20 July, 2010 in University by Aonghas

Farewell Chris

At noon today I caught the bus into Uni with Rose. She was pleasantly surprised to see me because she thought I started earlier today. We had a pretty nice catch up on the way into town, since I didn’t get a chance to meet up with her in the holidays. When we got to Uni, we also bumped into Rachel Chambers, another friend I hadn’t seen for way too long. It was good she still remembered me .

Chris was my action group leader at Student Life

After a couple of my lectures, I had a quick walk through the quad to check out some of the stalls that were set up for Orientation Week. A guy approached me and asked if I had time to fill in a questionnaire for Student Life, but I told him that I was already involved with Student Life and was in Chris’s action group. I was shocked to learn that it was Chris’s last day at Uni today because he is off to Canada for at least a couple of years! Luckily Chris was also at the stall so I managed to say goodbye and thanks before he left. I’ve only known Chris since the beginning of this year, but in that time I’ve gotten to know him quite well. I’m sure he’ll do well in the future and hopefully we’ll meet up one day too!

23 April, 2010 in University, Youth Group by Aonghas

Steamboat Tenpin

I bet the owner of this locker feels special

I went to my second Student Life action group meeting this morning. Josh couldn’t join us because he had a test/assignment that he needed to work on, but Nesta and Chris were both there. Today we looked at "Stepping from Being Unable to Empowered". We talked about sme frustrations we have as Christians and different struggles we come across. We read a passage from 1 Corinthians 2:9-3:3 about Paul discussing the power or ability needed to understand God’s truth.  

This afternoon I was pleasantly surprised when I bumped into Caragh Taylor after my last lecture. Since I hadn’t caught up with her for ages, I decided I’d walk with her to her next lecture so we could have a chat at the same time. Turnsout her lecture didn’t start for another 40 minutes so we sat outside OGG and shared the latest goss in our lives. Before long Rebecca Cunniffe joined us coincidentally; she had just come back from a trip. We had a pretty nice conversation before Caragh had to leave for her lecture. After we left Caragh, Rebecca and I walked to her locker under the quad. I was amazed when I found out Rebecca’s locker was almost opposite locker #1! I just had to get a photo of it while I was there. Don’t judge me, I live for the little things okay!  

Fiona and Gabrielle cooked up a storm

Tonight’s programme for Youth Group was activity night. The plan was to have a steamboat dinner at church first, before going to Westgate to play two games of ten-pin bowling. When we arrived at church just before 6:30, most of the preparation had already been done; the food was all laid out on the tables with the gas cookers at the ready. The food that was on offer ranged from crabmeat to meatballs to fish balls to noodles and cabbage. Since I didn’t trust myself cooking anything properly, I let the experts (the females) take control of the cooking pot. Before tonight I didn’t really know what a steamboat dinner was, but it was an interesting way to share dinner with the others.  

We cleaned up after dinner before heading to Westgate Tenpin. As well as Angie, we also gave Claire a life to Westgate. Because Claire was riding shotgun, she got to decide what radio station we listened to. If you’ve been in Calum’s car before, you’ll know that the radio is really dodgy and displays random things like "CD" even though there is no CD player. So it was a bit of a mish for Claire to decipher the whackjob of a stereo system, eventually tuning into her desired station, Radio Hauraki. Fortunately we were nearly at Westgate by that time, so we didn’t have to listen to that for long… just kidding! It wasn’t too bad   

Everyone looks on at Westgate Tenpin

We split ourselves into four groups and changed into the trendy bowling shoes. I always thought I was a size 8 at bowling, but as it turned out, the size 9 shoes actually fit better. So I’ll have to make a mental note to remember that for next time. In my group we had Samuel (NOOB), Cleo (CHINY), Claire (URMUM), me (ANGUI), Carmen (ZOMBI) and Grace (PUFLY). Not having played bowling since that time our ex-neighbour Phillip took us out (the time I scored my personal best of 146!), I was feeling a bit rusty, and it showed. I missed all the pins in both my bowls of the first set. Luckily I started to improve, very slowly. I ended up with one strike and two spares in my first game, a total score of 104.  

