The kin…

The light within you shines like a diamond mine, like an unarmed walrus. Steer on to freedom… Open all the boxes. Open all the boxes.

Pictures speak louder than words, so this post is purely dedicated to a compilation of 50 photos that my mother, sister and I have taken over the past three days.

We took a trip up north to Paihia in the Bay of Islands with some friends, and had an absolute blast, staying at a house right on the waterfront which had spectacular views. I can’t believe that I personally didn’t take any more photos (thus compiling mum and Liv’s photos too, because we all lounged around and did some things together, but some things apart), but it just goes to show how much fun in the sun and relaxing downtime I’ve been having! We swam (out to a post, twice), sunbathed, played poker, had Boston Legal marathons, sang along to songs in the car, drank beer, took bubble baths and ate far, far too much:

There was a huge cruise ship not too far offshore.

Reflected view from my bedroom window, with Liv in the corner.

View from the house.

Interior.

Lottie on our bed with the ranch slider wide open, basking in the view and breeze.

From the outside.

Super Liquor was right across the road! But we didn’t need it, haha.

Mum took this from across the road in the house, when we were heading out to the beach.

Me and my new American flag towel.

Beach!

I didn’t know my sister had taken this until I scoured through her memory card. What a pervert.

Lo and I. I know, I keep calling her a variation of things, but in my head she is a mix between Charlotte, Char, Lottie, and ultimately Lo from “Charlo” (which is what I type into “recipients” when I txt her).

My feeet.

Second floor view from the house.

Massive kitchen!

Japanese noodles.

Lottie wanting to nick off with my blanket and replacing our cat as the ginger tucked in my blanket whilst on holiday. Adorabubbly-cute, haha.

My risotto in progress.

Final product = risotto with mushroom, onions and chicken. My dinner and everyone else’s late night supper… I accidentally took a reeeaaally long nap, you see.

Meal complete with a CC & Dry, of course.

Mum and her Japanese friends all gave my risotto rave reviews, yay!

Lounge.

The house.

These sunset photos were taken by my mum – when I look at her photos, I can really see where she has inadvertently influenced me in style and composition over the years, without really ever properly “teaching” me anything specifically. She never told me how to compose my photos or how to take them in the first place because she didn’t want to restrict my view… but I guess some things just rub off over time, haha. But I’m glad it did.

In a way, I’m relieved I missed out on taking a drive out with mum and her friends to see the sunset, otherwise I would’ve had an internal struggle with my obsession to photograph everything, versus just taking life in through my eyes, not lens.

The spa that we had for a bath.

Lo blowing some bubble love my way.

Once we turned the jets on, the bubbles boiled over like crazy!

View from the house.

We stopped over at Matakana on the way home so that I could quench my cravings for the delicious ice cream and sorbet there. That, and we needed the girls’ room.

Blueberry sorbet and Chocolate ice cream. I LOVE CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM. It’s my top flavour of choice, I get it 99% of the time – but I knew the sorbet there was amazing so I couldn’t miss out… The girl at the store accidentally gave me blueberry ice cream instead of sorbet at first, so that’s what that glob of purple is, in between the two scoops.

I recommend their ice cream and sorbet, but I fucking hate their stupid queuing/ordering system and their customer service isn’t too hot either. That, and I was super glad the girl with short hair who kept touching her hair whilst scooping ice creams didn’t scoop my ice cream.

KILLER EELS?!?!!!!

The odd tree and the car parked in front of us.

Liv took these as we were crossing the harbour bridge, heading home.

There’s me driving with my left hand and red nails.

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I’m gonna meet you on the astral plane, The astral plane or I’ll go insane

I’ve never been huge on dogs, mostly because I was bitten by a huge one (unprovoked!) as a kid, and I still have the scar to show for it. But lately, I keep finding dogs really cute, and even entertain the idea of having one in the far off future. Maybe. I’m not a leopard, so I can change my spots.

Yesterday we went over to an old family friends’ place for a barbecue, where Liv and I visited our old pal, a cute dog called Penny. He’s only a couple of years younger than Liv, which makes him ancient in dog years, and it was very visible from the way he had difficulty walking, as well as his overall laziness. It just made me so, so sad, and dread the day where our cat gets that old too… I remember when he used to be such an energetic little dog that we couldn’t calm down and he would run and yap and yelp all the time – where as now we had trouble attracting his attention, even with food! Anyway, here’s Penny in all his cute glory, my oldest friend in New Zealand.

Of course, I couldn’t do a dog post without posting our cute cat as well. A couple of hours ago, we found him curled up in Liv’s suitcase and we immediately gushed over his cuteness and whipped our cameras out. However, by the time my sister’s rear end got our of my way for me to snap a few of him, she had already pissed him off thoroughly – with constant flashing in his eyes and calling his name – that he simply wasn’t in a cutesy sleepy mood anymore, and was just purely unimpressed. Luckily for him, I don’t use flash. We’re going on a little trip up north for a couple of nights, so this affectionate chappy will hopefully not miss us tooo much!

