Technology Fails Me Again

Once again I've been having problems with almost all the gadgets in my possession, to the point that I'm even considering crossing that path to Apple!

- My Sony Vaio laptop (had it for about three years):

Won't even boot up into Windows (we're talking Windows 8 here). When it does, it freezes, or I get a whole lot of notifications telling me various key files are missing. Admittedly my laptop was fine when it was running Windows 7, and Windows 8 up till the last couple weeks. I didn't exactly install Windows 8 properly though, having reformatted my laptop before realising that for Sony Vaio laptops you have to download some sort of install app that will sort out the drivers for you. In the end I had to install the drivers individually, missing some along the way.
Bottom line, my laptop is dying on me!

- My Galaxy Note 8 tablet (had it for a few months) :

Battery life is meant to be at least a day. Lately, the battery has been dying on me within an hour, sometimes in a matter of minutes! Just today, I turned it on after charging it, and I witnessed the battery drop from 100% to 65% within about two minutes! Fortunately I have warranty on it so I'll be taking it back tomorrow!

- My Samsung Galaxy S3 phone (had for just over a year):

I've had problems right from the start. From the LED light not working, to constant freezing problems, now my phone keeps overheating whenever I keep 3G on! I was originally waiting for the Note 3 but now I'm a bit weary of Samsung.

What's going on Samsung!

Now I'm considering buying a new laptop for under $2000. It looks like the options will be Macbook Air vs some Windows 8 ultrabook. Time to get investigating!

Don't Trust Kids with Whiteboard Markers

I've been trying to improve my fashion sense by wearing better clothes than just a t-shirt and shorts, which I guess isn't too hard to improve on...

This has seen me wearing pants at church recently, and today I thought I'd wear my mustard coloured chino's that I bought on sale at Hallenstein's (TMI) for only the second time.

Not a good idea around kids...

This little girl who had been scribbling all over the whiteboard with a red whiteboard marker in a room I was in ran up behind me and dotted me on the back of my pants! She then attempted to do more damage, and I had to restrain her and confiscate the whiteboard marker off her.

Unfortunately the damage was already done!

When I got home, I tried putting some washing powder on it and scrubbing with a toothbrush, but it's still there! What am I supposed to do now!

Working on That Asian Side of Me

Recently I've had a few people try to speak to me in Chinese, and after having tried to speak Chinese at the Mid-Autumn Festival and failed miserably, it's made me realise I've got to start working on my Chinese again! 

I'm going to try start blogging on my Chinese blog to practise my Chinese, but beware: it's full of mistakes, so if you do actually understand it, feel free to have a read and correct me, or read and laugh if you prefer!

Pub Quiz Round Two

Tonight I went with Chen for another round of pub quiz at The Dominion. This time around Hamish couldn't come along because of work, and Chen brought along Rose, his girlfriend.

Jenny and Michael, two of Chen's med school friends were back tonight, along with two new people, Anna, another med school friend and another guy who I think is a medical registrar. I didn't actually get his name!

This time around we had rounds such as 'Branded', 'Music', '50/50', 'It Takes Two to Tango'. I didn't feel as though I contributed as much this time around, but we seemed to do a bit better! At one point we were coming second!

We eventually settled for sixth place, which was a definite improvement over last week's 15th...ish.

The most amusing thing tonight thought was that our team name was meant to be called 'The Grand Round', but when we showed up, we saw the sign at our table

"The Glam Round"

Um.....but hey, I think it could actually catch on!

Mid-Autumn Festival Awks

The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival was being held across the road from our church at the Trusts Stadium today, and so after church we had a shorted choir rehearsal so that we could go across to check it out...or so I thought...

The minister's wife who is also in the choir showed everyone these cool little pens with a piece of paper you can pull out and it talks about God and Jesus. I initially thought...phew OK it's in Chinese. I'll be off the hook since I don't understand what's on the pen. That's when they showed the other side to reveal the English side!

I've never gone and done outreach before, as I never feel like I'm ready or would be able to say the right things, so I thought I might just give this time a pass as well.

When I got across to the stadium though, I found all the church people there and in the end they persuaded me to give it a go! They taught me how to say

'Happy Mid-Autumn Festival' 

and

'Jesus loves you!'

in Chinese. I tried approaching some people and saying that to them as they walked by, but was completely ignored the first three times, as if I didn't even exist!

My first success was a little child. To be honest I just asked her if she would like a free pen!

I bumped into my old pharmacy friend Ai Ping and had a bit of a catch-up, which was pretty cool! She didn't want a pen!

Half way through, I realised I wasn't saying the right thing in Chinese to people, and then without thinking wished someone a Happy Chinese New Year!

