So off I went to the music department. I let myself into studio 3 and started to rummage around all the old-looking folders and music piles. At first I couldn’t find much, but then I realised all the band and orchestral music was lined up along the shelf at the back of the room. I started flicking through them all from one side to the other, and in the end the most interesting/playable pieces I could find included Candle in the Wind by Elton John, Theme from Carmen, Thunderbirds Theme and The Theme from A-Team. The newest music was probably The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers medley, but we played that piece in the orchestra back when Dr. James was at Rutherford (2004). I talked to Mrs Faaea-Semeatu later on in the day and I think we are going to go with Thunderbirds. Now the only thing left to do is find people to play in the orchestra!

After lunch I went to the junior assembly with Luke and some of the other Prefects before going down to the sports pavilion to help with the clean up of pots and pans and woks and utensils. When I arrived at the pavilion, it looked like everything was under control in the way of washing, so I helped wipe down some tables. After that I felt a little redundant because I didn’t know what to do. Ji Eun was practising for Bring It On so I asked if she could teach me a few moves from their performance. It wasn’t easy, let me tell ya! The 8 moves that I learned in 15 minutes was merely 10 seconds in their performance which was several minutes in total. If I struggled remembering the order of those moves, I think I would have no chance remembering everything in their routine.

Ms Hsiao asked us to go around school and take down all the advertisements of Chinese food from windows and classroom doors so the remainder of the period was spent doing that. Tomorrow… Japanese Day!

Carey and I went to get the key for the noticeboard so we could put the posters in behind the glass, but we realised the task was going to be more difficult than we initially thought. When we slid the glass door across and tried to position the posters, the height of the notice board was slightly less than two posters on top of each other, so we decided the only way to fit all the posters on the board was to position them horizontally. However, there were quite a few notices from ages ago that were still stuck there on the notice board. Things like UNITEC revision classes, ball gown hire, scholarship applications… and we didn’t know which ones we could take off or which ones we could cover. Mr Moore walked past and told us that we could pretty much take off anything we wanted, so in the end we just gun-stapled the posters over all the old notices. That way they would still be there after International Languages Week. Good thinking!

At lunch time we had the pinyata hitting game set up outside B Block and it drew quite a big crowd. The first pinyata we had was circular and quite small compared to the other one. The rules were one hit per person and they were spun around blindfolded before they got to hit. It didn’t take long for the first pinyata to break. In fact, the person who swung the last hit at the pinyata managed to bring the whole pinyata to the ground. Everyone (mainly junior boys) jumped at the chance for a small confectionery but the pile up looked like they were fighting over something worth a lot more than a lolly!

After that little brawl I was a little worried for the second pinyata that was twice the size. This one was in the shape of a horse and it took a lot more swings before it showed any signs of damage. After so many attempts the donkey/horse was still swinging and twisting on the string. That all changed when Mr Beguely stepped up to the mark. He took one whack at it and it was enough to break a hole in the pinyata. You can guess what happened next - that’s right, everyone dived in and started a massive orgy of scrambling for lollies. So all in all, quite a successful lunchtime in my opinion!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MRS RUSSELL. Today we celebrated Mrs Russell’s birthday as she turned 21 What I was disappointed about was the fact that I missed out on the birthday celebration during tutor period because I had to talk about International Languages Week at assembly. Luckily there was a little bit of cake left when I got back, so I got to have a taste. It was a chocolate mudcake (I think they’re called?) and it did taste quite good!

I also want to wish Mars Keomahavong a happy birthday for today as he turns… 18?! Wow that’s so old (sorry Mars!) I can’t believe it. For those of you who don’t know Mars, he is one of the earliest memories of a friend I had at Henderson Primary School. Whenever I talk about him to other people, everyone always says “wow, his name is Mars?!” and yes, it’s true, like the planet. In fact, he even has a sister called Mercury and a brother Comet! He was quite the man at soccer/football back in the day, and when I caught up with him the other month, he’s still going strong with his footy apparently, going overseas to play in tournaments etc. So I’m sure he’s going to make the big time soon and when he does become the next David Beckham, I can say “Hey, I know that guy!” Good on ya mate!

