losing to find.

For the first time in a long time, I had a whole afternoon between birthday parties completely to myself without the hassle of studying for something on Saturday. In short, wandering around the city from Ultimo up to Wynyard on foot with the challenge in mind NOT to use the maps on my phone, it was nice to have some me-time outside of the house, especially somewhere where I don't really get the chance to go to very often. It was an invigorating experience on my own being able to air my thoughts in during the winter-wet day and watch the city light up as night fell.

The weather has recently been pretty atrocious alternating between cold and blustery to just plain cloudy and rainy, if not both at once. That aside, getting the swing back in to uni has been fun and much easier than last time. The music club is starting to get off the ground (yay!) and the subjects this semester relate to each other more closely than the last set (ignoring maths) so I'm looking forward to the rest of semester and how it'll all turn out.

It was great catching up with everyone last night at Rutherford's and Tansy's birthday party, both close and acquainted ones - events like those remind me how much I do miss spending time with them when I'm not absorbed in my own world. Friday night was also a time of fun catching up with the Aspire peeps - once again I forget how amiable and fun those guys are and I wish we could all just be on the same campus so we could meet up more.

Life is progressing as it should be - nothing (too) awkward and unexpected has reared its head into the otherwise plain expanse of the future, and most everything is progressing quite comfortably.

just a little bit stupid.

Ever have that sinking feeling that your first interpretation of something is COMPLETELY different from what your next, more enlightened view interprets? I've got that right now and am really wishing I had a time-turner right about now. They say we learn through our mistakes, though I believe "they" just enjoy seeing us fall flat on our faces. But to be fair I probably would too.

smiles ablaze.

Spent the day at a conference in Penrith hosting a bunch of science postgraduate/researcher presentations with a small tinkly bell to mark the end of tea times - if this string of unexpected necessities keeps up, I won't have a holiday left to enjoy *sadface.

Japanese class outing planned for this Saturday; hopefully people will be able to make it and will rsvp soon. Now it's time to catch up on some offspring.

write a song, bleed some hearts.

Just a ramble about songwriting really.

So for Christmas my sister got me a sheet music for Adele and a chord booklet for practically all of Angus & Julia's songs which I love to bits. It also gave me a kick in the bum to get some more of the stuff and I managed to nab a Norah Jones one as well. While going through these songs, I noticed that there were many kinds of chords that I saw which I had no idea how to play - mostly sus, min7th and addx chords. After some scouring on the net, I'd learnt the basic theory behind them, and a new section of music seemed to open itself to me (as corny as it sounds).

Lately I've been integrating these chords into the recent songs I've tried to write. The process as a whole is slow and painstaking at times, grasping for words as to what exactly I want to say or how I want to say it. Of the songs that I have managed to complete, looking at them now I'm only happy with two of them. The rest either came out weak in the lyric department (the wording came out weird), sounding like a song I'd heard before or the whole song itself was too specific with raw emotion that it would come out too angsty and not really make sense to other people.

On the upside, the whole process has been a great way to deal with myself and emotions. While the reject songs will never be heard by anyone but me, they exist because I worked something out or came to terms with that something. One of them kind of worked as a slow-release type thing and about a month after it was finished, it was only then that I could play the song and say to myself, "I agree with that".

The song I'm making now is the first of its kind in my collection, a 'story-song'. It's one of those that tells a story between characters that reflect the experiences of the composer, and it's very difficult. I have no idea what's going to happen to my three characters after the first chorus...hum. Suggestions? See you all soon!

-- //restart.

It's been quite awhile since I've done this, so bear with me.

High school is over.

HSC is done with.

University and the rest of my life is ahead.

It's really funny looking back at how much every Year 12er was freaking out about HSC over a 12-month period and that failing it would be the end of the world. It could be said this is an exaggeration, but I remember feeling emotions akin to those words in the week before waiting for results.

Ironically, those results don't matter anymore. Now I'm taking it easy and doing what I want (mostly). I'm getting on with the rest of my life. I only keep in contact with a handful of people from school, which saddens me - I know there are many good people I won't see again for a long time.

But in the mean time, I've accustomed myself to become more introverted, if not slightly reclusive, keeping to my own devices on some days. Learning to cook this and that has been a frightful challenge - frying has its payoffs but potentially painful at the same time. Gaming (especially with Sebastian) has taken up the customary third of a day most days, whether playing fighting games or going through an adventure/RPG together.

Funnily however, something that monopolises a great part of my time and energy has been songwriting; putting out feelings in a "poetic" way, if it can be called poetic. I guess it's a kind of journal-keeping, though I'm lucky enough to have a family that doesn't snoop around for personal information of that kind. The privacy that comes every morning when they leave for work allows me the freedom to explore composition in a way I don't dare in front of other people. It's becoming a hobby, albeit a vexing one. Of the various songs I have written, I'm only happy with two or three of them.

Life after high school (or at least the months immediately following) has been very...educational, from a personal sense. I feel I know more of myself, spent more time alone and away from others everyday. Not to say that I don't go out - mum complains I go out too much - simply the fact that I have 'me-time'.