Realising I was failing on my own, I decided to pair up with Antonia who did the talking and I handed out the pens. We were much more successful! I think people are more willing to listen to a girl than some ugly old guy like me!

When we had finally given everything out, it was time to go exploring! We went inside the stadium to check out what was going on, but it didn't seem as though much was actually happening. Everyone had gathered around the stage, but we couldn't tell what for.

We decided to go back outside and check out the food stalls. We caught up with Claire, someone we haven't seen in a while. It was so good catching up with people!

I was starting to get phone calls from the adults wanting their children back, so we had to rush to find something to eat. I offered to shout everyone squid, but it seemed as though every stall had sold out of squid! We eventually found a stall that sold it. It was a little spicy but it was OK!

Once we returned to church to reunite some of the people with their parents, we went back across the road to the festival, hoping for some discounts on food since it was almost the end of the festival. Sadly we were disappointed.

It's good to see WTV holding some Chinese festivals out west though. Usually they're held in the city or out in South Auckland. I don't think I'd ever seen as many Chinese people in one area in a long time as I did today! Hopefully there'll be more festivals to come!

(http://youtu.be/bDq9r7J7neU)

Fire! Fire!

OK..not really, but we had the first fire evacuation practice at church that I can remember! Maybe I just can't remember any of the others, or maybe it's just because this is the first time I was actually directly involved in this one as one of the fire wardens.

I wasn't a very good one though...I was caught off-guard a little. The siren was meant to sound after the service at around 11.30. We were meant to be by the door we were looking after at that point, but I was packing up equipment from the English service when it sounded!

I rushed off to the door where Ben was (both Ben and I were together), and by then everyone had exited that door, so there wasn't really much more for me to do, except to show off my cool neon-orange armband!

Everyone had to evacuate to the carpark. It was only a few minutes before the all-clear was given and we could return.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfh-RhqUpeY)

The Birth of our Worship Band

This morning our church held its first English service after break of just over a month due to the church's Mission month.

What was going to make this English service slightly more special was the fact that our 'worship band' would be doing worship for the first time! Usually our set up for worship is just the worship leader, two back-up singers and a pianist/keyboardist. Our group today consisted of me as the leader (and also playing the cajon - a drum that looks like a wooden box!), a back-up singer and two other singers on instruments, two keyboardists, a guitarist and a bass guitarist. We decided to use the first two English services to try out a few new arrangements and just see what we're capable of. I was to lead the first week, then Angie would lead next week.

The songs I picked to lead this time around were:

Blessed - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y383zE_8kYo)

Desert Song - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmOgyohx_y4)

Unending Love - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDIuFrdKiXg)

How Great is our God - Chris Tomlin

 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvXweftb7UU)

To Be Like You - Hillsong

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zneDiI1-09o)

I've been struggling a little in the past couple weeks with a bit of a cold and a cough, thanks to overnighters trying to finish assignments, and I thought it was coming right just in time yesterday when I was just able to sing that last song To Be Like You, which goes up really high! However, I woke up this morning with the cough back again and my throat not feeling the greatest! I was quite anxious about it! 

We had a bigger congregation than usual this morning. I noticed quite a few people from the Mandarin fellowship at our service, which must have been the first time for them! I was talking to one of them the day before at our rehearsal, light-heartedly saying they should come along and bring everyone from their fellowship. I didn't think it'd actually happen! There were also a few new people too which was quite cool!

10am was soon approaching, and we were frantically getting Aonghas and the others to play a little background music as everyone waited. There was a bit of an awkward silence till that happened!

Once it hit 10am though, it was time to go! I started off with a prayer, reading something I had prepared earlier on my tablet. As soon as I finished, the band came in, and as they were playing the intro, I was meant to say to everyone

"OK everyone let's all get on our feet, raise our hands, raise our voices and praise the Lord Almighty!"

Instead, what came out was 

"OK everyone let's all get on our feet and raise our feet..."

That's when I quickly went into damage control mode to correct that just in time before the end of the intro and the beginning of the verse! At the same time my pdf file with the lyrics was on the wrong song and so on top of correcting myself, I was trying to swipe back to the correct song in my pdf file!

The rest of worship went a bit more smoothly. 

During the sermon I was still worrying about the response song, which was To Be Like You (the one with the really high notes!). I was tossing up over whether to sing down low or just sing as is. In the end I sang as is and managed to get through it!

PHEW!

We made it through! Hopefully we can do this a bit more regularly! We've got next week to prepare for now though!

Bye Bye Big Mac

All the vouchers have run out, and so no more free Big Macs!

Aonghas tried getting one on Thursday night, only to be told on the website that they had run out. Fortunately the night before I got another one, so I collected it last night and saved it for lunch today.

Bye bye Big Mac, we had a good run!

Let's Get Quizzical!!

