The ride down to Rotorua from Auckland was reasonably easy; I’d slipped in and out of unconsciousness listening to my ipod whilst thinking “wait… I never heard the end of that song…”, but the one upside to having been tardy to school was that I landed the front passenger’s seat in the second of the two minivans that we’d taken down.

Dinner, however, was a different story. Much to my surprise and horror, we rocked up to a place called… New Zealand Gourmet Food or something – which turned out to be a Chinese restaurant promoting veal – with a couple of taxidermised deer around the place for decoration! Ordering food was quite a fiasco. For once I felt such an asian, and I had to explain to everyone that, no, they shouldn’t order a dish each because in asian restaurants the portions are designed to be shared – “that’s why the thing in the middle of the table that you guys keep playing with spins, you know”, haha. Mind you, the funny thing about dinner was that it turned out to be the most Chinese food I’d ever eaten, since we ordered mostly “safe” food, like (way too much) fried rice, and chicken dishes.

Highlight of the day so far: we had to push-start the van after dinner!

Anyone unfortunate enough to have been within my vicinity for the past week will have undoubtedly heard of the endless pain on the right side of my mouth caused by two wisdom teeth growing simultaneously.

I’m sure majority thought I was just being a hypochondriac with all my bitching about it – but no longer! I finally managed to get a dentist’s appointment for about an hour ago, and immediately the dentist said I had to have the top one pulled out – right then and there. Needless to say I was mortified – I hadn’t had a tooth pulled out in over a decade and the last time I was sitting in the same seat a couple of months ago I’d had some fillings put in. My memory immediately flicked back to the pain and discomfort… if fillings hurt so much, how bad is getting a tooth pulled out going to be?! It turns out that getting numbing injections took a lot longer and hurt a lot more than getting the tooth itself taken out. I asked to keep it – but they didn’t even rinse it for me! At the moment, I’m just afraid of the numbness wearing off, since I could see some fleshy bits attached to the tooth, urgh. Sorry if the photo’s a bit gruesome, couldn’t help it!

The upside of it all is that Mum and I drove straight to the ice cream factory store and bought 4x frozen yoghurts and 2x mango sorbet tubs all for the cheap price of $10! The looney downside is that I can’t have hot food for a week; have to keep biting on this fucking gauze that’s really pissing me off right now to stop the bleeding; have to keep taking antibiotics; aaaaaand… I can’t drink my pains away either, bugger! Mind you, that’s proably better for my health and eftpos card in the long-run, but I’m going to see Handsome Furs tonight and was hoping to have a beer or too, grrr.

On the strand of music, I photographed the Popstrangers gig on Saturday night, so eveeentuuually the pics will be up. Also, the Stage Band has a gig at the Howick Club tonight; I’m not sure what the occasion is but I guess I’ll find out in about an hour. And the best news? Concert Band won KBB!

My mother was an avid advocate of me attaining my license bright and early. With the legal driving age (beginning at a learner’s license) yet to be changed from 15 here in NZ, I’ve had my full driver’s license for well over a year now (had it since I was 17) – which means, on paper, I’m as qualified to drive as someone who has been driving for decades. I just saw these two videos which are being shown in the UK as an attempt to deter teenagers from txt-driving – they really need to start showing similar ones here, what with the huge amount of txt-drivers (regardless of the law change this November). This is a huge contributing factor as to why I often choose to drive over hitching a ride. Too often I’ve been in a car where the driver suddenly whips out their phone and starts txting/reading txt messages… it’s truly scary especially a particular occasion where we were travelling at 70kph on a 50k zone.

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”.

Even though all the gigs listed in the Groove Guide are on the internet with greater detail, I always make a point of stopping by Burger Fuel or the Rock Shop for a printed copy. I like to tuck it next to my month-old lotto ticket and floating coin in my bag; that is, on the rare, but growing occasions that I carry a bag at all.

The large disappointment that comes with this entire ordeal, however, is the fact that they mispelt my name on the photo page – sure they got it right under “Contributors” elsewhere, but, who on earth spells “Amanda” wrong?! I actually expected my last name to be mispelt, as usual, but I guess stupid things like this always have a tendency of happening to me. Alas, this will not be the end of my life on print.

It’s almost 2am, for what seems like the thousandth day in a row. I’m in dire need of sleep. I don’t think I’ve slept before 2am for over two weeks and it’s getting ridiculous. My body doesn’t understand what keeps my mind awake so late into the best hours of the twenty-four.

