The time has finally arrived! My brother is turning 21, and is one step closer to leaving home!! I’ll bet he’ll stay until he’s 30, the sly bastard!!! Except my brother is much more motivated than I’ll ever be, and will probably be off somewhere doing something important in nine years time.

Soon-to-be very important people are very hard to shop for. They’ve normally already saved for what they want and can’t think of anything else they might like (under $500) when you ask them. My carefully considered gift consists of I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert, America by the Daily Show peeps (my brother loves the shows, but will he love them in book form?) and 50c lolly bags (this is the best thing about my job). I feel like I should be buying him a stripper instead. It’d be worth it for the look on his face.

Anyway, I am quite amused that the wrapping paper I used states that it comes in either silver or classic cold. How on earth do people miss these things? However, this might finally be the stupid wrapping paper tidbit that will stop me from mentally connecting wrapping paper with my brother rapping. This is because I asked my brother at Christmas time whether he’d had to do a lot of wrapping at work, and I seriously thought I’d asked him whether he’d had to do a lot of rapping at work. Probably the only time I will ever say, “No! I didn’t mean that! … Oh wait, I did.”

I could never be a shop gift wrapper. I get ridiculously anal when I’m wrapping presents. The corners have to be flat and neat, the overlaps have to be perfect straight lines, and the ribbon has to be just so. I’d drive the customers mad. The problem I always have is that I cut the paper just that fraction of a centimetre too short … and then I have to decide between starting fresh or cutting a strip to cover the gap. And this decision is harder than it sounds.

I hope my brother appreciates the effort. He probably will. He’s one of those reealllly slow present openers who take the time to pick off every piece of tape and neatly fold the paper before moving on to the next present. I should be like that, really, but I use all my care in wrapping the presents and none whatsoever in opening them. So my brother will slowly open my carefully wrapped present, and - best case scenario - will gasp with joy, clap his hands in glee and exclaim, “you are the best sister in the whole wide world and I am going to buy your first house.” Or he’ll just say, “thanks, blister”, and start neatly folding the classic cold wrapping paper. I’d be happy with either reaction.

I was walking down Queen St today, and happened to notice two cops walking to their car with a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s one of those things that shouldn’t really be funny, but it totally was. I do have to ask - what is with the cops and doughnuts association? I’ve never seen a cop eating one in my life! I wonder if police graduates decide that once they’re in uniform, doughnuts will always be off limits. Although I don’t know why they’d care. If you want a doughnut, you want a doughnut. Even if people do laugh heartily as you walk past clutching one in your hand.

I don’t really like doughnuts. Unless they’re homemade cinnamon ones. I like those.

I was slightly nervous about meeting someone from online for the first time, but Amanda and Rilla turned out to be awesome company. However, I’m sure if someone had transcribed our conversation, there would’ve definitely been some choice nervous ramblings from me. Also, quite a few mentions of boobs. And jelly wrestling.

The problem with Auckland (or you might say one of the problems if you happen to be from anywhere in NZ that isn’t Auckland) is it’s not really a tourist place. And most of the shops can also be found over in Aussieland. So we did a loop around the Queen St area to see what was out there that wasn’t Aussie or expensive.

Amanda and Rilla weren’t scary, but something that did frighten me #1:
A woman was walking up Queen St with her pants undone - or she might’ve been rezipping them. I don’t know. I didn’t particularly want to look. Ask Amanda. I’m disappointed the viking wasn’t there, or the intense Christian rapper guy. It seems whenever you want the crazy to appear, it never does.

Afterwards, we walked through Albert Park to the uni (to scope out the young’uns and score Amanda an Auckland Uni pen), browsed through Smith & Caughey’s (where they sell some hideous dresses for $800 reduced) and Atrium on Elliot (it has a lot of Asian shops), and then got some delicious lunch at Tony’s (where we got to see a video of Amanda’s death defying leap, and omg, it looked both awesome and scary).

Rilla had to go after lunch, so after saying goodbye, Amanda & I went back to Aotea Square and got a picture taken (after waiting for someone to walk past us to take the picture … you would think people would walk directly through the square, instead of walking all the way round). I think that picture will end up on my long list of “pictures that I would’ve done differently in hindsight”. I am just going to say I was staring into the sun and my eyes were watering and I take awful pictures in general. But I don’t think my eyes were closed!

Also, quick lesson in Aus vs. NZ:
Thongs (Aus) are called jandals in NZ, and thongs are another word for g-strings in NZ. You’d probably be considered a bit forward if you ask someone in Kiwiland to get your thongs for you.

