Tails’ Blography

This month I finally participated in my first OC. OC stands for Organised Chaos and is a LAN held at the Bellville Velodrome. If you’re unfamiliar with what a LAN is, its pretty much a place set up for people to bring their PCs/laptops and play games against each other and share files etc. It runs from Friday evening (6pm I think) until Sunday afternoon (12pm), and lots of people bring mattresses and bedding to stay the nights. Tournaments are held and prizes can be won, and some months they’ve held spot prizes, where if your seat number is drawn you win a prize. Its great!

Booking is done online or on the day, and is R140 per seat. If you’re just spectating you dont pay, which is normally what I do. This time, however, I brought my PC and stayed the weekend. I participated in some Call of Duty 4 games, and sucked haha. I was sitting at 26 kills where everyone else was at around 80 haha (I wont even mention my kills:deaths ratio!!). Its a hard blow to my ego because I used to kick ass at Unreal Tournament a year or few back hehe. But I’ll get better…oh yea, I’ll get better.

Also at the LAN are food stuffs. There’s a burger place, pancake place and this month there was a chip place that sells those chip twister potatoes-on-a-stick things. Pancakes are R4 each, and burgers range from R14 (single plain burger) – R37 (a double meat and chicken burger with chips). Coffee is R5 and there are various chocolates, sweets and cooldrinks aslo for R5 each. Scooters Pizza* delivers to OC if pizza is more your meal of choice (oddly, whilst searching for the Scooters’ website, I came across the Epic Scooters Pizza Delivery site – really, what next!!). You can bring your own food and booze (if you drink responsibly and are not underage) if you’d like. I brought snacks (pretzels & doughnuts! yum!!) and wine (and was told I look “too classy” for a lan because everyone normally drinks rum/brandy & coke from a 2l coke bottle haha).

Unfortunately, for about 3 hours on Saturday at around noon, the power went out and left us high and dry. A lot of people gave up pretty quickly and went home (losers!), but we stuck it out and once it came back on again, we had a good 10 more gaming hours (we left at 3am on Sunday morning). In fact, a lot of people thought the break from gaming was a nice change. All in all, a great time was had and I cant wait for the next one! Seriously, I’m hooked!

If you’d like to participate and bring your PC, go to the OC website* for booking information (you can book online), prices, and rules. Its definately worth it! The site also has some great photos (April’s pics will be within the week I’m sure) or check out their Facebook group. Do remember to game safely and, especially since someone at this month’s lan had an epileptic fit, remember to get enough sleep and eat a decent meal. I was unaware but apparently too much sugar and sleep deprivation can induce fits if you’re prone. I enquired after the guy and turns out he was ok, the fit was minor, and he was collected and taken home to recover. Poor guy

Some pics of our little corner of OC:

About 1 min after the power had gone off (lights were running on generators)

A better view of the disgruntled lanners

The bf…unimpressed about me taking a photo of him. Thats our friend, Ferdie behind him, and behind him you can see some of the mattresses people have set up for sleeping

A disgruntled Steve hehe

My PC (yes, I like my grey mouse and keyboard, ok! ) next to Michael BIIIIIG 26″ monitor and sleek black keyboard (the silver machine behind my monitor was huge and very expensive! People kept passing by to admire it haha)