23 February, 2009 in University by Aonghas

Overdraft with Bank Applications

I didn’t exactly have the best start to my morning today. You know how I nearly missed my bus on Friday? Well this morning the bus didn’t even come! Either that, or I actually missed it this time… I was standing around waiting for 7:45am bus until past 8 o’clock before I started to get a bit worried. I called my dad on my cell phone to tell him that the bus hadn’t arrived yet, so he said he would come and pick me up. Just as we hung up though, lo and behold! The bus comes around the corner.

In the end I didn’t manage to arrive at uni until just after 9am. I sorted out my student allowance forms out at Studylink (thank goodness!) and as I was walking back to uni I saw John and his wife from church. AUT seemed to be having an Introduction Day or something because there were heaps of “fresh-looking” people bunched up in the AUT quad. I noticed a few little tents being put up in the quad at Auckland Uni as I walked past. I was approached by one of the guys who was standing at an Overseas Christian Group table. He told me he was from West Auckland and we talked for a little while. He also gave me a lollipop which was quite nice.

My luck on the spinning wheel won me a high-five!

At lunch time today, Luke, Marianely and I walked around the quad to have a look at all the different clubs and organisations that were set up. We saw that the ASB Bank stall by the recreation centre had a spinning wheel with what looked like prizes on each of the wheel segments. I decided to try my luck at the wheel (you could even win movie tickets!) so I went up to the lady and gave the wheel a good spin. Unfortunately for me, the ticker landed on a picture with two hands slapping. My prize – a free high-five with the ASB lady! How rewarding! The lady told me to go sign up for a bank account to get free transaction fees etc. as part of the tertiary package so we followed her directions to find the ASB caravan behind the General Library. There were two guys sitting at a table with a laptop by the caravan; they didn’t look like they were doing very much. Since Luke already had an ASB Bank account, he switched over to the tertiary account. I filled in an application form however, and signed up for a new account. On the way back to the quad, we were stopped by yet another bank – this time it was BNZ. The lady told us that if we signed up for a BNZ account, we would get a free Student Card! I thought, what the hey, I may as well! So again I sat down and filled in another application form. That’s two new bank accounts in one day! I really hope they don’t start charging me for not using my bank account, or else I’ll probably find myself in a whole lot of debt!

20 February, 2009 in Church, University, Youth Group by Aonghas

Reverse Photo Scavenger Hunt

Today I nearly missed the bus in the morning. I was so close to missing the bus that by the time I got to the traffic lights, the only thing stopping me from missing the bus was the fact that the lights turned red for the bus just as I ran around the corner to the bus stop! That was so close.

In the afternoon tutorial session there wasn’t a lot of work being done. I think it was down to the fact that it was a Friday afternoon and everyone was waiting to go home to start their weekend. The people in the room next door to us were enjoying a game of hangman, led by one of the tutorial helpers. Some of the words they had to identify included ‘DAN CARTER’, ‘FACEBOOK’ and ‘SADDLE POINT’. Since Luke, Marianely and I were sitting in a position where we could see the whiteboard of our neighbouring room, we were playing along as well, and Marianely solved a number of them quite fast. She told me to call out her answers, most of which were correct! The tutorial helper (I think her name is Jennifer) asked me to come up and choose a word. I didn’t know what word to choose until I introduced myself as Aonghas and was about to say “but it’s spelt differently…” That gave me the idea to use my name as the word for hangman. I started off with seven lines _ _ _ _ _ _ _, to which many people responded with a puzzled look. They managed to spell most of my name correctly quite fast but the only letter they couldn’t work out for while was the ‘O’ (A _ NGHAS). I nearly had the whole hangman drawn before someone shouted out ‘O’. That was quite a fun activity, and a good way to sort of get to know the others on the course.

Marianely’s dad gave me a ride home today. He dropped me off on Te Atatu Road because I said I could walk the rest of the way home. Luckily on the way home, my mum happened to be driving past so she stopped to give me a lift home. Before we went to Youth Group tonight, I stopped at David’s house quickly just to drop off the laptop so he could do some programming for the robot before tomorrow’s competition. He showed me the robot upstairs in all its glory, together with spare parts scattered on the floor. It looked pretty sophisticated.

Tonight at Youth Group Hamish and I led worship. First Hamish led the song we played off a CD, called “What the Lord Has Done in Me“, while I wrote the lyrics for the next song on the whiteboard. The second song we sang was called “Great is the Lord and Most Worthy of Praise“. I attempted to play the accompaniment on piano, a personal first for me at church. All in all I think it was okay, despite my many split notes and mistakes.

