The Running Man

Netrix Road Trip

Just got back from the annual Netrix volleyball weekend road trip to Culberra beach (near the South coast of NSW @ Nowra) :)...another weekend away. This time with another group of friends, made up completely of HK. Needless to say, the entire trip I didn't talk much and there was Cantonese flying all over the place (a bit like S'pore, where all my friends tend to go back and speak in Mandarin...except in this case, its Canto) its like being in HK...everyone spoke Canto. Despite all that, everyone still made me feel welcome and was v friendly...We all met up at a sports bar in Hurstvile for dinner on Fri night before setting off in a convoy formation on our weekend road trip! :)

The traditional pre-road trip car picture before setting off (see my previous road-trip post)

After about 2 hrs of driving...luckily I wasn't the one navigating...so pretty much slept most of the way :P. Finally we reached the Culberra beach house which we rented for the weekend. It cost a total of $1,000 to rent for the 2 days, but luckily we shared it between the 14 of us (yes its a big group...so we needed a big house...1 QB, 2 DB, 8 SB). The house was by a pretty secluded beach by the coast, with the beach about 100m away :) Beautiful. The house was pretty spacious and beautiful as well...very modern. Here are some of the pictures of the place:

Ok, now special mention needs to be made about the shower...if you can see in the above set of pictures, it had 2 shower heads pointing straight down (now this looked like it was a shower meant for two...2 shower heads, lots of space, clear glass door ;)...very cool (gushing). My future house can consider installing...2 shower heads!! what a novel concept :P. We brought tons of food and snacks (of course its a weekend trip and there are so many of us :P).

See the view?
The next morning (actually we all didn't sleep till about 3am...coz you know it was the first day in a new house with lots of ppl with lots of games, food and conversation), we woke up to a beautiful sunny day :). Haha...the good thing about going with a large group of girls is that they tend to all chat together while cooking...breakfast for us guys! :P haha (think I will get in trouble with my female readers) didn't need to ask them...they just did it :P bacon, eggs and toast. Oh well am grateful and was thankful that they did cook a good hearty breakfast for us all :P. The plan for this morning was that we were going down to the beach, relax, tan, swim and play beach volleyball! Now we'd brought our own portable beach vball net (its pretty decent), sun chairs, bikinis (for the girls), boardies (for the guys) lots of sunscreen and of course....beach food! We were well prepared for a day out in the sun...and all just 100m away from our house :). Special mention needs to be made about our 15th and 16th guest...Noodle (first picture) and Charcoal! two of the cutest dogs ever...they were brought by Andrew and Siam :) Throughout the entire trip they were so well behaved and just fun to pet. Charcoal was just so tiny. Ok enough about talking about cute dogs :P (they really were just fun to have around and good entertainment value). Anyway after a good breakfast we all headed off to the beach, these pictures should be pretty self explanatory (blue skies and sunny sun!)
Putting up the net (like the movie 'Flags of our Fathers') hehe
Don't know what Jenny and Siam were trying to do...the sun does strange things to people :P haha..the boys were definitely interested...haha It was a very hot day and we really did get a good tan...

Just the guys...again...probably the coolest guys in Culberra beach :P...cold beer, beach volleyball, hot weather...what could be better?! This is a weekend...

A group photo of all of us :)
Stayed at the beach for about 4-5 hrs...tired and hungry we packed up and went back home (luckily some of the girls went back before us...to cook maggi mee for everyone...when you are tired and hungry, nothing beats maggi with salted fish, luncheon meat :P yummm..thx gals!) where we ate and waited for the shower to be free (despite it having 2 shower heads...still only one person went in at a time :P) haha...

We were all tired and hungry...even Charcoal was exhausted :P Now we needed to rest because at night for dinner...we were going to have an 'Iron Chef' tournament done by all the guys (ie. the girls would be doing none of the cooking..:(, it was left to us guys). Its quite a neat concept...what happens is that the 8 guys were split up into 4 2 man teams, the girls would provide the receipe (and have already shopped for all the required ingredients) then we would have 60 mins to cook 2 dishes each :P quite a challenge I must say, especially with all the female eyes on us (and their comments to each other...which thankfully was in Canto otherwise it might have affected my cooking :P) haha .... the pressure to impress :P
The girls with the ingredients...

Translation please?

Needless to say...us guys took the challenge very seriously (competitive spirit amongst us) especially since the girls went thru all the effort to collect everything (even bring additional cookers, pots and pans so as each team had all the required equipment...) (also I think we ate the back-up food..the maggi mee in the afternoon :P haha). My team's 2 dishes was: 1) Honey Soy chicken wings; and 2) Stuffed Capsicum/Egg plant...I was in-charge of making dish (2) :P and I don't like Egg plant :P

The dishes were (from memory): Honey Soy Chicken wings, Stuffed Capsicum, Shanghai soup, Curry, Steamed vegetables, Fried prawn cakes, Sotong, Pork and egg...a feast! and of course we had rice and cold beers with that :P

The overall result??...it was a success! and the food was of outstanding quality (seriously...being humble here..but all the girls agreed that we definitely set the 'standard' of how a partner should cook ...haha) it was quite good.(Jul...you would be proud :P of the dishes) This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Guys can cook...provided you (ladies) provide the ingredients, receipe, helpful hints along the way, wash-up after us, and put us under some pressure to perform..haha ;)

Next for desert it was the girls' turn...and we had watermelon balls and some kind of milky coconut sort of mixture :P (sorry didn't really take note or ask what I was eating)...but it was delicious all the same haha...

Cheers!
Ok now at this stage my camera ran out of battery :( sorry...will try to get the pics of one of the other gals.

What happened the next day...well we packed up and cleaned the house (check out was at 11am) and headed for the 'softest sand in the world/Australia/Sth Hemisphere'...Hyams Beach @ Jervis Bay (see previous previous post for pictures on this). Where we...yup...set up the beach vball net again and played (much more enjoyable coz the sand was like powder...actually baby powder...so soft). We also went snorkelling and swimming at the beach :P. It was so much fun and the sun wasn't as hot (ie. perfect weather)...

With the setting sun (another beautiful sight)...we all headed back to Sydney to a nice Chinese seafood resturant for a huge dinner (so full) of crabs, prawns, etc etc...its good to be with friends on the weekend and go somewhere and play a sport you all enjoy :)

posted by Darren at 3:45 AM