2010

The first real concept of “2010” was embedded in my head by a b-side song of the same name by the Mint Chicks on their limited edition white vinyl, which was complimentary with tickets to their farewell tour in 2007. Having just said that, I actually had to ask a friend to confirm which year it was because I simply cannot believe how fast time has flown. Then, I was 16, wishing to be 18, glamorously gig-hopping… and now I am theoretically where I had wanted to be.

I wish I could start this new chapter (and decade, as many like to speak of lately), with exciting, self-assured plans for the year to come, and effectively the future… but in all honesty, I just feel lost as hell. Why? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that in a negative, pessimistic kind of way – in fact I’m feeling very ambitious and hopeful for the future – but having just finished 7th form and effectively my last year of pretend-childhood, it seems that all of a sudden I ought to start taking myself and the things I do slightly more seriously. Currently, I am sitting on (almost literally… it’s in an envelope, in a folder under my seat) my acceptance letter the Jazz Performance major from university, and the attached form that I need to send back to formally accept my place; but I don’t know why I haven’t mailed it after an entire month of having received it. On one hand, sure, it was December, I had graduated only the day before the date on the letter; then it was work, Christmas chaos, followed by new years… and I could make excuses and say that I really hadn’t had the time, but really, I just hadn’t wanted to make it seem so realistic yet. Ultimately, when I sign, date, and mail the letter, it will have sealed my 5 years’ of deliberating my fate – I will be rejecting law school for jazz school. I’m excited and over the moon, yet shaking with fear over what that might entail. I’ve had so many lectures from people that “know better”, and I’d said to the last person (a family friend), “look, I’m sorry to be rude, but I haven’t made this decision overnight – I’ve thought and thought about it for five years, and I’ve heard what you’ve just said about a million times and I’ve taken it into consideration. More than taken it into consideration. Trust me. It’s Christmas, please leave it alone”… and needless to say the got the message; last I heard, he’d later said to my mother “well I can’t imagine she’d get as bored as she would in law school, I suppose”. Ha!

In irrelevant matters, I was going to make a post about a pair of $20 light denim shorts that I’d scored on Boxing Day; and ultimately chopped them up and diy’d some distress into it because I thought light denim just shouldn’t look primp and perfect… but I didn’t want to start off 2010 with some story about my afternoon with 2 knives and a piece of cardboard whilst on msn at the same time… so…

Beach tomorrow! It will be good. I will have photos. Aaaaand, watch this space, kids, I’m shooting Big Day Out!

Hello, how are you?

My grandmother flew down from Taiwan a week ago and is spending Christmas with us this year; so in between my erratic Christmas shifts and gigs, my nights have been slotted full of silly banter whilst playing Rummikub. Work has been more stressful as of late, as the mall’s been far busier than usual (and I only get called into work on the hectic days). According to today’s newspaper front page, Christmas sales have been down significantly since last year, but at work it seems to be that most people are resorting to cafes to catch up with people, instead of actually spending money on presents for one another.

I’ve been stuck on the till for somewhere between 15-20 hours in the past 4 days alone, and so many things are really making my nerves tick. You know when you enter a store and the sales assistant greets you and ask, “Hi, how are you?” and if they linger for a response you usually respond with “good thanks” and keep browsing? Or, if they’re awful at their job and completely ingenuine, they’ll simply ask and move on before you respond… that’s all very well because it seems to be the routine for sales people. But what I truly cannot wrap my head around is about the 2/5 customers that approach me at the till and go “Hi how are you I’d like a flat white… etc…” – the painful lack of punctuation reflecting the exact way they speak – not even pausing to make their words a question or proper sentence. WHY do they open their sentences with “how are you” without really even making that a question?! Furthermore, even when you totally disregard the fact that it’s a completely redund
ant thing to say, it also makes me feel like a right prick because I’m the one who is supposed to be asking such things, and I don’t know whether or not I should even acknowledged that they’d said it at all?! On top of this, I think the usual 80% of people who say medium when I ask whether they’d like a small or large coffee (whilst pointing to the small, then large cup), has grown into about 90%. Is it really so hard to figure out that a middle-sized cup will not miraculously appear out of thin air, just because many womens’ conscience (or stupidity) seems much more satisfied when they think that they’re not getting a “large”. I give up, I truly do.

I’ve got so many more pet peeves accumulated from work over the past year, but it’s all been heightened over the last few days. It didn’t help that on Saturday morning I started work at 7am following a very late night out in town watching Yacht, who were supported by a crazy set by The Sneaks, and the alien-headed Kazaam Blam. The mere three-hour nap I took before rolling out of bed to get to work on time was simply not enough to refresh myself from having to get quite pushy and block the view of other people in order to get a decent shot of Yacht; their dance moves and craziness kind od reminded me of Karen O, but definitely nowhere as wild. Overall it was a good show, but it was a shame that my friend and I couldn’t stay until the very end of it, just because we were both sooo exhausted from work and Saturday the following would be much worse and busier.