On late nights like these where I sit here or in bed and write and write, I wonder if I should be doing something more productive such as sleeping. I love sleeping, but evidently never in the “correct” hours of the day. I glance at the time and tell myself “you’ll regret this tomorrow”, and I mostly do, but there is something just so satisfying with having this time to myself. As if not only the whole house (yes, cat included), but the whole world was asleep, and this time was just between me and my mind. Asides from feeling the most creative or mentally productive at these hours, I’m also often the most upset and depressed. It’s when my problems I can distract myself from all day can no longer escape my consciousness. So I transcribe such things into words. And wonder to myself – is this stuff ever worth reading?

I finally grew a little bit of courage and started the momentous task of writing a novella/novel-type thing. The main problem I have is, I’m not sure how to set the timeline and in which order to do it, because it’s like a back and forth flashback/present-day thing. Why couldn’t I have made this easier for myself?! Hopefully spending the next couple of days away in the countryside relaxing on the beach will suss my mind out. I take and handle things too personally.

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” e. e. cummings

Does the body rule the mind, Or does the mind rule the body? But we cannot cling to the old dreams anymore, For there are brighter sides to life

HAPPY 2011 EVERYONE!!!

I can’t even begin to describe how refreshing it is to feel like I have a really nice and refreshing new start. I’m happily crossing things off to-do lists and today I gave my room a thorough tidy-up, as well as slept in new sheets last night on the first night of 2011. This is going to be a much better year than last. I know every other person is probably saying that, but considering the amount of crap I went through last year, I’m determined and excited for this to be true.

The highlight of my day today was remembering that I had bought a lotto ticket from my friend Sinead at the supermarket yesterday, and deciding to check the numbers online… and it turns out that I had a Division 4 Bonus Ball win, which equals $60 for me! Yusssss. See – looking like a fantastic start to the year already. My sister and I had slightly misread the results online and almost thought I might have won a bit more, but sixty bucks redeemed at Charlotte’s workplace suits me just fine. Isn’t it just handy to have two best friends work at Lotto outlets? I rarely buy lotto tickets and like to save them for special occasions, so I thought, heck, it’s 1.1.11, it can’t hurt!

My quote of the moment: “To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.” – Emily Dickinson

Here are some photos from my New Year’s Eve Yard Party – only a handful of them were taken by me, before inebriation, haha. The rest were taken by my sister and apparently my friend Veronique was the one who took gazillions of photos of the red cups and beer pong in progress:

The conception of the brilliant beer pong table came about when I agreed to let Ethan bring his friend Curtis along to my party. I also asked him in the same txt whether he had a long enough table suitable for beer pong or not, and he said he didn’t – but that they would build one! A bit skeptical, I asked how serious they were – to which Ethan replied “His dad’s a builder, he’s an architect [student] and I’m an engineer[ing student], between us, we’ve definitely got it down” – and that they did! Apparently they modeled the colours and “BMS” off “Blue Mountain State”, but it just so happens to also be Liv’s school colours at Pepperdine, haha.

That rude person’s photo-bombing hand is mine, I’m a bit embarrassed to say. And I really don’t look too great a few seconds later in that photo to the right. Also, I believe that magenta sheer blouse which I was wearing is the only pink item of clothing that I own! Bought it on new year’s eve for $20 on sale. It matched my lipstick, you see…

Here are some shots from a bit earlier on… when we looked fresher. The one on the left below is of Cara, Charlotte and Veronique, on my bed.

In the second photo down from this, we are doing tequila shots. I got told that my mum took this photo, but I’m not sure how true this is… I want my hair a bit longer!

The morning after and pancakes my sister made. Unfortunately, I turned it down for bacon and eggs that I whipped up instead.

Also, I’ve got a bunch of directions I’d like to head in, and things I’d like to accomplish this year, but I still think that new year’s resolutions are just not for me. I often read other people’s ones, and it just seems like such an overhead, umbrella sort of thing to do – not to mention the fact that I hate making goals. I know that goal-setting is a healthy thing to do, blah blah (enough teachers and parents have told me that), but I like things to be vague. In a way, because it feels like such a disappointment if I can’t meet them, but also as if I’m setting a limit as to what I’m going to do.

So, no new year’s resolutions for me, just badass, kickass time.

Oh, one last thing – I finally put up photos from the Viper Room last month. Click here and here!

She has black hair and small hands, And I have a red kite; I’ll put you right in it, I’ll show you the sky

Mmm, what better blog post to end the year with than one filled with scrumptious food that makes you go for seconds, thirds, and then confess of the agony of over-indulgence? Although, for some reason I am writing this blog post at 6am (very reflective of how I’ve been living December…) so I’ll just keep this short and sweet.