Luke brought up a few ideas that he came up with for the Prefects too. His vision is for the Prefects to be profiled more around the school, especially to the Juniors. He wants the Prefects to spend some of the free option subject periods in some of the junior classes and perhaps help them with other areas of life as well. The end of the year is not far around the corner now and I completely agree with the fact that we need to leave a legacy as the Prefect Group for 2008 for the future Prefects to follow.

At lunch time Carey and I met with Ms Heath about the promotional video and the corresponding Media Studies credits that we could consider. It looked like quite an interesting project to do, and to get credits for it would just be a bonus!

Tonight we had another training session at work. I don’t really know if those training sessions do anything for me to be honest, but I guess it reinforces what we are supposed to do while we’re working. I always remember watching the training DVD for Cotton On for the first time. It was almost cringe material. They had these role-playing actors pretending to work and be customers and the guy acting as the sales assistant walks up to the ‘customer’ and says

“Hi there, is there anything I can help you with? We actually have a 2-for deal on the tops in the middle of the store, which colours do you like?”

Like seriously, he was pretty hard out. I don’t know about you, but if I was that customer I would be intimidated more than anything! Although I can think of a few people who are exactly like that when they work… Ah well, late start tomorrow!

Today I didn’t have to start work until 2 o’clock (I usually start at 1:30pm) so I had more time to eat lunch and not have to worry about the time. At lunch we had pork buns and sticky rice; the buns were separated into separate bags - because usually they have a vegetable bun and a pork bun in the same bag. I sat down at a table with Hamish and while we were eating, Sherman came over to sit with us. I hadn’t talked to Sherman for a long time and he was interested to know how I had been over the last little while. I told him about school and how everything this year has been really busy. I talked about going to Atlanta for the robotics competitition and he seemed quite interested (well, I think he was…). He then told me about his work at the hostel and his intentions to do further study in Christianity. Later my mum came over to our table and we continued our conversation for a little bit longer until we had to go.

When I arrived at work I was greeted by Rosaria, one of the new girls. I remembered that Denis had transferred to work at Cotton On Newmarket, because he usually worked with me on Sundays. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him properly. Oh well, I’m sure we will meet again the next time I feel an urge to buy some clothes from Cotton On Newmarket. Make sure you come to visit me sometime too Denis! Rosaria’s shift finished at 2 o’clock so I was going to be working the rest of my shift by myself. The four hour countdown began.

One of the things I like best when I’m working is when friends and whanau come to visit me. I like to keep a list of the people who come to visit (and hopefully I’ll add the grand visitors list to my website soon). Before I actually started my shift I met Zhan Curtis who was buying something at the counter. I had to stop and think whether or not Zhan still went to our school; I didn’t want to ask him and embarrass myself if he said yes. I think he does still go to our school though… yeah, let’s go with that. Nobody else who I recognised came in to see me for a long time after that, so I spent most of the time trying to rack up the store and make it look tidy. There were a few boxes of stock in the changing rooms which I didn’t know if I was supposed to do or not, but upon closer inspection I noticed that most of it was sale stock and we don’t have the sale stock on the floor at the moment. Anyway, halfway through my shift Kriza came into the store. Kriza was one of the supervisors who was working at Cotton On when I first started in December 2006. It was really good to see her again after such a long time. We had a short conversation and she told me that she was doing her honours year of her Food Science degree at Auckland Uni. After Kriza left, the visitor numbers started to grow! Great! First it was Serenne who came in, then I met a Korean girl called Jenny (who used to learn violin from Mrs Green with us) before Ari and Elina came in to visit. Apparently it is Kento’s (their younger brother) birthday tomorrow so they came to the mall to look for a birthday present for him. Gees Ari, took you long enough to come visit…

I didn’t do much for the rest of the afternoon when we finally got home, but I knew I had to pick Serenne up from her house at around 5:15pm so I made sure I allowed time to have a shower before I left. The storm outside was bustling and hurling around and I imagined arriving at the ball and seeing all the girls in their soaking dresses with smudged make-up running down their faces… it didn’t seem like a pretty sight.

