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.

she got tricks in the stash, stacking up the cash; fast when it comes to the gas, by no means average

I’m feeling a bit guilty for being a bit of a shop-a-holic lately, but after reining in my shopping habits for the past few months, my aesthetic inclinations could be tamed no longer! Although now I’ve got to stop. It’s funny how our views of money changes with age. We felt rich at primary school if we had a gold coin to go to the dairy with, and later $20 notes were a big deal. These days, who knows… I remember my first “big” sartorial purchase as if it was only yesterday – a $60 pair of Levi’s jeans that Mum bought me. At the time $60 was like ohmygod-expensive and I thanked mum endlessly and promised I would wear them until they wore out or I grew out of them – whichever came first. Unfortunately I grew out of them too quickly since I was only ten at the time, but by then the dark denim had already faded at lot, especially at the knees, and my sister got a beautifully worn in pair of jeans (that sounds really mean, but jeans are nice when worn in!). I didn’t convert to skirts and dresses until I was 18, so before then, jeans were pretty much a staple. Anyway, the main thing about buying those jeans was the motto my mum’s instilled in me – sometimes it’s worth investing a bit more money (on anything I guess, but in this instance, clothing) when you know you are buying a high-quality piece that you will treasure and wear (or use) over and over and over again. Even though this piece of advice has led me to buy some garments and shoes at outrageous prices, excluding dresses that were for special occasions, I have definitely gotten my money’s worth on everything pricey that I’ve bought. For example, I wore my Mooks jacket for almost a year and a half straight, and those aqua patent Dr Martens of mine have been worn to pieces in seven countries, if you will allow me to count Hong Kong.

This leads me to the two big things I bought last week. A Stolen Girlfriends Club dress, and a pair of beautiful Beau Coops boots. I was a bit chuffed that the size 8 dress had sold out just as I went to buy it, but the size 10 fits like a dream anyway, so all is well. My trick to justifying spending so much on a summery dress is that I had bought a voucher for SGC for a hundred dollars off the voucher value, and that it will have a decent re-sell value. Haven’t taken any photos of the boots yet, but here is the dress. SGC definitely package their products well, and I really like the ribbon that it came with. My only complaint is, does such a little dress need to come in such a hefty box?! Poor couriers’ vans must fill up pretty quickly! Needless to say, I have lived in that dress since Thursday and it is Sunday now; I’ve already worn it to a birthday barbecue, to uni and to coax my sick cat out from under the backdoor steps!

I am not a big fan of what people call “selfie” photos, but I can’t be bothered putting it back on, so these were the pics I took to show the boy the dress. It’s also gotten seals of approval from both Mum and the boy’s mother, and compliments galore, so surely I can’t really go wrong with living in it all summer.

The boots and my mixed views on wearing heels in various places will be discussed in the next post. But for now – has anyone ever joined and/or used one of those sale “groups” on facebook? I’ve been using one a fair bit recently, and it’s been a mixed experience in terms of selling and buying clothes. Here is a list of observations and thoughts that arise on a daily basis with this group:

  • I cringe every time someone says “[item of clothing] brought of [store/place/person]”. It always makes me do a double-take and I think, goodness, it’s bad enough that people don’t understand the difference between “bought” and “brought”, but how the heck do they mistake “off” for “of”?! Even “bought of” wouldn’t sound anywhere near correct… It’s really sad when the one-person-per-day who correctly says “bought” makes me happy and restores some faith in the future of female intellect in this country.
  • I’m guilty of this myself, but it is absolutely astonishing how many people sell things that have “never been worn” or have only been worn once. I’m sure most females in first-world, privileged positions have done this at least once and it begs me to question – when will women ever cease succumbing to the “impulse buy” or buying things just to wear on one occasion? How many times have we heard females we know utter words such as “I need [a dress/shoes] for [occasion]”? It’s crazy. And yet we keep doing this.
  • Some people sell really high quality, designer clothing (or shoes) at cut-throat prices, yet on the flip-side, others are trying to sell chain-store, boring and mediocre items for not-so-cheap prices. I would much rather my real suede shoes from Zara (I know not “designer” but still high quality) keep sitting in a shoebox instead of being sold for $20, sorry.
  • There are certain trends that course through this group. Namely, the SGC Acid Doll dress, the SGC garden print t-shirt dress, Karen Walker hydrangea shirt/dress and the Ksubi Baddies singlets. Each trend began when someone posted said item for sale, and ever since, several other girls have made posts that say “Looking for [aforementioned item]” with variations of “please please please” or “will pay good $$$”. This is followed by bundles of other girls posting these same items for sale, and more often than not, intense bidding wars take place, followed by other people saying “also looking for this!” – crazy, right?! I find this incredibly bizarre because all of these things have been sold in stores and online for up to a year, and I know that they are being sold at lower prices on this facebook group, but the way people behave it sounds as if they’d never heard of such things before until now. I really do not understand why people would be willing to pay over a hundred dollars for items that have (sometimes, but not always) been shrunk, faded or have peeled prints…
  • Slightly relevant to the above point, I actually own the Acid Doll dress myself. The boy’s youngest sister had told me the other night that the middle sister wondered whether I purposely frame it into the background when I post photos of things I’m selling. Aside from snorting a “no, my room is small and there is nowhere else to hang it without getting it crushed!”, it’s actually quite ironic that she pointed this out – because I’m REALLY sick of people asking whether or not I am selling it! Even if it’s just the vaguest blur of colour in the background, I have gotten handfuls of people asking if I happen to be selling it. I don’t understand why logic doesn’t prevail when I have already told one person “no, otherwise I would be listing it”, and someone else comes along and asks the same thing, in the comment immediately after. I thought the idea of threaded comments were created so that people could see the progression of discussion. Clearly this has not caught on with everyone.

