The Dessert Club Pie Eating Competition finally got off the ground today after being postponed twice! I was a little nervous about how it would go as we hadn't publicised it as much as we would have liked, but in the end it went pretty well! Because I'm the web guy, I've been the one who has had to contact all the people who have signed up via Facebook whenever we postpone, which doesn't make me look good!

I had classes all morning at Grafton and came back to the city with my pharmacy friend Jamie only after she told me there was a Uni Lost and Found Sale (where the students association sell off unclaimed lost property). I was hoping there'd be some good, cheap textbooks. As usual most of them were commerce books, but I did find one law book on Torts that I bought! I'll save that for the holidays ;) I also bought a pair of lab glasses for $1! My current pair keep sliding of my nose...and I paid $7 for those at The Warehouse! I texted my brothers about the sale earlier, so Aonghas was already there and he had bought a Nike basketball for $2! The oddest thing I saw for sale though would have to be the box of condoms!

It was cool how heaps of people were dressed in green as well for St Patricks Day! I did my best, but the best I could do was khaki green, or as Winnie, this pharmacy girl puts it,

"p** green"

Anyway, I saw the Dessert Club stall in the Quad, where some committee members were hanging out trying to get more sign-ups. I went over to join them. It was getting closer to 1pm, so we had to start getting prepared for the competition in the main Quad where quite a lot of people were already. That posed a problem, as we needed a few of the tables to run the competition off, but we couldn't get anyone off the tables! The girls tried getting me to tell people to get off a couple tables using the microphone! I managed to get out of it and somehow we got two tables!

The competition was supposed to start at 1pm but we ended up starting later because of the late sign-ups. Aonghas had signed up to enter, and to my surprise Lisa, my friend from youth group decided to sign up! I totally didn't see that coming! She also tied her hair back for the competition (which was sensible of course!), which was surprising because I was talking to her at lunch yesterday (somehow we managed to talk for several hours??) about how she never tied her hair back! Anyway a few others I knew came by to check out the competition, despite not entering.

Finally the competition started, and when it got going, it got going! Our competition consisted of three rounds - the first round involved the competitors having to eat a bowl of jelly with lollies in it...without their hands. Once that was completed they had to get a piece of paper that named an object they had to find somewhere in the Quad and then present it to the club committee member. The final round was the actual pie eating! Originally we said no hands, but in the end we just let them eat it as fast as they can!

Boy did they get messy! Because the pies were filled with cream and jelly, people had cream all over their face and some on their clothes! This guy came first and ...Aonghas came second! Yay!!! Lisa didn't come in the top three but yay that she competed and did something a little different!

Claire, another friend from youth group came along to watch and so after the competition, she, Lisa, Aonghas and I walked over to the Engineering building before I had to go off to Grafton to endure another Pharmacotherapy workshop, which went over time and was extremely...EXCITING! :S

After how many years of having a presence at West City Shopping Centre, Pet Corner is finally shutting up shop. From what I overheard, it's due to the recession. It's going to be slightly sad because I've always remembered a pet shop being at West City,. Even in my childhood I'd go to the pet shop to check out the animals, especially that big white bird they always have. that talks! And now he's on sale for $1500... :(

Even though I probably won't be doing much shopping (or any at all) at it, I hope another pet shop will pop up in West City sometime in the future!

Two weeks of uni have now passed and I have to say it hasn't been too bad up to this point. There is one paper that worries me but I'll get to that soon..

The first week of uni is always the best when most of the lectures are just boring introduction lectures which you can just switch off in, while the labs are just introductory labs where you just go through the rules and finish a couple hours early...the best!!

Unfortunately because the Grafton campus is getting major upgrades, there is a shortage of teaching space up there, so classes for one of our Pharmacy papers got relocated to the city campus. This meant we would be having our tutorials in some random room called Arts206 located somewhere in the Arts Faculty! I suppose it's a good opportunity to know my way around that area. It does mean more walking between campuses though, which takes a bit more energy this year since I don't have an unlimited bus pass which would let me catch the bus from one campus to the other. It's good exercise walking though, even though it takes a bit longer!

Orientation was a big thing at uni during the first week. This is usually quite interesting, checking out the different club stalls and getting free stuff. For me this time round though, I had spend quite a bit of my spare time helping out at the Dessert Club stall. It wasn't too bad, talking to random people. Those who were actually interested in the club were a whole lot easier to talk to...obviously! It was funny though how sometimes when I'd try approach passers-by (while holding a plate of lollies) and they'd walk away from me! We did have quite a good turnout.

