News Flash: Marissa's Universe will be on hiatus for a week until 11 April ...

... on the account of being at the Gold Coast for a mini-holiday. Itinery thus far consists of: golf (x2), Dream World, Jupiters Casino, St Arnou Brewery (really looking forward to this one), beach, Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not (I choose Not), pub crawl. Hopefully the trip will live up to mild-expectations.

Was kinda excited about this trip but now all these 'to-do' things have popped up, leaving me with plenty of anxiety and lotsa loose ends! Grrrrr. To top things off, KGV bball comp for next season is full which means I cannot play basketball. My life is OVER! There is no point to my existence anymore. What is life if there is no basketball? Oh the existential issues!

Last dragon boat race for the season occurred on Saturday @ Penrith. I think many people would define the day as a successful one considering we took out 5 categories. That's an entire hand baby! I must say though, the most satisfying race was the women's final, where we won by only 0.04 seconds. Now that's winning by a whisker (literally)! I have to grab someone's arm every time I watch the footage on Clinton's camera ... it was THAT close. There were tears of joy when they announced the results on the P.A. system. It was rather emotional watching some of the girls cry, although not being able to play bball next season is making me shed tears now!

To celebrate a successful day, we decided to go to Mocha. Man! It took so much effort to come back out again, bearing in mind that we had been awake since 5:45am. Thanks to some 'connections' via Jpeg/PDF aka Tif, we managed to get in the V.I.P line and enter the club for freeeeeee (my kinda word). Oh my goodness, there were some interesting people that night! We had this black dude wearing an eskimo-type parker when it was clearly too humid to do so (black ppl can make anything look cool though); this white chick that was fully dancing like Britney Spears with her black boyfriend (she was sooooo good! I was transfixed for a good 10 minutes); random weirdo guys invading our 'Asian' circle (yes we were the only people dancing in a circle); Paris Hilton look-alike, with the tiniest pink dress to match; bomb funk MC-free-styler type dancers doing battle-dancing (very cool to watch). Anyways, by end of the night, I was sooooo buggered that I ended up sleeping in the car outside my house because I was too tired to walk into my house.

Which brings me to today. Did a health assessment test this morning. Part of the test involved doing a fitness test where you had to the step test for 3 minutes. An excellent result is <85 heart beats per minute for a person my age. Guess what I got? 132 heart beats per minute!!! This equates to a POOR fitness level. After a few phone calls, the lady realised that she made me do too many steps per minute. No wonder I was puffing and huffing so much! Other than that, cholesterol, blood glucose and waist to hip ratio are all good, though blood pressure is a tad low and she said "we can work on the amount of sugar in your breakfast foods". Teeeheehehe. Guess the red bean bun and the usual peanut butter & kaya don't help.

Okay, need to tie up a few more loose ends. Happy Easter all.

To add to my woes, mp3-project is DOWN! What is the world coming to? (Presumably a world of anti-illegal software distribution)

It's been a shit pile of a week. Visions of glitzy red-carpet week (on the account of not having to study - yay!) have officially been torn asunder. Why? Well sometimes life is just very hard to contend with. If I was on Days of Our Lives at the moment, the slogan would be 'these are the FUTILE days of our lives', but I would consider keeping Stefano and Sammy because they are too evil to discard.

Issues Issues Issues! *sigh* Ok, enough sad sack whingies.
It has been brought to my attention that I seem to attract certain unwanted behaviour.
Example 1: Amidst the excitement of it all, I forgot to mention that during the 'private' (note inverted comas) golf lesson with Boy Robin, he decided to prove some point he was trying to make by THROWING A GOLF BALL AT ME! Furthermore, he told me to look away first and then proceeded to hurl the ball at my direction. Who does that? What kind of golf teaching method is this? How could that possibly prove ANY kind of point? From memory, I think he was trying to use that analogy to say something along the lines of 'you can't hit the ball if you can't see it'. HUH?? Really?? Surely not ...
Example 2: Some tall white camel's penis (i.e. dude) decided to cork me in the thigh during basketball. Now there's a huge lump growing out of my right thigh which is causing me to walk (rather than run) like a Wally. I think he just couldn't handle the thought of me BURNING him to the hoop, therefore he had to take me down. ;p

It has also been brought to my attention that the reason I am never awake on the train ride into work is because of my choice of breakfast foods. My morning meal consists of Kaya and Peanut Butter on 2 pieces of bread *drool* (or occasionally Nutella if I am in a chocolate mood). Effectively I am consuming coconut milk, egg, sugar and fat that amounts to about 60% of my daily fat intake. Anyways, the hypothesis is that there is so much sugar/fat in my daily breakfast routine that it is sending me to sleep about 15 minutes after consumption. Could be entirely possible. But how could you refuse the temptation of kaya & peanut butter?

