Calum 的个人资料The Democratic Republic ...照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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4月30日 Dinners Aplenty!This week has started off pretty well for me. First of all the lecturer of my 8am class on Monday morning had to cancel the lecture due to catching some throat infection which meant a chance to slightly sleep in!! :D Well....I got an extra hour of sleep but I caught a later bus into uni and met up with Phoebe on the bus! Anyway the two highlights of the past two days so far have been the pharmacy dinners! On Monday night was the 1st year pharmacy dinner. Because I am an 'Alternative Admissions' student (it just means I transferred to pharmacy in 2nd year and have to take some 1st year papers to catch up) and know quite a few 1st year pharmacy students from camp, they wanted me to come along to their dinner. Originally Michael (who went to camp with me) and Ziheng, another one of my friends who is an alternative admissions student were going to come, but Michael's ATM card got munched up by the ATM machine while Ziheng pulled out. I turned up to the dinner at 6pm and found out it actually started at 6.30pm! I just sat there for a while before the whole group of 1st years came up. There were only fourteen of us that night. Most of them were from my cabin group or those who went to pharmacy camp! That was pretty cool though as we knew each other. I ordered this large pizza and managed to just finish it all! I also ordered this chocolate mousse afterwards which was pushing it! We finished the dinner at about 8pm and we all slowly walked down the road as a group before one by one we caught rides home. It was really cool catching up with all the 1st years though! On Tuesday it was the 2nd year pharmacy dinner! I was a little unsure whether I wanted to go as sometimes I wonder if I know the 2nd year pharmacy students as well, but it was great! Word was to dress up as pirates but I completely forgot about it as I fell asleep the moment I got home the night before and didn't prepare anything! I sat next to this group of girls, some of whom are really good friends with my friend Diane. I also sat with James, this cool Malaysian guy and some other pharmacy people I haven't really talked to before. Nonetheless, I got to get to meet quite a few people throughout the night and now I know a few new names! Apparently our year is the most sociable year with the hottest girls (according to the pharmacy students association's president!), and I can definitely say they're sociable! We had people taking photos all over the place, people shouting, the Asians playing some variation of rock paper scissors in which the loser got his face tagged with a marker... This time I ordered this pizza that was divided into four quarters, each being a different type. Rather than eat the whole pizza like I did the night before, we pooled our pizzas together and shared them amongst each other so we got to have an even great variety of pizzas! We finished just in time for me to catch my bus at Sky City where I caught up with David again! 4月28日 Fobs There and Right HereTonight I did something which I seldom do - I turned the TV off! There was nothing worth watching! I sorta...started watching TV on the internet! After the minister at church tried speaking to me in Mandarin and I was staring blankly at him (I think I'm forgetting everything!) and encouraged my brothers and I to try and keep up our Chinese, I went searching for any source of Chinese TV or music on the net tonight, and ended up with these programs which let you watch streaming TV channels online! I know it's nothing new, and I sorta found some programs last year but that was back then when we were handicapped by a 2gb data limit and the online streams stopped working! Anyway, now our data limit is 20gb and nothing is changed, we just went over our limit again today despite trying to control our downloading, which means we'll be on dial-up speeds for the next two weeks! Oh the pain!! So after flicking off the TV I opened these programs and had a look through the various TV channels like CBS, the CW and (as much as I tried not to) Fox News, but most of them were screening paid programming (or informercials)!! Thank goodness for Cartoon Network! If only I had that on normal TV. At least that way it wouldn't stop and buffer every few minutes! I also found this other CCTV (Chinese channel) with Spongebob Squarepants dubbed in Mandarin! Now only if I could understand it... The channel I was really looking for though is TVB, this Hong Kong TV channel, mainly because my mum asked me and also because I want to watch something in Cantonese! I think I understand what it is like for those people who try to learn English but just can't get it! Instead for me it's Cantonese. No one wants to speak to a fobby Cantonese speaker! Just last week I really wanted to try have a conversation with a friend in Cantonese, which went something like "Ngoh.....ngoh......