We decided to continue our stall into the second week of uni for a few days. We were the only ones besides a few other random Asian clubs to have our stall open in the Quad, but we didn't get as many people coming to our stall. So what do the people helping at the stall do to help pass the time away when no one comes? Perve at students walking by! I swear I took no part in that!!!

I seem to be getting a lot more involved with the Dessert Club this year, despite only being in charge of updating their websites. I had to pick up the pies that had been ordered at this Glen Eden bakery the other day for the pie eating competition our club is holding...some time next week (it's been postponed several times now I've lost track of when it's actually going to happen). Originally I thought I'd be able to get Aonghas to drive me there but he had to work, so I decided to drive myself there which was a bit of a worrying though since I had never driven to Glen Eden before and didn't exactly know where to go! To make things worse, I discovered a wasp flying around inside the car while I was driving! I managed to keep carm though and got there without getting stung.

Dealing with the lady at the bakery was a little funny. When I paid with EFTPOS, the lady kept accidentally unplugging the EFTPOS machine! She gave me two boxes and when I inspected them once I got back to the car, I realised she had only given me ten pies instead of the 20 we had ordered. I texted the girl who ordered them, and just at the same time she said the lady from the bakery rang her saying she had more pies! So I went back in and got the rest.

So back to uni - some of the highlights in the past two weeks:

- Last Tuesday (the first Tuesday of semester) Aonghas and I caught the bus into uni early in the morning to get to our 8am class, when the bus suddenly stopped down Te Atatu Road! The motor started going again but the bus pulled over at the next bus stop and we all got out, and this was just before we got on the motorway too! We were standing around waiting and wondering what was going to happen next, and if we should get on the next bus that just arrived. We were soon shepherded back onto the bus after a while though and we made it to the city, albeit a little late!

- I also ended up deciding to buy this big, thick Pharmacotherapy textbook that we need for one of our papers this year (a 30 point paper too - i.e. runs through both semesters!) as well as several papers next year. It is over 2000 pages long, maybe 4-5 cm thick and about 4kg thick and $230! Fortunately for me I got a $40 book voucher for helping out with Orientation Day at Grafton the previous week. When I asked at the University Bookshop if I could use the book vouchers, they said I wouldn't receive the 10% student discount (pricing the book at $207) and would only get $40 off the original price of $230. However, the temp staff member had no idea how to take off the 10% discount, so she just left it there. Yay!! I've never brought the book to uni since though. It's sooo heavy!

- I had my first Uniguide meeting with the students I guided on the first Thursday of the semester. I only just made it as I had an orthodontist appointment at Middlemore Hospital an hour prior to the meeting! Only four of the six students showed up though, and when they showed up none of them seemed to have any problems or questions! I suppose I consider myself lucky, but it would be cool to be of some help to them!

What has also been cool is being able to catch up with people at uni! The best place seems to be the Business School foyer. All I'd have to do is sit at one of the tables in the foyer and someone I know is bound to come along!

During the first week I saw and hung out with Lisa, this girl in my youth group nearly every day of the week! We'd just somehow keep running into or seeing each other! There was one day I was going to meet Angie to borrow a book off her. We ended up going to the Business School where we met up with Gwen (who I've probably hung out with more times in the past two weeks than I did all last semester!) and ate for a while, when Lisa came along and I introduced her to them. A little while later I saw Elisa, my ex-pharmacy friend sit down at a nearby table and so I called out to her to come join us and introduced her to the others. It turns out she and Lisa are schoolmates!

There was this other day I came into the foyer and saw Lisa sitting there doing some study, so I joined her (maybe annoyed her too haha). A little while later Shen, my high school friend came along and sat at a table beside us with his friends. After a while he came and joined us. Lisa's friend from high school came along just as Lisa had to go off to her class. Ben, my other high school friend had been texting me wondering where I was, and soon came to join Shen and me. Lisa's friend decided to stay and sit with us, so it was now Shen, Ben, me and Lisa's friend for a while. That was an...interesting conversation. We discovered quite a few unusual things about Lisa's friend!

What's funny though is I hardly run into my brothers at uni! Maybe that's a good thing. We need our space! There was one time however when I was on my way home and I crossed paths with Hamish, who was walking in the opposite direction towards uni. After asking him where he was going I let him be and crossed the road. That's when I caught up with Aonghas who told me he was going home, so we both walked to the bus stop. While we were waiting there, Hamish came along and joined us! That's probably the only time we've caught the bus home together so far!

