It's been a long time .... I shouldn't have left you ....

Hey everyone. First off, sorry about the lack of updates for weeks now. It's been a combination of schedule changing, tiredness, lack of internet access ... and well laziness on my part. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned at some point that we don't have internet in our rooms so I have to head downstairs to a cafe to use the internet. The fact that I've had to get down there and I'm tired every night is part of it, but the staff there has been a little more persistent in the past while about making sure you buy a drink or something while using their internet so the few times I have been down there I'm only online long enough to get my emails and check a few things before they ask me to drink or leave. Anyway I'm here now ... so here goes.

Funny enough, everyone is probably thinking there is tons of news to report on since it's been so long ... well really ... there isn't. Things are quite routine as far as work is concerned. One of the groups we hang out with a lot has finished their contract and they've left so there's a new group replacing them and new people to get to know so it's kind of sad that some of our friends have left, but cool at the same time to meet new people. Also since they've left we've had our schedule changed. When we started working here we had to be at work at around 4:30-5:00 in the afternoon and we worked until around 10:00-10:30 at night so we were always getting in late. It wasn't always fun getting in late and having to eat late and not having time in the evening to chill, but at the same time it left our days free for people to do stuff if they wanted to. For the most part I just relaxed in my room and worked in the day on my laptop. Sometimes the group would meet up and go to the pool or the gym (neither has happened in a while now since we're always so tired though). Our schedule is now 1:00-1:30 until 6:30-7:00 in the evening. I'm personally finding it worse. I end up sleeping in still because my body is exhausted so by the time I get up and get ready and eat etc it's time to go to work and then in the evenings I'm tired from performing so I don't want to go and do anything. My last few weeks have just been sleep, eat, work, eat, sleep ... rinse and repeat. It probably seems a little more mundane and tiring to me because I'm even just chilling on my days off. I go for walks every few days though for a few hours, usually at night, and that's kind of cool. I just walk in a different direction from home for like an hour and see where I end up. I guess it would be more interesting in the day time with stuff open, but for now it's a good little adventure for me every few days.

Other than the schedule change, everything with work is the same. our performances are still attracting people and getting people talking, which is really cool. Doesn't mean we always have huge crowds though. Sometimes, especially early in the afternoon at like 1:00, there are only 2 or 3 people watching the show. It's actually really hard to flip and run around on stage with no one paying attention, but we've learned how to play to each other and feed off of each other while we perform so it's good.

Body wise ... wow I'm tired. Before we left we were all saying that our bodies would adapt and we'd get use to all the physical activity. Not quite so. Cardio wise, we're all in way better shape. We were huffing and puffing in the first few weeks and sweating buckets, now it's not nearly as bad. It's still a long day and we're still tired but it's not *as* hard cardio wise now. Muscle wise and joints are a completely different story. With only one day off and less than 24 hours in between work days our muscles and joints are an absolute mess. Everyone on the team is hurting in some way or another. Some worse than others too. I don't need to go through them all because I'm not saying this to come off as a complaint ... but it's so much harder in that respect than I thought it was going to be. There are some days where my entire skeleton feels like it's out of place and aching. It's just something you can never get used to ... flipping and joint impact so many times in a day ... day in and day out. We're finding our ways to cope though (mostly just sleeping lol). Still loving it ... but I'm definately needing and looking forward to a good rest after this.

So, interesting things ... let's see ... like I've already mentioned I've been on a bunch of walks so I've got pictures of more randomness (up on facebook and I'll put the link at the end of this) and some video of that.

We had a big group dinner before Vybe left. We went to a hot pot place and just ordered a ton of stuff. Seems like a pretty normal dinner, which it was, except for the plate of prawns that someone ordered. Very quickly just in case someone doesn't know what hot pot is: the table has a pot of water which you bring to a boil and they serve you plates of raw meats and vegetables and you boil/cook your own food. So we had beef, and fish, and dumplings ... and then these prawns. So like I said, everything is raw, which you expect, but these prawns were still alive! They all had skewers stuck up their butts but they were skwirming and wriggling on the plate still trying to get away! I can't lose my appetite when I'm hungry, but this was still pretty gross. I'm eating and dumping meat in to the pot and these things are flipping around on the table trying to get off of plates. Needless to say ... many many jokes were made that night and there were lots of laughs ... except for the one vegetarian, animal rights activist person at the table. She was not ... amused to say the least ... especially when the night was done and we had prawn puppet theatre making them rap and dance with the skewers.

