An EGGScellent Concert!

On Friday night my youth group and I attended the Epsom Girls Grammar School's music concert to support two of our group members Jenny and Cleo. Jenny is the concert master of her school's symphonia orchestra while Cleo plays the big bass drum in the orchestra. Originally Aonghas, Hamish and I would be joining our youth group to watch, but our mum decided to come at the last minute as she was concerned about Aonghas's ability to drive safely in wet conditions at night!

We initially had problems finding carparking and got stuck in a big jam in the school's driveway. We managed to turn the car around and head back out towards the exit of the driveway, with people in cars heading in the opposite direction asking us if all the carparks had been taken up. Poor people!

There was only about 10 minutes till the start of the show and we were still looking for a carpark, so we all jumped out while Aonghas and my mum went to find one. I went to try buy a ticket for my mum (tickets for our youth group had been pre-purchased) but it was all sold out! This other guy we had taken with us hadn't bought a ticket either! Fortunately not too long after everyone had entered the theatre there were either some spare seats or they had added extra seats. Big phew!

I managed to get a seat right at the the top, right at the back of the theatre. This was a good position as there was a railing and I'd be able to lean on it as I filmed the show! I was next to a girl from the school who was filming with the school's camera. She saw me and asked

"Hey you're from Jenny's fellowship aye?"

I told her I was and asked her how she knew. She said,

"Oh I met your brother at Polyfest earlier this year."

I had to tell her that it was me she met! Wow did she think I looked older?

The show started off with a couple of jazz and stage bands performing, one from the school and one from another school, Sancta Maria College, who were guest artists. There were some quite catchy tunes, and I was amazed at just how many brass musicians a girls' school has!

The Epsom Symphonia, the group our youth group had come to see finally performed just before the break. They performed two pieces, 'Dance of the Clowns' by Mendelssohn, and 'Danzon No. 2' by Marquez.

Jenny, as the concert master, came on stage last and tuned the orchestra like a true pro. What was funny was that straight after Peter Thomas was announced as the conductor, Jenny walked on stage! I'll probably call her Peter from now on!

The orchestra was pretty huge, especially when you compare it to what we've been used to at Rangeview, which is an orchestra of 10-13 people!

Cleo was all the way in the back corner with the percussionists. I could just see her!

The orchestra's performances were pretty good, and Jenny even had her own little solo in the middle of 'Danzon', their second piece! Go Jenny!! I heard some of our youth group attempted a Mexican wave but failed. If only I was with them so I could join in!

During the break I met up with this new girl in our youth group who only recently came to New Zealand and is learning English. I'm going to get her to help me with my Chinese and I'll try help her with her English!

The most of the second half of the show was made up of performances by concert bands from both schools, ending with a combined concert band performing music from the 'Chronicles of Narnia' movie.

To end the night in true Oddfellows fashion, we hijacked the foyer to take a group photo!

It's always really cool going to support someone you know, and it sorta makes you proud seeing them on stage doing so well, and being able to say you know them too! ;)

Stress Replaced with Boredom

It's now three days into the holdiays for me! No more studying or thinking about pharmacy for another three weeks! Well that's the ideal scenario, but it's likely that I'll end up doing some before next semester, especially when resutls come out! :S

After my first MEDSCI exam a couple Saturdays ago, I had my next chemistry exam on the following Tuesday, so I spent all of the days in between studying for that. Chemistry was....so-so? I really don't know! My pharmaceutics exam was then the following Thursday, which left me with a day and a bit to study.

On the night of the Tuesday my second exam was held, my old intermediate school were holding a music evening. The music teacher at the school still keeps in touch with us, and emailed us to invite us to come watch. In past years I've always been meaning to attend but exams have usually gotten in the way. This time because it's been so long since I last talked to the music teacher I decided to come watch the visit.

The theme of the music evening was animals, and so there were songs like 'What's the Time Mr Wolf'...you get the idea! When the show started with all of us being asked to stand as we sing the national anthem, I thought how Rangeview Intermediate hasn't changed one bit in eight year since I last attended! As the night went on though I could see that it's definitely changed!

For a start a big surprise was the performance of the school's Korean drum group. It may have just been drumming, but it was pretty catchy drumming! The school has also been trying to keep with the times and had a few students playing electric guitar/bass to accompany the choir. The orchestra was pretty good for an intermediate school orchestra, and was probably bigger than it was when I was there.

The recorder ensemble was pretty cool. I listened to it, wishing my students could play that well! Then again they are half their age...

Another big surprise was one young Korean boy, who played a violin solo which was very impressive. He probably got the biggest applause of the night!

It's quite different watching an intermediate school concert though compared to, say, a secondary school concert as you have to constantly remind yourself just how young these kids are! When you're 20 and you have these 11 and 12 year olds you certainly feel much older! You could tell quite a few of the boys' voices hadn't broken yet!

I went to see Ms Rai, the music teacher afterwards, and she was still happy to see us again. She's still got photos of past orchestras as well as me and the newspaper article I featured in on the wall beside the front door of her classroom! She kept going on about Aonghas and me whenever anyone came in to the room!

We waited around with Ms Rai at the office as she had to keep an eye on a couple of students till their parents picked them up. She got quiet annoyed with them!

I spent the next day trying to cram for pharmaceutics, but I started to get frustrated, not being able to absorb anything! I had to go all the way to the Tamaki campus for that exam the following day, and it was not too great! They had only changed the exam format this year, which meant we had to answer short and long answer questions instead of multiple-choice questions! Within the first five minutes of the exam I could hear people sighing!

