No, no, I’m not leaving civilisation for a year – I’m just off to Taiwan/Japan for a month, and that’s what my luggage looks like. 90% of what I’m taking consists of “western food goodies” and other New Zealand-produce like sheep wool scarves and boots. The 2x party packs of salt and vinegar chips are for my godmother, because apparently they don’t have s&v flavoured chips in Taiwan?! Plus, chocolate just makes a solid, relatively cheap gift – I mean, who doesn’t love chocolate?

Among the slightly less expected items were milo – I’ve got four heavy packs of those in there somewhere, for my mum’s friend in Kyoto who’s kindly offering me and my friend a place to stay next month when we fly over. And Ugg boots. Apparently they’re all the rave in Taiwan during their winter at the moment, and my godmother’s very picky and wanted NZ-made ones, with proper wool, instead of the cheaper, Made-In-China alternative.

I think the most annoying thing is the fact that my flight is at 11:45pm tonight – making today pretty redundant. Asides from my last minute packing and tidying my room, I haven’t really been able to do much today. Although, I think Charlotte’s coming around for goodbye hugs and to snip my fringe. It really, really needs a cut. But I’m too scared to do it myself!

I think the main upside to my luggage being occupied by edible and space-consuming gifts is the fact that after I arrive, my bag will become virtually empty, allowing me to go craaaazy with shopping; this is mostly important because university will be kicking off a couple of days after I return, and I don’t know how I am going to cope with mufti everyday for the rest of my life! Blog entries full of newly-bought goodies and yummy foods and sights from Taiwan/Japan soooon. If all goes well, by this time tomorrow I will have in my possession a very funky pair of somethings that I’ve lusted after for aaaages now, look out!

Whilst making all the new headers for my random image rotation banner, I remembered that I hadn’t posted this photo! It’s one of my favourite in a long time. I spied this couple from the 2nd floor of the Downtown mall foodcourt one night when me and my friend David were in search of a soft serve for him. We had a window seat and I thought they were super cute standing there in the empty square hugging that I had to snap a pic. The look of them almost makes me very, very lonely, until my non-committal phobias kick in, haha. The overlay-looking effect is the reflection of the foodcourt chairs in the window I’m looking through.

I went to a friend’s 18th birthday party last night, but I don’t have any pictures because I didn’t take a camera (she has plenty, so I’ll steal and post some later, maybe). It’s kind of funny because all her birthday parties year after year are like the same event. With virtually the same people. Except every year we’re all a little older, a little rowdier, and of course alcohol was suitably pulled out last night. I drove so didn’t really drink much – but they made some crazy-ass punch!

The other, completely irrelevant thing on my mind is the fact that, as luck would have it, the first, serious tattoo I’ve actually contemplated in a certain place… already graces the body of Erin Wasson. Now that’s hard to top. Except hers is upside down to what I’d like. To have you having to google-imaging it, I’ll stop being mysterious and say that the item in question is a feather. I haven’t drawn up anything of substance, but I want a light-looking feather, and I want half of the chinese character of **for some reason my WP won’t let me publish a chinese character so click here for it** (meaning feather, in case you hadn’t already guessed) blended in, subtly. See how the word even looks a little feather-like? And it’s relevant because it’s in my chinese name, as wel as symbolising a lot of things. Ahh, now I just need the decisiveness, guts and pain-tolerance!

**Edit: It’s 3am in the morning and I’m not bothered to write a new entry, but the good news is I’ve changed the theme and I have a random image rotation on the head banner; so you can refresh to see almost 30 odd pictures! I may or may not delete/add some more later**

This is such an image-heavy post that I’m not even sure where to begin recalling my past week of events! But I’m counting on the theory of chronology to help me out here:

We left for Raglan on Tuesday, but I’d stayed up to some ridiculous hour on Monday night – well into the early morning – and it was raining all night, with general terrible weather. Thankfully the rain had cleared up a bit by Tuesday morning, and more so when we headed South-West towards Raglan, the first 3 photos are from the beach on the Tuesday:

