A Taste of my own Medicine!

I was supposed to go to this social get-together with the MEDSCI study group that I had joined only a couple weeks ago but since my mum was home today I wasn't allowed out today which was a little sad since I really wanted to get to know some new people and make a few more friends!

 

Later that night I went back to my old school Rutherford College to perform in their final Studio Show for the year. I was waiting in the music room (which is kinda like backstage for the hall ever since they knocked down the theatre and started having Studio Shows in the hall!) and just hanging out with Aonghas, Janet and Ji Eun, these Korean girls. Janet was runner up in Rutherford Idol a couple years ago and won the music section of the Talent Quest last year (so you should get an idea of how great a singer she is!) while Ji Eun is like the resident pianist at Rutherford (despite there being some new Korean international student who is apparently really good!!). 

 

Aonghas and I decided to wear our matching Cotton On dress shirts (the one I wore to the Scholars' Assembly earlier this year which Angie called weird!) along with these Chinese hats with pompoms on the top of them to go with the Chinese song we were playing. It has some Chinese name so I'm not too sure if we translated it correctly - Beijing News to the Frontier Village...yeah doesn't really make any sense! Our performance wasn't too bad and we got through it all right (or most of it!).

 

Anyway the interesting (or should I say weird?) part tonight was when I got asked by Janet if I used to like #(&$(&*&# (I won't name names!). I tried asking her where she heard this from and she said she talks to year 13s at her school, which is the same year level that  #(&$(&*&# is in, so it was either her or someone else! Last year people around school kept making things up about me liking #(&$(&*&#  as well but I've been trying to put a stop to it and to find out someone is still telling people...if it's you and you're reading this, I will find out!!!! I probably won't do anything to you though...

 

To add to this, Janet and Ji Eun started speaking to each other in Korean, pointing to me. When I thought I heard something I asked what was the gossip, you know, just to join in(!) when they told me it was about me...and some girl...who's Asian, plays the flute, guitar and piano...:S

 

Now I know what it feels like! But I'm not a gossiper I swear!!

Confudiddlibimbambuzzled

So holidays have officially started. While I've been TRYING to do a bit of study, I've ended up making a stupid bet with a little girl and been made even more confused by another!

On Sunday I had church in the morning. We woke up a little late and Aonghas had spent quite a bit of the previous night staying up doing some video work on the computer so he sort of slept in. My mum drove Hamish and me to church, but she thought we were really really late, and so she ditched us and let us go to church by ourselves! So I was hoping at least Angie would be coming to church as she spent her last txt replying to mine the night before telling me she'd be coming if I was going! I suppose her mum told her that there would be no Sunday school for the next two weeks though!

In the weekend as well I had this conversation with this girl who for some reason is angry at me. I tried to sort it out again, asking her what was wrong. I suspect it's because people tell me all sorts of stuff about what goes on at their school and some of it involves her...so I pretty much bent over backwards to try reassure her that I didn't let it affect what I thought of her and it didn't change anything, but she just kept telling me she didn't care and that it wasn't any of her business and I could listen to whatever I wanted. In a similar fashion to how the two preceding conversations ended, she went offline without saying any more!

I've been good friends with this girl for the past four years and suddenly now for some reason everything has changed! I have no idea why and have done my best to keep our friendship going but I'm just so confudiddlibimbambuzzled! Is this what guys mean by girls being so confusing and difficult to understand? I've tried and tried and now I'm just about to give up and let things be and if she still wants to be friends then so be it but if she doesn't, then...yeah...

Last night I went with Aonghas back to good old Rutherford College for the studio show rehearsal. I'm playing an accordion duet with him. Originally I was going to play cello with this other girl Shirley while she would be playing flute and someone else on piano, but she later told me she wasn't going to do it anymore. Anyway back to yesterday, it felt so weird being back! It was like I was a stranger there!

