One Long Night: a ball, a casino, and a football game

The annual Tommy More Ball took place last weekend, and it was a really fun time. Everyone from college got dressed up in suits and dresses, and after a huge group picture on the quad, we all got in buses (double-decker no less) and headed off to the Parmelia Hilton Perth hotel downtown. The theme for the ball was Arabian Nights, though the only noticeable expression of the theme was the center pieces, which were nothing more than misshapen vases spray-painted gold. It was excusable though since there isn't much people could wear themselves to represent the theme. Although one guy (who's actually Colombian) wore one of those head things with his suit and looked something like an Arabian petroleum businessman.

Myself, I wore the dark brown suit I got last Christmas and matching brown tie. Luckily, I have many brown ties in my repertoire since seemingly every girl I went to a dance with in high school was determined to wear a brown dress. Anyway, something quite interesting happened when I started to get dressed for the night. I put my pants on and noticed they didn't fit at all. They were too dang loose and barely stayed up on my waist. Of course though, I knew my belt would fix that problem. I slid the belt through all the loops, and then I pulled to tighten it and watched in horro as each knotch slid through the buckle until even the final knotch of hope had come and passed. Even the last knotch on my belt was too large. Apparently, I've lost a bit of weight since I came to Australia. I've developed a few theories as to why that is, unfortunately none of which includes an increase in exercise. I'm pretty sure it is a combination of the lack of junk food in the dinig hall as well as almost no access to food outside of dining hall meal times. Originally, I thought these were horrible things, but I suppose they're good from a health perspective. In the dining hall I am forced to eat mostly fruits and vegetables (and meat mush as it has come to be called) and drink apple juice at every meal. On the other hand, back at Notre Dame I partook daily of french fries and cheeseburgers, only to wash it all down with a drink I refer to as "The Bulldozer", 2 parts Vault and 2 parts Mr. Pibb (I know, I know but I tried 1 and 1, it just isn't the same). Also with Reckers open 24 hours a day and conviently located right next door to Dillon Hall, I would frequent the place for late night smoothies and BBQ chicken pizzas (which are sorely missed). Nonetheless, I'm probably much healthier now than I was before, and in actuality I didn't really notice my pants being loose at all throughout the night. So in short, my pants didn't quite fit, but it wasn't a big deal. Dedicating this much blog space to the pants story probably wasn't worth it. I guess I thought it was interesting though. Moving on...

The food and service at the ball were excellent. A live band was there to play music, which turned out to be pretty good, though unfortunately for me, I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit where everyone was "hood" and only hip-hop music is played at dances. So I'm only familiar with the hip-hop dances, while Australians seem much more interested in live bands and rarely listen to hip-hop at all. Either way, the ball was really fun. Since I didn't take any pictures of the night, I've stolen a few from Vanessa.

Piyush, Kate, Me, Vanessa, and Kelsey at the Hilton

Piyush, Me, Tom, and Luke

After the ball, which ended at midnight, there were three buses giving everyone three options: go back to Tommy More, go out to the clubs, go to the Burswood Casino. Now I am not a betting man. But, I have heard that the Burswood Casino (the only casino in Perth) is a really nice venue and worth at least one trip. The casino was indeed a popular choice (at least among the Notre Dame students who had never been) and many of us piled into the Burswood Casino bus.

Arriving at the casino, it wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. To start off, the outside of a casino at around one in the morning on a Saturday night is not where you will find the friendliest and the cleanliest of people. I also expected more theme and presentation, having seen casinos mostly in movies about Vegas. All I really got to see was a big room full of casino games, which I suppose is all a casino really is. In truth, we spent little time exploring, and I have no idea if there were restaurants or bars or more rooms full of games in the rest of the place. Anyway, when we got there we headed straight for the cashier to exchange our money for coins and play some games. I knew that we had a few hours to burn at the casino since the Notre Dame game would start at 3:30am, and there wasn't much sense in sleeping before then. So, I decided to put just ten dollars in (which gets you a lot less then $10 US anyway) and the cashier gave me ten shiny one dollar coins, with which to play the various games with fancy blinking lights and whistles.

Now before I tell the rest of this story, I must say that I do not condone gambling. It is a waste of money, and it can be addictive. Casinos are super profitable because the odds are in their favor, and even when people win they usually gamble the money away again. I don't think anyone should ever gamble. I'll be the first to admit that of course this makes me a hypocrite, being a story about gambling and all. But try to remember it was only $10.

