Photography, both mine and others’.

Yeah, the river, it spoke to me, It told me I’m small and I swallowed it down, If I make it at all – I’ll make you want me

Leaving the internet and blogosphere behind for a bit has been good for me. I’ve been doing a lot of major thinking in terms of re-structuring my life, my studies and my future. I still haven’t made a 100% commitment on any decisions yet, but at the moment it looks like I will be stuck at university for quite a few years to come, yet. I guess I’m just going to really try to make whatever I decide work for me. Ahhh. The woes of being multi-faceted, apparently multi-talented and seeking a more academic outlook.

A couple of days ago we had an “AS Music class plus Joel Reunion” roast lunch at Cara’s house. She had bought a few kilos of pork last Sunday and forgot to freeze it, so it went off and she had to re-buy the meat again that morning, causing us to wait until 2.49pm for lunch! All of us had skipped breakfast in anticipation of the roast lunch, so we ended up pigging out on my cupcakes as entree instead. The food (when we finally got to eat) was amazing though, so kudos to Cara for having us all around and being a lovely domesticated host. Poll of the day as to who would produce offspring first went to Cara (be it good or bad), so I guess it’s a good thing that she can do a bloody good roast!

Clockwise from the man in the beanie: Kingi (William), Freddy, Joel and Cara tucked away in the background.

Cara, Colin and Kingi. It’s funny how weird someone’s first name sounds once you get stuck into calling them by their last name.

Typical Joel slouch. With possibly my glass of Lindauer that he nicked and drank! Which I didn’t quite complain about though, after the wine incident last weekend.

The lovely view from Cara’s parents’ house. We had the lunch there instead of at her flat – because it’s much brighter and nicer. Plus it’s plenty more familiar territory to me.

Making sure we eat our greens…

Almost meal time.

I brought up how weird it was that we are all still friends, even though we rarely see each other, let alone everyone at once these days.  Joel (the tall, lanky, token finish-all-the-leftover-food guy, haha) is an absolute all-rounded genius who can write more Kanji characters that I can, who also makes Mechanical Engineering and Chemistry conjoint degrees sound too easy. When he tried to explain to Colin what “mechanical engineering” means, and the possibility of becoming a rocket scientist, we begged that he should become one just because of the endless “you don’t need a rocket scientist to…” jokes that we can pull. He was also the friend who traveled with me to Taiwan and Japan last year, although we really only became friends in 2008 from a mutual friend. That was the same year that Cara and I became friends as well; prior to that she absolutely loathed my guts because of some doped up footballer I dated and then dumped (because he was too stupid…) all the way back in those junior days of high school. She now works full time in freighting (is that what you even call it?) and sings in the Auckland Graduate Choir that often performs with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra. I don’t really remember how I became friends with Freddy at all asides from music and economics class; he’s the token Asian chick-magnet who has severely buffed up this year and we have to constantly tell him to keep his muscles to himself! I’m also not sure how I befriended Kingi, but I only remember that we bonded over our mutual distaste for our music teachers, growing up in the “ghetto South Auckland” and concert band camps back at college. Lastly, there’s good ol’ Colin. Mister Spanish-speaking gossip extraordinaire law student who is now also studying Chinese and constantly asking me for pingyin of words and phrases he doesn’t know. What a weird and eclectic bunch we are. I’d say it again – I simply don’t know how we’re friends. But that doesn’t matter, right? One or more of them are always there in times of the oddest needs. I think I’ve received late-night rides home from everyone except Kingi. I gave him one once.

So back to that afternoon, our lunch looked like this:



Then Freddy left because he had promised to meet someone at the gym in town, and look at how gleeful the rest of them looked at the sight of dessert! The action shot of them all shaking on some bottle of mousse or trying to get ice cream or meringue is absolutely priceless.

I have to admit: I’m not too keen on Crunchie ice cream. I don’t like Crunchie chocolate bars so the ice cream didn’t go down too well with me at all. Plus I was extremely full. Kingi rebutted my excuse of the ice cream being “urgh yellow!” was “but you are too!” – just priceless! Especially coming from the Pineapple Lump/Crunchie Bar man himself – brown on the outside and yellow on the inside.We are full of racially colourful jokes, aren’t we, literally… courtesy of our high school culture, I’d say.


Then Colin nicked my camera off me and embarked on a mission to photograph me. As usual, I resorted to my face-hiding tactics…



Creepy stalker-like photo by Colin, tehe.

My dessert!!!

In all seriousness though,  I need to lose some pounds and get over this lens-shy habit that I’ve formed in the past couple of years. I don’t know how I ever managed to fare as a child model, but apparently I’m supposed to go back to Taiwan in some months to let some famous photographer shoot me. Good lord. Help! Gulp.

Behind cabin curtains, Let’s join the mile high club. I can’t wait anymore

How rare is this? My computer has been off for days and days in a row – probably four or five days? – I lost count! Between then and now, I’ve had Japanese food, tacos, far too much cheap wine and ice cream, and I’ve been to the Auckland Museum as well as the Winter Gardens, plus won a hockey game. There’s something so satisfying about disappearing for a few days, especially with some of my favourite people and food in the world.

After the boy finished his exams, we celebrated with an evening in with a western film and Boston Legal; then went out for a long-awaited meal at a very delicious (yet affordable) Japanese restaurant not too far from my house. I decided to take a roll of 24 Kodak colour film with me, and here are the results. For once I didn’t fuss too much over anything, really. It’s quite refreshing using colour instead of black and white for a change – plus it was easier and cheaper to get developed quickly. These are most of the photos, and as you can see, most of it entailed me stalking the boy around the place:

Banana and jam on toast for breakfast.

