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

15 March, 2010 in Church, Social by Aonghas

Church Camp 2010: Willow Park

This weekend our church had its first family camp at Willow Park Christian Camp out in Howick. The purpose of the camp was to encourage everyone to get to know other people at our church and also to just have some time to relax and have fun. We left home at around 6:45pm hoping to arrive at the camp by half past seven. Earlier in the day our car tyre was punctured by a screw, so we were still driving with a space saver tyre which meant we couldn’t drive faster than 80kmh. Still, we managed to get to the campsite just on 7:30! The location of the camp was really nice, with Bucklands Beach pretty much across the road from where we were staying.

[googleMap name="Willow Park Christian Camp" description="1 Hostel Access Road, Eastern Beach, Auckland" width="630" height="250" mousewheel="false" zoompancontrol="false" typecontrol="false" directions_to="false"]1 Hostel Access Road, Auckland New Zealand[/googleMap]

When we arrived, we were shown to our room upstairs by Sherman. We were allocated to Room 10 with Jireh, Andrew, Rayson and Bobby also together with us. We went back downstairs to meet up with everyone else outside and found them playing on the trampolines across the field. Jireh demonstrated how to do a forward flip on the trampoline while the rest of us looked on. I had a quick jump myself and although I attempted to do a forward flip, I landed on my back! Pretty scary experience at first though; I hadn’t ever tried that before!

The ice breaker game to help us get to know one another

The bell was rung and it was time for the official camp programme to start. We were all ushered into the auditorium where Gabrielle gave an introductory speech and welcomed us all to the camp. Camp programmes were handed around which included all the names of the people and their group numbers, as well as a timetable outlining the schedule of events during the weekend. After a few more introductions, Richard’s wife Michelle led us in a few ice-breaker activities. We all got out of our seats to mingle with people we didn’t know before we were split into two halves with a division down the centre aisle. For this activity we had to sit facing a curtain with someone from the other side facing us (but we couldn’t see them). When it was time, the curtain was dropped and we had to call out the name of the person sitting across from us. I was filming for most the time and it was pretty funny seeing the looks on people’s faces as they tried to scramble their mind for a name.

We were then asked to get into our concert groups (there were eight in total) to start planning for our performance at Saturday night’s concert. Four groups had to perform songs, while the other four had to present skits. I was in group eight along with most of the other people from Oddfellows, and we had to prepare a skit with the theme of “Welcoming new people to church”. It was nearly 10pm before we all headed back to the dining room to have supper. I had a cup of coffee to keep me awake (not knowing how long I was going to be staying up!) and we spent a while talking at a table. I also had a chat with Tim which was pretty interesting. The instruction we got from Gabrielle was that we had to go upstairs to our room at midnight so in the end we didn’t actually get to stay up that late to talk. Then again, Calum and I had to get up early in the morning anyway because I had to take him to Lincoln Heights so he could teach his recorder classes at 8:30am.

Willow Park Christian Camp is quite a nice venue

The first night of sleep was a little bit of a roller-coaster because I kept waking up. Maybe it was the fact that I was sleeping in my regular clothes, or maybe it was because I wasn’t used to the different environment. The first time I woke up I thought it was nearly time to get up but I didn’t feel like I had had enough sleep. It was only 3:50am. The second time I woke up it was nearly 6am. Trying to think about sleeping didn’t really help, which was a little strange because usually I find it really easy to fall asleep. Before long there were sounds of little children bellowing out in the hallway. Once they started up, I knew I wasn’t going to get anymore sleep. Calum and I left the camp just after 7:30am; I left the video camera in the trusty hands of Ray so he could film the morning programme while we were away.

We finally got the tyre replaced after half a day

As it turned out, we made it to West Auckland with 20 minutes to spare before 8:30 so we decided we’d take a quick detour through the McDonald’s drive-thru for breakfast. Little did we know that Calum’s hot chocolate would end up with a dead beetle inside! Yuck. After dropping Calum off at Lincoln Heights, I headed down to the car repair garage in Henderson Valley to see if I could get the tyre replaced. I must have arrived too early though, because everything was still closed when I arrived. I went back after going home for a shower and by that time they were open so I managed to get the tyre changed. Yay, now I didn’t have to worry about driving faster than 80kmh on the motorway!

The camp food was delicious!

