23 March, 2010 in Interests, University by Aonghas

Microsoft Presentation

I received an email last night about a presentation by Microsoft that was scheduled for this afternoon at the OGG building. The blurb in the email attachment said,

Microsoft Student Road Show 2010

Join us on our campus visit, where Microsoft will come to town and talk about a number of different student benefits, such as access to free software, discounted Office, career and networking opportunities, and showcasing some cool new technologies.

In true Microsoft style there will also be a heap of giveaways including a retro Microsoft t-shirt for the first 20 attendees!

The representative from Microsoft talked about the upcoming Windows Phone 7

The free t-shirt was the real draw card for me, so I was keen to get there early. As my luck would have it however, I ended up searching for the room for nearly 10 minutes before I realised it was down the end of the hallway. Even then I waited outside the door because I thought a previous lecturer was still in progress, when in actual fact everyone else had already gone in via the door on the other side! As you can probably guess, I wasn’t one of the first 20 attendees so I missed out on the free t-shirt. It was still a pretty interesting talk nonetheless. A guy from Microsoft New Zealand, Ryan Tarak, spoke to us about some of the new technologies Microsoft is developing. He focused on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 and the new tools that will be available to developers once it’s launched. We watched a few KeyNote videos from the Mix10 conference he went to last week in Las Vegas.  He wasn’t specific on when the launch is due to reach New Zealand though. You can follow Ryan’s blog on the Microsoft website.

Definitely exciting things to come in the way of cell phones. I can’t wait for Windows Phone 7 to arrive!

22 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

My Drill Gauge

I started the week by attending a Class Rep training session in the Musgrove Studio at the Maidment Theatre today. It was my first time in the Maidment Theatre and it reminded me of the old Performing Arts room we used to have at Rutherford College. There were quite a few Class Reps who showed up but I don’t think there were any others from the Engineering Faculty. The purpose of the training was just to get a general idea about what Class Reps actually do. We were given a few scenarios where students had problems (either with the course or the lecturer or something else) and we had to suggest different ways we could try to solve their problem. The whole training only lasted an hour so it wasn’t too strenuous. Rose invited me to play squash with her and Angie at 11am so after the Class Rep training I went over to the Engineering building to get the squash racquets from my locker. The underpass to the Engineering building was dark because the lights hadn’t been turned on yet, and as I was entering the underpass I took a photo because it looked somewhat inspirational, analogous to the phrase “light at the end of the tunnel”.

There's always light at the end of a tunnel

When I arrived at the gym Rose was already waiting for me. I also saw another familiar face too – Si-Yu (I don’t know if that’s the right spelling). I hadn’t seen that guy since the junior years at Rutherford because he moved to Auckland Grammar Boys’ after a couple of years. He joined us down on the squash court and for a supposed first-time player, he was actually pretty good! I don’t know how he managed to play for so long in jeans and a dress shirt though! When we finished playing squash at 12pm, I went to have lunch with Rose and Annette. Coincidentally we bumped into Caleb Moses and Sue Hur at one of the cafes in the quad, so we joined them at their table.

The hacksaws were really loud

Tonight I had my second workshop at AUT. We spent tonight’s session finishing off our drill gauges from last week. I had two more holes left to drill before I could hack-saw the edges. The hack-saws were irritatingly loud, especially with 15 people screeching at the same time. I was worried for the welfare of my ears, though thankfully it didn’t last for too long. After the sawing it was back to the good ol’ file from last week to smooth down the remaining edges. We also had to file the corners with a 6mm radius at each corner. Finally after polishing the whole gauge with sandpaper, the last thing to do was to hammer in some markings. We punched in the size of each hole and also named our drill gauges at the top with lettered punch bits. Yay for my first workshop project being completed!

Me with my drill gauge and teaching assistant Paul Elliot

Since there were no buses left that went to Te Atatu after I finished my workshop, I had to catch a bus that went through New Lynn. I took the next bus that arrived at Sky City and it happened to be the 113; the bus that goes down every side street there is! Before long, I was already having a nap on the bus but I was woken by a loud thud half-way through the trip. When I woke up most of the people had already gotten off the bus but there was one Asian lady sitting behind me. I turned to her after I heard the loud thud and she started talking to me in Mandarin. I couldn’t understand some of what she was saying but I picked out a few familiar phrases about what I was studying and about my family. I tried to reply with my broken Mandarin and I think she could understand the general gist of what I was trying to say. After she got off the bus at the Glendene BP station, I realised how much Mandarin I had forgotten since High School! I really should keep up my Chinese or else I’ll start forgetting everything else too!

