Labour Day

Who ever said Labour Day was never a sunny day. Not only was this Monday a happy day, but for the first time in a long long time, the sun shone and the birds sung. I was into my fifth hour of stats study, cursing the bloody calculator for giving me answers which weren’t even options in the multi-choice list, when the sun came out. After that, there was no going back to stats, so I lay back, sunned my tummy and slept on top of my stats notes= a very HAPPY Amy!




So maybe the weather is taking a turn for the better, though given that it rained on the way home tonight (and knowing Auckland), the joyous “man…. I don’t want to study” weather wont last long.

Maybe it’s just as well. I realized that by this time next week all of my exams will be OVER… that’s right, over! The action starts of Friday, with Jurisprudence and then Stats. So it’s really going to be a fun-filled day for me and anybody else who has the misfortune of crossing my path! Even better then waiting for Monday, I am officially finished with law, as of Friday morning! Fingers crossed I’ll never be reading another case in my life!

Studying and studying and studying

It’s another cold, rainy wet Auckland day. Not like that is anything new. So I’m sitting in the info commons with Edris and Susan, studying hard (obviously). It’s less then a week till exams and I’m doing the bi-annual “why didn’t I start studying earlier” rant. But WHY? Why didn’t I start studying till now? Why didn’t I go to class? Why am I not studying now??? Why why WHY?

Oh well, I’ve done five years of this, so what’s one more set of exam right? Well, that’s what I keep telling myself. So I’m studying stats again, hence the need to procrastinate by writing a post in my Blogg (see previous post).

Well in another bout of “I really should be doing work, but oh, internet!” I was reading BBBs blogg and got a little nostalgic. He posted about his childhood fondness of Gremlins! After we ohhh’d, awwwd and ahhhhhd over the pictures of the Mogwai with a pot belly, I started thinking about my favourite kiddy things. I still remember Falcor from the Neverending Story and the little worm with funky blue hair from the Labyrinth (“wanna come in and meet the missus?”). Of course, after all that, I started ranting and raving about the value of today’s cartoons and movie characters. What ever happened to my favs, like the trash heap from Fraggle Rock?

AWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

Speaking of cartoons, I’ve just spent a good chunk of an hour watching Madagascar of Edris’ computer… randomly laughing and having people staring (headphones you see). I love the little Lemurs, especially Mort, he’s so sweet. For some reason I keep thinking of these lines:

“Get up Mort! Do not be near the King’s feet okay?”

“After much deep and profound brain things in my head…” yeah, I feel like that too sometimes!

Intense I know…. Deep and profound stuff going on in my daily life… oh well back to Juris!!

Song in my head

The song I currently have on repeat is (drumroll):

Almost Here: Delta Goodrem and Brian McFadden (the dude from Westlife).

Random Sunday Ramble

Right, so I FINALLY took the plunge and booked my flight to Brisbane today. I thought that if I didn’t take the plunge, then I was never going to do it. So on November 5th I’m off for a few weeks on much needed R & R and of course occasionally working to pay my way (of course after I submit a plan... if anybody concerned is reading this:)).

Okay, I’m admittedly an airline snob, but due to my own apathy, I have caved and had to book Garuda. I remember saying to a friend that I’d rather swim to Brisbane then fly Royal Brunei…. I’m having second doubts=) I’m sure it’ll be a stunning few hours and I’ll make sure that I don’t get seat 36F, which I’ve been assured is a window seat without a window… great.

Was having an airline chat with a friend last night and of course she had to point out the Emirates special that was in the Herald, $208 one way to Brisbane… go bloody figure! Just as I book my ticket on shoe box hell, my fav comes up slightly cheaper. Oh man!

Oh well, thanks for that man=) I’m imagining hanging out by the pool, in nice and sunny and warm and sunny and warm (did I mention sunny??) weather! I’m easy to please, it only takes a tummy sunning to make me happy! The weather has been so crap here recently. I wasn’t in NZ last Spring, but I’m sure it wasn’t like this… maybe it was worse. I swear, Auckland has the worst weather in the world! How is a person supposed to wake up happy and rearing to go, when outside is sticky, humid, hailing, windy and raining. You put on a jacket and the temperature is 30 degree an hour later. Leave the woolies at home and it starts hailing… YOU CAN’T WIN! It really does test my patience!

Now I’m just rambling. New discovery of the day is the “much better then the last time I tried it” munchy mart coffee, which is perfect when munchy mart is the only thing open on campus during the weekend. It’s definitely not Starbucks, but a hell of a lot better then the coffee I remember from NUS, which woke you up with a jolt, purely cause it tasted like poison (survival mechanism). So I’m sitting here on a Sunday, happily drinking my non-Robert Harris (which is crap anyway) coffee from the Robert Harris cup and thinking that I should be studying. OMG study!

Am definitely starting to get stressed! 3 exams in 2 weeks! It’s not so much the stress which sucks, rather the way the stress makes you act. Don’t know about anybody else, but I start to treat people that I love like crap. It’s never anything that they’ve done, it’s just me and my insane mind. I swear I’m going to start hearing voices soon (outside of the one’s that I’ve always had). So I apologise to everybody I’ve ever been mean to, nasty or just plain ignored during exam time. To the rest of you, well I probably meant to do that;) (kidding… not…. Nah I really am).

