Barbecue, Taboo, Dictionary Game.

A wonderful start to the holidays!

(My greatest regret is the lack of photos, as everyone was too busy with the food and games to take pictures)

Last night, we braved all odds (rain, wet seats, stuck gates, killer winds) to have a barbecue at the courtyard-y pit area in IH. The idea was hatched on the basketball court the day before (Oh horrors! Aaron actually played basketball!), and planned at completely the last minute. Instead of organizing stuff at night on Saturday, some of us Avenue residents (+guests) decided to have a fun romp through Royal Park and go down to Flemington Road to "acquire" some posters instead...

The day started of wonderfully with a trip down to Vic Mart to get ingredients to burn at night. Some things I learned at Vic Mart: I should not be allowed to buy sausages (4 kgs of meat, baby!), and watermelons are expensive. Hehe, oddly enough, some random guy complimented Jeannie's Liverpool jersey on the tram ride back. Even preparation time was awesome fun. Like Kenny said, there was a real sense of community effort with everyone contributing. Kinda like the houseboat experience without the actual houseboat.

We had insane amounts of food and drink. And barbecued watermelon. Which was pretty awesome in an icky way. Thanks so much to Jeannie for helping us out and loaning fridge space and her grill, even though she was leaving for the airport at 8:30pm, and couldn't fully enjoy the barbecue with us. In the end, the razor winds and impending return of the rain motivated us to scramble the hell out and back to the warm confines of AV07 for dessert and games.

Taboo was awesome as usual. There were lots of funny moments, but the one I remember most was this: Sheanee gave "pen" as a clue for her last word, and I just shouted out "PANDA!" for the heck of it. We timed out on that, but guess what the very next card was? PANDA! I CAN PREDICT THE FUTURES! Hehe. Also, while trying to get my team to guess "Quit", I said "I don't want to play anymore" it was supposed to be followed by "so I.... " but the confused looks on the faces of my teammates as they thought I had actually given up was just too hilarious. Ah.. Taboo. Fun times. (Missed Pat and Jeannie randomly shouting out "PENIS!" at every clue though...)

Next came The Dictionary Game. For those who don't know how it's played: One person looks through a dictionary for a random word and reveals it to the rest of the group without giving the definition. Then, each person playing writes down their own definition of the word on a piece of paper and passes it back. After that, the definitions are collected and read out, along with the actual definition. Everyone then votes for the definition they think is the right one. If they get it right, they get 5 points, and for each vote that is cast for their own false definition, they get 1 point. That's how you play The Dictionary Game. Really good once people got into it and started giving really convoluted definitions. Melbourne Uni students really know how to bullshit, hehe.

The words of the night were (taken from my trusty Scrabble Dictionary):
oophyte - a stage of development of a plant (highlight: YOU FIGHT!)
maderize - to turn brown, used for white wine (highlight: to incite feelings of rage, or the state of being irate)
santol - a tropical plant (highlight: a drug derived from bacterium, used in the treatment of tinea or ringworm)
casaba - a variety of melon (highlight: medical term describing the upper region of the liver)
xerus - a type of African ground squirrel (highlight: the sixth star of Mercury)
pahoehoe - smooth, solidified lava (highlight: a type of laughing therapy)
myrmidon - a loyal follower (highlight: favourite noodles eaten by Japanese royalty)
jejune - childish; uninteresting (highlight: outcast royalty of France)
lintel - a horizontal supporting beam (highlight: Dr. Doom's alter ego after meeting the Battlestar Galactica at Caprica 7)

24, Kenny and Jo were tied in first place.. so you know they either have great vocabularies or can bullshit a lot, hehe.

All in all, an awesome weekend of food and fun. Ahh... It's going to be a great holiday. :)