Sleepy
Now Playing: Evermore - Light Surrounding You
I do want to write something a little bit different to my normal Monday "here's what I did on the weekend" post. I did have a pretty good weekend though, my birthday on Friday night was fun and I did manage to end up feeling quite "special" for the day, which in the end is the whole purpose of a birthday really. Then the rest of the weekend were lots of fun times with Amalia, yet strangely somewhat relaxing at the same time. I think I needed to have a more quiet weekend than normal because I slept badly on both Friday and Saturday night, and ended up feeling rather energy-less on both days.

Oddly enough, I think I noticed feeling particularly tired and sleepy on Sunday because it tends to be a fairly rare occurance these days. Generally I have my life organised enough to ensure that either I'm in bed not too late, or I will be able to sleep in enough to make it up. The idea of waking myself up with a bit of caffiene turned out to be majorly counter-productive as for some reason when I'm already tired coffee just makes it worse rather than giving me more energy like it supposedly does for other people. It's a strange sort of tired too, like the whole world takes on a surrealness to it, like I'm in a dream where I sort of inhabit my body but at the same time I'm also sort-of in third person watching what's going on rather than actually living it. I guess that it's the sleepiness that makes everything reminiscent of a dream and enhances the surreality of it all.

It's interesting when I think a bit more about my changing sleeping patterns throughout the last few years, and even before that back to when I was a child. When I think about it now, I probably went to bed generally too early throughout my childhood, and as a result found myself having to fall asleep when I wasn't actually that tired, and subsequently finding it really really difficult to fall asleep. I would lie in bed (often with the light on as I was a wimp and scared of the dark until a much older age than I really want to admit to it) thinking about various things for seemingly hours, then freak out that I was never going to fall asleep, rush out to tell my parents I couldn't get to sleep, then try again for a while more... and so on. The hours that I was trying to get to sleep now seem amazingly early, but I guess that a lot of those memories did come from when I was quite young, but probably in summer it was still light outside that definitely didn't help, and I can't imagine trying to fall asleep with the light fully on these days.

As time went on, and I became the master of my bed-times much more than ever before, somewhat unsurprisingly I began to find it easier to fall asleep. I guess because it was later and I was actually more tired, it was inevitable that I wouldn't spend as long trying to make myself fall asleep. Eventually getting over my fear of the dark would have helped further as I was now able to fall asleep in the dark, with fewer distractions around my room and obviously with the darkness telling my body that indeed it was time to fall asleep. Even later on, I probably developed better techniques to ensure that I would fall asleep quickly - of letting my mind wander as I lay there at night, rather than trying to develop a particular trail of thought in my head, and it became even easier. I stopped actively trying to make myself fall asleep, trying to find that moment when I would actually drift off, and rather just let it happen to me.

Once we got a computer at home, during my first year of university, my sleeping patterns changed rather more dramatically, as the most fun internet chat was to be had between about 10pm and 2am each night, as that seemed to be the time when the people I knew were most likely to be online. Though come to think of it that was probably because I was online at those times. I would find myself stumbling to bed when I eventually managed to summon enough motivation to leave the conversation I was having and head upstairs to bed. While going to bed this late was great for making me fall asleep quickly, as I would be gone just about the moment my head hit the pillow, it did mean that often I felt totally wasted the next day, in a way that I had never particularly experienced before. Sure, there were the odd occasions during primary and intermedidate school when I woke up in the middle of the night and found it impossible to get back to sleep - the longest hours ever as I counted down to 7am and actually being able to get up; but it wasn't until the latter half of my first year at uni when I felt so actively tired. I literally fell asleep during one lecture on Geomentality (a Korean lecturer telling me about Maori legends... which was quite weird actually) and almost fell asleep in quite a few other lectures. This was strange for me, someone who usually found it very difficult to fall asleep in circumstances that were anything except perfect.

Throughout the next couple of years my sleeping patterns were all over the place yet again, with early starts due to Natalie's Starbucks job mixed in with other late nights. Then at the start of 2005 I did a whole pile of graveyard shifts at McDonald's for a few months that really messed around with things. It was a bit annoying how much that screwed my sleeping patterns up, because working at McDonald's on the graveyard shift (11pm-7am) allowed you so much more freedom to do things the way you wanted than could ever happen during the day. Usually your fellow staff members would consistently work the same shift, which meant that you got to know them quite well, and it was just a more relaxed feeling around everyone. But the pay-off was having enormously messy sleeping patterns, getting to bed at about 8.30am, sleeping (if I was lucky) until about 3pm, then heading back to work around 9.30 or 10pm that night. Although I generally got a reasonable amount of sleep during the days, it wasn't the quality of sleep that I normally got at nights, and I would always find myself at the end of the shifts having the most intense level of tiredness ever. On the occasions when I had a couple of days off and managed to get to sleep at night, turning off the light and actually truly experiencing darkness for the first time in many days felt like such an amazing feeling. I don't think I have ever slept that well again.

The consistency of my current job's hours does mean that my sleeping patterns have once again returned to a sense of normality. There's also a strange circularness to it all, beginning in my school days when I needed to wake up around 7.30, get read and be out of the house shortly after 8.00 - I now find myself in the same situation, in the same room (though thankfully not alone in the same bed). It's quite odd really - perhaps my sleeping patterns are a reasonable metaphor for my life: a long time of normality, then times where things were all over the place, and now returning to something normal again.

25
Now Playing: Coldplay - Clocks
So I turn 25 today - the last aspects of childhood have finally gone as I can (finally) get a rental car and (even more finally) get student allowance without my parent's income being taken into account (not that I'm studying, but ANYWAY). When I was younger I think that I looked foward to being 25, it would be like the peak of my life when I would be old enough to have money and cool stuff yet still young enough to not really feel old. I don't know whether my expectations have really been fulfilled, but while I say to people occasionally that I do feel a bit old these days, it's not really that true. Perhaps because the people I find myself working with or interacting with at work are generally all much older than me, I do think of myself as quite young still. I feel like I'm just kick-starting things into action rather than feeling like I'm the experienced know-it-all. Which is a little intimidating, but still ensures that I feel young.

I have found myself, somewhat unfortunately, becoming less and less excited about my birthdays throughout the past few years. I guess that when you're 19 you look forward to being 20 because it feels like a big milestone to no longer be a teenager, while when you're 20 you look forward to being 21 because that's culturally the "big birthday". Yet once you pass that 21st I suppose that it doesn't really seem like much of a big deal to go from being 23 to 24, or 24 to 25 and as a result it's not really that exciting anymore. It's just not quite the same as when I used to wake up and be so excited by the fact that I was now 11 and not 10 anymore, and that the whole day would pass in a magical sense of bliss because of that. In fact, when I woke up this morning I lay there trying to grasp the last threads of the dream I had just woken up from, and for quite a few minutes didn't even register that it was in fact my birthday. Leila immediately reminded me once she had awoken, but I was kind of like "oh yeah... that's right".

Nevertheless, I guess it is nice to have a day when I'm the special person. As it often seems like I'm running from one thing to the next trying to make sure everyone else is alright, it is pretty cool to have a day when I can sit back and think that at least for this one day it's everyone else's job to make sure that I'm having fun and that I'm enjoying myself and feeling happy. And a few nice presents always helps things along - hopefully I will be able to put together enough birthday money to get myself a digital camera.

The Last Day
Now Playing: Evermore - Know It's True
So this is my last day of being 24. When I think back to this time last year it seems like a hell of a long time ago, perhaps longer than many of the years before it seemed. I guess that's because a relatively large amount of stuff has happened since that time. I've talked about that on many occasions before, so I won't go boring everyone once again, but it is quite interesting that because things have changed so much since April last year it just feels like an age ago. To compare my life now with how it was then is difficult, as although it felt like it was working out really well at the time, this time last year, in hindsight I now realise that it was standing on fairly thin ice, as things turned out it did disintegrate rather badly a month or so later.

Yet I'm not one to dwell too much on the negative side of things, as obviously there have been some significant positive changes in my life throughout the past year. I have found myself generally happier with life throughout this time than at pretty much any other time in recent memory, and although there are still some pieces left to fit in the puzzle the main foundations are there and I feel like I'm generally living my life the way I want to, more than I have before.

Yes I have remained fairly slack in my updates throughout the last week or so. As I wrote in my last post the inspiration to write a big long post just hasn't really been there lately, and while I know it will come back I haven't really had the motivation to force myself into writing in here when I haven't really felt like it. Maybe it's just the time of the year, shifting from reasonably warmish weather back into what feels like winter, that's just depressing enough to suck away my motivation as I realise we've got about six months of coldness ahead. New Zealand got bundled out of the Cricket World Cup in the semi-finals, yet again, which actually wasn't particularly surprising I suppose, but just reinforced how annoying the whole 1992 World Cup situation was, as we blew what has turned out to be our only real chance of ever winning the world cup. One day I'll write about my experience of that match, which although hazy after 15 years and relatively depressing, is still an interesting memory from my childhood.

But anyway, yeah I turn 25 tomorrow. I guess that's theoretically my peak in a way. After that I'm supposedly 'over the hill' and 'old' etc. etc. Kind of weird really as I still feel like I'm getting myself started in the 'big bad world'. Hopefully I have a nice day.