(trying to figure out the right word in Cantonese)" ("I....I...." in English) (My friend) "OK let's just speak English" And so my struggle to find someone to speak Cantonese with continues... I finally got round to texting a friend hoping to catch up with her after not having talked to her in the last month or so, and I must admit I was sorta expecting all these exciting stories of fighting dragons and climbing mountains! Here's a little bit of it (or should I say most of it? haha) to demonstrate how magical the conversation was: "Hey! Haven't talked to you in ages! How have you been doing all this time?" "Yeah it's been.....ages. Good... you?" Talk about a frosty reception! So much for catching up with people! haha So anyway back at church my brothers and I have now officially become table putter-uppers-and-take-downers, and that pretty much sums up what we do with the tables every morning before and after the service and lunch! It's not too bad, but it means we'll have to get to church a lot earlier than we currently do! And while remaining on the topic of Asians, noooooooooooo for the Asian girl Ramiele being kicked off American Idol last night!!! Now I have to find another contestant to support based on something other than race! 4月27日 ANZAC DayOne of my eyes looks bloodshot and I swear I'm not stoned! So I better get to sleep really soon! Happy (or sad...or...oh I don't know) ANZAC Day to all for yesterday! I originally was going to sleep in to make up for the many previous sleep-deprived nights when my mum kept trying to wake up me up, pushing me to come with her and Aonghas to the ANZAC service in Te Atatu Peninsula. Aonghas and his school's prefects group were to march with the others to represent his school there. While my mum and I were standing along the side of the road waiting for the parade to start, this man came up to us and asked me if I could help him out with his camera because it wasn't working. He had just bought these new batteries too. I told him it was probably because he hadn't charged the batteries after buying them and he was pretty gutted as his son put him in charge of taking photos of his grandson who was taking part as a cadet in the parade! We offered to take some photos for him as our camera was working. That wasn't for long though, as the battery Aonghas supplied us with was almost flat! The service went without many hiccups. At the beginning this guy did collapse and had to be helped out of the hall by some firefighters (which got me wondering if police and fire service personnel were invited to be represented, why not St Johns? Or maybe they are but I didn't see them? Or are they so short on staff they were all probably busy?). We sang a few hymns, had a prayer, a speech was given by a young servicewoman. What was a slightly odd about her speech though was she started talking about all the different places servicepeople were currently stationed around the world and how they were serving the people and so on. There was a little bit more, and then she started talking repeating what she said earlier! Nonetheless it was a good speech. The Last Post was played, and after a few more short speeches the service was over. It did make me think about the risk these people took to defend and fight for their country. I am 1000x grateful to all past and current service people! Later in the day we went to church for a slightly extended youth group meeting. We played some activities like hockey with newspaper, and I must say that's the most exercise I've done in ages!!!! My thighs are still sore after that! We also planned what we wanted for this display board about our youth group in the foyer. If Aonghas has his way it'll be a mock of the High School Musical poster! Later in the evening we prepared heaps of dumplings for the dinner with our parents later on. Some of the guys got a little too creative, filling one or two of the dumplings with flour! The dinner was not too bad and I filled myself up! To round off the night we played a few games together which was really funny when some of the parents started laughing crazily at some of the weirdest things! 4月24日 Protest Invasion!What an interesting day with protesters climbing onto the med school roof holding a banner protesting the testing of animals or something like that!
Anyway yay for another day of holiday! Now if only it could've been next week instead of this week to spread the days off a little..Yesterday I was soooo tired I slept right through my 8am lecture and my friend had to poke me to keep me awake, so I ended up buying a bottle of Red Bull, which did absolutely nothing for me! Well that's the last time I'll be buying a bottle of that! I was determined to sleep earlier last night, only to have to stay up till late working on my chemistry lab report! I didn't get that much sleep and so went to uni half-awake! I met up with Zahir on the bus and so I didn't get to sleep there. For some reason though I didn't end up sleeping through any of my lectures or workshops! After getting my APSA (the student pharmacy association...or something...) membership card we all went down for Subway for an early lunch after our workshop ended earlier than usual. Once we finished lunch, we went up to study and when it was time for our next lecture and the last for the week, we were on our way to the theatre when someone told us there were protesters outside the med school!
