Catching up with the Old

Today I went to Westcity and for the first time in at least four years I met Hussein at Countdown who was waiting with his friend for the lady at the sample stand to cook some food! (Typical Hussein!) He's definitely more muscly than the last time I saw him, and he's slightly taller than me now (after all those years at primary school when I had the height advantage over him!) but he's still got curly hair. I'm really glad he's still fit and healthy and doing well at school! Hopefully I'll see more of him at university next year!

Aonghas caught up with his old primary school friend Mars who has now caught up to Aonghas's height as well! I caught up with Joanne too, so today was a great day for catching up with good old Henderson Primary mates!

Our Taiwanese friends who used to live in New Zealand sent a DVD to us containing some video footage from 1993-1995, when my brothers and I were really little and used to play with them when they were little too. It was sooo good seeing what I was like back when I was four years old! I can't really remember much but from what I saw in the video I had a high-pitched voice, liked to make toys kiss each other and asked heaps of questions!

Harbour Festival Photos

A bit of a mishmash of photos from the Auckland Harbour Festival

Harbour Festival Fun

I went to the Auckland Harbour Festival yesterday to check out the free Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra performance at the Viaduct Basin. My mum, Aonghas and I travelled into the city by train, the first time I've ever been on a train in New Zealand! (I've been on one in Hong Kong but surprisingly not in New Zealand!) WOW it was fun though! Going under tunnels was pretty cool, especially arriving at the Britomart Transport Centre!

 

We arrived at the Viaduct Basin a few minutes after the concert was meant to have started. Not much activity was going on yet though so fortunately we weren't that late! Most of the music played are well known orchestral pieces like Trumpet Voluntary, and Water Music. The concert lasted for three hours with the audience made up mainly of older people and Asians! The concert was great! The only downside was that there was no shelter for us and so I got a bit sunburnt!

 

We spent the rest of the afternoon watching street buskers who came from various overseas places such as Australia and England. They were really entertaining. Some of the acts included riding a unicycle with one foot while flinging a rubber fish with the other foot into a fishbowl on top of the head, balancing a glass of water on the head while juggling three batons on top of a unicycle, and juggling a sword, a flaming baton and a tomato while standing on top of a bicycle upon an approx. 3m high pole.

 

I really enjoyed the Auckland Harbour Festival and I sure hope it becomes a permanent fixture! Apparently the fireworks on Sunday night were the biggest ever seen in New Zealand. Too bad I missed them!

Celebrating Second New Year in a Year

To celebrate the year of the dog we started off by attending a church service that ended with a Lunar New Year Feast which was like a huge shared lunch. I like it when we have lunch like that at church! I always come away with a full stomach!

In the evening we went over to the neighbours house for a barbeque. It started off with the three of us Anderson brothers just sitting there by ourselves. I was texting friends to pass the time away. For some reason Szelin and Zippo our neighbours haven't really talked to us much recently during these holidays and they continued in that way during the barbeque. It soon became clear though that Zippo had some of her own friends over...one of them being the girl I tried kissing a couple years ago so I understand why they wouldn't talk to me that much! Anyway fortunately our other friends Esther and her sister Julia came over a little later and we hung around with them for a bit. We ended the night by watching Kung-Fu Hustle. Even though it was the second time I had watched it I still found it pretty good!

Bring on the new Chinese year!

Happy Chinese New Year!

新年快乐！！恭喜发财！！

 

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!!

 

I wish you all the best for the new Chinese year!

 

Despite being a couple days late I also want to wish everyone a belated HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY! not that anyone in New Zealand really cares about that!

 

I'm not really celebrating Chinese New Year except for having a shared lunch at church and maybe a barbeque later in the day with some friends. In the past few days we've just been repainting the house giving it a second coating of paint. So far we've done two walls, and they look a lot better than the others with one coating which are starting to peel off!

 

Average Pass

I got my NCEA results in the mail this morning. I was a bit nervous upon opening the mail as I knew I did extreeemely badly last year in the exams and would definitely fail something! Thank goodness when I did check out my results I didn't fail anything! My results aren't too great so I won't mention what I got here but at least I passed NCEA level 2, 3 and got university entrance so this year won't be too important to me! I'll probably want to get into a limited entry course at university (whatever it will be) though so I'll have to get a lot better marks this year!

