lunar.soliloquy

So I just arrived back in Rotorua yesterday night. I do wish I had better memories of this place, but some things can't be changed. Perhaps I ought to make some new ones. Even without being in the high school environment there should be opportunities to expand my world here if I just look hard enough. Yeah, Rotorua's not so bad, it was just my attitude towards life that was weighing me down all that time I was here. Living away from parents for three years doing a degree as hectic as med makes you grow up, and fast. I guess if there's one reason I'm glad I chose to do med, it could be that. Meh, however that happened, I'm glad that I did make it in, somehow.

First day of work in Murupara today, joy. Spent the entire day doing some super-boring auditing for the doctors as part of their quality control thingie. Almost fell asleep at my desk this afternoon. I'm glad nobody saw me, falling asleep on the first day of work is never a good way to make a good impression on your employers. Anyhow, that job should be done by tomorrow I think. After I'm finished with that job I'm going to do a phlebotomy course with one of the labs in Rotorua to gain some venopuncturing skillz and go back to the clinic and puncture some veins ^^. I'm hoping I won't cause too much mess for the nurses to clean up and actually be of some use, heh. I never was good with anything practical, besides maybe piano, if that counts.

Ah, so lonely out here in the rural town. I'm staying in Murupara overnight so I'll be relying on my laptop (filled with anime from Masaya's hard drive, of course xD), my DS and a few books for company tonight. No point in going out in a place like this, honestly. Even if you did somehow manage to get out without getting raped/mugged/assaulted there isn't anything here at all anyway. At least K Rd has places to go (and no, I don't mean brothels, either, if that's what you're thinking). Oh well, time to wind down with some Code Geass R2 for now, too tired to think of anything else to say here.

I wish I had them back in high school. But that doesn't matter now, all that matters is that I have them, and what's in the past doesn't matter anymore. I have to keep telling myself this, otherwise I'll never stop thinking of the high school life I could have had, the memories that should have been made, the people I should have met. Stop it now damn it, the past's gone, and the future awaits.

I woke up this morning feeling a bit under the weather for some reason. Probably I should have spent Sunday resting after going on a six-day long road trip to the Coromandel but instead I went and hung out in town. Meh, not the smartest decision I've made in my life but I sure as hell don't regret it. Time in Auckland is running devastatingly short with my parents coming up on Friday and taking me back on Sunday (with work commencing immediately on the following Monday, gah ><). When you want to spend time with people in a limited timeframe, you have to work around their schedule and to do that sometimes you have to make a few sacrifices, and that's just how it is. At the time of writing I've just received a text from a friend who's organising a get-together dinner before I head back to Rotorua for the summer. I feel truly blessed to have this opportunity to say my goodbyes to my friends before I head off. Thanks for organising this, you know who you are =) I saw the facebook movie yesterday. It wasn't a super-epic movie I'd have to say, but it was interesting nonetheless since most of the events were based on what happened in reality. It was a little heavy on the business and political side of things, but that's to be expected of any film involving large amounts of money. I did like the Harvard university setting, it's always nice to see what other kinds of university life are like across the world.

Coromandel road trip was epic. Although the accommodation wasn't quite as cosy as the ski lodge last time it was still pretty adequate and the facilities were good. Not having to bring sleeping bags on the bus is a definite plus, the beds were pretty good for a backpackers and there was some nice solid water pressure on those showers. The soundproofing could have used some improvement, the walls may as well have been made of paper for all the sound that carried through even while just having a normal conversation. i admit, the amount of noise generated during games of Pictionary or Monopoly are probably a bit above normal conversation level but for the noise to carry all the way through 2 doors and a corridor? Seems a bit dodgy. Perhaps because the building wasn't as insulated as the one at ski since at coromandel people usually come during summer, and the building needs to let in some ventilation? Lol, I'm thinking too much again xD.