We looked out the window and they were standing right in front of it on the roof of the med school, holding a banner! Some students had gathered in the quad talking or looking or whatever, and a police car pulled up. By the time we finished our lecture and came out though they were all gone. I had originally planned on staying in uni till late as Chen and I were going to go to the Debating Society meeting tonight. I had several hours spare time and so I decided to try study in Albert Park, but that was disrupted by spontaneous bouts of insomnia! Once I gave up, I walked back to the quad to come across Kat and Dominica! They were staying back for the Kiwi Asian Club's Korean BBQ night which I was originally planning on attending were it not for me forgetting to sign up before midnight last night! We along with Winner this other KAC exec. walked down to a nearby cafe and hung out there for a while before I went back into the city. I was on the computer for a little while longer still waiting for Chen, when I got a text from him telling me he was going home! It turns out he had other....commitments! 4月22日 Red Bull Really Gives you Wings!Boy is that thing strong! Yesterday after staying up late to work on my chemistry assignment, I was having trouble staying awake while trying to study for my test on the following day (today). After struggling for a couple hours, I decided that was it. Time to try the stronger stuff. Lift Plus was no good. Bring on the Red Bull!
4月19日 Unpractise Music?Wow I must've played really bad at my accordion lesson today...or at least a lot worse than at the last lesson for my teacher to claim I must've unpractised my music! Then again I couldn't even get through my piece! I did manage to get through the Prelude of the Prelude and Fugue I'm learning, but with heaps of mistakes throughout! My teacher stressed that you don't play mistakes in Bach's music...anyone else's music BUT Bach's!! I told my teacher about how we rushed the entries for the accordion championships, and that I just ended up throwing in this slow movement of a Mozart Sonata that I learned for grade 8 in my programme as I couldn't find any other lyrical piece in time. The minimum playing time is 15 minutes though, and my programme is roughly 16 minutes, thanks mainly to the movement from the Mozart Sonata because (according to Auckland Uni's Naxos Music Database) the three-page piece takes eight minutes...that's if you include the repeats and play it REALLY SLOW! So there's no pressure on me to play my pieces fast this time! Just as well! I also put down the wrong piece for Aonghas on his entry form as he's playing Prelude and Fugue No. 5 not No. 2 (minor thing...very minor haha) but oh well! We'll sort that out when we have to. As for music teaching this morning, I drove there, but didn't spot the policeman leaning out the window of his mufti car holding one of those speed gun things, and now I'm just trying to remember how fast I was driving, because I remember at that time I was rushing to get to the school in time!! So fingers crossed I get no speeding ticket! Singing DisasterI was to lead the singing at youth group last night, being the first person besides the youth group leaders to lead the singing. I had to lead two songs and had kinda sorted out which ones earlier in the day. I was given this big folder with all these Christian songs to choose from, but because all the well-known tunes had already been done before, I ended up picking one of the lesser known tunes 'I will Run to You' by Hillsong...I think... as well as 'The Power of Your Love'. 4月17日 Not so GreatWell holidays have turned out just as I thought it would. There's not much time for relaxing this week, as I'm either doing my work or thinking about it! Today I had to go into uni just to hand in an assignment! We got our first mid-term test mark back today, and I'm feeling a bit of both relief and disappointment. I'm relieved I got that many correct but disappointed I didn't get more! It was terrible however, and means I have to now do better in the end-of-semester final examinations :S It's times like these I wonder why I didn't make a complete change from the health/science field to something else when I had the chance. It'd be too shameful to change degree AGAIN for the third time and I'm not going to quit that soon though! I've got a test on the second day back at uni as well, and so while having to complete my chem lap report and assignment I've still got to study for this test! The entries also closed for the NZ Accordion Champs the other day and we only got a text from our teacher the night before alerting us to this! We hadn't even filled out the entry forms or sorted out the payment, so we're going to hope they don't