Of straws and eggs

I was at the post office last week to post off something. The post office here in Australia is pretty much different from the ones back home in Malaysia. Here, there are magazines, calenders, envelopes on display and for sale as gifts. They even have toys such as soft toys and as below...

Mr. C bought this box to my attention and reminded me of this competition I joined way back in my uni years at Metropolitan College whilst pursuing my Bachelor Degree in *yawn* Accounting and Finance.

I had totally forgotten all about it. Definitely brings back memories. Of the time where there'll be competitions such as seeing how many human bodies you can squeeze into a Kancil car. Kancil is a Perodua car that legally fits two passengers in the front and two behind, if not three. If my memory serve me right, I think the winners managed to fit more than 20+ people in the car!

Although we didn't joined that Kancil challenge, a group of us joined a different competition. Waitaminute. I think it was two groups. We were given a certain amount of straws and we had to make some kind of contraption that would protect this one little egg.

The test is, once the egg is settled 'safely' in the building make of straws, the judges will then hurl the contraption from the first floor onto the basketball court. The winner will obviously be the one with the unbroken egg!

We met up at a friends house in Subang and experimented with all kinds of design. And then, we would run across to the nearby apartments and throw down the straw 'building' to see if the egg survived a safe landing.

It was good times with lots of laughter that's for sure. The lame ideas we came up with and finally, after tons of practicising and a few unfortunate eggs, we were ready!

The day of the competition came and I remembered the look of horror on our faces when the judge held to the 'pillar' straw part, accidentally bending it as she hurled with all her might to the court below. But, the egg didn't break and we sighed with relieved.

However, we had to go through another round as another two groups' (if I am not wrong) eggs were safe too. We were still anxious as our pillars, the support, was slightly damaged. Despite that, we were ecstatic to win first prize!!!

And first prize was voucher to Swensens! Not Svenson haircare but Swensens Ice Cream parlour.

Aaahh... those were the days of simple, carefree youth.