I also got this pack in the mail from the survey company that rang me on my birthday. They want me to fill in a 144 page questionnaire! I have nothing better to do and I like filling in forms anyway so I don't mind. I also have to fill in this media diary thing recording what I watch on TV and what I listen to on the radio for a few days. My chance to let those TV programmers know what people really want to watch!...hopefully...

Rushing to get things Finished

We finished painting our house!...well the first layer anyway. We were going to paint but then we realised we didn't have enough paint so we delayed it by a day, but then the next day we realised our paint trays weren't clean! So finally we got EVERYTHING prepared by the third day and got the house painted within the next two days.

We originally thought the paint we bought at the Boxing Day sales at The Warehouse was white paint that we could use to paint our house, but when we looked a little bit more closely we realised the paint was actually creamy colour! We started painting one wall. At first there didn't seem to be much difference, but the more we painted the more obvious it became that our house started to have a dirty brown colour! We figured we hadn't washed our house properly so we painted a few of the other cleaner walls and came back to that one. Soon enough we got the house done. So we no longer live in the White House, but in the Cream House.

I got a phone call the other day from the Music Education Centre regarding accordion students for me this year. Currently it isn't looking too promising, and so what they are planning to do is do a bit of accordion promotion at local schools, which means I might end up visiting a few local primary schools to give them demonstrations and hopefully encourage a few kids to take up the accordion.

NCEA results are coming out tomorrow and I'm definitely not looking forward to that! Praying that I haven't done as I think I have!!

Near Quarter-life Crisis

ARRRRHHHH I'M OOOLLD!!! I just turned 17 yesterday, which made me realise that nearly a quarter of my life has gone! I still can't speak either Mandarin or Cantonese properly, I'm near-jobless, single and ugly! I'm one year off from turning 18 and you know what that means...no not booze but being eligible to vote!!! :D OK maybe it's not so bad...

Thank goodness I've got great friends! Thanks everyone for your birthday wishes! I don't want to name everyone here. My aunty rang first thing in the morning though to wish me a happy birthday. I'm guessing she has kinda taken up my nana's former role of ringing the birthday person of the family. She told me my nana had a brooch in the shape of a C that she could give me as I was the only person in the family whose name started with a C.

The family all went out to the Chinese New Year Festival at the Auckland Showgrounds in the morning for a couple of hours (because my dad had to rush off to work by midday) Apart from overcrowding, it was great! I met so many people there! I met Ellen my recorder student and her family, Julie's mum and sister, and Teresa who I haven't seen since New Year's Day last year! I also met an accordion teacher based at the West Auckland Music Education Centre who told me she lost three of her accordion students and is struggling to find new students. That definitely is not a good sign! She did however tell me that the accordion world championships will be held in New Zealand in 2009 so hopefully that might be a goal for me to compete in that!

When we got home we were originally planning to paint the house but we realised this time that we didn't have a paint tray! So our painting plans were delayed AGAIN.

Then this Indian guy rang to do a survey on my quality of life. I thought what the heck why not I don't mind surveys! He mentioned $3000 and a few $100 gift vouchers were on offer too so that was a bit of an incentive. When I answered that I attended Rutherford College and he told me he used to go to Mt Roskill Grammar, he asked me if I knew anyone there and so I asked him if he knew Diane or Disha or Anuprita (sorry you other people from MRGS I forgot to ask!) He didn't know Diane or Anuprita but he did know Disha!

Chen came over to give me a birthday present which was really cool of him Thanks Chen!! and I spent the rest of the afternoon talking to Hyun and Joon on the phone. For the record I ate rice and sweetcorn for dinner ;)

So that sums up my 12th birthday-Chinese New Year Festival, telemarketer and TV in the evening. Bring on my 12th year of life hopefully it'll be a better year!

End of Paradise

We have to return to school in under three weeks!!! NOOO! I've got so much to do by then! I've got to paint the house, tidy the house, watch some movies, and some other stuff as well!

