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!