Calum finished teaching at 11:30am so when I went to pick him up, we headed straight back to camp so we’d make it back in time for lunch at half past twelve. Our timing was pretty much perfect actually, because lunch was just about ready when we got back. It was my first meal at the camp since being there and I must say it was very nice! We had pork rib patties in bun with pasta, salad and beetroot! After lunch there was a little bit of free time so we headed to the gym to have a bit of a play. Some of the guys were playing with a soccer ball while the others were playing tennis without a net, playing random stuff on the piano and throwing around other balls. Later the rest of the people joined us down at the gym for the prepared group activities. There were four groups doing different activities in a rotation.

The group activities were crazy but fun

The activities consisted of: blowing flour off a plate in order to grab lollies with your mouth, transporting water by cupping it in your hands and balloon relays in partners and also with a stick. Sounds pretty crazy I know, but I think everyone had lots of fun. Most of the time I was filming and it was definitely a lot of fun watching them all looking silly. After the four activities I thought it was over, but I was wrong. We only stopped for a short break to have afternoon tea before we were back into it! The second round of activities was more about skill. Each group was given a number of plastic cups and the goal was to construct the highest tower of cups. There were many tumbles and crashes along the way, but in the end I think the winning tower was stacked 17 cups high!

The end of the group activities segwayed nicely into the soccer game we had during free time. Originally we were hoping to have a soccer game between the different fellowships at church, but it ended up being just mixed teams. I don’t know what the final score was but if we lost, I’m sure it wasn’t by that much We were all tired and exhausted after the soccer game but luckily it was just in time for dinner so we could all refuel.

'Welcoming new people' was the theme of our skit

The highly anticipated evening concert was held on Saturday night with all the eight groups performing their prepared presentations of songs and skits. It was pretty entertaining even though I couldn’t understand any of jokes in Chinese. The basic summary of our group’s skit was Calum, the church pastor, welcoming all sorts of stereotyped people to the church from emos to nerds to homeless people to druggies… I don’t know how I’d cope if our church had so many extreme stereotypes like that though!

We sang Shirley 'Happy Birthday'

After having a relatively early first night, we were all keen to stay up late on the second night. There were still quite a few people awake after supper, bantering away around tables in the dining room. It was also Shirley’s birthday so we gathered around to sing her happy birthday by the sofas. Gabrielle told us that we had to go upstairs to our room when the other fellowship decided to go to sleep. Since we found out earlier that the Canaan fellowship stayed up until 3am on the first night, we thought we’d still have ages to talk. Unfortunately for us, the other fellowship decided to go to sleep just after 12:30am so we were pretty gutted because we knew we couldn’t stay up for much longer. We savoured the remaining minutes we had together before we skittered upstairs back to our rooms.

We had the Sunday service in the auditorium

The final day at camp on the Sunday was more or less a wind down to the weekend. More people arrived at the camp in the morning for the church service that was held in the auditorium. Ada gave the sermon while Sherman was the translator. Before lunch we also had another time for group activities. This time each group had to collect items that were called out by the person running the game. The items on the list (such as belts, necklasses etc) then had to be used to dress up a volunteering member in each group, who then had to parade across the stage in a makeshift fashion show. Hamish was the model for his group, brave man!

The whole camp was over in less than three days but it had felt so much longer. On the drive home from camp I started thinking about Uni again and how long ago it seemed since my last lecture. I don’t feel like going back to Uni so soon; it feels like I should still be on holiday. Overall I think the church camp was definitely a great way to spend a weekend away from home and relax. I wish we could have more weekends away like that!

Smile everyone!

7 March, 2010 in Social by Aonghas

“Party in the USA”

Make a wish!

Tonight Stephanie Gates had her 19th birthday party at her house. As you can probably guess,  the theme for the party was ‘Party in the USA’. After feeling a bit overdressed last year at the Sizers’ Christmas gathering, I didn’t know how extreme to dress up for tonight’s party. In the end I just went in some casual clothes, nothing too out-there. Though I did have blue shoes, a blue hoodie and some blue on my T-shirt so as to keep with the American colours (or should I say colors). I arrived at Steph’s house not too long before 9pm and made my way round the back of the house. From the looks of things, the American atmosphere was definitely buzzing with all these American flags and balloons hung around the place, along with those cool red plastic cups you see in all those teen American movies! I actually later found out that there’s a company that makes those red cups called the Solo Cup Company and the ones we had at the party were the real deal!

