5 September, 2010 in Friends, Social by Aonghas

Nick Turns Twenty

It didn’t seem that long ago since Nick’s last birthday party, but here we are again another year on. Tonight Nick celebrated his 20th birthday and invited a few friends to dine with him at La Porchetta on Lincoln Road. The last time I had eaten there it was still Pizza Hutt, so everything looked a bit different inside. When I arrived, most of them were already seated and we were just waiting on Sam, Bryn and Hailey. The menus were passed around and me being my usual self, I couldn’t decide what I wanted to eat. After scanning over the menu back and forth, I finally settled on the Quattro Gusti pizza, which was a pizza that had four different toppings. I ordered a large pizza, though I didn’t realise how large a ‘large’ was until it was put in front of me by the waiter. Luckily I was hungry by then so I managed to gobble it down… just! Just before we left, Nick was surprised (though somewhat prematurely due to one of the staff members mentioning “candles”) with an ice cream birthday cake! We sang him ‘Happy Birthday’ and divided up the cake before it had melted completely. On the way out, I bumped into a Michelle Lee, an old friend from Rutherford. She was with her friend Aniva, who turned out to be the same girl I met at New Zealand Natural a while ago.

Happy Birthday Nick!

From left: Me, Carey, Nick, Luke

After dinner, it was back to Nick’s house for a bit of hangin’ and chillin’. Some of the girls arrived later after getting ready, while the rest of us played some pool, darts and listened to music. It was nice to chat up with some friends I hadn’t seen for ages, even though a few of them were a bit tipsy at the time. We sang the birthday song to Nick again, but this time with gifts.

The taxi vans were due to arrive just before 11:30pm to take us into town. Since I wasn’t going to be staying out all night, I decided to drive into the city myself, and Luke came with me too. On the way into town, we saw two breath-testing stops on motorway on-ramps, so the Police were definitely out in numbers tonight! The taxi van we were following stopped just before the viaduct so we needed to find a car park as close as possible. At first I didn’t know where to go and there were cars all over the place, but luckily we didn’t have to search for too long before we found a carpark down at the viaduct opposite the Westin Hotel.

From left back: Luke, Racheal, Steph, Sam, Nick, me, Rosie

The message from friends was that they were at “Provedor”, a bar on the waterfront. It took a couple of misguided instructions from road workers and security guards to finally find our way there, but we got there in the end! The music at the bar was pumping loud and I took my first step into a bar in the city! Over the next hour or so, we had a great time dancing with friends in amongst a crowded pack of randoms. Photos were taken and we even met some other friends from school. When it was approaching 1am we left Provedor to go somehwere else. I’m not sure if anyone knew where that “somewhere else” was at first, so we walked through some streets trying to find another club that was free. One of the clubs had a very long queue waiting outside; I’m not sure what that one was called though.

Tonight was a night of “firsts” for me. It was the first time I had eaten at La Porchetta, the first time I had walked into an alcohol store (but I didn’t buy anything!) and the first time I had gone to town! In other news, my workmate Nikki invited me to her party tonight as well and I was planning to go, even for a short while, but I didn’t manage to get there in time . So I’m really sorry about that Nikki, but I’ve still got your birthday card so I’ll make sure I give it to you when I see you at work next!

2 September, 2010 in Friends by Aonghas

A Nicholaonghas Day Out!

We got our lunch from Country Fried Chicken (on a rainy day!)

The weather was groggy and wet this morning and I didn’t really feel motivated to do anything except laze around at home. Nick texted me mid-morning asking if I wanted to have lunch so I agreed (since he graciously offered to pick me up ). At first I was half-expecting to dine at Wendy’s like the old times, but Nick had a surprise up his sleeve. We drove in the rain for the better part of ten minutes before we arrived at… Kentucky Country Fried Chicken! It was a small little lunch-bar type place that sold everything from burgers to chicken and even sushi! Nick told me he had come to CFC, as he called it, many times in the past but not for a while. We both ordered a combo that included a chicken burger, two pieces of chicken, chips and a drink. As we waited for our lunch, we read the weekly Coffee News which always has interesting stories and jokes. In this week’s edition, there was an article about a Korean lady named Cha Sa-soon who had finally passed her written exam for a driver’s license… after 950 tries! That’s crazy. Especially since she paid almost $4200 in fees in the process. And that was just for her written test. In the “On the Lighter Side” section, this one-liner joke was pretty clever I thought:

What gets bigger the more you take away? A hole!

