The first day of performances was on Tuesday and Rebecca, one of the girls from my youth group was due to perform with her school concert band at 11.30. My class finished at 11am, so I thought I'd have time to walk down to the Town Hall from Grafton. However, our lecturer was having technical problems with his powerpoint presentation and so it was delayed by half an hour! I was thinking of just leaving early and skipping the lecture, but just as I was about to, the lecturer decided to start! I was trapped! I ended up playing Naughts and Crosses with a friend while waiting for the lecture to finish.
Fortunately he sped up towards the end and finished slightly after 11. I rushed out of the lecture theatre to catch the bus. I thought this would take less time, but every traffic light we approached seemed to turn red! I ended up getting off at a bus stop which was not that close to the Town Hall at all! I could've walked there in a shorter amount of time!
Anyway, I luckily got there just in time to witness Rebecca's performance! Her school's band, the Westlake Girls High Concert Band performed a Lord of the Rings suite as well as a couple other pieces. I really enjoyed their performance!
After their performance, Rebecca and her group came back into the hall to watch the rest of the performances in that session, and I managed to say hi to her since I was sitting in the row right behind her! I then met one of the viola players in the Auckland Symphony Orchestra who had come to watch her daughter play as part of the same group!
I watched a few more of the performances which were really entertaining. I have a whole new admiration for brass instruments! I couldn't stay for long before I had to rush off to meet up with Angie for lunch. She just bought sushi from the Quad while I bought a few things from that Asian bakery and we just had lunch by that waterfall outside the art gallery.
Once she went back to class, I went back to the Town Hall to watch a few more performances before having to go home to deliver newspapers all on my own!
You can check out some of the highlights of the performances I got to watch below.
I didn't get to watch too many performances on Wednesday, as I had a workshop on sunscreen and travel medicines at 8.30 in the morning (in which I had to do a roleplay in front of the class as a pharmacist for the first time!) and then another stressful dispensing lab in the afternoon.
The pharmacy dodgeball competition was on at night, and I was originally thinking of participating in it since I hadn't participated in any pharmacy sports events during my time at uni. However, there was also a Dessert Club meeting and of course the KBB Music Festival all on at the same time! Oh...and I almost forgot the most important of all - a job interview in the afternoon before all that!
The interview wasn't too bad, in that the lady interviewing me acknowledged that I didn't have as much experience as other applicants, but asked me what I could bring to the pharmacy. She also asked me what my dream job was, to which I replied
"Prime Minister!"
She probably thought I was joking. Whether I was or not...I'm still not too sure myself!
After the interview, I went to the library to try do some study since I had a small test the next day, but kept falling asleep at the computer! I ended up deciding I would go to the KBB Music Festival first, then drop by to check out the dodgeball competition, then finish off the night at the Dessert Club meeting!
I watched a few of the bands at the KBB Music Festival before I went back up to the gym, but the door was locked! OK I could've made more of an effort, but it was rainy and I was tired so I just went straight to the Dessert Club meeting.
Thursday was the big day - the day the orchestras would be performing! I had a class and a small test in the morning, but straight after, I skipped an extra class on gout to go watch some of the orchestras perform. I'm forever amazed at just how large and good these high school orchestras can be! When I was back at Rutherford, our orchestra was no bigger than 20-30 people! These school orchestras were almost symphony-sized, while some actually were symphony orchestras!
I caught up with Aonghas during lunch and went off to buy an SD-card for our dSLR, as I realised I had forgotten to put one in.
We got back for the afternoon session to watch Cleo and her school orchestra the Epsom Symphonia perform. I was supposed to meet my friend Scholastica but she missed the performance, but Jenny, the former concert master and also from our youth group made it. The orchestra was pretty good. Cleo plays the big bass drum which is pretty cool!
Her school's performance was supposed to finish by 2.45pm which would have given me enough time to get back up to Grafton for a workshop on wound care, but it lasted a bit longer than planned, and I had to run all the way back up to Grafton, arriving about 10 minutes late!
The professor taking the workshop didn't seem to mind or notice though, which was really good. He was showing us all these different types of bandages, plasters, hydrogels and all sorts of tools to manage wounds. He even demonstrated some of them on us! Because I was sitting at one end of the room, he would often demonstrate on us, including wrapping this clingy type of material around my wrist to show how it's much better than that white material-like stuff!
After the workshop, I headed back into the city just in time for the second half of the evening session, when all the big guns would be playing like Westlake Symphony, and Macleans Symphony!
They didn't fail to impress! Westlake Symphony Orchestra even brought a combined choir as well!
To finish off the night, Burger King! What a week. I've been musically inspired!
Check out the highlights from Thursday below:
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