Having a good time chatting on the deck

"Yea-eaa-ea-eaah! It's a party in the USA"

There was already a decent-sized group of people at the party when I arrived. I said my hellos and wished Stephanie happy birthday before I blended into the scene. Some people were dressed to the American theme a lot more than others, notably Luke who didn’t actually have a shirt on at first (and I didn’t even get a photo!). Hand-painted T-shirts was a recurring style in many outfits too. From feeling overdressed last time, I started to feel a bit underdressed this time! But it didn’t faze me for long once I started chatting and mingling with some of the peeps.

It turned out to be a really good night of catching up with old friends and finding out what everyone was up to these days. I had a nice long chat with Cresilda as we reminisced about the old days way back as far as primary school! There turned out to be heaps of people at the party that I didn’t know (or at least I didn’t think I knew them from vaguely seeing them in the dark). In fear of missing someone out, I won’t attempt to recall everyone I caught up with, but to everyone I talked to – thanks for the catch-up! We should do it more often.

See more photos from the party in the photo album.

From left: Shaun, Stephanie, me, Hannah, Rosie

P.S. Happy birthday to my other friends, Claire and Rebecca from church! I hope you both had a great day and got a chance to relax and enjoy yourself on your special day

29 November, 2009 in Personal by Aonghas

Birthday Wishes

It always feels good when people remember your birthday and pass on their birthday wishes. Yesterday I was overwhelmed by the number of people who wished me happy birthday and I would like to thank the following people who sent their regards (in approximate chronological order):

• Amanda Teo
• Fiona Ho
• John Luong
• On Tsui
• Carmen Chin
• Grace Wong
• Cleo Chin
• Rose He
• Nick Miller
• Szelin Yap
• Mercury Keomahavong
• Carey Sizer
• Serenne Fang
• Ruby Jang
• Kayemm Chan
• Chris Kim
• Chelsea Robinson
• John Kingi
• Johnny Wu
• Ella Tunnicliffe-Glass
• Anne Yu
• Ari Osborne
• Luke Sizer
• Marianely Ngangom
• Kassandra King
• Szepo Yap
• Yvonne Tse
• Rachel Jury
• Chandre Smith
• Caragh Taylor
• Phoebe Chong
• Rebecca Cunniffe
• Sophie Kaulima
• Alexandra Siu
• Menglu Rao
• Mengyun Rao
• Sarah Bailey
• Qi-Wern Chi Chi Lim
• All my TDI buddies
• Joon Suk Oh
• Brendan Su
• Mohaimen Ibne Mizan
• Jireh Chan
• Jesse Peeters
• Amanda Koo
• Hyun Suk Oh
• Stephanie Tsang
• Vanessa Gao
• Becky Li
• Johann Jungwirth
• Josephine Mak
• Rhea Peters
• Oceane Jossomme
• Albane Jossomme
• George Song
• Julian Tang
• Ying Tan

I hope I haven’t missed anyone! Let me know if I have! Thanks everyone once again.

30 June, 2009 in Holidays, School by Aonghas

Blending in at Rutherford

Today I met up with my old school friends at Rutherford! I arrived at the school just after 11am and signed the visitors’ book at the office. It just so happened to be their mufti day as well, so I didn’t look too out of place as I walked through the school at interval. It was a little unnerving at first because I didn’t know if I would recognise anyone, but I made my way to the TDI form class and was welcomed with a big “AONNNGHHHASSS!” as I walked in the door. Most things in the form class looked similar to last year, and I noticed some photos of me still on the wall which was nice to see. A couple of interesting things caught my attention however. The first was a small whiteboard behind one of the laptops with David’s name on it and read “What to Wash”, followed by a list of body parts for each day of the week. When I asked David about it, he told me that he was in fact washing those body parts each day PLUS more. That was reassuring to know. The other slightly strange object in the room was a large cardboard box with eye holes cut out on the front and the words “T.D.I Guess Who?” I managed to get a photo of me with the Guess Who box on my head – can you even tell it’s me under there? Pretty hard, I know.

A whiteboard to keep David's hygiene in check

Who's the mysterious person under the box mask?

