speaking of wildlife, I came across this white-tail spider in our kitchen last night...
Eeeeek! I don't like killing ones that big because you can feel them crunch. So I kept him in that glass, drove ten minutes away and let him go in a big field.