I’ve picked out some photos from Yacht, click here for the full set:

and I want to walk around with you

It’s taken me two days to recuperate from my excitement-filled 18-hour day out on Tuesday: I’d spent the day lounging in the sun at the beach, followed by one of the best gigs of this year –Animal Collective playing at the Powerstation (scroll down for gig details).

My Tuesday kicked off bright and early with a wake-up txt message from my friend making sure that I had indeed gotten out of bed by 7.40am – which I personally thought was a little over-the-top, but considering for the entire year I’d rolled out of bed at 7.55am for school on the days which I didn’t have training nor rehearsal… it seemed understandable that they wanted to make sure the driver was awake.

Nine of us decided to head up north to the Shakespear Regional Park, and set up site for the day on Te Haruhi Bay. Ironically the best part about the whole trip for me (asides from how early they’d made the departure time) was the drive up north. Good friends, decent music, great views through the sunnies and an effortless swift drive for just over an hour was definitely my cup of tea. The biggest obstacle of the day was when the people in my car disagreed with those in the other car as to where we wanted to set our towels down for the day. I’d personally vouched for the sand and didn’t understand why we’d drive all the way to a nice beach with decent, soft sand (Auckland is full of overly shelly beaches that don’t really have decent sand) only to spend the day sitting on the grass; but eventually we compromised, moved around a bit and got the best of both worlds when we threw a frisbee around on the sand and I even attempted to use a soft bat on a foam ball. It either went too far or in whacky directions or both – the foam ball didn’t stand a chance against the wind!

At some point in the afternoon after several hours of swimming, lying in the sun with music and pigging out on buns and a roast chicken that we’d bought from Countdown, we decided that we’d bury Euan in the sand. Well, actually he’d volunteered himself, and made sure that we made the sand wet and compact enough that he couldn’t escape. And soon, what do you know, one of the boys suggested (how typical) to make the buried-Euan into a giant penis. I felt somewhat guilty for having encouraged the use of dried seaweeds as pubs around his head, followed by Michael’s cam-whoring antics as the owner of the giant penis once he saw me whip my camera out!

The real fun began when I got to surpass having my bag checked at the door of the Powerstation simply because I was being given a media photography pass and got to dart through the door. My obligatory drink of a Monteith’s Original led to my vow of never ever drinking beer out of a plastic cup again, regardless of how good and cold the beer was. It just tasted vile… with a slight tinge of that smell of plastic which mixes in with your taste buds at the back of your throat. Nasty. $8 for plastic beer? No thank you. The bartender looked at me with great distaste when I asked if he could just give me the bottle – I imagined in my head that he was thinking something along the lines of “Didn’t you get the memo? No glass bottles in this venue!”, good lord. Not surprisingly the rest of the evening only went uphill from there – Bachelorette’s set (or what I caught of it) was enjoyable albeit the couple of technical difficulties which caused her to even restart a song. Boy was I wrong when I’d expected to see a duo on stage – obviously my friend had misled my beliefs to this “opening band” idea, and apparently I’d also missed her best song. Nonetheless, thanks to the mellow tone of Bachelorette and the use of my camera, I easily settled myself in a comfortable, just off-centre spot in the front row. I’m pretty sure I was allowed, if not supposed to be in the pit in front of the railing, but I simply didn’t want to have to leave the front after 3 songs – which turned out to be a priceless decision.

In a strange way, I’m grateful for the photography for 3-songs-only rule, as it meant I was forced to set my camera aside and fully throw myself into enjoying the show. Otherwise, I know I would’ve been far too torn between thrashing around during the set or staying affixed behind my camera. I applaud them for their set list, especially with slotting in tracks from their latest album evenly throughout the set – opening with In the Flowers, ending the encore with My Girls, with an extended “just a sec more in my… beeeeeed” from Panda Bear nicely placed in the middle. Pure magic. For quite a few of my shots I’d purposely used a slower shutter speed and aperture to capture the atmosphere and buzzy movement of it all.

Here’s my favourite, followed by some highlights (click here for full set):




Tell me where it hurts, amnesia

I’m just going to add this at the top of this post, since I’m lazy: but how the heck did i forget to mention that i got accepted into jazz school?!! I’m so excited, this means I don’t have to fall back on doing law (it sounds a bit backwards, I know), but it’s what I wanted.

I usually take a lot of joy in photographing gigs, especially the really challenging ones in some stupidly dark venue, with rugged band boys that like to move around far too much – but last night was a totally different story. For some reason, despite being a Saturday night, I just wanted to curl up at home and stay that way. It didn’t help that I’d developed a headache, then shown up only to discovered that the “doors open” time had been postponed by an hour (thankfully I always show up very late anyway), but it still pissed me off. To add to this, as I was getting stamped off the doorlist, the promoter/organiser of the gig tells me that no flash photography is allowed. This is usually music to my ears (no pun intended), as it means no one else should be annoyingly flashing also, except that the only other time I had been to the venue, the band had been lit from the back of the stage – silhouettes get old. Quickly.

