On the sly

I’ve been feeling increasingly down, frustrated stressed out as of late, and in general I don’t have all that much to say right now. The only thing which has occurred that might have some long-term bearing on my life is that I’m already officially accepted into the LLB/BA conjoint degrees at university next year based on my UCAS points. Music and Bmus/BA, however, still says “Pending”… we shall see how that develops after I actually send in my music application, I suppose.

The other day during last period study class, I was much too tired to attempt any more writing and sat around daydreaming instead. I was thinking that I really don’t like the feeling I get when I get asked if my hair is naturally curly. At this point I should explain that my hair is naturally quite wavy – though not enough to be curly, and too much of a mess to be anywhere near straight, so about a year ago I got talked into getting a perm; which has surprisingly lasted a whole year until about now. In other words, I decided that being in-between sucked so chose to incline towards something which I thought looked better than the other (I look awful with proper, straight hair).  But being asked such a question makes me feel somewhat like a fraud. Frankly, I observe other people’s roots for answers, instead of asking them “oh, is your hair actually naturally blonde?” – surely not! It would be social suicide in the land of females, so I’m not quite acquainted with why it’s okay for me to be confronted with “oh I thought so, that it wasn’t naturally that curly”: as if I was fake by further extents than those evidently-bleached-platinum-blondes with skin several shades of unkempt and uneven orange, their lips dripping with gloss.

That said, I don’t have any problem with people dying their hair blonde – except asians, really. Now that is just not meant to be. Gross.

I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity

Somewhere amidst my current state of hayfeverish nose-blowing and nose-bleeding, I’ve been having a pretty reckless week. Kicking off Monday morning with Stage Band practise instead of hockey training for a change, we were hyped to attend the KBB Music Festival in town this week – it’s my 5th, and last.

All term I’ve been resentful towards school and agreeing with fellow cynical 7th formers who say that they “won’t be missing” college – and to a large extent, I now realise that I haven’t been completely lying. Maybe it’s because it’s midnight and I tend to get quite wordy and analytical at this time of day (or night, should I say… but it’s day to me, but more on that later), but I suddenly realise that the only place I will truly miss is probably the music department at school. As much grief, frustration and angry tears it has brought me in the past half a decade (good god, did I just say half a decade?!), it’s the one place outside my bedroom that I have spent the most collective time at. Trust me, I wish I was exaggerating when I say that, this Monday alone, I spent 6 hours at music at school: that’s two hours more than I had slept the night before.

For the first time in 4 years I changed my stage band attire – our uniform is basically black, black, and more black, with a gold and maroon waistcoat, but for once I didn’t wear jeans and wore a skirt instead. Mr. Bolley asked where my blazer was from because he thought it was part of some uniform, but I had just decided to wear it instead of the hoodies that everyone else had worn into town for KBB since it suited better (below, right… it looks quite posey, but truth be told I wasn’t looking at the camera because I’d just woken up from the long car ride home). The other picture is of an outfit I put together at the last minute a couple of weeks ago for a gig I photographed. It’s not a very “outfit picture” though, and I don’t even have my long socks and boots on, but I thought I’d just mention that the shirt I’m wearing is actually a dress! Although ironically, I’ve ever worn it out as a dress yet, but I think it looks better like this. You can’t see it in the picture, but I had to tie a black ribbon making the straps meet in the middle, since it was a low back, and very loose, low cut dress.

I’m still quite sketchy on their decision to relocate the festival at the Aotea Centre instead of at the Auckland Town Hall this year; in fact I have yet to find out as to why they did that at all, but the acoustics in the Aotea Centre simply pales in comparison to the Town Hall. The only upside I can think of, is that all the schools have much more storage space for instruments, cases and other gear – but for two days in a row now we’ve been assigned to level 5, which is a bitch of a tramp up the stairs with a bass case/amplifier! We were sneaky for Concert Band today and managed to dodge the event co-ordinators and snag rides upstairs in the lift, yay!

So I mentioned before that I get quite wordy during the late hours, on Sunday night (the reason I slept so little), I used my inspiration to churn out lyrical words as a means of procrastinating from finishing an English assignment. I wrote quite a fair bit, but here are just some snippets; none of them are titled (yet), and I find that phrasing/emjambment/punctuation seems to be a big aspect of things I write. If I ever put music to them, though, there are some lines/words that I will definitely change and rephrase:

The last thing I wrote that night, my personal highlight:
The navy curtains disguise the time of day
Or night, we are uncertain,
It’s been so long since we left.
A room once so small and empty
The hollowness of a house, not home,How did things change the tone?
Candles won’t bring us romance,
But the closed white door a privacy
And in here, a silent intimacy.

This is only the second half, I’ve omitted the first part because in hindsight, it really sucks:
I will leave because you say
so, I will leave
Not of my own accord.
I will leave because you say,
So I will leave.

I’m not too sure where this came from, it was mostly spurned from the first couple of lines:Whatever happened to indifference?
Your sun-stained chest
Makes me cringe that you
Want her berry-kissed lips on you.
Since when could I not keep
A small cup of coffee steady
It would be easier than easy
To shed this on her lap.

What happened to “go with the flow”?
Now I’m looking up maps for directions
It’d be easier if I knew where we were heading
But what a bore that’d be.
And if my only desire is to
Fulfill your desire too
How my paltry needs
Will kill the “me and you”.