Last night something came over me and I announced – much to my family’s delight – that I was going to whip up dinner for the evening. I know that sounds like nothing at all, and a lot of families take turns with cooking, but in our household, it’s a big deal when Amanda cooks. Especially voluntarily. I rarely cook, and I avoid the kitchen as much as possible, preferring instead to enjoy the fruits of my mother or sister’s kitchenly labour (yes, I made that word up – I could have said “culinary labour” but I didn’t want to!) because they both cook amazingly. The only times I will usually cook is when I have to, such as when I’m home alone or when my mum is too tired to cook.

Anyway, being the ambitious, thrill-seeking person that I am, I decided to aim high and announced that I was going to cook up a risotto.  Now, everyone knows how much hard work risotto is, but how worthwhile the outcome is, so that’s why I picked it. Also, mum and Liv have been talking about wanting risotto for quite some time, and I thought, hell, this Jamie Oliver recipe book is going to teach me how to cook! In reality though, I didn’t really follow the recipe (I never do), and kind of made stuff up as I went. Apart from staples like steak and lasagne, I’ve never cooked the same thing twice, because I literally throw together what is available at the time, and make up weird combinations of things. Luckily for the family, this time I avoided lemon (which I usually use a lot of) and mint, and threw together something more normal-sounding. I decided to whip up three dishes, as I needed some more kitchen drama to keep me busy whilst stirring risotto; and I was pleasantly surprised and pleased with my miraculous ability to finish cooking them all at the same time:

There was a tray of meatballs with basil, black pepper and parmesan, baked in tomato-y sauce which I didn’t get a decent photo of, but that was dish #1.

Dish #2 was chicken with spinach and capsicum, which I cooked in hot, delicious butter.

And #3, the most important thing being the risotto (spinach and onion). To be honest, about ten minutes into cooking this, I started freaking out that it wasn’t going to work out, and that I would let everyone down. But I’m glad I didn’t! The only let down was that I forgot to put mushrooms in the risotto, but we ate so much of it so fast that we hardly had time to notice.

I think that’s my cooking quota for the next 3-6 months fulfilled, thanks, haha.

I hope everyone has a good and safe New Years and I will see you next year! What are your exciting celebratory plans for New Years Eve?

And a young man’s gonna make mistakes, til he hits the brakes

“By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future.” – Zelda Fitzgerald

I think it’s safe to say that I certainly do not live my life in a very safe manner. Wait, that sentence just sounded retarded. But it makes perfect literal sense in terms of what I’m saying. It’s true – I take a lot of risks, some calculated, but more often than not, I ignore such “calculations” and stick with what I want to do/think I should do/think I can get away with. The latter which sounds absolutely terrible, although thus far I have turned out quite “alright”. Point is, I wholeheartedly agree with the above quote, and I am living my life and making my “big decisions” as I see fit – not in the most “sensible” and “safe” manner at all. Instead, doing what I think will lead to where I’d like to be. I think that if I can’t dream big and try to fly towards such dreams up in the clouds at age 19, then there will be no more-appropriate time to do so.

I’m beyond grateful and appreciative towards my parents’ encouragement and support of me, even in times when they disagree with my decisions; I know there are many, many parents out there who simply do not provide such freedom and constant support towards their children. I’ve noticed (and mum’s also told me) that people are either in positive awe of how brilliant it is, or in absolute shock and horror towards my parents with regards to the fact that my sister and I pursue such “unconventional” pathways – and all with their full backing and support! Other parents that my family knows have either high-5’d us for sticking to our guns and going for it, or have taken it upon themselves to try and convince me that music is a stupid course of study that will lead to nowhere, and no career. They’d list all the reasons why I should study law or whatever instead (this is back at high school when I hadn’t decided on my university degree yet), and how I should just keep music as a hobby, etc. It’s as if the decision is so fucking obvious that only an outright idiot would choose otherwise. Even though I am always polite and try to deflect and then divert such conversations, it always maddens me, right to the very core. I just want to say who the hell do you think you are?! Don’t treat me like a fucking idiot; you say that as if I hadn’t thought of all of the above already, etc. Anyway, I don’t even know how that train of thought got here, because then I got distracted and have been reading something completely irrelevant for the past half an hour. Point is, I’m glad I still have a lot of things that I look forward to, because of the path I’ve chosen. Rather than having chosen one which I dread to face the end of.

Yesterday, with just a towel-bag of essentials, I set off for a very long drive out to a friend’s family house, south-west of mine. The weather hovered from very cloudy, sunny, and then cloudy, spitting rain, sunny, then back to the clouds and eventually decent rainfall. Photographically equipped with only a Canon point-and-shoot in the back pocket of my denim cut-offs, I didn’t take that many photos. The countryside experience is more about the intertwined smell of freshness, cow dung and grass in the air, the bugs that crawl on you, and the thorns, sand and mud on your feet. All in all it made for an interesting day – most certainly a very adventurous drive as I wasn’t quite sure where I was going to end up – with great company, great conversation, great food and great fun. In other words, a bloody great day:

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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