My final couple of exams were for pharmacotherapy, which is probably the hardest paper in 3rd year pharmacy! It's a full year paper, so we won't fail the paper if we fail these exams, but it helps to pass!

I had my oral exam on Monday. After that random encounter with the girl on the bus in the morning, it gave me a little boost to try do as well as I could! Throughout the weekend prior to that day I was beginning to give up as I just couldn't remember anything and it wasn't sticking with me.

While my oral exam was scheduled for 2.15pm, I arrived in the morning and hung around in the computer room/Information Commons with some of the other pharmacy people waiting for others who had their oral exams earlier to come out and find out what disorders they got. It was a bit of a process of elimination! The room was filled with all these nervous, well-dressed people!

Eventually it was my time to go up. I was with a group of people who had their oral exams at the same as me. We were first put in a room together where we were given two cases, and twenty minutes to prepare for them. The two disease I was given were duodenal ulcer (yessss!!) and Crohn's disease (uuuggghhhh). All I could manage in 20 minutes were scribbles all over my paper!

For my first case I went into this room with this female examiner who will be our course co-ordinator next year as well as a pharmacy intern who had only recently graduated. This lady was scary! Apparently she made the girl before me cry! (She didn't upset her, I think the girl was just scared of her!) I got into a bit of a sticky situation with this case, as I screwed up the treatment and went blank. I tried saying I was having blanks and couldn't remember!

My second case was a lot better...I hope.... The guy in my second case had osteoarthritis which I know more about than the others, as well as peptic ulcer disease, which I was able to read up on. This time the intern asked me the questions. Because she went through the list, sometimes I had answered some of the questions before she had asked me. She would then asked me the questions I had already answered, which meant I ended up repeating myself. We finished ahead of time though, and I was about to leave before the examiners told me I had to wait till the whistle blew. I sat back down and an awkward silence followed...

Finally FINALLY my last exam was on Wednesday. This time it was the written exam for pharmacotherapy. After the oral exam most of us just felt like holidays had already started (or wanted them to anyway!). By now I had sorta given up, or was struggling with thoughts of giving up! I did do my best to study as much as I can though. The exam wasn't as bad as I thought, but then again I went into both the oral and written exam thinking I wouldn't be able to answer anything. Therefore anything else would definitely be better than expected!

I swear 85% or even more of what I wrote in my exam was rubbish! If I was to implement any of my patient care plans in real life I would've killed my patient by now! I don't hold high hopes for that exam, nor the oral exam, but I won't worry about it till I get the results back...

To end the semester, I jumped on the computers after exams only to be joined by Susannah, a pharmacy friend after, and Chi not too long after. We were just talking about random stuff when they discovered they were both in the same intermediate school class but hadn't realised till now! What a discovery!...And how sad is it that you don't remember people you attended intermediate school with!

To finish off the end of semester, I went and bought Wendy's, but had to catch the bus before I could eat the burger. The only thing...I caught the wrong bus, the one which happened to take over an hour to get to my area by travelling down too many side streets! I just wanted to get off as soon as possible so I could eat my burger!

The King is Dead

RIP MICHAEL JACKSON

I was hoping this wouldn't be his last unconfirmed death (remember all those other ones?), but it turns out this is the one that would be confirmed. What a sad day! First it was Farrah Fawcett (of Charlie's Angels fame) earlier today, and now Michael.

I have many memories of Michael Jackson and his music. In almost every school social, disco, and ball you could expect his music to be played! Moonwalk competitions would be held, impersonators would perform...complete Michael Jackson craziness.

I could also remember his tour to Auckland in the mid-90's (I didn't go but saw it on TV), especially his shiny gold spacesuit, and all those crazy screaming people!

Anyway, as someone somewhat distastefully commented on the NZ Herald Your Views section,

"Michael Jackson didn't just touch the kids, he touched the whole world with his music."

Rest in peace Michael Jackson, and may your music live on!

A Kiss from a Stranger

I had a weird experience on the bus on Monday morning on the way to uni. I got on and was about to sit down when this girl across the aisle said 'hi' and asked where I was going, and I told her I was going to uni. I swear I saw her holding a joint...on board a bus!

Anyway I thought that was it and decided to have a read through one of my pharmacy reference books as I was having my oral exam (osce) later that day. She then came over and sat next to me and asked me what I was reading. I happened to be reading up on asthma treatment, and so she started talking to me about her family and everything.

We were approaching New Lynn when she started telling me about how she just recently broke up with her boyfriend because he kept cheating on her. She then jokingly said I could be her boyfriend!

As the bus pulled into the New Lynn bus terminal, she got my number (I don't think she has a phone though?) and asked me if I wanted a kiss. This caught me by surprise and I was left going

"uhhhhhhh...."

trying to figure out what I was supposed to say or do next! That's when she kissed me on the cheek before getting off the bus! She just happened to put on some lipstick before doing that, so I made sure it was all gone before I got to uni!

Well that was a bit weird and unexpected! It's not often you get kissed by a random girl on the bus...

Twittering Away!

Wow I just found out you can send and receive 'tweets' from Twitter for free on your mobile (thanks Jennifer)! That's pretty cool! Now I admit I didn't get what all this fuss and hype over Twitter was all about, and I sorta still don't, but when it's free, who cares!

So if you've got a Twitter account then follow me at http://www.twitter.com/euraznboy and I might return the favour!