#################################################################################### FEM05 - Finnish Elma Meeting 2005 Leivonmäki, Finland 13.-20. June 2005 by Abula #################################################################################### LINKS: ==================================================================================== - Pictures: http://www.otit.fi/~krabula/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=album16 - Videos: http://www.moposite.bubhost.com/vids/fem05/ - Talk: http://www.moposite.com/mopolauta/viewtopic.php?t=2692 - Results: http://www.moposite.com/meetings/2005_june_leivonmaki/index.php PARTICIPANTS: ==================================================================================== FIN --- Abula [FM] Karlis [FM] Jokke [FM] mr [FM] Tisk [FM] Stini [ICE] Juzam [WNO] px [FIN] axxu [AC] veezay [ROTAPLASK] onlainari [¿] MP Orcc Markku terb0 OME NOR --- skint0r [IV] xp [WNO] Cubein [TAH] Jalli [ICE] TorInge [ICE] SWE --- MIF [EMA] Jeppe [NL] BarTek MY PERSONAL MEETING HISTORY: ==================================================================================== FEM05 was fourth official FEM. Before that there were two AC-meats. AC-meat1 and AC-meat2. Those were mainly for #across people, Finnish operators of the channel. I wasn't welcome to the first AC-meat in the past. I was pretty new in the community and didn't know many people. Actually I had just bought my computer, six months ago. The participants of it were: Karlis, Tisk, px, Conny, kuiva, bluu and it was arranged at Tisk's home in Ulvila. Conny played in team HC (Hellsinki Crossers) with Karlis and Jokke before the FM was founded. bluu founded channel #across with px. The rest people you should know. AC-meat2 took place a year later, this time at Toble's home. I was still quite a newbie but because I knew px pretty well I was also invited. Also our IRL friend, Tuska (good Elma player too) came with us. The other participants were Karlis and Tisk again and also kuiva and bluu. Also the old school players Nikke [EMT] and Mikko [EMT] visited us. This happened in the year 2001. Not much Elma playing involved in the AC-meats. The first FEM was arranged in 2002 in Lammi. mrickx took part being the first foreigner ever in our meetings. The FEMs have been bigger and bigger every year and more and more people coming from abroad. Totally twelve foreigners have been in FEM, but no one twice ;). Personally I've met BarTek, MIF and ramone two times. So FEM05 was my fifth bigger Elma meeting. I've been in many smaller ones too. I guess I've met more Elma players than anyone else in the community. WINTER: ==================================================================================== Planning, such a big meeting that FEM is, must be started early enough. This time the Mopolauta FEM05 topic was created on 25. October 2004 and that is pretty near to the serious planning starting day. FEM02 and FEM04 were both in same place, same cottage. It was built for six people. First time we were nine and in year 2004 we were 16 people. Participators of FEM04 can tell you that we really reached the limit. No more people there. So because FEM05 was going to be even bigger we had to find a bigger cottage for us. After a while we ended up to the one which is located near to Jyväskylä and about two times bigger than the Lammi cottage (FEM02 & FEM04). At the same time we decided to increase the duration to one week. The previous meetings had been four days long at maximum so far so this was quite a leap. Still a few problems remained. The cottage was pretty expensive: 880e. And the retainer was 80e. This problem was solved quite fast. skint0r donated 250e for the meeting. Thanks a lot! Hopefully people still remember that. Another issue was about responsibilities. Some underage players wanted to join the meeting (axxu, Raven and later xp) and the meeting was getting quite considerable and thereby the responsibility issues had to be thought through carefully. Luther gave a shit and rented the cottage so that was kind of solved too. Later he said he can't come so the responsibility moved to mr and me. mr has always had the biggest role in FEM organizing. I really want to thank him. He takes care of everything and gets things working. Remember him too! Such a great guy. He provided the chairs, tables, fridges, disposable plates, cups and ketchup. Also he contacted the cottage renter and took care of that too. Thanks. HEADLINES: ---------- - Planning takes time - Cottage got to be big enough - Duration should be one week - Thanks to skint0r and mr NOTE: ==================================================================================== I handle days as periods when most people were awaken. So for example Wednesday ends at 8:00 on Thursday morning. Also the pictures are listed this way. 11. JUNE, SATURDAY: ==================================================================================== FEM05 began on 11. June for our abroad friends. skint0r, xp and Cubein drove about 3075km overall by Cubein's van. BarTek and MIF travelled by busses, taxis, trains and boat. Jalli's parents brought Jalli and TorInge to Finland. On Saturday the Finnish participators were just fighting and arguing in #elma.fi to get the meeting mood up. SMALLER EVENTS: --------------- BarTek took his laptop but