Everything asides from the crap weather that returned on Wednesday, and my ever-worsening cold was great: the campsite was awesome and it was set up so you could park right next to your tent (instead of the sort with a separate carpark); we were lucky enough to get a spot right next to all the vital facilities like toilet, shower, bbq, etc. On the second day due to my cold and our lack of wetsuits, Charlotte and I opted to stay out of the choppy waves down at the surf beach, but my sister and her friend Caryn dived straight in with some rented boards that were $35 for 3.5 hours. We were all so tired from either surfing or going on an huuge walk down the beach (it’s a very, very long beach, we found out) that we all collapsed and went to sleep halfway through our poker game that night. I haven’t had the chance to get the photos off Charlotte’s camera yet, but she has the other half of photos, which include the huge sand dune that we decided to scale whilst the youngsters surfed. Soft sand is very, very difficult to climb – but the leaps down felt amazing!

The photo on the right is of the Bridal Veil Falls, which we visited on our drive back to Auckland. I believe the sign said it was a 55m drop – and evidently we didn’t feel like taking the half an hour walk down… and back uuuuup.

Upon arrival home, Liv and I cleaned all the sand out of our bags and flopped down on the couch for some much needed rest – I shot the Peaches gig that night too, except I haven’t yet had a chance to sort those photos yet.

The very next day I awoke to my paranoia of forgetting something important as I was leaving to attend Auckland’s Big Day Out. Usually I would’ve packed light – sunnies, money, ticket and phone in pocket, but this year I was photographing for Cheese On Toast (who had offered and gotten me my first fancy-looking media pass that had my name pre-printed and all!). Here are some shots of acts that I’m sure most people will recognise, the rest are up at CoT! (Hopefully I’ll put some up soon as well… although such publication is a bit iffy…)

To be honest, I’d always thought Muse was good, but I had been quite indifferent and definitely didn’t constitute myself as a fan. But that changed after photographing them – I was completely blown away. It was just so EPIC, intense and insane.

Ironically, this is my favourite Muse photo:

Lily Allen:

Sophia Burns of The Veils – she’s stunning, it was a mission to get her face though, with the shoe-gazing bassing stance:

Ladyhawke & what I found beyond the media room beneath the stadium stands – the stadium changing rooms had been converted to the bag check area, and all the rooms and bathroom walls were lined with numbers and bags against the wall in numerical number; here’s a photo of the main corridor:

Jet:

Joshua Third from The Horrors – once again, trying to get his face was such a mission, but I eventually got quite a few, here’s two I like of him:

At the end of the night my sister got a shot of me in my bright orange photo vest. I never wore it apart from when I was in the pit because the fabric was quite rough, and plus it got pretty hot. Although, the one time I’d left it on whilst trying to find my wallet in the shade, soooooo many people stopped to ask me for directions for things… obviously they couldn’t read the “PHOTO 19″ on the back of my vest and assumed I was an event guide – who were in florescent yellow vests scattered throughout the stadium. There were so many of them I couldn’t figure out why anyone ever thought to tap on the shoulder of the girl who was evidently having trouble juggling 2 heavy cameras with 3 lenses digging in her bag! Following that, I had to work both days of the weekend and my shoulders were completely rubbed, raw and soooo sore. But it was definitely quite an experience – front row punters were all jealous, and they all had some misconception that I want to take a photo of everyone of them… haha.

Completely irrelevantly, today my mother bought me a belated graduation gift. It’s a turquoise Thomas Sabo bracelet, and thoroughly appropriate for the occasion, as we were barely just discussing how she hadn’t quite yet found something I could keep close to me all the time. When I spotted the bracelet it immediately reminded me of mum because she has a custom silver cuff with the same stone embedded in the centre of it from Japan when she was about my age – and I’ve been borrowing it for about the past six months. Ahh I’m so in love with this, it adds some sparkle to my silver and monotone jewellery, yay!