Blog Laziness
Now Playing: Chemical Brothers - Surface To Air
It is funny how at times you find yourself so caught up in the day to day aspects of life that you find yourself amazed by how the year is zipping by. It's not too far away from being May, and really when I think of myself at work in particular I am just getting beyond the point where it feels like the year is getting started. I suppose that a lot of that has to do with the changes at work that have taken place, with Pete leaving for Singapore, and the fact that I have just made it to a year formally with the company. Then again, often I find myself thinking such thoughts around this time of the year, probably because with the changing seasons it has become obvious that we're definitely not at the "start part" of the year, instead being well into the "middle part".

I haven't seemed to have had much motivation to write in here lately. I suppose that I've been busy doing other things on the net, and fairly busy at work etc. etc. It's also been a phase where I've largely felt uninspired to write in this blog, which in some ways is a little sad considering that enthusiasm I have generally had lately. I'm not too worried really though, as often that kind of thing happens and I go through a phase where I'm not really reading too many blogs and not really feeling like I have too much to say. Or I just can't be bothered sitting down and typing out an entry. Perhaps it is just blog laziness, as there has been a reasonable amount of stuff going on in my life - more possible houses popping up for us to apply for and interesting times with Amalia over weekends etc. etc.

There are a few rather interesting things coming up in my life throughout the next while though. A cricket world cup semi-final on Wednesday morning, my birthday on Friday and a day-trip to Napier next Monday. Then Leila's graduation is not too far away - so there will be fun and interesting times ahead, and I'm sure that with those things I will find myself having more motivation to write in here.

Cry Baby
Now Playing: U2 - One Tree Hill
At primary school it's marginally acceptable to burst into tears - even when you're a guy. People are generally quite considerate of it, and although there will probably be the odd "cry baby" taunt, generally everyone accepts that it's not like the worst possible thing ever. At least that was my experience. I don't actually remember bursting into tears particularly often at primary school, although I know it would have happened on more than a few occassions (I have many other embarrassing primary-school memories but I'm sure I'll come to them in time. There was of course the occassion when I first wore my glasses to school, and probably also many of the times that I fell over on the asphalt courts and scraped my knees. I don't think there was ever a summer where my knees weren't covered in various grazes at different stages of recovery, but while I would have surely bawled my eyes out after each and every one of them (at least in my earlier years) I guess the reason why I don't specifically remember them is because it wasn't really a big deal. Everyone cried, even the big Samoan guy who was twice your size but still three years younger than you.

Yet by intermediate things really did change in that regard. Perhaps towards the end of Standard 4 it had become a little less 'acceptable', as my memories of Dipak calling me four-eyes include something along the lines of the reason he did it was to make me cry. Nice. But anyway, at intermediate there were immediately so many more reasons for me to be feeling upset and on the verge of tears. While the whole "four-eyes" thing largely died down at intermediate - I remember one kid once calling me that and then getting sternly told off, by another kid - people had become so much more sophisticated in their ways to make you feel miserable that it didn't need to be done through simple name-calling like that. They could cleverly exclude you from their games, pretend to comfort you in a way that made sure you knew that you'd fucked something up big time, and find all your insecurities in adept ways to make you feel as miserable and hopeless as possible.

And being the fragile creature that I was, I would inevitably burst into tears if things got beyond a certain point. If I felt unfairly picked on during our lunch-time games, out came the tears. When I got told off during aerobics in front of half the school, out came the tears (although I tried to hide them by saying that my glasses were hurting my eyes, which my teacher kindly and probably falsely backed up by saying the same thing happened to her). I suppose I didn't make life easy for myself, by doing stupid things like forgetting mufti days and having to wander around school in my uniform while everyone else wore their cool clothes, or even worse once I did remember mufti day wearing a stupid tracksuit that made me look about 8, while everyone else was wearing their jeans and Stussy T-shirts in summer, or their oversize polar-fleece hoodies in winter (remember when they were cool?)

Even in Form 2 I still suffered from this fragility, especially towards the end of the year when all my friends seemed to desert me. During games of handball I felt unable to simply accept that I'd messed up and hit the ball out - instead sticking my ground and trying to argue my way out. I'm sure that on some occassions I was quite justified in doing this, but on others it felt like I needed to do it because there was simply no other way to deal with losing out after slowly making my way close to the top. On one occassion I was amazed at the way a friend of mine, Jason, managed to just deal with that situation whereas I just couldn't handle it without getting myself so worked up and inevitably pissing everyone off once again.

While by the time high-school rolled around I was able to control my emotions a lot more, on a few occassions they still got out of hand leading to another round of tears. However, slowly but surely I felt more and more able to bottle up those emotions, to create a bit of a wall around myself that meant while I still got upset and hurt at times - particularly in the first couple of years at high school - I was able to keep that reasonably externalised from myself through this wall. In fourth form, a guy called Keith who had been in my class when I was in Form 2 kindly started reminding me and a few of the people I knew about how much of a cry baby I had been back then. While this was really really annoying, as I had hoped to let all that disappear behind me, what it did let me realise was how far I had come in those couple of years. That I knew the things which had set me off back at intermediate school I could now get through. Sure, I still felt upset and hurt on many an occassion at high school, but generally I was able to just suck it in and bottle it up, rather than turning into a burbling mess.

I guess this is probably a more common kind of story than I ever thought at the time, that other people were also struggling with the same things that I was struggling with. To fit in, to be cool, to not make a fool out of oneself and so on. As I tried more and more to achieve these things, in many ways it was my self-confidence that continued to erode. Obviously the person I was naturally couldn't fit in, couldn't be cool and would inevitable end up acting like a dick - so I needed to be someone different. I had to keep my emotions under strong control, I had to do everything possible to ensure that I wouldn't end up embarrassed and looking like an idiot. And through all of this I probably became very successful at it, at least at keeping my emotions under strong control so that I wouldn't burst into tears or snap at someone and end up making a real dick of myself.

The irony of all of this is, of course, that once I got towards the end of high school and into university, I found that I had gone too far and my emotions were under too much control. I found out that just as I was great at moderating myself when I felt bad and keeping an emotional distance between myself and everything else to make sure I didn't end up too hurt, that this also meant that it was really difficult to let myself experience positive emotions and to open myself up to the good friends that I had during this time. I was so good at making myself feel neutral, and being largely sheltered from everything that it was difficult to move away from that, difficult to let anyone in and see the real me, as I had specifically been hiding the real me for quite a few years as it seemed like he was an unlikeable idiot who continuously made a fool out of himself. Fortunately I do feel like I have largely regained my self-confidence throughout the last few years, although with a few rather large hiccups along the way obviously. At the end of high school my friendship with Jannatun enabled me to realise that the real me was actually someone pretty cool and worth knowing, while my relationship with Natalie made me realise that - seemingly unbelievably (as I had previously thought) I could actually be found attractive by someone, a physical boost to my self-confidence that had never happened before.

Yet I still sometimes notice that some of the effects of those years at intermediate and high school still stick with me and affect my personality. I'm not the kind of person who finds their emotions swinging this way and that way all the time, in fact I often have to force myself to get angry about something to make sure that I make sure my point is heard. While this is obviously useful at times, as I'm able to trust myself not to do something stupid in a rage and don't get too down-trodden when a few things don't quite go to plan, in other ways it's really annoying and I do find myself wishing that I didn't have quite the same level of control over my emotions. For example, when Jess broke up with me last year I almost wanted for force myself to cry while she was still there, so that she knew that this was tearing me up, but while I was shaking and felt totally shit, I couldn't externalise those feelings in an obvious way. I knew that to get myself through and over the hurt I felt I would first need to truly experience it, and then get that out of my system - but in the time after that I found myself acting so normally, a little quieter than usual but I wasn't a sobbing wreck all the time, which seemed to actually make things more difficult. I found myself listening to music that semi-related to what had happened and using the emotion in the music to finally bring some of those feelings to the surface of myself and finally experience them.

In effect, instead of doing anything and everything I could to stop myself from crying - as had been my goal for those years at intermediate and high school - I now found myself doing whatever I could to help myself cry, to become the cry baby I had been at primary school at intermediate once again.

Nostalgic Trip
Now Playing: Salmonella Dub - Bubble
I had, what I guess could be termed, a reasonably typical and not too busy weekend. I've had a bit of a cold throughout the last couple of days so that has slowed me down a bit, generally because of a blocked nose rather than any other too serious symptoms, but enough for me to not feel exactly like myself. Leila's recovery from her long-term illness appears just about complete, although that positive is balanced against her realisation of how far she's got behind in her university, which is stressful enough for me thinking about how she's going to catch up, let alone her thinking about how she's going to catch up. Nevertheless, by Sunday night the weekend felt quite satisfying, in a way that it hadn't felt on Saturday night really. It felt like a weekend should, having a little bit of everything to ensure that, while only being two days long compared to the previous weekend's glorious four days, it was still pretty cool.

I can hear myself thinking here "why on earth do I need to go into so much detail to remind myself why the weekend was actually pretty good?" I guess that a lot of my working week is made easier by looking forward to the upcoming weekend, to plan something particularly nice for it or to just have the knowledge that it will be a fun time. It's not that my work is particularly unlikeable or stressful - often Monday feels like my recovery day after a busy weekend - but I think I look forward to them because they're different, because during the week life just becomes so patterned that it's nice to have things done differently on the weekend. It's nice to not know exactly what I'll end up doing on that particular day, nice to know that I won't be getting up at exactly the same time, and going through a series of events every morning that turn out to be exactly the same each day. It's not that I find those events unpleasant in any way, and it's been particularly nice throughout the last month to have cricket to watch each morning while I'm eating breakfast - but in the end it's a pattern and every Friday night I find it quite exciting (in a silly way I guess) when I don't have to find my phone and set the alarm for 7.25am the next morning.

