Snowflake, or other intriguing felines.

but you ain’t going nowhere, why you procrastinate girl

Taken at MoMA, New York City.

This is it — there are 12 days before my recital and 19 days before my first law exam. And then, perhaps by November 13th I will be able to con myself into relaxing and not constantly refreshing the “exam results” page.

I’ve been quite sick this week (had a fever on Monday night which carried into Tuesday) and I’m going to attempt my first full-day at uni tomorrow, but it will be Friday already. Words can’t even begin to describe how stressed out I am. I know I signed up for this workload so I’ve got to see it through, but my god — how did I ever think my mind and body are supposed to come of this intact?! I’m 99.999% sure that what I’m doing is unprecedented as I’m taking the maximum law workload along with probably the most important paper in my entire jazz degree (since it includes my recital).

Anyway, to brighten my hopes a little, here is a list of things that I look forward to doing in the fortnight right after it’s all over. In no particular order:

  1. Reading. I can’t wait to read. And read. And read. Recreationally. Without guilt as to what else Ishould be reading instead (i.e. law cases and textbooks). I will read in bed, on couches, in the sun, in the breeze, outside, inside, all night long until dawn — I will read!
  2. Play hockey. I’ve been skipping summer hockey games because I need to attend other people’s recitals, or be studying or practising. I can’t wait to show up to a summer hockey game not exhausted from my long day, and get to stay late after the game drinking beers with my team. I’ll probably throw in “go to the gym” and general “exercise” here too. They don’t really warrant new points.
  3. Writing. I have so many ideas that right now merely exist in some abbreviated, bullet-pointed form all over the place — in my phone, notebook, scattered on post-it notes, etc. I can already feel that I will be turning night and day around like I do every summer — reading and writing until dawn, then collapsing when the birds start chirping. It’s going to be amazing.
  4. Drinking beer. That’s right, drinking beer gets its own bullet point here. I fucking love beer and I can’t wait to grab a box of cold beer and be popping them open in the sun, at barbecues, whilst cooking dinner. My god… nothing beats the feeling of a cold, cold beer on a hot spring/summer’s day. I’ll be scouring for sales of all the yummy, hopsy beers, mmm.
  5. Beach. I don’t really care what kind of day at the beach it is at the moment, I just want to go to the beach. Be it to read a book, write some stuff, walk around, eat an ice block, drink a beer, read some more, tan, tan, tan, maybe even swim if it’s warm enough…
  6. Spend all day with my cat. Self-explanatory.
  7. Go to the art gallery again.
  8. Take a shitton of photos. I need to get my camera fixed ASAP.
  9. Remember that I love playing music and keep doing it. It’s not actually as much of a chore as I keep telling myself it feels like.
  10. Listen to music all day and all night long.
  11. Hang out with my friends and catch up with people.
  12. This doesn’t fit within the “fortnight” criteria but oh my god I cannot wait until my sister is home in December. It will have been over a year since I last saw her by then.
  13. Do other, spontaneous, miscellaneous, unexpected, stupid stuff. (Like suddenly leave without notice, maybe?)

Now, they’re scared of where their daughter’s been, ’cause who knows, she could be alone with men

Taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film; Nikon F3.

I’m supposed to be moving out of home in a week’s time and I haven’t packed a single thing. My room is a wreck but I keep telling myself that there’s no point in tidying since I will be leaving soon anyway. I think the main thing I need to do is throw things out, rather than pack it all. Because who really needs shoe boxes full of clothing tags when they have boxes worth of postcards? Clearly, I “collect” too many things. The amount of books and clothes I have will be a mission to sort through, let alone everything else. That’s the mystery with me — because I can happily live out of a suitcase for weeks and not miss anything, yet when I’m back home, I can’t seem to let anything go.

I’m also starting to get terribly nostalgic about everything, thinking like, this will be the last weekend I sleep in this room and other pointless, torturous thoughts. I’m just too sentimental. And yet, I don’t think I would care half this much, if I was moving far, far away to the other side of the world. I’m only moving twenty kilometres away, it’s really not a huge deal. Plus I’ll probably be home for dinner at least once a week since I am still tutoring around here, and hockey is five minutes away. I just don’t know how my sister ever coped with leaving the cat!

Case in point — I found him sleeping on my double bass yesterday afternoon. Just too adorable:

Also, I’m pleasantly surprised at how much The Strokes’ new album is growing on me. For some unspecified reason, my favourite track so far is “Slow Animals” (below). I’d almost forgotten about their ridiculous 5-album-contract until I read this the other day. It’s an interesting analysis of what’s happening there, but I don’t know… maybe when it comes to bands from the early noughties, I really don’t like to over-analyse. I’d prefer to hang onto that feeling I had from ten years ago when I first started blogging, first really fell for music of my own accord, and was far too young to register half the lyrical content of  bands like The Strokes, Bloc Party, and of course the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. As much as I have to acknowledge that great things happen in Auckland and New Zealand, I can’t help but constantly feel that we’re so far off from being at the epicentre of anything. Maybe that’s why I wouldn’t care that much for all my stuff if I were moving far, far away.