We arrived at Hahei beach at around half four in the afternoon, iirc. Lol I couldn't blog during the trip cuz the internet there was devilishly expensive ($1 for 10 mins? Come on...><) so I'm trying to remember everything off the top of my head now. I think we just checked out the place and unloaded all our stuff that day. I remember having some nice egg omelette with some other stuff (cucumber, probably) along with some suspiciously soft and squishy rice. Lucky for me I wasn't on dinner on day one, because I was pretty damn tired that day if I remember. Well, not tired enough that I couldn't participate in the poker that happened that evening. I'm always up for a game or two. Or three. It's amusing how over the course of the evening we got to know people's poker personalities and know who's bluff to call and which people raise big only if they actually have something.
I think we may have played something else that night (jenga?) but trying to recall events from a week ago is hard for intellectually challenged people like me so I'll leave Monday for now.

Tuesday was beach day at Cathedral Cove. Breakfast was cereal and milk and was going to be cereal and milk for the next five days. And cucumber, if you're into that stuff. Oh yeah, before I forget I'd better mention that we came to the trip with a supply of about 20 odd cucumbers. Don't ask why, we just had them. Hence the having cucumbers with every meal, I don't think I want to touch any of those long green sticks for at least another week. Anyway, cucumbers aside, we went for a bit of a walk to Cathedral Cove, think it took us about 1 hour 30mins to reach there including the random stoppovers to gemstone bay and stingray beach to check out the scenery those places had to offer. Didn't see any stingrays that day, though. Apparently Cathedral Cove was where the opening to the 2nd Narnia movie was filmed. I guess New Zealand does have some pretty nice beaches, I probably take these sorts of things for granted after living in this place for so long. I didn't find this particular beach too special, though. Probably since it was quite small. Even beaches at the North Shore are longer and vaster than this one, according to some friends who live there. At least the weather was good. Even with sunscreen on I think I got a little tanned from that day, for some reason I tan real easily under the sun. Probably due to that bit of Indonesian blood in me, heh. Dinner was pasta and more pasta. Pasta is surprisingly good despite the simplicity of its preparation, with the right sauces. I should make it more often at home, instead of haing rice day in and day out.

We went on a 3 and a half hour kayak on Wednesday with some tour guides who showed us the ropes on basic kayaking and the various attractions around Hahei beach. We pretty much just went around the same places as we did on Tuesday (Gemstone bay, stingray beach, cathedral cove, etc), except this time experienced it from a different angle (from the sea! lolz xD). It was cool being shown the different types of animals that hung around the beach and the sea. It's been a while since I saw a gannet skydive into the sea to grab a fish at 120km/hr and the first time I've seen a stingray up so damn close (yeah, we actually got to see stingrays at stingray beach for a change!). Haha, Shaochen and me were always speeding away from everyone else and had to wait for the rest of the group a couple of times to catch up to us. At one point, we were so far ahead of them that they didn't even bother to wait for us before starting the tour commentary and by the time we paddle back to them they had already finished. Lolz.

Dinner was vegetarian sticky rice dumplings (compliments of mum and dad) and potatoes with stock. Apparently someone didn't know the difference between stock and gravy but she does now ^^;. Oh yeah we also went around the place looking for fruit trees in the backyards of various unoccupied holiday homes. According to our tour guide on the kayak he and his wife often went around picking figs, peaches and loquat from the various fruit trees that grew in the area. Fruit at the convenience store was so expensive that we didn't get any and since fruit doesn't keep so well we didn't get any prior to the trip either. Unfortunately we didn't find any figs or peaches but we did find a lot of grapefruit, lemons and loquat, which was better than nothing. The grapefruit was a tad sour, though. Had a bitter aftertaste too. Ah well, fruit is fruit.