The Winter Gardens: I hadn’t been here in years and years, and the boy had never been until that day.


Sitting at a bench in a corner.


I think we enjoyed the tropical gardens more because it was heated to a very warm temperature inside. Auckland’s been freezing lately. Winter’s finally here.



Those lily pads!

He took this one of me. I like not reaally being seen.

Stalking strangers, as I do.

We were too lazy to take our boots off to go inside the marae that’s been built inside the museum. But I waited a little while til this guy walked through.

Bones.

That statue thing is badly placed in this photo. Oh well.


More stranger-stalking.

Glass ceiling.

View from the top floor.

Double exposure.

It was far too dark inside this room.

The display was “Auckland 1866”, but someone had tacked a polaroid inside and dated it 1989, haha.


Double exposure: the Sky Tower and city skyline v.s. the boy and the museum.

I have some personal favourites out of these, but I’d like to see which ones other people like most?

It’s funny that I used to think the Auckland Museum was huuuuuuuge when I was a kid, but now it seems so small. Especially in comparison to places I’ve been in the last while such as LACMA or the Getty Centre. Traveling and seeing things outside a daily, normal spectrum really does help to pull the size of the world in perspective, I think. It’s also interesting how I can react so differently to feeling small – at times it empowers me on this I must search for so much more and see, feel, live more things feeling, but other times it belittles me and demotivates me if I’m not careful. Everything in moderation, I guess. I’ll try and take more rolls of film during this semester break. Before taking extra papers takes over my life again.

By the waaay, the boy’s name is Daniel. I personally can’t stand people calling him Dan. It doesn’t suit him. I think that irks me more than it irks him, haha. And I don’t know yet, but I still don’t think I’ll ever blog with his name. I think it’s more obvious and endearing to just call him “the boy” on here anyway. I used to worry about how he’d feel having me splash his face all over my blog – since some friends of mine mind, although most don’t – but it seems he rather enjoys it. Oh, to be someone’s muse.

Obligation, Complication, Routines and schedules

I need to blog more often throughout the week so that the “things I want to blog about” don’t snowball up into one massive blog entry that resembles a tree with branches spurting out all over the place, rather than a more sightly lone autumn leaf that people like to pay strange amounts of attention to. See? There is so much crap that has accumulated in a week’s time that my very first sentence alone is far too long and disturbing. Okay.

I want to know – how much do “normal people” let things get to them? How much empathy are most people capable of, especially when it comes to books, movies and music? I haven’t done much in the past week, except I feel like I’ve been on an intense emotional rollercoaster, and I’m not too sure whether I enjoy this or not. And the root of all this spawns off into many, many tangents.

 

Taken on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 B/W film; Nikon F3. A photo I had used in the exhibition.

For one, the reason I asked the questions above is because I’m one of those people who cry at movies, TV, music, books, you name it. Even a single, beautifully written line can get my tear ducts working on overdrive. I have this unfortunate (I feel, for the most part) ability to perceive, then receive and feel everything on such a personal, realistic level. I’d taken the last couple of days off reading, but ever since starting it last week, I have been disappearing into Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead (just over halfway through it now). I read a particularly painful part of the novel at the boy’s house, and tears started pouring down my face. I felt bad and embarrassed because it’s an odd predicament isn’t it – to have someone crying over a book you gave them – but oh heck, he deals with worse from me. Then I told him this is exactly what I mean by things getting to me. I wish I didn’t feel and care so goddamn much about everything; I hate how everything has the ability to seep right through my rough and tough exterior and pluck and snap at my heartstrings. Felisa (who no longer blogs publicly, I think) and I have discussed how it’s almost like a writer or artist’s complex – that we notice things that other people might merely glance at, and actually register such things. Because we then go on to recreate them. My therapist said I need to stop owning everyone else’s feelings and my mother said maybe I should go into acting.

On the flip side, I can be a totally detached and hardened person. I can force myself to feel an empty hollowness, rather than invest any personal interest or reaction to something. It’s probably better in terms of a “public self”, but do I really want to feel empty and hollow and react to nothing?

Also, this is the playlist I slept and read to for a couple of days in a row. Favourite track from The King of Limbs mixed in with a bunch of Tricky. There is something painfully sexy about it all. And it proved to be a great sober-driving-at-3am-playlist, after a Friday night spent dancing my legs off to music I wouldn’t ever listen to outside of a club. Many people find it surprising that I dance. Sober, even. It’s liberating and I feel kind of powerful. Not because I had seven pairs of eyes glued to me (none of which I was interested in), but because it made no difference to me whether there were any at all. It’s the same feeling I get even when I’m just doing normal things during normal hours, and rather reminds me of Marina having said that she magically attracts men even when she’s not trying. It is the power in that innocence, precisely; yet not at all, and so much more all at the same time.

I think I might have to blog about it later rather than squish it into this post, but I have a 40-minute appointment with the HOD of Jazz on Tuesday. We’re all scheduled in for a 10 minute chat each, mostly about the changes to the Bachelor of Music degree structure that will be implemented next year, but I have broader issues to discuss in terms of what I’m going to enroll in… such a complicated and delicate issue that will potentially affect my future more than it will affect any other jazz students. Urgh.

 

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

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