because MIF doesn't have such he had to bring his normal tower. Someone would bring a screen for him. The tower needs quite much room and therefore not too much clothes can be carried along. Actually I think they had like two socks and one underwear. HEADLINES: ---------- - Travelling started PICTURES: 002-011 12. JUNE, SUNDAY: ==================================================================================== Some people still travelling, other people just packing up their cars. Today Jeppe came to my home to sleep the night here so we can leave in the early morning. We packed some with him and went to buy some candies (well, 3.5kg). Jeppe had forgotten to sleep last night so he was extreme tired and went to sleep at 21:00. I had my normal rhythm on and sat on computer till 3:30. Actually Jeppe woke up 30mins later than I fell asleep. SMALLER EVENTS: --------------- skint0r took a pic of EL-Ma sign but who noticed and remembers the player called Same? Check out the Wcup201 results. HEADLINES: ---------- - Travelling is compulsory - Packing gets your mood up PICTURES: 012-033 13. JUNE, MONDAY: ==================================================================================== BarTek and MIF arrived to Jyväskylä at 2:00. No one would pick up them before the noon. Luckily they informed about this before coming the Finland so we made a map for them to find the nearest 24h places to spend time. I heard they had some troubles to stay awake and therefore the salesperson had asked them to leave the place for a few times. After 10 hours waiting finally px picked up them. That 10 hours weren't that much anyway if you compare it to the whole trip they had made in busses and so on. Dannish people: be happy of your short distances! But it could be even worse like in Canada. Me woke up at 9:30 after 6 hours sleeping. Jeppe had been awake for hours already and he started to be a little bit jumpy. I cooked porrige for us, packed up the the computer and loaded it into my car. After that we were ready to go..hm, wait! Jeppe, did you close the door? "No.." "Ok, better to close it if I won't be here for a week." The clock was about 12:00 and sun was shining, very hot day, which isn't the best weather for travelling. Later it rained like hell and I was not able to drive over 50km/h. I called Stini to tell him the sad news, he wouldn't ever fit into our car. It was already almost 100% full and yet Juzam and his computer were lacking. No problems, Stini could take a train instead. So from Oulu, where I live, we headed to Kokkola to get Juzam. Picked up Juzam, drove to the cottage, left our package there, drove back to Jyväskylä with px to pick up Stini, went to a food store to buy beer .. and food. Then back to the cottage. Greetings, setting up the computer and went for a walk with px and mr to talk about the meeting organizations. Monday was meant for saying hi to people and getting things working. And we reached that goal. TorInge was showing his playing skills and other people were watching him eagerly. He made three multi WRs with other people (skint0r, xp, Cubein). Not many tries needed per level. They even asked me to play a WR to Gravity Ride with him but unfortunately I wasn't good enough to do my part (take apples and go to flower). I'm not really familiar with other keyboards except my own one and on top of that I can't really do the trick needed in Gravity Ride. Maybe if I trained for it a bit on own computer I could have done it. Excuses, excuses... SMALLER EVENTS: --------------- Juzam and Jeppe bought a few beers during our car trip. When I announced that only a few kilometers left the boys opened their beers immediately. Panic beer I would call it. And at least Jeppe kept on that because when I was back from the store Jeppe had already passed out being bottomless (opposite of topless) in toilet and sleeping on floor. People had troubles to recognize other players when seeing so many new faces at the same time. For example MP asked Markku in English "Who are you?" and I greeted MIF as a new guy to me eventhough I had met him two years ago. Also I heard some people didn't notice me because I have grown hair. axxu had forgotten his contract where his mom agrees to let him stay there. mr had to copy the paper text manually. Printer would have been nice. MIF computer broke during the trip. Some cooler problem if I recall correct. Fortunately some super glue and Karlis did their jobs and everything was ok. IRL #fem05 irc channel was founded. People wrote their "Hi" to it but nothing more. It was meant for chatting but since we had the real irc there was no real need for it. Pretty neat idea at least! Guess whose... Tisk has been without Internet for a year now. That's the reason he has got "some" extra time to think and he was very enthusiastic before the meeting. He planned contests, called me and even painted an FM shirt. After being a few minutes in the meeting he half-jokingly announced: "this sax". I hope he had great time however. skint0r brought two boxes of Nalle porridge which he never opened. HEADLINES: ---------- - Travelling takes money and time, and nerves - Greetings I hope everybody did with everyone - Cottage was big and nice - Surroundings is not what we needed but the forest and lake were wonderful - Jeppe showed who is the king for kossu