Thursday was our free day. Sleeping in ftw. Woke up at around 9:30am and I was still the first one awake. So I played my DS, lol. Played a few games of chess with two guys over breakfast while waiting for the rest of them to wake up. I think the lovey-dovey couple went for a romantic stroll along the beach while the rest of us geared up for some tennis at the local dive shop. My arms still ached from kayaking but nonetheless had a good few hits (and probably even more misses). First time playing tennis for me, lol. But it was all good fun. Came home in the afternoon and hit the mahjong again with junk food and cucumbers. I managed to salvage the dodgy-looking overcooked rice from Monday's dinner sitting in the fridge by turning it into fried rice with mixed frozen vegetables and egg, which I thought was quite a success by how quickly it went. The guys fired up the barbecue and everyone had their meat and sausages while I had my veggie patties and dumplings in the cool evening breeze. I think that day we ended up gossiping a bit about other people which I found a bit boring so us guys went inside and went back to the mahjong. Yeah, we played a shitload of mahjong that day, it was epic.


On Friday we went to Hot Water Beach, supposedly one of the main attractions in the area. Despite it being a rather cloudy day the place was pretty damn busy and none of us realised exactly how small the actual thermoactive area was. We probably spent at least an hour poking around in the sand looking for a hotspot before finding a place near the tide where we started building fortifications to keep the tide out. Unfortunately despite it being low tide at that particular time we found our efforts to be in vain as our walls were constantly overrun by the massive tides that just washed all our work away. In the end we resorted to waiting for other people to leave their little hotspots and sniping their spots once they were gone. It was then I realised how damn hot that sand was, and why it was said to be used by the Maoris to cook people in. It was so hot that I would voluntarily let sea water in to actually cool it down to get it to the right temperature. I think I'll just stick to the Polynesian Spas in Rotorua for natural hot spas. God, if anyone stayed in that place for too long they'd surely get cooked to the point of being dinner.

After the beach we went on a short walk up around the various cliffs around the area where we took some pretty awesome photos of the beautiful scenery around the area. The weather wasn't spectacular that day but there was layer of mist covering the horizon which I thought was really pretty, in a mysterious sort of way.

For our last dinner we had rice again with some potato chips, egg omelette and those funny green sticks who's name escapes me at this moment - oh wait, of course - CUCUMBERS, duh xD. That night, six of us stayed up til 2am playing Monopoly which was epic. I went out pretty fast but still had lots of lols watching the rest of the game while retiring to the position of real estate agent and banker. Probably the craziest game of Monopoly I've ever played, oh the lols.

We had to gaps the place by 10am in the morning, so couldn't sleep in too much, unfortunately. They even kicked us out in the living and dining areas so we resorted to playing mahjong on the outdoor tables. It didn't last long, however as there were mosquitoes everywhere and people were getting bitten. So we packed up and headed to the park instead. Not really much to do around that area besides browse overpriced gift shops and hang out, really. Our bus came at noon, so we had a bit of time to kill. Probably the longest couple of hours in my life. At least the bus trip back was good. I was rather tired and managed to get some shuteye on the bus. All in all, a great trip with awesome people, I won't forget it. Well, except maybe the cucumbers. I don't really wana remember that Dx.

Thanks Lester for taking all those amazing pictures! U r da man =D

I woke up at 5am yesterday morning to make these babies. Took 3 hours to make them and were gone within 15mins at Ice's picnic at her house. I'm still pretty inexperienced at making these things (hence the long time it took to prepare) but I was pretty surprised at how well they turned out. My first few onigiri turned out a real mess, being the health-conscious person I am I ran the classic error of attempting to overstuff the filling (since I had plenty of real good vegetables in there), resulting in the rice ball pretty much exploding as soon as it was out of the mould. Now I know exploding onigiri might sound like fun, but trust me it isn't. Those which I tried to overstuff ended up in a huge sticky mess of rice, filling and seaweed which stuck to the chopping board, the table, to fingers, or pretty much any surface really. I was faced with the dilemma of wondering what the hell to do with such a big mess of fail onigiri, until I had the sudden idea of just pressing the big mess into the mould and wrapping it up with seaweed. Yeah, those 6 onigiri at the back were failures. Still, 9/15 is still alright, isn't it? That's exactly 60% success, which sounds pretty passable as far as I'm concerned. At least I managed to salvage those failures into something respectable-looking (and hopefully tasting), sometimes I surprise myself at my own ingenuinity, heh.

