Well I certainly had an interesting weekend. 🙂 On Friday Maggie and I hooked up with Jacky, Jeannie, Mathew and Sandra for dinner and it was fun. I haven’t seen a few of those guys in months and it was great to catch up. Heh before dinner everyone came over to take a look at Simba and they all agreed that he’s a very pretty cat. 😉 Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures but trust me, it was a blast. 😀

Earlier last week, Charlene was teasing me on something she had planned for Saturday night which would be “fun”. No matter how much I asked, she wouldn’t tell me what it was so I was left wondering for quite some time. Grr must return the favour in the near future. 😉 Anyway as it turns out Mark and Charlene took me to the UofT observatory in Richmond Hill to see the comet 17P/Holmes which on Tuesday had brightened by a factor of a million.

As an astronomy buff I had read about it earlier but seeing it was definitely awesome. Looking at the comet tail on through a telescope or a pair of binoculars, it was very fuzzy and almost looked like a galaxy. It was pretty inspiring and definitely gives you a feeling of “smallness”.

After the viewing we went to the London Pub for nachos and wings, heh as usual Mark made a mess of himself. 😉 Mark and Charlene came over to check out the cat and look at some photos from my trip to China last year. Since I had Jason’s M249 at my place, I also showed them that and to my surprise Mark can one hand the M249! That’s pretty amazing considering the gun is about 6kg, that dude is pretty strong.

Sunday was the sniper clinic and Alan picked me up at around 11AM. I have always been interested in the sniper role but found it difficult to play due to the rules at most fields. “Sniping” in airsoft is definitely not the same as in videogames or real life. Anyway the class started at 12PM and we went through what type of kit snipers should have, the role of a ghillie suit, target/object observations and proper movement.

In the last test of the day our task was to crawl ~100 meters undetected and shoot a metal silhouette of a person. Sigh if my rifle had been sighted properly I could have been first to shoot the target, unfortunately the sighting had shifted (for some unknown reason) and my BBs were flying right of the crosshairs. I guess I should have compensated for that but was competing with 7 others to be first.

I was first to take a shot but was the third person to hit it successfully. After realizing I had a problem with my weapon I crawled up another 20 or so meters and was within 10 meters of the objective, lol at that distance I could have thrown the BB and hit the target. 😉 The sentry was did not see me even though at times I was within 3 meters of his position, I guess CADPAT isn’t that bad after all. 😉

Heh I’m proud to say that I am now level 2 certified as a sniper and can upgrade my gun to fire 450 fps with 0.36g BBs. Non certified players are limited to 450 fps with 0.2g BBs, if I were using 0.2g ammo, my gun would be firing in excess of 600 fps. 😀 Of course with that much power and range, I have to be very careful at what I’m shooting at. Sha Do (the instructor) would definitely kick my ass (or anyone one who was attending) for playing in an unsafe manner. Airsoft is about having fun, if I wanted to “hurt” people I would have stuck to paintball… For the time being I’ll leave my gun at non certified spec so I learn the ins and outs of airsoft sniping first.

Man who knew crawling on your belly for 100m would be so tiring, good thing I sit in front of a computer all day. 😉