Month completed: October 2011

You may think that rock paper scissors (RPS) is just a game of luck. But for some, it is more than that. It is an ultimate battle of nerves and a game of trying to out-think your opponent.

Each year around the world, national RPS championships are held to determine the nation’s best player. I was out of the country last year, so missed my opportunity, but was determined to compete this year.

Last night in London the competition was held, a knockout competition that started with 128 competitors, and 7 rounds later finished with one champion. Games are played as first to two wins for the first few rounds, and then more wins in the later rounds.

I spent the week studying different gambits (three move combinations), read the stats on which move gets played most and least (scissors is the least common), and decided on my opening move – scissor sandwich.

In the first round, I went up to play my opponent, and they never turned up (they were no doubt intimidated). I won the match by default.

In the second round, I had the unfortunate position of playing the referee. I stuck with Scissor sandwich (and then planned to follow it if need be with Crescendo – paper, then scissors, then rock).

My opponent was evidently a big fan of scissors though. He played scissors, scissors, rock, scissors and all of a sudden I was out 2-1, my dreams of being UK champion dashed for another 12 months.

Strangely, it was actually kind of a nerve-wracking experience.

You can see me trying to keep myself cool just prior to battle.

Here I am in battle, just before my close defeat.

Nat came along to watch, and was giving me psych-out vibes because she wanted to go home. Nothing like having your own cheer squad cheering for you to lose!

It was definitely a fun thing to do though, and I will be back in 2012 to try and claim the title. Probably not with the Scissor sandwich though!

Month completed: September 2011 (but really, this one is on-going)

Ages ago (as in, back in 2007), while working at Saab in Australia I set up a program whereby for every new or used car sold in Australia we (Saab) would buy a one-year subscription to Greenfleet.

This was on the back of watching An Inconvenient Truth (a great movie about global warming) and wanting to do something to help.

Each Greenfleet subscription paid for the planting of 17 trees, which would over their life soak up the equivalent of the carbon emissions of an average car in a one year period (about 4.3 tonnes). During the program we sold enough cars to pay for the planting of tens of thousands of trees (soaking up tens of thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gas).

Anyhoo, as I said that was a while ago now (four years), and recently Sara (the CEO at Greenfleet) got in touch with me and gave me an update on how the plantation is going.

The trees were planted in a couple of locations, one of which was the Purga Creek Nature Reserve in Ipswich, Queensland. Here’s one of the plants shortly after being planted.

Apparently, it is the time shortly after the planting that is the toughest for the plants to survive, as they are small and weak and more vulnerable to natural events like floods.

Fortunately, about 80% of the plants have survived some pretty tough conditions, and are now getting big enough to protect themselves from future issues.

Here is what some of those small plants now look like, with plenty more growth to come. In total, 92,000 trees were planted (many thousands of which were Saab’s contribution).

It feels really good to see my simple idea turn into reality, and for there now to be thousands of trees out there growing, soaking in carbon dioxide, and doing their bit to help the global warming issue.

For those in Australia, who want to do their part for this issue, I recommend getting a Greenfleet subscription. You will feel less guilty about using your car, and at the same time do your bit for the planet.

My Mum, who is currently in Texas, saw this and couldn’t resist taking a snap for the blog.

Fun facts about Route 183:

• It starts in Texas, and goes through Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska before finishing in South Dakota
• It is 2,012 km long
• It runs pretty much directly up in a straight line from start to end

Month completed: September 2011

This is one I have been psyching myself up for for a while.

Ever since I got the voucher for Christmas to do a bungee from my brother Nick and his girlfriend Pheobe.

Today, I finally redeemed the voucher, and took the plunge from 160 feet up, on the banks of the Thames river in London right next to Tower Bridge.

Here’s me starting to get nervous.

Getting my pre-jump briefing.

3…2…

…1…aaaaaarrggghhh

Going up in the cable car was a scary experience, and as I reached the top, and the cage door opened I realised how high 160 feet really is.

I was told not to hesitate, but just to jump on the count of three. The free fall lasted all of about two seconds before the slack caught me, and it was all really a blur. When the rope did catch me, there wasn’t the sudden jerk back that I have heard happens. It was quite smooth actually and certainly my eyes at no point felt like they were coming out of my head!

It might be the last hint of adrenaline talking, but I think I would do it again. Probably off a bridge though, and from a higher height next time to get more free fall.

