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Friday, July 6, 2012

The unhappiest traveller...

And the award for grumpiest person on a plane goes to...

ROB SKELTON!

Rob struggled to fit his lanky six foot something frame into even Qatar's generous seats. He couldn't stretch his legs out at all, and by the time we were half way through the flight from Doha to Osaka he'd pretty much given up on ever being happy again.

Rob adopts his patented "I-Don't-Want-To" sleeping position
But as I type this, Rob is figuring out the kettle in our room and making tea. You should see the happy little grin on his face as he prepares his Five Roses...

Sunday, July 1, 2012

One of our favourite people

Between Heydinger declaring that people are "the worst", Matt insisting on moderation in all things, and my general grumpy state, there aren't all THAT many people that we like (apart from our respective girlfriends fantastic, of course).

But Niell is one of those people that we all agree is awesome. Nothing seems to phase him, he's from Namibia (although he'll deny this if you ask him) and he likes a good pair of pink ear muffs.

One of the things we like about Niell is his hair. Sort of. So here's part of the story of Niell's hair.

It used to look like this:
Niell (on the right) with his bestest friend TimTam
Then Tim (and the UCT Ultimate team) cut off his luscious mane:
And now (at least some of the time) Niell looks like this:
Despite now looking like a HUGE lesbian, Niell has managed to stay awesome. Although he still has to shout, "I'm a DUUUDE!!" on the line before a point, otherwise girls will match up across from him.

And that's Niell.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Hummus is ok, I guess

At the beginning of this week, I ate some hummus on a pita. It was quite nice, actually.

In slightly more exciting news, here's the weekly internet!

Oh insanity wolf... (source: quickmeme)

Imgur (my usual procrastination tool of choice) seems to be having issues at the moment, so I've been struggling to get anything from there. Or maybe the university is blocking it. Who knows?

Three days until two-thirds of the Junction leaves for Japan (along with one of the girlfriends-fantastic). I head out next Wednesday, with Joy (as far as Doha) and some more of the team.

I should start packing sometime, probably.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Clearly productivity is not high on my list of priorities today

Snigger.


Source: i.imgur.com/896Gp.jpg

Abe Lincoln will be late

The Junction has been eagerly looking forward to the release of "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" (watch the trailer here). It's a movie which we expect to be ridiculous enough to justify paying money for, and we were planning to go and see it when it was released in theatres today (June 22).

But then Matt came home with sad news yesterday: the movie will only be released in SA in early August! There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as we came to terms with this disappointment. Heydinger said, "I don't care," but we know he was just putting on a brave face so that I wouldn't be overcome with grief.

Luckily we'll be distracted by playing at WUGC2012 for most of July, so I'm sure the time will pass quickly. Before we know it we'll be sitting in the cinema with disgusting quantities of popcorn and fizzy drinks, watching a guy with an axerifle explode trees.

Speaking of the World Champ's, the player profiles are being released on our team blog, so you should go and look at our silly faces.

Also on the World's front, the schedule has been released. The Mambas are in a pool with the USA, Germany, Italy and Singapore. It's going to be amazing to play against Revolver (who won the USA Club Nationals last year) and Germany (who have just beaten a bunch of other top European national and club teams, apparently); and we can't help but feel that we have a good chance of giving Italy and Singapore a run for their money and ending up third in the pool.

Just over two weeks until the first pull at World's. SWEET.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Everything in moderation...

That was what my mother used to say to me on a regular basis while I was growing up: “Everything in moderation!” She would say this in reference to everything from food to social engagements to exercise. I don’t think I had realised the extent to which I had internalised this principle, until I started living at the Junction. Until this year I wouldn’t have described myself as a person who did many things in moderation…

Within a couple of weeks of moving in with the Johns Fantastic, I realised that McCoy and Heydinger display a variety of polar opposite extreme behaviours. In a number of instances, my behaviour seems to fall somewhere on the spectrum between the Johns.

When washing dishes, for example, McCoy stacks the dishes immaculately both before and after washing. Heydinger, on the other hand, pulls the dishes from all over the kitchen straight into the sink, and then puts them in the drying rack in a manner that could, at best, be described as haphazard. He will even throw clean plastic items into the drying rack, an action which I suspect McCoy thinks should be punishable by death. I don’t stack dishes in descending order of size, but I also don’t throw clean items around the kitchen, so I think that it would be fair to say that I take a moderate approach to washing dishes.

Another aspect of our lives that displays this trend is our diets. If McCoy had his way he would subsist on carb's and cheese, and the occasional piece of meat, while Heydinger specialises in consumption of salads and something called “chia”. I walk the middle road, consuming foods belonging to all of the different food groups with some regularity. If asked, I would refer to my diet as moderately healthy.

I would also normally refer to myself as moderately fit. Over the last while I have been working pretty hard on my fitness in preparation for the World Ultimate and Guts Championships in Japan. I have enjoyed this, but I would be fine if I was only exercising three times a week (rather than working out and/or playing Ultimate five times a week). I don’t think Heydinger would be. He seems to need to exercise like other people need to breathe. McCoy… Well… I'll just say that on a number of occasions over the last few months McCoy has sat and eaten sandwiches while Heydinger and I have worked out in our lounge. So, compared to the Johns, I am, in fact, moderately fit (even though I’m fitter than I’ve been for a long time).