Will this blog continue? Of course - if not sporadically. We'll see how this goes.

//end.

Just came back from prefect camp which was a really great experience. Personally, I find it a lot harder to compare to the other camps because it was a completely different kind of camp than the others. There was a fair bit of work on leadership and brainstorming about what we'd do as prefects, so it wasn't as activity-intensive as I thought it would be like Yr 9/10 camp, but the discussions on leadership in my opinion were alright. I'll admit that I may have had a yawn every now and then, but honestly it was an interesting seminar to have during the camp. The food was REALLY good. I think the fact that the kitchen was catering to 35-odd people rather than over 150 would have played a huge factor in the food quality.

The last two days we had leadership meetings basically discussing and doing activities on how to be an effective leader; all the activities occurred in the afternoon. The first day was different though since we arrived at around 10-10:30. The whole day was really centred around getting used to working together and being with each other, so the activities basically consisted of Icebreakers and Initiatives. I HATE helium sticks. Spiderwebs are alright though.

That night we had a prefect brainstorm on school issues; probably one of the most inspiring times I've experienced, and definitely from a place I didn't expect. I never really thought until then that you could become so passionate about something. To paraphrase, we want to bring back school spirit and the Hurlstone Family. That night my cabin (Rutherford, Kelvin and Zul) all went to sleep pretty early by comparison, but I couldn't get to sleep until 12:45. There was no real reason for it since I had coffee in the midday, which should have been fine...hmmm....

Next day was more leadership in the morning, lunch, and then canoeing, raft building and archery. Triangles work in rafting. Some people cheat by batting away cannonballs when they're not meant to. Oh, and look out for Charlie's Angels with bows.

That night we had the Prefect Head elections; everyone running had to give a speech. I'm not gonna recount the speeches; too many to recall. A lot were quite emotional; I cried behind a tree afterward considering the day it was and the speeches. I'll treasure that night forever. My biggest thanks to all of you who were there for me and gave your support. Also, I didn't know about your situation [bread]. It was really good to talk with you that night; thank you for entrusting that part of yourself to me. Oh, and to [bread] and [cup], a very big thanks for all that you did for me today...it means a lot to know that you went out of your way to help me. For [flowers] and [surprise], thank you as well for being so supportive. To [flame], thanks for holding on that night.

Today we had some more leadership discussion before a few initiative-style activities and lunch. We left afterward (obviously), arriving at school a little earlier than expected and Cried our lungs out, though I don't think it was advisable at that time. Just to add, there were too many good memories of the games room to mention, so maybe you might add some [pong]? But then again I don't think you read this...

Going onto another subject really quickly because I need to eat dinner...

This post is labelled '//end.' because I'm going to stop blogging at least until then end of Year 12 and HSC. I don't really have the time for this anymore, but I figured that I should leave a definitive 'final' post. I might pick this up in again a year or two, but I can't say. Thanks to everyone who have followed, commented, read or stalked because they really had nothing better to do. You guys were the reason that I actually kept posting after the first few months; it was nice to know that there were others interested in my life (or have no lives). In the beginning, I started this so that I could have a documentation of my life in high school, but I've found that life is too dense and too complicated to try and describe in 30 minutes of sudden-blog-inspiration. After about a year this began to talk about feelings and my angsty-self. Again, thank you for reading; I really do appreciate it *beats heart with fist in a manly way that men do*.

So, for a year at the very least, I bid you all adieu.

reprieve.

I am currently enjoying my second day of laziness and am wondering what the coming year of school will hold. I mean, how much work will we get during the summer holidays? That's my biggest concern so far - I bet they'll give us an entire unit to do, like Cosmic Engine. Erk. But anywho, I'm not focusing on my worries and am just having fun doing whatever I feel like I guess. The change in weather from the everyday cold to the sunny but cool days has been a nice change. I like winter because of the food, but I miss ice-cream and some sun has definitely changed my summer-winter perspective. Spring hasn't been so bad in terms of allergies at least, seeing as how I beat the pollen to the punch by getting a nasal spray. That stuff is a godsend :D

The last day of school was pretty odd, but fun. As far as I remember, there were 14 people there, though half turned up later in the day: at first it was 6 or 7 people. Did we have classes? Yes, for English and Maths. Did they try to make us do some work? Yes, they did. Did it work? No. We played Wiki-races instead of reading those booklets in English. For Maths, Morrison gave us a question to prove the maximum value of a triangle in a circle. We didn't really bother, so we just talked. The rest of the day was just hanging out in the donut quad (with Yatesy XD), library and art quad. Sadly, when I went to get some Goulburn Valley from the canteen, they were all sold out. Ice-cream as well. It was fairly warm that day, and no ice-cream = DID NOT LIKE.

The last two periods everyone just stayed in the art quad. I got to return my money to Lana since she had turned up during lunch and we stole Dan's phone, played games with the bamboo sticks and also SOS with Li-Ching. At the bell Larry, Justin, Dan and I ran to catch the train and...well, that's about it. It was all alot of fun I guess, but there wasn't much to be done. Honestly, I just went to see what it would be like and to return my money to Lana.

Here's to the holidays!