Snowflake, or other intriguing felines.

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!

You don’t own the green pines, The blue sky, or the smoke. You don’t own the dust in your Big brown eyes when you keep them closed

I’m just itching to make another playlist right now, but I really should go and cook dinner. I’ve been indulging in lounging around far too much and pretending to myself that these two weeks are an actual holiday when they aren’t… I really need to get started on the two tests I have next week, as well as memorising the 40 songs I will need to know in 7 weeks’ time. Damn. In the meantime, it seems the whole country is either in a buzz (or downbuzz) over the fact that the Rugby World Cup starts in just FOUR DAYS, and we are hosting it. I used to follow the rugby avidly, but after so so sooo many disappointments (mostly at previous World Cups), I’ve sort of given up hope. I don’t want to over anticipate it this year only to be disappointed again – so I’m hoping my keeping a low profile in my head when it comes to rugby will make us winning it this year that much sweeter. Here’s to hoping…

The boy accompanied me on a large excursion around town the other day. I had an appointment on the North Shore, which prompted us to pay The Department Store a visit, where the boy ended up buying this Vanishing Elephant coat for a very good sale price – and it’s so super nice that I rather want to steal it. Speaking of stealing his jackets though, I’ve discerned that I can pull off wearing pretty much all of his jackets. Now the tricky thing is to con him into actually letting me wearing them outside of his bedroom, hmm.

The weather was amazing. I’m not usually a sunny-day person, but who can complain about this?

I thought this photo was funny because usually it’s me wearing a silly grin whilst he has a weird almost-smile thing going on – but it’s reversed here, haha.

Anyway, the exciting thing about our wander around several central spots in town was that I’ve finally picked out something amazing that I’m going to wear in just under a month’s time. It cost me an arm and a leg, but I think it was well worth it considering what a timeless piece it will be, and that I might even contemplate wearing it to my 21st birthday party next year – that’s how amazing I think it is. It even came in pretty packaging too:

Mystery item, haha.

And lastly, I started this painting about three months ago, but hadn’t touched it until yesterday. It was a whole lot of textured black and white until now… It’s still far from finished, and I know the owl isn’t 100% realistic or anything (I was not about to attempt that), but I have a whole heap of work left to do on it that will hopefully make the whole thing a lot more abstract and layered – which is pretty much my kind of thing to do. Also, the poor cat has been in a buster collar for the first time in his life because his leg is still infected from a cat bite that happened a while back. It had only healed on the outside last time and started bleeding again, so the vet had to give him an anti biotic shot, and I’ve had to clean the wound twice a day, as well as stop the scab from healing up too quickly. A rather cringey and painful task for both him and I. Physically painful for him, and heartily painful for me.

Something like a phenomena, baby, You’re something like a phenomena

It’s about to be my 20th birthday. I have mixed feelings about not being a teenager anymore, and it’s scary considering I was still 19 when I went to the supermarket this afternoon and once again didn’t get ID’d for buying alcohol! Earlier this evening, I went over to the boy’s house “for dinner”, thinking it was just going to be another fun but casual dinner. Turns out, they had cooked me a feast of lamb shanks (done superbly with probably the same recipe as mum, score!) and fresh brownies out of the oven with fancy ice cream on the side for dessert. It was such a sweet, sweet surprise, if I wasn’t so takenaback I probably would have jumped and given Donna a hug! I probably should have. Ahhhh. Anyway, I’m still in awe of how nice it was, to whip me up a hearty family meal to celebrate my birthday for me, when my family are away – I will never forget it. What a nice way to round of my teenage years.

