Alcohol free? Shit.

Leadership camps. I won't hold back here, I have done so many of them in my time. Don't get me wrong, team building is good, and working as a team is a skill that must be harnessed and practiced, however, this years camp, sounds like it's going to be agonisingly, passionately painful. I am 20 years old and being shipped off to a student leader training camp at a sport and rec centre. This is the same place my brother went for his year 5, 6, 7 and 8 camps. That's... primary school and junior high. I am in third year at university. There is a rotational washing up system and it's alcohol free. Shit.

They will do team building exercises like... building rafts and high ropes. Then they will do a bush walk where I shall pretend to be positive and happy and part of the team, when in fact bushwalking is on my least favourite things to do list. There's animals and trees and generally no ocean. It's not out of my comfort zone, its just in my "This is nature. I hate nature" zone.  I hate trees, I hate bugs, I hate birds if I can see them, though they do sound nice if I cant, I hate snakes, I hate things that bite and if it were passably tolerable in mid winter when everything is dead, in the middle of summer it's perhaps my worst, screaming, sweatiest nightmare.

I should add to this, that while normally college food is decidedly crap at the best of times, camp food is decidedly deadly and might actually kill you if consumed in large (or small) quantities. The fact that I will be washing the cutlery is also a concern for the people who will be eating off it given that my washing up skills stretch as far as placing the dishes on the bench, and sometimes tipping scraps into the bin. So is this atmosphere creating a positive team environment for me? No, it's making me want to resign from my position.

I see now why Winston Churchill was an alcoholic.

twenty eleven or two thousand and eleven?

Okay. There is a question. An overwhelming, overpowering, all important question that I feel I need an answer to. Do we now say twenty eleven, or do we say two thousand and eleven? Now I won't lie, I am obsessively pedantic over such frivolous grammatical headaches. I feel that it is necessary to use the longer of these phrases for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it sounds more proper. Like we actually respect the era we are living in. I liken in to when people nickname me "JC". My name is good. I like my name. My nicknames are even okay. My mothers love names don't bother me, but when people can only be bothered to use my initials, well that gets to me. I too, can recite letters of the alphabet without regard for what they represent and stand for.

I feel that this modern and delightful era of 2011, needs the utmost respect. It may be remembered for war, or peace or because someone famous dies. It may be remembered for for a scientific breakthrough or one day given as a date when somewhere, something important happened as I am sure it will. For this reason, I want it to be spoken of and referred to, in a way that reflects the intelligence and modernity of those who live in it, and not sound like another boganized phrase that someone has thoughtlessly blurted out.

So on that note,  I advise you to choose wisely how you will refer to this year. You never know where words can lead you, and what will happen once you get there.