28 November, 2009 in Holidays, Home, Personal by Aonghas

Nineteen Years On…

It’s a little bit scary to think that I was born on this day nineteen years ago. I hadn’t even had a chance to properly adjust to to being 18, and now I’m another year older! My day started pretty early this morning with my violin lesson at 8 o’clock. We waited for Calum to finish teaching his recorder classes before we picked him up and went to Sherman’s hostel in town to see John’s new baby. We met up with Nadine, Winston and Aunty Stephanie when we arrived, before being let into the hostel by John’s wife Pauline.

The new baby was only 10 days old but he already had quite a lot of hair on his head. I’m not sure of the baby’s name though (I’m not even sure if they have named him yet!). Since we arrived slightly late, we couldn’t stay for long since we had made reservations at the Dynasty Yumcha restaurant across the road for 12 o’clock. We told Pauline that we would come back to see the baby afterwards.

I had lunch at Yumcha with my Sunday School class

The Yumcha restaurant had really fast customer service; the waiters and waitresses were coming in from every angle with all sorts of food just moments after we sat down! Knowing me, I just HAD to embarrass myself at some stage today – and sure enough I did. Just as I was picking up my little cup of tea (it was still hot!), I knocked the cup over and made a huge wet patch on the tablecloth. Luckily it didn’t spill over the side so I didn’t get wet. Even more surprisingly, the wetness dried pretty quickly too and I nearly didn’t even notice it after about 10 minutes. The prawns I tried were interesting to eat. I wasn’t sure of the proper technique to eat them, but apparently I was supposed to “suck” the flavour out of it before I peeled the shell off the prawn. In the end I just made a bit of a mess on my plate with all the prawn shells, but I managed to get through all of the fleshy stuff (with greasy hands afterwards of course!).

After lunch we went back to Sherman’s hostel. The baby had just been sleeping so he was pretty calm when we arrived. When Pauline brought the baby out into the dining room, we all took turns holding the baby. It was actually the first time I’ve held a real baby that small I think! He was so soft and a little wriggly when I held him. Everything about him was so tiny, like his hands and feet and nose and ears! I guess that’s what expected from a baby though…

My first time holding a baby!

We dropped Calum off at his friend’s birthday party on the way home. Meanwhile Hamish and I played a bit of basketball in the back yard. I had a short rest in the lounge afterwards before I decided to text Chelsea and ask when the TDI Farewell Evening started tonight. Thinking it started at 7:30pm, I thought I would still have time to get ready, but I got a shock when Chelsea texted me back and told me it started at 6pm (which was in less than 5 minutes!). I rushed out the door, jumped in the car and zoomed off to Rutherford!

When I arrived at Rutherford, I was greeted at the door by Hohepa and Helena. They gave me a a programme and invited me inside. It felt pretty good being back at my old school and seeing all my old TDI buddies from last year. I mingled with a few peeps over dinner and met up with Chen and Mathew as well. When dinner was over, we all took our seats and the official programme started. Michele and Caleb van Beynen, the Head Students for next year, were the MCs for the evening and they did a stellar job! Every student in TDI was acknowledged for their achievements this year, and the Year 13s were all given their speeches by their Year 12 underlings. I was so proud of all the speakers tonight because all their speeches were really touching, as well as humorous in their own way. It was such a nice way to end my birthday, so thank you everyone in TDI for reminding me of the good days at Rutherford. You have all grown so much.

Overall my 19th birthday was very enjoyable. This is my last teenage year so I’m going to try and live it up as much as I can while I still can!

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!

21 February, 2009 in Robotics, School by Aonghas

A Vexing Final

I had to sacrifice a morning to sleep in today because I had to go with Calum to help teach his recorder classes. Since he’s still recovering from his jaw operation, he couldn’t play the recorder so he used me to play the recorder for him while he taught his classes. Today was the first day of classes for the year, so there were some new faces in the beginner classes. I saw a pretty clever feature on the photocopying machine when I popped out for a little while to do some photocopying for Calum. There were three sheets that Calum wanted me to get copies of, so when I loaded the top tray with the three pages, the machine automatically pulled each page in one at a time to scan and copy, but I noticed the side tray was moving back and forth where the copies come out. I didn’t realise till afterwards that the side tray was actually moving across when each set of three pages had finished printing, so that each set of sheets were already separated. I thought that was pretty clever!

We got home from teaching at around 11 o’clock and I had to get ready to go to the Vex Robotics competition at Avondale College. When I arrived at Avondale, our team had already played one of their matches and they lost unfortunately. We managed to rectify that loss with a few more wins subsequently, which helped our ranking climb a bit.

From left: Meiyen Toh, Kayla Craig, Aonghas Anderson, Chelsea Robinson, Crystal Chan, Caleb Van Beynen

I spent quite a bit of time hanging out with the Westlake girls during the day, since I hadn’t seen them for quite a while. Their teacher approached me after seeing me with my camera and asked if I could take some photographs of their team for their school newsletter, so I tried to get some good shots of their robot in action as well as their team members during the day. After all the round robin matches had been played, the top-ranking teams were announced, and each of them chose another team to be in their alliance going into the semi-finals and the final rounds. Although we weren’t one of the top four teams, we were chosen by Onehunga High School to play with them in an alliance. The semi-final matches were played (they were just single matches) and the Rutherford/Onehunga alliance managed to come away with a win to make the finals. Unfortunately for the Westlake Girls’ alliance, they were knocked out in the semi-finals.

The finals match at the weekend's Competition

Heading into the final round, Rutherford and Onehunga were up against Glenfield and another school (which I’ve forgotten). It was best of three matches. The first match was easily won by the Rutherford/Onehunga alliance, however the second match was won by the opposing alliance. I think their loss in the second match was partly due to the fact that Rutherford’s robot had a parts malfunction when the conveyor belt detached. The score was 1-1 and it came down to the last match to decide the winners. After another gruelling match, it was hard to say who had won by a brief inspection. The result was… a DRAW! That meant the Decider match had to be replayed. We were in for a nail-biting final!

The last match wasn’t as close as the second to last match, and in the end the red alliance won the competition (Rutherford/Onehunga were the blue alliance). It was an unfortunate end result but I think we can definitely build on this experience and I’m sure the Rutherford Atomic Kiwis will be back to put up another challenging fight at next week’s competition.

I’ll add more photos from the day when I fix up my gallery. Shouldn’t be too much longer to go now…