After our worship leading, it was activity time! On explained that we were going to be split into three groups and we’d each be given a set of captions. For each caption we had to take a photo that would match the caption. In my group there was Claire, Cleo, Brendan, Justin and myself. The three captions we were given were:

• It was pretty obvious to the onlookers how THIS was going to end.
• It is a miracle! A youth group walking on water! (or similar)
• Who would have thought a youth group could do THIS and no one got arrested!

We were stuck for ideas at first, but we decided to have a walk around the church anyway to give us some inspiration. We thought we might go into the bathroom to see if we could photograph anything in there. I had my first experience in the female bathroom at church tonight (don’t worry, there wasn’t anyone in there at the time) and I must say their bathroom looks a tad prettier than the guys’ one. They have more toilet cubicles for one, though I guess they make up for the absence of urinals. We ended up taking a photo of me in one of the toilet cubicles with my back to the camera… embracing myself… as though I was making out with someone! Don’t ask me how that idea came up..

Next we went into the janitor’s closest further up the hallway and found a huge gas cylinder in there. After playing around for a little while, Cleo taped Brendan to the gas cylinder and I put on latex gloves, ready to “interrogate?” Brendan (this was all for the photo of course, I wasn’t planning on carrying out any such act on Brendan!)

We got back to the classroom at the end of the activity and looked through all the groups’ photos after sharing time. Some of them were quite funny, while others were just plain random! Hopefully someone will upload the photos on to Facebook or something so you can see the final shoots.

19 February, 2009 in University by Aonghas

Geek Campers Reunite

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SZELIN YAP AND MICHELLE YE!
I was slightly more pushed for time this morning than I was for the last three days so I didn’t have time to eat breakfast before I left to catch the bus. Since the 7:45am only let me just make it on time to the lecture yesterday, I was a bit worried that today would be a repeat. Luckily for me though, we made it into town early at around 8:40am (although it meant I had to cut my sleep on the bus short!). When I arrived at the lecture theatre I didn’t see Luke or Marianely so I decided to find a seat myself. There was a guy sitting in the middle of the front row where we usually sit, so I sat near him in the same row. I noticed the guy glancing over at me a couple of times and I thought maybe I looked funny or maybe I had something on my face, but then he said, “Hey, did you go to the Avondale Ball? With… Serenne?” Apparently I drove this guy (his name is David) to the Avondale Ball from Serenne’s friend’s house where they had the pre-ball. Marianely and Luke arrived shortly after, so I moved over and sat next to David for the morning lecture. There were more students in the lecture today because it was the first day for the new ones since they are doing the condensed 7 Day course. When we got to the tutorial rooms, I met up with Sanna O’Connor-Morberg. I knew her from the Science and Technology Forum I went to at the beginning of last year. She told me that she is doing an Engineering/Arts degree at Auckland Uni this year, just like me. I guess I’ll be seeing more of her once uni starts.

At lunch time I left Luke and Marianely to meet up with a few peeps from the Science and Technology Forum (the same one I knew Sanna from). Apparently a couple of the students who were in the Forum camp up to Auckland to visit so they were having a little reunion thing at the food court at Planet Hollywood. When I arrived at the food court I was trying to look out for people I recognised but I wasn’t very successful at first. I didn’t want to walk up to a bunch of randoms and act as if I knew them, only to find out that they were complete strangers and that I had just made a fool of myself. Luckily I saw someone wave at me, and when I got closer (I couldn’t make out any faces from a distance) I saw Joyce, Eugene, Yvonne and Anne sitting at the table. I was pleased that they all remembered who I was! Yvonne is only up in Auckland for a short while before she is going back to study at Victoria University. Soon Josephine arrived as well, followed by Maryanne (all the way from Palmerston North!) and Julian Lees. I didn’t know initially, but I soon found out that Maryanne and Julian were a couple. I thought that was quite amazing, seeing as they lived so far away from each other for all that time. They looked very nice together though, I must say.

The tall purple stools at Giapo on Queen Street

Joyce, Eugene and Yvonne with their delicious-looking ice cream

After lunch we headed down Queen Street to the ice cream place with the tall purple stools outside, called Giapo. I’m sure I hadn’t seen that place before, but I was told that it’s been there for a while now. A couple of the girls went in to buy ice cream while the rest of us waited outside. Jin and his friend had arrived by that time too.

We walked up to Albert Park and sat in the rotunda to chill out. It was quite interesting to learn that almost everyone who was there was either studying Biomed or Engineering at uni. I couldn’t stay long to talk though because I had to get back to uni for the maths course. We had a group photo just before I left so hopefully it will be uploaded somewhere online shortly. It was a really good to catch up with them – I’m sure I’ll be seeing them around uni regularly, especially the Engineering ones!