20 March, 2010 in Social by Aonghas

Cooking Mama at Jennifer’s

This afternoon we were invited to Jennifer’s 20th birthday party at her house (Jennifer is a girl from my Sunday School who studies Chemical Materials Engineering). We thought the party started at 4pm but when we arrived at her house, we didn’t see any other cars. After sitting in the car for a few minutes, we thought we might as well go in. When Jennifer answered the door, we found out that most people were actually arriving after 5, so we were a little early. We met a couple of Jennifer’s friends who were already there though – Sarah and Marco. They were still planning the group games that we were going to play later in the evening. Soon more people started arriving and we were trying our hardest to remember all their names. Nadine from church arrived as well, so we started talking to her since she was a familiar face. Jennifer took a photo of us with her Polaroid camera (Calum thought it was an underwater camera!) which was really cool. I hadn’t seen one of those cameras for ages!

I haven't seen a Polaroid Camera for ages!

Everyone prepared a different dish

When there was a sizable number of people, we started eating food from various dishes people had prepared. There was heaps of different food such as pasta, chicken nuggets, sausages with pineapples and tomatoes, sausage rolls, sushi, sweet desserts…

The evening was getting on and it was time to start the group activities. We were split into four teams and then told which game we would be playing first and with whom. Our group (The Cool Bunch) was up against Team 1 first, playing a game called Jukebox. We were played the beginning of different songs and we had to identify what song it was. It was the best out of ten songs and our group ended up winning! Other games during the evening included Jenga, a speed drinking game with coke and a straw, and a rubberband-passing game using straws in our mouths. I don’t actually know what the prize was for the winning team though; maybe there wasn’t one.

Our group playing "Jukebox"

Make a wish Jennifer!

We all sang Happy Birthday to Jennifer after the games, before group photos were taken. One of Jennifer’s friends got a little crazy with the cake cream, which soon escalated into a cream fight. Because I was standing in the corridor while this kerfuffle continued, I was caught in the crossfire. As Jennifer passed me she wiped a large lump of cream on my T-shirt, although I don’t think she realised. It was no biggie; I just used a tissue to clean myself up. We didn’t stay too long after that and we left at the same time Nadine did. It was a pretty fun night overall, really good to meet some new people and have fun celebrating Jennifer’s birthday!

Our Sunday School class with Jennifer the birthday girl!

20 March, 2010 in Home, Personal by Aonghas

Goodbye Afro

I don’t remember the last time I had a haircut. It doesn’t seem so long ago though, maybe even earlier this year. My hair seems to have some weird growth hormones or something because it always gets too long too fast. I have the curliest hair out of my brothers, so it gets pretty annoying trying to maintain it every morning when I wake up. This afternoon I finally got a haircut! Like usual, our resident barber, ie. Mum, took to the scissors and snipped all my gorgeous locks off. Here is a side-by-side comparison, what do you think?

My afro is no longer!

19 March, 2010 in University, Youth Group by Aonghas

Building with LEGO®

Our group's LEGO model

On the topic of churchy stuff, tonight at Youth Group we had activity night. Calum led worship while I played the piano (tried to!). We also brought Angie along with us to Youth Group tonight as well. Gabrielle led the programme and told us that we’d be building a model using Lego. There was a bit of a twist though. Each group had to nominate someone as the ‘President’ and someone as the ‘Vice President’. In another room, Gabrielle had constructed a model earlier using different Lego pieces and each group had to recreate it without looking at the original. Only the President in each group could see the original model and then report to the Vice President what it looked like. The Vice President then went back to the room where the rest of the team was and had to tell them how to create the model, but only being able to answer “yes” or “no”. In our group I was the Vice President while Rebecca was the President. It took our group a bit of an effort to get started, but once we had the base sorted, things started to take off quite quickly. Rebecca did a great job explaining how the different pieces were positioned, using her arms and hands to show me on the wall. In the end we managed to finish the whole model, and amazingly we were only one space off from being exactly perfect. Great team work guys!

16 March, 2010 in Personal by Aonghas

My First Trademe Sale

My first Trademe auction - "Media Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand"

Last week I took a leap online with my first Trademe auction. Previously I had bought things online through E-Bay and Trademe but I had never put anything up for sale. For Film & Media Studies 100 (FTVMS100) there is a prescibed text book (Media Studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand, edited by Luke Goode and Nabeel Zuberi) necessary for weekly readings and exam preparation and I paid full price for it at UBS last year when I was taking the paper. Since I knew everyone taking the paper this year would need it, I thought I’d try selling my copy on Trademe for a slightly cheaper price. There were no bids on it for the most part of a week but one night before the auction was due to end, someone used the “Buy Now” option and bought my textbook for $65! I was so pleased it sold for that much (still a bargain though if you ask me, since it was in pretty good condition!) Today I met up with the winner of the auction to make the trade. Everything worked out so smoothly; now I’m considering selling more things online!