We sat in the car to eat our lunch

Our lunches were ready by the time we finished reading Coffee News so we took our food back to the car (the car with only 2 hubcaps, might I add) and Nick drove down to the little carpark near Te Atatu beach. We had a good catch up over lunch and talked about the recent happenings in our lives. Nick started playing music off his iPod so I decided to test this app on my phone called “SoundHound”, which is supposed to recognise songs after recording short sound clips. After correctly recognising a few songs, Nick dug into his vast music collection to try and beat the system, even with some home-grown NZ music. Although there were a couple of exceptions, I’ll think it’s safe to say we were both pretty impressed by the accuracy! And just in case you’re wondering what songs we tested, here is a list of (most of) them in reverse order:

Yeah, pretty long list! After we got tired of that and realised how much of my Vodafone data plan we were wasting, it was time to head home. But not before we made a quick detour to have ice cream!

My sundae had a mixture of cookies & cream and coconut strawberry ice cream

1 September, 2010 in Work by Aonghas

Meeting My New Manager

All my other workmates had already met our new manager Jess except for me. She started working at our store over a month ago but before today, I had only ever talked to her on the phone and left her notes in our “communication book” at work. So when I heard that I would be working with Jess today, I was pretty excited. I even got a text from her this morning telling me that she was looking forward to working with me finally. That was nice.

My shift started at 1pm and I was rostered on to work until 6:30pm to close the store. I had to walk to work so I left a bit earlier so I could squeeze a small feed in before I started. When I got to work I was greeted by Jess, who seemed really friendly – just how I remember her on the phone. She got me to start on the mens’ fixtures before she finished her shift. I had to shift around some of the stock to get ready for the new VM.

By the end of the day, I think I completed everything Jess had set for me (or so I hope). I’m glad I finally got to meet my manager though, and I’m looking forward to the next time we get to work together. Oh and thank you Nikki for letting me work your shift today

26 August, 2010 in Friends, Music by Aonghas

KBB Music Festival 2010

I had my last assessment for the first half of the semester this morning, which was a 20% interview for my design project. I had felt a bit iffy about the whole interview beforehand but it turned out to be not too bad (well, fingers crossed!). The interviewer we were assigned to asked a couple of curve ball questions but ultimately I was just pleased when it was over.

Throughout this week the annual KBB Music Festival is being held at the Town Hall. Calum went to listen to a few sessions earlier in the week so I thought I’d go to watch this afternoon seeing as I didn’t have any lectures after my interview. As luck would have it, this afternoon’s programme included various schools’ symphony orchestras including Cleo’s orchestra from Epsom Girls’ Grammar School. Calum and I arranged to meet outside the Town Hall before the afternoon session started so we could sort out the cameras for filming and taking photos.

Epsom Symphonia played well at the KBB Music Festival

The afternoon bracket of performances started at 1:30pm with Macleans Symphony Orchestra. They played a few pieces and ended with Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 by Elgar. The Avondale College orchestra followed before Epsom Symphonia took the stage. As the players started moving into their places, I scanned through the orchestra until I spotted Cleo at the back near the huge bass drum. Their conductor Peter Thomas was applauded on to the stage before the orchestra opened with their first piece, The Barber Of Seville Overture by Rossini. Their following pieces, Nimrod by Elgar and Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre were played just as well as their first. I’m not sure what it is, but I think orchestra performances are always that much more exciting when you know someone who’s playing in it.

Calum had to leave quickly straight after Epsom performed because he needed to get back to uni, but I thought I’d stick around just to hear some of the other orchestras since I had no other commitments for the rest of the day. After a couple more orchestras performed, I was pleasantly surprised when I was tapped on the shoulder by Cleo. She had returned from being backstage and introduced me to Sunny, a school friend she was with. I later found out that Sunny played the oboe in the Epsom Girls’ orchestra and was also the same year as Cleo. For the rest of the afternoon bracket, I sat together with Cleo and Sunny in the audience. There were a few pieces that didn’t sound particularly appealing to me, though I thought the combined “St Peter’s and St Mary’s Sinfonia” orchestra played quite well to finish off the session.

Highlights from KBB Music Festival Thursday 26 August 2010 (Orchestras)

Thanks to Calum for filming and uploading the video!