I spent most of the day in the form class talking to whoever had study periods. Mrs Russell was trying to send an email in Gmail with an attachment file, but she kept getting a pop-up proxy box before it would freeze on her. I then found out from Chelsea that sending emails home was now restricted and they aren’t allowed to send emails home with attachments anymore?! That’s just crazy. It made me remember how much I loathed the school network last year. Thank goodness the network at Auckland Uni is nothing like that!

Chelsea, me and Gannin

Gannin, me, Ari and Clinton

Before I left Rutherford, I sat in with TDI during their form period after lunch in Room 50. It brought back a lot of memories from last year just being there, and all the things that I miss started to come back to me. It was so good to see that the love and support for one another in TDI is still very much alive; everyone still keeping themselves busy. Thank you guys for making my day and reminding me of the good ol’ days! I hope you all enjoy your ball this Friday!

24 February, 2009 in University by Aonghas

Familiar Faces All Around

Today was the official opening to Orientation Week at Auckland Uni (I think?) and they started with a Powhiri and Opening Ceremony in the morning. On the morning bus, I was pleasantly surprised to see Craig get on at Te Atatu Road. Because the bus was already quite full, I was sitting in an aisle seat next to a random guy, so Craig sat across the aisle from me next to some random lady. On the way to town, I got a text from Rose asking if I was coming into uni. Apparently she was with Chen and John Kim at the clocktower. I couldn’t go to watch the powhiri anyway, because I had my maths lecture to go to. Craig and I parted our separate ways when we reached uni and I didn’t see him for the rest of the day.

After our morning lecture, we walked past the ASB Bank spinning wheel again. It was being run by different people so I thought I would try my luck at something better than a high-five. I was feeling lucky right from the moment I touched the wheel to spin it, there was definitely a strong vibe of prize-winning running through my veins. I spun… and won… a can of Gourmet Baked Beans!  I was pretty stoked with that actually, they weren’t just baked beans, they were Gourmet baked beans! It even says on the side “They’re not just beans, they’re a status symbol” and it has one of those pulley-ring things on the top so you can easily open the can. In fact, they look so good that I don’t know if I want to eat them. I’ll probably give them to Calum though, since he can’t really eat much else at the moment.

Lunch time popped up really fast today. It may have been because our morning lecture was an extended one and a half hour session, or perhaps I was just really eager to meet people I knew at lunch time. As soon as we got to the quad, the change from yesterday was immediately obvious. There were so many people everywhere. Uniguides in red t-shirts were taking groups of students on tours and the atmosphere was very lively! Rose sent me a text telling me to go to the quad, and when I first saw Rose coming up the stairs I almost didn’t recognise her! She now has a fringe and her hair looked straighter than I remembered. Chen was also with her, going along with her tour. Luke, Marianely and I decided to tag along with Rose’s tour group up the stairs to the Student Health Centre. A lady there gave a quick speech about health services at uni while she distributed paper bags with more information, a free condom and a tube of toothpaste inside. I’m sure I can put that toothpaste to good use (the condom has an expiry date of October 2010, so go figure…). While we waited inside the Kate Edgar building, quite a few people I knew walked past and stopped to say hello. I bumped into Eugene by the stairs; she was waiting for her friends to arrive. Lydia Rayner and Persis Samuel walked past just after. Other people I met today included Caleb Moses, Nancy Jiang, Cresilda Cross and a girl from Avondale College (her name was Lisa) who recognised me from the Avondale Ball.

My luck changed today with these prizes I won from ASB

Our afternoon lecture was a two-hour session today. We were taught about Echelon form and how to organise a linear equation into a matrix. It was quite interesting, despite the fact I started to feel tired by the end of it. After the lecture I walked down to ASB Bank at the Owen G. Glenn Building with Luke because he wanted to sort out internet banking for his account. After he set it up with one of the guys there, he collected his prize from the spinning wheel from this morning. He could either choose between an ASB Bank drink bottle or an elephant money box. He chose the drink bottle. I asked the ASB guy if there was any other way I could win the elephant money box (because it looked cool) and he said I could get it if I set up KiwiSaver with ASB Bank. He gave me some information about KiwiSaver and said that I could take the elephant too. Score! That pretty much made my day. After that, I walked to Sky City to catch the bus home with Calum.