departure: feels like i cannot kiss you hard enough, not even if i bore right through you

I’ve done it again. I have started to call it my “spontaneous disappearing act” and I think it’s rather suitable. Just a little over two years ago, I dashed off to LA and San Francisco on a whim to see my sister and travel alone – and five days ago I pretty much bought the exact same flight deal. In two sleeps’ time I will be leaving for two weeks… after my third sleep (if I actually fall asleep on the plane) I will be in LA and in the middle I’ll be spending a week in New York City!!! I’ve aaaaalllwaaaaays wanted to go to NYC, but I’d never actually planned what I would do there because the thought of only fantasising about it was too painful. So now I’ve got to throw some ideas together pretty quickly. I’m sad that Aaron Parks is playing a night or two before I arrive in NYC, but I’ve got a handful of other people I want to see while I’m there, so hopefully it all happens! I will also be taking a LOT of film with me because I figure I would never regret bringing too much, but will definitely struggle if I feel like I am running out.

The trouble with spontaneously ditching one’s life for two weeks is that suddenly everything needs to be rescheduled or cancelled. I’m losing a nice chunk of pay from the time I’m gone and will be spending thrice that, so I had better spend wisely. Especially with Australia on the cards for Jan-Feb. Gah. But I strongly believe that travelling is one thing from which you will gain more than you spent. Anyone else with a case of wanderlust will more than agree, I’m certain. For those who are skeptical or hesitant about travelling alone, I think people just need to get over the “I need a buddy” mindset and try it out. It can be daunting, for sure, but I’ve met some really amazing people, been invited along to things and experienced so much that I swear I wouldn’t have stumbled across had I been with even one other person. However, in saying that, I’m not looking to missing the boy for two weeks. Of course I’ll still have an amazing time without him, but then I think, damn, who’s going to be my perfect person in all my photos; who will take a nice picture of me with something I want, rather than slap me in smack bang in front of it like other people do; who will hold my coat when I put my coat on; mostly importantly, who will hold my hand?!!! I guess the answer will be that no one will, and I will remember how I made do without him for all those years and travels prior, but I really wished that he was coming with me instead of writing his honours dissertation. I suppose he’ll at least get two weeks’  of decent work done without me distracting him, which means more adventures here when I get back.

As if to make me miss him even more, the lovely, lovely thing surprised me with a bouquet of flowers today:

 

 I’m kind of sad because I won’t get to see them for long since I leave so soon, but I like letting flowers dry out, so I will preserve them that way. We’d run out of vases since it’s spring, so I had to beautify an old gherkin jar, haha.

Just thought I should casually mention that the reason I’ve not been blogging is because I’ve been too busy: passing out at Radiohead, moshing to The Black Keys, shooting Sal Valentine & The Babyshakes and pining over Baths‘ sweet, sweet lyrics in person. I think the latter was quite suitable for this post, don’t you? Hopefully I’ll eventually address these distressing and heart-wrenching experiences, but for now I get to see my sister reaaaal soon and I will try try TRY to blog from LA/NYC!!!

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.

premise to interlude…

Another week, and two all-nighters later, I am three out of five essays down. I cannot wait until November 10th which will be the first day of my summer holiday! So this is the plan, I’ll state it publicly now and hopefully I will actually follow through. Because I am such a messy person, of course my room (especially my desk!) is once again just… a wreck, basically. Frankly, I can’t study or concentrate when it’s so messy because I can’t feel like I’m sitting down to do something “proper”, so once I hit “publish”, I will get up and tidy. Ready for the rest of this week, which I’m sure will be very, very long.

It seems I’m not the only person that needs a tidy environment to study or be productive in. But the problem is, often “tidying” because a form of procrastination itself. Thus, without any plans to do further studies or practise tonight, I am just going to tidy then hit the hay. Yes, I will… Does anyone have any tips on how to keep a desk/room tidy? Because I mess it up so quickly, it only takes sitting down at the desk and voila! There’s teacups, drink bottles, tissues, pens,  eeeeverywhere. Surely there’s got to be a more efficient way to go about being a student than this!

Also, these are some more photos from the last roll of film I posted. I’ve left out all the boring group shots and just left in what I thought were nice or amusing. It’s always such a surprise when I get films developed from my point-and-shoot because I don’t think about what I’m doing, unlike when I shoot with a film SLR. That’s when I have a certain level of anticipation and expectations, which is not always a good thing. These photo are from exactly four months ago. All on Kodak UltraMax 400 film, some of my 21st birthday party aftermath follows:

P.S. I jumped the gun a bit and bought us tickets to Crystal Castle’s Auckland show as well. It’s a super early present of some description but oh well. In conjunction with the other shows I mentioned last week, January is shaping up to be SERIOUS PARTY TIME.

these days are scraped from ceilings

It was so nice to read the handful of comments/emails that I got in the last post — and really lovely to know that I provoked some thought with regards to goals and bucket lists. I guess those things can get stagnant and we all need new perspectives to formulate motivations sometimes. Something that I am lacking right now. I really shouldn’t be blogging right now, but I enjoy it so much more than writing the essays which I have due in next to no time, ahhh!

I had spent the virtually the entire weekend camped out in the boy’s room, bashing my head with books, trying to come up with these essays in time. But all I want to do is gush gush gush because – GUESS WHO’S GOING TO SEE THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS TWICE?! And I am not joking when I say that I have been jumping, dancing, leaping around the room singing them at the top of my lungs. Driving to them. Writing, eating, loving, procrastinating, prancing around to them. You have NO IDEA how over the moon/giddy/happy/ecstatic/crazy/hyper I am about this. The boy and I decided “oh why not” when they announced their only Big Day Out side show in Sydney. So we’ve decided to fly to Sydney, then train down to Melbourne for BDO and Laneway. That’s the rough plan, at least. Nothing’s been planned nor booked except the concert tickets at this stage, but we are 100% committed to going.