Amanda didn’t mind tagging along with me to my uni (the building I use most is diagonally across from Aotea Sq) and waiting while I tried to find a computer to use that would allow me to get my feedback on something I did last year. Only the cool tourists check out the student life and uni buildings, dontcha know? Anyway, I found a computer & Amanda had a student magazine to read, but we didn’t count on…

Something that frightened both of us #1:
The computers in the digimed labs don’t just turn on, they TURN ON. I almost thought the computer was going to explode.

The AUT building was close to Amanda’s hostel, so I went for a quick visit, leading to…

Something that did frighten me #2:
The lift in Amanda’s hostel is evil. It drops down a few inches when it reaches the floor of your choice. No lift in the world should ever do that. However, scary lift aside, the rest of the hostel was A+.

Anyway, Amanda taught me there was more than one way to play Snap (and I re-read this in a different way whilst editing and just want to clarify that this other way of playing Snap does not involve taking off any clothes)!

It was a very unscary visit, but something that did frighten me #3:
After leaving the entertainment room, I completely missed the fact there was a step and ended up plunging down in a very graceful manner (not). Amanda found it very funny, and so did I. This is what I’m like all the time (I’m surprised my clumsiness didn’t reveal itself sooner). And then it was time to say goodbye.

Overall, I give the day two very enthusiastic thumbs up! Fine holiday fun!

And because I didn’t take a camera and have no pictures to brighten up this post, here’s a picture of the Skytower:

Tall.

Hmm. What have been the highlights of my week?

1. I got a ticket for the Smashing Pumpkins & Queens of the Stone Age concert. I am very enamoured of the fact I get to see two bands I like for the price of one. I don’t even care that the Smashing Pumpkins is just Billy Corgan, Jimmy Chamberlin + two others. I wasn’t cool enough to be born in the early 80s.

I’m still hoping that
  – Modest Mouse
  – Radiohead
will tour NZ soon!

I also hope
  – Unkle
  – Battles
  – Spoon
  – LCD Soundsystem
come back sometime, because I missed all of them at BDO (with the exception of Spoon).

2. I went to the library and got out a stack of books (chick lit & non-fiction, my two favourite genres). Half the fun of going to the library is not knowing what I’ll end up taking home with me (reserves are for suckers … unless you’re dying to read the book, of course … which means I’ve just contradicted myself). Anyway, sometimes the choice available leads me to get a bit carried away. I can normally measure this by how many times I drop a book on the floor on the way to the issue desk, the car, my room, etc. I can’t help it. Books are like a drug for me, and I’ve got to have as many as I can.
3. I also started a pig exercise regime after weeks of being all talk, no action. I actually overthought what would be involved in bacon boot camp, because my first instinct of just walking Lily in circles (or squares, if that’s what you’re into) turned out to be the right way to shed those excess kilos. I really don’t have a clue what I thought the alternatives would be. Recreational sport? Aquatics classes? Belly dancing?!

Yeah, I don’t think you can beat that for an exciting week.

I didn’t mean to post this so late, but I got caught up in the gargantuan task of cleaning my room. Since my room cleaning methods consist of dumping everything on the floor, and then sorting and discarding items, it’s not really surprising if I’m still going a week after I tipped everything on the floor. And before I get completely off topic, here is my one sentence summary of Big Day Out ‘08: FUCKING HOT, Rage Against the Machine rocked. If you want the longer version, here it is:

The route to the stadium from the train seemed completely different from the last two years I’ve been, and I have no idea why (this is foreshadowing). Something else different from previous years was the fact we hit the food stalls first. This is what happens when you go with two guys. However, I did end up with a massive slice of watermelon for being an early bird, so it wasn’t all bad.

I would’ve never gone to see Operator Please if it weren’t for my friends, but they were fun enough to pass the time. I spent most of the set mocking the keyboardist, who had nothing to do except play chords and dance.

The Checks are a tight live band, but after seeing them twice I couldn’t really muster up much enthusiasm. I made the amateur mistake of standing next to a speaker, and with every squealing note, I could hear that my right ear was getting absolutely screwed. I was beyond relieved when we left to see Shy Child.

… who completely rocked! And they had a keytar! A keytar! I would definitely pay to see them again. The keytar player (keytar!) tried out his Kiwi, by telling us he’d learnt the phrase “sweet as bro”, but he really should’ve said “sweet as, bro”. The comma is important, because otherwise you’ve just uttered a really weird simile.

Op Shop. Snooze. They were more exciting at Christmas at the Park than they were at Big Day Out.

The appearance of the Bleeders was the ideal time to have a lunch break. I shouldn’t have bothered though, as my lunch turned out to be the most disgusting butter chicken I’ve ever eaten. I guess you should expect that when you buy it from a Chinese food stall for a cheaper price than all the other food stalls.