There have been a lot of events happening at the Venetian lately as well. We've had the Asian Toilet Summit, Mobile Phone expo, Tabacco gathering ... some other randomness weird events ... none of which have anything to do with me or affect me in any way, but it has made the hallways much more full and difficult to get through. It's been interesting to see so many more people though. During their lunch breaks there are literally hundrends of people just sitting on the floors in the halls. It's crazy. Also with all these business people around I've finally seen children around again. I can't believe how much I missed having kids around until now. Seems silly I know, but because everything around me is casinos and fancy hgh class stores, etc there are no children anywhere, but these people are bringing their families with them so now there are kids running through the halls on a lot of days. Makes me smile to see them. I enjoy it (even though a lot of the younger ones stare at me blankly just as much as the adults here do lol)

There was a halloween 'event' if you want to call it that, at the lounge on the first floor this year. Now halloween isn't something that I celebrate at all, but we went to this party as a team and dressed up as the Chinese flag. I dressed in all white and went as the pole and the four others wore red shirts and taped stars on them. We would all just walk around and then randomly call out to each other and link arms and wave around. It was hilarious! We won the costume contest too haha! The night wasn't any different than another night as this lounge though. There's a live band that we've gotten to know and they play there so we sometimes head down there and just chill out in the evenings.

Oh, this is exciting (for me). Since we're half way done our contract (well over half now) Carl and I have switched rooms. Now Carl is sharing a room with Christian and I have the bigger single room. Now Christian is a great guy, but I'm so glad to finally be alone. I'm not used to the roommate thing and I definately like and need my own space. Especially now that we're getting more and more tired and spending more and more time just chilling in our rooms and laying down it's so great to be able to just come home and crash, or listen to music ... or whatever without having to worry about someone else ... not that I really did to being with haha! You know what I mean though. The room is great ... took me 3 days to clean it after Carl was here (thanks again bro) ... but it's great.

Last week I got to go to see Chris Brown. I'm not a humungous fan or anything, but I do like some of his music and I do think he's a good performer. It was fun. I don't usually do the concert thing when I'm back in Toronto. I figure music doesn't have to be 'watched' to be enjoyed, but even though it was a smaller concert it was a lot of fun. Especially watching all the kids go completely nuts haha. I'll admit though, he is a good entertainer. That's pretty much all I can say about that ... I'm not a teenage girl and don't think he's cute ... so ... um ... it was good. The end. I didn't get good pictures since I had to take them on my phone and I didn't have an amazing seat. (my phone camera has no zoom) I'm taking all my photos on my cellphone camera since I don't have a digital camera. I can take good pictures on my video camera, but I wasn't allowed to take that inside the concert.

Yesterday Carl and Chrisitan went bungie jumping off of the Macau Tower. It claims that it's the worlds highest commercial bungie jump so that's really cool for them. They said it was amazing. I'm not afraid of heights, but I have no desire to jump off of a building with a rope attatched to me lol. Carl has wanted to go ever since we got here so I'm really glad for him. Christian has never been bungie jumping and finally built up the nerve to go. He's also told me he's afraid of heights so I think it's really cool that he did it. We left straight from work so I didn't get video of it but they were given a video taken from the top. They said they might go again though (apparently now that they've gone once the next time is half price) so I'll get it then. Afterwards we went to the Macau food festival. It was good, but we couldn't figure out what a lot of the stuff was because it was all in Chinese. We all found good stuff though, and some weird stuff too ... like chicken on a plate with their heads snapped ... but still hanging there. They also had some carnival type games. Carl tried two of them ... both impossible ... and I just realized ... both involved whacking the crap out of a target lol: whack a mole and some other game where you had to pound a lever to get little plastic balls to shoot in to a lions mouth. As with most things that have to do with Carl, it was really funny to watch. As we were leaving for the night there was a band setting up on a stage so we sat for about 10 minutes but they didn't start. None of us are in to Chinese music, but whatever, it wouldn't been different. As the cabs pull up and we get in they start playing ... Achey Breaky Heart ... it was hilarious (to me anyway). I'm so glad we didn't stay for that.