I’d totally forgotten about my plight with these shortbread cookies until I was cleaning out the memory card and found photos which my mum took of them. These were the nicest batch, and dare I say, my batch that I’d mixed from scratched and made myself. I know, I know, shortbread is freaking easy to make, but it was more the fact that I actually went to the effort of making them that’s really worth something – I’m really lazy and generally don’t enjoy much baking/cooking, etc…

Anyway, the story behind these Christmas shortbread cookies was that I’d made them to give to friends who I simply couldn’t afford to buy Christmas presents for. The problem was, at some point, mum took over mixing the ingredients, and she’d doubled all the ingredients except the flour! But being the amazing cook she is (and me the shitty one), she didn’t like the idea of me entertaining the idea that perhaps she’d done something wrong in the process, as the mix was just faaar too soft to even cut up! Thus began the tedious task of refrigerating them back and forth until I had finally shaped them all and baked them. It wasn’t until much later that she suddenly had a lightbulb moment and went “OH…” haha.

Those who managed to eat some in the end said they were good anyway; but I felt a little bad that there were many friends I’d failed to deliver to, just because we were never home when I was free or had the shortbread with me!

In other matters, tomorrow I’m driving down with a friend, my sister and her friend to Raglan for a couple of nights. We’ll be camping at the local holiday park, and who knows, I might even brave it out and attempt to surf. Maybe. I’ve always wished I could surf… although unfortunately the weather at the moment isn’t looking too fantastic, I’m just hoping it clears up soon, but it’s a guaranteed good trip in general! In fact, this is shaping up to be an exciting week overall: Tues-Thurs is Raglan, Thursday night I will be photographing the Peaches gig (I’m actually quite gutted that I’m missing out on The Mint Chicks because it’s on the same night), and Friday will entail about 14hours of photographing Auckland’s Big Day Out. Not to mention I can’t get out of shifts at work for both Saturday and Sunday…

To be honest, I just can’t wait to see what whacky shots we come up with on the trip and how good proper stage lighting will make my gig photos; so please, please, please all have your fingers and toes crossed for me that my sore throat gets better ASAP!

So our beach day didn’t quite go according to plan when the weather soured with cold windy gusts and rain. So when the weather finally cleared up the other day, Charlotte and I took a quick drive down to a beach that I used to visit a lot as a kid, and spent the afternoon laxing in the sun and chatting. It was just a good day, but we didn’t do anything exciting really, and I only took two pictures (one of which is below). I think the funniest thing that happened on our excursion was when we decided to go to Momo’s (an asian bubble tea place) in our beach gear on our way home – upon entry the waitress gave us the most inquisitive, rude look, as if we weren’t allowed to be in there or something… very strange. The same thing happened when we tried to order and pay our check. A friend of mine said, “well, you know, asians don’t go to the beach!” (but he’s asian, so that’s not really racist… hahaa).

I was surprised to find a wayward branch full of the prettiest, yellowy-pink roses that had swayed out onto the footpath in our front garden when I got home as well. Ah, pleasant surprises.

I’m actually in a bit of a crisis at the moment: our family’s decided that our huge yard (along with 2 side hedges) just costs far too much time/money to maintain – think mowing lawns, weeding, trimming hedges, and the regular garden bag service to take it all away – so we want to sell our house and move into a bigger one with a smaller, more tameable garden. This, and with my quickly-approaching departure date of January 26th as mum’s deadline for me to clear my rubbish out, has led me to pour the entire contents of my desk drawers and shelves out. A lot has already gone into the paper recycling and rubbish, but I honestly cannot move around my room, let alone try and sleep (my bed is worse than when this picture was taken). I even slept on the couch after getting home at 3am from Sumadayze. Anyway, the point of this picture was to show how luxurious my cat is, even in moments of chaos – he’s managed to snuggle up and sleep on two (apparently quite pricey, as I’m pillow-picky and can’t sleep otherwise) pillows! What a cutie.

As if my room wasn’t enough to deal with, I procrastinated in my sleeplessness, and sharpie’d myself a Cheap Monday tee shirt:

I must say, although it’s severe cheating, I was quite happy with how my free-hand skull drawing went. And I’d screwed up one sleeve whilst tearing it, but I’ve split the sleeves on both sides (the idea courtesy of Charlotte) and it’s nice and loose, and rather beachy. Maybe I’ll go and confuse the waitress at Momo’s again with my bikini underneath, tehe.