Our house is SUPPOSED to be white but it looks kinda bluey white and our old neighbour always complains whenever he comes over to visit that our house is half-painted. That is partially true as my dad just covered the walls with one layer of paint. So several years after our house being painted white and a year after I washed the house, we spent a week rewashing the house, preparing it to be painted. Today was going to be the big day we do the painting, until we realised we wouldn't have enough paint to paint the whole house! We had 16L of creamy white paint so maybe we might paint our house creamy white.

Training: Complete

I am officially an accordion teacher at the Music Education Centre, but whether I'll have any students to teach is another matter!

 

Today was the last day of the training course. A South African piano teacher with a doctorate in music came to give us some tips on how to teach young beginners as well as late beginners. I was lumped with all the piano teachers and so a couple of hours weren't too relevant to me, such as the different beginning piano books for young students. The piano teacher went through the rows of piano teachers picking pairs to come up and do a bit of role playing with one teacher acting as the teacher and one acting as the student. When it came to me and the Asian girl next to me I told her I didn't know how to play the piano as I was an accordionist so I got to be the student (I know how to play right hand anyway so it was just an excuse not to have to act as the teacher!)

 

Yesterday I was talking to this guy I met called Bradley, a third year university student who will be teaching violin/voice. After he complets his bachelor of music degree he wants to go on to do a bachelor of arts in languages, because as it turns out, he's an opera singer and would like to know more Italian, German and French! That's really cool and I can't wait to hopefully hear of him in a few years time as a famous New Zealand opera singer!

 

So yeah I signed my contract filled out all required forms and now I'm done. I'll be teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays...if I do get students... 

Training Course Saved

Today I attended a music training course to become a more 'effective' music teacher this year. The training course runs for three days from today till Wednesday. I haven't really been looking forward to going because it means having to be there for seven hours listening to people talk and being around all older people, not knowing anyone and being a total loner.

 

Fortunately it didn't start off that way. This guy who attended the initial introduction to the music school at the same time as me recognised me, even though I didn't recognise him at first! He's a third year university student studying violin/voice. I talked to him for a while before the course started till his friend arrived and I kinda got...ditched...

 

It turned out that not everyone was old. There were a few people the same age as me. However I was the only accordionist there (apart from the speakers of course!) Fortunately I wasn't a loner for too long! This girl came up to me and asked if I used to go to Rangeview because she remembered watching me perform the accordion at assembly! I then recognised that it was Elizabeth from Rangeview! I haven't seen her since Rangeview but we caught up a bit during lunch. It's funny how we used to go to the same intermediate school but never talked but now we're at different schools we're able to talk to each other!

 

Anyway the course went on and on for seven hours with the speakers telling us about the definition of teaching and learning, how to structure a lesson, blablabla with a few tea breaks in between. I kinda dozed off a little towards the end of the day but finally it was 4.15pm and time to go home! I've got another three days to get through but at least the next two days will end at 3pm. It does feel a bit like school has already started back up though!

Black Friday not so Black

So the day wasn't that bad but I didn't get through the day without incident. First I broke a can opener while trying to open a can of baked beans. This must be the seventh can opener we've gone through! The hands always seem to break!

Later in the day my dad took me driving, focusing on my hill starts, which I'm still really bad at. I think (or I hope) I'm getting better and I started to feel a little more confident about doing a hill start at the intersection. I came up to the intersection, which just turned red, and stopped. This Mercedes Benz stopped right behind me so I was hoping that I wouldn't release the break too soon and roll back into it! I waited for a while and then the lights turned green and I tried doing the hill start, but the car stalled and the motor stopped so I quickly started up the motor again and do another hill start. The car stalled again and the motor stopped again! By then all the cars behind me overtook me and went past. Third time lucky and I got the car moving! Oh so embarrassing!!!

Happy Black Friday!

Happy Black Friday!!

 

"On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake."

 

- Katharine Kurtz in "Tales of the Knights Templar" (Warner Books: 1995)

 

OK I know we're not supposed to believe in superstitions but hey let's have a bit of fun with this! I recall one Friday the 13th back at primary school when I accidentally kicked a ball into a girl's face while playing soccer and my two friends Chen and Jason ran into each other!

 

I'm probably staying home all day, but I can think of thousands of possible bad things happening to me...maybe I might get run over by a car while standing on the driveway...I leave bread in the toaster for too long AGAIN and burn down the house...or a plane crashes into our house! OK maybe not but let's see what happens...