Like I said, we're all really tired now (and we're allowed to be) so we don't do much (if anything) during the week. On our day off though we try and do something or meet up for dinner or something like that. It's really cool to me that we're still cool with each other in the group. We've seen a lot of issues within the other groups and I'm really glad we've been able to find our own ways to deal with things. We spent yesterday chillin together at the food festival and today we all went to a beach and had a BBQ with some of the friends we have here. Cooked up some meat, made a salad and just hung out and talked and laughed. Had a lot of fun. (Yes there is a Carl story) We went grocery shopping before hand and Lucie bought a frisbee, so five of us are tossing the frisbee around near the water ... yes, obviously we can see where this story is going ... and eventually the frisbee ends up in the water. Now it's a bit windy and this isn't a commercial beach in the sense that they advertise swimming etc here. There are parks and fire pits for cooking, but there are very very little people here. The sand isn't great for playing in (half of it is hard mud) and the water is salty and the wave coming to shore are fairly big, for a beach anyway. They're like a foot high at their smallest and about five feet high sometimes. It was really cool actually because you don't normally see waves like that on a beach. Anyway, the waves are pretty small and the frisbee is still floating pretty close to shore so Carl runs to the water to get it. Now, none of us have swimming trunks. Again, this isn't a swimming/tanning beach. So he rolls up his jeans to just under his knees and steps in the water. As he does a wave comes crashing in and it's about at his knee so he jumps back so he won't get his pants wet .. but now the frisbee gets pulled out a little farther. This happens two more times and our frisbee is getting away so I yell at him "Just run in fast and get it before the next wave comes". So the tide pulls out and Carl goes dashing in to get the frisbee ... his jeans are a little bit wet but it's not a big deal. He finally grabs the frisbee and turns back (the water is about half way up his calves). As he turns around I see this huge swell build up behind him so I yell out again "RUN CARL RUN!! A WAVE IS COMING!" He turns his heads and sees this huge wave building up and starts running back to the sand but the water built up so fast he couldn't run. Next thing you know Carl is up to his chest in water ... completely soaked ... one second later ... wave is gone, Carls face is ... priceless ... I'm passing out laughing ... but we have our frisbee back! Oh man it was so funny! The wave litterally took one second to soak him and the next it was gone. Carl spent the next hour sit and walking around in his boxers while his jeans hung in a tree to dry. Good times.

Anyway, as you can see, things are still cool here. We've got just a month left to go and we're home. Ready to come back to the cold and snow. I'm so excited ... ... (right). We still have a lot of work left and a lot of things to check out though. We stil haven't gone to see the Cirque show that's here. I'm hoping that will happen very soon.

I'm posting a bunch of a pictures on facebook and the link is at the bottom of this post. Some are really old (weeks) others are recent so just go by the captions. They're all random anyway. This batch is a lot of scenery again since 90% of the time I'm out alone so I can't get in the pictures but I'm in a few. The next set will have me in more places so they won't just look like postcards. I also have a lof of backed up video footage so I'm posting that here too. It's also old, so I'm not going to write commentary for it all like I did with the last set. I think they're pretty self explanitory anyway and if they're not, just message me or comment and I'll fill you in.

That's it for now! No more huge gaps in updates! Time to get some rest. Another week awaits!

Peace out!

Picture links:
1) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=177139&l=869cc&id=628240306
2) http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=177146&l=e41ff&id=628240306

Videos:
1) Intro to work day


2) Day Beginning

Video notes: This is from week 2 ... yes it's old I know. I still haven't played basketball, I still haven't seen Cirque, and I don't live on the 16th floor anymore.

3) Underground Staff World.

Video notes: Uur costumes needed to get replaced (that's what Carl is talking about); when it goes black and I thought I turned the camera off ... I didn't lol. There's like 5 minutes of nothing but I cut it.

4) Getting Food

Video notes: I didn't know the camera was still on so this one is pretty boring ... skip to 3:40 for some more commentary.

5)Off to Work.

Video notes: The guy and girl are from the Vybe crew, both from Toronto (small world); I finally got caught taping so that's why it jumps :P

6) On the road!

Video notes: I think this one is pretty boring. The tower is where the guys bungie jumped though. Oh ya ... I'm dumb, that's not a scooter lane ... people just use it 'cause they're crazy.

7) Off to Work.

Video notes: I still don't know what thay mini golf thing is. I've never seen kids on it so I don't know. I have taken zero classes, but we have gone in the studio to just train on our own.

8) Walk through the halls.

Video notes: It's super fast because there's no talking and it's boring, but at least you can see it.

9) Entertainment Area

Video notes: We don't chill here anymore haha. It's too far a walk.