Spoon sounded really good, all jangly and summery, and would’ve definitely been one of my highlights if it weren’t for the shitty scheduling. They deserved a bigger crowd than they got, and I really hope they come back. Lazing by the barrier, soaking up the music, I realised I was quite possibly the whitest person there. I practically glowed in the sunlight. Considering how effing hot it was, my efforts to protect my Snow White-ness weren’t that bad this year. I had very faint redness on my forearms and around my eyes, mild sunburn on the top of my left shoulder and ouchy fuck sunburn on the top of my right shoulder. I have no idea how I managed to miss the top of my shoulders, but I did, and it hurt.

Dizzee Rascal was intense. I felt like I was drinking sweat the whole time, which as you can probably imagine, is pretty fucking disgusting. Not counting the sweat drinking, it was a killer 45 minutes.

I wanted to see Battles, but they never appeared. I found out later they’d switched with the Nightwatchman, which would’ve sucked for the guy who found out from us that Tom Morello was definitely appearing at 6.15. Oops. Hope he enjoyed Battles!

Interesting fact: I went to the toilet (not a Portaloo) at 5.30pm, and they were clean and well stocked. I wonder if this year’s punters didn’t know about the stadium toilets? This is a most puzzling conundrum, but one that I’m not complaining about. I felt like I was visiting a very popular person’s house, instead of being a person at a 45,000 strong music festival.

Arcade Fire were one of my highlights, although I wanted to throttle the girl standing behind me who would not shut up. This is one of my top concert annoyances, others being:

• People who lean back in a mosh for no good reason.
• People who arrive 10 minutes into the set and then try to push their way forward for a better spot.
• Tall people who all cluster together (this one’s a bit irrational, but I still hate it).

Shihad own the 7-8pm main stage slot, which is okay because they’re a good band, but I don’t want to be watching them in the 7-8pm slot every second year I go to the Big Day Out. Anyway, people were squashing people by trying to get into the D barrier when the light was red - that’s how they got a bullet blasted through their head, blasted through their head (sorry, lame “joke”). Shihad stopped playing until everyone backed up, which led to a crowd shitfit that was quite entertaining to watch from my seat on high.

The organisers must’ve been on crack to choose Bjork as a co-headliner. Not because she lacks talent or can’t put on a good show, but because none of the Rage fans wanted her there and they made this pretty obvious. This has led me to the conclusion that most Rage fans are big, fat, musically intolerant babies, and they need to suck it up and let people enjoy the music they want to listen to.

But Rage against the Machine was so much fun! I was way too tired from the heat to even consider entering the mosh, but I did have a great view from my seat in the stadium. And I swore with the best of them, motherfuckers.

By the time my friend and I exited the main stadium (always such a mission), all I wanted to do was relax and enjoy a blast from the past in the form of Supergroove. It was super relaxing to sit on the grass and people watch (trying desperately not to think about what I might actually be sitting on). There wasn’t a lot of crazy around, but I did spot two guys with matching Silver Fern tattoos, who, when they realised this, starting rubbing up against each other.

And to give this story an appropriate end, my friend and I went the wrong way out of the stadium and added an hour to our journey home.

I want to wish everyone who reads Emily, I think a happy New Year! Wishing this a week after the actual date is not laziness, just fashionably late-ness. I wish I could say that my New Years was spent partying like a D-list socialite, but despite my efforts to be sociable and actually go out and do something with my friends, this was not so. The New Years dance party we went to was pretty unimpressive. Especially since it cost $50 a ticket. However, my idea of an exciting New Year is eating a bar of chocolate and watching Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour on DVD (starring Donny Osmond!). That probably means my opinion of a good time can never, ever be trusted again.

It truly was lacking in party atmosphere though. My friends and I got there at 11.30 and the room was barely half full, with no noticeable difference at 3 o’clock. The music was great for an hour or so, but then they changed the DJ and he was one of those DJs who manages to make dance music that actually sucks the fun out of dancing. I could have more fun dancing to Chopin (which I think I’ve tried before, oh the shame). We finally ended up at McDonalds - a place I’ve always found so incredibly festive that it becomes an ongoing struggle to control the urge to let off fireworks when I am sitting there. A few of my friends wanted to go back to the dance party, but mostly because they didn’t feel they’d got their money’s worth. My personal view is that if you aren’t enjoying something, it’s not worth it to stay and bore yourself stupid in order to get more for your money. At this point I was happy to do whatever, because the whiff of gross smelling food had perked me up. Alas, our New Years celebrations were over for the night. That left us with the task of trying to find a taxi driver who wouldn’t try and rip us off during the drive home. You tell them where you want to go and get them to agree to a price, and then the cheeky sods try and raise the price somehow - “No no, you didn’t tell me that you required me to get off the Great South Road and actually drive you to a house, no no no!” Asshole.

