The Joys of Welding

Oh yes, it's joyous indeed. You can barely see anything, so your first weld will probably miss the edge and hit the side of the table before you realise you completely missed the mark and start again. But then you can't find the edge again, so you try and start in the middle of the piece instead, so you backtrack-weld and eventually cause the steel plate to melt because you spent too long trying to weld it. Oh yes, its just so much fun. I could just about kill someone from the sheer enjoyment I derive from it...

Anyway. It's the last day of workshop practice tomorrow, so I'd be rid of this cursed course and can hopefully have more free time (to work) and go to gym. Hm, Smith & Caughey's having a 25% discount sale tomorrow. I must admit I'm quite intrigued by the prospect. Although it'll be undoubtedly pricey, which breaks my heart so. And I want are preppy clothes, which I've never seen anyone but Ralph Lauren, Junya Watanabe, GAP, Gant, et al (there's a few more, but I notice these more) makes. Which basically means no New Zealand label does the look. Sad... since I do like it so... Ah well. =(

Hm, on another note, it'll be Apple's Black Friday event as well tomorrow. So I might take a look tomorrow and see what I want more. At the moment, it'll probably be a toss between this really nice sports jacket by Hugo Boss that I saw at Smith & Caughey's (which will also inadvertently make me broke) or maybe some really nifty Apple thing, like the iPod touch or maybe even, the MacBook Pro (sigh, I wish). Hm. Or maybe I'll get nothing at all. It all depends on the prices of things really, and I'm none too keen to spend what looks like $500 (even after a discount) on the sports jacket since... well... I have my doubts sometimes about things like these. I love it, and will wear it heaps, but can I justify spending at least $500 on it? It'll probably be cheaper if I was in the States or the UK too =(. How sad that prices get inflated to ridiculous amounts when they get here.

Anyways, I'm off. Ciao!

Edit: I was just reading Casey's notes (the Masters student whose project I'm doing some work on for the summer) and I found a sentence that finally describes the kind of work I expect to be doing over the summer with some clarity (stolen from his thesis notes): 

This study hopes to gain understanding of how mechanical forces affect gene expression, cytoskeleton arrangement, and cell to cell signalling in physiology.

A movie marathon - maybe a jog

I watched 4 movies over 2 nights, and most of them would be considered festival type films: Juno; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; Atonement; and La Vie en Rose. It only occurred to me after watching all four that I like movies that are somewhat sad. The ones that I liked best of the two? The Assassination of Jesse James, and Atonement. Only because they were so... sad... touching in a way. And so cinematographically beautiful.

I know its a bit late to be watching either of the 4 movies, but I've been rather busy this year, so I haven't had as much time to watch movies as I'd like. I'm entirely happy I saw those movies, and I absolutely love it. As much as I liked 3:10 to Yuma in fact. It was somehow sad as well, which brings me back to the theory that I like sad stories. 

I made a drill gauge in workshop practice today. Yay! It's utterly useless except for looking somewhat pretty in all its polished steelness (I filed at it and sandpapered it to give it a finished look, I'm so proud of myself). I think it'll make a wonderful paperweight.

Off to bed, I have gym and workshop practice again, for pretty much the rest of the week. Then after that it'll be work and gym. Ciao!

My brief holiday... is ending!

Its sad, but my summer holidays are over. Tomorrow I begin workshop practice, the prelude into my summer job. Then summer work begins, and my holidays at the beach will rapidly drop to nil. My tan might fade because I don't have enough time to wander around and lie in the sun.

It's sad, I know. But oh well, c'est la vie.

Going out for dinner tonight with some mates at the Canton Cafe. Sounds pretty good actually.

I bought Nigella Express (yes, I love Nigella Lawson, though she is no professional chef), but I was honest-to-God debating buying the French Cafe Cookbook instead. The French Cafe is one of the top restaurants in Auckland. And the food looks exquisite, plus you have to book it weeks, if not months in advance. And the hefty price tag associated with it makes it impossible for me to sample its culinary brilliance anytime soon. I did skim through the pages of the cookbook though, and it looks gorgeous. I was literally drooling over the recipes in the book.

I'm still very satisfied with Nigella Express though. It has a lot of great quick dishes to cook on the go, although I've noticed that Nigella is a woman who doesn't seem to mind deriving some of her cooking ingredients from specialist stores and markets, as compared to said professional chefs who prefer making their lovely sauces from scratch. Oh well, differences I suppose. And speed is always sometimes useful. Maybe I'll look through some more books on fast cooking and absorb their little spiel on fast cooking before I form any prejudices on how quick cooking should be done. Although, like I said before, Nigella Express is a treasure trove of a book. I almost wish there were more recipes to be included on it, but I'm being greedy here.

