The Pain

Yesterday was a really hectic day. Not only was it the school's open evening, but I had to get my braces! There was a meeting for all tour guides during first period yesterday morning. Luckily I had a free 1st period so I wasn't missing out on anything. After the meeting was over I then met the principal with Heather to get our speeches double-checked. After that we both worked on the prefects display, and ended up working right through the next two periods!

My appointment at Middlemore Hospital to get my braces on was at 1pm and I was going to leave school at 12 but because I had to get some stuff sorted for open day at home, the deputy principal changed my leaving pass so I could leave half an hour early which was good...meant I could miss the chemistry quiz! :D

I got home, had some time to eat and burn a DVD before having to rush off to hospital. Even though I arrived late, there was a bit of a hold-up because of a newborn baby. Eventually it was my turn and I sat in the dentist's chair while the dental surgeon (this Chinese man) did all sorts of things with all these gadgets (one was called a 'gun') that went whiizzzzzzzz and sssssssssssssissssssss... He told me to close my eyes while he attached the stuff and put these things in my mouth to keep it open. It was entertaining listening him talk to his staff though.

"Could you pass me the *(&*&( Diane?"
"My name's Denise"
"Oh sorry about that! I'm sure I called you Denise in the morning though didn't I?"
"Yip you did. Don't worry, I've been called heaps of things. My nickname's Deedee."

and later on...

"I'm not wearing my glasses"
"That's a bit of worry!"

I ended up choosing navy blue braces with the help of the dentist who told me that most guys chose that colour.

After an hour it was all done. I was given some wax to put on my teeth if it got a little dry and told to take my time to brush and not to eat lollies. I asked about ice-cream and soft drinks and they said it should be OK as long as I don't have too much.

I managed to get home half an hour before open day, grab my stuff and go on to school. When I got to school I was given a really large group to take around (I think about 15 people/5 families?) and it was a little difficult as some families were slower than others, and I kept having to hold the group up to wait for one to catch up, or run between rooms making sure they all knew where they were going. Interestingly three of the parents I showed around were ex-students (including one former head-girl!) who said not much had changed at our school since they had been there! Then they saw a teacher through a window:

"Oh my gosh!!! Mr Bradley!!!!"

My group was cut in half when some had to leave for the intermediate school choir festival, and after an hour I finished one tour! Since I couldn't eat with my braces, I went straight on with my next tour, but only got half way through that before having to go back to the hall for the principal's address and Heather and my speech to the parents. I was afraid we'd have to speak to an empty hall, but remarkably it was near-full! The speeches went well with the principal having a lot to say! Afterwards I went to get my dinner, which I couldn't eat, so I grabbed what I could so I could take home to feed my family :D

Overall the open evening went well with a good turnout!

All for Charity

Today a few of us prefects and some 2007 prefects went to Alexandra Park to help unpack heaps of books and stack them on shelves for this Children's Variety Book Fair. Chen, Zahir and I were working on the same table, rearranging books within the banana boxes they came in. We were working so fast, having done over 5 fully loaded tables of boxes! As we were going along someone (can't remember who) came over and told us were supposed to put the books in different boxes! So we had wasted over an hour rearranging these books! I hope they still give our school some money! (They said they'd give our school some money to buy blazers for prefects next year, don't ask me how that works!) Us guys decided to take a break before correcting our huge mistake, so we crossed the road to the Noodle Box to have a feed while Lindsey, Evan and the girls started to fix the books we had done. I'm so sorry guys!
We had some chips at the place. When we came back though everyone was leaving! That was our hard day's work anyway. It felt good helping out a bit, and it was also good to see others getting stuck in, when on most occasions you get people making excuses for why they can't make it to something outside of school hours or complaining about how they have to spend their time doing stuff..

I found out one of my bestest friends is going to study veterinary science down in Palmerston North earlier than I expected next year, which means I've got to catch up with her in the holidays before she leaves! I haven't seen her in a while so we've got a few things we have to do when we meet again: 1) Bear hug 2) (apple) Pie eating contest 3)...

I also had a bit of a mishap with another of my bestestest buddies when I accidentally forgot to sign out and she thought I was ignoring her but we sorted that out SO SORRY ABOUT THAT!

Later tonight I went over to my cousin Greg's house who was able to print out some stuff for me in colour. Our printer is only black and white and when our new colour printer ran out of black and white ink (and we didn't bother refilling it) the nozzles got clogged and meant we'd have to pay money to buy something extra to unclog it, so it's kinda useless to us now.

We talked a bit about how school has been going and stuff, and we're going to try see if we can get something between Rutherford and Henderson High going! Obviously Rutherford will reign but it'd be good to prove it to him ;)

Interesting Week

RIP SARENA

No Hyun I meant our fish :P Our second to last surviving goldfish died yesterday (six months after the last), leaving the only survivor to be Rydia! When trying to determine the cause, one stood out: our new water filter. We're not too sure if we had put it in a place where it was pumping too much water that it's force killed the fish. Or...the goldfish was just old...

I haven't updated all week mainly because of my HISTORY ASSESSMENT which took me all week to finish and had me end up staying up till 4.30 yesterday morning trying to complete it. I had to do this tourist guide on a NZ historical site.

