Time (The Revelator)

It's 74 days now or something ridiculous like that. How about it.

I got my learner's today, it was a half day due to the PPTA meeting. Dad picked me up and we did the grocery shopping, got Starbucks and L-plates.

Starting to teach year ten health classes next week. Mock exams are the week after next week. The weeks seem to be going unusually quickly, unfortunately weekends are too. On a roll with painting, after Helen and I spontaneously began dripping paint into the art room sink and pressing paper onto it, creating the best effects. Inspired.

Still got to get my university portfolio together by the 1st of October. Hoping to go down to Hawke's Bay to visit my grandparents the week after next when I have study leave.

Haven't shaken off my cold yet. Sore head whenever I cough, which is pretty miserable. But I'm okay. Comment and tell me one thing you're dreading, and one thing you're looking forward to.

Um Wow

It just hit me properly that it's the last day of term two tomorrow. We've just about finished our film, just got to record and put in the voiceover and we're done. We have done so amazingly well considering the huuuge tragedy that happened last week. Good job Alex O'Connor and Jennecca Evalu! And I am fully confident that we will get the results we deserve.

Then thankfully I'm also finishing off two pesky written internals in French and English. English is the creative writing one but it's so bloody hemmed-in I can't stand it. Typical of NCEA to turn something creative into something so formulaic. And the French is also a bit of a farce. I'll be glad to get them over with.

I decided tonight to wear my antique fur stole to the ball as well, following the Narnia theme. It's very beautiful and precious, since it was passed down to me by my auntie Trish who recently passed away. I'm also wearing the locket she gave me, that belonged to my grandmother, and holds a picture of my dad's dad when he was 17 years old.

So we're nearly there. Even when I do get to the holidays however, I have a whole pile of art to do to prepare for working on folio boards and resubmitting. I think I blather on about my assessments a lot, and repeat myself endlessly, but I think when I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed I draw and write a lot of to-do lists and planners and summarise tasks to keep track of them and pin them down in the swirling mess that is my mind.

Also, watched I'd Do Anything tonight, Tara was FINALLY eliminated. Silly tart couldn't hold a note, what was she doing there? I like Niahm most, but since when is a name spelled like that pronounced like "Neev"?

Three Weeks

...until the end of term, and the ball, and holidays. We have to finish our documentary before that, though. So I'm not wishing the time away, exactly... I'd also love to get my art internals all finished and resubmitted so they don't carry over into term three, when we'll be starting 3.3 -- can't believe I'll be making my last NCEA art submission ever in a matter of months.

Today I went to DressSmart and had a very successful shopping trip with Roz & Helen. I bought gold, not-too-high heels from Wild Pair for $30, and a little gold sequined purse to match for $11. I also found this gorgeous long wool coat in Creem (the shop where I bought my ball dress last year, it has some lovely stuff) and I called Dad and said "I know this isn't what I came here for, but, I do need a winter coat..." and because he is so kind he let me use his money and buy it. I know. I've been spoilt.

A friend of the family, Marcelle, (whose husband was the one who played matchmaker between my parents!) has very very kindly offered to make my ball dress. So yesterday we went to Centrepoint Fabrics in Newmarket and bought a pattern and material. I ended up buying something totally different to what I initially thought I wanted -- but I am super pleased with my choices and can't wait to see the dress start to take shape. Tickets for the ball go on sale this week on Monday and Tuesday -- year thirteens (rightly) take priority and so that's another expensive day, but of course, well worth it.

I've been watching a lot of the series Dollhouse on the recommendation of a friend, and while I'm enjoying it, I can see why it was rated so badly and was eventually cancelled. I mean, let's be honest, Eliza Dushku cannot act. The role really requires extreme versatility, after all, she has to take on different personalities sometimes multiple times in a single episode. But as an actress, Dushku doesn't seem to be able to dig any deeper, and often doesn't convincingly "transform". A few of the other performances are pretty flimsy, too. However it's forgivable, because the idea is pretty fascinating. And I'm enjoying having a series to follow. I suppose I could always go back and watch season one of House. Aww! So much has changed...

My to-do list is so massive. Thankfully I've checked off some of the ball-related things this weekend, and yesterday in town we had a really good filming session, but there's still heaps to do. I'm praying for a burst of energy and motivation this week.

All right well I have to go and clean the bathroom now. Then I'll have dinner (I'm sure it will be delicious -- Nana is chopping up vegetables to be roasted) and attempt to do something productive, and I suppose after that I'll go to bed. And another week will come.