In other news, tonight I was walking to the bus stop at Sky City when I was approached by a couple of guys from the Church of God. When they asked if I knew God and I replied yes, one of the guys (his name was Robert) started sharing with me selected verses from the Bible that supposedly indicate there is a “God the Mother”. According to them, a Mother God gives us the “water of life” and not many Christians appreciate this. Robert then told me about the importance of The Passover and other events like Atonement and so forth. It all seemed a bit much for me to take in at once, but I let them have their say before I continued on to catch the next bus home.

15 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

The Art of Filing

Fire drill at the gym

When I got to Uni, I met up with Rose and Angie at the gym to play squash. It was the first time I had played squash for the year so I was understandably a little rusty. Not long into our squash sesh, we heard a continuous alarm ringing. Initially we just ignored it but after ringing for more than ten seconds, we assumed it was a fire drill. Sure enough, all the people down in the gym were also heading up the stairs as we shuffled outside in a big mob of sweat. It was a relief to get some fresh air once we made it outside; I’m sure the others felt like they could do with a bit of a cool-down too. Luckily we didn’t have to wait too long before we were allowed back in, and we continued playing squash until nearly half-past eleven. 

I played squash with Rose and Angie at the Uni gym

The workshop is located on St Pauls Street

There wasn’t much time to get ready after my last lecture finished at 5pm. I had to go upstairs to my locker to get my gear before making my way across the road to find out where this workshop was being held at AUT. It wasn’t that much of a mission to find actually; the small lecture room was nearly full by the time I arrived. We were introduced to the University before being given an outline of what we’re going to do over the 9-week course. We were then split into three groups and sent to different workshops. I was put into Group 1 with our teaching assistant being Paul, this guy who looks a lot like the main character in the Eddie Murphy film The Nutty Professor. For the first three weeks our group is going to be doing “bench” work. Our project is to contruct a drill gauge with a piece of metal. The first task we were assigned to do was to file the edge of the piece of metal. You’d think it’s simple but as I found out, it’s actually really hard to get the surface completely flat. I spent the better part of 40 minutes just filing this darn piece of metal trying to even out the surface.

My first workshop was spent filing a piece of metal

Even when I thought it was straight enough, the flatness test we used didn’t agree with my judgement! I should probably explain what I mean by the “flatness test”. There was this metal table with ink on its surface and we had to rub the edge of our piece of metal we were filing on to this table. If the edge of the metal was flat, the whole edge would be painted blue by the ink, otherwise the gaps indicated where the lower sections were on the piece of metal. 

Finally when I managed to get the edge straight, I had to do the same for the adjacent side and file it flat… at right angles! I thought it would take forever, but surprising it didn’t take too long; maybe I was beginning to master the technique of filing. Next thing to do was mark out where to drill the different sized holes on piece of metal. We had space to drill holes ranging from 3-10mm with 1mm increments. I got all my holes drilled by the end of the workshop so next week I’ll only have to do a few finishing touches before I’ll have my very own drill gauge!

15 March, 2010 in Church, Social by Aonghas

Church Camp 2010: Willow Park

This weekend our church had its first family camp at Willow Park Christian Camp out in Howick. The purpose of the camp was to encourage everyone to get to know other people at our church and also to just have some time to relax and have fun. We left home at around 6:45pm hoping to arrive at the camp by half past seven. Earlier in the day our car tyre was punctured by a screw, so we were still driving with a space saver tyre which meant we couldn’t drive faster than 80kmh. Still, we managed to get to the campsite just on 7:30! The location of the camp was really nice, with Bucklands Beach pretty much across the road from where we were staying.

[googleMap name="Willow Park Christian Camp" description="1 Hostel Access Road, Eastern Beach, Auckland" width="630" height="250" mousewheel="false" zoompancontrol="false" typecontrol="false" directions_to="false"]1 Hostel Access Road, Auckland New Zealand[/googleMap]

When we arrived, we were shown to our room upstairs by Sherman. We were allocated to Room 10 with Jireh, Andrew, Rayson and Bobby also together with us. We went back downstairs to meet up with everyone else outside and found them playing on the trampolines across the field. Jireh demonstrated how to do a forward flip on the trampoline while the rest of us looked on. I had a quick jump myself and although I attempted to do a forward flip, I landed on my back! Pretty scary experience at first though; I hadn’t ever tried that before!