So, had some good times at the picnic yesterday with some good weather, good company and good food. I won't say anything about the unexpected tramp through the forest apart from the fact that I would have worn my walking shoes if I knew such an expedition was imminent. Not that I mind walking too much, at least it wasn't like muddy or anything. Played some SC2 afterwards at iPlay which was pretty fun. Almost won my first Raynor party, lolz.

Ah, looks like it's almost time to go. Today we're supposed to be meeting up for ice-cream at Giapo where they've got some kind of deal going on. I have to get the laundry out from the wash and hang it up before I go pick some people up from uni who need to get some stuff from my place for Coromandel. I guess I'll be going now.

Some part of me doesn't think these articles are compatible with each other, lolz. Just found my NCEA L3 Merit certificate at the bottom of one of my drawers and thought it would be a joke to hang it up next to my dux medal and student doctor badge (my UE certificate's up there too btw). I always have fun cleaning my room cuz you never know what junk you might find...

Sorry if this looks like I'm being stuck up or anything, just these things I find amusing...I must have a weird sense of humour xD

Where they belong. And not touching them again until February. Or later.

My cough has gotten somewhat better since my last entry but still pretty damn annoying, especially when trying to talk to people. It's like there's a tickling feeling in my throat which triggers some kind of reflex coughing spasm, ah you don't need to know the details, what the hell am I doing.

So I successfully managed to hack my wii on Sunday before I was invited to go play cards with some of my sister's engineering friends. And no, not MTG this time, but we played this awesome game called Dominion where you're in this medieval setting where you manage limited resources to try and secure as many victory cards (estates, duchies and provinces) by purchasing various improvement cards and the like. It took a while to get the hang of but in the end it was great fun seeing what sort of combinations you can pull off by taking advantage of certain cards. Anyway I won't bore you with the details (not that I can be bothered explaining them lol) but if you ever get the chance to play Dominion, it's a great game. After a dinner break for pizza we got into some Munchkin which was pretty fun, although I never quite got into that game as much as other card games for some reason. I mean, it's fun, but the whole thing seems too much based on luck due to the imbalanced nature of some of the cards, although I guess the idea is that people target whoever's winning with their hex cards, but even then they're still hard to beat. All in all, a fun night out with some good friends.

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention was how flash metropolis apartments are. People were commenting on how our Statesman apartment was like a hotel, but Metropolis actually -was- a hotel before it became an apartment complex, lol. I know Statesman apartments are definitely above average but Metropolis is in another league altogether. It's funny, our host that evening didn't want to take us in through the front door because it looked too flash XD but I would definitely agree with that one. Even I would feel a little subconscious about taking people up to a place through what seemed like a Sheraton hotel lobby. It's like "wtf? do you live in a hotel or something?" I suppose I shouldn't really care what other people think anyway. Still, I can't help but feel a bit of hate from other students I take up to my place in the Statesman who have to put up with cheap student accomodation from their allowances. It's times like these that remind me to be grateful for what I've got in this life and forget about all that shit I don't have. I don't think most people hate people who are well-off just because they're rich, I reckon it's because some take it for granted and lose their ability to appreciate the small things in life. I don't want to fall into that trap, but I know how easy it can be to do so.

Yesterday was spent playing hacked games on my wii. Lol, yeah what a silly way to waste a day, I know, but I haven't done that in so long and it felt good to butcher some zombie heads with a katana-wielding high school girl complete with uniform and pigtails. One thing to note to others wishing play hacked games on their wii, there's a difference between DVD+R and DVD-R (I had no idea, I'm so low-tech these days) and only .iso's burned on DVD-R's are able to run wii games. Learned that the hard way. Anyway, so I got into some Onechanbara Bikini Zombie Slayers and pretty much spent most of the day playing that. The story is pretty ridiculous and just seems more like a justification for little girls to be running around with katanas lopping off zombie heads. It's so mindless and silly which makes it awesome, lots of blood too. Simon popped in for a bit to borrow my waistcoat and tie for some formal pastry thing he's going to. Oh yeah, I've also started watching Code Geass, I'm up to episode 8 and it's a great anime. The main story is pretty similar to the manga but the actual scenes differ quite a lot, especially with all the Knightmares they didn't have in the manga. I might watch an episode or two after this entry.