And without a witty little quip to sum everything up, that brings me to the end of my fascinating story of the exciting things I get up to on New Years, when the option of Donny Osmond smiling toothily in his coat of many colours is not available. Next year I’m hoping for synchronised dancing on Queen Street.

I’m not really a resolution-setting person, but I’m hoping I can achieve these goals this year:

1. Save enough money for my exchange to Toronto.
2. Blog regularly and get some more content up.
3. Improve my exam and assessment preparation.

Especially today. I opened a package from my uncle this morning and was greeted by the most ugly ass bracelet I have ever seen. Even though my uncle wasn’t there to see my reaction, I still tried very hard not to let an “ergh” expression appear on my face. It didn’t work. Luckily my mum thought the exact same thing, so I didn’t have to continue pretending that I loved it. It was just so … hideous. I am so glad my uncle wasn’t actually there to give it to me, because I would’ve felt awful. Yet it still made me smile, because:

a) he got the present here perfectly on time. He’s done this for everyone in my family this year, and I can’t hate the present when he’s put so much effort into remembering birthdays.
b) my uncle didn’t even send a card, which is so… him. The only reason I knew who sent it was because my mother recognised his handwriting. Otherwise, it could have been from anyone!

Also, I managed to cut my thumb with an umbrella, bringing my tally of idiotic events involving umbrellas up to two.

I got on the bus to go home yesterday, exhausted after a Christmas shopping day in Auckland that saw me end up with more for myself than anybody else, and was greeted with an middle aged man wearing thick silver rings on all his fingers, pimp sunglasses, a mullet-type hairstyle, tight pants and tucked-in shirt singing Phantom of the Opera. My first thought was ‘at least it’s not as bad as that guy who played Happy Birthday on his guitar non-stop for twenty minutes’. I had changed my mind by the time we’d reached Otahuhu and he was still going. The only silence came whenever he finished his current song of choice. He would pause, run his hands over his hair, look to his left, sit in silence for a few seconds, sing a note to find the right key (which sounded like the noise I’d imagine a small child would make after being pushed off a cliff) and start singing again.

The best part came when some South Auckland “gangstas” boarded the bus at Papatoetoe and decided to join in. This consisted of them mimicking every strange noise he made in between songs and his vocal theatrics and also laughing whenever he sang a line like “I’m just a hunk a hunk of burning love”. Unfortunately his response was to turn around, give them the thumbs up, and sing louder.

Just before we reached Manurewa, a similar looking middle aged guy boarded the bus and finally stopped singing guy by engaging him in conversation. This enlightened us on what singing guy thought of music:
“It’s the language of life, isn’t it? It just affects everyone so deeply.”
and Tom Jones:
“Tom Jones is a legend, man. He’s even better than Elton John.”

Before Tom Jones disembarks, bus buddy remarks:
“Man, I’m sure I’ve met you somewhere before.”

Tom Jones replies:
“It must’ve been that time in prison, ay.”

Of course.

This past week has been the most exhausting week I’ve had all year. I only had 2 hours of class, but the rest of the time was used to finish everything that should’ve been started weeks ago. My sleeping patterns are still whacked up from pulling an all-nighter on Wednesday to complete an essay (such a bad thing to do, but so, so necessary). I don’t know why uni has managed to decrease my motivation for completing assignments, but it has, and it has done it well. I have even starting losing enthusiasm about my marks. THIS IS NOT GOOD. Dina Lohan getting her own show on E! is less frightening than this!!

I am in a chipper mood about exams, however, since it has actually given me something to do. I managed to waste all the fun, time-wasting activities when I was supposed to be finishing said assignments, and have spent the last few days mostly sitting down doing nothing. Sometimes listening to music. Occasionally eating pears or apples (always a fun time with braces). I guess I should aim to be bored out of my mind more often so I can pretend I’m a motivated person.

If you knew me offline you would know I am one of the clumsiest people on the planet. I constantly trip over, frequently misjudge distances, and rarely appear sober. A perfect example of this clumsiness occurred yesterday while I was leaving the cinema. I was holding the door open for another exiting patron, turned around … and walked straight into a rubbish bin. The noise this made was akin to an alien invasion. People who were 20 metres away could hear it. And if that wasn’t bad enough, I somehow managed to get my umbrella stuck in the rubbish bin. Everyone turned around to figure out what had caused all the racket and saw me wrestling with my umbrella in a frantic attempt to make a quick exit. It was the most embarrassing thing that has happened to me all year, but it was also hysterically funny. I should just be thankful I didn’t knock myself out by walking into the concrete pole behind the bin. That would’ve been much, much worse.