Surely other people have had similar experiences too?

I know it’s been a long time, but I’m too lazy to to post a playlist right now, plus we have just acquired a very large playlist of new music I’m trying to sift through, so it would be a mess… but go and listen to Chet Faker here and click through to his Soundcloud as well. I had said to the boy a week or two before the Laneway lineup was announced that we ought to track down a gig of his when we are in Melbourne, and what do you know, turns out Laneway agreed with me.

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:

to live like common people, I never think I’ll do

The list of ever-looming deadlines I have are looking gloomier by the day. It’s amazing how many things I find myself doing instead of writings essays and doing my jazz research dissertation. It’s not that I’m “wasting time” per se, when I procrastinate, I am genuinely doing and reading things I find interesting – they just aren’t the things that I must do. Right now. I was saying to a friend yesterday that “assignments are like screaming children. You like to hope they’ll go away if you just leave them, but you know they MUST be dealt with”. When I shared this analogy with the boy, he added something that I think is pure gold: “and like your children, everyone is totally disinterested in hearing you talk about them”. Touche.

The Raveonette’s new album, Observator, is now streaming here (aka it has leaked anyway), and will be officially released in a handful of days. I urge anyone who has ever enjoyed my playlists or music I’ve posted to go and check them out. Reading Sune Rose Wagner’s backstory of how the album was conceived (you can find it here) has given me a deeper perspective on the album as a whole. I know that some people don’t like to find out what songs and albums are about or were inspired by, because they feel it “taints” their interpretations of it; but having already repeated the album to death last night, I definitely wasn’t at any risk of having my initial experience influenced. It’s fantastic. Really fantastic. It’s what I love them for – sincerity, noisy guitar, what some have labelled a “dream pop” sound, and relatable lyrics. Also, for this album they’ve brought in the piano on a couple of songs which really gives songs like “Observations” a deeper, sombre timbre.

Here are a couple of photos taken a couple of months ago. Anyone who knows me knows that, whilst I love wielding the camera, I rarely volunteer to be in photographs. Even less frequent is the event of me handing my own camera over – so this shows just what a good night I was having. Both taken on Kodak UltraMax 400 film:


When I bent down to pick up my pointe shoes off the floor to hang them up last night, a string of thoughts were triggered and the idea hasn’t left me since. Even though I haven’t done ballet for five or six years now, I leave my pointe shoes hanging on my bedroom door. On that same hook are a couple of really pretty dresses that I just like seeing. It’s an aesthetic thing. But also, I realised last night that I can’t put those shoes away and let them fall into dusty obscurity because I absolutely loved ballet and it was a part of half my life – which is a  decade! Even though at the time I probably came across like I hated it (it was hard work and painful and time-consuming and full of pressures and I had an old teacher that just went nag, nag, nag), I still loved it. I’m not into the more classical stuff, like if I have to ever hear music from the Nutcracker again I will snap, nor could I sit through something like Cinderella, but I love the more contemporary styles. Earlier this year mum and I went to see the Royal NZ Ballet’s performance of “NYC: Three Short Ballets From the Big Apple” and it was one of the best nights I’ve had all year. To drift back on topic – it’s scary how things can be such a big part of your life and suddenly it’s just gone. Whether by choice or not. And no matter how you felt about it at the time or afterwards, you will never be the same person again, because everything that we do in our lives shapes us in some way. Skills we learnt and a practised and polished may be deserted and given up on – but to some level we are a changed person, and we retain those skills and knowledge to some degree.

I was feeling rather down about myself last night, thinking about ballet and all the things I can’t do with my body anymore. Even more poignant were these feelings, since I had a physio appointment yesterday, because I am aching all over as we’ve taken on extra hockey trainings in preparation for this Saturday’s semi-final. But then I thought, hang on, yes there are many things I can’t do anymore, or at least not as well as I used to be able to, but because of all those years of hard work towards different directions and different goals, the me today can probably do a lot of things that normal people can’t do. I really need to make a proper list of things I can do, have done, and then all the things I’ve yet to accomplish, but really want to. The mere idea of compiling this list is daunting though. There’s definitely a reason why, unlike many blogs I read, I don’t have a “Bucket List” or a “101 in 1001” list. I don’t like setting concrete goals because I don’t like failing. My excuse is often, I’ll want different things at different times, and therefore it’s pointless setting myself up for feeling like a failure if I take things off the list because I can’t or don’t want to do them anymore. So after all this, I’m not sure if I will make a list or not. But I’ll definitely make a list of things I’ve managed to do already. Like a reverse-motivation thing: if I have already done this, then surely I can do that too.

Thoughts?

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