But I’d love to see you before I leave, I leave next weekend, I’m not ready to go

Knowing that I’m a sleep-wrecking advocate of “trying to do it all”, my sister sent me some lecture notes from her religion class about how we simply can’t “do it all.” Whilst I haven’t gotten around to reading the lectures themselves (I think I can be forgiven, some days I have uni from 11am-6pm with virtually no break!), the email with her views on it have been really interesting. So I’ll rephrase — I’ll try to do everything I can. Good news is, I did make it back into the Division 1 hockey team after all, despite panicking about how badly I had trialled on the first day; I must have made up in round two.

Anyone who knows the boy and I quite well would know that we’re not advocates of marriage. I don’t even believe in little things working out, I’m such a bloody pessimist. Being the lofty thrill-seeking person I am, it’s surely no surprise that I always question the doctrine of monogamy. Without going on a huge tangent, I’ll clarify that I’m not about to ever be a swinger, and I simply couldn’t deal the jealousy and uncertainty of being in a “relationship” that isn’t monogamous. But I often encounter existential issues like “what’s the point?”, or my strong belief that I can’t be with someone unless, for its duration, I believe that I’ll always be with them, and will always want to be. Regardless of if that actually plays out in reality, I feel like, if that’s not how you feel when you’re together, then WHY would you bother being “together”?!

Some time in 2012 I devised a test for “how I may one day use to gauge whether or not I will accept someone’s proposal for marriage” — this is, assuming that anyone would ever be crazy/stupid/brave enough to stick their neck out for slaughter like that. The test is, I’d ask myself whether I would be willing to get a tattoo related to the person. It doesn’t have to be their name or anything, just, something sentimentally, symbolically, intimately related to them. Everyone knows that it’s a dumb idea to get a lover’s tattoo (sorry for the grand generalisation, though I’m not sorry if anyone actually thinks it’s a great idea), but regardless of if I’d ever follow through with something so stupid, I think if I could ever answer that test in the affirmative, then it would be pretty telling. There is so much more on how I feel about all this that I haven’t breached, but I’m looking forward to chucking my casebooks and real book on the floor, and climbing into bed with a book called Sex at Dawn. Before anyone jumps to any conclusions, it’s a New York bestselling anthropological book with the subtitle that reads “How we mate, why we stray and what it means for modern relationships.”  I think the key point to be extracted from praise on the back cover is “that humans evolved to be monogamous” — a topic I’m clearly fascinated by. It seems messed up that I’ve talked about these things for years but this book actually belongs to the boy and he read it sometime recently and has since shoved it under my nose. Let’s ignore the fact that I’m three quarters through Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw and the infamous American Psycho. Those can surely wait, whilst I uncover the thread of how modern human relationships came to be, right?

Here is Master Flakey, cute as ever, always managing to find a spot of comfort in the mess of a life I lead. I’m going to miss him so soo sooooo much when I move out soon.

and the noise from the crowd increases the chance of misinterpretation

I’m pretty bummed that I haven’t got any decent photos to post because they’re all on film and I haven’t gotten any developed. So for now I’m afraid phone photos will have to suffice, even though I find it completely unacceptable!!! Just thought I’d post a couple of pictures to show how much I’ve really been living in that dress I talked about – I’ve worn it to class, fancy dinner, to do a 21st birthday speech in, and the other day I wore it to my first and most important exam. Which I feel like I botched completely because I simply lost my brain it in, but for once I really hope that my gut feeling is wrong, argh.

So this was before I felt like breaking down, before my exam:

I wore it as a top when the boy and I went out for nice dinner by the sea. I don’t usually do “outfit photos” or whatever, but I liked the outfit so much I did, for once. I have a severe thing for leather…

This is what we observed as we were leaving our exam the other day. Mum had kindly dropped us off and then picked us up from our exam (how lovely, right?), and on the side of the road we saw four Asian men – presumably tourists – taking photos of the “University of Auckland” sign. I have to say… it’s actually one bloody ugly sign at one of the least photogenic corners of the university. They really need to erect a prettier one for when I want graduation photos, haha. We’d already gone around the corner and couldn’t take a picture by then, but these men later proceeded to take photos with themselves in it. I didn’t realise that Auckland University was worthy of touristy photos. It’s not like UW or Cambridge or Harvard or basically anywhere else more famous and more beautiful?