Anyway, on Saturday morning Amalia and I had some nice time with just the two of us. I dropped Leila at work, and then after that we headed off out towards Mission Bay. Amalia had been wanting to go to a nice playground, as she loves them, and as I had been getting a little sick of the same playgrounds over and over again, I remembered that the one at Mission Bay was particularly cool. However, driving out along Tamaki Drive we spotted one at Okahu Bay that looked like it might be fun, particularly as it appeared a little different to the normal playgrounds and had a flying fox.

There's something about flying foxes that always made them the coolest possible thing a playground could have. The one at Cornwall Park used to have a flying fox, as well as the coolest ever slide that twisted around a giant oak tree - before it got destroyed and turned into a pretty pathetic playground - apart from the push-train. The awesome playground at Long Bay on the North Shore also had a flying fox, though most of my memories of that place are of me being too scared to go on it. School camps generally had the best flying foxes, though I remember the one at my standard four camp seemed set up slightly wrong which meant that it was a mission to hang on when it slammed into the tyres at the end. However, the most amazing flying fox I have ever seen was at my standard three camp, at Carey Park in Henderson Valley. This one stretched for what seemed at the time to be an eternity, most probably at least a hundred metres I suppose. At the top you had to climb up about three flights of stairs to reach the top of the wooden structure you started off at. There was a rope netting underneath the first part of the flying fox, put there because if you fell of it from such a height the results would be pretty nasty. A teacher was there at the start to help you on, and there was an interesting system of pulleys required to help the actual fox get back up to the start. Some of the bigger boys were great at pulling this rope to get the fox back up to the top. I went on it at least once, possibly twice, absolutely shit-scared of coming off, but in the end loving the thrilling speed it accumulated on its long descent. To this day I haven't seen a cooler flying fox.

Nevertheless, the Okahu Bay one still looked pretty exciting, although knowing Amalia is still a bit small to go on it, I basically just popped it into my memory bank as something to surely come back to in the future when she's big enough to go on it on her own. We played around the rest of the playground, climbing some rope ladders, a few swings and more, before checking out the flying fox properly. I told Amalia to watch as I went on it by myself, and she was pretty amazed by how fast I zipped away. Soon afterwards another father and his son, who appeared to be about Amalia's age if possibly a bit older, came up to check out the flying fox. The boy asked his Dad if they could go on it together, something I hadn't really thought of as possible, and they just jumped on it and headed away - safe and happy as anything. After seeing that I figured that it would be sweet as for us, and after carefully positioning Amalia in a way that I could hold both her and the fox tightly, we zipped off as well. It was cool being able to share the thrill of her first flying fox ride, and brought back a whole tonne of memories related to them for me.

Yesterday the weather was really all over the place, so Leila, Amalia and I had a variety of small outings including a small walk around my old primary school - as there are a couple of really cool playgrounds there and Amalia really did seem obsessed by them this weekend. I was fine with that though, as it's always fun to marvel at her physical skills as she climbs up rope ladders like someone way older than her and balances her way across other areas in ways that even surprise me. It was interesting having a wander around Mt Albert primary, remembering my times there and all the fun little places I used to play in. I guess that because when you're at primary school your curiosity for the world is greater than later on, where you just hang out where you friends are, I explored every last little bit of that school a lot more than I explored my intermediate or even my high school. Therefore, no matter where we walked I found myself having so many memories and recollections from my days there. We sat down near the dias, where we always used to have school lunches for 10 minutes to make sure people actually ate their lunch before we could go off and play, and I imagined things how they were back then - which is at least 15 years ago now (god that makes me feel old). A few trees had disappeared, as well as some of the classrooms (stolen by Leila's old primary school as it turned out). I recalled having hundreds of lunches there, sitting in surely the best place possible with my best friend Nick as he had his ham roll and two superwine biscuits - which later turned into gingernuts, while I had a variety of things in my school lunches (most memorably those little red packets of raisins). It was funny to think that my best friend and I managed to end up with the best place possible to sit during lunches, and seemed to have so many other friends who sat around us. I guess it reminds me that things were actually pretty cool at primary school, and perhaps for once in my life I was part of the 'in crowd'.

The New School
Now Playing: Lifehouse - Hanging by a Moment
I suppose I was lucky in a few ways, that because my family have lived in the same house since before I was born I only ever went to three different schools: one primary school, one intermediate school and one high school. I know other people who chopped and changed schools again and again, which when I think about it must have been hell. I generally felt a bit sorry for the new kids that came to our schools, not knowing anyone and always feeling like a bit of an outsider, even months after they first started. Luckily I never really ended up in that particular situation, although effectively I probably did something very similar, something that - when I think about it - probably messed up a lot of things during my early teenage years.

During my time at Mt Albert Primary School the place did a bit of a metamorpohsis, thanks to the removal of school zoning, which allowed people to chop and change where they sent their kids. Mt Albert ended up with a Samoan principal and while the wider area was gentrifying throughout this time it seemed to largely bypass Mt Albert, that became more and more ethnically diverse throughout this time and as a result a lot of the people decided to send their kids to the oversize Gladstone Primary. It was a bit awkward having people who lived in our street but obviously sent their kids to another primary school because they wanted to avoid the one with all the Pacific Island kids, but despite (or perhaps because of) being one of the few white kids in my class at school, I dide really enjoy primary school. There were a few moments that weren't particularly great, like when I started wearing glasses (as I wrote about a few days ago), and a few other times that I plan to end up writing about at some stage on this page, but overall I did enjoy primary school. I had a best friend, Nick, who was in the same classroom as me for every year except when I was standard 1, which was a huge bonus. But I think the most important thing was that generally people were nice, and although there was the odd person who was mean to you, in general your friends were your friends and they stuck by you and didn't stab you in the back at every opportunity, just to look cool.

Towards the end of standard 4 it became a little worrying that everything might end up changing for me. For a start, Nick was always a year behind me at school (despite being less than two months younger than me) which meant that no matter what I would end up going to a different school to him at least for one year. And secondly, my parents planned for me to go to Pasadena Intermediate, largely because it was on my mum's way to work, rather than Kowhai Intermediate where most people from my primary school were going. I later learned that Kowhai had a bit of a bad reputation at the time, which (as is always the case for schools) may or may not have been justly deserved. I knew a couple of people who would be going to Pasadena, Tan and Andrew, although that was through the cricket team I was playing for rather than through school - and plus I knew the chances of ending up in the same class as them would be pretty low. In addition, a few people from my primary school seemed to be hinting that they may end up going to Pasadena as well, so I figured that possibly things wouldn't be particularly bad.

We had an open day at Pasadena at one stage towards the end of primary school. Unlike the open day at Kowhai, when all the standard 4 students had been dragged along because it was highly likely most would end up going there, my parents had to drop me off at the open day at Pasadena and then pick me up again. We all assembled in the school hall, where I managed to find Tan and Andrew, and also met their friend James - someone who I would know for the next 10 or so years. As is always the case when getting a bunch of students together in an assembly hall - even if we weren't yet going to that school - they got us to sing a bunch of songs (what is up with teachers and their obsession with singing?) which I didn't know because they were the ones other primary schools sung but not mine. We then wandered around the school, even getting split up in to the classrooms that we were likely to end up in the following year. I remember watching a bunch of seemingly huge guys play a game of handball on the courts, and then having my future teacher read us some of a Terry Pratchett book (the one about the really small people... I think). It wasn't a particularly unpleasant day, but I had this foreboding feeling that I felt out of place and a tad lonely, and that this would continue once things kicked off properly the next year.

On my first day of intermediate school I found myself feeling like the new kid at a school, and even though all the other form 1 students were technically in the same boat, they had friends who they knew from Gladstone, Grey Lynn, Westmere, Bayfield, Pt Chev or any number of other schools they had come from. And despite various chances for other Mt Albert Primary students to end up coming to Pasadena, it turned out that I was the one and only person from Mt Albert who came to Pasadena that year. Feeling left out from everyone else's primary school groups was difficult enough, but this was compounded with the general nastiness that accompanies intermediate school, as everyone starts to hit puberty their hormones scream at them to be as mean to everyone else as possible, so that they could feel a little bit better about themselves. From the happy friendliness of primary school it felt like I was being thrown into a big nasty fire - one that seemed to get worse and worse at every opportunity.

Fortunately I did find myself making a couple of friends reasonably early on. I had met Umesh, an Indian guy from Gladstone, on my first day. We discovered interestingly that we were both born on April 27th, 1982 at the same hospital and therefore there was a good chance our mothers had seen each other around the maternity ward at that time. However, at intermediate school we each had our individual desks where we spent all our time, and unfortunately if you didn't end up sitting next to or near your friend it meant that you hardly had any opportunity to talk to them or interact with them during class time. You were left sitting next to other people, who seemed to over time develop a hearty dislike for me.

