Rants about everything, anything and yet nothing at all.

Just set aside your fears of life, with the sole desire

I don’t know where my mind is. At all. In the past two weeks of freedom, I have started three draft blog posts (none of which saw the light of day), finished reading Atlas Shrugged, Less Than Zero and Snuff, and painted my new-2nd-hand dressing table which I bought off a friend last month. So here are the photos that have been requested both irl, via txt, email and twitter. It was a 2-day effort, especially since I only started painting it late in the afternoon of both days. And although it wasn’t what I had in mind to start with (I’d initially intended to do crackled gold over the top… but that didn’t work out at all), I think it looks pretty alright. I must say, the final product looks much better in person. Especially since I took those pictures at like 2am when I was finally, exhausted, but delighted to be done with painting textured gold:

Post-exam/assessments state = mess mess mess!

Green base

Using gold powder which is apparently older than I am, rather than the gold acrylics I had intended on using… because it turned out a shit shade (literally) when painted on. This caused a huge detour in repainting the top and a drawer, and general mayhem.

Flakeypie sleeping on my clothes as I paint.

Finished product. It looks funny with flash, but otherwise the gold doesn’t show up. It’s a lot softer looking in person. Eck, anyway. Not amazing, but better than boring cream.

I think I’ve just been really quiet on this blog ever since I’ve been on holiday because I’ve been having trouble with figuring out where I am. Existential problems of a twenty year old. If I don’t change my mind between now and clicking Publish, I will get up and rip a few things off my bedroom walls. November’s a new month. It’s not clogged by university stress or deadlines or pressure to catch a certain ferry in the morning… Summer’s a new season. I need to get onto this wave of “newness” and ride it out for as long as I can – as far as I can. Away from this current spot. This mindset.

I just feel like decisions are harder to make everyday, every year, because the older you get, but more important these decisions tend to be. Back at age 16, whether or not I wanted a summer job, or which jobs I might like to apply for only affected how many movies and concerts I could go to. This very day, a year ago, I had landed at LAX with a bag and plans full of a lot of nothing, and a mind full things I wanted to dump and acquire. Those twenty days changed me a lot. But having said that, I’m changing a lot, all the time. Although my whole life, I’ve always been the kind of person that “changes a lot” and constantly feel like I am, or must be, in a state of motion. A state of momentum, be it pulling me forwards or often times, even backwards… but I always had to be moving… changing. And so right now, when I find myself so idle – right at the end of a period of great motion and turmoil, and on the brink of another such period… what do I do? I want the next twenty days to count – as much as those same twenty days had counted for me, last year. As if not so much, at least, I want them to have meant something. I don’t the next three, four months of summer to turn into a dull, smooth blur, like what the sea appears to be, whilst a dangerously powerful rip lurks beneath the surface. Because that’s what I’m like.

The periods where I am just “alright” are possibly a million times worse than those periods where I experience the whole range of emotional extremes. I’ve contemplated getting medicated as a trial, maybe for a couple of weeks, now that grades and creativity aren’t things I HAVE TO be stressed about… but at the same time I also think that that would be copping out. That it would ruin the past year and a half of resumed talk-therapy and trying really hard to set right the bad mold I’ve been pressed into. Most of all, I think the biggest thing I need to overcome is this need to apologise for everything – to apologise for the way I am, and the things I do, and how I do them. And having to feel like I have to earn things. That I have to earn people’s love, attention, and earn the feeling of deserving any good thing that ever happens to me. This is a messed up topic, most especially because I haven’t put any of this into context, I know, but that would require like an entire autobiography of the past fifteen years, and this blog might explode, ha. But hmm. I can’t believe I just typed all that and not deleted it all. Fuck it. I’m sick of having to censor out the bad things because I don’t want to get too personal, or because I still struggle with anonymity and privacy issues. I’ll share what I want to share.

Anyway, the point is – I’m going to – I’ve got to keep reading like I’ve been doing this week, keep attempting to write, keep clicking the shutter… and heal my hands so that I can play the bass. I had a bit of a dumb accident with my left thumb last night and I feel like I’ve either lightly sprained it, or at least really pissed off a ligament or something, because it hurts like a bitch, and I can feel pain even when I’m not moving it. And then when cutting my nails just before, my right index nail split from the flesh way too deeply and it stings stings stings! So there goes my pivoting finger (left thumb, on the double bass), and one of my playing fingers (right index). Great. So much for working on my chops.

