Beyond the sand

And seas, a great evil stirs. Behold! It’s nothing more than a company of morons come to celebrate, or rather, worship their great deity known otherwise as cohesion, which occurred on the 1st of August, quite some time ago.

I too, had to participate in this horrid ritual or risk having my name being listed for the next requiem. Thankfully, we got to sleep late on the actual date; the event would be taking place at a chalet located near my lair, and it would only start a little after lunch.

Unfortunately for me, though, my role in this fracas was expounded by virtue of the fact that a few rascallions saw me wielding my Nikon around duirng the previous unit cohesion event, and promptly reported such findings to those wielding the chains of power.

I’d received a call previously about being the ‘official photographer’ for the event (which essentially is a synonym for ‘cheap labour’) from some goon or other, and I was left with little choice in the matter. Of course, I would have brought my gear either way, but they can’t know that.

I got to East Coast Park a little early, and decided to have a little walk around the place, seeing as I don’t usually step away from a LCD screen for trees, birds and bugs. I found the water park, and found something else.

I shot some of the water skiiers at the park.

I shot some of the water skiiers at the park.

I actually have a new shot in my gallery that was part of this shooting spree, but this is one of the others that came out ok. Panning has never been my strongest point in photography, and I’m trying very much to change that before the all-important event coming up in September.

The fellowship of the making of the flags.

The fellowship of the making of the flags.

Tools used for flag creation.

Tools used for flag creation.

Anyway, the event pretty much started out like any other kids’ event, with the company being divided into sections and tasked to design their own group flags. Oh wait. How old are we again? Seriously, flags? What the fuck is this, recess games during preschool?

Shooting was a little challenging due to the treacherous sun, though; even at 3 p.m. or so, the sun cursed us with its noon-like intensity, blowing out highlights and rendering light meters all but useless. Indeed, most of my shots involving the sky in some way or other had to be extensively post-processed in order to get anything worthy out of them.

Anyway, flag-making took its time, finally culminating in several pieces of paint-soaked cloth hanging miserably from wooden poles, hoisted around by various people as they saw fit.

Then, our dear organizers announced the commencement of the games. I? I’d say they were Olympic in vision, sure. Only in vision.

Yea, that's his name. He's cool.

By the way, we actually use that bucket for waste oil in camp.

Yea we asians have a lot of English names.

Yea we asians have a lot of English names.

Pretty much standard Captain’s ball, water bombing, tie-your-feet-together-and-run games dominated the small stretch of beach that we chose to occupy, with lone rangers occasionally heading back to the chalet to catch a breath and a drink. I elected to employ a previous strategy for events that seems to work quite well so far, heading from point of interest to point of disinterest; meaning that I basically head to obvious focal centers like the games, then take a look at other, less noticeable features like that innocuous soccer ball left on the ground a small distance away, or that paint bucket discarded in the grass over there.

Anyway, I wasn’t the only one with a dSLR, as some other fools had come with their own kits to try and usurp my position. If only they knew I’d be more than happy to let them bear such a burden!

I did find a sergeant who I was on good terms with using his D80 with a nice 17-70mm f2.8/4.5 Sigma though, one that I had been previously considering seriously as a replacement for my decidedly trusty, but slower 18-55mm f4/5.6 kit lens.

Some weird sweet wafers with tuna filling. Pretty good, actually.

Some weird sweet wafers with tuna filling. Pretty good, actually.

It was pretty clear, though, that he had little to no idea of the power he held in his mere skinny hands. This has become more prevalent in the past few months, it seems. People spending their dough on stuff they cannot possibly even hope to imagine to handle.

It pains me like it would a tree being lit on fire. And then chopped down. Then crushed into splinters.

But I digress.

The games ended pretty early, and we had about an hour before dinner began. Of course, where my unit is concerned, this meant that dinner began an hour early. The pigs.

While the catered food was not wholly indigestible, it did provoke certain squeaks, squeals of protest from my digestive tract as my mind tried to lie to itself that really, what I was eating was just food, stuff that would somehow sustain me for yet another span of time. Wouldn’t it? I attached myself to a certain element that seemed relatively palatable: a kind of semi-sweet pastry stuffed with tuna.

Well, I guess it’s got protein and carbs. And it had lettuce. It’ll do.

No, seriously. A treasure hunt?

No, seriously. A treasure hunt?

I stayed a while for the barbecue, but what I realized was that I didn’t give a shit about the event. This came as a sort of surprise, seeing as most of the people in my unit are certainly retarded, but at least they weren’t retarded fuckers like the kind I’ve been dealing with all my life.

In that split second it took me to realize the gravity of the situation, I realized one other thing: that it was time to go.

And go I did.

Quickly, I might add: I still wanted to get some Soul Calibur IV in before hitting the rack.

As you can probably tell, I’m not really all that enthused about this particular event. I’m not sure why: perhaps something that sounds more like coercion doesn’t really get the response out of me that people are looking for.

Then again, I’ve been forced to attend stupid events all my life; why would one more be any different? Especially one in which I could, at least, distract myself with my PSP and photography.

Such trivial matters, indeed! In any case, I got to try out the Sigma lens, and got to handle the D80 again, so … yeah, actually I don’t think this event was really significant in any way. Too bad.

   

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