Today I think I'm going to be going out to town with Simon and hang at BK where that girl who plays Pokemon is going to give us some discounts or something (she works there). I'm also supposed to be helping Jo with food for the Coromandel trip next week, I think we're going out to the supermarket tomorrow or something but I don't think that's been confirmed yet. Hell I'd better start packing soon, I didn't realise the trip was so soon. Also need to tidy my room, too...still a huge mess from exam time. It's funny, I've got all this stuff I need to do and none of it's getting done. This's what holidays do to you I guess. Ah, so lazy..

btw check out my new Miku mousepad =D just arrived yesterday and I'm loving it <3

Happy now? Yeah I'm talking to you. You know who you are.

Being sick. It's been 6 days since the onset of whatever I've got and still doesn't show too many signs of going away anytime soon. Probably a combination of having to study, sit two 3 hour exams and going out have delayed my recovery but what the hell am I supposed to do about that? Sure, I guess going out wasn't as necessary as the first 2 but I'll be going back to Rotorua relatively soon and this is pretty much the only time I'll get to spend time with my friends in Auckland before I go back to Rotorua (and Murupara *sob*) so I do want to make the most of it.

Yesterday was an interesting day. I actually planned to softmod my wii that day but somehow I ended up going to AUT and playing DotA with some random engineering students who had just finished the last of their 4th year exams. Apparently WC3 is installed in almost every lab computer in engineering in a hidden folder named "Photoshop" lolz. Been a while since I played that game, don't really miss it though since SC2's been keeping me busy. Lol, one of Simon's friends kept giving me advice which was good since everyone else there was so hardcore and I was quite out of their league. Blizzard does make good games. But some of them can be really addictive, so sometimes it's better just to stay away from them altogether.

We headed to town after that. That's when I met HER. By her, I mean a girl who knows more about POKeMONz than I do, and is absolutely crazy about that game. Seriously WTF?!? I didn't think that was even possible, let alone I'd get the chance to meet someone like that. I guess that's the cool thing about Simon, you always meet new people when you hang out with him. But yesterday was something different. SEVEN HUNDRED and EIGHTY HOURS on her heart gold save file. And THREE HUNDRED and something pokedex. I'd met her briefly before at a random time I went into town to lend Simon my stethoscope and sphygomo but didn't really get to know her that well (apart from her blood pressure, which I took to show Simon how it's done) but my god, that girl's got Pokemon coming out of her ears. So, we had lunch together and hung around the arcades for a bit, then Simon had an urge to hack some Pokemon so we went around to my place after. That's when I played some epic Pokemon challenge (battle tower or something, I forget the name) with her, where you choose 2 Pokemon each to rent and proceed to do a series of double battles until you lose. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun playing Pokemon like that since my sister stopped playing that game (guess you grow out of these things after a while, lolz) but it was so epic, I mean, discussing tactics, choosing which Pokemon to use after each battle and which ones to keep...analysing the stats and movesets of each pokemon...I don't think I could do that with anybody else in the same way I did yesterday. I mean, that was just EPIC. Haha, I know, this must sound so nerdy but hey, Pokemon rocks my world and I don't care if it's a kids game or what. That's another reason why I'm so annoyed I was unwell, I didn't get to enjoy the experience as well as I should've. Ah well, I'm sure there will be a next time.