People Visiting People

Yesterday I visited one of my pupil's mum's shops in Onehunga after she rang to invite us to come have a look. First we thought she said Albert St, and because the only Albert St was in Otahuhu we went all the way to Otahuhu. We arrived at the address to find a Sikh temple! So we gave her a ring again to discover she meant Alfred St in Onehunga!

 

Today we went to visit this girl who recently moved to New Zealand from China. She plays the accordion and so we were helping her get in touch with the right people so she could enter the accordion competitions this year. She might even join us to form an accordion quartet! She told us how she lost a bet with her roommates and so she had to play her accordion down Queen St and made $10! Her roommates came to support her...and manage the money as well!

 

This morning this lady came up our driveway to borrow this bike from one of our neighbours while her little boy helped himself to a tricycle that was lying around outside our other neighbours' house. She walked down the drive with the bike and clearly saw her boy riding the tricycle and when confronted by our neighbour after she had noticed what had happened she claimed she didn't know he had it!

Belated Birthday Wishes

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DIANE!!!

While I'm at it there are also a whole lot of other people I forgot to wish a Happy Birthday to over the last month so to the following people, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! (in chronological order i hope):

Happy Birthday Nick!
Happy Birthday Aunty Ivy!
Happy Birthday Janice!
Happy Birthday Peter!
Happy Birthday Heather!
Happy Birthday Uncle Spencer!
Happy Birthday Tammy!
Happy Birthday Alex!
Happy Birthday Troy!

Movies!!!

I've been watching as many movies as I can every night while I've got the time! On Sunday night the neighbours invited us over to watch Mr and Mrs Smith and War of the Worlds with them. Mr and Mrs Smith was pretty good but War of the Worlds had me stumped a little bit.

 

Tonight though I watched House of Flying Daggers and that was such a cool and sad movie! I'm hoping I watch enough Chinese movies so that my Mandarin/Cantonese (whichever language the movie is in!) will improve but I probably rely too much on the subtitles anyway! I tried watching this other Chinese movie 2046 but it was a little odd. The beginning voiceover was in Japanese and then the rest of the movie was in Mandarin. I understand more Cantonese than Mandarin even though I'm studying it at school, and so it was difficult to understand what was going on. Japanese subtitles didn't help either!

 

 

Kong is King! (How many times have we heard that?)

=Warning: may contain spoilers=

Despite whatever anyone else says, I think King Kong was a really good movie! I went to see it with my brothers and Chen last night (sorry Hyun and Joon! I was meaning to see it with you but...yeah...), which was the first movie I've seen in a year and 6 days! Aonghas tried buying himself, my brother and me childrens tickets but when the girl at the counter asked for some ID, the girl next to him told her

"Oh they go to Rutherford"

So we ended up having to pay $12.50 for secondary school/tertiary students' prices! I guess we don't look that young anymore!

Anyway I thought the CG animation was great! The way they created that ape/gorilla and not to mention an entire city accurately! It was also cool to see buildings you're familiar with such as the Auckland Civic Theatre get destroyed by a gorilla. I kinda felt sorry for Howard Shore who was seen conducting the orchestra in the theatre, as he got dumped as the score writer for the film and didn't get acknowledged in the end.

We sat in front of these girls, who throughout the movie were going

"Awwwwww he's [Kong] so cute!"

and then later when he was fighting the dinosaurs...

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!"

But yeah what a sad end to the movie! It was interesting though that the Black guy died, the Chinese guy died, and the guy with what looked like a Maori tattoo all over his face...yip died. When Ann and the playwright (I can't remember his name right now!) were standing at the top of the Empire State Building (imagine slightly higher than highest point of Sky Tower) there seemed to be a lack of wind. Maybe it just wasn't a windy day... Anyway two thumbs and 8 fingers up for me! KONG/ANDY SERKIS FOR BEST ACTOR!!!