  

I started the second game off a bit better than the first, though I only managed to knock six pins down on my first bowl. Throughout the middle section of the game I started to dwindle in points scoring, even coming last at one stage I think. The real climax of the game came down to the last set however. Cleo had bowled her last set and ended with a score of 84, the highest in our group so far. After my ninth round, I was sitting on 75 – 9 points under Cleo’s final score. So in order to win, I had to get a strike or at least a spare to finish with 85 points. The pressure was on. I hadn’t bowled any strikes in this current game so far, so the odds were already against me. I calmed myself and went for my last bowl and… STRIKE! I knocked them all down! And I got to have another bowl as well?! I went for my extra bowl and I never thought it would happen, but I got another strike! AND I got to have another bowl after that too for some reason! In the end I finished with a score of 102 for my second game, I really didn’t expect that at all. If only luck was on my side earlier in the game.  

Group photo (of the ones who were left when we finished our game)

Here is the full table of scores for our group:  

Game One

Game Two

I would type up all the scores from the other teams but I think it’s going to take too long!

14 April, 2010 in Social by Aonghas

Student Life Night Out

Turns out I wasn’t actually rostered on to work today. Though I only found that out when I got to work and my manager told me. She said I could stay since I was already there so I worked a three-hour shift until 3pm. Tonight I was invited to have dinner with the guys from my Student Life Action Group at a Korean BBQ restaurant in town. They said it was fine for me to bring my brothers along too since they had nothing else to do. We got into town just before 7pm and parked down a side street off K Road. We were sure to take everything with us and not leave anything valuable in the car since the alley looked pretty dodge.

The sign outside our restaurant

My Action Group leader Chris came out to meet us on the corner of K Road (that’s sounds dodgy in itself…) and he walked us down to the Korean restaurant where everyone else was. I saw Josh and Nesta, the other two guys from our group, as well as a bunch of other guys from another group. After grabbing a plate, I had a look at the different food that was available. I didn’t actually recognise much, if any, of the food there apart from the kim-chi. I opted not to try the kim-chi though since I knew it was really spicy. Instead I had Korean noodles, Korean pancake, seaweed and some other creamed pasta-looking stuff. Since it was a Korean BBQ restaurant, we had to cook our own meat on the gas stoves provided on every table. The raw meat all looked pretty similar and I couldn’t tell what was what, so I just grabbed a few pieces of random raw meat and took it with me to the table. The other guys were already cooking meat on the stove and some of it was ready by the time I sat down so I tried what I think was lamb. I’m glad they cooked it for me though because I don’t think I’d be able to trust myself enough. Because the restaurant was a buffet, I filled myself up until I was full.

After the dinner, Chris suggested that we go to play some pool. As we walked down the road, I realised one of the other guys who was with us was Toni Keeling’s boyfriend, Alistair. I had only met him once before, and it was brief, so I wasn’t sure if it was him or not at first. He told me that he went to Rangitoto College last year and he met Toni last year at MAX, the maths extension programme for Year 13 students at The University of Auckland. This year he’s doing Engineering – good stuff!

Chris taking a shot

The place we went to play pool was on Queen Street, just up the road from the Town Hall. We hired three tables between us and I played my first game against Chris. I played a few more doubles games before the final game where I played together with Chris against Ryan and Nesta. It was a contested battle to the end, and what made it more interesting was the new rule that Ryan introduced halfway through. Basically before we took our shot, we had to make a call and decide whether or not we were going to sink a ball. If we said we were going to sink a ball but didn’t, then we’d get chalk rubbed on our face. Similarly, if we said we were not going to make the shot but ended up sinking a ball, we’d also get chalk to the face. As you can probably guess, by the end of the game we all had blue faces covered with chalk. All in the name of fun though! We ended up leaving just before 11pm and we were relieved when we saw that our car was still where we left it and in one piece!

