Friends, acquaintences, and other social matters.

This is worse than winter

The weather around the general Pacific area has been shocking – I’m sure I don’t need to delve into all the lows, earthquakes, tsunamis and whatnots… so “summer hockey” last night (and undoubtedly tomorrow night also) was atrociously freezing and wet.

I haven’t been studying much these holidays, but last Friday night my friend’s band, the Artisan Guns finally released their first EP through EMI, Bird & Bone. It’s amazing. I was so excited to have bought it in a store as well, and I’m sure the novelty is far greater for them than it is for me. Sadly, my favourite track (Tuesday Night) isn’t on their myspace page… but their EP Release gig blew the audience away. Unfortunately I haven’t had time to put pics of them up yet, but I’m finally uploaded photos of other friends of mine, who were their supporting act, the Glass Owls. Photos can be found here, or through Gallery -> Summer Boys.

I don’t usually get very good shots of drummers, cos they tend to be right at the back of very dark stages, but the photos from Friday were my best yet, even if I say so myself. I’ve just gotten back from Metronomy’s concert, and it’s 2.33am, so blogging is probably the last thing I ought to be doing right now… but I just felt like putting some photos up. Right now, my jacket is still grossly damp from me having been stuck in it in the front row, dancing and clicking away. Urgh.

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.

A beach, a tournament and music nationals

I’m not sure exactly what happened to my blog in the week/ends that I was away in Rotorua, but somehow it has nicely resurrected itself upon my return. A blow-by-blow (sorry, couldn’t resist, I copped too many hits to the hand, arms and legs with endless blood and skin loss to not use that term) account of tournament is just far beyond me right now, and to be frank, coming 14th isn’t too exciting. Although, I’m proud to say we only lost to the team who won the Marie Fry cup by 3-1.

The first set of photos are from the Friday night before I left – Angie and I went with our geeky boys to see District 9 – and I have to admit, after having seen the first 20minutes at a friends house on a pirated file, I couldn’t take the first half of the movie seriously. But then it got darker, deeper, and I was almost reduced to curling in my seat. The real fun only began when most of us parted ways, but Freddy, William, Joel and I were adamant that we weren’t going to return home without getting up so some form of shenanigans. It started off with us lying in the middle of Joel’s street. I was determined to get a photo of it, so we acquired William’s camera and ended up heading for a stroll along the beach. The huge downer was that his camera was desperately lacking in battery power, so all the shots we came up with were pretty funny since no one knew what was going to show up until the photo had been taken, nor did the shutter go off when we wanted it to.

The one on the right shows me wincing in surprise as Joel suddenly sat down when the flash went off; and the bottom left, according to Michael, looks like an album cover. I’ll salute to that.

I’ve included a couple of pics from tournament – my warpaint from our last game, luge lifts; and Concert Band National/North Island Festival – our school got 6 straight gold awards! And dammit, the far bottom right picture ended up being the wrong one… in my haste I mis-compiled it… it was meant to be a far, far funnier one. Oops.

No time to be bored

I just found the awesomest origami-styled art – some guy called Won Park folds $1 US bills into amazingly intricate things. Check it out Here.

Whenever the holidays roll around (such as now, finally!) and I start receiving txts from friends asking me what I’m up to, and complaining of how bored they are, I can’t help but think that they’re being silly. For starters, I’m secretly jealous of people who have time to be bored – I’m so busy all the time, even during the holidays, that I simply don’t have the time nor energy to be bored. It’s only Tuesday today and already I don’t have a spare day to myself until Sunday, and even then I’m worknig 8 hours that day. I guess I’m the proactive sort: if there are people I want to catch up with, hang out with or see, I will get hold of them, and make sure we have something planned. As for the people who end up txting me on a daily basis asking me what I’m up to, because they’re “bored”, well unfortunately for them, they get left behind, ultimately staying home and doing nothing at all.

I’ve always had the tendency of being the person that organises things – hang outs, outings, movie nights, get-togethers – there’s one such person in every group. But frankly I’m tired of it, and I’ve decided that if people aren’t going to get off their arses, then other people who regard me as important enough to arrange something with, win out.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh? What are your thoughts? Are you the kind of person who waits around to be invited, or the sort that invites people along?

Ethereal

I can’t believe that the school ball is over. After months of planning and plotting of the annual school ball, I must say that I felt really, really proud that the ball committee this year far outdid last year’s. Since our school is one of the biggest secondary schools in the country, with well over two thousand students, one of the few venues that can hold about the thousand senior students and partners that attend the ball is Sky City. But one of the downsides to having such a large venue is the challenge of having to decorate it. Since the ball room itself is huge and therefore impossible to entirely decorate, we had to mainly focus on the foyer. My proudest feat has to be the 2x Thai Airlines’ cargo nets which I draped with white chiffon and wired up with fairylights, then hung from the balcony, dipping into the foyer. It took houuuurs. Now everything just seems like a denouement, there’s only grad dinner to look forward to in December, and then 7th form and college is over.

Anyway, the rest of the photos are up on facebook. I’m really ridiculously ill with the flu (don’t even say “swine”), but have to go into school tomorrow for rehearsals and a music concert tomorrow night… joy.

I can’t believe how much we’ve all grown up, us four have been in the same form class since 3rd form… 5 years ago, until now. Wowzers.

My handiwork in the foyer – draped chiffon with fairylights on two Thai Airlines’ cargo nets.

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