Anyway this week we met our new principal Mr Moore from Westlake. Sure he's a bit different to Mr Edmeades, and is more strict (tucking in shirts, socks up, please and thank you, blablabla) but that's what our school needs! People have also been criticising him for making the whole school learn the school song Me Hui Hui but it wasn't actually his idea! Anyway I was surprised when he had a meeting with prefects yesterday and he asked if anyone had questions. I said I did, and he said

"Yes Calum?"

I was just like woah cool he knows my name! Yeah! Anyway he's made quite a few changes to the school already within the first week and it'll be interesting to see if there'll be any effects along down the line.

I thought I had completed my physics assignment a week earlier when I finished it before school started, and I was so eager to prove to everyone that I was back on track with physics since I had missed out on attending heaps of classes, until today I realised I had misread the units of the values in the question! I'm always doing stupid things like that.

Last night I went to this church ball in Te Atatu Peninsula where Aonghas and I played french music on the accordion as people walked in for the first hour. It was going well for a while till one of my bass notes got stuck and we had to end up playing three pieces each and then swapping accordions.
We played ten minutes extra (free of charge!) and afterwards went in to enjoy the ball. Aonghas had a partner and all his friends came (a lot of year 11s), whereas for me there were only a couple year 13s, and half of them left halfway through! I caught up with a few old friends like Sam, Andrew and Matthew.
I did a bit of dancing with Yvia and her friends. Yvia taught me some dance moves which I'll try see if I can remember! I was a horrible dancer! Lucky I didn't drop her!
Most of the night though I was a bit of a loner since there weren't that many people I was close to, and what made it worse was them playing songs like LOVE is in the air! There was good food though, like that nice cheese with biscuits, and punch. I also talked a little to Christine who reassured me that having braces would be fine. We're gonna be METAL BUDDIES! (we both wear glasses...well she does occasionally and we'll both have braces!)

Now that history is complete, all I have to do this weekend is get the prefects display for open day sorted, write a report for the Smales Farm thing, complete all my scholarship application forms (from the words of Mrs Taylor: Bring them on Monday Calum, and don't be late like you usually are!"), write a report for Mr Coughlan on our reflection of the first half of the year, a profile of myself for the principal, a speech for open evening and huff help out with this charity event on Sunday to try earn some money for the school!

Boy in Town

On Friday I got to go in to the city with Hamish for the first time without my parents! Yeah I know heaps of people my age have been doing that since they were how old but for me I've never really had any need to go into the city. However, that day I had to go in for my industry visit to AJ Park, this Intellectual Property law firm.

Hamish and I caught the motorway bus, which was fun! I just practised my Chinese speech while waiting to get there. We got off outside of Aotea Square and I originally thought Hamish was going to show me where the Quay Tower was, but instead he was about to walk off to university to buy his coursebooks! He told me the Quay Tower was down the other side of Queen St! So I had to walk all the way down Queen St in 15 minutes! On the way there, there were about three firetrucks (one with a cherry pick) surrounding this office building with onlookers all crowded around. I couldn't see any smoke or fire, and no time to anyway as I had to rush to the Quay Tower! I didn't want to be late as I didn't really know what to expect, and wanted to make a good impression by being early at least!

I finally made it to the Quay Tower and went up to level 14. I was greeted by the receptionist and asked to have a seat. There was already this Asian girl there reading some magazines so I assume she was the other girl from Westlake. I just sat down opposite her and grabbed a newspaper and started waving it, trying to cool myself (I was wearing 5 layers of clothing yesterday, expecting a cold day!) We didn't say much till I asked her if we were meant to bring anything and then we started a conversation before the guy from AJ Park invited us in.

We went into their boardroom and the guy went through the whole patent/copyrighting/trademarking process with us. After that we went on a tour around the level meeting the different patent attorneys. They were all really friendly and they all had their own offices or cubicles. Some had boxes of counterfeit goods!

After the tour we went down to the cafe at ground level and had a coffee. I told them I had only drunk coffee once or twice before and so I just got the same as what Jade (the Westlake girl) got. After that we went back up. It was only then that I realised I left my folder under my chair at the cafe! So I went all the way back down to retrieve it, but it wasn't there! I asked the lady at the counter and she told me security had it. That was lucky!

After a bit more explaining and learning we finished a bit earlier than we were supposed to. Since I was supposed to meet Hamish at Britomart by 5pm but Jade was going to catch her bus outside the Town Hall and there was half an hour left, I just decided to walk with her back up Queen St, and so we got to know each other a bit more. I've been working on my conversation skills! hahaha Once she caught her bus I walked back down Queen St again (three times in one day!) and met Hamish at 5.01pm which wasn't bad timing!

Our bus was going to leave at 5.15pm so I had time to go to the toilet. Now the toilet is no ordinary toilet, it's one of those automatic ones! As soon as you push the button the electric doors slide shut and music starts playing. While I was dealing with nature, there was the music playing in the background... what the world needs now, is love, sweet love...That was really cool!

I can't wait till uni now, getting to go into the city everyday and walk around and do stuff with all that freedom!

Why Asian Guys Get Less White Chicks

If you want to know why, check out this video!