It's funny too how there are various phases in what people call you. At first people call you Hamish's brother. Next they call you Calum, and call Aonghas Calum's brother, or Head Boy's brother, and then the last phase is when they call you Aonghas's brother! It's happened to me both at Rangeview and now at Rutherford! It's not too bad though.

And finally, last night was also the lunar eclipse. I wasn't expecting much as I couldn't possibly imagine how the moon could look red, but sure enough it did! We were all standing outside, with Aonghas manning the camera on top of the tripod watching the moon sloooowly disappearing when Szelin, our neighbour came out in her sleeping gown and joined us. We were talking for a while when our other neighbour came out and told us to look for the lunar eclipse! A little ahead of him, but he meant well!

Just as we were about to go back inside, I had one final task. I stupidly made this bet for $10 with a 13-year-old girl Kar-mun who lives next door, that I could make her scream. Well she was heckling me! Anyway I quietly followed Szelin back home and sneaked into her bedroom and sat on her bed, but Kar-mun was still awake and texting! Although....she did make a quiet

AHH....

noise which I consider as a quiet scream but she contests that it wasn't a scream and that there is no such thing as a quiet scream!!

High School Musical at Henderson High!

On Saturday night I went to Henderson High School (yes into enemy territory!!) to go watch their school production High School Musical, which I must say is the coolest musical a school could do! In fact the day before at Rutherford Day the wife of one of the board of trustees members asked Aonghas and I to recommend to the right people that the school do High School Musical next year! We told them that Henderson High had beat us to it, and suggested that we should do High School Musical 2!

Anyway we got to the school just in time. We were seated in a row that was really really tight though! We figured out the reason for the tightness - the people sitting in front of us had pushed their bench back a bit! I ended up sitting diagonally just to give my legs some room!

The story went along the same lines of the movie (as expected!). The lead actor and actress were pretty good, with the actress playing Vanessa being the best singer in the cast. However, probably the best in the cast (with not even a little bit of bias in this! ;) ) would have to be my cousin Janice, who played the crazy drama teacher! She was great! She didn't even need a microphone and I could still hear her! I was amazed at how she didn't crack up laughing even once on stage, as she's usually always smiling and laughing!

Prior to watching High School Musical at Henderson High there was only really one song I kinda liked - We're All in This Together....

But well done Henderson High! You've made me become addicted to High School Musical music! I even listened to the whole album the following night!!!!

45th Rutherford Day

On Friday it was the '45th Rutherford Memorial Day' as my invitation said! I never knew it was a memorial day! Anyway I got my mum to give me a slight trim and she ended up chopping the sides of my hair off my head so I once again ended up at Rutherford College with a weird haircut!

I was racing against time to capture a tape for the video camera as the one Aonghas did over night malfunctioned while dressing myself. Mr Moore the school principal had given me a new school tie to replace my tie that the school lost (but hey I'm not complaining! My one last year was plain! At least this one had some patterns! Woo!) I ended up wearing my head prefect uniform from last year excluding the blazer, as I couldn't think of anything else that would fit the 'formal dress' requirement. I thought my white shirt would look better than the stripy purple shirt that I wore to the Scholars' Assembly, which Angie called a bit..weird.. However, when I turned up to school I soon discovered I looked a lot like one of the prefects at school! In fact some people even thought I was a current student at the school!

Originally I was going to come to school earlier during morning tea so I could catch up with some of my friends, but once again being an Anderson I arrived just as interval ended! I passed all the senior students who were lining up and came across Alex and Angie, and as I got to the staffroom I met my year 12 English teacher Mrs Betanzo who asked me

(#1) "Oh hi Calum! Are you taking photos today?"

I replied that I was a guest . I caught up with Chen and the head students who directed me to the holding pen for guests (the music room). There were quite a few people who I didn't know in there! I was the odd one out, being the youngest and without my ex-co-head student Heather who was still down in Christchurch! This lady from AUT saw me , came up to me and asked

(#2) "Excuse me, do you know where the toilets are?"