One thing I need to remember to do though is to carry a house key with me. That day when we all came home together, none of us had a house key and our mum was out. We ended up waiting outside the house for over three hours! I found myself locked outside the house again on a gloomy day a few days ago!

OK this post is long enough. No more long posts! I'll talk about Friday the 13th and that lecture I said the wrong thing in tomorrow...

Uni has made me forget about blogging for a little while but I'll try resume it now that I'm not really doing anything productive. So everything's going to be everywhere, but that's OK I'll just with the night I went to see Watchmen...

Because it was Claire, one of our youth group member's birthdays, we decided we'd just go out on the Saturday (last week) following that youth group to watch Watchmen and then have dinner afterwards. We struck a bit of a problem though - the movie is R16, and we had a few people who weren't 16 yet! We settled on an alternative movie for them - Slumdog Millionaire. The next problem - there were a couple who weren't over 13, as Slumdog has an R13 rating! Solution - they can come have dinner with us!

Unfortunately Aonghas had to work that evening so he could only make it to dinner. Hamish and I joined Lisa and Claire, the only other two in our youth group who were R18, along with On and Fiona, the married couple who are two of our youth group leaders, to watch Watchmen at Westgate.

I watched Watchmen not having any previous knowledge of what the graphic novel was like or what the story was all about, and so I didn't really have expectations, except maybe that it'd be a bit graphic because of it's R16 rating! I thought it might just have some tame sex scene, but didn't realise it would have a full blown nude sex scene, or even some blue guy who walks around with his penis hanging out! Now this was the first time I ever watched a sex scene of any sort at the cinemas (not surprising when you consider some of the only movies I've ever watched at the cinemas to be Pokemon, Lord of the Rings and Benjamin Button!). What made it even awkward was that I was sitting next to On, my youth group leader (and a guy!) as it happened! But being the mature people we were (and everyone else in the cinema besides that crying baby) it was no big deal.

The movie was also pretty gruelsome. I still haven't decided which of the numerous murder/bludgeoning scenes was the best but believe me there were quite a few and they were quite gory!

Speaking of that baby, I first thought the baby crying noise was part of the movie! There was a scene where this person was about to lift a plastic sheet off something, when a baby started crying and I thought maybe there was a baby hidden under a sheet! I soon came to realise it was from an actual baby in the theatre!

After the movie we joined the others who had already finished watching Slumdog Millionaire. Acccording to them Slumdog Millionaire was 'life-changing'. That's what they said about Wall-E too! Wall-E is higher up the 'life-changing' scale however.

Anyway, we decided to have dinner at this Japanese restaurant at the other side of the carpark. Sadly for me because I have another six weeks till I can eat solids again, I didn't think I'd be able to eat anything, so I thought I'd just wait till Aonghas arrived with the food my mum had prepared. On insisted I buy something though, so I ended up just buying a bowl of noodles. Aonghas soon arrived after having to make three separate trips to pick up three other people (I offered a ride to one of them who had texted me, thinking Aonghas would be nearby, not realising he had almost arrived at Westgate!)

It was pretty cool having dinner with the group. I was quite slow at eating because of my jaw, and so I took my time while taking photos of the others. We also broke into song (Happy Birthday!) when Claire got back from ordering some more food.

When it hit 9.30, the Japanese waitress came over and told us our time was up. I didn't even realise there was a limit! I hadn't finished my noodles by then and so I poured it all into a container I had in the bag my mum gave me and took it away with me. I wasn't going to waste my money!!

We took home Jenny, this other girl in our youth group and that concluded our night out with the youth group!

This is why I won't be buying another drink from McCafe for a little while...

That was the chocco frappe (I think that's what it's called?) I bought from McCafe. The guy chucked some ice in a blender and started blending it. He obviously didn't blend all of it! When I tried sucking up the drink through a straw nothing would come up, and I soon realised it was because there were big chunks of ice left in the drink!

However...because this is the first time I've ever ordered such a drink, maybe this is normal? I tried something similar at the beginning of the year when I went with my friend Phoebe to Esquire's and it certainly didn't have large chunks of ice in it, but maybe it was a different type of drink. I don't know but if it is supposed to be like that, then I apologise for being so critical, but I still don't think I'll be buying another one of these drinks anytime soon!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Saturday was set as our mum's surprise birthday party at our cousins' house...or so we thought it would be a surprise...

