6 October, 2010 in Home by Aonghas

Szelin to the Rescue

This morning in admidst my half-sleep/half-awake phase, my mum came into my room and supposedly told me to take the house key with me to uni today because she might not be home when I got home. Except I didn’t hear her say that. So this afternoon when I got home, I found Calum sitting outside our back door with no way to get inside since our mum was still out. At first we managed to kill some time by surfing the web on our phones since we could connect to our WiFi, but I soon got bored of sitting around so I tried to find something else to do to help pass time. Luckily I managed to get into our garage (which isn’t connected to our house) and I found a flat basketball by the door so I decided to shoot some hoops with it. Too bad it was flat though; it really took the fun out of playing basketball.

Szelin and Calum showing off their respective name badges from uni. I was the odd one out

Before long, I noticed my neighbour Szelin waving to me from her lounge window and I signalled her to come over. She came outside to ask what we were doing and we told her that we were locked outside our house because we didn’t have a key to get inside . She invited us over to her place until our mum came home so we happily followed her back to her house. It had been a while since we were last at her house – ironic really, since one would think that being neighbours meant we could go over to each other’s house all the time. I guess we’ve all just been busy and caught up with uni and other things so we never really got the chance. Szelin was home alone and she made us a hot drink before we had a catch up over the dining table. We continued our discussion downstairs in her bedroom and talked about the recent happenings in our lives. We were introduced to their new dog Lambchop (I think?), who was very energetic. He’s quite the constrast to their other dog Pepper, who has been around for ages. After a couple of hours, our mum finally showed up at home so it was time to say goodbye. Thanks for the hospitality Szelin, hopefully we’ll catch up sometime again in the near future.

2 October, 2010 in Home by Aonghas

Lights Out!

The powercut turned somewhat into a romantic candle-lit dinner

Tonight while we were sitting at home watching TV, we all got taken by surprise when the whole room was thrown into darkness. The whole house in fact. A quick look out the window and down the street confirmed the assumption that we weren’t the only ones without power. At least our whole road was struck with a power cut and it just happened to come at a time that was just a bit too dark to see properly. In true emergency spirit, my mum found an assorted collection of candles to light so we could all see. I knew those candles would come in handy one day It also just so happened to be dinner time for us, so we ate dinner as a family in candle light and I must say it was a definitely a change from the norm. The absence of electricity really made me realise how much time I have without TV, computers and the like, and I think  I saw it as a timely reminder that I should always remember to take breaks from these things. After nearly 30 minutes, we heard an array of random beeps coming from various appliances around our house and then everything was back to normal. It was almost as if nothing had happened.

22 July, 2010 in Home by Aonghas

Rainy Days

Usually our smaller cat Mao Mao sleeps in the lounge overnight until the early hours of the morning when she walks down the hallway and wakes my dad up to let her out. Tonight she went for an early sleep and just woke up about 15 minutes ago to have something to eat before, presumably, wanting to go to the “bathroom” outside. She was meowing at me and circling around my legs until I went to the back door to let her out, but she just sat there looking out at the cold rainy night.

Mao Mao didn't want to go out into the rain but she needed to go to the toilet!

It was raining on and off earlier today but tonight it’s just gotten worse. We used to have a litterbox inside when Mao Mao was younger, but after she trained herself to wake our dad up in the morning to let her out, we figured she grew out of it. After sitting at the door staring blankly at me for over 10 minutes, I guess the urge to relieve herself finally got to her and she darted out the back door into the rain. I hope she doesn’t get too wet. Maybe we should bring back the litterbox for winter nights like tonight.

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!

28 November, 2009 in Holidays, Home, Personal by Aonghas

Nineteen Years On…

It’s a little bit scary to think that I was born on this day nineteen years ago. I hadn’t even had a chance to properly adjust to to being 18, and now I’m another year older! My day started pretty early this morning with my violin lesson at 8 o’clock. We waited for Calum to finish teaching his recorder classes before we picked him up and went to Sherman’s hostel in town to see John’s new baby. We met up with Nadine, Winston and Aunty Stephanie when we arrived, before being let into the hostel by John’s wife Pauline.

The new baby was only 10 days old but he already had quite a lot of hair on his head. I’m not sure of the baby’s name though (I’m not even sure if they have named him yet!). Since we arrived slightly late, we couldn’t stay for long since we had made reservations at the Dynasty Yumcha restaurant across the road for 12 o’clock. We told Pauline that we would come back to see the baby afterwards.