When I arrived at Serenne’s house, she gave me the tie to wear that matched her dress material and colour. It took me three, maybe four attempts at tying the tie before it finally looked like it was the right length. Even then the skinny end of the tie was longer than the fat end at the front, so I just decided that I would tuck the thinner end into my shirt. We had a couple of photos taken before we left, and luckily for us, the rain wasn’t falling too hard at the time.

I forgot to bring the address of Serenne’s friend’s house where they were having the pre-ball and it didn’t help that the road map was left in our other car, so I was left to go with my gut instinct as well as listen to Serenne point me in the general direction. We ended up circling a few roads a couple of times, but finally managed to locate the house (which was lucky, because I was getting worried that we would be driving around in circles for the rest of the night)!.

When I walked into the house, I was introduced to the friend’s mother, and a few other parents were also there. I was ushered into the dining room where everyone else was, and Serenne introduced me to her school friends, some I had heard about before. It was a little unnerving being around some of her friends at first, because I didn’t know what Serenne had told her friends about me, and I didn’t know what sort of first impressions I was giving. I just tried to stay friendly and greet new people as I passed by. The photo shoot just before we all left for the ball made me feel like a celebrity! All the parents had their digital cameras out and there were flashes flashing all over the show for a good minute or two. I never realised how hard it was to keep a big smile on my face constantly for so long!

At first I thought I was going to be following someone else to the ball, because I had no idea where Eden Park was, but we weren’t sure who to follow and before long we were lost already. Serenne rang one of her friends who was still to come past us apparently, so her friend told us to stop on the side of the road and wait for them to honk their horn as they drove past. I stopped on the corner of the road (where it was perhaps not the safest place to stop) and sure enough a loud toooooot blazed past not long after (oh yeah, and I experienced the Doppler effect right there too).

Parking was not a problem at all because there were carparks within the premises that we could use. After walking up five flights of stairs, we walked across the red carpet and shook the hands of the head students and the College Principal. Serenne was on the look out for her friends to sit with, bumping into other people she knew on the way. We found her friends occupying a table on the other side of the dance floor so we joined them. After we had settled down in our places, someone suggested that we have our photos taken while it wasn’t too busy so we headed to the end of the ball room where the professional photographers were. First we had a group photo and then we had individual partner photos. Serenne and I were the last partners in the group to get our photo taken. I hope they looked all right…

The dance floor was being entertained by the live band they had up on the stage. I must say that the band was very professional and the standard of music they played was very good. I didn’t want to get too wasted before dinner though, so I made sure I didn’t pull out many of my signature dance moves too soon! There was a large variety of pastas, salads and meats to choose from at dinner time. Everything looked so appetising, but I didn’t want to over-eat and get too full. Dessert was served at our table after dinner. For dessert we had these cube-shaped ice cream-filled savoury things that tasted pretty good.

For the rest of the evening we spent most of the time dancing to the music either performed by the band or played by the DJ. It was very entertaining and a lot of fun, but as the saying goes “time flies when you’re having fun”, it sure did. I met up with a few old friends from Rangeview throughout the evening and I even got to have a photo taken with the Deputy Head Boy of Avondale which was very cool.

I just remembered that Carey was at the St Cuthbert’s ball tonight as well. I wonder how that went for him.

