Tuesday, April 26, 2011
I am in Asia
check it: last night I almost walked in to a Burmese drag queen in a back alley, but it didn't bother me. This is what being in Asia does to you.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Sorry
I know it's been a significant period of time since my last post, meager thought it was. Historically, we bloggers provide excuses for these absences, so what is mine? Well, I'm exceptionally lazy, for one, and there was that earthquake...
Since it's been so long, I'll provide a little recap of the ensuing events in my great life:
Thanks for reading, and looking.
Since it's been so long, I'll provide a little recap of the ensuing events in my great life:
- Our house lost pretty much anything even vaguely resembling water pressure for two weeks. Suffice to say my hair was downright filthy for a period of time, so much so that we resorted to paying to have it washed at the local salon (for a "bargain" special post quake price of $5!).
- School has restarted, albeit to an extremely confusing timetable, and shared classrooms with Avonside Girls' School. So confusing, in fact, that in the last two weeks I have managed to go to my french class twice, only to be told by year 9s that I am in the wrong place. How embarrassing...
- My sister turned nineteen! She picked up tights and a copy of a Frankie for her troubles, and myself a free pizza and glass of delicious Apple Cider for mine. Classic!
- The new Fleet Foxes album was released- er, leaked, I should say. I am listening to it as I type this, much in the same way that I have been for the last week. It's just a shame that I have only been enjoying it for three days of that, but good things take time and all that.
- My headphones finally arrived from quake/tsunami stricken Japan. The are great, especially when I can't bear being subjected to that top 40 shit at the gym, nor the puffing and wheezing of old men next to me on the rowing machine.
- I finally have grasped the points course structure of engineering at university. Never mind that I have no interest in engineering itself- as far as I am concerned, nothing could be so baffling as those charts that in hindsight are embarrassingly simple.
- I took this cool picture at the park opposite my place last Sunday evening in nice light:
- Also, during the course of several plumbers fixing our pressure, someone fucked up, and there was a several metre high parabola of water shooting across the road. Here's what it looked like:
Thanks for reading, and looking.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
late night realisation
Reading your own blog is like looking at yourself in the mirror: you can do it all you like but the quality of neither your blog nor reflection will ever improve.
I never thought I would say it
But I have run out of witty titles. No, just kidding, that will never happen. Seriously, though, I never thought I would say it, but I really want to go back to school.
It would be easy to say that I miss school, but in all honesty, I don't. School is not fun, no matter how you look at it. Fretting over my grades is not fun. Putting up with the dumb shits in my classes who insist on asking inane questions is not fun. Being handed two sets of calculus homework throughout the course of a single period is certainly not fun.
No, I miss the scant free time that having to go to school afforded me, and the ensuing savouring of these morsels of down time. Between three o'clock and when I might go to bed at ten or eleven, I reveled in merely not being in class, and despite our massive amounts of collective complaining, I'm pretty sure most of my contemporaries would have felt the same way.
But this earthquake here in Christchurch, it has put everything, as they say, out of whack. I now find myself with ample hours to while away, and frankly, I can't find enough stuff to fill them. It's a sad thing to admit, but this is really how I have been feeling. That isn't to say, of course, that I haven't gotten plenty done, and enjoyed most of the time off. Georgia and I spent a couple of days in Nelson with my hilariously upbeat grandparents, and have subsequently been to Halswell Quarry and The Groynes (yeah, great name I know) taking some sweet photos. But knowing that I don't tomorrow have work to go back to, tests to sit, leaves me with a hollow feeling. Not to mention the death and having our house condemned.
More than anything else, life's crappy parts, the working and going to school, highlight the not-so-crappy ones, and this system simply works. People need a job to do, and I don't think there's any two ways about it. Surely even in retirement you would get bored, and the monotony of endless games of golf and glasses of cider would start to become... monotonous.
For me, this is like using the money cheat in that classic game, The Sims. Sure, repeatedly hitting "RosebudAAAAAA!?!?!?!?!?!?!" was great for a while, and the subsequent millions of dollars in my virtual account brought a vague smile to my face, but after constructing a palace featuring an entire floor full of scuba tanks (and then the bastard had the nerve to go and not like it!) what else is left to do? It's the ongoing grind, the battle, that makes the results worthwhile. Money, weekends, without what preceded them are meaningless.
I used to enter all of those Australian maths/english/science competitions back in primary school, and a few days before them, my mother and I would leaf through practice papers. A grind, sure, but I knew they helped. Anyway, one night I felt especially melodramatic, and whined "can't we stop? I've done enough!" Even though it was all ploy, my mother bought it, and much to my surprise replied, "Sure, if you think so." At eight years old I simply couldn't compute having gotten my way, and hastily backed down, guiltily conceding to do another paper.
And like that, I will gladly return to the unrelenting dullness of school, so happy that sneaking some time on my Xbox means something once more.
It would be easy to say that I miss school, but in all honesty, I don't. School is not fun, no matter how you look at it. Fretting over my grades is not fun. Putting up with the dumb shits in my classes who insist on asking inane questions is not fun. Being handed two sets of calculus homework throughout the course of a single period is certainly not fun.
No, I miss the scant free time that having to go to school afforded me, and the ensuing savouring of these morsels of down time. Between three o'clock and when I might go to bed at ten or eleven, I reveled in merely not being in class, and despite our massive amounts of collective complaining, I'm pretty sure most of my contemporaries would have felt the same way.