I had lunch at Yumcha with my Sunday School class

The Yumcha restaurant had really fast customer service; the waiters and waitresses were coming in from every angle with all sorts of food just moments after we sat down! Knowing me, I just HAD to embarrass myself at some stage today – and sure enough I did. Just as I was picking up my little cup of tea (it was still hot!), I knocked the cup over and made a huge wet patch on the tablecloth. Luckily it didn’t spill over the side so I didn’t get wet. Even more surprisingly, the wetness dried pretty quickly too and I nearly didn’t even notice it after about 10 minutes. The prawns I tried were interesting to eat. I wasn’t sure of the proper technique to eat them, but apparently I was supposed to “suck” the flavour out of it before I peeled the shell off the prawn. In the end I just made a bit of a mess on my plate with all the prawn shells, but I managed to get through all of the fleshy stuff (with greasy hands afterwards of course!).

After lunch we went back to Sherman’s hostel. The baby had just been sleeping so he was pretty calm when we arrived. When Pauline brought the baby out into the dining room, we all took turns holding the baby. It was actually the first time I’ve held a real baby that small I think! He was so soft and a little wriggly when I held him. Everything about him was so tiny, like his hands and feet and nose and ears! I guess that’s what expected from a baby though…

My first time holding a baby!

We dropped Calum off at his friend’s birthday party on the way home. Meanwhile Hamish and I played a bit of basketball in the back yard. I had a short rest in the lounge afterwards before I decided to text Chelsea and ask when the TDI Farewell Evening started tonight. Thinking it started at 7:30pm, I thought I would still have time to get ready, but I got a shock when Chelsea texted me back and told me it started at 6pm (which was in less than 5 minutes!). I rushed out the door, jumped in the car and zoomed off to Rutherford!

When I arrived at Rutherford, I was greeted at the door by Hohepa and Helena. They gave me a a programme and invited me inside. It felt pretty good being back at my old school and seeing all my old TDI buddies from last year. I mingled with a few peeps over dinner and met up with Chen and Mathew as well. When dinner was over, we all took our seats and the official programme started. Michele and Caleb van Beynen, the Head Students for next year, were the MCs for the evening and they did a stellar job! Every student in TDI was acknowledged for their achievements this year, and the Year 13s were all given their speeches by their Year 12 underlings. I was so proud of all the speakers tonight because all their speeches were really touching, as well as humorous in their own way. It was such a nice way to end my birthday, so thank you everyone in TDI for reminding me of the good days at Rutherford. You have all grown so much.

Overall my 19th birthday was very enjoyable. This is my last teenage year so I’m going to try and live it up as much as I can while I still can!

11 November, 2009 in Holidays, Home by Aonghas

Mitre 10 Mega, Carters, Bunnings

This morning I went out to the front of our house to measure around the conservatory with my dad. Underneath our conservatory we’ve got this cement board-like stuff that’s been cracking over the years so we thought it was about time that we replaced/repaired it. After we got the measurements, I went out with my mum and dad to have a look at some different materials we could use to fix our conservatory.

The first place we went to was Mitre 10 Mega. The guy we approached there didn’t really know much about what we were talking about, but he did show us some of the wood outside (it was slightly raining at the time). Before we left Mitre 10, we passed by the garden department because my mum brought a couple of plant clippings from the back yard to find out what type of plant it was before digging it out. We saw one of the garden guys and when we showed him the plant clipping, he immediately dismissed the possibility of it being a fruit plant, but couldn’t decipher what it was. He asked two of his colleagues if they could tell what it was, but they didn’t have and idea either. Finally he showed the clipping to one of the young ladies (her name was Jessica (I read her name badge!)) working on the other side of the gardening section.

The mapou plant

She identified the plant as being a mapou, a New Zealand native apparently. She even took out her New Zealand Natives book to double check, and sure enough she was right. The red stem on the plant was a “dead giveaway”, she said.

Next stop was Carters, down the road. The guy we met there was driving on a forklift. At the time he was moving a pallet, but when he came back he directed us over to the plywood (while still driving the forklift). Seeing him riding on that forklift made me a tad jealous because it looked like so much fun, what with the multiple joysticks and rear-wheels that steer! We weren’t too sure if plywood was the best way to go either, so we decided we’d give it some thought and moved on.

The last destination on our home depot store round-trip was Bunnings Warehouse on Lincoln Road. It’s much smaller than the Bunnings in Pakuranga, but nevertheless we thought we’d just pop in to see if there was anything we hadn’t seen earlier. The older-looking guy we met there was quite a character. I missed his name, but he took us over to the corrugated plastics and suggested we cover our conservatory with this stuff. When my dad mentioned that our conservatory roof might need replacing after the birds had picked holes in the top layer of our Twinwall plastic roofing over the years, the guy joked with a solution to keep the birds off the roof. He said,

“Just put the f**king cat up there, that’ll keep the birds off it! The only thing is how to keep the cat up there… might need a cage!”