Ooh, I had best get ready to go. I wouldn't want to be late would I?

Tent on a Van

Here lies Iain's tent, on the 19th November around 3:00 PM, shortly after Tony yanked out the pegs and tied it down to the Jesus van, which belongs to the church Iain's mum works for. It was soooo hilarious at the time. Iain was none too impressed however. I wish I could find a picture that showed his reaction to it.

Hmm...

I noticed this on Scotty's album, so I thought I'd upload it here too. The background to this picture is rather simple. I think it started off with Adrian giving Ange a head massage, then Kane (not pictured) wanted one, but Adrian said it would be weird or something. 

Then Adrian proceeded to give Tony one, making Kane annoyed/jealous. Yeah, whatever. Then I got one from Ange with Tony lying next to me on Ange's lap who was lying in Adrian's lap. So here it is...

Back

I was going to write earlier, but I got very sleepy and fell asleep for the last 7 hours. I think I'm coming down with a cold, which kinda sucks.

Camping was fun, although I wish it was warmer than it would be and that the sun would be out more. I also found out that I was very very good at 500, at least when I was playing with Charlie, Darien, Ethan, and so on. And, shockingly I didn't finish my bottle of Bacardi I brought, but I blame my developing cold for that.

All in all, it was an awesome trip, I had heaps of fun at the beach, except for two instances yesterday, one when I decided (rather stupidly) to take a morning shower. The water was FREEZING!!! In fact, I didn't feel so good after that one. The stupidity then continued at midday when I went for a swim in the ocean. The sun was mostly hiden, problematically, which only made the water colder. I probably got hypothermic shock from that as a result. No idea... although I was feeling rather feverish today.

We lit bonfires at the beach every night, and drank to celebrate... well, I don't know what we were celebrating really. The end of exams, life, youth? Whatever it was, it was a damn good celebration. And the sand was really nice and clean. I have a little bit of a tan from the trip too, so that's good. Could do with more I guess, but there wasn't enough sun anyway, and we didn't stay long enough. Another day would probably have covered me, tan-wise, although I would have been down with the cold then, so I'm not sure how that'd work.

My god, Cathy was up at 5:30 yesterday morning cleaning up the general campsite, and woke me up. And me being a light sleeper didn't make it any easier either, considering that I barely caught a wink of sleep the night before. I have no idea how much sleep I got over the two nights, but I'll bet you it's less than 10 hours in total.

My nature of hangovers appear to be shifting. This morning I was rather suprised to discover that I didn't have my normal hangovers (the seasick vertigo types). I instead had the mother of all headaches for my hangover instead. Its definitely a slightly more welcome change, since I don't feel like puking my guts out with this type of hangover, although slightly worrying in that I appear to be changing. I mean, I discovered that I had a huge gap in my memory from the night before as well, which was extremely disconcerting. 

I woke up early in the morning suddenly to find myself in bed with my sleeping bag draped over me, when my last conscious memory was standing up at the beach and talking to uhm... Timmy and Iain and whoever else? Apparently I was actually still alright, very drunk, but still conscious and moving and talking. Whatever it was, I actually don't remember any of it. Which was very very worrying too. 

Nothing much happened from what I could gather anyway, in my regards. I apparently traded my usual jibes with Drake, ran around trying to find my bottle of Barcardi and the bottle of red wine I had. More interestingly, I learnt that I missed out of the bit where Iain was running around and Timmy, thinking that Tom was Iain, tackled him. Then they started wrestling, and apparently Tom was humping Tim, or something like that. And later Tony came up to Drake completely nude and uhh, made disturbing passes at him. Haha, that would have been gold. According to Mihailo, I actually was there and apparently made some comment, but I really do not remember any of that anyway.

Oh, we actually got Iain to streak anyway! That was kinda funny, me, Kane (Timmy's brother), Tony, and Charlie sorta peer-pressured Iain to do it with us, and we went streaking all across the bonfire site at the beach. Oh yeah, it's a nudist beach anyway, so nothing illegal, although most of us were apprehensive about going in the nude, so it made streaking all the more fun. Hehe. It was quite a while since I did that last anyway, and when I commented on it to Iain, he was like: "It actually sounds like something you'd do anyway". WHATTT? I give off streaker, fratboy vibes? I doubt I embody those stereotypes. Do I? Hmm.

