Reunion Recap. (With exclusive photos!)

In 2003, there was a couple of guys I was studying with who had an idea for some kind of campus-based social club thing. Where we'd have, like parties and stuff. 'Cause our Screen & Media department at uni was getting on real well, the staff and students hung out a lot, the TV station was up n running and we were all having a good time.

(Plus, studying very hard and doing extremely well on our essays and producing short films that were relevant to the cirriculum, obvs).

After hearing them talk about it for a while, I realised that the underlying source of motivation was that our Student Union was supposed to give all formal organisations that signed up with them a lump o cash. Once this news spread, it wasn't long before we had all the paperwork needed and were putting that first cheque towards our inaugural Networking Night. There were a couple typos here n there, but basically that's how the Waikato S&M Social Club was born and how I became Club Treasure.

In the first semester we went from a dozen members to over a hundred. Our mailing list was really successful, as people used to it talk about projects, source gear, get advice and track down flatmates. We also had great events like music video competitions, film screenings, the end-of-year awards nights and - let's not forget - some awesome piss ups. I staged a coup and bumped myself up to President, sourcing sponsorship from DB and Red Bull, and we came up with the blue n yellow badges which signified membership.

And last weekend was all about remembering those good times. A core group of us assembled at Sam Brown's house (out at the manor) and general consensus was 'thank goodness we're all such film geeks and took so many pics over the years... because the rest of my memories are foggy...'.



There were a few key members missing, obviously. Those who have moved overseas, those who couldn't make it that weekend, those who have come to the conclusion we are unbearable wanks needing to pull our heads outta our collective arses. It highlighted the relationships which have stayed strong and those which have changed in the years since we graduated.

A lot of the friendships have grown closer in the last year or so, thanks to so many of them being based in Auckland now and working in the film industry. I'm literally the only one from my group of uni friends in Wellington. *sniffs pitifully* But it means I get to keep track of everyone and can just slot right in there with their social circle when I head up north.

Example: photo of me with Trelease, Mella, Chelsea & Marama. (Ahem - that's me on the far right, random stranger who stumbles across blog and are unsatisfied enough with life to continue reading this far into drivel).



Trelly & Marama I flatted with in my last year in La Tronica, but Mella and Chelsea, I didn't know quite as well. I was fortunate enough to have caught up with Mella a few times in recent years, especially considering she has had an amazing time raising her family, including her second child being born four months premature. (I know - OMG ). But now they're all in Bucklame and I get to hear the goss and see the pics on Tanya's Flickr and its all happy families.

It was the first big catch-up since Sam Barnes' funeral and it kinda felt nice to be all together and to be doing something a bit more normal. He would have so enjoyed the night though, waxing philosophical about the passing of time and other crap. We also talked about the fact that certain couples had had to come only one or the other, due to parental responsibilities, and that in five years time, that situation would only be worse. Would our next reunion require a creche? Quelle horreur!

Fortunately, there were plenty of other shenannigans to distract me from such thoughts. Such as, I got banned from throwing things. I was like "This is unprecedented!!" but then Sam Brown was whaa-ing about some doormat they'd never recovered and of which I had no recollection. I only got sent to the corner once for violation of this "ban", but Marama said I wasn't allowed to take my drink, so really I think things got a bit of a hand and I don't mean for my biffing of whatever it was that probably preferred being in mid-air anyway.

The manor house did not let us down in relation to mod cons and I spent a lot of the night mystified by these crazy electric ice cubes. For this photo I was trying to get them to the 'flashing' setting, while Rebecca was trying to explain this was redundant for a photo, but yeah - whatevs:



Sam took the next logical step and put them up his shirt.



Just in case you missed that the first time, here's McGeady's footage:



And no night on the piss is complete without two underqualified drunk bitches trying to set the kitchen on fire.
Cue... Bel & Trelly!!



(She is sooo gonna give me the punnies for that call).

You can go here to see "my" photos on Flickr by which I mean the ones off Rebecca Trelease's camera, heh hee! Cheers for those doll.

And of course for the full experience, you can check out Tanya's Flickr ones as well if you didn't already find those through her Backfired.net blog, which is apparently undergoing an overhaul at present, ooohh!

We went into town eventually, as it was the last night at Sohl bar and they had six bands lined up. It was packed there, people literally spilling all the way across the footpath - I've never seen a bar like that in Hamilton. Us girlies traipsed around the other clubs for a while, dancing up a storm, before we experienced the wrath that is Mella changing her mind and scuttled back.

It was sort of weird being out in Hamilton (for the first time in three years) and realising that I knew no one. The turn over is so fast in a uni town - even if I did know a first year student back then, chances are they'd be gone now. And you're not really given an incentive to stay in the Waikato, at least not the media types that I got to know while I was there. Unless you're tied to academia, or boring enough to compromise to life there, you move on pretty quick.

I just realised that sentence should have been 'It was sort of weird being out in Hamilton' FULLSTOP bahahah!

On a final note, I was at the Embassy today, buying movie tickets and the guy behind the counter goes "are you from Hamilton?".
I was all WTF? and he pointed to my handbag. It has an S&M Club badge on it (as well as a Sparkle Motion one, a Shaky Hands one and a Feelings Are Boring Kissing Is Awesome one).
Turns out he's a Waikato grad too, and was a member of the Club in about 2005 - long after I'd left the Tron. So that was warm fuzzies. And then he booked me into the sweet leather seats, so that made me happy too.