Update: I found a photo of the group on Yvonne’s Facebook. Here we are at Albert Park:

From back left to right: Yvonne Tse, Jin's friend, me, Jin Kim, Eugene Shin. Front: Maryanne Ting, Joyce Chan, Anne Yu, Josephine Mak, Julian Lees.

18 February, 2009 in University by Aonghas

Lost Unicorn

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOPHIE LI!
The 7:45am bus arrived this morning later than it did yesterday. I managed to get a seat row to myself for the first time though. The traffic was quite heavy this morning too, which is probably why we didn’t reach the city until just after 8:45. I had to do a little power-walking to uni once I got off the bus and managed to make it to the lecture theatre just on time. I sat next to Luke in the morning lecture, just beside the front door. We had a new lecturer today, David Thomson. He went through relationships with graphs and simultaneous equations, and ended up going overtime by around 15 minutes.

At lunch time today I saw Jennifer from church in the Info Commons. She told me that she had a Mechanics exam this morning, but she didn’t know how well she performed. I’m sure she will have done just fine though! We met up with John Kim at the Clock Tower after that. He came into town to buy some textbooks at the University Bookshop for his classes, though they were quite pricey! We talked for little while before John caught the free bus back to Britomart and we headed off to eat lunch.

LOST: A 'missing unicorn' poster we found at uni on the noticeboard

Since the tables in the quad area looked quite full, we decided to sit on one of the nearby benches in front of the noticeboard. Marianely noticed an odd-looking poster pinned up on the board – it was a notice about a missing unicorn! The unicorn, named ‘Angel of Death’, had a description that read, “Unicorn (11 feet long and 8 feet tall. White robe with a golden tail. Has a tooth missing on lower jaw and dances when playing the theme song of harry potter”. I’m pretty sure it was put up as a joke, but I took a photo of it anyway. We thought it might be amusing to text the contact number at the bottom of the page and say that we spotted the missing unicorn running down Symonds Street, just to see what reply we would get.

We sent a text saying, “Hey I think we just saw your unicorn running down Symonds Street. We tried to call out but it was too late!”

About 5 minutes later we got a reply. He/she said, “Dang i told him 2 stop taking crack he gets hypo”. That was pretty fun. I sure hope he/she finds the unicorn soon! If you’ve seen it, give Teva a call!

The afternoon lecture went even longer than the morning lecture – nearly one and a half hours. The lecturer, David, taught us about functions and absolute values. I think he’s quite entertaining as a lecturer actually, just by the way he talks and by his mannerisms. I was surprised when he pulled out a twink pen to erase mistakes he made on his page, even though it was just on scrap paper. In our tutorial room my suspicions about a guy on the course being Isaac Rayner were confirmed when he approached me at my table. We had a quick chat and he told me that he hadn’t done 7th form maths at school so he was doing this course to give him a bit of a refresh.

Luke and I managed to walk to Sky City before the 4:15pm bus arrived so we caught an earlier bus home. The weather changed so fast on the way home in the bus. One moment it was sunny – the next, it was pouring down with rain. Hopefully the weather will clear up before tomorrow!

Also Scholarship results came out today, I haven’t checked yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t pass any of them!

17 February, 2009 in University by Aonghas

Considering the Factors

Today was Day 2 of my Superstart Maths Course. I didn’t have to be at uni until 9am so I caught a slightly later bus than yesterday. As I waited for the bus at the bus stop, David Graham flew past on his bike, but I didn’t get the chance to say hi to him. Even though the bus timetable showed that the bus route started in Glendene/Te Atatu, the bus was nearly full by the time it arrived at my bus stop. I made my way down the aisle like I did yesterday and found an empty seat next to a young-looking teenager. I assumed he was a school kid but he wasn’t wearing any uniform. I didn’t know whether or not I should start a conversation with him, so I just sat there silently. Before long I started to doze off, falling in and out of consciousness. The boy sitting next to me got off the bus near Western Springs so I got the window seat for the rest of the trip.

When I arrived at uni, it was nearly 8:45am. I didn’t see Marianely or Luke so I decided to go into the lecture theatre without them. An Asian girl was already sitting in the front row where we sat yesterday, so I shuffled along the row and sat next to her (I left a seat in between us though!). Marianely showed up just before 9am but she couldn’t sit next to me because by that time there was already a guy sitting on the other side of me. This morning’s lecture was spent finishing off surds before moving on to inequalities. I had completed most of the exercises yesterday during our tutorial session in the afternoon, so nothing was really that new to me. When we finally did get up to finding critical points in inequalities though, we ran out of time!