First period A Level English was turbulent this morning. I would have said that I don’t remember the last time I felt so upset via txt/phone messages, except just then I recalled a certain psychotic ex-boyfriend. Regardless, an issue arose which I honestly should have thought through carefully – I mean for goodness sake my mother’s a photographer, I should know better than to be the source to two publications’ photos at the same concert. Sure, I was approached by the band in regards to the second one, but I should have known better. Talk about overwhelmed. The rest of gig pics are here though.

Thankfully that’s behind me now, and I have one last weekend to enjoy with the imminent thought of exams and auditions and tournament week hanging over my head; I don’t think that thoroughly qualifies as “enjoy” except I plan on getting mildly intoxicated enough at a gig I’m photographing this coming Saturday. I would plug it and stick up a poster and all… but no one locally relevant reads my blog except for the odd friend so what’s the point?

Anyway, I’m up here at Cheese on Toast now:

My friend showed me this off failblog, it was just so funny I couldn’t not post it –>

I don’t have anything of interest to record other than the following:

1/ I’m going to Clap Clap Riot in town on Friday night, and I will be photographing for Cheese on Toast - super excited.

2/ Very likely also that I will be seeing the Handsome Furs later this month.

3/ I can’t believe I’ve just renewed my domain for the… 3rd time? So that’s like, Happy 4th Birthday (soon) to StaticImage.net.

4/ Lastly, I just wrote this – any guesses what it’s about? Someone thought it was a vibrator, before I wrote the 3rd part… it’s not, haha.

Steel-bodied, so velvet,
In your hands, you see through
t’Wind the time, start at centre,
Can you, can you, develop her?

Hardened core, so ice cold,
Turn her on, let light in
Uncap the blinds, turn the ring,
Can you, un-blur everything?

Smooth-cased, so focused,
Snap in place, the view you see
Construe, the picture you prefer,
Can you, can you, capture her?

It’s taken me a week but I’ve finally managed to sort through, resize and upload my gig photos from last weekend: Cut Off Your Hands at the Ellen Melville Hall, supported by (in chronological order) Brand New Math, Oh Mercy, Bionic Pixie and Collapsing Cities. I’ve attached some to this post, but the rest are here.

I remember years ago when I used to complain that all decent gigs were R18 – and indeed they were – everytime a band I was keen on was playing, I had to check everywhere to find out whether or not there was an All Ages section separate to the bar at the venue, or if they were going to forgo admitting youngsters altogether. At the time, older friend had said “You’ll be grateful and understand why gigs are R18 once you turn 18″, but I never fully understood until I was at Ellen Melville last Saturday night. Overall the gig was great though – $15 for 5 bands, now that’s seriously impressive. I would’ve paid more than that just to see COYH alone. Kudos to Savvy for making it non-profit, with COYH shirts going at $15 also (I’m currently wearing mine, minus the hems that I tore off).

The real downer for me was more the fact that, for once, I felt quite old at a gig, and felt like I had to be nice to the people around me. Upon arrival at the square on High Street, I had a 16 year old asking if I could buy her cigarettes. I really didn’t like the idea of her approaching anymore strangers, and there were a lot of dodgy men lurking around. Later, whilst hogging my prime position in the front row just in front of the Ampeg bass rig (I want to play through one of those again, they’re truly amazing!), I came across a boy behind me that looked no older than 12 or 13 – I wasn’t even allowed to the movies down at the local mall that late without strict parental guidance to and from the carpark, let alone at a concert in the city when I was that age! The point was, I felt truly bad during every changeover when I’d turn around and sit on the edge of the stage, looking at the rest of the audience behind me. I guess I haven’t changed much in the sense that I’m still the over-enthusiastic girl right at the front in a band shirt, although I’d always hated the taller, older people in front of me, on the occasions where I couldn’t get in the first row; and ironically, I was now one of them. I guess you can’t really win. But I felt bad having to nudge people half my height (and looked half my age) out of my way, so was a lot gentler than usual. Gah.

I was going to do a brief review of the gig, but I seriously can’t be bothered right now, seeing as I have A Level English and History essays to write. On a completely different note, last night I was down at Cassette 9, and I’m thoroughly annoyed at my lack of sleep (and therefore judgement), because I’d chosen the easier route to town – via ferry – which meant that I never got to see Shocking Pinks because I had to catch it back! It didn’t help that 2x teapots and 2x beers didn’t get me tipsy enough to not feel disappointed; and my Long Island Iced Tea was also a denouement: so many people have recommended it to me, but finally I tried one last night, and for some reason I could hardly taste anything that went in it – for some obsurd reason, it tasted like a bourbon and coke. A $15 bourbon and coke at that. Ouch.

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