Bump Bump Honk Honk

Over the past two days while my dad has been on holiday from work he has taken me driving around West Auckland. My hill start is getting better, but I keep stalling! What is worse about it is that whenever I do a hill start I always seem to be around people who are watching who start laughing at me! Yesterday I did a slight hill start at this intersection and I stalled a bit and these Polynesian guys in the car next to me started laughing. I parked beside this house which happened to have a couple of Polynesian guys outside and when I did a hill start and stalled, the guys bursted out laughing and my dad just waved to them.

 

What scares me the most is doing a hill start at an intersection with cars right behind you! I'm afraid of either letting the handbrake off too soon and rolling back into the car behind, or not starting right, causing the car motor to stop. Guess what? That is exactly what happened to me in the middle of an intersection down Lincoln Rd yesterday! I was turning left into Lincoln Rd, and as I was turning I must have lifted off the clutch too fast and the motor stopped. In the middle of the road I had to quickly start the car up and get going again!

 

Whenever I'm driving along a road and a car is following close behind I just pull over to the side of the road so I don't cause them to crash into the back of us. I managed to count eight cars that I was holding up at one time!

 

I suppose as time goes by hopefully I'll get better...

Froggie where are you?!

The frog is on the loose! Why do we always have bad luck with our pets?! Despite feeding them and changing their water frequently, just recently one of our two tadpoles died. Our remaining tadpole continued to grow on its own, and was starting to develop well into a frog. Until...yesterday morning my mum came over to check on our aquatic pets when the bowl was empty! Our frog had jumped out and ran off somewhere! Either it is still somewhere in the house or...I don't want to think what the cats could possibly have done to it!

House Call

New Years Day wasn't too exciting. We spent the day tidying up the bedroom, which still isn't tidied. We seem to have a lot of clothes and books in our house, and with all our bookshelves and clothes drawers already full they're all overflowing onto the ground!

We've managed to tidy up the lounge at least, so we've been able to invite a few people over to our house. One of our aunties came over prior to Christmas (I think she must've been the first in a couple years to visit?). We invited Phillip over the week before Christmas. He drove all the way from Palmerston North, so who were we to refuse to let him in! Last Saturday Hyun and Joon came over and then just yesterday Shen came over for a while to visit. Fortunately they didn't all mind the mess!

Happy New Year 2006!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!

Yay another year begins! Another year older! All the best to everyone for the year 20 06 let's hope it'll be a great year!

These are a few of my New Years resolutions...yeah I've probably made too many to be able to keep them all and they're mostly pretty stupid:
1. Take at least five photos a week
2. Do at least 3 good things a day
3. Get good grades
4. Achieve something as head boy
5. Make at least one more really good close friend
6. Go to the ball with A GIRL (I don't know if some of these are considered New Years resolutions actually)

One of my friends suggested I try get my first kiss in 2006 but that's probably pushing my luck a little too far!

Record Reading

I just managed to finish reading one novel in under a month! Prior to the holidays I realised I had only read one novel all year, and I was forced to read it (yes Life of Pi) and that took me about two months, so I thought I'd see if I could try read a novel within one month! I'm proud to say I read 220 pages within that time! OK so some of you people have read some really thick Harry Potter books within one or two days, but I'm getting there!

I was watching movie trailers (as you do when you don't have money to watch movies) when Memoirs of a Geisha came up. I had no idea what it was about, and to be honest it didn't look too interesting, but because I heard it was based on a novel, I thought what the heck I'd just read the novel. It turned out to be a really really great read!

'In 1929 an impoverished nine-year-old named Chiyo from a fishing village is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto's Gion district and subjected to cruel treatment from the owners and the head geisha Hatsumomo. Her stunning beauty attracts the vindictive jealousy of Hatsumomo, until she is rescued by and taken under the wing of Hatsumomo's bitter rival, Mameha. Under Mameha's mentorship, Chiyo becomes the geisha named Sayuri, trained in all the artistic and social skills a geisha must master in order to survive in her society. As a renowned geisha she enters a society of wealth, privilege, and political intrigue. As World War II looms Japan and the geisha's world are forever changed by the onslaught of history.'

Some of my favourite passages in the novel that really made me think included:

'Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true'

'I never seek to defeat the man I'm fighting I seek to defeat his confidence. A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory. Tow men are equals - true equals - only when they both have equal confidence. '

So if you have nothing to do in the holidays try reading Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.