The Next Level
Now Playing: The Fray - Trust Me
It has now been six years and three months (to the day as of yesterday actually) since I first made an entry in this blog. As I've mentioned over the years, back then I thought of it as a news page, I hadn't even heard of blogs and wouldn't hear of them for another year or so. Rather, my news page was a place for me to quickly retell the events that were going on in my life. Short and sharp little opinions that I now find rather embarrassing punctuated what was going on in my life, and although I don't think it compares much with the quality and length of my current entries, it was a great start and it's a really good way of looking back on my life from that time. Over the past six years my blog has evolved, had a few breaks, had some times when I seemed to update almost every day, had other times when it was more infrequent, short posts, long posts, interesting posts, boring posts and so on. Last year I started retelling a few stories of my childhood, which I found fun to write about and hopefully were interesting for people to read about. A couple of days ago there was the story of my glasses, which once again was quite interesting to relive, although a bit painful still at times.

I guess the big question is where do I want to take my blog into the future? Do I see myself still writing in here in another six years and three months? Hell by then it will be 2013 and I will be over 30 years old! I certainly hope that is the case, as hopefully Angelfire doesn't go belly up and gobble all my archives and hopefully I continue to feel motivated to keep the thing regularly updated. I don't see why that wouldn't be the case, especially if the next 'life pattern' I find myself in (which shouldn't be too far away once we move into our own place) is conducive to blog-updating. But that doesn't really answer the question of where I want to take the blog next - whether I want to continue it in a similar way to how it's gone in the past, with it focusing on what's going on in my life with a few other things thrown in their on the odd occassion, whether I want to focus it a little more narrowly on some topic so that is has a bit more of a niche, or whether I want to talk about different aspects of my life a bit more?

I don't really want to repeat myself again by saying that at the very bare minimum I do want my blog to provide a record of my life, as that's pretty obvious. But above that I really feel like I want to do something a bit extra with it, something that can take it to the next level perhaps, something that would be interesting enough for more people to randomly come across it, add it to their favourites and possibly even link back to it. I had a chat with Leila on Friday last week, as we were walking back from Takapuna beach to Milford beach actually, about what makes a particular blog end up with heaps and heaps of hits, or being one that we find particularly good. In the end it seemed like the main ingredient was pretty simple: quality. Sure there are other useful things that will attract people to visit your site - such as commenting all over the place so that people will follow the links back to your site, or ending up on the links list of a rather major blog, but the only thing that will keep people coming back again and again is if what you're writing is enjoyable, interesting and generally of a good quality.

I think that over the past few months the general quality of my updates has improved a lot. They have generally got longer, and a bit more focused on a few things rather than skimming over lots of things but only in a small amount of detail. Where I have needed to skim, I've done it quickly and got into something with a bit more depth later on in the post, and generally I have managed to get closer to how my ideal blog would be. At the same time I've ended up with more readers, still largely my regular ones (you know who you are!) but also and increasing number of randoms seem to drop by and then stick around, which is also pretty cool. Yet I still find myself reading other people's blogs, and wish that mine could be more like theirs, not necessarily because they get more visitors than me, but often just because the way they write could be more fun and interesting to read than the way I write in here. And then I get thinking about ways in which I could do things better on here, while at the same time ensuring that it still feels right when I'm updating, and doesn't feel like a completely new and different blog.

Then on Sunday night (I think it was then) Leila and I had just watched Big Fish and I was feeling all philosophical about things, as you when watching a movie like that, and it got me thinking about ways in which to bring more emotion into this blog. To write about my past a bit more, and not just the happy and joyous memories, but also those which weren't so great but probably as a result had more of an impact on my life. The traumatic events or otherwise that led to me having the personality type that I do today, particularly from my school days because I feel like I can reflect on them now in a more objective manner. By writing more about these kinds of things it may serve other purposes too: people who I know who read this blog may feel like they know me a bit better and understand me a bit more, I might be able to lay a few ghosts to rest in my memory, and I may end up actually understanding myself a little better as a result of writing it out and really thinking about things. I know that I have a tonne of stories to tell, a tonne of experiences that I could share and I think that it would not only make this site a bit more interesting to read, but also really make me understand who I am and why I am like this a little bit more. There's nothing like a bit of introspection.

Of course this won't mean that I abandon writing about what's happening in my life, as that'll always be an important part of this blog, but hopefully on the days when nothing particularly interesting has happened I can delve back into my past and revive a few memories in a way that helps me - and everyone else - understand who I am a little bit more. Fewer gaps between entries has to be a good thing!

Happy 3rd Birthday
Now Playing: Madagascar - I Like To Move It
Dear Amalia,

Today I see you turning 3, and I find myself amazed in some ways that it has been three years since you were born, yet in other ways it seems like a lifetime, not just for you but also for me. To imagine my life without you is now impossible. On your first birthday I promised myself to write something nice in both your birthday card and on my blog every birthday for you. Something that would go a way towards letting you know some day how much joy you bring to my life.

Since your last birthday it's funny to think that everyone has experienced the third year of your life. A year that has been dominated so much by your amazing grasp of language, and the way in which your talking has left everyone hurting with laughter on some occassions, or simply amazed by your sweet words on other occassions. Seeing you now as a big sister reminds me of how much you have grown and developed over this year, and how amazing you truly are as you do your absolute best to hold Aston correctly, or to comfort him when he is sad.

I look forward enormously to the next year, to experience your development as a three year old, and to enjoy the times I have with you. Nobody could have made me feel better like you managed when I needed it most last year, that you could bring a smile to my face when I thought it wasn't possible. I find myself thinking of you as not just my daughter, but as a great friend of mine, someone who I treasure every moment with, and someone who I enormously look forward to seeing you develop into the future.

Happy Birthday my little girl, I hope that the next year can be your most fun yet!

Lots of Love,
Daddy XXOO

The Glasses Kid
Now Playing: Snow Patrol - Ask Me How I Am
When I was about six years old I remember going with my mum to a place where they tested my eyes. I had to look at this chart of letters and read them out aloud. I seemed to do OK with it and nothing more registered much in my memory. At school I remember reading the blackboard fairly well with my friend Nick, and at one stage managing to read it better than he seemed able to. But apparently it was at this very early stage, during this trip to the optometrist when I was six, that it first became obvious that I would take after my father rather than my mother when it came to my eyesight - short-sightedness.

In my last year at primary school we went back to the optometrist, although this time to a different place on the outside of St Lukes shopping centre. Once again I hadn't noticed anything particularly wrong with me, I had seemed to do OK during the hearing and vision tests we had in our school library at primary school. Yet this time it was a bit more of a struggle to do as well as people expected of me, and after that trip it became clear - that I would need glasses. I remember sitting in St Lukes after that with my mum, and feeling a level of fear and sadness that I hadn't really come across before. I was going to need glasses, I was going to stand out from everyone else, I was going to look stupid, and it was something that wasn't going to go away, this was something I was literally stuck with for the rest of my life. I particularly remember this because it was the only time I could recall that my mum hadn't tried to tell me that it wasn't really a big deal, that I didn't need to be so upset about it. I guess she knew that it was a big deal, and in some ways life would never quite be the same again for me.

We picked out what seemed to be the most suitable and practical set of glasses for me to have at this stage of my life. A double connection between the two lenses for extra strength, rubber hooks attached to the ear support things so that they wouldn't come off my face all the time. I didn't mind how they looked too much, although looking back at photos now I did look rather stupid. But I didn't really have a choice I suppose. At first it was quite amazing the effect the glasses had, I could see colours in a way that I just didn't think was possible, everything had a clarity to itself that appeared similar to a situation where someone would have drawn little black lines around the edge of everything. I remember getting home and looking at my bookcase, and just being amazed by how bright the colours were. Because I had never experienced perfect vision up until then I guess that I had just accepted that colours weren't particularly bright, that things weren't that sharp and that everyone saw the same way as me. It was quite amazingly actually.

Yet that didn't stop me from being freaked out by the prospect of having to wear these things for the rest of my life, and particularly from wearing to them at school. Although primary school was hugely enjoyable for me, overall, by the time we got to Standard 4 the nastiness that would really kick in at intermediate school and high school between student was just starting to emerge between people. I didn't wear my glasses to school immediately, as my parents thought it would be a good idea if I got used to them first. This was just fine by me, as I wanted to delay this moment for as long as possible, though I mentioned it to a few of my friends and began to notice how many students around the school also had glasses, how much of a freak I would end up being. Out of about 250 kids at the school, I think I counted two others who had glasses - oh yay I would be in a select group of three out of the whole entire school. When you're around 10 years of age, having something like that sets you apart from almost everyone else is most definitely not a good thing.

I know that all this was happening in around March 1992, because one day I came home from school - after not wearing my glasses during the day - and the 1992 Cricket World Cup was on TV. New Zealand was playing Zimbabwe in a rain affected match, which turned out to be a really spectacular match to watch. But the thing that stuck in my mind was how odd the TV looked to me. Instead of the clear pictures that I was used to it looked to me like it was a strange muddle of colours. I realised that I hadn't put my glasses on yet, but at the same time this seemed strange because only a few weeks earlier it had seemed like I had been able to watch TV no problem. Perhaps having the glasses meant that my brain didn't have to work quite as hard to make sense out of the images my eyes were sending it, and therefore didn't know how to deal with things when it did have to work harder again.

