Kids.

We're born innocent. Until birth, we only know of the warmth of our mothers, and muffled sounds of the outside world. It's not until we're exposed to various realities over the course of what they called 'growing up' do we being harsher, more cruel, and more similar to the people who we once did not understand.

There's something about childhood that gets me. In their world, the greatest problem is how to coerce mum into buying them an ice-cream. They don't need to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, whether they'll have a roof over their head the next week, or what they're going to do with their life, if they'll be able to do what they want with it even. At least they shouldn't have to. Their priority is growing, observing and learning from the world around them.

Chocolate Shop in Whangarei

Perhaps that's why children bring us so much joy - they remind us of more simple times.

Shoes.

Our feet carry us, but shoes are the buffer between our feet and the gravel, stones and sand. I have a weird sentimentality when it comes to shoes. Some of you may be aware that I enjoy buying clothes, maybe too much so for a guy. However, I have a very different attitude to shoes. I won't buy new shoes until the ones I am wearing have fallen apart. I can remember every time I have bought shoes since I started being sentimental about them, and there is a good 2 year gap between each time!

To me, shoes carry so many memories with them. They have gotten soaked at Splash Mountain in Los Angeles, climbed to the Tian Tan Buddha Statue in Hong Kong, dodged the Hot Spring Monkeys in Japan, been there when I watched a surgery, walked on the cobblestones streets in Slovenia. They have crossed borders, carried dust from one continent to another. They, to me, are physical reminders of where I've been, and where I will go.

The real things.

So it's the end of 2011. Such an intense, and life-changing or perhaps life-revealing year - the most so far. I feel like I figured out more about myself in this one year, than in the 16 before combined. I saw the world, I met inspirational people, I overcame challenges and discovered better music. I like to think that I came out of it braver, more self actualized, more aware of the world around me.

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be YOU. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all."


So many things are the same around us as they were at the beginning of 2011. The same unpredictable Auckland weather, the same hope for the year to come. And yet everything is so different. So bring on 2012, it's going to be so different, but really, not so much.

In the past week I was at Hot Water Beach, camping with 21 other school friends. It rained constantly until new year's day, which we spent at Whangamata, and on January the 2nd, the weather was beautiful. All the rain made us appreciative of sun's rays. Over this week, I realized how we are forever connected, forever distracted from reflection by something insubstantial happening in our lives. This past week was not only a great time with friends, but a great time to spend a little time by myself. Getting up that little bit later, reading by myself in the tent, making my own MiGoreng.

So new years resolutions for this year:
1) To keep it (life and myself) real, while I venture into University
2) To NOT procrastinate. I'd get so much more done. - I don't know how realistic this is though..

Apologies for the jumbled post. Hopefully the ideas that have been bouncing around within my head have been conveyed to you.

Happy new year, and best of luck for 2012

Melbourne yo!

So last week I decided to head over to Melbs for a week, admittedly with my parents, for primarily a med interview at Monash (but really for the holiday =D) 

We flew out earllllllly, and trekked it all the way to the University Campus. Started to really like the campus, it's actually nice how its far away from central Melbourne, so that there would really be a university culture there. 

Melbourne is so nice. It's so arty, so friendly. It confounded me how there was constantly SO many people in the city! It's like the britomart intersection x 10 constantly ah. Did some touristy things while I was there - The NGV (National Gallery of Victoria - a name which I found conflicting... how can it be a "National" Gallery when Victoria is a state? weird) as well as much outlet shopping :) 

Full priced clothes is so expensive in Australia! Outlet shopping is the way to go. 

Even though people earn a lot more than in New Zealand, the cost of living is a lot higher! Can't survive on anything less than $10AUD per meal, unless you want to film Supersize Me 2 or something. 

Federation Square & St. Paul's Cathedral

NGV

Luna Park

State Library

On the trip, I met up with Lizzie from school and we went to Luna Park! The best thing about these amusement parks is the sheer unsafe vibe the rides give off, and also the lack of safety restrictions they must have had when they were building them. I swear if i wriggled enough I could have fallen out of the rides.

I also visited the Shrine of Remembrance, which is such an epic shrine for Australia! It was built in the year after the first world war, but now serves as place to remember all conflicts Aussie was involved in. It didn't hit me until I visited this, but the soldiers of the wars were my age. I can remember going to the Auckland museum all those years ago, when the stories told of seventeen year olds enlisting, but now it has dawned on me that I AM that age. Can you imagine what life would have been like if we were born in another time? Crazy.

Towards the end of the week, I spent an embarrassing amount of time in the State Library of Victoria, which is such an amazing building. If the library in Auckland looked like that, I'd really want to study :P It's just so... antique? It's mind boggling how people sat there so many years ago, studying different things and just in such a different world to the one we're living in today.