bottle, or was it opposite... - TorInge is truly amazing and have extreme superb skills - Three multi WRs - Organizing the computers, fridges, cords and timetables got ready PICTURES: 034-114 14. JUNE, TUESDAY: ==================================================================================== On Tuesday the 24 hours total time competition started at 12:00. Surprisingly many players participated: Abula, mr, Karlis, Tisk, BarTek, skint0r, Jalli, xp, TorInge, terb0, Markku and veezay. Not everybody sent in their results though. As you know and have seem the results I don't have to rewrite them here. Personally I didn't have a clue that skint0r were playing. Of course I would have beaten him if I knew! Now I lost by a few seconds, dame I was angrey. Norway took triple victory and TorInge was the spotlight of the contest. Everybody was watching TorInge's driving and Stini sat next to him almost during the whole contest. Pity that I didn't watch him more myself. So nice to see how the impossible tricks are driven almost in all attempts. One WR and 37:39,xx total time speak for itself. Tisk did 14 personal records and very near to his normal total time, that was quite nice too. I made 45mins myself, wasn't happy at all. For example Apple harvest top2 was 2:37, 2:39. Well, nevermind. Will do better next year. Orcc, MP, Jokke and onlainari arrived today. I bet they felt a bit outsider for a moment because other people were just hoyling the internals and hardly noticed them. HEADLINES: ---------- - 24h tt, TorInge sick again - Jokke, MP, Orcc, onlainari arrived PICTURES: 115-141 15. JUNE, WEDNESDAY: ==================================================================================== 24h tt hoyling is going on. I gave up at 6:00am or something after been hoyling Apple Harvest for three hours. My last record was made at 2:39am so I think the last hours weren't too efficient for me. The other people kept on playing and at least Jalli and mr both reached the 12:00. Thus they played the whole 24h. After waking up we took the group pictures before onlainari left the building. Next in timetable was Headbanger pipe battle. Originally the contest were meant to be a fight between BarTek and Abula because in the winter it was Abula who challenged BarTek. Apparently other people got interested too and for example mr practiced entire half year for the compo. But but, BarTek didn't win, but came second last (3 pies) and didn't send in his results. Abula was second so I beat BarTek at least, and mr. Surprisingly axxu took the victory. He came from total darkness, he didn't expect to win even himself. Anyway, 50 pipe through drives in about 34 minutes. We have counted that he made the pipe about once in two attempts. That's pure sick and max skills. I don't think he has trained much. Even his personal record in Headbanger (47 secs) wouldn't reveal him to do great in this contest. Legendary 1h total time competition was arranged this night aswell. With a help of Sisu vodka Orcc got guts to film the event by commenting the happenings and thereby prevented it to be too boring. Also I was a bit drunk after drinking six beers. Still I think I did my best ever. After the contest was over we kept on driking. Me, MP, Karlis, veezay, Tisk, BarTek and Jeppe at least. It lasted over the midnight till the early morning. While chilling and grilling outside I asked px: "btw, how about the gaa gala?" Clock was about 0:45 and it was scheduled to start at 1:00. px asked for a list of the winners and then we were ready. MP helped px with the speaking part and I was holding out the prizes. Actually px forced me to give out one prize too. It was Rookie award for axxu. axxu doesn't feel like a rookie anymore, but that's only because we are like 1-2 years late with this GAA thing. I was kind of daunted about the whole gala thing but everything went well, thanks for people with good attitude/comments and our oral masters. Maybe this will become a tradtion. I got my third award. Last time I got the Site and Contribution, now the Site. More about the gala: http://www.moposite.com/mopolauta/viewtopic.php?p=85904#85904 Then we continued our chillgrill outside. Did some wrestling, armwrestling, korpitsa and stuff like that. I guess we were a bit drunk, at least some of us. Then sauna and some nude pictures. SMALLER EVENTS: --------------- TorInge had brought some gamepad and people tried Elma with it. I gave a try in Headbanger (I think it got filmed too) and hell, so hard. But maybe it could get easier if trained more but for what? Obviously TorInge had trained some because he made 25 low in Hang Tight at the first try, just to show it's possible to drive well enough with the pad. Yet the pad wouldn't ever BEEP. Stini was playing Stepmania quite often. Quite weird looking it is. It's some kind of dance game meant for dancing mat but also can be played by keyboard. It seemed to be quite near to some music instrument. Funny looking too. But hell, what for? You could have played more Elma if not... A bat flied inside the cottage and stayed behind the kitchen shelves for days. It came out on Saturday or something. Then we turned off all the lights on cottage, opened the front door and turned on light there. And then the bat flied outside. After all official trophys were distributed px decided to give out