The main thing I accomplished this past week was finishing my jazz research dissertation. I don’t know what it is about music essays that make them so painful and difficult to write. Especially essays about jazz. It’s ridiculously hard to find “academic” writing which is useable when it comes to jazz. I had nine pages of handwritten notes but it took me so long to churn out the actual essay itself. I had thought that my essay last semester on “How can we explain the Romanticising tendencies of nineteenth-century music critics?” was hard enough already. I had hated writing it because it’s awfully broad and difficult to write about “Romanticism” in general, let alone trying to attribute reasons as to why nineteenth-century music critics wrote in a “Romanticised” way… this entailed first learning that music critics did this at all, reading them, then trying to pass off reasons as to why. I’m pleased to say that essay was graded with an A. But this one… well heck, we didn’t even get given a precise “essay question”, per se. All I knew was I had to write about someone and their innovation in jazz. How broad is that? For both of these essays, I spent ages thinking offhandedly, prior to actual research and writing, and then spent a whole week staying up until dawn trying to “write something”. Ended up writing most of it on the last day of course – but unlike other essays where I have a bad habit of writing at the last minute, these essays took an entire week of intense stress and seriously questioning myself “what am I saying, is it somewhat correct and how do I say it?” I don’t know what kind of grade this will get but I have to do a 20-minute seminar about it on Tuesday, which will be worth 40% of my total grade, so I’m pretty freaked out that my entire grade is based on what I said in a handful of pages.

My phone was uploading my past week’s photos to Dropbox and I thought it was entertaining how I procrastinated with Instagram especially during the wee hours of the morning, so here is a pictorial run-down of my essay-writing week…

Decided to use the fountain pen I received for my birthday. I refilled it so much I lost count how many times (as mentioned above, nine handwritten pages of notes, urgh).

I wore my jelly shoes around my room because they make me feel so nostalgic and it’s still way too cold to wear them to the beach! Which I think is the only socially-acceptable place that a 5’7″-21-year-old can wear jelly shoes at, yes. Eating in the middle of the night…

Rediscovered my Pilot “Petit 1” fountain pens which I plan on using again. Glass bottle coke from the boy helped me stay awake.

I couldn’t believe it when I realised that morning that I had been reading Time magazine for half my life. Dinner at the boy’s house, yum.

Egg pancake mummy made.

The cutest and most affectionate cat ever that slept on my lap most nights as I wrote my essay.

Blueberry pie! Another dinner.

And these are at the boy’s house last night and today. He kindly let me use his spare monitor because my netbook’s screen just wasn’t cutting it for studying. And contrary to popular belief, studying with the boy is actually really good for me, he’s not distracting and in fact keeps me on task. Not what most people expect. He’s just so bloody hardworking that I need to keep my head down and keep working too.

and everyday, I am learning about you, the things that no one else sees

Today I went about my day feeling, I can’t believe it’s only the third week of semester, I am far too tired, and the feeling hasn’t shaken off since. Even when I get a full night’s sleep, I can’t seem to ditch this innate tiredness. Of course, staying up late this very instant is not helping, but I am completely hooked onto listening to an album right now and I can’t turn the computer off until I’ve sat through the whole thing. I’ve got a dissertation to write before the semester’s out, and I’m trying to listen to all that I can cram in, because I honestly have no idea what form, shape or directionmy “musical voice” is in whatsoever and I need to figure it out pronto! It’s just been a really slow couple of weeks, which is why I wanted to blog about the blissful evening that the boy and I had. We’ve been together for another “celebrate-able” length of time now, and didn’t waste any excuse to book in an evening of feasting on food, bubbly, each other, and of course, the action at the Olympics!

With help from the boy, I cooked cordon bleu, firstly on the stove, and then we threw it all in the oven with potatoes, onions and a healthy dollop of mustard seeds and tasty (read: randomly thrown together) herbs that was then sprinkled with cheese and mushrooms. For dessert we hadamazing mango sorbet, fresh fruit and berry yoghurt… I’m getting hungry just thinking about it! It was a wonderfully relaxed and lovely evening, and pretty much had all of my ideals: the boy, yummy dinner, great wine, dessert (plus spearmint dark chocolate!), live hockey, a fire going, the cat being jealously affectionate, and to top it all off it was raining outside, which is our absolute favourite. I dare not imagine life any other way, even though I am juggling so many things and exhausted all the time, at least I am healthy, loved, and happy. And I think that’s three of the most important things to strive for in life. Most of my friends tell me that they feel like we’ve been together for years and years, which it hasn’t been, just yet – but I certainly believe that we will be, without a shadow of a doubt. We make each other better people not just through the good things, but we also confront each other with our worst parts to change and improve. I’m a hectic, chaotic madhouse of a person but maybe I’m cooking just well enough for the boy to stick around? Kidding. But I’m glad that he does, despite the chaos… because I don’t think I’d quite be Amanda if I were to attain a stable personality. So thank you, to my main man, and to everybody else’s main-men for keeping us sane or at least distracted from insanity!

Also, it’s been superb to watch top notch international-level hockey every evening, and of course I’ve got my fingers crossed for our women’s Black Sticks team (sorry, the men were too much of a disgrace the other night, don’t even ask!!!) for hopefully a medal. Speaking of hockey, my team’s season’s been going fairly well so far – we’ve made the top four play offs and will hopefully do well in the next couple of games to make it through to the finals. It’s nerve-wracking stuff and I’ve kind of been playing below my standard lately, but I’m willing myself to pick things back up. I don’t know what’s been happening in my head that I’ve seemed to have lost all my sense of being “onto it” when it comes to potential-goal-time, and my fitness has vanished into thin air in the past couple of weeks, but it must return! Maybe it’s got more to do with being mentally exhausted rather than my actual physical fitness right now?

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