Everything and nothing at all.

Start a few fires and have my way

I got an expensive haircut today: my sister’s hairdresser doesn’t work on Fridays and I was impatient, so I paid a little more for a “more experienced” (aka more expensive, and apparently more popular) stylist; which resulted in me having to wait for a whole 40 minutes from the appointment time I had made, before he finished with the previous client!

These are photos pre-cut. I can’t be bothered with any post-cut photos yet, oopsies.

I’m feeling rather strange about the fact that I watched two compleeeetely contrasting movies today: Nine and Valentine’s Day. Mum picked me up from the city as I finished uni slightly earlier on Fridays, and we managed to catch the only remaining screening time of Nine. As I hadn’t had lunch and was feeling peckish, we decided to be naughty and snuck in food from Burger Fuel – though I must say, I don’t think the Bacon Backfire (huuuge burger that has bacon, chicken and brie in it!) that we shared was half as good in the dark though… It’s just not quite the same as being able to see the yummy, unhealthy goodness ooze into your mouth… mmm.

Anyway, the movie itself – compleeeetely different from what I had expected. I was very curious about it, but wasn’t prepared to pay for it (and I actually didn’t), but the main reason I agreed to see it was because Mum really wanted to, and had no one else that was willing, haha. I think overall, I only mostly enjoyed the visual and audio appeal. I liked Fergie and Kate Hudson’s song and dances the most, but the entire movie was just a bit too frustrating for someone who isn’t exactly a musicals fan.

Then, just before, Charlotte and I caught a late screening of Valentine’s Day. Yes, yes, I know it’s almost a whole month after Valentine’s Day, but I don’t think that two girls catching a lovely, light-hearted movie at the end of a tiresome week needs any justifying!

In other matters, Mum caught this photo of me earlier today, which shows what I wore to uni: MinkPink singlet dress; grey slip (the singlet is freaking see-through!), Aqua Dr Martens; Mi Piaci Laine bag; Le Specs; and my good ol’ bass on my back – weighing me down all day week!

We share the same skies

I’m finally back! Actually, I’d arrived at 5am on Friday, and then was at the university merely hours later for my orientation day – resulting in about 38 hours of no sleep by the time I fiiiiiinally made it into bed.

I know, I’d intended to blog whilst on my holiday in Taiwan and Japan, but then my laptop broke within the first 2 days of arriving in Taipei, which royally screwed that plan up. I really should be sleeping now though – the first official day of university is tomorrow and I should try to kick my university career off with a decent night’s sleep… but knowing me, I will be browsing the web until I doze off eventually.

Asides from getting reacquainted with my bass (and any form of technique at all) after a whole month of being thousands of kilometres from it, the other hurdles I really need to tackle this week is my sheer nerves and anxiousness about starting uni itself. It’s exciting, yes, but I’m scared shitless at the same time – I’m doing Jazz Performance for goodness sakes! It’s a far cry from the would-have-been alternative… sitting comfortably unnoticed in a crowded law lecture and being able to do my own thing without putting myself out there – until I was read, at least. But now… I’m crapping out about having combo and improvisation classes, etc etc. Yikes.

In other matters, yesterday evening, the family decided to trade bedrooms – which equals bigger room for me, yay! The only (but huge) problem is that, now that we have fiiiinally moved the furniture contents of 3 bedrooms around, the wardrobes will remain unchanged until we can get it together enough to get everything back in the right places. Despite the bigger room, I still can’t see any carpet, simply because half of what I own is sprawled on the floor. Wish me luck with that…

And last, but certainly not least: Last night I attended The Cribs show at Juice Bar with a couple of friends. It was AMAZING. The best concert I’ve been to in a long time. The Jarman brothers (and yes, who could forget Johnny Marr) had amazing stage presence, everything was tight, energetic, a thousand times better than on record; and their shared vocals were done just so, so perfectly. The sweetest thing was, Ryan had a picture of Kate Nash stuck on his Gibson, under the strings, between the pickups – super cute! I’m just jealous that Gary (which one’s that? the hot bassist, of course!) who’s only 29 is married to a 42 year old! Granted, she’s meant to be pretty amazing (mixed an album of Elliot Smith’s, etc) but still… Gary was well worth the leg pain that comes with a barrier-less venue!

Anyway, I will endeavour to post about my trip in sections along with photos – when I eventually get around to sorting them all. For now, here are some shots that I’d taken on film. All unedited, directly from scans. It’s good to be back!

I’ll walk this modern tightrope… Where is home?

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!

She’s a snake and a charmer at the same time

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!

She’s always lookin’ at me

**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!

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