But this earthquake here in Christchurch, it has put everything, as they say, out of whack. I now find myself with ample hours to while away, and frankly, I can't find enough stuff to fill them. It's a sad thing to admit, but this is really how I have been feeling. That isn't to say, of course, that I haven't gotten plenty done, and enjoyed most of the time off. Georgia and I spent a couple of days in Nelson with my hilariously upbeat grandparents, and have subsequently been to Halswell Quarry and The Groynes (yeah, great name I know) taking some sweet photos. But knowing that I don't tomorrow have work to go back to, tests to sit, leaves me with a hollow feeling. Not to mention the death and having our house condemned.
More than anything else, life's crappy parts, the working and going to school, highlight the not-so-crappy ones, and this system simply works. People need a job to do, and I don't think there's any two ways about it. Surely even in retirement you would get bored, and the monotony of endless games of golf and glasses of cider would start to become... monotonous.
For me, this is like using the money cheat in that classic game, The Sims. Sure, repeatedly hitting "RosebudAAAAAA!?!?!?!?!?!?!" was great for a while, and the subsequent millions of dollars in my virtual account brought a vague smile to my face, but after constructing a palace featuring an entire floor full of scuba tanks (and then the bastard had the nerve to go and not like it!) what else is left to do? It's the ongoing grind, the battle, that makes the results worthwhile. Money, weekends, without what preceded them are meaningless.
I used to enter all of those Australian maths/english/science competitions back in primary school, and a few days before them, my mother and I would leaf through practice papers. A grind, sure, but I knew they helped. Anyway, one night I felt especially melodramatic, and whined "can't we stop? I've done enough!" Even though it was all ploy, my mother bought it, and much to my surprise replied, "Sure, if you think so." At eight years old I simply couldn't compute having gotten my way, and hastily backed down, guiltily conceding to do another paper.
And like that, I will gladly return to the unrelenting dullness of school, so happy that sneaking some time on my Xbox means something once more.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
op-shopping and sweat-shopping
Opshopping has never been an activity that compelled me that much. This could be down simply to my not having any real interest in clothes, or maybe because I always used to see it closer to the manner in which the Americans do- as "thrifting". That somehow buying second hand clothes was demeaning, and made me "thrifty" with all its awful connotations and implications.
My sister, on the other hand, has been at this game for years. She often comes home, laden with skirts and dresses, blouses and jackets, proudly announcing how little she paid for them. And these weren't bad looking pieces by any means; they were just nice, regular clothes, that you or me had passed on to the store, who later passed them on to Georgia for one tenth the original price. Funnily enough, probably one much closer to what the clothing chain would have purchased the clothes off the factories for.
This leads me on to my next point, about sweat shops. Being in South-east Asia fairly regularly lately, I often had t shirts and pants thrust in my face by local shopkeepers, so desperate for that one sale. I don't even care that much that I am likely paying thrice what the local people do- to me, 30 000 dong makes hardly any difference. It is, after all, only $1:50. Something about "fake" clothes repels tourists like me, but especially where things like Chuck Taylors are concerned, how is "fake" any different really to "real". We all well know that Nike, and their subsidiary, Converse, are notorious for use of sweat shops, and what's more, the poor quality of their shoes, even when "real" means that there's virtually no difference in what I buy on a smelly backstreet in Hanoi, to what I pay twenty times as much for in my local Rebel Sport.
Georgia and I recently took a séjour up to Nelson, anxious to escape the earthquake-ridden Christchurch. In town, and in the local settlement of Richmond, we went out armed with the goal of doing some successful opshopping in some new opshops. Georgia is well attuned to the entire process, and under her watchful eye, I managed to score a sweet corduroy jacket and a dress shirt for the grand total of $16:60- what a steal (and I mean that without sarcasm, for once).
I always imagined myself in my adult life, jet setting around the globe, of course being paid vast sums of money, and among other things, wearing only the finest clothing by Hugo Boss, Dior etc, but maybe I'll now have to revise this. Well, at least I'll surely still own a Breitling for each day of the week, seeing as though the $10 Bell&Ross that I picked up in Hué broke only two days after it was purchased.
My sister, on the other hand, has been at this game for years. She often comes home, laden with skirts and dresses, blouses and jackets, proudly announcing how little she paid for them. And these weren't bad looking pieces by any means; they were just nice, regular clothes, that you or me had passed on to the store, who later passed them on to Georgia for one tenth the original price. Funnily enough, probably one much closer to what the clothing chain would have purchased the clothes off the factories for.
This leads me on to my next point, about sweat shops. Being in South-east Asia fairly regularly lately, I often had t shirts and pants thrust in my face by local shopkeepers, so desperate for that one sale. I don't even care that much that I am likely paying thrice what the local people do- to me, 30 000 dong makes hardly any difference. It is, after all, only $1:50. Something about "fake" clothes repels tourists like me, but especially where things like Chuck Taylors are concerned, how is "fake" any different really to "real". We all well know that Nike, and their subsidiary, Converse, are notorious for use of sweat shops, and what's more, the poor quality of their shoes, even when "real" means that there's virtually no difference in what I buy on a smelly backstreet in Hanoi, to what I pay twenty times as much for in my local Rebel Sport.
Georgia and I recently took a séjour up to Nelson, anxious to escape the earthquake-ridden Christchurch. In town, and in the local settlement of Richmond, we went out armed with the goal of doing some successful opshopping in some new opshops. Georgia is well attuned to the entire process, and under her watchful eye, I managed to score a sweet corduroy jacket and a dress shirt for the grand total of $16:60- what a steal (and I mean that without sarcasm, for once).
I always imagined myself in my adult life, jet setting around the globe, of course being paid vast sums of money, and among other things, wearing only the finest clothing by Hugo Boss, Dior etc, but maybe I'll now have to revise this. Well, at least I'll surely still own a Breitling for each day of the week, seeing as though the $10 Bell&Ross that I picked up in Hué broke only two days after it was purchased.
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