From left: Sunny, Cleo, Aonghas and Jordan (from Studio 2)

While everyone was leaving afterwards, I noticed Jordan from Studio 2 was doing some filming outside the main entrance at the Town Hall. In the spur of the moment, I decided to approach Jordan to ask if I could have a photo with him. I asked him if he remembered reading out my email on Studio 2 a couple of weeks ago and surprisingly enough he remembered me! Following the celebrity photoshoot with Jordan, I joined Cleo and Sunny through town on their food-hunting escapade. They were both hungry for food, though they didn’t know what they wanted to eat. After searching around for an undisclosed amount of time, they finally settled on Korean pancakes at this popular place on the corner of High Street and Wellesley Street. As if that wasn’t enough, we then made our way to Wendy’s afterwards to have another feed. Don’t get me wrong though, I did enjoy the experience and I found it amusing how we spent more time deciding what to eat than actually eating. We had an interesting conversation at Wendy’s including such topics as curry, porridge, teachers and lesbian friends. I also had a sudden realisation when Cleo told me that Sunny was in one of the dances at Chinese Extravaganza – I thought she looked familiar! Although we could have stayed and talked for ages, it was soon time to make tracks and head home.

Finishing all my assessments before the break, listening to awesome orchestra performances, having a photo taken with a television celebrity and making a new friend – not bad for a day’s outing .

Update: Jordan’s video clip was shown on Studio 2 a couple of weeks later and we managed to make an appearance in the background! Check it out here.

24 August, 2010 in Personal by Aonghas

Repping It Aonghas Styles

I was walking through the computer lab today at uni when I saw someone wearing a really cool jumper…

23 August, 2010 in Website by Aonghas

Blogging from an Android

I’ve had this app for blogging from my phone for a while now but I never got around to actually using it, so I thought I’d try it out and see how it feels.
I’m sure this will come in handy in future when I need to blog while I’m on the move.
And just for completeness sake, here’s a photo from my phone.
It’s a picture of my dinner from last night – homemade pizza! Yum, thanks mum

12 August, 2010 in Interests, University by Aonghas

Stepping Inside Stebbing

This morning I got the opportunity to take a tour around Stebbing Recording Centre Ltd. in Herne Bay. The trip was organised by the student branch of IEEE but it wasn’t until we reached the recording studio that I realised the guy taking us on the trip was Richard Stebbing, the son of the current owner and the grand-son of the founder of Stebbing Recording Centre!

Outside the front of Stebbing Recording Studios

The first part of the tour included an inside look at the recording studios. We were introduced to Murray, who gave us a brief overview of the companyand its history in New Zealand. The founder of the business, Eldred Stebbing, passed away last year and played a key role in the early days of sound recording in New Zealand. We were taken into the mixing room where we saw all the professional equipement they used and a massive sound board. Richard gave us a demonstration of a project he had been working on to automate sound mixing. We were told that their recording studio was one of the largest in the southern hemisphere and that they have hosted many international and local artists over the years, including Jamie Cullum, the White Stripes, Kenny Rogers and Split Enz.

After our tour of the recording studio, we took a brief walk down the road to their replication and manufacturing plant. According to their website,

Stebbing Recording Centre is the country’s only fully integrated replication plant, with all stages of the DVD and CD manufacturing process carried out on site to ensure meticulous quality control and efficient turnaround.

We started on the top floor of the plant where the mastering takes place. They use stamping equipment to create a master of the CD/DVD that can then be used as a template for pressing the discs. The equipment all looked really high-tech and the smell of a new DVD spindle was quite strong.

All the empty disc spools

Next we moved downstairs to the second floor. This is where the pressing and printing takes place. They use these large automated inject molder machines to press the discs from polycarbonate plastic and then all data is ‘stamped’ onto the CD/DVD. Then they are sent to the printing machines where they can either be screen-printed or offset printed depending on the type of design. At full speed, the machines are able to produce about 100 discs per minute! There were lots of DVD stacks that had already been printed and I noticed some familiar names like Outrageous Fortune, Footrot Flats and even Justin Bieber! Finally, downstairs we saw the packaging process where they had a large scale machine designed to package the DVDs into cases, complete with inserts and covers, labels for the outside, and even boxing the DVDs into cartons at the end. We also got to meet Richard’s dad, Vaughan Stebbing, who is the current owner of the family business. Overall it was a pretty interesting experience to see behind the scenes of a multi-million dollar business. Now whenever I see a commercial DVD, I’ll have a new appreciation for how it came to be.

11 August, 2010 in Personal by Aonghas

“Bee-nine” Makes National Acclaim

It all began during a chat with Nick one night a couple of months ago on MSN. I was trying to express an emotion but there was no suitable preset emoticon so I decided to come up with my own. That’s when “bee-nine” was born. Basically the expression is used to describe something that is “mmm fingerlickin’ good”. The term, based on the emoticon ‘B-9′  describes the face of someone wearing cool shades with a sly tongue poking out. I added a definition to Urban Dictionary and even created a bumper sticker to sell in my online store.