At interval we sat downstairs in the Engineering building near the cafe. My mum prepared some crackers and biscuits for me, as well as a banana. I spent the rest of the tutorial time in the morning working on factoring polynomials (is it “factoring” or “factorising”? I’m sure at high school the book used to say “factorise”, but the coursebook we have says “factoring”… weird :S). At lunch time we met Chen at the quad; he went shopping this morning for denim clothes for his Medicine Camp (I think he’s in the denim team or something). A couple of Chen’s friends came by while we were talking as well. We also got stickers on our uni ID cards so that we get student discounts on public buses. That was pretty much the highlight of my day. I caught the same bus home as yesterday, even with the same bus driver!

Tonight I stopped by Craig’s house before I went to buy some bread and ice cream at Foodtown. I met up with Andy Sani at Foodtown, who recently got back from a holiday. He said he is doing an acting course at Unitec this year, and that he might feature in some TV commercials. I can’t wait to see him on TV so I can say “hey, I know that guy!”. As I was about to back out of my carpark at Foodtown, I got a little bit of a shock when I checked my rear-vision mirror to see Chelsea staring straight at me!  She had just finished at the Year 9 Parent Evening at school. We couldn’t talk long though because her dad was loading the boot with groceries.

I still have to sort out music for Youth Group this Friday because I’m leading worship with Hamish!

16 February, 2009 in University by Aonghas

Starting Superstart

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMANDA TANG!
I was looking forward to having the whole month of February off before starting uni in March, but sadly my extended summer break was cut short today. I enrolled in a 10-day course called Superstart Initiative in Mathematics, which started today. The course is designed for students who either achieved low results in Calculus or have been away from Maths for a long period of time. Since I did Level 3 Calculus in Year 12, I was a bit nervous getting straight back into maths for Engineering, so I thought this course might help me out. The letter I got with my application told me to arrive at uni between 8:30 and 8:50am. Since I was catching the bus into town, I had to wake up extra early (like 6:45am!) to get ready. It was the earliest I have woken up for a very long time! Dad dropped me off at the bus stop up the road and I caught the bus using Calum’s bus card. When the bus arrived, it was already quite full and there were no empty rows of seats so I had to choose who to sit next to. As I walked further up the aisle, I realised I was running out of options so I quickly picked an empty seat next to a Samoan lady who was listening to music on her MP3 player.

The bus reached the city nearly 20 minutes earlier than scheduled. While I was walking towards uni through Albert Park, I realised that this was pretty much the beginning of my university life. Catching the bus at the crack of dawn and walking through Albert Park is probably going to become very familiar to me. I sat outside the Science building when I arrived at around 8am and decided to have a quick read through my course materials. I saw the signs for the course posted on the door but I didn’t see anyone else waiting so I assumed I was quite early. At 8:30am I thought I might actually check where the lecture theatre was so I followed the arrowed signs that led me upstairs and to my amazement the corridor was packed with people standing around! I approached the registration desk and collected my timetable for the two week course. I couldn’t actually make out anyone’s face because they were standing all the way down the corridor and I didn’t want to look as though I was staring at any one person for too long. While I waited with everyone else by the elevator door, someone started walking towards me. I was pleasantly surprised to meet Luke Dickinson! A few minutes later Marianely Ngangom arrived with her dad as well. I was so glad that I found them two because I didn’t recognise anyone else!

Luke, Marianely and I sat together near the front of the lecture theatre and we were welcomed by Julie, our lecturer for the first few days. The lecture theatre had a dual-projector display set up so she used one screen to show a PDF version of our coursebook (the current page we were working on) and she used the other screen to show the document viewer (the page she was writing on). There were probably 80-100 people in the lecture theatre. For the first hour of the course we started going through the first chapter of the coursebook, Basic Algebra. Most of the content was fairly straightforward, and I understood everything she explained.

At 10am, Julie led all of us across the road to the Engineering buildings. There we had out work session rooms, where tutors were available to help us while we worked through some questions in the book. Paul was the tutor in our tutorial room. We continued to work through our coursebook after a 15 minute interval at 11am. At lunchtime we walked back across the road and bumped into Nancy Jiang and Shirley Kim. They were there to sort out their uni applications and student allowances. Marianely had a little chat with Nancy for a while, and by the time they had finished talking it was time to go back to the lecture theatre for our afternoon session. The afternoon was more or less similar to the morning lecture, but we started to move on to surds and exponents. I caught the bus home with Luke afterwards from Sky City.

Day one down and I’m feeling okay about this course. It isn’t as scary as I first thought it would be, and I’m managing to stay ahead of the class (well, for now anyway). Tomorrow we have a 9 o’clock start so I should probably get some rest.