In 14 hours the boy will be exiting his last exam of the year and I can’t wait. Following that we have dinner plans, and we are also going to the cinema together for the first time ever. This has been the source of much heated conversation though. I used to think it was awesome because we’re such an interesting couple that we don’t have to resort to cliche coupley activities. Eye roll. But other factors came in and I got angry and what do you know, I blew the lid off things, as usual. Nonetheless, it will be great and then three sleeps from now we will be seeing Portishead together and I shall cry in public out of sheer happiness and the plan of making these twenty days count will totally be working out. Yup, that’s the plan. Playlist to come! Happy posts to come!

In the meantime, here’s a recent live video of a beautiful, tear-drawing song by Portishead – one of my favourites – and I’m quite positive that it will be played on Thursday night because I’ve been stalking their tour set lists online, and it’s been a staple. Oh god. How will I remain upright when I experience them for myself…

I am the heat in an empty room, the cold coming through the walls. Your sofas’ old, but I am new, and there is better on the brew

THE ALL BLACKS ARE IN THE WORLD CUP FINALS!!!!!!!!!

Now that my uncontainable excitement is out of the way, I am so dead this week. Two playing assessments and three compositions due… and I’m blogging. Because I don’t know what to compose and I’m sitting here listening to a range of both jazz and non-jazz music trying to be musically inspired. I can’t find the right chords… I just. Argh. I know I could be doing some playing practise, but I feel like I need to finish at least ONE song before mid-week.

On a completely different note, something’s always kind of bothered me – the whole “Asians with Western names” issue. What I mean is, since New Zealand has a lot of immigrants, a lot of people just assume that everyone has a “real” name from their home country, and that their English name is on many levels not their “real” name as such. I know that (and know of) a lot of people who moved over here got to pick out their English names before they moved out of Asia – and that’s fair enough. But I get kind of annoyed when people and systems such as the school-roll back at all my schools used to ass-ume that Amanda isn’t really my legal first name. I actually find that kind of disrespectful. Sure, it’s a very viable thing to assume, but assumptions suck (especially incorrect ones, which are often the case), and I just don’t like the undertones of “you don’t really belong in this country/you’re an immigrant“, etc. I know I’m probably just overreacting and a LOT of people don’t mean it that way, but a LOT also do. Just in the way they go dumbstruck with “oh, reaaally” when I clear up my names with them. Social reasons aside, it is soooo frustrating to have to constantly ask people to fiddle with documents for me, because whoever had entered the data to begin with had just assumed that my Chinese name goes in front of Amanda. It’s frustrating also, because I just feel simply undermined – because I know that I always fill out forms with my names the right way around, but people just think, “Oh, she’s Asian, I had better switch her names around so they’re correct”. NO. NO!

For the record, yes I was born in Taiwan, but I was born with both a Chinese and English name (for god sakes, my sister’s “English” name is actually Norwegian, so my parents are obviously well Westernised based on that fact alone), and I’ve lived in New Zealand since I was six, so that’s almost fourteen out of the twenty years of my life! Plus, my dad’s worked for American companies in Taiwan for over twenty years and my mum’s done stints overseas before we were born, so it’s really no surprise they gave both my sister and I names in both languages when we were born. We even went down to Internal Affairs all those years ago when we first moved here and paid some unearthly sum to get a legal document that binds my names in both languages so that I will never have one of those awful mishaps my mum has when she buys a plane ticket under the wrong name and has to produce multiple IDs, haha. Amanda is my legal first name and my Chinese name is my MIDDLE name, and then obviously my surname goes on the end. I think that a huge part of the problem also lies with the Asians who don’t have their names and documents all in line. So they’ll socially be called one name, but the name on all their documents and transcripts are completely different, and it just makes the lives of lecturers and so on, much harder. For example, not to pick on them, but all the other Asians in my year at jazz school are Korean boys. None of their names paper what we call them verbally. Not their fault, but does make life annoying for me when people go “no, but what’s your real name though?” – and might I just add, in the six years I had lived in Taiwan, most of the time I was called by my childhood nickname (that everyone I know in Taiwan still refer to me as these days), rather than my Chinese name anyway, so I honestly find it really hard to even vaguely connect with this “real name” assumption.