Sooo… I decided to spend an afternoon (which turned into evening, which turned into all night) digging out old photos from my years of being a teenager. This is one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done because – in case you hadn’t noticed – I rarely post photos of myself. And when I do, it’s usually ones I’ve taken, or got other people to take under my strict strict instructions. So what is beyond that “Continue Reading” link is actually hundreds of photos (mostly of me) showing my transformation during the ages 14-19. There are gazillions more photos somewhere, but I don’t have access to mum’s stash of photos at the moment, so I also don’t have any one hand from when I was 13. Regardless, even if no one is that interested in what little-Amanda looked like, I had a LOT of fun doing this, recalling so many events and memories that I had long forgotten about. I’ve posted things in order of age, and almost in perfect chronological order, so be impressed. It’s a little funny turning 20, because in New Zealand it’s not a big deal like 18 or 21 is, but in Taiwan, 20 is a big deal. It’s like NZ’s 18th and 21st birthdays mashed together, sort of. To put it in perspective, I can’t renew my Taiwanese passport on my own without a parent’s signature until I turn 20 tomorrow. Which reminds me I really need to get onto it.

Looking back, I’ve obviously grown up a lot throughout my teenage years, but I’ve also stayed the same in more ways than I had expected. I’ve done a lot of things that I’m proud of, but also a lot of things that I’m not. But I’m pretty happy where I am right now, and I’m just trying to look towards the future optimistically. And if you know me at all, you’d know that I’m not generally an optimistic person. Like… how I have to spend 13 hour at uni tomorrow on my birthday… I’m sure it will turn out fine though. Also, the exhibition opened yesterday, and I’ll probably post the official photos in the next entry, but there are photos of the gallery at the bottom of this post!

Oh, and you may be surprised to find that I hardly look different at all.

Age 14:

Taken at the house I “grew up in”. I wish my hair was that long again.

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Run to your house, undo the chains… I woke up wanting you

The exhibition opens tomorrow and I’m excited, despite being in the opposite hemisphere! These three photos makes up one of my collective pieces that I’m showing and is called Accomplice (accompanying text below). The lines in the sides of the frames are from the inaccuracies of using double exposure, but I like the authentic affect it has, so I’ve kept them as is.

All taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film; Nikon F3
“Our family cat has been everyone’s best friend and worst enemy. The best feet heater and the worst alarm clock. The best food recycling system and the worst mess. Much like me.“

Dedicated to my sister Liv, as Flakeypoo (that’s not his real name, but I call him all sorts of endearing things, I promise, it sounds better than it reads!) is actually her cat, but he’s become my most dependable friend and heater as of late. The boyfriend ought to pay him with chin tickles and treats for filling in on his job! He’s exactly what I want sleeping on my duvet – and sometimes under, as it’s getting colder now – to keep my feet warm, or to cuddle whilst trying to fall asleep to his soothing purrs. Honestly, I wouldn’t know what I’d do without our cat. Even though he wakes me up for a feed at 5am, which is unfortunately often barely an hour or two after I’ve managed to fall asleep, I still love him unconditionally. I thought it was funny the other night when the boy was over and Flakes was niggling at my feet, my response was, “I feed you, I sleep with you, I’m good to you, what more do you want from me?!” Irony.

What I want more of though, is time. I want to stop thinking about and basing my days on the time I don’t have to do things, time I don’t have to spend with people, time I don’t have to be alone and just mull over ideas and be a little creative.

In 21 days (or less, I don’t know the precise day my last assessment is), I will have completed half of my Bachelor of Music degree. It’s very exciting yet daunting at the same time, because then I will have to find some kind of temporary answer to the age old question of “what on earth are you going to do with that?!” Disheartening, yes, a little… maybe a lot. I found out this week that a friend of mine who’s a couple of years above me at jazz school currently doing her Honours course has just been accepted into Le Cordon Bleu. And yes, that’s the incredibly famous culinary school in Paris that was in the movie Julie & Julia. The main reason that this news struck a chord with me (oh haha lame pun, I swear I wrote it and then realised afterwards!) is because she also happens to be an asian female bass player, and we’ve known each other since college so often end up discussing the whole “upbringing vs futures” type thing.

I have a couple of non-jazz post-grad options that’s been swirling in my head since last year, but a lot can happen in a year and a half, so I’m excited yet anxious to see what happens in the next half of my degree, and what I’ll end up doing. I feel the northern hemisphere calling, and I honestly can’t wait to travel again in general. The thing is, I hate the idea of telling people what I might like to do in future, so I almost never tell… I hate the possibility of changing my mind completely, or flunking out of a path once desired.

