Chinese New Year Boilover

The Chinese New Year Festival held at the ASB Showgrounds came around once again this year, and this year we were going to try get there earlier than in past years! We had to pick Aonghas, Rose, Chen and one of their camp friends Harmony from O'Rourke Hall, where they were staying, as they wanted to come along on their 'Explore Auckland Day'. For Aonghas and Rose, well they live in Auckland so they thought they might as well come to the festival!

Our dad dropped my mum, Hamish and me off at the festival before going off to pick up the others. There were these cool Beijing Olympics mascots in the foyer! I wanted to get a photo with them but I couldn't get to the front so I just had to get one taken with their back.My mum wanted to look at some ceramic pots, so Hamish and I wandered around, checking out the stalls. The aisles left not much space for moving, and people ended up squeezing past others, or having to resort to pushing and shoving. Felt like being somewhere in Asia! We walked around, checking out stalls selling food, books, toys, advertising religion, while Aonghas and the others were stuck in traffic. I caught up with a few people like a Sunday School teacher from church and Julie, a friend of mine!

We met them in the foyer when they finally arrived, and immediately split into groups. Harmony, the other girl, hung out with us Anderson brothers and we just walked around having a look at the stalls. We came across the National stand where there were photos being taken of John Key, Pansy Wong and some other dignitaries. I tried asking some of the younger Asian people about joining the National Party, and asked them if I would get discriminated against by others for being a member ( e.g. if I was to apply for a job and the boss supported Labour...) but they guy just said to me

"Oh sorry sorry I'm just a volunteer!"


After talking to someone else who did know, that made me even more determined to join a political party on campus this year!

We were getting pretty hot and had nearly seen everything so we went outside to check out the food stalls and have something to eat. Once Harmony bought her food we sat under the shade talking for a while when we heard there was some game going on. We went over to the crowd to see that girl from the TV drama 'Ride with the Devil' picking people from the audience to come up and throw a dart at this spinning wheel, and win a prize. After a few people had a go, she decided she'd pick someone from the back, and after a bit of confusion as to whether she picked Aonghas or Harmony, Harmony eventually made her way up. She threw her dart and hit number 19. The lady in charge of the prizes went over to them, picked up a bag and wrote 19 on it and gave it to her! She ended up winning some food which was pretty cool.

By then it was about 1pm and we had to go meet up with the others so we could drop Chen off at Sky City for his job interview. We had a twenty minute walk all the way to the car park with me getting isolated from the rest of the group when I missed crossing the road at the same as them. We got to the car and got to the city slowly amongst all the traffic! We only JUST got Chen to Sky City in time, but fortunately it turns out the guy interviewing him was twenty minutes late!

We were originally going to drop the others off after buying an ice-cream from McDonalds, but after realising the McDonalds by the entrance to the Harbour Bridge was gone and that we were in the lane leading to the Harbour Bridge, it was too late and we ended up having to travel over the Harbour Bridge and back again! At least it was a good opportunity for Harmony to check out the sights, as she's from Christchurch!

We ended up finding a McDonalds and got our soft-served cones, before dropping the girls off at Sky City and making our way back to the Showgrounds. Just when I got there I discovered my friend Richard (supreme violin virtuoso!) was nearing the end of his performance! I felt so bad!!! I had planned to watch him perform! I will DEFINITELY be watching him perform at the Lantern Festival regardless! Nothing will stop me from making it this time!!!

The day grew old and the festival came to an end. This was probably one of the highlights of my holidays, or at least this week anyway.

On a completely different topic, I got accepted into BHsc/LLB (Bachelor of Health Science/Bachelor of Law), BHsc/BCom (Bachelor of Health Science/Bachelor of Commerce) and BCom/BSc (Bachelor of Commerce/Bachelor of Science in Computer Science) so a big HMMMM........

I spent half a day guiding Chen through the wonderful Ndeva (the university course enrollment system) the other day, which was a bit of fun, but just reminded me that I better get on to sorting out my own timetable soon!

I also just discovered that two of my friends are doing exactly the same conjoint - BA in Chinese and BCom! Go Chinese!!