HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRAEME BRENS AND PHILLIP MOBBERLEY!
I was supposed to have a late start this morning since it was Wednesday, but Mrs Faaea-Semeatu wanted me to come in to school early so I could have a look in Studio 3 for orchestral music that looked appealing. She told me yesterday that she would be in Room 81 before school because she had Professional Development, so I could grab the studio key from her then. When I arrived at school it was nearly 8:30am. I approached Room 81 and I saw the back of Mrs Faaea-Semeatu, but she was also with Ms Heath, Mr Shaw and another teacher. I felt anxious knocking on the door because I knew that I wasn’t even supposed to be there. But I knocked on the door anyway. Not suprisingly, the first reply I get is “go away, we have professional development!” from Ms Heath. I backed away from the door dumbfounded about what I was going to do next… Luckily for me, Mrs Faaea-Semeatu came to my rescue and gave me the key. Scary territory, I don’t want to have to go there again next time!

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!

Posted by aonghas under School
No Comments »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARTYN AND BECKY LI!
Day two of International Languages Week and we celebrate the Chinese culture. I should mention that yesterday’s day of celebration was actually Spanish (hence the pinyata competition). Today we managed to get the music playing outside the music room sliding door during interval. Yesterday I forgot to bring a CD of cultural music but luckily Caleb had some cool Japanese music on his laptop so we managed to get a CD burnt in time for interval. The main attraction of the day of course was at lunch time with the Chinese food being sold in front of B Block. Now I knew that Chinese food was always popular during International Languages Week, but I didn’t think it would be THIS popular. By the time I arrived at the food stall, all the spring rolls were already sold out. Now that’s what I call fast food! The fried rice was on its way out too by the looks of it.

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!

Posted by aonghas under Uncategorized
No Comments »

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNTY NOELINE, GEORGE SONG AND MICHELLE DE VOS!
This morning was a tad scary. I thought it would be the first time I had to go to the office to get a late slip. Although I had Chinese class first, I wasn’t just running half a minute late - it was pushing 5 minutes late! As soon as the car rolled up to the back gate, I darted up the driveway like a… cat? I made it to the stairs in C Block and I tried to walk in discretely so the teacher wouldn’t see me. As luck would have it, I walked into my Chinese class and Ms Hsiao (Chinese teacher) wasn’t even in the classroom. Nadia was standing at the back of the class with the pinyata she had bought in the weekend for lunchtime today. Ms Hsiao walked in just then and saw me at the back of the class. It was at this moment I was going to find out if she was in a happy mood or an angry mood. She looked at me, I stared back… the tension grew. Wow, I think this could turn into a short film! No, it wasn’t that dramatic actually. She basically just asked me to go with Carey and put up the posters of photos from the China trip in the holidays.

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!

Posted by aonghas under School
No Comments »

First of all, I would like to welcome you to the official launch of my website on 31st July 2008 at midnight. For those of you who stayed up to wait for the launch at 11pm, I apologise for the one hour delay. There were a few things I had to fix up before it all went ahead, but luckily they didn’t take too long to adjust.

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!

Posted by aonghas under School
No Comments »

The day had finally come when the head students and Mr Coughlan sat down and looked through the Prefect evaluation forms that were done at the end of term one and the beginning of term two (for those late people!) After English first, Mr Coughlan took the four of us to Servo Cafe up the road. We saw Faber’s mum there and ordered our drinks. We all got hot chocolates apart from Mr Coughlan who got some form of coffee. You know, I still don’t quite understand the different types of coffee. I’m sure people have tried explaining to me the differences but the only thing I can remember is that ‘white’ means with milk and ‘black’ means without milk. And I only found that out on the plane to Christchurch last year when the flight attendant asked me what drink I would like. Oh unless that was tea… is it possible to have a black coffee? Anyway, then there are all the different variations of latte, cappuccino, mochaccino… way too confusing. That’s why whenever I go to Starbucks with anyone else I just get whatever the other person is getting. But anyway, while we were waiting for our drinks to arrive, we sat down at a table and started discussing how we thought this year’s Prefect group was progressing. Obviously I cannot repeat everything that was said at the meeting but rest assured that the general overall feeling wasn’t too bad (to all you Prefects who are getting worried!).

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!

Posted by aonghas under School, Work
No Comments »