The ice breaker game to help us get to know one another

The bell was rung and it was time for the official camp programme to start. We were all ushered into the auditorium where Gabrielle gave an introductory speech and welcomed us all to the camp. Camp programmes were handed around which included all the names of the people and their group numbers, as well as a timetable outlining the schedule of events during the weekend. After a few more introductions, Richard’s wife Michelle led us in a few ice-breaker activities. We all got out of our seats to mingle with people we didn’t know before we were split into two halves with a division down the centre aisle. For this activity we had to sit facing a curtain with someone from the other side facing us (but we couldn’t see them). When it was time, the curtain was dropped and we had to call out the name of the person sitting across from us. I was filming for most the time and it was pretty funny seeing the looks on people’s faces as they tried to scramble their mind for a name.

We were then asked to get into our concert groups (there were eight in total) to start planning for our performance at Saturday night’s concert. Four groups had to perform songs, while the other four had to present skits. I was in group eight along with most of the other people from Oddfellows, and we had to prepare a skit with the theme of “Welcoming new people to church”. It was nearly 10pm before we all headed back to the dining room to have supper. I had a cup of coffee to keep me awake (not knowing how long I was going to be staying up!) and we spent a while talking at a table. I also had a chat with Tim which was pretty interesting. The instruction we got from Gabrielle was that we had to go upstairs to our room at midnight so in the end we didn’t actually get to stay up that late to talk. Then again, Calum and I had to get up early in the morning anyway because I had to take him to Lincoln Heights so he could teach his recorder classes at 8:30am.

Willow Park Christian Camp is quite a nice venue

The first night of sleep was a little bit of a roller-coaster because I kept waking up. Maybe it was the fact that I was sleeping in my regular clothes, or maybe it was because I wasn’t used to the different environment. The first time I woke up I thought it was nearly time to get up but I didn’t feel like I had had enough sleep. It was only 3:50am. The second time I woke up it was nearly 6am. Trying to think about sleeping didn’t really help, which was a little strange because usually I find it really easy to fall asleep. Before long there were sounds of little children bellowing out in the hallway. Once they started up, I knew I wasn’t going to get anymore sleep. Calum and I left the camp just after 7:30am; I left the video camera in the trusty hands of Ray so he could film the morning programme while we were away.

We finally got the tyre replaced after half a day

As it turned out, we made it to West Auckland with 20 minutes to spare before 8:30 so we decided we’d take a quick detour through the McDonald’s drive-thru for breakfast. Little did we know that Calum’s hot chocolate would end up with a dead beetle inside! Yuck. After dropping Calum off at Lincoln Heights, I headed down to the car repair garage in Henderson Valley to see if I could get the tyre replaced. I must have arrived too early though, because everything was still closed when I arrived. I went back after going home for a shower and by that time they were open so I managed to get the tyre changed. Yay, now I didn’t have to worry about driving faster than 80kmh on the motorway!

The camp food was delicious!

Calum finished teaching at 11:30am so when I went to pick him up, we headed straight back to camp so we’d make it back in time for lunch at half past twelve. Our timing was pretty much perfect actually, because lunch was just about ready when we got back. It was my first meal at the camp since being there and I must say it was very nice! We had pork rib patties in bun with pasta, salad and beetroot! After lunch there was a little bit of free time so we headed to the gym to have a bit of a play. Some of the guys were playing with a soccer ball while the others were playing tennis without a net, playing random stuff on the piano and throwing around other balls. Later the rest of the people joined us down at the gym for the prepared group activities. There were four groups doing different activities in a rotation.

The group activities were crazy but fun

The activities consisted of: blowing flour off a plate in order to grab lollies with your mouth, transporting water by cupping it in your hands and balloon relays in partners and also with a stick. Sounds pretty crazy I know, but I think everyone had lots of fun. Most of the time I was filming and it was definitely a lot of fun watching them all looking silly. After the four activities I thought it was over, but I was wrong. We only stopped for a short break to have afternoon tea before we were back into it! The second round of activities was more about skill. Each group was given a number of plastic cups and the goal was to construct the highest tower of cups. There were many tumbles and crashes along the way, but in the end I think the winning tower was stacked 17 cups high!

The end of the group activities segwayed nicely into the soccer game we had during free time. Originally we were hoping to have a soccer game between the different fellowships at church, but it ended up being just mixed teams. I don’t know what the final score was but if we lost, I’m sure it wasn’t by that much We were all tired and exhausted after the soccer game but luckily it was just in time for dinner so we could all refuel.

