Chapter 57 - O-Week

In which our hero makes heaps of Campus Cash ...

So. From February 13-19 Christian, Maria, and I were on a fantastically exciting expedition to Cairns, which is really quite far north. Like far enough that it's fully tropical, and there were warnings of dengue fever. Not to worry, though. We used heaps of mozzie spray. I'll explain the details of that adventure later. Right now I'm going to talk about the fun of O-Week, and how I got into all the Guild Crew stuff.

So. My first ever Guild Crew shift was packing bags of free stuff to give away during O-Week. This was on February 20 & 21. We'd returned from Cairns at about 3 p.m. on the 19th. The rest of the gang had already been working on them since Monday. I fell into step as best I could, and started to make friends among the other bag packers, one of which was Glen, whom I already knew. He was doing a lot of the heavy lifting because, as I've mentioned once or twice, he's a bit of a giant, and therefore good at that sort of thing.

Here's a few pictures from near the end, when almost all of the bags were packed. I think there was a total of like 6000 or something.

SO

MANY

BAGS

Glen doing heavy lifting.

All this work was done in the Function Centre space beside the Uni Bar. When they do big parties they open it up so it's all party space. It's all being renovated now, though, so it'll be all shiny and new in a few months.

Anyway, when we were all at lunch on Friday we decided that since we had so many boxes we should build a box fort. We decided that we'd sort of take turns working on it so as to not let on that we weren't actually working. It transpired that Glen just did most of it, and the rest of us kept working. He came and moved things around for us whenever we needed it moved though.

The box fort castle in it's early stages of construction. I did the turrets on the tower.

Completed fort. Glen looks out for approaching enemies. Soon after this 'Let It Go' from Frozen came on, and Glen started singing along, rather theatrically, from the same position in the castle.

Box fort interior. I did the shelf. It fell down later.

More box fort interior.

Completed exterior.

So there we have it. On to actual O-Week. My first job on the first day was doing campus tours. I did a total of three tours, and apparently I did fairly well. I was kind of a little hoarse after though, from all that talking. I'm not used to it. On the second and third days, if I remember right, I was giving away the bags that we'd worked so hard to pack. It looked like this:

Students streamed through to the right and left and collected their bags, then wended their way through the function centre, which had various business stalls set up inside it. There was heaps of free stuff like pens and USBs and things, and if you were so inclined you could collect all sorts of VIP membership cards to all the big popular clubs. There was also a free BBQ at the end, which was great. Although we got free lunch anyway cuz we were volunteering all day.

Wednesday evening was outdoor movie night, which looked like this, before it got dark:

The movie was Gravity, and I was on duty to give out soft drinks and popcorn. There's going to be another one this semester, but I'll just be in the audience as another volunteer has scored the refreshments role.

On Thursday I was allocated to monitoring some of the activities. I got given the mechanical surfboard. My job was to take names and record times and stay on top of the leader board, so at the end of the day we knew who'd won. The prize was a Corona mini fridge, with a built in bottle opener. The winner was the person who stayed on the longest.

This chap was the winner. His name is Guillerme. He's from Brasil. I think the winning time was over 2 minutes.

And here's the free BBQ that the student got at the end of their trek through the business stalls, with a view of the Corona mini fridge in the bottom left corner.

Friday morning I was part of the School of Engineering Orientation session, where we registered new students before the school orientation session, then gave them a quick tour as we made our way across campus, then we all enjoyed a free lunch.

Here's me and my friends looking awesome in our School of Engineering shirts.

Friday night I was scheduled to help out with the "Back to School" party at the Uni Bar, which got going at like 7, I think. The engineering stuff ended at like 1 p.m., so I basically had like 6 hours to kill. I luckily managed to snag myself an extra sub, however, which I kept for dinner, and then spent the remaining time in a computer lab somewhere, I think. There's no pics of the party, because it was inside and at night, which are two things my camera doesn't do well with.

There is, however, some pics of horses. Remember the business stalls I mentioned that were inside the function centre? Well, one of them was the Gold Coast Turf Club, and they were giving away stress squishy horses. The people at the other stalls, however, collected and decorated them. So here's some painted horses.