Now, I’ve never been much of a bag person – in fact, anyone that knows me well enough will have been asked “can I put my stuff in your bag?” when out and about with me. Anywhere, anytime, I enjoy my pockets, thus making my leather jacket a staple with any pocket-less dress or garment that I wear. I remember the two summers spent in black skinny jeans and band shirts with the boys, walking to and from the mall everyday, with only my phone, eftpos card and house key stuck to my leg in the sticky sort of sweat that tells you such jeans are a bad idea for summer. Such idiocy has served me well – I’ve never fussed over bag checks at events since I’ve never had one! Until I started carrying cameras around…

Anyway, the point is, I’ve fallen head over heels in love with this Melie Bianco bag, which is saying a lot since I don’t even have a habit of using bags… but with the conversion rate plus shipping fees, it totals to about $145 NZD, which is a huge ask for someone who wouldn’t even have that much in their wallet/card that will be potentially going into this bag, ha. I don’t know if I’ll end up getting it, but the black, the studs – it’s all just so tempting for me. In the meantime, I’ve promised myself to definitely not get it until at least after my trip to Taiwan/Japan, where I will undoubtedly be assaulted by an uncharacteristic lust for hot leather in the form of bags!

So these are infamous shorts that I scored for $20 at Glassons on Boxing Day. The look much better when worn, but I didn’t feel like having my tum, legs and arse in the pictures – most especially since I just became very well acquainted with dinner. I really wished that I had a “before” photo now, just for comparison’s sake; but I wasn’t exactly anticipating on spending that much time personalising them.

They started off a completely hole and tatter-free, with the bottom hem in the typical style of being folded up with the sides sewn up to secure the fold. I hated how that looked because I’d always associated light denim with rips and holes, so I’ve never actually worn them out in their original state! The most difficult part of tearing up the folded bit was first having to use scissors and a seam ripper to get it undone – who knew Glassons was so intent on keeping their shorts intact? It was a bit rough at first, but eventually I got the hang of making the tattered, holey bits without actually putting a proper hole through – slashing the denim in the direction of the white threads worked wonders, and my personal favourite touch is the triangular hole on my right thigh (you can’t really tell in that picture, but the triangle’s more distinct when worn).

Then last night I had a huge spout of sleeplessness, and decided to stud my back bum pocket. The only reason I chose the right was because I’d put a few slashes in the left and didn’t want to ruin it… but discovered today that, apparently I usually instinctively slide my phone into my right bum pocket, oops, pocket no more! I’d have to admit that the studding was probably the cause of most of the sleeplessness past 3am, since I sat in bed doing it, but I hate starting something and not finishing it, so I persisted for much longer, since the studs were so hard to align properly!

Mum walked in this morning and joked that I’d raised the value of my shorts to $80 and I laughed – but she’s right though, I see these things in stores for prices upwards of $100! On one hand, considering the trouble, I can see why people are willing to pay for this to be pre-done, but I had so much fun doing it and thinking these were only $20 that I’m glad I didn’t succumb to being ripped off. Pun unintended. Promise.

The first real concept of “2010″ was embedded in my head by a b-side song of the same name by the Mint Chicks on their limited edition white vinyl, which was complimentary with tickets to their farewell tour in 2007. Having just said that, I actually had to ask a friend to confirm which year it was because I simply cannot believe how fast time has flown. Then, I was 16, wishing to be 18, glamorously gig-hopping… and now I am theoretically where I had wanted to be.