There are a couple of other aspects of our behaviour that show this trend. Watch closely next time you hang out with us and you'll see the pattern soon enough. Look out for the Johns taking polar opposite approaches to the same activity. Then look for me. I'll be the other guy taking part in the activity... in moderation.

Before I sign off, I need to give the second Shoutout Fantastic! This one goes out to my very own Girlfriend Fantastic - Catherine O’Leary - who is kicking academic butt in the United States of ‘Murica! We hope to have a comment from her in the near future… When she learns to use the internet…

Matty out

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

In Praise of Leisure

Robert and Edward Skidelsky write about JM Keynes and ideas for the coming of a more-leisured world.


Take a Walk

This weekend, the Junction ventured out for a Field Trip Fantastic to Cape Point. We laughed, we cried, we made new friends (see above). Matt was... disappointed.


Thanks to the Matt Lewis tour company. Purveyors of "Walks with Matt"

Monday, June 18, 2012


GB vs Sweden

In July, the Junction is heading over to Japan to take part in the World Ultimate and Guts Championships (WUGC2012) as part of the South African Open team. You can find the team blog here. It'll have updates about the tournament (as will the Blog Fantastic, of course!).

Some footage of a showcase game between the British and Swedish national teams has been put online. Seeing as we might end up playing one of these teams at some point in the tournament, this seems like a good video to watch. Just in case... So here it is.

In other news, I am pretty sick of hummus. I didn't like it at the beginning of the year, then in about February I realised that it's quite tasty, and now I don't want to eat it anymore. This isn't groundbreaking news, but it's important to me, so now you're having to read about it. So there.

And that's all for now.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Inappropriate joke Queen

It's Friday, I've spent the day messing around online, and it's nearly time to head to the pub. But! FIRST! It's the weekly internet!


Makes me think of Bad Joke Eel a bit...

The second thing from the internet for today is some ultimate footage, specifically the video of the semi between Pitt and CUT at the College Nationals earlier this year. CUT went up 8-3 at half, but a huge comeback by Pitt lead to them taking the win 14-12. Pitt went on to win the final. Here's a link to some footage of the semi.

I'd embed it, but I don't know how to do that yet. Fail.

Junction out.

In Dinger's absence...

With Heydinger away from the Junction (he's in the Eastern Cape somewhere), things are kind of quiet. Practice was a bit strange without him; there was a lot less shouting at people to run harder. It was also Coach Snake's last practice until we hit Japan, so we're going to have to make sure that we're able to push hard through the last three weeks.

Anyway. I thought I'd take this chance to put up a few "Would you rather..." samples. Hopefully once Dingus is back he can contribute a few that I've forgotten.

First up, the original from Heydinger (which has generated a surprising amount of mileage):
Would you rather stick your face into a basket of Steers' chips, and keep it there for a minute
OR
stick a frozen hotdog up your bum for one minute.
[the answer seems obvious, but you'd be surprised by some responses...]


Tophe has come up with a few interesting ones:

Would you rather be forced to watch Scooby Doo for two hours every day
OR
feel like your feet are wet and clammy whenever you're trying to sleep.

Would you rather be fed like a baby bird by Rich Gore for 1 yea
OR
For the rest of your life whenever you go to the shops a randomly selected 15% (rounded up) of the items you buy are missing when you get home? (applies to items per trip not per shop or purchase).

And finally one from Rich Gore himself:
Would you rather get punched in the arm by the world boxing champion, bare-knuckled
OR
Get caned on your arse by a pro baseball batter with a wooden bat.

That's all for now. As we remember more of them, we'll try to put them up. We know you can't wait...

Friday, June 8, 2012

Happy birthday vibes

It's Jonno's birthday today, and the Junction would like to wish him a Birthday Fantastic.

Jonno's in Italy at the moment, being creepy around a bunch of young people, and being creepy around old people, and being creepy on bicycles. But if he wasn't being creepy he wouldn't be Jonno.

As a special gift, we're going to bestow our very first Shoutout Fantastic upon Jonno's tattooed shoulders: go and read his blog! You can find it at http://jonbook.wordpress.com/

Junction out.

PS Your Mambuddy wishes he could join you in a smoothy and some PnP in Kauai. I presume. He didn't actually tell me that. But probably.

Monday, June 4, 2012

The weekly internet

One of the deals we have at the Junction is that each week I have to put up on the corridor wall something that made me laugh that I'd found while I was "at the internet".

If I don't put something on the wall each week, the other two get to put up pictures that make fun of me. I'm sure they'll start posting those soon, but in the meantime here's the picture I put up for the week of 28 May to 1 June:

(source: imgur.com/gallery/1HPXZ)

And now you know.

The Blog Fantastic begins

This is the start of a collection of thoughts and ideas from the members of Junction Fantastic (hereinafter referred to as "The Junction").

Look out for fun sections such as:
  • Dingus' "Would you rather..." (hours of entertainment for the whole family!)
  • Matty's latest wildlife impressions (fun AND educational!)
  • McCoy's tips on stacking dishes for optimal washing efficiency (more important than you'd think!)
  • The odd ultimate-related discussion
 Junction out.