Back Online

So I took a week off the Internet, for experimental purposes. I had hoped it would make me more productive -- in fact I spent ages re-organising iTunes: ascribing album art to songs and artists that didn't have any, deleting repeat songs and sorting out playlists. I organised all my saved files, found some writing scraps and reminded myself that not all of my old poetry was bad. (To qualify as "old", a piece of writing needs only to have been written two weeks ago.) I didn't, however, make much headway into my work.

Exactly two weeks from today, I have exams. These are just "practice" exams, or mid-years, but unfortunately I also have four massive art assignments (worth 20 credits in total) due at the same time. Today I am feeling not-so-bad about that, as I did three backgrounds for paintings today. But don't let that fool you... there's a lot more to do.

Not to mention our documentary, which we are now filming. Apparently we have to finish filming before exams (two weeks!) which is very likely not going to happen... After school we will be going into the city centre to interview passers-by on social networking and how our lives are becoming increasingly "virtual". Hopefully we get a lot of useful stuff, and the weather/technology doesn't crap out on us.

Alright, so if I was able to exercise the will to avoid the Internet for seven days, surely I can will myself to write those practice essays, go on a painting frenzy, make some awesome design work, and I don't know, be generally amazing. Surely.

Patron Saint Of Motivation, Please Help Me

All the things I have to do by tomorrow are very urgent.

It's About Time, Maybe

One of the most nerve-wracking things one can do is bid on an online auction for something they really want when the auction has about twenty minutes to go. And someone is bound to be waiting, ready to pounce at the very last second. How cruel. The refresh button keeps calling.

So in... seventeen minutes, I may or may not have a new black blazer for $15. The same kind of black blazer that is currently going for around $70-80 in the clothing chain stores. I think my frugality is to be admired.

However, cool thing, we sold our couch and DVD player today, and because I arranged the deal I got 25% - this is partly because my parents pity me and my poorness.

ARGH TWELVE MINUTES.

Anyway, the actual reason I decided to write this blog was to go "omg" because this is the second to last week of term one, and after all the point of this blog is to document where school is at, not my wardrobe or my funds. Sooo, yeah it's okay. I have a French internal next week, on Wednesday and Thursday (evil, I know, in the last week, but it's better than the first week back). And also four art assignments on the go, as I'm taking painting AND design, so I get a double dose of research/drawing assignments. But those are actually really interesting, I love love love contemporary urban art. Believe it or not, there's so much more to it than graffiti. Let me point you to the wonderful Dan Baldwin, whose work I have (attempted) to emulate as part of the process of "breaking down and understanding the works of an artist model" - I'll post my experiment paintings on my art Tumblr later.

SEVEN SEVEN SEVEN MINUTES.

NOW FIVE.

Okay, I'm going to keep this blog post open until I know whether I've won or not.

*goes off and does other things*

*i.e. clicking refresh fanatically*

Oh my gosh. Two minutes. C'est insupportable.

SOME TOSSER JUST PLACED A BID. NOW THE AUCTION EXTENDS.

48 seconds can't beear itttttt

I WON I WON I WON I WON I WON.

Thank you for living through this with me.

A Day In The Life

Year 13 camp was the best camp I've ever been on in my liiiife, and that's a lot of camps, including various Easter camps, Soul Survivor, Parachute (okay maybe not Parachute '08, that was actually freakin' amazing) and of course heaps of school camps over the years. At around 9am on Monday the 1st of March, 180 of us went to Half Moon Bay on the bus. When we arrived we discovered that our ferry was having engine problems, and that we would have to wait two hours for the Waiheke ferry to arrive. So we all hung around the rich peoples' lawns and looked out over the harbour, and put on sunscreen and ate. Finally we were able to board the ferry and about half an hour later we had arrived on Motutapu Island, which is really not that far away, but the fact that it's an island somehow lends it a sense of isolation and awesomeness.

So we loaded our luggage onto a truck, and then began a six kilometre walk on a gravel track that went up and down through the dry sunny hills. (We thought we had it rough, but on our returning walk before we went home, we passed Rangitoto College, with ALL of their luggage on their backs. Thank you, Roskill, for having mercy on us.)