But anyway, I knew the time would eventually come where I had to wear my glasses to school. On the first day I think that Ella was at home for some reason, perhaps because she was sick, because I remember hearing to school along Sainsbury Road from where my mum dropped us off (I suggested this spot to her when I was 7 to save her a bit of time from where she used to drop me off - talk about being the geographer early on). Wandering down the road towards school I felt so terrified and up-tight - how would this go? Would things ever be the same again? What horrible names would people call me? I knew that it wouldn't take much to push me over the edge to a big bubbling mess, not so much because anything particularly bad was going to happen, but because I was so freaked out anyway. A few people commented on them before school, and I explained it to them, and I'm pretty sure that my best friend Nick would have known about them already by that stage.

As we sat down to start classes for the day it seemed to me as though everyone was talking about me, but I had got through to that point OK. Then Scott, a reasonably good acquaintance of mine, wandered in to class - a little late like he always did. Scott was nice guy from memory, a little bit odd in some ways I suppose, but someone who seemed quite intelligent but just seemed to end up getting the wrong end of the stick all the time. I suppose thinking back now there's probably a good chance he was ADHD, or perhaps something even a little bit more severe, but as a kid you'd never heard of such terms so we all just knew him as the smart but slightly crazy guy. During our maze-drawing phase he drew the most insanely impossible mazes of everyone, and didn't seem to worry about whether they were possible to do or not. Our teacher, Ms Ripley, seemed to eternally have something against him though, and he spent most of Standard 4 sitting at a desk right next to hers so that she could keep a close eye on what he was up to. But anyway, as misunderstood as Scott was, he had his heart in the right place, which is why I was so shocked when he spotted me with my glasses on as he walked into the classroom and immediately came up to me to say "hey four-eyes!" It was probably something I had would have expected from people who I knew didn't like me much, but coming from Scott it took me completely by surprise.

That's probably why I found myself bursting into tears. It was horribly embarrassing for me to have this as my response, but when I think back on it, it was something that was definitely going to happen and to get it out of the way this early was probably a good thing. Scott apologised to me profusely, and said he thought I was wearing the glasses as a joke. I'm not sure whether he actually thought this, or whether he just felt really bad about getting that sort of reaction. Nevertheless, it wasn't a particularly good start to the day. I managed to get through most of the rest of the day without too many dramas, I think largely because everyone was too freaked out I was going to burst into tears again to say anything to me much at all. Later in the afternoon that day (I think it was the same day) we were having some time in the computer lab - which was basically two computers back in the days of green writing on a black screen, and ones where you couldn't take the disk out if the right light was on (or was it if the light was off?) because if you did you'd kill the whole computer. While we were there, there was another kid called Dipak who wasn't even from my class, who decided it would be fun to call me four eyes as well. I don't remember if I burst into tears on that occassion, but it shook me up a bit and for some reason Dipak became a bit of an enemy with me for the next while as we each tried to think of nastier and nastier insults to call each other. I think at some stage I must have burst into tears, because after then he kept on saying mean stuff and then following it up with "well come on.... are you gonna cry again?" I never figured out why he had quite so much against me.

I did eventually get better at dealing with being the glasses kid. Not long after I got mine it seemed like there was a glasses explosion around the school, and us freaks doubled in number - perhaps up to about six out of 250. I found that I didn't always burst into tears as soon as someone called me four eyes or some other glasses related tease. Yet it still seemed like things were very different for me, I couldn't just go and play rugby with everyone else in winter on the fields because I was worried about getting my glasses broken, I found myself dominated by them in a way greater than I had hoped for. Whether or not it was reality, I found myself thinking that everyone looking at me would first see the glasses and then as an afterthought see the rest of me. Any thoughts I had had about making progress with Olivia, the girl I liked at the time, went out the window as I was now the freak with glasses, and why on earth would she want to be associated with me when there were all these other normal people around?

It's strange how long that mentality hung around with me. Throughout intermediate I had a continuous crush on the one girl, Ana, yet never even went close to doing anything about it, and the process continued right through until the end of high school really. I saw photos or videos of myself and understood why people wouldn't want to have particularly much to do with me, as I looked like a complete dork, which of course made things even worse as my self-confidence plummeted. Even after high school, when I found myself girlfriends - even long-term ones - I still felt as though wearing glasses prevented me from being "normal". After I was single again in 2004 I found myself trying contact lenses again, after having a pretty long break from using them although I had been using contacts on and off since December 2002. One time at McDonald's, probably around December 2004 or January 2005 I found myself staring out from behind the big food storage bin at McDonald's checking out the "scenery" as we used to call it (translation: the hot girls), and I finally realised that as I was wearing contact lenses that I no longer had to worry that I looked like an idiot, that I no longer had this immediate thought that anyone looking at me would go "oh he looks stupid" or "he looks OK despite his glasses" and so on. I could actually comprehend the thought that someone might find me randomly attractive, that I didn't have to make up for wearing glasses by being ultra-charming or ultra anything else. That I could actually feel confident in the way that I looked.

It had taken close to 13 years, and although my self-confidence had largely been restored by then, it felt like this was the last little nail in the coffin of my self-doubt. It had taken a while.

A Satisfying Weekend
Now Playing: Blink 182 - Miss You
Indeed easter did turn out to be a very satisfyingly lengthy four day weekend. Everything that I wrote about on Thursday of last week made itself so incredibly obvious over the past four days - most particularly that I finally had the opportunity to have a weekend where everything was possible. From a nice beachwalk between Takapuna Beach on Friday, a pleasant time with Amalia on Saturday at the library and the local playground, a great blob day on Sunday including cricket watching, cafe visiting and DVD watching, and then a more active day today taking Amalia to the easter show, this weekend did seem to have it all. I don't want to run through a 'blow by blow' account of everything, as while that could be somewhat interesting it's the kind of thing that I would have written for a fifth form history essay - which frankly if I was to read now I would find immensely boring. But there were some cool moments.

On Friday afternoon Leila and I went for a walk between Milford Beach and Takapuna Beach. It was an interesting walk, as much for the insanely over the top houses on the cliff-side of the walkway as for the amazingly stunning view out to sea. I guess it's pretty scary when you get people with a shit load of money coupled together with a fairly obvious part of the city to show it off. Each house seems like it's trying to be a little bit more wanky and pretentious than the last one, although in the middle of it you find a cute little cottage that looks like it's been there since about 1890. There was one cute cottage for sale right at the southern end of Milford Beach just as we were starting our walk - being promoted as an unprecedented property on the market, with a character historic type cottage on it etc. etc. Then right at the bottom was the sign that really told the proper story - 900 odd sqare metre development site. As if someone would spend $3 million or so to have this cute little cottage, even if it was right by the sea. I imagine that within a couple of years it'll be gone, and yet another wanky pretentious building put in place.

It was actually quite amusing to see how far some people will go with this. I remember a few years ago helping my dad out with a job of his, landscaping and planting a garden for someone who lived in this area, on the illustrious Minnehaha Avenue I think. They had this utterly spectacular house, views out into the Hauraki Gulf that appeared unmatched and so on and so forth. They had the first flat screen TV I had ever seen and this bathroom which seemed about the same size as half our house. But I digress, as we were walking along the path I mentioned to Leila about this house, and wondered whether I would be able to recognise it, and as we came around a corner there was one in particular that looked quite familiar. The front of it appeared in the shape of a boat, which was how the whole house had deliberately been designed, and the view matched up with my memory... except on second glance we noticed that in fact the house wasn't the actualy house, but only a boat-house, and the actual house was this giant structure further up the cliff. A boat house that could be confused with a proper house - could only happen here. But apart from the jealousy of these amazing huge and luxurious houses, we did have a nice walk along the path, stopping for a while under some pohutukawa trees for a breather and a bit of a read, and also crucially an opportunity to scoff easter egg. After stopping at the really nice secluded beach about halfway between Milford and Takapuna we continued on and did finally make it through to Takapuna Beach.

We bought a bit of late lunch, and then sat down for a bit to eat it, and to enjoy the spot and the great weather for a little while. There was a boat ramp nearby, complete with people struggling to back their little speed-boat down this long ramp, get it into the water, park the car back in the carpark and then get back down the boat-ramp and into the boat. I guess I had never thought about how tricky this process would be before, but watching it and having a bit more of a think about it there seemed to be so many opportunities for it to turn into a complete disaster: what if you back the boat down at the wrong angle and it goes off the side of the boat-ramp, taking the car with it? What if you don't secure the boat properly after disengaging it from the trailer and it slowly floats off into the distance? What if the wife's onboard as it floats away? With so many opportunities for disaster I thought we might at least see something horrible go wrong, but it seemed like everyone actually knew what they were doing for once, and I was amazed that they managed to pull something off which seemed to me as being so difficult, quite so easily. I guess they do it every weekend though.

It reminded me a lot of some of the stories my old cricket coach Peter used to tell us. Peter had so many amazing stories if I could even remember half of them I'd have enough hilarity to fill this page for months. But anyway, this particular story he recounted to us on a few occassions, and as a result stuck in my mind. Apparently, when he was feeling a bit bored and in need of some entertainment, Peter would head down to the local boat-ramp on a Sunday morning. Not to launch a boat, or to even go fishing or anything like that, no this trip was solely to see how everyone would manage to fuck up getting their boat into the water. He had stories of obviously super-rich people with their brand new giant boat carefully backing this monstrosity down the boat-ramp for the first time and setting it off into the water only for it to start floating away, with either the wife freaking out on board or the husband quickly abandoning his nice new 4WD to jump in after the boat and swim out to it. Peter always used to say that the biggest boats were always the funniest ones, as their owner's generally had the least idea about what to do. On one occassion Peter claimed he had seen a car ripped in two by the total incompetence of those trying to get the boat on its trailer into the water. I guess you never know how much to believe of stories like these, but I'm sure there must have been some truth in them. Perhaps one day if I find myself in the mood I will head down to a boat-ramp reasonably early and check out for myself just how amusing it can be watching people try to get their oversize boats into the water.