All the jazzy musical intricacies aside, one of, if not the greatest challenge I have to face on a daily basis is to not panic. It’s the one skill that I keep being let down by, and have to work on constantly. I panic, then I blank, and everything I knew and practised just completely disappears. The upside to this improvisation-related panic is that I don’t get concerned about being put on the spot with difficult/awkward questions or situations. Admittedly, I’ve always been one of those “good on the spot” people (at least, until jazz school), but I’ve been waaay calmer and think a lot faster, deeper and creatively these days, because, heck, at least in normal situations, I don’t have to give a musical response!

So I’ve got to put this question out there – what did you study (or what are you studying), is it relevant to your job/career path now, and are things panning out how you had planned or did you kind of just wing it and waited to see what doors would open?

Something nice to round the evening off with – a playlist I threw together last night to doze to:

Also, this is possibly my last entry as a teenager. I turn 20 on Monday but I’m completely swamped this weekend, and will also be spending around 13 hours of my birthday at university. Yikes. And some very relevant words:

“The first step — especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money — the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.” – Chuck Palahniuk

Is it the way she looks at you? Seeing her face as you walk through the crowded avenue, That sets you afire

It’s Sunday now, and I haven’t slept in my own bed since Wednesday, thus it’s now piled with clothes, books and folders. In a monumental headache-related fuck up yesterday, I accidentally fell asleep after my hockey game, which resulted in getting nothing on my “Saturday To-Do’s” list done; I eventually did a fair bit of jazz theory at the boy’s house, which is a strike of today’s list instead, but catching up on this huge list is just a nightmare right now… In the meantime, I’ve rekindled my love for the album Primary Colours by The Horrors. I haven’t listened to it in a fair while now, and I’m just remember how much I enjoyed their noise, bass sounds and lyrics.

It’s funny because at jazz school, asides from some of the tutors, no one else seems to participate in any form of sports or physical activity beyond the fitness that we need to strenuously play music for hours on end. On Thursday evening, I was engaged in a lengthy conversation with the head of jazz about windsurfing and various other water sports that he does. And I’ve had many conversations with my old bass teacher about the diving and spear fishing he’s into, but really, no one else is into anything physical. It’s funny to me that in a discussion in the common room on Friday, none of the other jazz students could get their head around the idea of how I’m excited to get back into winter hockey again this season, because I’ve missed the stress relief it brings me. Plus the fact that it allows me to directly exert some physical aggression that might be building up due to stress… and the fact that I’m a bit of an intolerant, grumpy person to begin with anyway.

See, despite all my terrible living, sleeping and eating (the latter is improving though) habits, I’ve been rather missing the feeling of being physically capable, fit and toned. In other words, I really miss the feeling of being able to walk and walk and walk, run and run and run, and carry a load of heavy stuff without feeling like collapsing. I also miss how flexible I used to be. Gone are the days of doing splits and grand battement in ballet!

My point is, surely I’m not the only one who used to be and misses being much more physically active as a kid, running around playing sports every lunchtime and then playing more sports after school? As if to rub salt in the wound, lots of people I know could care less what they eat/drink/do, but still have “better figures” by definition of being slim. And boys! Think about how many boys you know that can eat four times as much as you and still complain about how they aren’t putting on weight. If only females had that luxury… especially as we are the ones who are more likely to have bad food cravings anyway.

On the topic of indulgence, here are two cakes that mum’s friend paid her to make for her daughter’s 1st birthday yesterday. I helped the the icing. An absolute nightmare:


Why must chocolate frosting taste sooo good? There’s a bit left over and all I want to do is eat it by the spoonful!

This is what happens when you sleep on me. You get photographed. Applicable to humans also, but in this case, darling kitty.

Isn’t he just such a sweet sweet?

I really want to fast forward into this time in 6 days because by then I will have done my three-assessments-in-a-row and will be enjoying my 2-week Easter break. It also means I get to finish off a the films I’ve started in three separate cameras, get them developed (ouch, expensive!) and see what the heck is on them.

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