However, today bee-nine was taken to a whole new level when it was featured on TVNZ’s children’s show Studio 2. They were asking people to send in lingo and jargon they use so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to send in mine. Check it out below:

Studio 2 Lingo Feedback – “Bee-nine” by Aonghas

9 August, 2010 in Music by Aonghas

My New Favourite Band

They’ve been around for a while and I’ve heard some of their other songs which I thought were pretty cool at the time, but recently I’ve been really impressed with some of OneRepublic’s songs. Here are a couple of my favourite songs right now – Marchin On and Mercy. I didn’t even realise the second song was by them until I randomly found it tonight on YouTube!

Enjoy

OneRepublic – Marchin On

OneRepublic – Mercy

8 August, 2010 in Personal by Aonghas

A Random Questionnaire

Well, I was bored tonight so I did a Google search for “random questionnaire” and clicked on the first link that came up. I don’t usually do these kinda things but I needed something to help me waste time so here it is:

1. Why aren’t you with the person you love? That’s a good question.
2. Is it cute when you get kissed on the forehead? It would be!
3. What are you listening to? A clip off The Simpsons with Bill Cosby. Funny!
4. If the year consisted of only one season, which would you choose? Err.. I think I’d have to go with Spring. When it’s not too hot, but without all the rain.
5. Could you go out in public looking like you do now? Sure. Might need to fix the hair up a bit first though.
6. What was on your mind mostly today? Working out how much time I had before all my Uni assignment deadlines.
7. Do you like to cuddle? I sure do
8. What’s the best feeling in the world? Making other people happy.
9. Would you rather have your nose or tongue pierced? Neither!
10. Do you like the rain? Not when I don’t have an umbrella. I hate that feeling of slowly getting wet.
11. What did you do today? I sat in a couple of Chinese classes at church with my brothers to see what Chinese School was like.
12. Who was the last person you fought with? I don’t remember… nobody recently I hope.
13. Can you handle the truth? Sometimes it’s hard. But I try my best.
14. How often do you hold back from saying what you are thinking? Quite often, especially if I don’t know the person well.
15. Last night, did you go to sleep smiling? Probably not. But I wasn’t angry or anything!
16. Where did you sleep last night? Where I usually do, in my bed.
17. Did you have a good day yesterday? Yeah it wasn’t too bad. Got to hang out with a few friends and only had two lectures.
18. In the next 4 months, what are you looking forward to most? Passing all my courses this semester.
19. What are you wearing? Jeans, t-shirt, thin black hoodie.
20. What is bothering you right now? Not being able to know what people truly think.
21. Was last New Year’s enjoyable? I think it was a pretty typical new years for me. Stayed home.
22. Do you wish you had the chance to tell someone something right now? Absolutely.
23. Who would you want to be tied to for 24 hours? Haha can I choose more than one person?
24. Did you ever waste too much time on a certain boy or girl? Other people tell me that I do.
25. How was last night? Depends how late you mean
26. What is your mom listed under in your phone? Her full name. I like my contact list being organised.
27. Would you ever live with anyone on your top friends?  I don’t have any “top friends” on Facebook, but yeah there would be a few I’d consider.
28. Have you ever liked somebody and never told them? Yes. Though I think they might have found out on their own later on.
29. Has anyone disappointed you recently? Yes, sadly. I’m still hoping they’ll make up for it in future though
30. What does your hair smell like? My hair is too short to smell right now. And it’d be awkward to ask my brother to smell it for me :S
31. Did you have a tree house as a kid? Haha yes, it was just a platform of particle board though so it broke up like weet-bix when it rained.
32. Do you like going to the dentist? Not particularly, but I like getting the free toothbrush and toothpaste afterwards.
33. Do you try to do a good deed daily? I don’t have a daily quota for good deeds, but I try to do them whenever I can.
34. Can you keep a straight face without smiling? Yes, I’ve just gotta be thinking about the right things.
35. Even been sailing? We got to sail on little yachts for primary school camp.
36. Ever been on a cruise? Nothing spectacular. I’ve been on the ferry to Devonport though!
37. Are you afraid of speaking to large audiences? If I know what I’m talking about then it’s usually fine.
38. Are you afraid to tell the truth sometimes? I’m afraid when the truth might hurt other people’s feelings.

Some pretty random questions in that batch. Maybe I’ll try a different one next time.

Source: http://prince.org/msg/100/294240