I think if I had the money to buy a boat, I'm sure I could find something else particularly nice to spend it on.

Easter
Now Playing: Snow Patrol - The Finish Line
Today's a Thursday, but fantastically it feels like a Friday, and effectively it is. When I was younger I never really thought that much of easter - generally because it got swallowed by school holidays and the only excitement was the easter egg Ella and I would always get from our Nana. Sometimes my Mum would manage to overcome the thought that our teeth would fall out from all the chocolate and get us one too, but not normally. The times when easter didn't fall in the holidays were pretty cool as we'd get Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off school - a five day holiday which really felt like an age. Occassionally there would be the trip down to Thames, often on the Monday before coming back on the Tuesday so we'd miss all the traffic from people having to be back on Monday night. But oddly enough I feel a bit more excited about things these days - not so much because I'm a born-again Christian or anything (ha... now there's a funny thought), or because I'm going to get drowned in easter eggs (although Leila got me one earlier in the week that was niiiiiiiiiiiiiice), but because it's four days off. Yes... four glorious days off work!

Most of the time I really feel like my weekends are one day too short. On the weekends when I have Amalia the whole time I find myself more exhausted on Sunday night than I was on Friday night, while on the other weekends I do manage to have that nice relaxing day, but only get Amalia for the Saturday. In both cases it always feels like an extra day would make life so much easier, and make my weekends so much more pleasant. So the prospect of a four day weekend is truly awesome, plenty of relaxation time, plenty of time to do whatever takes my fancy. Thursday night's effectively like a Friday night, Sunday night will be like a Saturday night - yayness! It's come around at an excellent time too, as the whole past few weeks have felt extraordinarily exhausting. As mentioned in my previous post, it seems as though one thing or another has been going insane since February and I really feel like having that break which easter will provide.

I noticed yesterday that it was the fourth of April. Back three years ago now there seemed to be a reasonable chance that Amalia could have been born on that date, which would have made for the most awesome date-of-birth ever: 04-04-04. I think four is an unlucky Chinese number for some reason, but as I'm not at all superstitious I think it would have been a pretty cool DOB. You certainly wouldn't have to worry about whether the month or the day came first, or the year for that matter. In any case, she held on for another week before finally deciding to come and meet the world. This means that her third birthday is now less than a week away, which is a bit freaky. I took her back to Natalie's this morning after having her stay with us last night, and she had a quick cuddle with her baby brother Aston just before I left, and it was amazing to look at her with this little baby on her knee and think how big she looked. Normally I always find myself thinking of Amalia as little, not because she's small for her age or anything, but just because she's obviously smaller than most of the other people around her. Yet seeing her holding Aston, and noticing how big she looked really made me realise that this little girl of mine is most definitely growing up. It still seems odd to think of her as a big sister, because she always seems like my little girl, that she's the baby, but I guess that over time my subconscious will get over those things and realise that indeed she is growing up. I guess that in some ways it's a little sad as I do miss her at younger ages, but in general I'm excited to see her growing up, excited as she does new things such as trying to sound out the words we had written next to her paintings - even though she doesn't really recognise too many letters yet. I am looking forward to her growing up, which is a really cool thing.

The other funny thing to think is that I clearly remember my third birthday, and there is a strong chance that in the future Amalia will also remember it. It's generally big events that stick in one's memory over the years - as I remember a Guy Fawkes and meeting my cousin before the age of three, and I think there's a good chance that even if Amalia doesn't remember her birthday she will remember some of the events of the last few weeks - she may well remember seeing Aston for the first time. Funny how I get more excited about her birthdays than I do about my own.

Shellshocked
Now Playing: Snow Patrol - Same
It has been a really really insane last week and a bit at work. Hence the lack of updates, but also a feeling of shellshock after it all - especially after yesterday which was particularly insane. The subdivision consent that I have been working on almost exclusively for the past three or four weeks came to a climax, with our lodgement meeting yesterday afternoon. With about two days worth of work to get done in the morning my boss and I were totally flat stick organising it all. There were six copies of everything to be printed out, collated and bound. Twelve different appendices, various drawings at A3 size, A1 size and an enormous amount of time pressure was pretty insane. But we managed to get things organised pretty well indeed actually, although once we got to our mapping people who were to provide us with will these necessary plans things went insane again slotting them into the right parts of the report and so on. With six copies of everything it was a crap load of paper flying around everywhere. Six copies of the 64 page geotechnical report threatened to kill my printer for a while while everything else just was so so so insane. Amazingly we did manage to make it to the council meeting on time, although it became apparent quite quickly that we would need more information before they'd accept the application. Talk about frustration - going absolutely crazy for hours trying to meet a deadline and then realising that you've got to go back and organise things yet again. Luckily it wasn't our stuff that the council have problems with, but rather some of the engineering drawings and other related things so we didn't feel too much like idiots, but it was frustrating all the same.

It's a bit funny that this work insanity would happen at the same time that life outside work finally seems to be returning to some sort of normality. Leila is making good progress in her recovery, although she had "spectacular" results on her liver tests the other day, which is a little concerning. March was a pretty crazy month really when I think about it, as while my life was probably fairly normal with Leila's illness and Natalie having baby Aston - and then a whole pile of annoying subsequent complications - it seems like the month was anything but normal.

House-hunting has been thrust on the back-burners a little bit lately. Leila and I are still keeping up to date with new places that pop up and look like they might be good, but for some reason it doesn't "feel" like we're going to be moving anytime particularly soon. I don't think this is a pessimistic feeling, or even a realistic feeling I have, but the whole concept that within a few weeks we might be living in a completely different house just seems so unreal that I haven't quite got my head around it. I suppose that it's quite a big psychological change that will probably only kick in once we have actually found a place and got everything confirmed. The idea of having everything set up and going in a new place, a place that is our own rather than my parents' is really exciting, but at the same time thinking about the upcoming move is scary. Imagining the amount of packing that will be required, shifting furniture, setting up the new place, it all seems so daunting at the moment and is somewhat counter-balancing the positives that I can see in the future.

I haven't been writing in here much in the last week or so, for reasons somewhat outlined above. Hopefully with a four day weekend coming up, and a slightly less hectic work-schedule in the immediate future, things will settle themselves down and I will be able to find the time to get back into the habit of regular updates.

The Abandoned Blog
Now Playing: Lifehouse - Wash
Dear Blog,

I know that I've neglected you quite a lot this week. I've been really busy, and while I know that's not really an excuse as I have been busy in the past and still updated, but busyness of work has generally meant that at other times I've been quite keen to fully relax and haven't had the energy or motivation to write something particularly witty.

On the upside of things, Leila - you know that gorgeous girlfriend of mine - had her 21st birthday on Tuesday. We went out for a really nice dinner, although I did my normal at dinner which is really dig in to the starters because I'm so hungry and then find myself full halfway through an amazing main course. You would think that I would have learned by now to not do such things, but I am afraid my friend Blog that I appear to be a slow learner in that respect. Leila's throat is still killing her, but the fevers seems to be a little less frequent so hopefully she's slowly on the mend.

I do feel bad about neglecting you for the past few days Blog, especially considering how well I was doing in the last couple of weeks. I must have built up your hopes of continuing regular updates, and I am a bit sad that hasn't been able to continue. Hopefully you won't be too grumpy with me, and I will be able to make it up to you with a few more insightful and witty updates in the next week or so.

Yours Faithfully,
Josh

Meh-ness
Now Playing: Savage Garden - Crash and Burn
A bit of a strange weekend really I suppose. It felt relaxing enough I guess, with my parents going away up to Mangawhai Heads for a while Leila and I had the place to ourselves on Saturday evening and throughout Sunday. It feels like everything is still somewhat on hold as Leila's illness seems to be of the kind that isn't particularly actively nasty, it just robs her of energy and is likely to stick around for some time yet. Nevertheless, she's definitely in better health overall than she was this time last week, so hopefully that kind of trend can continue. Of course things are still moving forwards in life, with the flat-hunting continuing and work rolling on in its fairly slow pattern at the moment. The whole flat hunting business is quite mixed emotionally really - on the one hand it's exciting going through new places and wondering whether this will be the one, whether this could be the place where we end up living; yet on the other hands there are so many disappointments and frustrations. Frustrations that a particular place seemed perfect, but didn't have a bath and/or dishwasher. Disappointments when a really nice looking place is already gone without you really having a good chance to apply for it. I guess it's also daunting at the same time when I think ahead to moving house yet again. The stress of it, the sheer disruption of it, it sort of puts a dampener on what I should be looking forward to. Probably because I've done the shifting thing far too many times in the last few years - twice in each of the last three years actually.

