4 November, 2010 in Engineering, Friends by Aonghas

My Only Exam

This morning I had my only exam for the semester (yay!) but I didn’t think I was totally ready for it yet (boo!). I guess I had nobody to blame but myself seeing as it was the only exam I had and there were nearly 2 weeks between the last day of semester and my exam. My exam was held in the Fisher and Paykel lecture theatre and I tried to find a seat that was nearby the front of the room so I could see the clock.

The exam itself wasn’t too bad though there were definitely areas where I felt I could have done a lot better in. A lot better. Towards the end of the exam I was just hoping it would finish soon so I could enjoy my holiday, but I didn’t want to leave early so I could spend as much time as I could trying to answer all the questions.

After I finished my exam I went to have some lunch and I was sitting in the quad when Chen came along. We had a good catch up over lunch (well, while I was eating) and he told me that he was going overseas to China for a holiday. I wish I could go overseas too!

As I was walking back to the bus stop I saw they were doing renovations to the footpath in Albert Park. Maybe next year when I walk through Albert Park it will be all nice and new!

It looked like they were fixing the footpath in Albert Park

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

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.

22 July, 2010 in Friends, Social by Aonghas

Drinks at Shadows

Today was the first time I had been to Shadows

Since I’ve been at the University of Auckland for over a year and a half now, you would have thought I had been to the student bar Shadows at least once. But before today, that wasn’t the case. I remember someone, maybe my brother, telling me about the $1 bottomless glasses of coke they used to serve at Shadows, and I was meaning to go up there one day to check it out but I never got round to doing it. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t be bothered climbing three flights of stairs, or maybe I just had nobody to go with and there was never a good opportunity. But anyway, today I was sitting outside in the quad with Nancy and Jesse, eating my sandwiches prepared for me by my mum.

After Nancy left, Jesse and I were talking about engineering when Carey and Stephanie arrived. It took me a few moments to realise it was the first time I had seen Carey since his American escapades to the States earlier this month. Carey and Stephanie were on their way up to Shadows and asked if we’d like to join them. I was excited to go up there for the first time, and after being ID checked at the door, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the bar actually looked quite tidy and clean. I always had a mental image of the bar being smoggy and dark for some reason; maybe I got the impression that a student bar would be filled with rowdy drunkards vomiting all over the place. Then again, it was 1:20pm in the afternoon so perhaps it was a bit early in the day for the hardcore drinkers to be out.

Carey and Jesse ordered a whole jug of some kind of beer while I opted for a non-alcoholic option. I didn’t know what was on the menu apart from the regular soft drinks, so the bartender offered to make me a “mocktail”. I’m guessing that means a mock version of a cocktail? Anyway, he mixed all these different things together and shook it up in a silver shaker and the final drink turned out to pinky-purple. I asked him what it was called but I don’t think he knew himself – just a mixture of everything perhaps. It did taste pretty good I must say, but I expected it to taste how it did – that kind of taste you get when you mix soft drinks and juices.

Carey told us a little bit about his trip to USA and he shared a few party stories along with Stephanie. When 2pm came knocking it was time for me to go. Overall I am impressed with my first Shadows experience, and I wouldn’t mind going back there sometime. So if anyone needs a non-alcoholic drinking buddy, you know who to call