mind a late entry! Hypnotised!I had my first hypnotic experience on Monday night! On that night, I went to this hypnosis show at Henderson High School which was put on as a fundraiser for the school's netball team who wanted to tour Australia. I went with my uncle and the show started off with this 'magician' who was a lot more of an entertainer. He picked up this bowling ball and pretended to accidentally toss it into the audience. It turned out to be a balloon but you should've seen the audience gasping! The hypnotist then came out and asked for volunteers. There was a row of chairs behind him on stage for the volunteers, and I thought maybe I'd give it a go! So I went up on stage with the others and the show started! The hypnotist started playing this calm, relaxing music while counting down, and telling us to close our eyes and relax as much as possible. I can't quite remember what happened after but apparently I had a girl stand on top of me as I lay across two chairs, I pulled down my pants and I also went into the audience sitting on people's laps. I will get a tape of it soon! 4月15日 Aonghas off to AtlantaOn Sunday after church we took Aonghas to the airport as he was leaving for Atlanta for nine days. His school has gotten sponsorship to pay for him, several other students and a couple of teachers to travel all the way there to check out some robotics competition being held so they can get an idea of what to expect when they compete in a similar competition in New Zealand later this year. Apparently there are very few schools participating, with most of them being private schools or top public schools such as Kings College. Carmel, Auckland Grammar and Westlake, with Rutherford College being the only West Auckland school and possibly the lowest decile???
4月12日 Starting Holidays on a High NoteI've just come home from the Auckland Youth Symphony Orchestra performance in the Town Hall tonight, which is the first time I've seen them perform and it was really cool! I even sacrificed going over to the neighbours to play some games to watch them! What made it even cooler was knowing a couple people in the orchestra, Eliza (who does pharmacy) who plays the French horn and Jenny Chen, the concertmaster! It was actually Eliza who told me about the performance, and who was I to turn a free performance down! Only my dad and I made it to the performance as Aonghas is preparing for America tomorrow with my mum helping him pack, while Hamish had to work on an assignment.
The orchestra performed three pieces, Roman Carnival Overture, Trumpet Concerto in A flat Major and Symphony No. 7 in A major Op.92. I haven't heard any of these pieces before, except for possibly Symphony No. 7 by Beethoven, but I got my symphonies mixed up, it turns out to be another symphony! Anyway the orchestra was really good, the audience was packed, which saw us having to sit on the ground floor and me behind some tall Asian man! Usually we sit up in the balcony along the side of the orchestra so we can be a bit closer to see the musicians playing. It's amazing how far Jenny Chen has gotten and is going. She's about to graduate from uni and has already performed with numerous orchestras, won numerous competitions and will be traveling overseas! Now just to brag a little, I used to play violin with her in our intermediate school orchestra back at Rangeview ;) The last time I caught up with her though was probably some time last year outside the Music Centre after my accordion lesson. So it's kinda cool knowing (somewhat) the concert master!!
So that marked a good start to my holidays. I didn't get to sleep in though as I had to teach this morning, but I managed to arrive early to class this time! Today wasn't as bad as last week. I hid all the highlighters in the classroom so the kids wouldn't be able to get them and waste all the ink by drawing all over the white board (especially since they're not my white board markers!). When I left and locked the classroom though, I didn't realise I still had the pencil case of highlighters in my bag! I had to leave them somewhere with a note to the supervisor, I just hope she found it or else I'm going to be in some doodoo! Testing TimesA minor milestone for Calum yesterday - he compounded/prepared (or whatever you're supposed to call it) his very first drug - a salicylic acid ointment!! It was just like cooking, having to mix in the powder into the cream and get rid of the lumps. Mine was a bit lumpy though but was good enough for a first go!
4月9日 Messages from PhilsonHere is a selection of messages found scribbled on the desks at the Philson Library at Auckland University's Grafton Campus. It always puts a smile on your face when you're sitting there struggling to cram!