Oh and when I got home I heard about the All Blacks game. Disappointing 34-19 loss to the Wallabies in Sydney…

The assembly started with one of the primary students standing at the front as she introduced herself, before telling everyone to stand as we sang the National Anthem. When it was our turn to do the presentation, Rose wheeled the large table/box of library books out to the front and spoke to the children. I think everyone was delighted with the donation and we were thanked for our generosity afterwards. I thought that would be the end of the filming for me, but as I was putting the video camera away, one of the teachers told everyone to stand up and dance the Macarena, and that included the Rutherford College students! I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass by without filming it, so I whipped out the camera and focussed on Rose and Caragh. It was pretty funny watching all the students dance, and the range of enthusiasm amongst the little kids. What also amazed me as I sat at the back of the hall was the way in which the primary students behaved. Everyone was very attentive and sat up straight away when the teachers at the front told them to. That’s the sort of energy you see less of when you enter high school, and I think it’s a shame that some high school students cannot seem to find the brighter side of life.

Today at English was our last period to research for our seminars. I thought I might use the period to go online and research a little bit more about my topic of Divine Justice. By the end of the period, I still felt like I had more research to do because I had too many questions that I hadn’t answered. I guess I’ll have to look into it a bit more this weekend. Just another thing to add to the list…

At lunch time I had to track down the TDI projector and borrow one of the laptops in our form class to take to Te Atatu Intermediate School for the promotional presentation this afternoon. Mr Moore took me and Bryn down to the intermediate school (Bryn was going to be speaking to the school because he was a past student) in his car early so that we could set up the projector and laptop.

I managed to set up the laptop and projector on a nearby table at the front of the hall, but there was no sound cable that we could use to plug into the PA system. Luckily one of the intermediate students walked past and knew the teacher in charge of setting up microphones and audio set up for the school hall, Mr Felix. I thought we might just hold a microphone up to the speakers of the laptop while we played the promotional DVD, but in the end Mr Felix managed to find a cable long enough to stretch all the way from the stage down to the floor where the laptop was.

The rest of the performing students from Rutherford College arrived shortly after, as well as the intermediate students filing in after lunch. After the promotional video was played, Mr Moore addressed the school and then introduced Bryn to the stage, who spoke about his experience at Te Atatu Intermediate and Rutherford College. I liked the fact that he said “forget Kelston and St. Doms, they’re rubbish!”. The choir then sang the school song “The Rutherford Way” before an extract of our production “For Today” was performed. Overall, I felt our presentation was a success and hopefully Rutherford College gets the number of enrollments they need for next year.

Before youth group tonight, I remembered about the radio show and thought I might call in before it finished. When I rang up, David answered the phone and I told him that my name was “Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii”. I passed the phone to Calum after he put me on hold and Calum managed to get on air for a few minutes before the end. I think the topic on tonight’s show was sport, but I can’t be entirely sure because we only tuned in 5 minutes before the end of the show.

Tonight at youth group Calum and I led song worship. The first song we sang was “From the Inside Out” and our second song was “Jesus You’re My Superhero” where we got everyone to stand up and join in with the actions we had made up. It was pretty funny watching some of them dance (and for those of you who weren’t dancing, shame on you! haha) We had an activities evening tonight so we spent most of the time working on our poster boards for the foyer in our church. Our group was working on our “High School Musical” themed board, and it was starting to come together. I brought the cardboard that we were going to use as the stage for our board, but it was a little cheap-looking after I coloured it in with brown colouring pencil.

We played a game for the second half of the evening and we stayed in the same groups we were in for the boards. The game was split into physical and mental challenges. The first challenge was a physical challenge so I offered to represent our team, while Jireh was competing against me from the other team. The challenge was to see who could do the most press ups in 15 seconds. Uh oh.. I didn’t want to embarrass myself now. We got into position and waited for the countdown. As soon as On said “go”, both Jireh and I started doing press ups frantically. Initially I felt like I was doing okay, but 15 seconds was taking ages! In the end I managed 30 press ups while Jireh did 27, so our team got the point for that challenge. Phew, that was a good workout!

On the way to my first class (Chemistry), Mrs Taylor called me into her office. She had found a competition that we could enter, which was to design a robot/machine that could throw a shot put further than Valerie Vili. It was a good opportunity for our robotics team to consider, seeing as it is right up our alley. I think the winning design would be built as well as monetary awards for the winning schools.

