Musical Mishap

Yesterday Aonghas and I attended this accordion workshop over in North Shore. This French guy who is some expert in choosing the right music for programmes to enter into various accordion championships gave us advice and tips on how to improve our playing and performance. Once again we were late, so we arrived at Sunnybrae Primary School half an hour late. Everyone was already in the classroom listening to this French guy speaking! Aonghas and I quietly took our seats.

For the first two hours we listened to this guy tell us how to improve our performance techniques, from pushing and pulling the bellows at the same time, to raising your eyebrows and showing expression on your face as you play music.

We finally had our lunch break at midday, when Aonghas and I sat with some of the North Shore accordionists there like Jessica and this guy called George. Jessica only just got back from Taiwan the night before so I was surprised she even made it! We managed to get talking which is cool, because usually us Westies don't talk much to the North Shorians except for Jessica. So yeah it was cool getting to know them a little more!

After lunch we had to practise the piece we would perform later in the day for an hour, so we found a spot outside somewhere on the school grounds. I sat on this bench, and started playing. It was a little weird practising as some girls in bikinis walked by to the school pool, and these two boys rode by on their skateboards, and here's me sitting outside playing this weird musical instrument!

We were next given a demonstration on how the accordion works. I have to admit I nearly fell asleep during that! Hopefully no one saw me, although these two girls were giggling about something...hopefully not me!

The last half hour we spent doing more practise before we had to perform. I was one of the first to perform since I hadn't played to the French guy that whole day. My performance was so bad though! I kept playing mistakes and stopped right in the middle, so you know what I would be like - smile overtime. For some reason I just smile whenever I make a mistake! When I stopped I made some sort of scoffing noise which made it even worse! The French guy gave me a few comments after my performance, such as STOP SMILING!

I was supposed to go to the second day of the workshop today, but I was planning on going to the University of Auckland careers and courses advice day, while Aonghas had to go back to school for uniform and options check. I decided to come along. I thought I might try laugh at some of the students returning to school! :D (I didn't in the end by the way!)

We dropped Aonghas off while I went driving around Te Atatu Peninsula with my mum. After an hour we drove back to school and I saw Zahir cross the road! That was cool. We waited on the side of the road for over an hour and Aonghas (and Chen who we had to take home as well) still weren't done, so I decided to just drive past the main gate and back to the back gate, when I drove past Phoebe waiting at the corner of the road! The first time I tried waving to her like an idiot but she didn't notice me. She probably didn't notice the white car as I don't think she's seen it before. I came back though, and this time I honked the horn and hopefully she saw me! Hopefully it was her!

By the time Aonghas and Chen came out it was midday, so we took Chen home. I was busting to go to the toilet so I went into Chen's house, and Aonghas and my mum ended up being invited in too. We ended up having lunch there and talked with Chen for a while till it was 3pm! I missed the careers advice day at university but that's OK! I've got most of the stuff sorted out anyway.

By the way I never realised texting people after midnight was abnormal! I've had people questioning me about a previous post...I've been texting after midnight regularly in the past week...is that unusual?