'Welcoming new people' was the theme of our skit

The highly anticipated evening concert was held on Saturday night with all the eight groups performing their prepared presentations of songs and skits. It was pretty entertaining even though I couldn’t understand any of jokes in Chinese. The basic summary of our group’s skit was Calum, the church pastor, welcoming all sorts of stereotyped people to the church from emos to nerds to homeless people to druggies… I don’t know how I’d cope if our church had so many extreme stereotypes like that though!

We sang Shirley 'Happy Birthday'

After having a relatively early first night, we were all keen to stay up late on the second night. There were still quite a few people awake after supper, bantering away around tables in the dining room. It was also Shirley’s birthday so we gathered around to sing her happy birthday by the sofas. Gabrielle told us that we had to go upstairs to our room when the other fellowship decided to go to sleep. Since we found out earlier that the Canaan fellowship stayed up until 3am on the first night, we thought we’d still have ages to talk. Unfortunately for us, the other fellowship decided to go to sleep just after 12:30am so we were pretty gutted because we knew we couldn’t stay up for much longer. We savoured the remaining minutes we had together before we skittered upstairs back to our rooms.

We had the Sunday service in the auditorium

The final day at camp on the Sunday was more or less a wind down to the weekend. More people arrived at the camp in the morning for the church service that was held in the auditorium. Ada gave the sermon while Sherman was the translator. Before lunch we also had another time for group activities. This time each group had to collect items that were called out by the person running the game. The items on the list (such as belts, necklasses etc) then had to be used to dress up a volunteering member in each group, who then had to parade across the stage in a makeshift fashion show. Hamish was the model for his group, brave man!

The whole camp was over in less than three days but it had felt so much longer. On the drive home from camp I started thinking about Uni again and how long ago it seemed since my last lecture. I don’t feel like going back to Uni so soon; it feels like I should still be on holiday. Overall I think the church camp was definitely a great way to spend a weekend away from home and relax. I wish we could have more weekends away like that!

Smile everyone!

12 March, 2010 in Family, Personal by Aonghas

Puncture!

Punctured tyre!

We were on the way home today from Piano Traders and I was sitting next to Calum in the front passenger’s seat. I don’t know what caught my attention, but as we were driving back up the hill from Mt. Eden, I peered out the window and saw the back wheel squashed down on the road. We immediately pulled over to find the tyre nearly flat on the ground! We spotted the cause after a quick inspection of the tyre and noticed a screw that had punctured the tyre and gone all the way through. Not knowing how to change a tyre, the four of us (Mum, Hamish, Calum and me) stood around hoping someone would come to our rescue. We had a spare space saver  tyre in the boot but we didn’t have a jack to lift the car up. Luckily we were parked across the road from an auto-electrical car garage so we popped in to see if anyone there could help us. The manager, by the looks of it, offered to help us change the tyre, albeit not with the friendliest of attitudes. It didn’t take him very long though, and we were back up and running within a few minutes. Only problem now is that we have to get the tyre replaced at some stage soon!

We found a screw that had gone right in!

11 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

First SSCC Meeting

I was so used to catching the bus at 11am to get into town by midday that it felt weird getting ready one hour earlier today. Our Circuits and Systems lecture got shifted from 1pm to 11am on Thursdays because of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Staff Student Consultative Committee (SSCC) Meetings (that’s a mouthful) that were scheduled at the same time. The meeting was my first responsibility as Student Rep for Year 2 Computer Systems so I was pretty excited to see what I was in for. I read the email with the meeting’s agenda earlier in the day but when the time was approaching, I realised I didn’t even know where the “briefing room” was. Thank goodness for the campus map though, I managed to navigate my way to the Science building across the road and up the stairs. A knowledgeable-looking young man directed me the rest of the way down the hallway where everyone was already seated around tables in the briefing room. Dr. Oliver Sinnen, the chairman of the committee, introduced us all to the department managers also present. We then went around the table introducing ourselves before Oliver got into the agenda matters. I probably shouldn’t say too much about what we talked about (I don’t know if I’m allowed to say…?) but it was a pretty interesting meeting and a great chance to see how the department runs and the clockwork that ticks behind the scenes. At the end of the meeting we had a group photo before we left. The copy of the photo we got sent had numbers on all the people though, because Oliver wanted to know which person in the photo we were.

Electrical and Computer Engineering Student Reps 2010

My first Uni locker!

Another exciting event that happened today was finally getting a padlock for my locker. Yesterday I hired a locker in the Engineering building so I could leave my gym gear in it during the day. By the time I realised we could actually hire lockers, the only ones still vacant were either up on the 5th floor or down on the 2nd floor. I haven’t used it yet but there is now a padlock on my locker so that’s a start. Here it is in all its glory…