'What do you do if an epileptic is taking a bath? Throw your washing in'
'Feelings are like albinos. If you let them out they're bound to get burnt.'
'People who think they know everything infuriate those of us that do.'
'5 years later I'm still here!' And finally, whoever produced this poster didn't notice the spelling mistake all over the hand. I'm sure they meant influenza! 4月8日 Rubbish!My claims of energy drinks being my saviour may have been a little premature as I struggled to stay awake this morning despite drinking some Lift Plus! To be fair I haven't tried any of the others yet but that'll be the last time I spend $3.00 on Lift Plus! I guess I guess the only thing to try is to sleep earlier! And in news that may surprise many (or not), Blockhouse Bay is NZ's most Asian suburb according to an Asia New Zealand Foundation report. In an attempt to come up with some clever nickname for Blockhouse Bay to rival Howick's Chowick, Calum came up with nothing...Chowhouse Bay? (yes yes cringe cringe!) My Saviour!Energy drinks are the answer!!! After finishing all my lectures by midday, I went back into the city to eat lunch and study by the fountain at Albert Park. Once I finished eating I got into reading through my notes, when I started to drift off....that's when my book and my notes went CLUNK on the ground in front of all the Asian tourists hanging around posing for photos! I went back to the Info Commons to try study in the quiet study space but that proved too hard for me. I pretty much wasted an hour constantly dozing off, and that was the final straw. I went to Munchie Mart to get me an energy drink to try! I spent a little while staring at the energy drinks thinking...would this set a precedent? Would I get hooked? What has my life come to, having to rely on energy drinks just to get through uni? That's when a Munchie Mart guy must've gotten suspicious or thought something was up as he came over and asked me if everything was all right. I ended up going with Lift Plus (sugar free of course!) over Red Bull and V, only because it was cheaper. Nonetheless, I stayed awake for the next couple hours studying away at Grafton! To make it a fair test though I probably should've studied at the Info Commons again but oh well it still worked and I stayed awake, and am still awake! I did miss the bus AGAIN tonight when I wrongly thought the bus was coming at 9.45pm instead of 9.30pm and had to wait at the bus stop (and study) for at least another hour. I ended up catching up with David on the bus and after talking to him I have to say pharmacy sounds no way near as appealing as the IT industry! 4月7日 Rowdy KidsI had a terrible time teaching my students on Saturday morning. In one of my beginner classes I had a new girl join the other boys in the class. I was teaching them how to read music that day, but the girl and one of the boys told me they already knew and the boy kept moaning that it was too easy and BOOOOORRRRIINNNNNGGGG!!! So I gave them all a worksheet to do which got them to name the notes and told them I expected them to complete it very quickly. Once they claimed to be done, I went through it with them and turned out that the boy nearly got most of it wrong! Along with that he was one of the students making most of the noise! I'm going to have to get a little tougher next week! Sometimes I feel more suited to being a music theory teacher than a practical music teacher as I enjoy teaching that sorta thing. I would really like to teach music theory with the hope of getting some students to sit the theory exam. So far the only theory student I've had that has sat an exam is my brother Aonghas, who got distinction (one out of one, not too bad!), but it's probably more due to him having learnt a lot of music already than to me teaching him theory. I've been doing my best this weekend to try study as much as I can but you know me, being the sorta person to get easily distracted at home! I went to the library today after church to study and caught up with Nick and had a half hour discussion on democracy in America which was really interesting. He definitely is studying the right thing! He used to be pro-American but has done a bit of a u-turn after doing a bit of reading into various sources. On other things, while I prefer Daylight Saving, thank goodness for the extra hour of sleep last night! I was expecting to wake up at the wrong time in the morning but I ended up waking up at the same time so that extra hour of sleep must have really been worth it! We've also been stuck on dial-up speed internet for over a week now and I have to say it feels like we're back in last century! I think the culprit who used all our data allowance was our dad! Ever since we bought him an Ipod he's been downloading heaps and heaps of podcasts on various things such as language lessons and science broadcasts! I ended up purchasing the premium internet plan at uni because I just couldn't keep going at dial-up speed both at home and at uni! Anyway it's the start of a stressful week, with three tests coming up! After that will finally be the extremely short holidays, but even so I still can't wait! I can then use the spare time to work on two more assignments and study for some more tests!! But for now...gotta focus on those three tests.. 4月5日 Since I've Been GoneI really should try sleeping early but I've still got to prepare for my recorder lessons tomorrow morning! So anyway in the past two weeks a lot has been going on. I've had a couple assignments and lab reports which have been really annoying since it's taken up quite a lot of my time which could've been spent on studying for my three tests coming up in the next week! Some Random Photos from the Last Few Weeks...