Lo’ and behold, my worst fears had been confirmed – the stage was indeed lit from behind, and very dimly so, might I add. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I simply thought the first band was rubbish… and faaar too loud. I’d forgotten my earplugs. And in my attempt to photograph with as much light source as possible, I had to be stuck right next to the stack of speakers. Great. I think the only highlight of my night was the fact that the 2nd supporting band had greatly improved since the last time I saw them at their EP release a few months ago, and I actually thoroughly enjoyed their set last night, despite the literal headache plus the one of trying to find some damn light!

Sometimes, I feel like all my photos could end up in one big blur of the same thing. I don’t want to become one of those perfect photographers that has perfect lighting in each shot, with the musicians all in their standard stances and poses of playing their instruments… I try to capture some essence of the moment – something that is only there for that flicker of a second and will never happen again. Even throughout my daily excursions I have this really bad habit with looking at everything twice, or for too long; it’s because I think I will never see it again, which is true depending on if you look at it in the (somewhat) pessimistic way that I do. So i hope these aren’t boring.

Here are some of the pics from last night, the rest are all here:
My favourite is actually the first picture, a reflection of the sky tower that i saw in a puddle whilst waiting for doors to open.

P.S. Thanks for all the comments letting me know about problems regarding my comment form, the gravatar appearance, etc… i should get around to fixing it soon, hopefully along with a new theme.

A perfect circle

Tuesday 1st December, 2009: First day of the last month of my final year.

For months and months I’d been anticipating December 1st. No, for once it wasn’t for the birthday bash of my best mate, but rather, for my 7th form sign out day – my last day in uniform, ever – followed by Graduation Dinner. Not only did this signify the end of all college exams and last minute cramming for the year, but it also brought an end to five, often long and tedious years spent at Macleans College. Surprisingly, well, actually in all brutal honesty, I know myself better than this so it wasn’t really surprising to have found myself spending the day in numb frustration. I was sad to be leaving, but only because I’ve been so used to the comfort zone and safety bubbles that I’d built up around me at school: the daily routine of classes and socialising that I had become accustomed to and can execute in zombie mode all day, everyday, all year. But it’s for that same reason (and many, many more) that I have been more than ready for leave for over the past couple of years. I’ve been tired of the same surroundings, the same (many not-so-likeable) people, the uptight school rules, the chore of upholding my “prefect status” and trying to be some kind of role model to juniors who mostly don’t care. Speaking of surroundings though, I will admit that, whilst I often took the picturesque sea-view from school for granted at times, and often cursed it as the reason the billowing wind during winter was so brutally lethal, I don’t think I could have attended a school with a better setting. Most people don’t get to sit perched on a hill in the middle of a reserve, in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods everyday!

On that note, I think I’ll end my sentimental train of thoughts, I don’t think that I will fully deal with the change until it actually hits me once university starts next year. I have a lot of regrets… no wait, that’s probably not the best word, but in the sense that, people are right when they say things like “in ten years time it’s not the things you did that you will regret, but the things you didn’t do”, or something along the lines of… I can’t remember the exact, more eloquent phrasing! Anyway, there are definitely things that I wish that I’d done, or had done differently, but I guess that would ultimately have made me a completely different person, and I’m not too sure how well that would work out, haha.

Here are some photos from each setting on the big night:

Colin was generous enough to offer the services of his spare lounge for our pre-grad. Not surprisingly, everyone’s looking pretty glum. I think most people with either extremely hyper (definitely not us lot), or were feeling pretty out of it, tired, and generally just wanted to get through the evening unscathed by any huge pangs of “OMG SENTIMENT!”

This picture shows Sinead hijacking the background of me and Freddy… A bit of organisation later we were on the ferry into the city. It seemed the most social option, so we didn’t have to split into cars, beg parents for rides, etc, and at $4.40 it wasn’t so bad… until we got off the ferry and decided not to split a 10minute taxi fare, instead deciding to make the 4-block uphill trek on foot. Now usually I’m not one to complain about walking, but when the only black heels you own are about 4 inches high and also have a platform, my feet didn’t like me so much that day. Plus it was hot and humid, and showing up sweaty was really, really unattractive.

I must say, the good at Grad Dinner was a thouuuusand times better than that at the ball. And the dessert too, for that matter. I actually ate both slices of cheesecake! Though, as you can see here, I left my cardigan on for much of the evening. My Topshop dress is lovely, but I hadn’t really wanted to wear it to Grad since it’s very low cut at the back (as well as the front, for that matter, forcing me to break my arm-folding habit for the evening) and I didn’t really feel like it was that most appropriate.

And last, the true highlight of the evening = getting tipsy down at O’Hagan’s on the viaduct. Thankfully I have a lovely mother with a distrust of taxis, so offered to pick me up at any hour, drunk or sober. Me and three friends decided that mum’s transport offer was a huge ask already, and her having to wake up at 6.30am was just brutal, so we didn’t stay out too late and got home at 2am. Needless to say, I crashed without sparing a thought of taking a shower that night.

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