Our friend Chen is quite into trivia and during his travels has attended some pub quizzes. He invited us to come along to one tonight with a few of his med school friends.

I've only ever attended one pub quiz before, and it was quite interesting.

For those of you who don't know what a pub quiz is, you form a team, and there is a quiz master who asks the questions. There are several rounds, with each consisting of general knowledge questions of a certain topic.

We got to 'The Dominion' first (a pub down...Dominion Road!), where we ordered some food and waited for Chen's friends.



With half the team consisting of med students, a pharmacist and a commerce student, it was decided the team name was Gram Positive (science people will know what that is!)



There were eight rounds in the pub quiz, with topics on music, movies, arts and literature, geography, pot luck, believe it or not, scandals and Great Scott! (about anything related to Scott!). Each round was worth ten points, and we could choose two rounds in which our points would be worth double.



There were some interesting questions, and we didn't do badly for our first time. We came around 14th or 15th...out of about 20 teams. We were up against teams with older people, as well as a few teams with many more people.

 

We'll have to see if this becomes a regular occurrence!

Lorde Live

Tonight I went with Hamish to the free Lorde concert at Vector Arena. I managed to get free tickets for two people a week ago when I signed up to that new iHeartRadio thing (this whole free concert is their promotion after all!), but I forgot to get Hamish and Aonghas to sign up. I was going to ask a friend if they could take one of my brothers and we could all go together, but unfortunately they missed out on tickets, so I was left with a dilemma - just forget about the concert or go with one brother. Aonghas said he didn't mind missing it though, so I ended up taking Hamish.

We arrived half an hour before the doors were set to open. Aonghas initially was wondering where everyone was, as there were hardly anyone outside the arena. It was only when Hamish and I got a little closer there that we realised the queue stretched right down the road, around a corner, all the way to the next corner where we lined up! The weather wasn't the greatest either, so it was going to be a long wait! We were surrounded by these high school girls all talking about high school things like school balls, boys, etc.

Once the line started moving though, it kept on moving, and soon enough we were inside!

We were tossing up between going down onto the floor and standing, or just sitting on the seats. In the end, we decided that since Lorde doesn't really sing the kind of music you can dance to, we'd just sit on the seats, and we managed to find the seats right at the back of the arena, giving us a straight-on view of the stage.

Lorde wasn't due to come on till 9.30ish, so we had another two hours. There were a few radio personalities who came onto stage to talk, and then DJ General Lee played some music which was pretty cool.

Finally the warm-up act, Mt Eden came on stage. They're a dub-step group, and I have to admit when I saw Mt Eden on the tickets, it got me confused. I was thinking...I'm pretty sure Vector Arena isn't in Mt Eden?!


Anyway, they had a string quartet on stage, and had some pretty cool beats!

They went on for an hour, and I did feel like grooving a bit in the seats at the back.

It was a short while before it was Lorde's time. A light shone behind a white screen, and you could see Lorde's silhouette, before the screen was lifted, revealing the star of the show. I didn't really know her first song, but it did sound like most of the other songs she sung...which I had never heard of!

At that point I didn't actually regret sitting in the seats, as her music really wasn't the sort of music I'd feel like dancing to, or getting into! I only really knew two of her songs - Tennis Court and Royals. Once she had sung those two songs, I was hoping there would be some upbeat song.

The show was eventually over and we made our way out. We bumped into Grace who was with some other friends.

We were going to wait in the foyer for our parents to arrive but the security guards kicked us all out. We were standing outside the arena, surrounded by all these people with lanyards (I'm assuming they were guests of the sponsor), all smoking. There was even a well-known person from TV who was smoking. Nothing against the person, just disappointed in the smoking!

Overall I guess it was a good concert experience, but maybe it just reconfirmed that Lorde isn't really my type of muisc! I hope she continue to do well though and become big!

What Late Nights do to You

We had another rehearsal for our worship band today, and I was struggling to sing properly! I swear I'm coming down with a cold! I just kept coughing and couldn't even reach the high notes!

I think I must've caught the cold over the past two days, having slept at 4am in the morning trying to finish my assignments. It's been pretty cold recently and by the time I had finished my assignment on Friday morning, my fingers were freezing!

Hopefully I get better by next weekend though, as I will be leading worship!

Time to Work Out!

I finally joined a gym today! A few months ago I found out that Jetts will be opening a gym in our area, so I registered my interest on their website, and they texted me this morning letting me know that they will be opening by the end of the month! Everyone who pre-registered were invited to sign up and get a discount on membership, so right before work my mum took me there and I signed up.

I booked a time for orientation since it's a 24/7 gym and we need to know all about security etc. They also gave me a three week pre-opening workout. I shall start on that next week!

Summer body here I come!