My last Orionis weekend

I go to Nes in a Porsche, party, sail, party, sail and go home in a bus.
This last week I have been looking forward to another weekend with Orionis, without knowing anything about what would happen. As you know, I am trusting of nature and I don't like to plan too far ahead. Therefore I was not really worried about the lack of information about the weekend. Friday I still had no information about the weekend, except that I was going somewhere to sail in a Valk with my crew of five. I knew that the event would start friday and that I would need to find a way to get there, but I didn't know the location or the specific time when we were expected. Luckily, other people sorted it all out for me and I ended up being picked up at home by Martijn. He drives a Porsche. I already knew that, because I've seen him on another weekend in this beautiful red Porsche. It's not the kind of thing that would usually impress me; I'm not much into cars, so I basically think it's a waste to pay that much for transportation. Yet, it has a strange kind of attraction and it certainly is quite impressive for a student to be driving something like that. The first time I saw it, I quickly decided that it must be his father's car, so I would not have to be impressed by it. It turns out I was right about it being his father's car, but I couldn't avoid being impressed by him, when he picked me up in his own, white Porsche!
We drove all the way to Nes on highways, so there was ample opportunity to see what the car could do. It's fast. It's very fast. The seats surround your body as you get pushed gently into them by the force of the cars acceleration. The car is low and without much suspension. You can feel the traction of the road and hear the sound of the air rushing past. It was quite the thing. I also liked how we arrived in style to the costume party, which we had dressed up as playboys for. The costume seemed to fit well with stepping out of a Porsche and arriving just when the party was about to really start.
We had a lot of fun that night and a lot of people did a really good job with their costumes. I especially liked the guys in the Zwarte Piet costume (highly topical at the moment), the pope and the pandas. The pandas were the organizers of the event and they went the extra mile with their costumes. Not only did they look good, they also had a choreography which they performed for us to get the party started.

The next day I was all ready for sailing. I didn't know what we had to do, but it turned out to be some kind of adventure-day. I thought we would be racing, so I was a little disappointed, but it turned out fine. We sailed around in the canals and on some small lakes to a few points of interest and we also spent some time in a restaurant on the harbor. It was very relaxed and obviously meant mostly as a way to recover from yesterdays party. There was almost no wind anyway, so we just sailed calmly around. The little element of real sailing there was, was that our skipper, Tjaard, liked to trim the sails optimally. To me, that's an important part of the fun in sailing and I was happy that someone else shared that feeling. The Valk is horribly designed, but there are a few ways you can adjust the sail and we did our best with what we had. Unfortunately it was not enough to go faster than the other boats, so I guess we still have something to learn.

In the evening there was a big event, that everyone was very excited about. I didn't really know what it was and when I asked I got vague responses. "It's a kind of drinking game, but not like any you know"."I can't describe it, you just have too see it for yourself". "Wear some clothes that you don't care too much for". "Do not try to get drunk, you will get drunk anyway". It sounded like a lot of hype to me, really, how bad could it be? But it was everything they promised. It was a big game, with everyone involved. The pandas were working hard to make sure nobody ever ran out of beer. Three persons were sitting at the high table, acting as game masters and the rest of us were sitting close together on three long tables (we were around a 100 participants). In front of each one of us, was a beer glass and a leaflet with songs. The game had a lot of rules, but the basics were: when the president says cheers, everyone replies and drinks. The songmaster will announce the next song and who should sing it (the rest will follow at the first refrain). The punisher will decide who gets punished. The punishments are all about drinking beer, but in rather imaginative ways. Everyone who got punished got beer on their clothes in way or another. You can only leave your spot in breaks. This basic setup and a lot of people who follow the rules as good as they can makes for a great game. I don't know if you can imagine the game from so little information, but I can tell you it is a good game. Not just because it's fun to play. It is, but it's also well designed from a game-theory perspective. The result was, that everyone got drunk, but people were not forced to drink more than they could handle. It is also not humiliating, but bonding in a positive way. Well, that's a lot of praise for a drinking game, but I was really impressed with it. After that we went on to have a great party all of us drunk and in a good mood from the game.
Sunday some of us went sailing again. There was supposed to be a race, but the wind was too hard, so we were told we could do whatever we wanted. That was great, and I didn't doubt for a second that I would go sailing. We put in two reefs and used only part of the jib, but we still had a lot of power. The handling was absolutely horrible, as the power center of the sail kept shifting and made the boat want to luff or fall depending on the wind speed and relative direction. It was a real challenge to get it to sail well, but we got it down after a while and were definitely faster than the other boats. After a while we chose to go on an adventure, that is, see where a canal would take us. It was almost impossible to make any headway, as it was directly against the wind in a tight canal, but we did it for 40 minutes or so. It was good exercise and I think it was fun to have a lot of work (tacking every 20 seconds at times). When we turned around we got back to were we came from in five minutes.
That concluded my last weekend with Orionis. I'll still see the others at some other events, but I'm not joining next weekend's sailing and the weekend after that will be my last in Amsterdam. It feels like my time here is coming to an end fast, although I still have one sixth of my stay to go. Before I leave I have a lot of things to do, so the last two weeks will be full of activity I'm sure.