Can I just say it again?! I AM GOING TO SEE THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS TWICE!!! And Animal Collective! We are seeing them in Auckland before we leave for Sydney. Essentially, we are seeing the boy’s favourite band, and my favourite band – twice. It is going to be the absolute best week of my life I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that I will see the band that I’ve been listening to for half my life – twice in ONE WEEK. And if you think about it, half my life is a decade! Ten years! I remember being eleven and discovering “Miles Away”, then thinking I was so badass for getting away with listening to “Bang”. The rest is history. When I’m done with all these bloody assignments (and probably exams too), I will have to do a comprehensive post about my love for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. As if it wasn’t obvious enough already…

In the meantime, I had finally finished up a really old roll of film on my point-and-shoot and gotten it developed. It’s got lots of other good times on there that I’m going to spread out posting because I sure as hell do not get to party again any time soon. Apart from perhaps a sneaky few hours at hockey prizegiving this Saturday… So in memory of times much more carefree and deeper sleeps – all taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 film:

the week, end

I wonder if any other couples have a sport-watching routine that would resemble what the boy and I do. We’ve been really sad to see the London Olympics come to an end, and since I stupidly deleted the last day of the Tour de France from mysky, we’ve been watching the Closing Ceremony as the backdrop of dinners and dish-washing. I was so impressed by Matt Bellamy’s vocal abilities that I’ve re-wound and watched the bit where he hits that amazing note and transitions from piano to guitar (why did he step away from the mic?! Argh, I hate that note being cut off like that!!) over and over and over again. And then we speculated as to whose decision it was for George Michael to debut a new song that nobody knew, when he could’ve easily done another crowd pleaser. And whose call was it to blind us all with Jessie J’s 3x horrendous nude bodysuits?! Oh yeah, and to have to sing repeatedly too. Many, many others would have been far more qualified and deserving of the honour of singing along side the remaining Queen members, say. Yikes. So, just as the Olympics have wrapped up, the boy’s soccer and my own hockey are just heading into the business end of the season. I was sad to have missed his two very impressive sounding goals yesterday, since our game times overlapped. And I’m sad to say that my team lost to an opponent who are technically not as good as us, but are proving to be our bogey team. We probably needed the extra motivation though. We’ve had a few decent wins in a row now, and we have the semi final in a couple of weeks’ time, so maybe we needed a decent wake up call. Also, Liverpool probably got a bloody decent wake up call last night. After a night of beer pong and chandeliers (both fantastic beer games, by the way), I dozed off during the game, but to be honest, there was hardly any desire to stay awake considering the shabby loss to West Brom. Embarrassing.

A few food recommendations, then I’m back to nursing some battle wounds and studying with the cat. This Glass Eye Creek Wild Meat Sauce is one of the greatest sauces I’ve ever had. Considering the fact that I’m not a sauce person at all (tomato sauce is about it, and only on average-tasting fries, no less), this is a big deal. They only sell them in selected supermarkets and I’m positive they don’t sell them overseas yet, but I’m definitely sending my sister in Malibu a bottle of this when I get around to it! (Am happy to take requests too) I haven’t done all that much with it yet, but I was introduced to it in the easiest, most amazing manner of consumption: well-toasted Vogels (amazing NZ bread), buttered, sauced, then topped with feta cheese. Too easy.

Oh by the way, I have to confess now that I am turning into one of those people that relies on their phone for photos. So they’re all sub-standard to me (especially of the beautiful restaurant below!!!), so I need to umm, you know, get back into a camera-carrying routine. Damn. Cos all of these were taken on my phone, shhh.

I also put a spot of that sauce in my burger (below). Which was also made in quick-and-easy manner, but tastes so sooo good! The boy and I have been improving with each burger we make, haha. The below features two sorts of lettuce only because it sort of had to be eaten… For the patty, all you need is some mince, mixed with pan-friend onions (maybe garlic), an egg, mustard seeds, salt and pepper, mould into the right size (press down the middle part to a slight welled shape so that it goes flat when cooked) and grill in a regular pan. Flip only once. Let the cheese melt on the cooked half once it’s been flipped. And compile on toasted buns with anything you like. I had an egg with this one. Butter, salad, mustard seeds, Glass Eye Creek Wild Meat Sauce and some ground black pepper.

Just a token chocolate shot. Brain food.

On Friday night we managed to get around to going to a Japanese restaurant which the boy had been planning on taking me for quite some time. It’s located in the oddest of neighbourhoods (next door to a Chinese takeaways), and I can’t say that the shop front looked all that promising – in fact it was rather blinding. But after we were lead through this…

… a sliding door opened to reveal some stairs leading down into a quasi-basement area that was very industrial-loft-looking with a high ceiling and the most amazing framed windows on one side, and a lovely wall that was entirely painted with cherry blossoms. The waiters and waitresses (and chefs) all spoke or were Japanese, so it definitely passed my standard of what they advertised as “authentic Japanese” should be. We had the most amazing, drawn out meal that consisted not only of our absolute favourites such as karaage chicken and tempura prawns, but we also had shabu shabu. Not to mention the three bottles of Japanese marble soda that I could not resist!

Photo of the beautiful iris flowers in my front yard. One of my favourite, favourite flowers.

And this is what winning beer pong looks, like, heck yeah! After some warming up, the boy and I made a killer team last night. I had to crack open some beers on the side in order to drink any haha. One more week of tests and such, then it’s study break. I miraculously did better at my combo recital last week, (the best public playing I’ve ever done so far, I think), so yay for improving. In the meantime, Jacam Manricks is back and we’ll be attending his show at jazz school on Tuesday night, but check him out online!

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