The most ironic thing is – Amanda is even on my Taiwanese passport, and people still meddle with my name, ha. Reminds me, I reaally need to renew it.

Here’s a photo I took on the drive down to Rotorua for our trip a while ago and it’s one of my absolute favourites. It looks even more mega authentic on film than it would have on digital because it gives it like a rustic touch. And gotta thank the really shitty film I had to buy when I was out of decent film for a while:


Driving to Rotorua – taken on some crappy nondescript colour film; Nikon F3.

 1. Love Me – Rubber Kiss Goodbye
Just a really chilled out cute song with a really simple but effective bass line. Oh, and I love that chink-chink guitar tone, mmm. This song totally makes me think of being a teenager.

2. I’m Not the One – The Black Keys
I am so jealous that Felisa gets to see them in a few days’ time. Especially since they bloody cancelled out on coming to the Big Day Out this year – which was most annoying because they were the main selling point for me this year, grr! Waiting on their new album. I know bluesy rock gets repetitive and they aren’t known for being poets with their lyrics, but there’s something about their smooth sounding tracks and aptly-put lyrics that makes me such a fan.

3. Fine For Now – Grizzly Bear
I am becoming the Cat Lady and I am not fine. And this song is great, but if I listen to it any longer I may lose whatever illusion of “okay” I have. They’re definitely a band that took a lot to grow on me, but once I got hooked, I listened to them for hours on end. Plus, the guitar in this is amazing. Just go listen to it.

4. Wildfire – SBTRKT
To continue on from my last post, this is also another Laneway artist for next year. The boy and I have been fairly hooked on the album over the past week and weekend. I was apprehensive at first, but heck. What is it with us and music? It’s like we do music like other couples do movies or whatever. I mean, we do movies too, but only at home. Can you believe that in the two years and three months we’ve known each other, or the almost-nine-months we’ve dated, that we’ve never stepped foot inside a cinema together?

5. Rescue Song (RAC Mix) – Mr. Little Jeans
There was a week or so several months ago when I was totally hooked on this song. I wanted to be rescued. Badly. Her real name’s Monica and her voice is looovely. And she’s cute too, so better not let the boy catch wind of that, cos she’s brunette. Oh wait, I think it’s safe. He doesn’t like her music. I am totally just being a twat, by the way.

6. I Can’t Wait – Twin Shadow
Yet another Twin Shadow song, I just couldn’t help myself – he’s still on high rotation if not repeat. This song totally reminds me of A-Ha’s “Take On Me”, but I’m not 100% sure since they don’t sound that much alike. I could totally link a more comparable song, but this one was too good to pass up – dad used to make suuuch a big deal about how it was from back when music videos were new haha. Anyway, this song just reminds me of music from decades ago that my dad would listen to.

7. Twin of Myself – Black Moth Super Rainbow
Short (and arguably crappy) but very relatable lyrics. I’m sold.

8. Anywhere Anyone – Dntel
Because sedated sounding electronic songs are very soothing.

9. On the Verge – Terence Blanchard
I am so in love with this song. It was written by Aaron Parks and my god I wish I could write like him. Been listening to his album “Invisible Cinema” on repeat whilst in bed. Amazing brain food.

Is there anything as quiet as a night alone with you?

OH NO: Half way through writing this post my site went down because the webhost had to reboot the server since it was overloaded. Once that was done, I backed up my database just in case, and then tried to synchronise all my files (to my computer, to backup as well), but I had checked the wrong settings and instead of syncing my computer with my folder online, it did that backwards, so effectively half of my files were DELETED. So I’ve just spent the past two hours restoring all my photos from up until October of last year. SO MUCH FOR GOING TO BED AT 11pm FOR ONCE. What was going to be a nice blog-before-bed experience turned into a nightmare. Oh my goddd. This is what I had written before this all happened though:

This is my umpteenth time being left home alone to fend for myself, but for various hazardous reasons, this time is also going to be the most challenging three weeks ever. Judging by my productive rate of five tasks in seven hours, I don’t know how on earth I’m going to get through October – aka jazz assessments and assignments. The only things of note that I’ve managed to accomplish today are: attend one hours’ jazz piano class at uni (was 7 minutes late, too… which is always helpful), put petrol in my car, did the grocery shopping, scribbled some things down, and most excitingly of all – fussed over the Laneway Festival lineup announcement. I’m not the excitable-hype-hype-HYPE type, so I won’t jump on the band(rambling)wagon right now, but let’s just say I’m very pleased and thoroughly looking forward to it. And no doubt I will post playlists again soon.

