A different time.

So, uni is in full swing now. It's officially the last day of summer today, although the sun's not showing its face at all. The transition into university life has been a relatively easy and quick one. I've met so many new people in the last few days, and even managed to remember 70% of them! The CHEM110 lecture is at 8am, and so this semester I will be getting up at 6:15am, four times a week, to catch the 6:57am bus. This conveniently takes me right up Symonds St, so as to minimize the effort required to get to uni everyday. The upside to this is that the sun rises over Rangitoto island just as the bus crosses the harbour bridge. For now, at least. It'll be that much harder to get up in the morning without the view over the harbour to look forward to.

Uni is so different to high school. Breaks are at least 1 hour long, 90% of people have MacBooks and/or iPhones, and all the lectures are actually interesting. Admittedly, we've only had one proper lecture for each paper, but least it's about the subjects I want to learn about. There's also the mosh pit getting into each lecture, especially POPLHLTH111. In this paper, there are all the Biomed, Health Science and Pharmacy students, and there's only one lecture per day. This means that the Centennial Lecture Theatre fills up in 15 seconds on average, and there are 3 overflow lecture halls. Yesterday, we went to the actual lecture hall, and barely made a seat. It gets so crazy that they actually employ security guards to stop students pushing their way into the lecture before the engineering lecture kids come out.

There's such a long year ahead of us. So much work to be done, so much stressing to be felt, but it seems like there's going to be a lot of fun times too. I'm also really enjoying having no lectures on Wednesdays :-)

In other news, my internet finally renewed. Set a new record - last month I capped it in 2 weeks. I'm blaming on the excessive amount of time I spent on my computer...

this is a cool song

The last month

Haven't really had anything happen in the last month, and hence I haven't updated very much.
Just recuperating, reenergizing, relaxing. The weather in Auckland has finally made a turn for the better, and I got my RESTRICTED license! Can't believe that I left it this late - it was hardly difficult. Although they're changing in on Feb 27th, to include a more intense test, AS WELL AS a mandatory documentation of hours. guts bo.

As of today, I don't have anything more to prepare for these holidays. That's because I got my wisdom teeth out this morning. So much fun going into the operating room, wish I could somehow get my hands on the video of them operating on me! And going under general anesthetic was too good. Had the best sleep ever! I think I had dreams, but I can't remember them. My face isn't too chipmunk-esque, although there's a steady flow of bloody saliva going on. Currently got an icepack shaped like a diaper hanging on my face. So attractive that I think it's the next big thing.

In the past month, a lot of my efforts of the last couple months of 2011 turned out to be fruitless. Perhaps subconsciously I wanted to stay in my comfort zone that is Auckland, or realized that it was silly to give up something which is just calling me, but Australia decided that they didn't like me very much. All goods, I think mum's cooking, laundry, nagging & control is far superior to instant noodles all day everyday.

Last Saturday, I also turned 18. How exciting! It was so good to be able to see all my friends on that day, some of whom I hadn't seen in a while. All of a sudden, I feel a bit more sure of myself, of my right to say what I have to say, kinda like how Eragon and Saphira felt when they discovered their true names (I'm halfway through the book Inheritance.)

High school has returned for 2012, and it seems like they hardly even got a holiday. I visited Rebecca, who had just gotten back from New York, and walking through the torrent of kids in uniform felt already so foreign to me.

Yup, so that's my month in a nutshell.

I'm now going to eat more potato and gravy from KFC (so good, and edible for a swollen face) and listen to the Temper Trap & Foster the People.

bye.

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: