Cross

Day 21: a picture of something that makes you happy

So I was kind of down yesterday, not feeling like doing anything but feeling bad about not doing anything, etc. I ended up making this card for my mum, a combination birthday/cny stand-up one with the message in the middle:





2 hours design, 3 hours construction (although I was watching liar game drama at the same time =P). Maybe it was the mechanical-ness of it, or that I was concentrating on something for someone else, but after that I felt more tolerable. Day 21 =)

Looking back

I'M BACK! Happy New Year everyone~ <3

After 2+ weeks in Aussie, I have a lot to blog about, so here goes :)
Me and my family left NZ on the 23rd of Dec, I can't remember what time but it was a respectable afternoon hour. One of our family friends dropped us off at the airport, which was nice of him.

I hadn't been to the Akl airport international departure areas for a while. It's gotten a lot fancier~ there's this big tree-thing now that changes colour and has moons and hammerhead sharks and things swimming across it. I likes.

The flight was about 2 and a half hours long, so me and my brother watched Precious. Idk if it's a good movie, since I missed a lot of the dialogue cos' the plane was too noisy. And then my entertainment system froze after I finished watching, so my brother let me play Pinball with him on his, ngaw :)

Sydney's two hours behind Auckland so by the time we landed it was 10-something at night. Aunty Carol picked us up and took us back to her place, which is where we'd stay for most of our trip. It took almost an hour to get to her house.. I think, that's one of the main differences between living in NZ and living in Australia. See, Mum said that lots of Kiwis move to Aussie and because the suburban/city scenery looks quite a lot like NZ, they feel like they haven't moved at all, so migration isn't very stressful. But Sydney's a lot more spread out, and a lot more crowded. Every car trip would take at least half an hour. Just imagine how much of your life you would waste travelling around :/ no wonder they need a good transport system.

We got up early the next day and road-tripped to Nowra, where we spent three days camping. And when I say camping I mean OMG the campsite was ridiculously luxurious,
lol there were stations where you could plug in and get electricity for your lamp/toothbrush/hairdryer, manymany sinks with running water, a tv, showers, etc, it was crazy. But in a good way ><

There were a lot of Aunty Carol's friends and their families camping there too, so it was a big social gathering. And as it turned out, my parents were the oldest couple there, and also the longest-migrated, as in they've been in NZ for 23 years whereas most of those families only moved from Malaysia less than five years ago. Naturally that also meant that my brother and I were the oldest kids there - the closest in age to us were my cousins Naomi and Kyra, who are 13 and 12 (Aunty Carol does have another daughter Nisha but she's 6.) The rest of them were aged 3-11, so me and my bro ended up being sort of pseudo-babysitters. Some of them are so cute :) and they have interesting names too, like Jayee JayD Jacey (brothers and sister), and Zehn (pronounced like zen). At night when we were sitting in the tent my family would try to match up the families, because we met everybody individually:
"So Abby's husband is..."
"Simon. The one who knows how to make teh tarik."
"And they have two children?"
"Yeah, they're the ones with John and Zehn."
Reminded me of those logic puzzles lol. Who owns the fish?

Amongst the overly adequate facilities at the campsite was a jumping pillow, which is exactly what it says on the tin - it's a giant orange pillow-shaped thing that kids jump on. Like someone tried to build a jumping castle, but only made the base before they got bored and left it as a trampoline. haha my brother got really popular with the littlies cos' of that pillow - since he was heavy enough, he could make them all lose balance and fall over, and pretty soon all the kids were shouting JUMP!JUMP!JUMP!JUMP! haha but actually, apart from the jumping pillow and the playground, there's nothing to do at the campsite, you have to make your own fun. So we went to the beach and had waterfights and played stuck-in-the-mud, and on Christmas Day it didn't feel like Christmas but the mothers made us sing Christmas carols anyway. Which failed a bit because a lot of the kids didn't know the words.
So Kyra (who's a music pro and just a musical person in general) started singing radio songs and then one of the dads backed his car up and used it to play
summer songs from someone's iPod. Which also failed a bit because a lot of the kids didn't know the words. They could all sing the Justin Bieber song though... ew ><

We went back to Sydney the next day. lol I'm gonna stop this post here, getting too long.. so to end this is what my cuzzie Nisha said when I asked her about her favourite animals.

"My number one favourite animal is dolpins, because they are really smart and really nice.
Then after that is golden labrador retriever puppies. I want one but my mum says I'm not responsible enough.
My number three favourite animal is spiders. I like spiders.
And then cockroaches. I don't like killing cockroaches. I tried to pat one but my mum wouldn't let me because she said it has food and worms on it. But I wanted to pat it."

:3

One more fable

Day 3 (and all other picture days): A picture of you and your friends

"He's a paragon schizophonic."
"You mean a paranoid schizophrenic?"
"Yeah, whatever."

Christmas was approaching and the children of Pasta Primary were getting very excited. As is the tradtion, many of the little pastas had bought Christmas cards to give to their friends. One such girl was Tortellini.

Now, Tortellini was not a wealthy girl. She couldn't afford any of the fancy Christmas cards, but neither could she make her own cards - being a dumpling shape, dexterity was not her strong point. So, she went to the convenience store and with her pocket money she bought a budget pack of 9 Supr Special Christmas Cards!! Not all of the cards were particularly cute or pretty, but Tortellini knew that her friends would understand; it was the thought that counted, after all.

The last day of school arrived. Tortellini brought her cards in, all signed and smiley-faced, and one by one she handed them out to her friends. The last girls to receive a card from Tortellini were Penne and Spaghetti; they thanked her excitedly and rushed off to open them.

Spaghetti, a wiggly, willowy pasta, was thrilled with her card. Penne was not.
"Look at this," she said to Spaghetti. "Look at the picture! What does it look like to you?"
"It's a, um, it's a winter tree..." stammered the taller girl.
"It's a dead tree in a cornfield!" Penne snapped. "Who gives their friends a card with a dead tree in a cornfield?"
"She, ah, she probably just -"
"She obviously doesn't like me!" Penne cut over Spaghetti's stutter. "She gave you something nice, didn't she? Reindeers in santa hats?
If she liked me, she would've given me a nice card. She clearly doesn't and she just doesn't have the guts to say it. Well two can play at that game!"
Penne stormed past the stricken Spaghetti, and for the rest of the day refused to catch Tortellini's eye.

Tortellini, bewildered by Penne's cold treatment of her, asked Spaghetti if she knew what was wrong.
"Um," wobbled Spaghetti, "Um, Penne thinks... Penne doesn't really like the picture on the card you gave her."
"Oh, is that all?" smiled Tortellini, relieved. "I thought I'd done something really awful! Well, I did tell everyone earlier that I might have to give them an ugly card. I'll go talk to her again. Thanks, Spaghetti!"

But Penne was nowhere to be found; rumour had it she had driven off with a meatball on a motorbike.
Hmm, thought Tortellini, well I'll see her next year, anyway.

Unfortunately, Penne transferred to Carbonara College the next year, and she and Tortellini never spoke again.

Moral of the story:
Trees are not a symbol of regeneration.

As usual, based on a true story. This happened between three friends of mine when I was in year 2.. things like that were such a serious issue back then. But I guess we still fight over a lot of inconsequential stuff :)

Looking back

Day 12: How you found out about Tumblr (blogspot) and why you made one

Well the answer to that can be deduced from my first entry I think? hahaha
Basically what happened is, I was over at Bernie's house, and we ate some of her cake. It had ballbearings on it and it was good.

One of us got a little high, three guesses who :)

We went up to her room and played around on her laptop a lil' bit, then Bernie decided that since Winnie, Steph, YJ, Laina and herself already had a blog, I needed one too. Also, I had already been considering making one before then, but hadn't got around to it. So, she helped me set it up and everything, we wrote the first entry, and as they say, the history is now recorded for eternity by the delightful power of the internet.

Assorted

Dogbert: A disturbing number of you have requested the return of Loud Howard. Loud Howard is one-dimensional. There is nothing clever nor insightful about him. He is simply loud.
It is a mystery why anyone would want more of this guy.
Loud Howard: THEY LOVE ME!

Day 10: Songs you listen to when you are happy, sad, hyped, mad

hmm I don't think I've ever blogged about my music preferences before! Basically:
there is no difference in what I listen to when I'm happy/sad/hyped/mad, except for the fact that if I'm feeling *extremely* something, then I won't listen to songs that are nostalgic for me.

What I listen to in general.. ehh, the radio (top 40 kinda stuff), azn pop, and music that I happen to hear from movies or when I'm out somewhere, e.g., I recently watched the anime movie The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and I like the theme song.

yeah. this is why I've never talked about music. got nuffin' much t' say abowt et.

I tell you what, I'll tell you something else, heh.
The last Saturday of the holidays, we held a combined garage sale with our family friends, in their garage. Wasn't particularly successful (shakes fist at trademe) but it was pretty fun anyway. Highlight of the morning was definitely when the neighbour's kids, Summer (8) and Brian (5) came to visit. They spent aages trying everything out, walking around really seriously trying to decide what to spend their $1 on.

Brian: ooh look it's a party bag! How much is it? Twenty cents? Oh, man, it's too expensive! I only have a dollar!!!
Dixon: IT'S SO CHEAP I CAN'T AFFORD IT!

Eventually, due to their neighbour-inho status, amusing-ness and because they're kids, they got lots of free stuff. Including the party bag. =D

Day 11: Another picture of you and your friends
-story still in progress-

Zirka Circus

Day 9: Something you're proud of in the past few days

Me: Why is there a circus in the middle of Onerahi?
Iz: That's one question for which there are no answers.
Me: It's like 'what's the meaning of life!!'
Iz: *very seriously*. Exactly. Those two questions are on exactly the same level.

^
excerpt from one of me and Issy's bus conversations on the way home from regionals.
I really need to do a recount of this one! *cracks knuckles*

So last weekend, I went to Whangerei with the rest of the Akl squad (there were 16 of us, 8 boys 8 girls) for the U19 bowls regionals. We stayed there overnight, the girls at the Whangerei girls high school hostel, which was really creepily yellow on the outside, but nice on the inside :) although it turned out that every single window and door was locked and alarmed and trying to open them would get the police and fire crew there, costing the offender $1500... this apparently as a result of the boarders sneaking out too much. 0_o. Anyway, I had the best weekend I've had in a loooong time, hanging out with the rest of the team :) I miss them now!! And I've barely gotten to know them~ We had heaps of weird-as personal jokes over the course of the trip, and the training camps before that, good times :) And on the serious side:

Issy and I played pairs together - there were 8 pairs in total, and we had to play every other team in a round robin over the two days and come out either first or second overall to qualify for nationals in Dunedin. We ended up coming third, lost out to the other two Akl pairs. Congrats to them! But we're gonna take this as a learning curve~ Watch out for us this time next year, cos' we're gonna show everyone what we can do!! *does a retardedly determined face*

Yeah, so to answer the question 'something I'm proud of in the past few days' I'm proud that I went up and gave it my best shot, and got to know some awesome people along the way.

Catch-up ketchup

Day 7: A picture of someone/something that has had the biggest impact on you.

It goes without saying that my past experiences have shaped me into the person I am today. If it weren't for so-and-so influencing me here, if this or that hadn't happened, I would think completely differently. So, from that perspective, I am going to take the easy way out and say that my memory, which includes everyone and everything that ever ended up in there, has had the biggest impact on me. Taking laziness to a new extreme here =D



The picture...
I guess it doesn't look like much? What it is, is what the shelf above my bed looked like up until the Sunday before last. On that day, I put a whole heap of toys away to help make room for my grandparents, who are going to stay with us for several months. I stopped talking to my toys a long time ago, and they're very annoying to have to keep dusting, so I was surprised to find how much sentimental value I still gave them. It was very oddly emotional. Anyway, it's a small thing, but what my bedroom used to look like is now only in my memory...

Day 8: Short term goals for this month and why

For obvious reasons: study hard and ace my exams!