You can tell I missed a lot of shots

19 March, 2010 in University, Youth Group by Aonghas

Building with LEGO®

Our group's LEGO model

On the topic of churchy stuff, tonight at Youth Group we had activity night. Calum led worship while I played the piano (tried to!). We also brought Angie along with us to Youth Group tonight as well. Gabrielle led the programme and told us that we’d be building a model using Lego. There was a bit of a twist though. Each group had to nominate someone as the ‘President’ and someone as the ‘Vice President’. In another room, Gabrielle had constructed a model earlier using different Lego pieces and each group had to recreate it without looking at the original. Only the President in each group could see the original model and then report to the Vice President what it looked like. The Vice President then went back to the room where the rest of the team was and had to tell them how to create the model, but only being able to answer “yes” or “no”. In our group I was the Vice President while Rebecca was the President. It took our group a bit of an effort to get started, but once we had the base sorted, things started to take off quite quickly. Rebecca did a great job explaining how the different pieces were positioned, using her arms and hands to show me on the wall. In the end we managed to finish the whole model, and amazingly we were only one space off from being exactly perfect. Great team work guys!

10 March, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

Test Number One: Basic Skills

HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEPHANIE GATES! (her actual birthday day was today)

The thought of my first test this year at Uni hadn’t dawned on my mind until last night when I realised how much I still had left to revise. Although the topic of the test was “Basic Skills”, there wasn’t a lot that looked very basic to me when I went through the practice questions online. Feeling unprepared I decided to do some good ol’ last minute cramming. Fortunately enough, some stuff started coming back to me from last year as I was reading through the notes, namely things like Gaussian Elimination and matrix multiplication. By the end of the night I felt like I had a lot of it downpacked, though some of the integration questions still looked a bit dodgy.

This morning the plan was to get up early and study the rest of the topics for the test tonight. Well, that plan kind of fizzled. I did wake up and stagger to the lounge, but then I thought I’d take a “short rest” on the sofa. Which turned into another half an hour. There wasn’t much time for study by the time I had a shower and got my gear ready; I had to walk to the bus stop myself. Rose was on the bus when I hopped on at Te Atatu Road. I told her about my test tonight and got out some practice questions I had printed earlier. Luckily for me, Rose is the whiz kid at maths and she talked me through some of the integration questions I had question-marked. Phew! That was a relief, thanks Rose

It was the first time this year I had caught up with Rose on the bus today, but the reunions didn’t stop there. While I was studying at the Engineering cafe after my lecture, Ethan and Emily (from Robotics) spotted me at the table and came to join me. It’s been ages since I’ve seen Emily and it was great to find out she’s studying Engineering and Commerce. While I’m on the topic, I must also mention that I bumped into Toni (from Robotics) yesterday on the staircase too! She’s ALSO doing Engineering this year, so hopefully I’ll be bumping into them a lot more often this year.

Also today I met up with a guy from Student Life called Chris. Student Life is “a movement of university students who believe that every student at uni in New Zealand should have at least one opportunity to hear and respond to Jesus Christ”. During Orientation Week I indicated on a survey that I’d like to hear more about their group, so today’s meeting was about getting to know what they do around campus and seeing how I can get involved. Chris talked me through one of their magazine/booklets which had articles about God, successful studying, life’s big questions, etc. He told me about the weekly meetings they have and it was quite a good chat. It’s a pity their meetings are on at the same time as my lecture on Friday, but I’m sure there’ll be other ways I can meet other Christians on campus.

I attended my last two lectures for the day but I was thinking about the test the whole time. When my lectures finished at 5pm, I went to join Luke and Jesse who were studying up on level 5 in the Engineering building. It’s always great studying with those two before an Engineering test or exam, because I always learn heaps in such a short amount of time. I mentioned it to them while I was with them and I was saying how we’d be soo much smarter if we crammed hard like that every day!

Luke was in the same room as me for the test, 060-298 in the OGG Building. Not knowing if I was fully prepared or not, I was a bit weary at first going into the exam room. To my surprise however, the test turned out to be easier than I thought. There were a couple of questions there that were a bit iffy, but overall I reckon it wasn’t too bad. Luke’s mum took me home afterwards and I managed to make it home before anyone else. It was such a lonely place with nobody at home for an hour; only the TV and the cat were there to keep me company. I’m glad the first test is done and dusted, but when I think about the cramming that went on before the test tonight, I have to remind myself again that it was just Basic Skills. Please let the rest of the year not get too much harder!