*** After reading back through this post a while later, I noticed that the previous paragraph comes off as a bit more harsh than I had intended. I suppose when I wrote that I was worried about the effect my story would have on young impressionable minds, perhaps overly so. ***

Anyways, so there I was with ten dollars in my cup and a world of new and confusing games all around me. They had the standard casino games with poker, black jack, and roulette, but I don't like those games because they require some skill rather than blind chance. Instead, I went looking for the slot machines, nothing but chance there and all you have to do is push a button. I also sort of have a previous history with the slots. They had a casino on my cruise ship on senior spring break (see now it is beginning to sound like I gamble, but I can assure I have a strict policy of no gambling). I avoided the casino for most of the week, but since my friends were always in there, I decided one day that it wouldn't hurt to grab a handful of quarters (just 4) and maybe drop a few in a slot machine, just to pass the time. To my surprise the first quarter I played won me ten more quarters. A few minutes and a few machines later, I had of course lost a few quarters. Down to the last one of those ten victory quarters, I won again. This time it was 400 quarters! So in short, my first time gambling I won $100 playing on just one quarter. But I knew that it would be pretty unlikely for me to win like that again tonight, my second time at a casino. Still, I knew the slots were the only game for me.

After an entire lap around this casino, I realized that they didn't even have slot machines in the Burswood Casino. There wasn't any kind of spinning, matching games. Instead they had several strange games on computer screens that had strange images appear and if you matched some of them you won sometimes. I had no idea what the rules on any of these games were or how I could possibly win, but I decided they were better than video poker nonetheless. I walked up to one of these strange games and put my first coin in. The screen flashed, some objects appeared, the machine played some tones, and I won ten dollars. Well that was pretty easy, I thought. Now I had some insurance, and I could just play with my winnings and leave the place even no matter what. Not much later, however, I'd burned through those winnings and then easily convinced myself to start playing with the original money again. I decided to find a better game, though, hoping there was one that I could understand. After some searching and a strange belief that I had the special ability to sense a winning machine, I was intrigued by these two game machines that had been stuffed awkwardly in the corner of the room and just barely fit, as if the casino was trying to fill every possible open space with these money making machines (as if). The game was called Mr. Cashman (a coin with a top hat) and resembled a computerized version of plinko, the game where balls drop down hitting pegs and fall into certain holes at the bottom. The machine on the left was occupied by a guy, hesitantly standing more between both of them, so I crept my way onto the machine on the right, and he backed off a little. I put my coin in hit the button and watched as the virtual balls came down. I checked my winnings, 60 cents. But then something strange happened. All of a sudden a door appeared on screen. The door began to open, and who of all people should emerge but Mr. Cashman himself! Mr. Cashman began to dance around on screen as music began to play. I was wondering what the heck it all meant until the guy next to me remarked, "Wow, you're lucky. You're about to win big." Then Mr. Cashman went away and suddenly hundreds of golden balls began to fall. I watched in amazement as my winnings meter began to shoot up quicker than a pay meter at the gas pump. "I can't believe that. I was trying to decide which machine to play, and I picked the wrong one," the man said. The golden balls finally stopped falling and my winnings meter finally came to rest at $65. Happily, I collected my winnings and was ready to cash out, and as I did the man next to me casually remarked that this was the plot of the casino: you win big the first time and then it never happens again and your addicted for life. I didn't tell him that this was my second time playing and my second time winning big, but I did completely agree with his theory. Lucky for me Carnival Cruise Lines and the Australian casinos must not be in cahoots yet.

Anyway, I cashed out and kept the winnings and then waited around for the rest of my friends to finish. Sitting in a casino for too long with a pocket full of money is a bad idea. They did end up getting a little back, as I waited I may have put two or three more dollars in. Eventually, I found a machine that was a guaranteed winner every time: the coffee machine. It just made more sense to drop a dollar coin into something and know for sure you'd actually be getting something back. I got a black tea with sugar (cause I like things to actually taste good thank you), and hoped it would be enough to keep me up for the Notre Dame game. At this point, it was almost 3:00am and my friends were finally ready to go, so we piled in a cab and headed back to Tommy More.

We set up the projector in the Tommy More conference room as usual, but noticed that this weeks numbers were down. Only about 10 of us actually stayed up for the game, with the rest being unable to make it out of bed, either too tired or otherwise inhibited. Of course the Notre Dame football game again, for the fourth week in a row, came down to the final minute. And of course, for the third week in a row, the Tommy More internet frustrated all with its slowness and ability to shut off at the absolute worst time. We ended up having the watch the last minute on gamecast (no video, just updates), as well as overtime. In the end, we were happy for the victory, though the celebration was pretty weak given the state we were all in. We all went to breakfast in the dining hall afterward, by this time the sun had already been shining for a few hours. I ate some stuff and tried not to fall asleep on the table. Then I crawled into bed, knowing that it would take days to recover from the severe damage I had just inflicted on my sleep cycle. It had been a long night but a lot of fun. I laid my head on my pillow and closed my eyes, victorious.



Poll: This is a fairly lengthy blog post. I had only intended to write a paragraph or two but then I just kinda took off, which gets me thinking. If they made this blog post into a movie, do you think it would be appropriate to cast Shia LaBeouf as myself?