I kind of really like Melbourne :) Not as much as Europe, admittedly, but it's pretty great. 

Summer.

random picture that I took at Massey Library

Wow, freedom for the next 3 months? Weird.

No, what's stranger is that we now have no obligation to do anything. I can just decide to go traveling and never come back, or to give up everything and find a good bridge to live under. Obviously I won't - but the freedom to do so is there.

December the 1st was our Graduation Dinner. The last time we'd be as a year group (although only 116 out of 540 year 13's came to the dinner) It was strange, to say the least. It doesn't feel like we're never going to be together anymore. I guess it won't feel like it until we actually are too far apart, too separated by time and space. Amelia and I delivered the Valedictorian speech together. Felt so underprepared and nervous - we finished writing it that afternoon, and practiced it twice - that I didn't eat any dessert. Immediately regretted this after the speech!

There were two quotes that we used that I really like.

From Albert Einstein: "Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.


From a Keynote Speaker at the Rotary Science & Tech Forum: "If your dreams don't scary you, then they aren't big enough."

So, into the future we venture.
But before that, interview at Monash D:

Exams?

So it's NCEA exams. Actually, it's been that way for a while. I've had 6 of them, 3 more to go. Of those 6, 4 have been my subjects, which leaves only calculus that really "counts." Did I feel stressed for these exams? Yeaaaaah. No. I've been waiting, waiting for that *moment* to kick in, but it never did.

On Saturday, I'll be a free man. No more stress until MARCH next year. Jokes, I have to prepare for my interview at Monash and deliberate whether or not I'll apply to NYUAD. Isn't it crazy how your mindset can change so drastically over a short period of time, as a result of some seemingly coincidental and perhaps not so overtly influential incidences?

Last week, after my bio exam, I went to Jason Mraz's concert. To say that it was amazing would be a cruel understatement. Not only did he play for two and a half hours of favourites, and unreleased music, he delivered uplifting messages to the audience, leaving us feeling... Happy.

He said:

"I don't have expectations. Because when expectations fail to follow through, you fail.
Instead, I have possibilities.. Because when these don't come to be... Then you are just left with... other possibilities."


After the concert, Samantha and I managed to stick around for when he came out from the stage door to meet fans and sign stuff and take photos. He did this for a legit 40 minutes, happily meeting every fan, receiving generic comments of appreciation with an amazing humility, and having cameras flashing in his face every second. All of this, even though I bet he was ridiculously tired and jetlagged.

So that was my November. Nothing exciting, nothing profound. But still all good :)


Danny.

An end. A new beginning.

It's here. The moment at which we leave the safety of obligation and regulation, and cross the threshold into the unpredictable, the unchartered, the unknown.

The last few days of school flew by in the blink of an eye. Was it really only 3 days ago that we were still actually doing work in class? The last few hours of school are forever held in my mind, in comforting detail. It is not until you think about what no longer is, that you wish it were still there. Albeit mundane and still ordinary, I wish I had appreciated it more. 

If I met my third form self, I would be in disbelief. I really travelled, I really succeeded, I really did everything that I did? Did I really do all that? 

Now, all these moments are just memories. They lie in the past, only living inside of our heads. Slowly, these too will fade, becoming obscured by new memories, new experiences. 

We've finished at Rangitoto College.

In third form, my form class filmed ourselves in our English class. This is a tradition that our teacher still carries on now. We just sat there, talked about ourselves, what we liked, what we aspired to be. 

At the start of this week, our last week, the same class met up again, to watch this video. 20/27 of us had made it to the end. So much has changed since then. How innocent and impressionable we were. We had so much to learn, so much to experience. We were our undeveloped selves. Still the younglings of the school, we were yet to form our opinions, set our goals, choose our inspirations. 

Ryan came on. I still remember that day in 5th form so clearly. The shock, the disbelief. Although I didn't have the privilege of being very close to him, I remember fragments of our encounters. When I bused home with Debbie from the city, and he pulled me aside and asked me if she were my girlfriend. When he brought fancy bluetooth headphones to school. His characteristic bandanna, his easygoing attitude. May he rest in peace.

The video rolled on, and gasps and awws echoed through E13, as our 13 year old selves popped up on stage. I mentioned my love of cheese and my desire to make money. I don't think I knew what I wanted to be back then. 

We've all gone on to be different people, going different paths, but this history pulls us together.  We'll still remember the days of Social Studies, peer support and rebellious gangsters.

So now we carry on. Time doesn't stop. It's almost cruel how paths cross and diverge so quickly. But our five years at Rangitoto remains a part of us as we venture into the world. 

End of an era. 

Rangitoto College. 

Class of 2011.