Midholiday Assessment

So the first week of the holidays is over, and what have I accomplished? Well not really a great deal. I still haven't worked out how I study best, but after talking to a friend I discovered a way which has kinda worked, and in the last few days managed to revise atoms, photons and nuclei (I think that's it?) like the Conservation Laws and so on, so that's good...until I went through the practice questions and read another book and realised I didn't know that! That raises another question...how do you know when to stop going deeper into a topic/subject? NCEA Level 1 was OK because they basically told you what to study and revise, but in NCEA Level 2 and 3 the achievement standard is a little broader. Take the Level 3 Physics Atoms, Photons and Nuclei assessment. You have to know about 'the electron volt' but just how much about it do you need to know about it? I don't know if that's exactly the best example but yeah.

Anyway I've got to get started on my history assessment! I'm supposed to produce a tourist guide on one of the historical sites we visited in our history trip. I'm probably going to do Rangiriri. Don't ask me what happened there...I forgot...Yes I know I have to catch up on history too!

RANDOMS

I've been to that new RateMyTeachers website and some of the comments students have attempted to give teachers (but got rejected) are somewhat amusing. Here are a few:

"couldnt stand him, he couldnt even keep sheep inline"
"Once he wore a turtle neck and his pants are really tight!Perhaps hes missed his calling as a drill sergent because he sure likes his disipline!"
"I have a strong suspicion that mr ***** is actually a british spy.He works for the queen and is paid in crumpets.One time he told us he blew up a harbour with some potassium - ROCK ON *****!!!!!!!!!"
"***** looks like keg and needs to find his own girlfriend - stop trying to steal my woman you desperate old bu&*er."
"

SHES A ROBOT! "

mr ******* is a mean teacher and doesn't think about anyone other than himself he needs to find a girlfriend instead of trying to get the students they are too young for him!!!! and needs to get rid of his goatie!!!
"mr ***** needs to get his own style and fashion and needs to stop trying to look like hitlor he needs to get to know the whole story before blaming it on the sweetest people eva he needs to know b4 he judges people and needs to go sleep with his mum!!!!!"

Good People

Today we went all the way to our favourite yumcha restaurant in South Auckland. The Chinese lady kept persuading us to have more and more dishes till we reached $45 when we told her we had had enough. The food and the tea was good as usual. Good to see a few Europeans dining there too.

After that we went shopping down the main streets of Otahuhu, through all the cheap $2 variety stores. There was this shop that was selling everything at a discount, including clothes and all these other little things. I like those clothes that have those rip-offs of other things, like there was this jumper with m&m on it. Under it says mana Maori which I thought was clever! There were these cheap caps with SOUTHSIDE and EASTSIDE on it. I was thinking of getting one since I couldn't find WESTSIDE but then again I suppose I'd get smashed in Te Atatu for wearing something like that!

Originally I was invited to go to the movies with some friends who had decided to watch Pirates of the Carribean II in the city (which I've never been to before. I'm still trying to work out why Queen St cinemas are more special and expensive than other cinemas though?) OK to be honest (and plus my parents don't read this anyway) I was going into the city this Monday with Hamish anyway to visit the library and find some music I could transcribe for the accordion for an upcoming concert, and so I thought I'd just go watch the movie with my friends while I'm at the city with whatever money I had left in my wallet and then go to the library, come home as if nothing ...happened...yeah I know sneakysneaky (by my standards anyway thought maybe I should do something different in my life once in a while) My mum wouldn't be too happy with the cost of a movie ticket if I told her. Anyway it got cancelled and instead they're all going to Westcity to watch it now, and I didn't really find out till another friend forwarded the email he got from the person who had changed the plans to me...so I don't really know if I'm meant to go...or not...or if they want me to...doesn't matter anyway.

I was chatting to a couple friends tonight. This girl wanted to know my history with girls...uh huh the 'one day relationship' guy yep and then persisted in finding out who I liked. When I told her I usually only ended up good friends with girls and that there didn't really seem to be anyone to like right now, she tells me

"i reckon that its sadder to have noone to like than to like someone who doesnt like you back"

Yep thats nice! And wow this girl I just chat to for the first time tonight even though I kinda know her...a bit...she was...haaarsh....amongst other things told me not to stalk her, called me a lier and told me I talk too much before she had to go and ended our conversation? Nah probably just a first conversation thing. Just like how it really got me thinking in South Auckland that not all people in that area are thieves, dangerous, Samoan and poor. There was a lady at the counter who had a lot to pay for whereas I only had a couple of plastic flowers for my nana's grave to pay for. She saw this and let me jump ahead of her which was nice of her. It's these little things which make you feel good about other people and remind you that there's good in everyone! Some people just choose who to reveal that side of them to...

Random Stuff

I finally got round to doing some work today, by going to the library for a few hours and doing some hard studying! No TV, no computer, no food, just books and work work work...

What a sad day it is today anyway! Li Mei died on Shortland St (OK I know it looks embarrassing but I only watch it sometimes...honestly!), Anna-Lucia and Libby died on Lost. I feel sorry for Hurley! OK it is just a show it is just a show it is just a show...yeah you can tell I've been wasting my time watching too much TV!

Have I just taken it out of proportion or are more people going for a people of the opposite sex who are 5+ years older than themselves? Oh well suppose that ain't too bad. I think that's about the age gap between my parents. It all evens out when you get older. My parents always tell me MARRY SOMEONE A LOT YOUNGER THAN YOU - that way there's less chance of your wife aging faster than you (does that make any sense at all?)