We had music lessons for the first half of the day while our mum went out shopping. Our dad took us to accordion lessons and afterwards I kept pressing him to buy our mum a birthday present as we still hadn't got her anything at all! He kept relying on us, so I told him to go and try find something on his own since he's been married to our mum for over 20 years! He came back with a card and a gardening book. OK maybe not exactly what our mum would like but at least he put an effort into looking for something. He also wanted to buy her one of those Chinese pagoda ornaments from The Warehouse but there weren't any at the particular one we went to, so we rushed all the way back to Henderson to find one. Fortunately we found one, but on the way there our mum rang us on our cellphone, asking where we were! We told her we were on our way home...

When we got home we told our mum that we were going to take her to this sale at the ASB Showgrounds (which was true as she mentioned a few days ago that she was keen to go, plus there was a car stereo sale there!). She refused to go till she had had a shower! That was the first sign that she might've known something! When she got out of the shower she was also wearing perfume! She doesn't usually wear perfume when she goes to a sale!

The sale turned out to be mainly perfume, with some watches, sunglasses and car stereos. We only had an hour to check it out, enough time for me to buy a watch. We got back to Henderson to buy takeaways and were on our way to our cousins' place. Our mum was too clever and noticed that we weren't going home, and then that was when she revealed she knew all along that there would be a surprise party..because she had seen it marked in the diary my dad uses to mark his shifts in!

The party was pretty good. A few of the relatives couldn't make it, but that was OK. Our Brens' cousins bought our mum this gnome garden ornament which could hold plants, while our other Andersons' cousins bought her some flowers. We revealed our presents to her too.

It was also the first time my relatives had seen my new modified jaw! Because of the jaw, I wasn't really able to eat much so I made up for it by eating twice as much dessert :D Our relatives had actually prepared a birthday cake for our mum too! What was really nice was being able to get our mum and dad have a photo taken together after she had blown out the candles. It's such a rare thing seeing them together like that!

After the meal we all sat around in the lounge and the conversation turned into a 'guess the plant' game, where the aunties and uncles were trying to figure out which plant people were talking about (they weren't actually playing a game...they really didn't know what each other were talking about!).

It ended up getting late and that's when the party ended, but it was good to celebrate our mum's birthday (it was a bit of a milestone...but I won't say what sort of milestone!) since she's so important to us!

Friday was the Orientation at Grafton, and once again I offered to help out over there. Upon signing in, we were given these green t-shirts to wear and had to go off to take care of our assigned jobs. I was meant to go over to the hospital to help look after the med students but at the last minute one of the med student helpers wanted to switch jobs with me, so I let him. He was supposed to be helping out at the main entrance of the Grafton campus, handing out maps and pamphlets, as well as helping the first year pharmacy and nursing students.

So I spent most of the morning standing at the entrance with a few others handing out maps to arriving first year Health Sciences and Nursing students, as well as directing them to their lecture theatres. It was pretty cool getting to meet all these people, albeit briefly!

I also found out one of the helpers who is studying for a Masters in Pharmacology used to go to Rutherford! He asked me if Hamish was my brother!

The highlight was probably this Chinese man who was getting help from another girl. When she asked if he needed anymore help he turned to me and asked me if I could speak Chinese, and that's when I tried to say a few words in Mandarin and hopefully helped him! I finally put what little Mandarin I could speak into good use! I also met a few people who remembered me from pharmacy interviews, or from the Dessert Club stand the day before!

Lunch was the highlight of the day though - I got to help with drinks! Edwin (my pharmacy friend) and I kept pouring the drinks. We were originally supposed to be on ice but the day wasn't too hot and it was a bit cloudy so I guess ice wasn't needed! We did a few mixes of L&P with juice, and other varieties just to see if anyone would be able to notice ;) We kept pouring drinks until one of the staff members asked us to stop for a while since there were quite a few cups on the table already. That's when I started asking people to take as many drinks as possible! I even texted my friend Chen to come over and grab a few drinks!

The 3rd year Pharmacy Intro Lecture was right after lunch so Edwin and I left slightly early. I was optimistic about 3rd year Pharmacy til that day, when Chi, this other pharmacy guy kept going on about how hard this year will be. It was reinforced by the lecturers who kept warning us!! I've just got to *think of happy thoughts think of happy thoughts*.

What was also pretty cool was I talked to a few pharmacy people I hadn't really talked to much last year. That's one of my aims, to get to know and talk to more of the pharmacy students I don't usually talk to, to get out of my comfort zone!