It’s Blitz!

First of all – It’s Blitz! by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is AMAZING! I’ve finally gotten it, after months of lurking around on msn with the release date on my personal message. I have to admit, after first hearing Zero, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect – was there to be more of the same, twangy, catchy, zesty power tunes that the ingenious Zinner has made up on guitar, or something slightly more sinister, featuring the sophisticated side of Karen O’s vocals?

The answer was to be a tasteful equilibrium of the two. I’ve currently been making a huge attempt to tidy my room with this album on in the – no, not background, at all – well, with the album playing, and as usual, I’m loving the lyrics. One of my personal favourites so far based on both the way it sounds and the lyrics will have to be Hysteric – the words “Flow sweetly, hang heavy/You suddenly complete me/You suddenly completely” ring so heavily in my ears.

In other matters, I went shopping with my Mum and sister in Newmarket a couple of days ago in search of some ball shoes. I ended up with a pair of Mollini in coral (my phone takes crappy pictures, the colour looks off here), and whilst it doesn’t perfectly match my ball dress colour (flame red), I’d like to think that I will wear these heels on other occasions as well – plus, who’ll really be looking at your shoes if you’re in a Jovani dress? They were on sale, so I got them for $90 at virtually half price.

Despite being completely happy with the shoes, I’m outraged at the shitty customer service that I received. Upon arrival in the store, I found about three different shoes that I wanted to try on, and the two girls (they looked only 20-something) that worked there gave me one of those bitchy up-and-down looks, and proceeded to continue chatting behind the counter right at the back of the store, completely ignoring my presence and the fact that I was approaching them with all these shoes in my hands. Then, when I asked them if I could get them in my size, one of them snapped “Those two are the last pair, I’ll find go find this one”, and fell just short of snatching them out of my hands. What on earth.

By this point I was insulted. Okay fine if you two don’t want to approach every customer that enter the store and end up “only browsing”, but here I was, a more-than-eager customer wanting to try shoes on, and they were completely putting me off. Well I ended up falling in love with this pair but decided to ask them to put them on hold for twenty minutes so we could finish strolling up Broadway – and you know, just in case I found something better… in a store with nicer sales assistants – and I got a “yeah whatever”. Not only that, but when I returned less than a quarter of an hour later to pick up and pay for my shoes, I approached the counter to see one of the was busy rummaging in the back room for a shoe in someone’s size (the store was full by this point), and was wondering where on earth the other girl had gone when I heard a rustle, peeked over the counter, and found her sitting against the back wall, evidently hiding behind the counter, pretending like she wasn’t there, so she didn’t have to do her job! Then I had to say “umm… excuse me?” about four times before she finally let out an impatient sigh and stood up to serve me. I was just short of slapping her with a shoe or something when she looked blankly at me like she didn’t recognise me, and gave me an “eh, wtf?” look when I told her that I was here to pick up my shoes that were on hold – this, being the same girl I’d given them to.

It took her forever to find the shoes. I was mad. And left the store cursing them and telling my mother that I was definitely going to ring up their manager and lay a huge complaint at some point.

I’ve just looked up the store’s phone number.

Red nails, retail therapy and a hundred posts

Finally, my term one holidays has been kick started by Easter Weekend. As usual, within 24 hours of being released from the realms of our strict school rules, I immediately coloured my nails… red again – I went on a hunt for black, but couldn’t find it, and gold was just not bold enough for my mood.

I can’t believe that after almost three years that this is finally my hundredth post! Actually, I can believe it, because I’ve simply always been too busy or too lazy; or, more often than not, a combination of the two. My friend Angie and I sped off in my car straight from the school carpark (oh what rebels we are, our school doesn’t allow students to drive to school, most certainly not with passengers, unless you have a driving permit and passenger permission – both of which I’m a proud owner of – although I don’t think the mall’s what they had in mind when they issued that to me) the minute school let out at 2pm on Thursday. One of the few upsides with my school is that school always finishes an hour earlier when there’s a long-weekend holiday – we take ample advantage of it, of course.

I don’t think the rooftop carpark wall minded witnessing our drastic transformation from a primped and highly decorated school uniform (we adorn many badges) to flash things on heels. Ang and I spent the next 7 hours glamourising ourselves in changing rooms and making mental wishlists… my 18th birthday is in a month, presents, anyone? I couldn’t remember the last time I had so much fun (window) shopping. Hopefully when I receive my holiday paycheck for tomorrow (not even working, on Easter Sunday, yessss) I’ll be able to go back and buy a gorgeous sequin dress from Max. It’s a shame no one wants to pay $199 for a pair of pants that look amazing on me (even if I say so myself) – which is really saying something about how nicely cut and designed they were, considering I don’t generally look very good in pants. Towards the end of the day, however, after 2 malls and 7 hours of strutting around in heels, I was satisfied with the purchase of a new cardigan-shawl-like thing, as well as four bits of jewellery for $5/each from Bling at Botany since they’re closing down – they’re getting more stolen from them than what they’re making, the girl from school that works there said. I’m not complinaing.

I’m thinking I’ll take some photos of how I’ve been dressing lately, sort of as a point for future reference for myself, maybe? I feel very rock ‘n’ roll lately. I’ve always felt that way… but moreso as of late.

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