During Chemistry class today I asked Mr Wade if he was going to the Avondale Ball, because Serenne had asked me to ask him. He told me that he probably wasn’t going to go because of his wife’s pregnancy. Mrs Russell gave us an update about John Kingi during our study period today. Apparently he is doing very well at the moment, starting a new venture into fashion design and keeping fit at the gym. If you’re reading this John, then I just want to say good on you! I’m looking forward to catching up with him when he comes in to visit us on Monday. I had some Chinese homework to finish during our study period today, but I couldn’t seem to find my Chinese exercise book. Luckily Rose was with me, so she helped me with some of the questions.

In Chinese class today we had a new student. She was a Korean girl who had just come to our school from Marist College. She told us that she has been learning Chinese for the past two years there and Ms Hsiao happened to know the Chinese teacher there too. Today at Chinese we did a few exercises from the textbook “HANYU” which means “Chinese language” in English. The period seemed to go a bit quicker than I thought, and I was excited when the bell rang (not because I don’t like Chinese!) because I thought it was the end of the day since we finished early today. Unfortunately for me, it was only the end of period four; we still had English to go! At English today, I decided that I probably shouldn’t waste another period dithering around so I got on to one of the computers at the back of the classroom to do a bit of research for my seminar.

My parents weren’t going to be at school until 2 o’clock when their first teacher interview was scheduled for, so I spent the time beforehand in our form class. Faber and Craig were watching some video on the laptop while Chelsea and I were talking on the sofa. Chelsea gave me my Chinese exercise book, which I had been looking for for the past whole day! When it was just past 2pm, I realised I should probably head down to the office pretty fast because my parents didn’t even know who they were seeing! Our first interview was with Ms Hsiao (Chinese). She told my parents that I was pretty busy with other projects at school but I was still managing to keep up with the class (phew, not too bad!). Next we had Ms Edwards (English). She told my parents that I was doing okay at the moment, although she didn’t know how well I could do in Unfamilar Texts. She suggested that if I didn’t feel confident about it then maybe I could just drop the Achievement Standard and not do it in the externals, which would give me more time to focus on my essays. It didn’t sound like such a bad idea actually, considering I passed Level 3 NCEA last year, so I could just focus on the quality of my credits rather than the quantity. Mrs Russell was after that, and she didn’t seem to have too many problems with me. As usual with my parents though, they put everything I achieve down to luck, and always claim that I’m too lazy and should study more. In some ways they are right I guess, but other times I feel like they are too hard to please. Our last interview was with Mr Wade (Chemistry). It was the first time my parents had met Mr Wade, and they seem to think that he is a nice guy.

I can’t seem to get that Popular song our of my head; the one that I listened to/watched yesterday. It’s driving me up the wall. It used to be a cool, but I think it’s making me crazy now. If I hear it being played one more time I think I’m going to scream. I went to sleep at an extremely early hour tonight - 8pm! That’s right you heard me. I don’t know why, but I felt really tired tonight. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep nights prior to tonight and it was all building up. I woke up at midnight though to type my blog, but I had a weird dream before I woke up. I had a dream that I had this crush on a cat (a cat?!) but it was a talking cat and I thought of it as a human, even though I knew it was a cat. Anyway, one day I spilt different coloured paints on the cat because I thought it was a pretty funny practical joke, but then when I saw the cat licking itself trying to get the paint off, I started to panic because it might make itself sick. Weird? I think so too.

It was strange going back to our form class and having the first period off because I wasn’t used to coming into school that early on a Wednesday. It felt like there was nothing to do, since I usually have a class before my study periods so I’m already switched on into that school mood.