Here is the whole fun event, captured for your amusement. Enjoy!

Month completed: September 2011

Originally, this goal was to complete a race called CityChase. Long time readers may remember I attempted twice unsuccessfully to complete this race while in Australia.

Unfortunately, the London version of CityChase has been cancelled for the past two years. Fortunately, the Rat Race now exists.

The Rat Race is a 2.5 hour race around London, looking for checkpoints, completing challenges, and is like a mini-version of Amazing Race. The section we completed in was called Mean Streets.

Mark and I teamed up to compete in this year’s event. We were known as Team Oz.

An hour before the race we were given a map, and the location of 25 checkpoints. With this short preparation time, we plotted out what seemed like a good route. The trick is that each checkpoint is worth a different value, and the aim of the game is to collect the most points. Only when the race started were we given the checkpoint values, and fortunately we had managed to pick a pretty good route.

Over the course of the next 2.5 hours, we did parkour, went to a car wash, did karaoke, got soaked in a fountain, got free hugs, caught a rat in Trafalgar Square, did a mini boot camp, and found a whole bunch of checkpoints.

After the race, when the adrenaline started to wear off, the body pains started to kick in. I think we probably ran at least 15 miles in the 2.5 hours, plus add in the challenges. Right now, I am still in pain and think it will probably take a week or so to recover properly.

Here’s us just after the race (you can see it is now dark – we were running in darkness for probably the last half hour).

How did we do? Well, we did better than I thought.

Out of 173 teams that completed, we finished 30th!

Not bad for a couple of foreigners.

Month completed: September 2011

Once a year in Munich, Germany a beer tasting festival takes place.

You may have heard of it – Oktoberfest.

And it seemed like the most logical place to go to achieve this goal.

So last weekend (yes, weirdly Oktoberfest takes place in September) Nat and I, plus friends Mark and Christina, went along to check it all out.

We weren’t sure what to expect.

We knew there would be plenty of beer, and plenty of rides, but the whole thing was much, much bigger than I expected.

All up, there were about 20 tents, all of which held thousands of drinkers, and to get a table in one of these tents involved getting there before 9am (some Kiwis we sat with were lined up to get in at 7am).

Each tent is run by a beer company, and no expense seems to have been spared in getting each tent to be as amazing as possible. Here is one of the ones we drank in (you can see the number of people in there – this is in the morning!).

Three things to note in this photo:

• About 90% of people wore traditional German clothing. Not just the locals but the tourists too. We felt very out of place in our ‘modern’ clothing
• There is a German band in each tent that plays traditional music
• Everyone drinks steins, which hold a litre of beer (in other words, a lot of beer)

Apart from going to the toilet, you never have to leave your table once you are there. Waiters come round, take your order, and then through some sort of magic can carry upwards of 10 steins at once with no trays or anything. Just their bare hands. It was really quite amazing to watch.

As well as drinking, the Germans know how to do a good rollercoaster. Nat and Mark were big fans, and went on pretty much everything. It rained every day we were there, so the lines for the rides were very small (in fact, non-existent).

But it is the drinking that the majority of visitors and locals come for, and not surprisingly by mid-afternoon there are hundreds of people stumbling aimlessly around, having had a few too many. Including me.

Shortly after this photo was taken, and after drinking admittedly not too much, something happened to me that has never happened before.

I lost about 3 hours of time.

At about 3pm I went to the bathroom, and don’t remember a thing that I did after that until I suddenly came to my senses at about 6pm. There was 5 missed calls from Nat wondering where I was, and what I did over those 3 hours is anyone’s guess.

I still can’t recall anything, even now, but it says something for the strength of the beer in Germany!

Here are my 4 tips if you are planning a trip to Oktoberfest in the future:

Tip 1 – Wear traditional German clothes: They are expensive in most places (around 100 Euros) but it definitely gets you more in the spirit of the occasion

Tip 2 – Reserve a table: If you are like most people, and don’t feel like getting up at 6:30pm to get a table, you can reserve one by contacting the beer company. This way you can rock up at 11am and your table is waiting for you

Tip 3 – Pace yourself: Steins are deadly. If you want to try to get through a few, without ending up losing 3 hours like I did, take your time. The tents stay open until late in the night, so there is plenty of drinking time

Tip 4 – Get the suckling pig from Weinnes Brauhaus: Not located at Oktoberfest, but near the Marienplatz in central Munich, this beer house had the best suckling pig ever, and the potato dumpling was amazing too. If you are a fan of crackling, check it out.