Aside from all these millions of little things running around in my head, I suppose that the weekend was actually pretty cool in quite a few ways. Amalia was a little sick during her time here on Friday night and through Saturday, but apart from getting really upset at lunch time because I cut her sandwich into triangles and not squares (at her request) she was actually pretty damn good. We took her shopping around St Lukes for a little while, to get a few little things such as a sticker album and some balloons, and also to have a bit of a nosey around for possible birthday presents as her third birthday is only now a couple of weeks away. Earlier in the day I had taken Amalia out to see my Nana, which as always was also quite a lot of fun. We played around on the playground near my Nana's place for a while, having an awesome time playing games - and I almost forgot that she was supposed to be sick considering how energetic she was being. That can be the odd thing when Amalia is sick, that half the time she acts so normally that its easy to forget she's not herself. At other times she's just grumpy or what I would term "fragile" in that the smallest upsets send her into tantrums - or when she's really sick there's this strange disturbing silence from her. That's when I really know something's wrong.

With all these sick people around I sometimes feel like it's only a matter of time before I get struck down too. Particularly as Leila has now been sick for over a week, and is unlikely to be getting better in an enormous hurry it seems somewhat surprising that I feel generally as good as I do. Last Monday I felt a bit feverish for a while, and again today I have had a few headaches and not felt "quite right" a lot of the time, yet at the same time I've also hardly felt what I would term "sick". Pehaps I am just getting really mild versions of what everyone else has got at the moment, and therefore I am managing to immunise myself against getting it in a worse way. I certainly hope that is the case! It's just a rather big annoyance for Leila getting so sick at the moment, with her postgrad university just starting to really ramp things up, with a house-move not too far away, and with her 21st birthday.... well... tomorrow.

Sleepy Friday
Now Playing: Moby - Novio
Fridays are great, there's no doubt about that. Even if the weekend that's ahead of you doesn't turn out to be as great as you thought it would be, there's something immensely uplifting sitting at work on a Friday afternoon knowing that there's all this free time ahead of you, all this potential and opportunity just spreading out in front of you. I remember when I was at school I used to feel so much better about things from a Wednesday afternoon onwards because I knew that I was more than halfway through the week. It wasn't really as though my weekends were that fantastic, but they were certainly better than school was.

For a number of years, really up until the start of last year in fact, weekends did lose something of their significance. The whole student life thing necessitated working on weekends, and even when I wasn't a student throughout 2003 a lot of the time I found myself working on weekends anyway. I guess this was rather annoying in the sense that it took away that awesome feeling on Friday afternoons - but on the other hand sometimes I did have random two day 'weekends' on Mondays and Tuesdays, or most frequently two days off that were randomly split up across the week. Normally a Tuesday and a Saturday from memory. There was a brief stage back about four years ago actually when it seemed like I did indeed have proper weekends, but that certainly didn't last very long.

I don't think I find myself looking forward to the weekends because they're any more relaxing than my weeks. The last couple of weeks at work have been pretty damn quiet actually, lots of waiting for other people to get back to me, or trying in vain to contact people and not really being able to do particularly much without a reply from them. There's something really annoying about not having people get back to you about things - and at the moment it seems like nobody from a certain government agency has a working voice mailbox. Indeed, there's a good chance that my upcoming weekend will be less relaxing than my week has been, that there will be more things for me to do and it will be more exerting. But in a way that's quite possibly what I find myself looking forward to - as sitting around in my office at work when there's not particularly much to do actually does get a little boring after a while. I do try to keep myself occupied, by doing little things such as updating this blog with lengthy rants about nothing in particular, but there's only so far that can go. It's more the lure of not having to be in this one particular place for a whole couple of days, to have a good time with Amalia and Leila that really makes me look forward to this upcoming weekend.

Dreamlike Surrealities
Now Playing: Maroon 5 - Must Get Out
Leila and I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind last night. It was the first time I had seen this movie, and although it was a little odd seeing Jim Carrey playing a rather serious character, once all the pieces of the movie's puzzle came together it turned out to be a fantastic film. I'll try not to spoil too much of the plot for people who haven't seen the film, but it was the strange surreality of it all that really appealed to me. There's something about movies or television shows that have this weird 'not quite right' sense to them that I find fascinating. I guess it's because I find myself in real life being such a down to earth and realistic person it's nice to break away from that for a while, or to at least pretend that strange impossible type things could actually happen. Perhaps that's why I find my dreams so interesting.

Anyway, Eternal Sunshine has a lot of parts to it when the main character's memory is being slowly removed bit by bit. It's as if he's somewhere and then things around him start to disappear, which is done very cleverly through some fairly groovy special effects. While this kind of thing obviously doesn't happen quite so dramatically in real life, I was thinking last night and this morning that something rather similar happens to our memories of dreams when we wake up in the morning. Last night I know that I had quite a few dreams, some fairly complex and lengthy while others seemed to jump all over the place. Late in the night I could still vaguely recall quite a few of the dreams I had been having earlier in the night, as well as obviously remembering my most recent dreams in particular detail. Yet a few minutes later it was as if all those memories and all those thoughts had been suddently zapped from my mind. At first I had a few straws to clutch at, a few little strands that I thought would perhaps pull me back into that world and enable me to remember other parts of my dreams. But slowly they disappeared as well, and all I find myself with now are brief flashes of what could have been dreams from last night, but could also have been from any one of a number of nights before, or possibly may have even just been random memories or thoughts that flit through my head from time to time. It's like a recurring amnesia in a way, but also one when I'm able to re-enter that dream world each night and recall those past dreams so amazingly better than I'm able to whilst awake. I guess it's frustrating in that I know there's this incredibly rich world of memories, stories and places that I can't access whilst awake and can only remember the most amazingly miniscule bits of. But on the other hand perhaps this is what makes it so much more fascinating, that the fact that I can't remember most of my dreams is what makes them believable to me when I am asleep - in that I find myself in this 'other world' that makes sense as another world which is consistent with how it's been in the past but still different enough to my awake world for me to not get too suspicious.

Sometimes when I come across things that are obviously unrealistic in a dream it's amazing the lengths my mind goes to in order to try and justify how such a thing would be possible to myself. I used to commonly have a dream about it never becoming dark at night, or of the sun rising at weird times such as 2am. I would find myself either awake and out in the sun but looking at my watch thinking how bizarre it was that the sky was so blue and the sun was out considering the time, or at home trying to sleep but realising that the sun was up and being confused that such a thing would happen so early. Yet even in this I would find myself searching for a justification - perhaps that I was actually somewhere in the Arctic Circle and I was experiencing the midnight sun, or perhaps my watch wasn't quite right. In any case the realisation that I was in a dream rarely came to me, which I guess was a bit sad.

Quite a few years ago I had this recurring dream that I found quite distressing at the time, but now think of it as quite interesting. My first memory of this dream had me at my Nana's house in Howick I think. Perhaps this links back to me having my earliest absolute Christmas memory out there when I was 5 years old, but in the dream I think it was perhaps Christmas time again, the New Year's.... and then seemingly so quickly another Christmas and another New Year's rolled around. In what seemed like a matter of weeks whole years were rolling past. It was obviously quite scary in the sense the my life just seemed to be disappearing before my eyes, and that I could see the dates on calendars flick from one year to the next and on again so quickly. I would be visiting my Nana again and again for Christmases, year after year in what seemed to be such small gaps. I suppose that because time seems like such a constant the way in which it was sped up make things so freaky for me, and that it felt like I was forgetting so much of what was happening in my life between each of these successive Christmases and New Years. By losing my memories of those times it felt like my life was literally disappearing before my eyes - which was obviously what freaked me out, but is also what makes it quite fascinating to think about.

The whole idea of these "blank times" between memories is what I seem to find quite fascinating I suppose. Whether it's in a dream - a bizarre feeling that I've totally forgotten how I ended up at this point but I'm here - or whether it's looking back at my past wishing I could remember more of what happened in September 1999 for example. I find these gaps quite fascinating in movies as well, which is where this all started watching Eternal Sunshine last night. When the main character wakes up in the morning at the very start of the movie it's like he's found himself in this present with no sense of the past that has gone before him. It turns out that there's a reason for this, but the way in which his life seems so utterly empty is quite fascinating. That feeling of "what on earth has he been doing in his life for the past year or so" is quite a nifty trick that movies manage to pull, and generally there's a strong reason for them doing that. Other films where I have felt the same sort of thing include The Sixth Sense, American Beauty and Stranger than Fiction.

Hmmm... this has turned out to be a rather odd blog post. A little bit of this and that, a few old dreams of mine thrown in together with everything else. Ah well it's been interesting enough to write - if only I could remember more of my dreams I would have the most amazingly interesting blog entries every single day. Maybe I could write a little bit more about past dreams I've had that I do remember reasonably well.

An Odd Dream
Now Playing: Ben Folds - Rocking the Suburbs
I've written a few times about dreams in the past. Generally I'm amazed by the fact that my dream world appears so consistent across dreams, reaching back many many years into the past. Furthermore, past dreams become so much more easily remembered once I'm asleep - it's as if I find myself back in that world and all of a sudden I'm able to remember things that are just impossible when I'm awake. It's quite amusing reading back through times when I've mentioned dreams in the past, as even posts back in 2004 or 2005 actually seem to me like quite recent dreams in many ways. Snippets I do remember from dreams I've had in the past are almost timeless as I find myself unsure of whether they took place a year ago, three years ago or even longer. By writing them down in this blog when I do actually manage to remember them I suppose that I'm date-stamping them in a way that just isn't possible otherwise. I really do wish that I remembered more of my dreams, as it would make for incredibly interesting reading on this page.