First Day of Holidays

School holidays has gotten off to an unproductive and boring start. It's so hard to get into studying when you're stuck in a cold, messy, foodless house! Szelin (our neighbour) came over yesterday and we showed each other ball photos. Lucky her she found herself a boyfriend at her school ball! (yet another casualty..)  I also traded photos with a few other people. It turns out I didn't appear in many of other people's ball photos..oh well.. anyway other people had some good photos! Yeah it's a bit sad that the ball's all over. At least there's the year 13 dinner to look forward to I hope! Hopefully the juniors are able to have a social too and then I might be able to weasel my way in through my links with the Junior Council!

While I do have the extra time at home though I've been learning the finer points to life, like how to light a fireplace properly, and eating fruit. Actually I tried getting the fireplace going tonight and probably wasted ten matches before my mum came over and got it going with one.

Farewells + School Ball

Today started off with two shortened periods of school. I didn't go to chemistry in first period because I had to help set up equipment for Mr Edmeades' farewell assembly. Next period I had Chinese, in which we were supposed to be doing our Chinese speech, BUT she let us do it on the first Monday back of next term (thanks Bronwen, Nikki and Shiu Tai for persuading her to!)

Finally at 11am we had Mr Edmeades' Student Farewell assembly in the sports hall. It was amazing to see all the teachers lined up along the walls with the whole school sitting on the ground (or the ones that came to school anyway!). Heather, the other head students, prefects and I sat on the left side of the podium while Mr Edmeades, his children and grand-children sat on the other side of the podium. We started off with the choir performing. I felt bad because I was supposed to be in the choir and there was only one guy in the choir singing, while I was sitting up on the platform. So I just sang from where I was. Don't think anyone heard me anyway...

Heather and I gave our speeches. Fortunately I didn't say UMM too often. I had watched the tape of my speech on Friday night and realised I said it too much! Today was a lot better.

The Kapa Haka group then sang the school song as well as a surprise second song. For some reason the school song always gives me the good chills! We really got to teach the rest of the school how to sing it! We then gave Mr Edmeades his presents, and then Hyun had the last say, which I thought was probably the best line of the day:

"When I say school stand, could you please stand while Mr Edmeades and his family leave the sports hall. School Stand. " (something along those lines!)

After school I just waited with Phoebe talking to her for a little while till her dad came to pick her up. Too bad she had to work and couldn't come to the ball with the rest of us! At least she had him to keep him company...;);)

THE BALL - Well I had no idea what I was going to wear, so as soon as I got home I looked through my dad's wardrobe for his suits, and found this criss-cross brown one that looked kinda old enough to be 1920s. I also found this Maozedong hat which looked good enough to be one of those old fuddyduddy hats that I could wear with. Now all I needed was a mustache and a pipe. I went to WestCity to check out all the cheap variety shops for them but I couldn't find any! I came across Mrs Taylor (my dean) who had just gotten her hair done. I got back home, got a bit of a hair trim while Aonghas cut some spare carpet from the garage, darkened it with vivid and made a mustache for me.

I had to get to Crowne Plaza Hotel early as Heather and I being the head students had to collect tickets and welcome everyone as they arrived. I managed to come earlier than anyone else for once!!! So we stood at the top of the stairs greeting everyone. Eventually everyone arrived and we were free to go and take photographs and mix with other people. Steven found me and kinda hung with me for the first half till dinner when there weren't enough chairs for us to sit next to each other (no we weren't partners by the way!) so I sat at the same table as Alex, Nick, Esther, Esther's friend, Christine, Estee, Sarena, Amy, Ellyce and Jonathan while the twins sat with their Korean friends at another table.

We did some dancing, had great food for dinner and dessert, and took a lot of photos (I'll put some up here some time soon). Heather and I ended up having to give a very short speech to thank everyone for coming so I just thanked them for coming and wearing good clothes, and then Heather thanked Mr and Mrs Edmeades for coming and called for the people who were going to award prizes to come up on stage. I didn't win anything, but congratulations to Jonathan who got Ball King, Steven who got Ball Prince, Kirsty who got Ball Queen, Michaela who got Ball Princess and Toni and her partner for Best Dressed Couple!

It was weird going without a partner this year after going with a girl last year. To be honest it did feel a bit lonely at times, especially when they had the slow dances and there was only just me and the wooden man (decoration) dancing together...nah us single people danced together. Go Hyun for dancing with Gwen!!!!!!!! (sorry just really happy Hyun had some good stuff happen to him at a ball after what happened last year...) So yeah Joon and I didn't have anyone to dance with. We were fast coming to the last dance and I really didn't want to go away not having danced with anyone so I just shouted out if anyone was desperate and lonely enough to dance with me and Sarena ended up dancing with me while Amy danced with Joon for a little while.

But apart from not having partners the night was still good fun and was a a great opportunity to hang out with friends in a different way to usual. I'm definitely getting a new camera after this ball. The flash on my camera took AGES to load each time and people had to hold their poses for so long I told them they could relax while I waited for the camera to get ready! Grrr....I've got a Casio camera at the moment and I've tried playing around with all the settings etcetc. read up about how each of the different setting affect certain things but still this camera won't take good photos in rooms with artificial light!  This was the same with our previous Kodak camera, and I'm sure Kodak cameras these days are a lot better than the models they had back then when we bought ours, but does anyone know which brand produces the best digital cameras? I've heard Canon are probably the best but I don't know. I'll probably have to do a bit more researching over these holidays...