The chem lecturer writing and writing and writing...He just wouldn't stop! And I kept falling asleep!!
Eliza draws a french horn (she can play music and draw very well!) on the blackboard to help us visualize what she plays!
What lazy (and more accurate!!) people can use, a machine that does titrations for us!! :D
Ziheng my pharmacy friend giving me a lift back into the city
The museum at the med school (This was the closest I could get as i couldn't take photos inside!) Back Again!After nearly two weeks of absence, I'm finally back with a lot to catch up on! I've had quite a few assignments and lab reports to complete and have been soooo tired! So anyway going back two weeks all the way to Easter Monday when I went to yumcha with my church's youth group. We went to Sunshine Restaurant out on the waterfront, but it was a bit of a mission getting there! Cecilia and her husband Stanley, a couple of the youth group leaders came over to our house with some of the other youth group people so we could follow them to the restaurant in our car. We were just about to get on the motorway when we ended up overtaking them when they got stuck behind a car and so we went straight into Te Atatu Peninsula to do a u-turn and catch up with them. We noticed that the bus had gone though and lost them, but then they called us and said they were right behind us! We ended up making it into the city, and drove into this multi-story car park building. We went into the restaurant and that's when we realised we didn't have a parking ticket! What must've happened was that the car in front of us got a ticket and the barrier arm went up, and while it was still up we drove in without getting our own ticket! We were trying to think of ways of getting our car out as we needed a ticket to leave the building, and so we tried walking up to the machine but it said there was no car present! We thought we'd sort it out after the lunch though. Yumcha was pretty good. It had a wider variety than the South Auckland yumcha my family usually goes to! It was also packed with heaps of Asians! We ate and talked for a few hours. There was some weird food I had never tried, like some sorta tofu dessert that you mix together with liquid, but I thought what the hey I'll give it a go! It didn't actually taste too bad! It was soon about time for us to go, and so now we had to deal with the problem which was how to get our car out of the car park! I tried telling Aonghas to just drive out straight after another car while the barrier arm was up, but he said there were security cameras, so he ended up ringing the car park company and a guy came over and said Aonghas would have to pay some lost ticket fee of $35. Compare that to a possibly free parking (that comes with yumcha!). Aonghas went off to work while the rest of us went over to Cornwall Park. We played a few games together which were a bit out-there. One of them was a bit of a relay where we had to try move a rubber band down our face without moving it before leap-frogging over to the newspaper, make a hole in it and try get through it without ripping it. Our team lost that race. We also had this dress up race where we paired up, both in random clothes with one blind-folded and the other person guiding him/her. We had to run up the hill, switch clothes then run back. Our team lost that race too! We played a few other games like charades and this game where one person had to keep some water in their mouth while we tried making them spit it out. All the other people around us at Cornwall Park probably thought we were weird! It was really cool though being able to hang out with the other people in the youth group, getting to know them better. The day before at the special Easter service at church where Hannah, this pharmacy girl got baptised, she had talked to me about how she was really close with the people in her youth group and how they were like family, and just spending time with these other people sorta made me feel a little more confident and open about being a (or trying!) to be a Christian, I've even changed my religious status for the first time in Facebook! haha So thanks Hannah and youth group for that! |
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