However, it does make for the occassional interesting read when one dream does manage to stick in my mind for some reason or another. I think my dream last night stuck in my head because I woke up almost immediately after it, and although I did go back to sleep after that the fact that I was able to have a quick think about the dream which had just concluded, whilst being awake, meant that I'm still able to remember details about it that I probably wouldn't otherwise. In any case, I'm not quite sure whether this dream started out of the blue as I remember it, or whether it was an odd continuation of a dream I had been having earlier in the night or perhaps even the night before. In it Leila and I had recently had a little baby girl - which naturally I accepted even though I didn't have any recollection of the pregnancy, labour or birth. There was a strange disjointedness in everything though, as if this baby had obviously been around for a little while but I had suddenly been reminded of her. That sometimes happens to me in dreams, that something pops up into my dreams from a past dream, or from much earlier in the dream and I'm amazed that I forgot about it up to this stage. Generally that kind of process happens to me with dreams about university, as I suddenly remember that I am doing a particular paper and I'm shocked that the exam is coming up soon while I haven't studied for it any time in the last few weeks.

However, on this occassion I suddenly remembered that we did indeed have a newborn baby girl. This makes me wonder whether I had had a dream about this the night before which I had consciously (but not subconsciously) forgotten about. We were still living at my parents place, and the little girl was lying on Amalia's bed all wrapped up in a blanket. My sudden recollection of her led to a panic as I couldn't remember us feeding her or doing anything to her within the recent past. Fortunately she was OK, and we brought her back into my room. I'm sure other things were taking place at the time, but our main consideration began to turn to what her name would be. I was quite excited at the prospect of making this decision, of choosing her name from potentially millions of possible options. We ran through quite a few of them, coming up with a couple of different options beginning with C (I can't remember exactly what they were), before finally settling on Claire, and then for Jessica as her middle name. This was quite odd, as I've never consciously had a particular preference for either name, but the dream was so clear about it - even right down to the spelling of Claire as opposed to Clare.

I guess it's not particularly surprising that I would find myself dreaming about babies, with Natalie recently having had a baby boy, Aston, and Ella pregnant with a child of her own. I think the interesting thing was that in many past dreams about having another child I've been freaked out by it, thinking about all the millions of practical things that it would mess up. Yet on this occassion they just didn't come into it, and after the original stressing out regarding whether this child my mind had totally forgotten about was still alive, my main emotions running through the dream was excitement at being able to choose a name for this little girl. Often it's easier to remember the emotions of a dream than the actual story of it, and it was interesting to note that this was very much a happy dream for me.

House Hunting
Now Playing: Lifehouse - Take Me Away
Just as I found myself so amazingly inspired to write long blog updates last week, often so frequently that I needed to post a day ahead so that I didn't end up with two posts on the same day, I find myself this week reverting to normality once again. That feeling I want to update, but that I really don't know what I would write about. I do suppose a few things have happened in the past few days.

Firstly we tried, and failed, to get into our first house. A nice three-bedroom townhouse in Avondale popped up on Trade Me last week, with a few photos, a good location and a pretty damn good price. I called the real estate agent about it on Monday morning, as they had stated quite clearly in the advertisement on Trade Me to not call before Monday. Arranged with her to view the property, which was a really handy two minute drive from my work so I was able to go there on my lunch break. It was a bit of an odd place in some ways, with a really long driveway down to the house which somewhat reminded me of where I used to live between June 2004 and April 2005. It had a similar semi-detachness about it, and a similar bush setting - which from memory was pretty cool except for the giant spiders and other bugs that managed to make their way into the place with unnerving regularity. The driveway was potentially an issue I suppose, though not so much for me as for Leila and Amber who would have to trek up and down it regularly just as I had to in Beach Haven. Long driveways are also annoying for taking the rubbish out!

Anyway, the house seemed alright for us. So I had a look around it inside after meeting up with the real estate agent. She seemed a bit unusually unfriendly when I think about it, like perhaps she either didn't like the look of me and was thinking of any reason to put me off the place, or otherwise she had possibly already rented the place and didn't want to waste her time unnecessarily showing me around. The existing tenants were there, which as usual was rather disturbing as I wandered through their lives and all their stuff. It was particularly weird as there didn't quite seem something normal about them - perhaps it was the way they just seemed to sit and blankly stare into space, although I guess possibly they were just a bit gutted to be having random people shown about their house. Or maybe they were about to be evicted and were just grumpy with the landlord anyway. The place didn't have a dish-washer, and the kitchen was a little on the small side, but once again nothing that immediately jumped out at me to say "OMG you really can't live here!" One smallish bedroom downstairs was complemented by two larger rooms and a bathroom upstairs. Although stairs can be annoying, I like the way they seem to break up a house and give it a little more character than single-level places. The place I found myself subconsciously comparing this one to - on Rangatira Road - was similarly dominated by stairs. Although that place did go rather over the top by having four different split levels and three different flights of stairs. But anyway, the real estate agent seemed to confirm my suspicion that she wasn't too keen on really selling the place to me by saying that she wasn't sure the landlord would be OK with having three adults staying in the house. This seemed rather odd for a three-bedroom place, as it would be probably reasonably frequent for three adults to rent places with that many bedrooms. Today I found out the place was no longer for rent, so perhaps things had been finalised before I even got there. Who knows.

I suppose it's a bit of an annoying start to the serious flat-hunting process. I guess that right from the start I have figured that this kind of thing is likely to happen quite often - that although there are plenty of places out there that may indeed suit our needs we will still have to convince prospective landlords or real estate agents that we are the ones worthy of having this place, that we won't trash the house and that we will pay the rent each week. These might mean this process takes a little while longer than ideal, but I'm sure that eventually we'll come across a place that does indeed like us and that will end up being our home. Perhaps there were a few too many faults with the Avondale house after all.

I spent a lot of today doing rather tedious tracing and copying maps onto other maps. A particular job that we're doing at the moment involves trawling through an incredibly complex part of the District Plan which has numerous different overlay zones on top of the main underlying one. This form of land use regulation does have advantages in that it can achieve four or five different things at once using different overlays, but it makes the whole thing incredibly complex to understand. Even simply working out how many lots the site could be subdivided into under the District Plan rules requires an enormous amount of work to figure out. I spent a lot of time working out the different sizes of each of the overlays, then found myself trying to figure out how they all fitted together and whether I was able to just add up the allotments within each of the individual overlays or whether over-lapping overlays made things more complex than before. Confused? Yeah well I've been studying the documents for the last week and a half and I still don't get it so I'm not surprised if anyone else is confused.

Leila is starting to emerge from the fever-misted haze that has been her tonsilitis throughout the past few days. The anti-biotics have kicked in pretty quickly, although things can still be rather up and down with regards to her temperature. It's still nothing like it was at times over the weekend when she was totally burning up. Yesterday morning I was starting to wonder whether she'd passed it onto me, as I was feeling pretty icky myself for a while, though once I got a couple of painkillers into me everything went away and fortunately hasn't come back yet. Tonsilitis, as a bacterial infection rather than a virus, is apparently not very contagious so hopefully I'll be sweet.

Oh Yay It's Monday
Now Playing: Keane - Try Again
It was quite an odd weekend really. One in which I never really felt like I was doing nothing, but one where I reached the end of it and wondered what I had actually been up to for the last couple of days. Daylight savings ended, which totally messed up my bodyclock yesterday as I kept on thinking that it must have been way later than it was, while a couple of weird results from the Cricket World Cup added to the whole surreality of the weekend. Leila has managed to get herself tonsilitis, which is not fun as she had a really nasty fever the whole weekend, while I have felt generally OK but a little bit odd probably from having fairly minor afflictions myself. After last week at work being really so damn bizarre - as I had the office to myself the whole week and also had the hearing on Thursday - I was really really looking forward to Friday night, and the traditions of fish & chips at Leila's place. It is generally a huge relief in many ways to be able to finish off the week, and to put it behind myself. The hope of a relaxing weekend, the possibility of being able to sleep in and not having to set that damn alarm clock for 7.25am, the chance to recharge the batteries a bit. Yet for some reason, even though I didn't really do anything much this weekend, last night I found myself almost anticipating a quiet day at work so that I could do those very things, a chance to recharge the batteries a little perhaps.

Though I feel like I'm barely waking from a slumber, this week is potentially quite an important one. For the first time really the house-hunting has well and truly now switched from 'just looking to get an idea of what's out there and in case something amazing comes along' to proper serious house-hunting. That tedious process of sifting through numerous options that aren't particularly great at all, then coming across one that seems perfect but then doesn't have something quite critical, to finding the perfect place and then not being wanted by the landlord or real-estate agent. Yet looking on the positive side of things, it seems as though every day or two something promising pops up seemingly out of the blue, and while chances are that particular place won't work out, eventually something will work, and eventually I will manage to shift out of home (again). After nearly a year back 'home' with all my stuff squished into the one room it will be really great to have a place that truly feels like my own yet again. It's just the process of getting there that can be a pretty major headache, and then of course the finances which will get a bit of a squeeze once there are food electricity and phone bills that need to be paid. Ah well, should be exciting though!

I'm also only a couple of weeks away from making it through to a whole year in my current job. It's pretty insane to think that it has been that long, although in other ways when I think about everything else that was happening in my life a year ago it does indeed feel like a very long time ago. With performance and salary reviews to take place in the next week or so, it is a bit nerve-wracking in many ways as what goes on will largely impact on how financially comfortable I will find myself throughout the next year. All the feedback that I have got so far has been largely positive, so it does indeed seem like I am doing a good job.