one more. A glue bottle for Jeppe for drinking skills. HEADLINES: ---------- - 24h tt ended - Taking group pictures is always a funny moment - onlainari left the meeting - axxu ruled in Headbanger pipe battle - 1h tt was held - First drinking night - GAA04 gala was a success - Sauna is good! PICTURES: 142-277 (picture order is a little bit messed up; there are some morning pictures between Headbanger battle and GAA gala, but let's not care) 16. JUNE, THURSDAY: ==================================================================================== After sleeping we had a cleaning battle (not many participators though) and then normal Elma battles (at the end of the meeting there had been totally 54 battles and I played 16 of them; quite satisfied, because I really didn't go to fem to play normal battles). Some people said that the IRL battle feeling was gone because we used the battlebot. The another point is that someone should be always present to collect the times etc, so battlebot is much more practical. We didn't end up to any solution, of which method is the better one. Personally I was suffering a tiny hangover from last night drinking and decided to have a sober day between it and Beer battle. Karlis had other thoughts because he offered a bottle of Koskenkorva and people emptied it immediately. TorInge and Jalli left the building at 3:00 or something. Jalli's parents had been waiting for them for like eight hours outside of the cottage. TorInge had had max conversations with Juzam after a few beers and later he was regreting that he didn't socialize more. Well, at least a good reason to come back next year. Jalli also promised to play less next year. Juzam and Stini hoyled for multi Haircut WR and improved it quite much. HEADLINES: ---------- - Cleaning battle unpopular, maybe not arranged next year - Normal meeting battles are like irc battles... - TorInge and Jalli left - Haircut multi WR PICTURES: 278-292 17. JUNE, FRIDAY: ==================================================================================== Beer battle day, the main event of the year! At first I wanted to do some shopping and picked up MP and axxu with me. Started the car engine: "wruum, krats, krats" "What the hell, what's that noise?" Sounded like the car didn't feel good, something was wrong. None of use were car mechanics but luckily terb0 found and diagnozed the disorder place. I called some nation-wide traffic help and they asked if I wanted to get a breakdown recovery service (hinauspalvelu in Finnish). I thought it would be very expensive and said "No, thanks, I might call back later though". Anyway, shopping needed and Beer battle soon going to start. Also Sauna battle was going to be before the Beer battle. mr was kind enough and get us to food store (about 15km to one direction). On way we searched for a local car hospital, that would be so much cheaper. And actually found one. All this gave some stress to me but less than it could have given. Everything went well after all and I got my car fixed on Monday and it costed only 75e. The first aid (breakdown recovery service) would have costed probably near to 300e, which is equal to the value of the entire car. Tisk had heated the sauna for the compo but he never arranged it because me and mr couldn't have took part. We decided to arrange it later but never did, pity. Beer battle was a great event, I hope all the participants were enjoying. You never should overstep your personal limits but obviously some people did because they passed out so quickly and even puked on floor. Also I hope the organizers (mainly people who don't drink alcohol) tolerated us. Before the Beer battle Jokke announced that he will be participating the first 4-6 levels. He didn't have more beers and must wake up early to drive home. Then came the 7th event and Jokke brought his booze bottle. Well, correct, beers were gone, but... He played up to 11th levels! Actually all the 16 participators played the first 11 events, then people started to drop out and in the end only nine players finished the last level. And thanks for Sathy about the levels. I guess most people liked them and if not try remembering the two previous years levels. I really like the atmosphere of the Beer battle, maybe alcohol has some effects but still. People are social (oh, really), they try their best, concentrate as much as they can. During breaks they get more beers, sat outside and analyzed the contest. MP announced that Beer battle is his main goal in FEM. I had won the contest in two previous times. This year MP won the contest and I came second. I really didn't have opportunity to beat him, he was quite overwhelming. Also my second place was very safe. My three last positions were first, second, first, so I think I could have made better if there were more rounds. But that's pretty unessential to think because the amount of the battles were decided beforehand. Maybe in the future we could try the endless Beer battle. As many levels as needed. You can play even alone if you want. But the problem of this is the dangerousness. You can drink way too much when there are social pressure and rivalry instinct - and that's dangerous. Also the after game has very big role in the contest, because then almost everybody is drunk and in party mood. Therefore maybe the best memories (if they're remembered) of the FEM are from after Beer battle events. Watch the videos and you might understand. Very inside stuff though. In the early morning, when other people were sleeping, Juzam, Jeppe and veezay went rowing. I'm still feeling a bit fearful. Not the most smartest idea to go for a boat trip when you are drunk to teh max. SMALLER EVENTS: --------------- The atmosphere was quite gay occasionally. 