His seemingly ingenious idea was followed with a loud roar of laughter, I chuckled just to play along.

In the end though, we didn’t buy anything today. At least we’ve got some ideas now – hopefully they’ll be put into action before long!

28 February, 2009 in Home by Aonghas

Surprise Party

Tonight was the night of Mum’s surprise birthday party. In the morning we all went to violin lesson (at the super early time of 8am!) and afterwards I had to assist Calum with his recorder lessons again since he’s still recovering from surgery. I drove Calum home after we finished at 10:30am, by which time Mum had gone out. Dad was left home to take us to accordion lessons over in North Shore. The plan was to buy Mum a birthday present afterwards.

When we got home from accordion lesson, we told Mum that we were taking her to the Auckland Showgrounds for the big sale that was being held there over the weekend. We didn’t tell her, but on the way home from the Auckland Showgrounds, we were going to drive to my aunty’s house where everyone would be waiting to surprise welcome my Mum for her birthday party.

There were boxloads of makeup selling cheap

There wasn’t much time to look around at the sale since it closed at 6pm, but we decided to go along to have a look anyway. By the time we arrived, parking was free at the Showgrounds. We got to the main entrance, where we were only allowed in without any handbags or other bags. There were tables and tables of all sorts of things, ranging from sunglasses to makeup (there was A LOT of makeup) to perfumes to car stereos. I wasn’t too sure if some brands of perfume and cologne were famous or not but a few I did recognise included Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss, Dolce and Gabbana, Elizabeth Taylor as well as others. There were quite a few Casio watches being sold as well, but I wasn’t too sure if the prices they were selling at were actually cheaper than the prices elsewhere or not.

Casio watches

Calvin Klein's "Obsession"

Hundreds of sunglasses

On the way home we stopped to buy some takeaways (to keep Mum guessing if she had suspicions) but I think she started to join the dots of our secret operation on the way to my aunty’s house. She asked Dad why he had a day off work today (since he usually works on Saturdays) but he kept tight-lipped about it. We arrived at my aunty’s house and saw all the cars parked outside, by which time I’m pretty sure Mum had a good idea about what was going on. When we got inside, everyone came up to wish my mum a happy birthday.

The evening was quite relaxed and it was a good chance to catch up with my cousins. There was plenty of food for everyone and a delicious dessert including pavlova, ice cream, fruit saland and cream-filled eclairs to top if all off. My aunty and her family bought my mum a dwarf garden ornament with a pot at the back, while my dad bought her a pagoda and a gardening book. Hopefully it will mean our garden will look lovely in the near future!

26 February, 2009 in Recreation, University by Aonghas

Happy Birthday Mummy!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUMMY! (AND HELEN CLARK)
This morning when I got off the bus in town, I met up with one of the guys on my maths course. Apparently he caught the same bus as me but I didn’t realise he was on it. He told me that he was Shameela’s uncle and that he came from Afghanistan some years ago. We walked to university together before he went his own way (because he was doing another course for the day). Marianely arrived at the lecture theatre just before it started but Luke was still nowhere to be seen. I later found out that his car didn’t want to start this morning so he had to catch a bus into town later. Our morning lecture today was on integration. It was mostly revision stuff for me, but it was still good to refresh my memory. We met up with Luke after the lecture when we went to our tutorial room.

My first time upstairs at the Queen Street McDonald's

I met up with Persis and Lydia for lunch today (Lydia was Head Girl of Henderson High School last year and Persis was Deputy Head Girl). We met at Albert Park before walking down to McDonald’s on Queen Street for lunch. Since I had already finished all my lunch at interval, I decided I would just buy a small combo at McDonald’s. When we arrived, it was pretty full of people and quite a few students in uniforms standing around. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger combo (or something like that) for $5. The upstairs eating area was actually opened for the first time in my life so we went upstairs to sit down (I’m sure I’ve never seen the stairs without the chain across the bottom before!). It was good to catch up with Persis and Lydia after not seeing them for ages – I think the last time I talked to them was at Rangeview last year when we were promoting our high schools to the intermediate students. They are both doing Science degrees at Auckland Uni this year, though they will be specialising in different fields later on.