I think this is about to become a mini documentation of “how Amanda battles procrastination and juggles domesticity” for the next three weeks, until mum returns. It’s not that I don’t ever do the dishes, put on the laundry, clean the bathroom, cook three meals a day, put out the rubbish, feed the cat, let the cat out at 5am, clean the litter box, vacuum the house, collect the mail and deal with bills – nor does it have anything to do with my abilities to do so – it’s just that usually they’re (okay, rather unevenly) split between mum and I, and suddenly, in the busiest and most stressful three weeks of my whole year, I also have to do all those things, all by myself. Sounding like a spoiled brat aside, I think the biggest hurdle for me in terms of all the things I have to do is that I have to do them alone. Cooking for one just sucks. So does doing the dishes alone, without someone to chat to or share a cup of tea with.

Also, I tend to start going a little mad when I’m left for long periods of time on my own. Even if nothing is actually wrong, my old depressive and anxious spurts just come back to haunt me, if all I have for days on end at home is the cat to talk to. Maybe that’s where the “crazy old cat lady” stereotypes come from – because being alone with only the cat to talk to really doesn’t help with the escalation of madness. Gah.

Needless to say, I was more the overjoyed when the boy decided to bring his studying over for a couple of hours and let me cook him dinner. I’m sort of offering open dinner invitations to friends now, so as to have someone to cook for. I doubt it’ll actually work out too often because I have hockey two nights a week and I tutor on two evenings as well, but what the heck.

To round off such a messed up evening, here is an amazing song by Twin Shadow, who the boy and I are going to see on our almost-one-year-anniversary next January at Lanway. I love the video that this person has dubbed over the song though, it’s scenes from Before Sunrise and Before Sunset – two lovely lovely lovely films that fix so magically, so perfectly. It makes me gush, and I hate gushing, so there we have it. Reminds me that the boy and I need to finish watching them together. Oh memories… of one fine evening’s attempt to watch them, haha.

Click here for the video (the person who made it disabled embedding, gah!)

And oh… HELL YES THE ALL BLACKS ARE IN THE SEMIS!!!

Make it long, make it last forever, Make it cruel, just make me laugh

Let me first get your attention by showing you a cute picture of my very affectionate cat:

Now, that that has succeeded, I can insert a long entry below. So unless you’ve been living under a rock, or not very active online, you would have noticed a trend in the phrase “first world problems”. It’s a Twitter and Facebook tag, too. Anyway, that’s what I had today – a first world problem. I feel like such a brat saying this, for having even had this “dilemma” in the first place – it’s about choosing between two pairs of shoes for the law ball, by the way. I just felt like, oh my god, think of the people struggling to pay bills, and I’m struggling to decide between sexy-hottt-leather or subtle-preeetty-suede?! so yeah, I basically felt like an idiot in my utter indecision. I’ve “decided” for now, but tomorrow I will probably struggle with following my decision through. Anyway, the main thing is – I hate this phrase, “first world problems” – it’s so true, and yet, so crude! It’s especially bad when people misuse or overuse it, just like how the whole “fml” thing exploded some years back. I don’t know… I guess it just makes me feel like we are all a bit pathetic. It’s like how you can always find people in worse off positions than yourself, so why invalidate whatever problems you may have? Be it if you burnt your hand baking, or can’t find a sober driver, or like me at the moment, can’t decide between two hot pairs of shoes?

On the topic of shoes, I don’t know how on earth I developed a “shoe thing” – all I know is that it began with my aqua blue patent Doc Martens last year, then expanded onto Ksubi boots and then… well it all went downhill from there…

And a warning for the next post – I love love love Bloc Party and haven’t been able to take this song off repeat this week. It’s an oldie but a goodie – The Prayer SOOO applicable and relevant right now. More on that later!

