paintball - yesterday

Paintball at 1 yesterday. I just love the way some people like to give last minute informs to the organizers. At 11 am [2 hours before] Andrew calls. "Gotta practise for piano, so I can't come for paintball." Really wtf.
Anyway, at 1 pm, the head honcho comes. First thing he does is to revise the payments for paintball. Granted, he is a better negotiator than I am, so I can't bear a grudge against him for that. I'll come back to this problem later.
It is interesting to note how many people are really interested in paintball, yet have not touched the markers before. During the pregame briefing, out of the 18 present, only 6 were old hands. Thus what Tim said is true, you can skip the briefing if you have heard it once.
Ok, now to the game. The first round was real crappy, with the blue team winning on default, default here being running out of ammo = lose. That really sucked, big time.
The second round was the best round for me. Some think it was stupid, others think it was clever, I call it battle stress. What happened was that the opposition [black team] had my teammate pinned down in center field, whilst I was on the right flank. Checking my ammo, I found that there was none left. Some temporary insanity then came over me, and I decided to use the focus on center field to flank black team, with a giant bluff. As I crossed over to their side, I just pointed the empty marker at them, point blank. Since at close range pointing the marker at your target means that they are out, this temporary insanity managed to give me a 4 kill streak. Although I must say that this "melee Rambo" isn't really that good, because you need a good distraction first, and if the opponents see through your bluff, you're dead.
Trying the same trick a second time didn't work, because the marshal caught me without any ammo. Then again, I still managed to take one guy with me, but I think that shouldn't count. [The guy hadn't had any ammo either.]
On the 4th round, Daksha, Jun Jen and their gang left, Kay Li and Gwen pulled out, leaving us with 15 players in the field. To most of us, this was the real thing, because the crazy ones and the old hands were all in the game. At first the blue team had us black team pinned down. [A switch of team was necessary to keep the players balanced.] Crouching behind a pile of tyres on the left flank, Brian and I were pinned by fire from center field and left flank. The game then changed when I advanced, taking advantage of a lull in fire. Now I was hiding behind a collection of barrels.
Kesvick then advanced. Using the gaps between the barrels, I sniped the guy as he came forward to hide behind a couple of tyres. Oddly enough, after at least 8 shots, he still didn't get off. "How many shots does it take to take you out?!" I shouted. Then Calvin advanced, but I got him with 3 in the side. Sniping at Kesvick was still not effective at all. And he was still there calling for backup. "Guys? Guys!"
But the game ended soon after. Brian came out to tackle Kesvick, and I came forward to assist. Together, between the both of us, we "meleed" the rest of blue team, which was by then down to 5 [not including Kesvick]. So endeth the last round.
The other FFK fella was Matthew. When I called him after the second round, his excuse was classic: I forgot. Bloody hell. Who forgets this stuff, especially when it is a class event after all?
Now to the last problem of the whole day. Payment. Ok, so it is better to split the rounds to conserve ammo for those who aren't going to finish 300 rounds. But it is harder to do the maths for the extra rounds. Well, if there is a next time for paintball, we'll just have to plan way ahead to avoid logistics problems. And to avoid spending close to an hour just working out the shortfall of cash.
One more thing, though. Next time, I'm never ever gonna invite Kesvick. His friend is all right enough, but Kesvick is just too annoying to everyone. Even to his own teammates.