I directed her to the staffroom while trying to hint that I didn't go to this school any more. That's when she asked me if I was an alumni.

While in the music room I had someone else ask me

(#3) "So you here to take photos today?"

I replied I was a guest. Quite a few people gave me odd looks when I told them that, and so I had to explain that I was last year's Head Boy.

Finally it was time to go into the hall. All us guests lined up ahead of the teachers and then we walked down the aisle as the jazz band performed on stage. Apparently the hold up was due to the guest speaker Dean Kent having just proposed to his girlfriend the night before!

It felt really weird to be sitting amongst the guests and staff when for so long you've been one of the ones on stage performing to them! Mr Moore gave a rousing speech at the beginning which was surprisingly pretty good, and this was followed by the choir singing The Rutherford Way Values Song that the music teacher Ms Faaea wrote in one night during one of the school production rehearsals! Now just like the rest of you upon hearing this I was a little sceptical as to how you could possibly write a song about something like that, but Ms Faaea seemed to pull it off! I ended up having that #@$*& song stuck in my head all weekend!

Dean Kent next gave his speech, which he managed to do off the top of his head! It was pretty amusing hearing about how he was a small white guy with no hope at all and soon had the opportunity to represent NZ in swimming. One of the funniest parts was when he went off in a tangent and started bagging Paris Hilton for being scum!

Chen thanked Dean Kent with his typical humorous speech and then it was followed by the Joseph cast and choir performing a medley of songs from the production and Janet performing a song by Norah Jones which got a really loud applause from the students.

The kapa haka group came up next to sing Me Hui Hui, the school song. Their guitarist wasn't present and so the music teacher was playing the piano. The group weren't too familiar with the arrangement and missed their cue though, and so an emergency guitar had to be sought to rescue the performance!

The Rutherford Day ceremony concluded with us walking down the aisle as the jazz band played. After I managed to catch up with Chen, Gwen, Alex and Zahir before being invited to the lunch for guests and staff. I managed to catch up with quite a few teachers, and talked to this student teacher who asked me

(#4) "So..you're like a year 13 student?"

To which I replied,

"No I'm a former student"

So the day turned out to be quite a feel-good day, albeit a little weird to have so many people mistake me for a current student at Rutherford!

Time for a...Slight Break!

Finally uni has come to an end for two weeks at least - it's the mid-semester break!! Well it officially starts on Saturday but I don't have any class tomorrow so I'll just start tomorrow!

It's about time too, as I've already started to get restless! At the beginning of the semester I told one of my friends that I was surprised I was staying awake in lectures and was surprised how full of energy I was, only to be told by my friend to wait till the end of the semester and see if things would be the same by then! Well he was right; I'm all tired and worn out!

I had two lectures this morning that I barely survived through, and then spent a couple of hours preparing for my MEDSCI lab in the library. After that I went over to Albert Park to have some lunch and enjoy the outdoors, when one of my uni friends Kevin unexpectedly came by and joined me! We just discussed our dire situation of being stuck studying a useless degree i.e. Health Science

"Most people who don't know what to study just do BCom, while we did Health Science!!"


Yep that's us! As soon as it hit 1pm I had to dash off to the Clock Tower to check out this Student Life Christian meeting thing that Ayesha (my ball partner way back in year 12! She's now a 2nd year law student) had been encouraging me to come to for the past few days. It was ..interesting, all about the differences between men and women. I also got to catch up with Ayesha after not having seen her since the ball way back then! (Well I've chatted to her just never had the chance to catch up with her in person since)

I then dashed off to my MEDSCI lab over in Grafton where we got to play with THE BRAAAAIIIN. That was...OK...We mainly just spent the three hour lab session identifying the different parts of the brain. Our brain had a tag BH42.

To conclude the first half of semester two, we had a test!

But yay now it's holidays now! Well...sorta...I've got four exams in the first four days back after the holidays so I'll have to be studying hard out!

Heather and Diane will be coming back up to Auckland during the holidays though so I'll have to catch up with them!