I wish I could start this new chapter (and decade, as many like to speak of lately), with exciting, self-assured plans for the year to come, and effectively the future… but in all honesty, I just feel lost as hell. Why? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that in a negative, pessimistic kind of way – in fact I’m feeling very ambitious and hopeful for the future – but having just finished 7th form and effectively my last year of pretend-childhood, it seems that all of a sudden I ought to start taking myself and the things I do slightly more seriously. Currently, I am sitting on (almost literally… it’s in an envelope, in a folder under my seat) my acceptance letter the Jazz Performance major from university, and the attached form that I need to send back to formally accept my place; but I don’t know why I haven’t mailed it after an entire month of having received it. On one hand, sure, it was December, I had graduated only the day before the date on the letter; then it was work, Christmas chaos, followed by new years… and I could make excuses and say that I really hadn’t had the time, but really, I just hadn’t wanted to make it seem so realistic yet. Ultimately, when I sign, date, and mail the letter, it will have sealed my 5 years’ of deliberating my fate – I will be rejecting law school for jazz school. I’m excited and over the moon, yet shaking with fear over what that might entail. I’ve had so many lectures from people that “know better”, and I’d said to the last person (a family friend), “look, I’m sorry to be rude, but I haven’t made this decision overnight – I’ve thought and thought about it for five years, and I’ve heard what you’ve just said about a million times and I’ve taken it into consideration. More than taken it into consideration. Trust me. It’s Christmas, please leave it alone”… and needless to say the got the message; last I heard, he’d later said to my mother “well I can’t imagine she’d get as bored as she would in law school, I suppose”. Ha!

In irrelevant matters, I was going to make a post about a pair of $20 light denim shorts that I’d scored on Boxing Day; and ultimately chopped them up and diy’d some distress into it because I thought light denim just shouldn’t look primp and perfect… but I didn’t want to start off 2010 with some story about my afternoon with 2 knives and a piece of cardboard whilst on msn at the same time… so…

Beach tomorrow! It will be good. I will have photos. Aaaaand, watch this space, kids, I’m shooting Big Day Out!

My grandmother flew down from Taiwan a week ago and is spending Christmas with us this year; so in between my erratic Christmas shifts and gigs, my nights have been slotted full of silly banter whilst playing Rummikub. Work has been more stressful as of late, as the mall’s been far busier than usual (and I only get called into work on the hectic days). According to today’s newspaper front page, Christmas sales have been down significantly since last year, but at work it seems to be that most people are resorting to cafes to catch up with people, instead of actually spending money on presents for one another.

I’ve been stuck on the till for somewhere between 15-20 hours in the past 4 days alone, and so many things are really making my nerves tick. You know when you enter a store and the sales assistant greets you and ask, “Hi, how are you?” and if they linger for a response you usually respond with “good thanks” and keep browsing? Or, if they’re awful at their job and completely ingenuine, they’ll simply ask and move on before you respond… that’s all very well because it seems to be the routine for sales people. But what I truly cannot wrap my head around is about the 2/5 customers that approach me at the till and go “Hi how are you I’d like a flat white… etc…” – the painful lack of punctuation reflecting the exact way they speak – not even pausing to make their words a question or proper sentence. WHY do they open their sentences with “how are you” without really even making that a question?! Furthermore, even when you totally disregard the fact that it’s a completely redund
ant thing to say, it also makes me feel like a right prick because I’m the one who is supposed to be asking such things, and I don’t know whether or not I should even acknowledged that they’d said it at all?! On top of this, I think the usual 80% of people who say medium when I ask whether they’d like a small or large coffee (whilst pointing to the small, then large cup), has grown into about 90%. Is it really so hard to figure out that a middle-sized cup will not miraculously appear out of thin air, just because many womens’ conscience (or stupidity) seems much more satisfied when they think that they’re not getting a “large”. I give up, I truly do.

I’ve got so many more pet peeves accumulated from work over the past year, but it’s all been heightened over the last few days. It didn’t help that on Saturday morning I started work at 7am following a very late night out in town watching Yacht, who were supported by a crazy set by The Sneaks, and the alien-headed Kazaam Blam. The mere three-hour nap I took before rolling out of bed to get to work on time was simply not enough to refresh myself from having to get quite pushy and block the view of other people in order to get a decent shot of Yacht; their dance moves and craziness kind od reminded me of Karen O, but definitely nowhere as wild. Overall it was a good show, but it was a shame that my friend and I couldn’t stay until the very end of it, just because we were both sooo exhausted from work and Saturday the following would be much worse and busier.