Not sure why I didn’t think of doing this earlier, but from now on every time I attempt a new goal I will be wearing this t-shirt.

Just makes things a bit more fun, and official.

The design was inspired by one of my favourite fictional characters. Can you guess who? Here’s the answer.

Just thought I would give a quick shout out to these three crazy guys (known as the Three Muppets) to congratulate them on their massive bike-riding achievement of riding from Land’s End to John O’Groats (basically, from the bottom to the top of the UK).

It took them 15 days to ride the nearly 900 mile journey.

One of the riders, Dave, is a mate from work, and along with the other two riders they did the ride partly to raise money for CRY (Cardiac Risk for the Young). If you feel like earning some good karma today, why not give them a few quid to say well done.

You can read all about their adventure on their website - great for anyone looking for a bit of motivation to do something big.

The Evening Standard ran an article yesterday about 30 things to do before you turn 30, which you can read here.

Some of the goals were a bit questionable, as was the reason for the article (Beyonce Knowles getting pregnant), but the sentiment of setting and achieving goals is always a good one.

And the fact that they took my plan of doing them before turning 30 was just cool.

Month completed: August 2011

I am a self-confessed board game enthusiast. There, I’ve said it. Board games rock.

Scrabble is one of those that I enjoy, but have only played very infrequently (in fact, until yesterday I hadn’t played for about 5 years).

During the week a friend told me about the Mind Sports Olympiad, an annual, week-long Olympics with tournaments in just about every board game imaginable.

So, I decided to enter Scrabble.

Without training.

At all.

Probably not my greatest idea, but whatever.

I turned up on Sunday morning to the venue full of mostly the older generation, most of whom had been playing on a weekly basis for dozens of years, and most of whom were in a league (one of my opponents was in three different leagues!).

So, some pretty tough competition.

There were 7 matches, and the tournament went from 10am to 6pm.

Playing in a tournament is different to playing with family around the dinner table in the following ways:

• There is a time clock. You have 25 minutes total to make all your moves, and although that seems like a long time, the pressure of having it there really ups the stress levels. The clock we had was an old-fashioned analogue one too, so you could hear the tick, tick, tick as each second counted down, like a heartbeat
• People take it really seriously. One guy was yelling at others if they talked too loud during his go. Another guy almost had a fit because he turned up five minutes late and was told he couldn’t play because the fixture had been done (he eventually played after he calmed down)
• It is only played by two people. None of this four-player Scrabble nonsense!
• Challenging (where you declare that you think your opponent is making up a word, or spelling it incorrectly) is fun, as you both go up to a special challenge computer, enter the word, and wait for a big green tick or big red cross to tell you if the word is OK or not. It is kind of like waiting for the third umpire in cricket to declare if the batsman is out or not
• Overdraw (where you take more than the actual number of tiles you need) is a massive faux pas, unlike at home where you would just chuck it back in the bag
• Rarely is a single-word played – the key is the two-and three- letter words that connected two bigger words together
• It seems to be all about the spread (the difference between your final score and the final score of your opponent)
• Good players (i.e. not me) seem to have their next moves planned out well in advance, and hardly get close to using their 25 minutes
• There is no word dictionary you can consult if you are not sure about a word. You just have to put it down and hope it doesn’t get challenged

How did I go, you ask?

Well, as expected, I got slaughtered. It was kind of like joining the Olympic marathon without doing any training runs first, and expecting to keep up with the Kenyans.

My final stats

I lost all 7 games, although I did manage to lose one of those games by just 16 points (he correctly challenged my made-up ‘va’ on a triple word score, which ended up being the difference between winning and losing).

My average over 7 games: 240

My opponents average over 7 games: 389

Average spread: 149

My best word was ‘quail’ on a triple-word score, which got me 48

All the concentrating throughout the day, and the pressure of the timer, meant that by the end of the tournament I had a massive headache. No-one tells you that about Scrabble – it is really mentally draining.

And last night, all I kept seeing were random letter tiles floating around, and I was trying to re-arrange them in the best order in my head.

Would I do it again? Probably not. To get any good at Scrabble you need to dedicate yourself to learning new words, playing regularly, and I get the feeling that my head would not like me much if I put it through what I put it through yesterday.

I am more of a card player anyway.