And the hunger of those early years will never return, But I don’t mind, I don’t mind

Daylight savings is messing with my head. I know we’ve only flicked our clocks an hour forward, but somehow that hour throws me off so badly. It’s weird that I handle weird jetlag far better than this! I had my “technical jury” today, which is a technical assessment on everyone’s main instrument, in front of a panel of two teachers. It went well, I think. Not flawlessly, not amazingly, but well. And to be honest, that’s all I need right now. To be relieved. To breathe temporarily. I feel like I’m just clinging onto this university year by the fingernails (that saying sucks, bass players have really short fingernails!) so that I will be able to fall into the abyss of dreaming once again, come November. And then I will once again have to make some way-too-serious decisions about my courses next year that will potentially affect me for the rest of my life. What’s with young people and having to make big, huge decisions around the ages of 17-21? Maybe it’s for this reason that I sometimes feel I suppose the US college system where people just get a Bachelor of Arts or Science and then do post-grad if they want to do something more specific and refined. The whole specialised degree thing in New Zealand is kicking my arse right now. I don’t want to be a uni student for that much longer!

I was looking for some old travel photos earlier and stumbled across this – a photo someone took of me from 2 years and 2 months ago. I want to be that thin again. Somebody please preserve my generous bust-line and lipo my thighs away, please! That sounds awful. Urgh. Seriously though, if it weren’t for the fact that I tore those jeans in Malibu last year, I would try and take the same photo again, just to compare, for self-torture self-motivation. Why do us females do this?! So many blogs that I read have at some point or another (if not currently still) been through some kind of weight-loss scheme. I can’t handle taking tight-skimpily-clothed-photos like Amanda does, nor will I ever go “on a diet”, so I don’t see the point in rambling about this, but can my magic lose-4-kilos-nonsensically powers please come back? kthanxbai. (btw, that was the first – and last – time that I’ve ever typed that “word”)

“it would be nice to look like this again” photo. Everything’s just kinda gotten bigger – bigger boobs, bum, and hmm, hair is a close tie for size, I’d say – but they didn’t need to be! gah.

Tokyo, 2010 – taken by my friend Joel

Whilst I’m on the topic of useless requests, I’d really like to be transported back to Tokyo like about now. As seen above with some sunnies, Canon, asymmetrical-zip trench coat and thigh-high boots. I guess when I’m that covered up, I still look exactly the same… In all seriousness though, the good news of this post is that the boy and I are going to Taiwan and Hong Kong. We finally paid for our flights today, and I will leave for Taipei in mid-December, whilst he finishes up work and joins me on Boxing Day. We’ll mostly be doing awesome things everyday, as I tend to do whilst traveling – galleries, museums, shopping, eating, drinking, dancing, gigging, and photographing our way around town. It’s going to be a blast, and it will be the first time that I’ll see the infamous New Years Eve fireworks at Taipei’s 101. We’ve only got two nights in Hong Kong though, so trying to cram all the things to do there will be interesting…

I’ve also been going on and on about wanting to go to London and New York (I don’t care which first, at this point!), but as neither of us can afford it right now – obviously not after this trip! – it’s been put on the back-burner of things-Amanda-constantly-remembers-to-wish-aloud-for, haha. I need to take up more shifts promoting chocolate and crackers at the supermarket. Uni is getting in the way, but hopefully I can earn some moolah in Nov/Dec to save up ahead of time.

Taipei, 2010 – taken by my friend Joel

And summer hockey starts this week, yay. I’m playing in two teams on both Wednesday and Thursday, so it’s going to bring a lot of exercise for me that has lapsed since winter hockey finished this month. Maybe this getting-my-old-figure-back thing might actually happen after all, haha. In the meantime though, I just might tape up my knees so that they don’t get skinned and see blood, as the law ball is on this Saturday. You’ve been warned: the boy has bought the most amazing suit ever, and to be honest, I don’t think he ought to go out in it as it’d just be a waste of hundreds of dollars since I’ll just want to rip the thing right off him. Plus, it means I have to fight for the limelight, which was meant to be relatively easy in a gold dress, but not so, next to a fucking gorgeous blue suit worn by such a handsome lad. I really miss him tonight, can you tell?

1 … 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 … 14