Okay, I am now feeling officially coffee sick and am starting to think I really should stop typing such crap and do some work. Guy who never stops eating (he’s on his 5th banana in 2 hours!!!!!) is staring at me funny, definitely some sign from a higher source that I should stop now and bugger off to do some real work=)

Goodnight Kiwi

Whilst cleaning out the AIESEC office (again) I started reminiscing about the past... the 80s to be exact. We found these badges of a kiwi and it reminded me of the nights my sister and I used to stay up super late (11pm:)) just to watch the close down from TVNZ. I got really excited about the thought, but my balloon was soon burst when I realised that out of the 8 or so people there, NONE of them grew up in NZ. They just didn't understand the historical importance of Goodnight Kiwi. Then bless him, James the most "kiwi" of us all walked in, and had actually been having a highly intellectual conversation, of the same variety, a few days previously with some friends:)




You see, back in the good old days television never used to run 24/7. It would shut down about midnight and Goodnight Kiwi would come on. Goodnight Kiwi and The Cat are television broadcasting icons in NZ history, and TVNZ hasn't been the same without them. Now there is no signal for little kiddies to be going to bed or for people to think that now the mind-draining television is turned off... hell, we'll have to talk to each other now! No no no, we can happily spend weeks ignoring our loved-ones, in a hypnotised daze of advertisements and colours. No wonder James said that our society has been going down the toilet since the end of Goodnight Kiwi in 1994.

Here is the cartoon sequence from Wikipedia:

"The one minute long animation begins with Goodnight Kiwi and the Cat in the master control room. Kiwi shuts down the screens, and starts an audio cassette playing an instrumental arrangement of traditional Māori song, Hine e Hine. Kiwi walks through the studio while Cat jumps and pulls faces into a camera. Kiwi turns out the lights, puts a milk bottle on the porch and locks the door. The two climb steps to the roof, and ride an elevator to the top of a transmission mast. At the top, Kiwi goes to sleep in a satellite dish with the Cat sitting on his stomach. The short closes with the words: "Goodnight from TELEVISION NEW ZEALAND."

I miss my Goodnight Kiwi fix!

Our first EB Photo

One... Two... Three..... AWWWW!

Finally we had our first real EB photo and it's only been nearly 4 months.

4 months and hundreds of photos later, this is the result:)

Stats makes you stupid

Okay, so I've been trying to combat my stats 10(easy) assignment for days now... and I mean days! So many people said "take stats, it's easy". Random phrases like "guaranteed A+", "it's a breeze", "buy one get one free", "10 rupee... good price" flowed like cheap Tui at the commerce ball. However, it was not to be! Okay, so now I'm getting ahead of myself and admittedly overreacting.

But lets just say that this semester, the fights with the calculator, the tears, the yelling, the screaming, the sleepless nights have all lead to one thing: a very real fear of failing. You see, some people just don't understand mathematics. Unfortunately I have fallen into this category and now gain that dreaded knot in my stomach at the mention of 108!

I remember the days when maths was all about making the perfect pie chart, isoceles triangles and hanging out for the morning tea break. Those days are sadly gone, instead being replaced by poisson distributions, t-tests and nonparametric blah blah blah. I miss those easy days, in fact Stats is making me even miss the horrid years of law school (didn't think that one was possible!!!). Cases, lots and lots of cases... pages, wonderful pages of impossibly too tiny to read text from judges with over-inflated egos, thinking they should be bowed to. I miss those days.

But then again, I guess that we always say that you only learn something, where that something has come from a challenge (key learning from my AIESEC days). Stats is definately a challenge, now if only people would stop laughing at me before my self-esteem and confidence digs its way to China!

ps. Long live Geometry!!

All it Takes.

Sometimes all it takes is one word, or one phrase to make you fall in love with a song. Bored and procrastinating so I decided to look through my music library and found some songs that I haven’t heard in ages but played repeatedly a few months/ years/ decades ago. Ahhh, the memories. I used to drive my flatmates nuts with the repeat button on my stereo.

Here are some of the lines from songs that have made me hit the repeat button over the years:

The strands in your eyes that colour them wonderful stop me and steal my breath
Emeralds from mountains, thrust towards the sky, never revealing their depth.

I’ll Be: Edwin McCain.

I want the things I had before, like a star wars poster on my bedroom door.

Promises mean everything when you’re little and the world is so big.

Wonderful: Everclear

Can you imagine no first dance, freeze-dried romance, five hour phone conversation, the best soy-latte that you ever had and me.

Drops of Jupiter: Train

Every word I didn’t say, caught up in some busy day, and every dance on the kitchen floor we didn’t had before.
Every sunset that we’ll miss…

When I look to the Sky: Train

Introducing Bombay Rockers

**Introducing the Bombay Rockers to Blogger**

Okay, so they are pretty much white dudes singing a mix of hindi and english rock/pop/scummy tracks, but they are awesome.

I got addicted to Rock the Party when they constantly played it everywhere in New Delhi. Okay, so they aren't exactly your Coldplay or U2, but they definately aren't the next S Club 7 (thank goodness for that!).

Google Bombay Rockers... you won't regret it...

"Incompetence is bliss, say researchers"
BY ERICA GOODE New York Times

There are many incompetent people in the world. But a Cornell University study has shown that most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
People who do things badly, according to David A. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

Noooo, you don't say. Thought that I'd revisit my lame attempt at keeping some form of virtual diary going. It started off with a bang (i.e. one post) but yeah due to my own incompetence it never seems to go too far past the "maybe I should write in my blog" thought. But here you go.

Admitting previous defeat well I'll give it another go.

So following on from the procrastination months ago I'm at it again, doing yet another essay at the last minute. I always wonder if there are some people that just live on the thrill of writing pages and pages of "crap" that only one other person is ever going to read?

Hmmm, definatley not the way I prefer to spend my precious hours but what can you do? I think I'll just sit here listening to incomprehensible Punjabi rock, contemplating my absolute incompetency to string together a single scentence for the essay from hell :)