I went to dinner with Simon and a few of his friends in the evening. Apparently he's got connections with the owner of the Dynasty Chinese Restaurant on Wakefield St so he shouted us a feed there. Met another new face there, had a nice chat with her, although again what would I have given to get rid of that goddamn cough...>< whyyyy do things have to be so annoying? Why is the only time I get the chance to meet new people and expand my social network like this when I have to be so under the weather? Garr... anyway we went to the domain to join some of my classmates from med school for fireworks and had a good time there. It was pretty cold, though. And I wasn't feeling good...sigh. We did some pretty cool things like spell out words and numbers using sparklers and took photos of them. They even did an ECG trace with them (and I thought I was nerdy xD) and believe it or not, it actually turned out pretty good. Playing around with sparklers and things can be a pretty fun way to spend Guy Fawkes. Although it did get a bit dangerous at one point. I think there were some idiots in the domain who thought it would be funny to have firework wars with each other, and we got caught in the crossfire a few times. I happen to have a family friends who lost part of one of his hands due to a fireworks incident, so I was reluctant to actually light and of the proper fireworks. I think I'll just stick with the sparklers ^^.

It's kinda sad how I had more fun yesterday than going to halfway grad last Wednesday. I guess I'm not really so much into alcohol, drinking and loud music. I mean, what's so social about having the music up so loud that you can barely hear yourself think, let alone what other people are saying? I think I've covered this in another post, so I won't get started on it again. It's annoying how so much is happening now that exams are over, and I'm still not feeling 100%. Of all the times, why now do I have to get sick? Life isn't fair. Sorry I'm ranting on about this, but this cough just isn't going away even as I type. It's been keeping me up at night, and I haven't even been able to catch up on much sleep recently (probably slowing my recovery as well).

Yesterday was great though, despite all this sickness. Just looking back to how things were in high school and comparing it to now, I've realised just how much my world has expanded since then. It feels somehow strange to have people in your life who do actually do the things you do and feel the way you do. I can't describe the feeling in words, it's just so...great. It seemed so foreign to me in my high school years that I'd ever meet people who would appreciate the things I do in life. No-one would ever care how much study I did at home, how many hours of piano I practised, or what sorts of books I read or anything like that. And all I did to that was to shut those people out of my life cuz if they weren't interested, I wasn't interested in them, end of story. And why would I be interested in how many people got drunk on Saturday or who made out with who that evening, because I don't give a damn about that gossip shit. I don't regret living my high school days in isolation. But by depriving myself of a social life I threw it away before even realising exactly what it was I was giving up. By throwing it away, I meant deciding to do MEDICINE. The respose I get from this from my parents and friends is "Oh, it was a good thing you didn't have friends in high school, that way you managed to concentrate on your studies and get into medicine!" YEAH F**N RIGHT. I get that so much it's not even funny. For crying out loud, I only got bloody MERITS in NCEA L3 and that was without any so-called distractions from friends. Does that tell you how oh so hard I studied in high school at all? Yeah go figure. I didn't give a shit. I even think that having the right friends would motivate me, not the other way around. I probably would have still gone for med but I wouldn't have been so quick to dump the social life. It would have made the decision harder, as it was meant to be, and give me all the more reason to work hard and make the grades.

Oh boy this post is long and full of rant. And hell this cough is driving me nuts. I wonder if I should try modding my Wii today, or do something more productive like cleaning out my room (my room always looks like a bomb hit it after exam time). Need to do groceries as well. Work starts in Murupara on the 29th, I really want to get over this cough and make the most of what's left of my time in Auckland.

One to go. So I think I managed to get through 305 alright despite the coughing, throbbing headache and fever (Panadol ftw) although I may end up submitting for an aegrotat anyway just to be safe. One can never trust their reasoning while under the influence of any toxic substance, be it alcohol, crack or overreacting interferons and cytokines storming around your body. Surely Doxazosin is a calcium channel blocker and Diltiazem was an alpha blocker (since those 2 were in the same lecture and they both sound similar-ish I used to get those confused)? Anyhow, I sure hope that 312 turns out to be one of those exams you can just b/s your way through like I did with 211 last year.

Argh, my eyes still hurt from concentrating for 3 hours and I can feel the headache coming back again. Time for another Panadol, Tamiflu and shuteye.