Pretty tired, and that was a massive rant on my part. More sleep..... Night

Open Survey (of sorts)

Alright, out of general curiosity, I'll just leave this one open indefinitely, so reply whenever. I've noticed that engineering students in New Zealand tend to dress badly, or at least poorly when compared to Science majors, Medicine, Pharmacy, Law, etc. How true is this over wherever you are? Bear in mind that I mean most, not all =)

I have a feeling Singapore's exempt from the rule, since it's a little too hot. And how do I define poorly dressed? Hm, that's a hard one. I dunno, I guess they just look sloppy in a way? Or a general refusal to wear anything but t-shirts? I can't define it because it's based on what I see. Plus I'm bad at explaining stuff (as I've already established in my interactions with fellow students during lessons). Anyway, gotta get back to last minute packing. Ciao!

God the weather sucks now. I wish it were all sunny again, but it was pouring, then drizzling all day today. I honestly hope that it doesn't stay like this over the next 2 days on the camping trip.

Today was a relatively uneventful day... I went gymming as usual, then bought myself a nice pair of black lace-ups. Hm, what else...?

Oh right, I met up with Richie later as well, but instead of watching a movie, he kinda dragged me - well, he didn't really need to, since I didn't mind - to a netcafe where we played some Warcraft 3. Yeah, sad, I know. Okay, fine, not very sad at all. I got thrashed, since Richie plays more than I do. Suprising, huh? He's actually quite geeky. It amuses me somewhat. 

I even got to use the "You dress like an engineer" insult on him, since he didn't bother bringing a change of shorts (and was hence wearing his gym shorts), although he at least changed his shirt, or I would have dragged him to the department store and blitzed him with fragrance.

Oh, dinner time. See y'all later, maybe when I get back from camping... Ciao!

FREEDOM!!

...to the shores of freedom ... where no one lives

Alright, I guess quoting "Honey and the Moon" wasn't particularly relevant to me finishing my exams, but I still really like the song, so what can I say?

Yeah, it's all over, the exams are all finished for this year, and I can rest. And boy was it ever a terrible exam. I didn't want to have to do a "Regurgitate a summary of your 20-page report". Which I didn't manage to finish anyway, but ah well. Did most of the rest of the exam, so I hope I'd be fine.

Gym and Danny's tomorrow, movie with Richie on Sunday, and gym on Monday, then camping on Tuesday!!! Wow, my schedule's packed. Workshop practice in two weeks though =( I don't wanna do workshop practice. Gotta suck it up I guess.

Golly, I do seriously have cravings for a martini... Too bad I'm out of olives and vermouth. And I'm not going to just drink gin. I'm not that much of an alcoholic yet, heh. 

Me and Rhys have developed an interesting relationship, it seems. We'd good-naturedly bicker and I'll continuously diss him and put him down. And sometimes he does the same, but I probably have dished out more insults at him than he has at me. One of my worse ones being: "You dress like an engineer". Oooh, ouch, if anyone understands the stereotype. I suppose it was fitting though, since he IS an engineer after all, but then again, I apparently don't dress like one, or whatever. Too much thinking into this topic confuses me. And as Tim likes to say "Gabby's always confused". Thanks, Tim. You sure are helping my cause here.

And so I end with a particular set of lines from Joseph Arthur's song still stuck in my head... Ciao!

but right now... everything is turning blue...

and right now... the sun is trying to kill the moon...

and right now... I wish I could follow you...

to the shores of freedom... where no one lives...

Inspiration

Sometimes, it can be really difficult to keep pressing on. I'm not just referring to my exam studies right now of course, which is - pressingly urgent - yes, but there's always more things this could be applied to as well. In times like these, I find that it's great to find your source of inspiration to forge ahead. Some of my mates are my inspiration to get me through these particularly tough times.

Everyone has their own source from which they derive this inspiration. What's yours?

P/S: Paid off the deposit for the suit today. $1200 for now, $1150 when it's done. Ouch! =(

Reform

The election results are out: National has won over Labour. Capitalists over Socialists. Whatever you want to call it, the government is changing once more for the first time in quite a few years. About time too. Although I still personally don't agree with some National's policies. But hey, change is good.

Last exam on Friday, I just can't wait. I went down to Working Style to make myself a suit, which would cost me about $2300 I think. I suppose it's not too bad a price to pay for a made to measure though, and it's in a lovely shade of charcoal gray. Yay!

I happened to see this on the headlines of CNN. An 8-year-old has been charged with premeditated murder. Insane huh? I never thought that would ever be possible.