24 men in one cottage for a week and totally 700 drunk beers can produce that. I've heard that wannabe-gaying is trendy nowadays. Earlier it was only for women, but now also for men. I kissed at least xp and BarTek. veezay might have had one of the biggest roles in this area since he did a ice cream blowjob for Karlis, tasted Karlis' piss and filmed when MP was peeing. Also you have seen the after sauna pictures... HEADLINES: ---------- - Abula's car got broken - Cancelled Sauna battle - onlainari came again - Superb Beer battle - After party PICTURES: 293-317 18. JUNE, SATURDAY: ==================================================================================== This day must have been the most lazy day. No pictures and only one mark up in the timetable: 6 first internals. That contest was quite funny - 4 years ago. But it's still such a classic that we really can't miss it. And almost everybody took part in. The most popular contest in FEM05. Mainly because we begged everybody to play it. I guess some people were suffering hang over. HEADLINES: ---------- - Hangover get people lazy and quiet - 6 first internals is classic, but couldn't we change the levels at least? PICTURES: - 19. JUNE, SUNDAY: ==================================================================================== skint0r, Cubein and xp tactically left the cottage today so they didn't have to take part to the boring cleaning mission. Seriously I think they really cleaned up something in the cottage before they left and that's something that never happened before, good job fellas. onlainari left the place too in the morning. The day went by chilling and rowing around the near island on the Päijänne lake. FM duel played Shelf Life for a few days in the end of the meeting. I remember Karlis said that finally (because the meeting was long enough) they have some time for internal level hoyling, which seem to be the most satisfactory for Karlis and mr. No WR during the meeting but at least world class times and later Karlis took the WR as we all know. I bet some people had hard time to understand what's so fun at hoyling the same level for dozens hours in the meeting. But, we are different, ok? SMALLER EVENTS: --------------- Me and Tisk were rowing together (MP and px were also but they had own boat) and we had some talks about the Elma2 and stuff like that. Perhaps some great plans were made on the lake, who knows. Kitchen was quite messy after couple of days. We had some debates about cleaning it. Me personal humble request was that everybody would wash their dishes after usage. Somewhy this didn't happen though. HEADLINES: ---------- - The rest Norwegians left, onlainari too - Chilling is needed too, eventhough some contests got skipped - Shelf Life is an Elma internal level PICTURES: 318-338 20. JUNE, MONDAY: ==================================================================================== Cleaning the cottage, packing up the cars and travelling home. To me it meant over 700km driving via Kokkola and Haparanda finally to Oulu and home. Tired but happy, as they say. SMALLER EVENTS: --------------- The ice cream van visited the place on early week and people bought quite much ice cream there. On Monday, when we left the cottage and people couldn't get the ice creams home we "had to" eat them there. So quite a few litres ice cream were licked and eaten before the departure. HEADLINES: ---------- - Cleaning the cottage - Packing up the cars - Saying the good byes - Travelling homes PICTURES: 339-379 21. JUNE, TUESDAY: ==================================================================================== When other people were at home, BarTek and MIF still travelling. I'm not sure if they have arrived home even till this day. PICTURES: 380-381 AFTER THE MEETING: ==================================================================================== A week after the meeting we got an extra bill. The cottage were too dirty for next visitors and therefore the owners had to reclean it and that costed 100e for us. I can tell you that the cottage got cleaned up very well (as you see in the pictures). We have never had problems with cleaning in earlier FEMs so quite a surprise it was. I have contacted the owner but he really has no arguments, just repeating: "it was not ok" and not telling what was wrong. But I think we won't go any further on this issue, not bother. Next year we have to buy more ketchup, that's sure. And try to be even more slave for the timetables so that we can arrange more contests. If the next year meeting will be bigger, we could rent the smaller cottage aswell which is very near (60m) to the one where we were now. That means quite much more money though. I thought about personal analyzing each person who was in FEM but I'm sure I couldn't do that politically enough and some people would dislike me. So I won't. Eventhough you asked me. 30-June-2005, Abula