I’ve picked out some photos from Yacht, click here for the full set:

It’s taken me two days to recuperate from my excitement-filled 18-hour day out on Tuesday: I’d spent the day lounging in the sun at the beach, followed by one of the best gigs of this year -Animal Collective playing at the Powerstation (scroll down for gig details).

My Tuesday kicked off bright and early with a wake-up txt message from my friend making sure that I had indeed gotten out of bed by 7.40am – which I personally thought was a little over-the-top, but considering for the entire year I’d rolled out of bed at 7.55am for school on the days which I didn’t have training nor rehearsal… it seemed understandable that they wanted to make sure the driver was awake.

Nine of us decided to head up north to the Shakespear Regional Park, and set up site for the day on Te Haruhi Bay. Ironically the best part about the whole trip for me (asides from how early they’d made the departure time) was the drive up north. Good friends, decent music, great views through the sunnies and an effortless swift drive for just over an hour was definitely my cup of tea. The biggest obstacle of the day was when the people in my car disagreed with those in the other car as to where we wanted to set our towels down for the day. I’d personally vouched for the sand and didn’t understand why we’d drive all the way to a nice beach with decent, soft sand (Auckland is full of overly shelly beaches that don’t really have decent sand) only to spend the day sitting on the grass; but eventually we compromised, moved around a bit and got the best of both worlds when we threw a frisbee around on the sand and I even attempted to use a soft bat on a foam ball. It either went too far or in whacky directions or both – the foam ball didn’t stand a chance against the wind!

At some point in the afternoon after several hours of swimming, lying in the sun with music and pigging out on buns and a roast chicken that we’d bought from Countdown, we decided that we’d bury Euan in the sand. Well, actually he’d volunteered himself, and made sure that we made the sand wet and compact enough that he couldn’t escape. And soon, what do you know, one of the boys suggested (how typical) to make the buried-Euan into a giant penis. I felt somewhat guilty for having encouraged the use of dried seaweeds as pubs around his head, followed by Michael’s cam-whoring antics as the owner of the giant penis once he saw me whip my camera out!

The real fun began when I got to surpass having my bag checked at the door of the Powerstation simply because I was being given a media photography pass and got to dart through the door. My obligatory drink of a Monteith’s Original led to my vow of never ever drinking beer out of a plastic cup again, regardless of how good and cold the beer was. It just tasted vile… with a slight tinge of that smell of plastic which mixes in with your taste buds at the back of your throat. Nasty. $8 for plastic beer? No thank you. The bartender looked at me with great distaste when I asked if he could just give me the bottle – I imagined in my head that he was thinking something along the lines of “Didn’t you get the memo? No glass bottles in this venue!”, good lord. Not surprisingly the rest of the evening only went uphill from there – Bachelorette’s set (or what I caught of it) was enjoyable albeit the couple of technical difficulties which caused her to even restart a song. Boy was I wrong when I’d expected to see a duo on stage – obviously my friend had misled my beliefs to this “opening band” idea, and apparently I’d also missed her best song. Nonetheless, thanks to the mellow tone of Bachelorette and the use of my camera, I easily settled myself in a comfortable, just off-centre spot in the front row. I’m pretty sure I was allowed, if not supposed to be in the pit in front of the railing, but I simply didn’t want to have to leave the front after 3 songs – which turned out to be a priceless decision.

In a strange way, I’m grateful for the photography for 3-songs-only rule, as it meant I was forced to set my camera aside and fully throw myself into enjoying the show. Otherwise, I know I would’ve been far too torn between thrashing around during the set or staying affixed behind my camera. I applaud them for their set list, especially with slotting in tracks from their latest album evenly throughout the set – opening with In the Flowers, ending the encore with My Girls, with an extended “just a sec more in my… beeeeeed” from Panda Bear nicely placed in the middle. Pure magic. For quite a few of my shots I’d purposely used a slower shutter speed and aperture to capture the atmosphere and buzzy movement of it all.

Here’s my favourite, followed by some highlights (click here for full set):