Merrick & Rosso had a skit on their show the other time called "Unfortunate Name Town". It was hilarious! Especially considering we were talking about Julia Gulia the other day. They had names like Paige Turner and Teresa Green (try pronouncing it with an American/Canadian accent).
Am looking on eBay for a 'memory foam pillow'. Figured I have to look after my neck/back from now on. Since the last entry, I have visited both the physio and acupuncturist again. Been on a crazy spending spree: golf, Gold Coast holiday, and New Zealand skiing trip. Does anybody out there wanna come to NZ and leave with me on the 11 Sept? (Please read entry on 17 March for vital clue.) Leave me a msg on my comments thing ;p

And for those that are up-to-date with the bball comps (only Gregan I think), we won both the mixed and women's, and next week is SEMIS ... ooo ahhhhh! Unfortunately I will be in QLD so hopefully I will get to play in the finals when I come back.

Just another manic monday ... but thoughts of having the next entire week off is invigorating my senses. Though I must admit that the idea of having to pay an amount close to $200 to play golf is inducing me to shit bricks a bit. Wah lauuu! Golf is such a bloody expensive sport. And once you become very good at it, it seems like the rule is that you have to become fat, cf. Laura Davies, Annika Sorenstam, Karrie Webb, John Daley.

Continuing with golf, some of you may know that Fiona, Sharlene and myself got some 'private' lessons last Friday evening. Yes there is reason why 'private' is in inverted comas, perhaps to influence readers to articulate 'private' in the seedy/suggestive kinda way. Our instructor apparently looks like Chris O'Donnell according to 2 of the 3 lesson-takers (note: I think he looks nothing like Robin), and well, he had a very very nice swing (no inverted comas). Evening panned out better than expected with a 'lovelly' (har!) sms to top it off! ;p teeehehehehehe.

What else, what else? Oh yes, visited the acupuncturist on Saturday. The treatment has given me mild relief (yay!), though I have been told that I have to return for further acupuncturing another 7 to 8 times. My calendar is not allowing this sort of dedication at the moment. Might have to clear certain dispensable activities. And it's not true that acupuncture doesn't hurt. Going to the physio tomorrow as well, you should feel how tight my neck/shoulder area is (yeah I'm just trying to scam a massage ;p)

More filming over the weekend, including the much anticipated Bollywood dance sequence. Man! We didn't even dance that much and my legs are aching today ... so pathetic! Dancing with a helmet was rather testing. How are you meant to function if you don't allow the largest organ in your body breathe? And we know how above-average-sized my head is ...
Rowing for the 1st time in 4 weeks on Sunday afternoon - thank golly it was a light session.
Tiff's birthday party on Saturday night where I witnessed a mighty fine man. This is the first time in a long while that I have been unable to avert my eyes. All I can say is nicccccccccceeeeeeeee, very nicccccccccceeeeeeeee!

All this talk about Penelope Cruz induced me to dream about her last night. She was so upset over that nasty Tom Cruise, and I was trying to console her. I remember she had tiny hands! I guess it's because everybody is so anti-Penelope, and I kinda feel sorry for her. We all know it's Tom Cruise that is the common factor here.

Comments received thus far from my own brain-child commenting system are fraught with themes indicating the following:

I am perceived as incapable of generating anything creative and/or mildly technical, especially in the 'online' space (even though I play warcraft ... hmmm relevance? None.)

I am desperate enough to force people to leave comments.

'Copyright law does not exist in cyberspace'. I remember doing I.T law in 5th year uni and this was the motif that underscored the subject. Case in point being CHAD CHONG who has stolen my commenting system, and has not even bothered to slightly augment the design/format! ;p

I still do not understand the concept of daylight saving (the system is still under the assumption that it is daylight saving. Nearly every year, I have an argument with someone as they try to explain the concept ... but alas!

Keep them coming guys ... maybe without the "Marissa told me" bit ;p