Persis Samuel and Lydia Rayner

After lunch we had a two hour lecture by Addie Pujii about Mechanics. I didn’t actually know what part of Mechanics he was going to talk about, but neither Marianely or Luke came to the afternoon lecture. Before the lecture started, Julia passed around an evaluation form for everyone to fill out about the course. Although the Mechanics lecture was mainly about deriving the formulae found on the Mechanics formula sheet from last year, Addie did show us a video clip of these guys rapping about vectors. I managed to find the video on Youtube, it’s called The Vector Song. Original title, I know. It was kind of funny in places, but pretty random! Here it is below:

–

Tonight we went to Sylvia Park Shopping Centre to pick up a Pharmacy book that Calum bought off Trademe. After we picked the book up, we decided to have a browse around in the different shops. We came across the Sony Style shop that sold all sorts of Sony electronics, but everything was really expensive. I saw a tripod that was $849! For a tripod! I don’t know how many people actually buy stuff there; they might just gawk and ‘wow’ at everything and then walk out, like we did. As we were leaving Sylvia Park, we spotted Ryan Benjamin at a restaurant/cafe place about to have dinner. He waved us over, and we had a quick chat with him. He seems to be enjoying his job at Rosehill College. Apparently the interest in Debating has risen over there, which he’s excited about. Too bad Rutherford is going to win the competition this year…

Although we didn’t have a special celebration for Mum’s birthday today, we’ve got a little secret up our sleeves for this Saturday which she doesn’t know about (or at least we don’t think she knows about it!)

19 February, 2009 in Home by Aonghas

A Cat & Mouse Affair

When we got home from Westcity tonight my mum found out cat Mao Mao playing with something in the back lawn. On closer inspection, it turned out it was a little mouse! Surprising the mouse was still alive, running around the back lawn. It didn’t look like our cat was interested in killing it, she just wanted to play games. Either she wasn’t hungry or perhaps it wasn’t her preferred flavour of mouse. Anyway, I whipped out the camera and snapped a few photos of their little play-date.

Can you spot the mouse?

The little mouse was happy running around in our lawn

They played together for quite some time

Mao Mao giving the little mouse a bit of encouragement

And then they got tired...

After I went inside I didn’t actually see what happened to the mouse. I hope Mao Mao didn’t bring it inside though!

19 February, 2009 in Home by Aonghas

Help Me, I’m Lost!

You know I never thought it would actually happen to me. People joke about it but I never took it that seriously. Until today. To cut a long story short, I got lost in some random-looking suburban area that I had never seen before and I felt stranded with no sense of direction whatsoever! How did I get to be there you ask? Well, what happened was…

I caught the slightly earlier bus home at 4:15pm and I was feeling a little dozy from the early morning start etc, so I fell into a half-conscious state of mind in the bus. I tried to stay awake enough to realise where the bus was so I could get off when I needed to, but obviously the sleep took control and before I knew it I was asleep on the bus. The next thing I remember was waking up as the bus was going down a hill on a street that I couldn’t recognise.

The first street signs I saw didn't really help

My initial gut feeling was that we were already in Swanson somewhere so I pushed the stop button on the bus in an attempt to get off the bus before I was taken too far away from home. The bus driver stopped and I got off. I only realised that I actually had no idea where I was, as the bus drove off into the distance. With no street signs around, I decided to make a start up the road to try and find out where I was. I was pleased to see a street sign up ahead, but when I got close enough to read the signs, the two streets Waari Ave (the street I had just walked from) and Awaroa Road made no sense to me. I still had no idea where I was!

By this stage, I was trying to keep my cool (though it was becoming increasing more difficult), knowing that I still had my cell phone if I needed to contact anyone. I sent Calum a text telling him about my situation and he said he would try to look for a map somewhere.

I figured that orange-looking building in the distance was Westcity

That’s when I realised I had Google Maps on my phone! Fortunately I still had some credit left of my phone so I connected to Google Maps and it told me where I was on the map (within a 900 metre radius). I zoomed out on the map and worked out that I was actually in the back of Sunnyvale somewhere, near the Waikumete Cemetery. I continued up the road I was walking and eventually I saw the back of the Kelston Community Centre and Great North Road emerging in the distance. “Finally, civilisation!” I thought to myself. It felt as if I could breathe clearly again. I walked all the way home and ended up reaching my house at nearly quarter to six. So much for the earlier bus, huh?

And just for the record, I’m not the only person in my family who has done this! My brother Hamish had to walk home from a bus stop near Waikumete Cemetery coming home one night from uni because he fell asleep on the bus and woke up thinking he had missed his stop. Also, my dad forgot to get off the bus one night coming home from work and ended up walking home from Lincoln Road! It must be Calum’s turn next!