The rest of the day that followed was pretty standard really. We had a quick cultural committee meeting in the music room at interval - that was pretty much just to get everyone up to date with what the cultural committee were doing this term and also to organise the Sing Star competition that we are running in week four of this term. At lunch time we had choir practice as well, because the choir is performing at Te Atatu Intermediate School on Friday this week to promote our school. Apparently Mrs Faaea-Semeatu had asked Ari to run the choir rehearsal because she wasn’t going to be here at lunch time. When most of the choir (actually not that many people turned up, I would say maybe half the choir was there…) had arrived to the music room and were lingering around, Ari called for a attention and gave us our starting notes on the piano. She gave the tenors (me) an F sharp as our starting note, but it sounded a tad odd. Maybe it’s because I haven’t sung The Rutherford Way for a long time, but I wasn’t really feeling it with an F sharp. It was like yeeeah.. but nah. The other people in the tenor section (who were there) were Julian and Alex Strange (I think he was supposed to be singing tenor… unless there was a bass part, though I’ve never heard it before). The balance between the girls and the boys wasn’t very ideal; the ratio was like five to one (5:1). “Five to one man, FIVE to ONE!” -Paul Fisher Anyway, before we got much further, Mrs Faaea-Semeatu (it feels weird typing her whole name out all the time…) popped in and we quickly ran once through The Rutherford Way. I accidently sang “The Rutherford Day” in one of the choruses and had a little self-chuckle.

The rest of the day seemed to fly past because our Year 13 assembly ran slightly overtime, which meant the English period was shortened even more than the already shortened periods we have on Wednesdays. Like yesterday, I wasn’t going to be picked up from school until later (today it was 4:30pm) so I just stayed in our form class while I waited. Today after school Ms Russell was helping John Kim fill out an application for a scholarship of some sort (I think) and was discussing some of John’s personality attributes. We all agreed that John was an honest, determined and considerate individual who tried his best all the time (good on you John!). I sat down on the sofa with Faber and we started to talk about the film camp in Christchurch that we went to last year. That’s when I took out my phone and started playing him the song Popular from the musical Wicked. It was a song that a couple of girls performed in the studio at film camp. That’s when Faber jumped up and told me that he had brought in his DVD of film camp to school. Excited by this, we both sat around a laptop and watched the Popular performance on the DVD. Michele Lee was also bystanding while we watched, although I don’t know if the performance was very appealing to her. Or perhaps it was just because the girl on the video was jumping around in a pink babydoll type dress. Other videos we watched from the DVD afterward included Feeding the Ducks which I must say was quite random. It was basically random shots of ducks in the river at St Andrew’s College (the school where the camp was held) with the shark music from Jaws as background music. I don’t know if they were trying to buld up some sort of suspense with that music but the ducks were too innocent-looking to cause any harm. We also started watching The LipSync Competition but gave up on it when it started to drag on for too long.

Time was running along and before long it was time for me to leave. Dad picked me up at the back gate at 4:30pm and I went home to get changed because I had an appointment with Nick at the gym today. I drove myself to Club Physical and saw Nick there, who had just started. I was a bit anxious about coming to the gym today because I hadn’t been for a good two weeks at least (Nick thinks it was more than that… I’m sure it wasn’t that long ago!). Nick decided that I would just do his workout today (well, with slightly lighter weights) so I could get back into the routine again. I must say that the weeks of not going to the gym took a bit of a toll on my body. The weights felt heavier than they used to be, but fortunately I managed to keep up with Nick’s intense regime. Half way through our workout I met Helena by the drinking fountain. Apparently she had just been running on the treadmill for half an hour (wow, I don’t even think I could run for that long!). Nick introduced me to all these weird exercises today, which he assured me were more advanced than the exercises I was doing before. The last exercise I did was this one where I lay on a backwards inclined bench with a pole held behind my head, and I had to do reps of crunches-type things while looking at the ceiling before swinging the pole from side to side ten times. Yeah I know it sounds weird and, believe me, it definitely looked weird too! After our workout at the gym I took Nick home in the car because it started to rain. Before I dropped him off we had a chat in the car just to catch up in general, since we haven’t really talked for a long time. It was a good chat though. Very interesting.

I didn’t really do much else tonight to be honest. I think I had better get some sleep though, because I have a walk with Mr Moore before school tomorrow!