When we finally got to the camp, an ex-military camp nestled down by one of the beaches, the head instructor or overseer (who calls himself Troll, which is a thoroughly appropriate name) proceeded to give us a sort of warning/introduction lecture regarding matters such as sun protection. Away from the smog of the city, the hole in the ozone is a bigger problem, and temperatures go into the 30s. Troll claimed to have spent time dealing to girls with blisters on their shoulders the size of his fist, thus it is a camp rule that no one is permitted to go around during daytime with exposed shoulders. The punishment for that offence as well as the usual alcohol/drugs ban was an even longer 10.5km walk, with luggage, in the hot sun, alone, to the ferry. Funnily enough, people were really well-behaved at this camp.

So then we just launched straight into activities - our first one was the Survivor Challenge, which was a kind of assault course with two forts on either side, and you challenge another team. One of the obstacles is a cargo net that you have to crawl under, and I sacrificed comfort for technique, resulting in bleeding knees within the first half hour of our activity. I must admit I actually felt pretty ruthless. =p

And then we did Waka Ama, which is a kind of long canoe that fits eight people, and you all paddle, and it has an arm out to the left which stabilises it. We had to race the other team and we won, because Mr. Cornes, who was the teacher on our boat, has actually represented New Zealand in that very sport. Strange what you learn.

I'll just go through and list the other activities and give a short description.

Art - screenprinting t-shirts with designs to remind us of our camp.

Snorkelling - self-explanatory. We went down to a part of the beach called Stingray Alley but I saw no stingrays. Snorkelling out at Goat Island is far better... all we saw was a little group of snapper.

Kayaking - awesome fun. Paddled out to a little rocky island then played some games in the water. This was when the moment with Swanwick happened - if you've heard about the cicada incident, this is where it was at.

Sailing - omg. So fun and hilarious yet so frustrating. I would really really like to try it again with better instructions. MR. HORNE.

High ropes - let's not talk about this one. I climbed to the top of the centipede which is a sort of hanging pole with staples and footholds in it, and then I also climbed to the top of the wooden pole that connects up to the high beam. But there was no way I was walking over the top.

SEAL challenge - as in Navy Seals. Lol. A kayak was placed on the sand, we had to dig a hole underneath it to fit the entire group underneath the kayak and out the other side, without talking, without tools, and without touching the kayak. Every time someone slipped up, we had to run down to the water and do whatever the sadistic instructor requested - for example, lying down in the shallows (which were rocky, and covered in pointy razor-sharp oyster shells) and rolling three times to the left, three to the right... sit-ups, singing the national anthem... whole group going underwater... Then once we'd all climbed through we had to fill the hole under the kayak with water and all of us had to go through the water underneath. After all that, we had to play a game transporting pieces of a puzzle down a field without talking and without moving with the pieces. Then we had to carry our kayak through the swamp. Yes, so much fun.

Archery - again, it's obvious.

Confidence Course - destroys your confidence.

Beach Games - a failure of an activity. One game was "frisbee golf" in the grassy hills. Most of the time, me and Nic and Jono and Nandita were just looking for our damned frisbees. Then we played Invaders on the beach, which sort of petered out.

Pump - we had this last, on the last day. Hahaaaaa omg. The idea is light weights, loads of reps. We were flattened after that.

Raft-building - ours floated! We won.

Annnnd that's it I think. Ah wow. It was pretty amazing really. And all the good times at mealtimes when we sat out on the deck and just talked and joked, and then the skit night was great. I was relieved when it came to an end but also sad. It's one of the highlights of the year and now it's gone.

Except now I think I'm thoroughly at peace with the idea of leaving school. It has become tired - the routine is old and repetitive and nothing is new. That's not to say at all that I'm not going to absolutely make the most of this year - just that I will not feel a desire to stay at school.

In terms of changes to my future plans, I have been talking with my family and I think things will go as follows:

In December this year and January/February of next year I will work my butt off and earn lotsa money. Then in March I will go to Auckland Uni and start a conjoint BA/BfA degree. Then in June when the first semester ends, I will go to England as I have planned to for a long time, and spend a couple of months there - spending some time in Bristol and also having the Europe experience - visiting my exchange student friends whom I won't have seen for two years, and some family around France and Switzerland. It's nowhere near as long as I planned to go for, but with recent developments in my family, I know that there is all the time in the world for me to travel and "follow my dreams", whereas at this stage in my life I need to be here with/for my family as much as possible. After I come back I will work for the remainder of the year and into 2012, then resume my degree where I left off. Aaaaahh it's all so exciting and confusing and I really hope it all works out. I always knew my plans would have to change, thank God I'm such a flexible person. It has not yet put me into a tailspin. I think I'm okay with it all.

Does anyone even read this blog? Hahaha.