I'm home!

Exams are oooover, and I survived my first trimester at University. I'm quite proud of myself, but am reserving final judgment until after exam results come out. After exams I went out with some old friends and new for a post-mortem and dinner at Nando's (Take note, Sounisian people. I totally only went there because I heard you all talking about it) and then gelato and bubble tea (NOM NOM NOM!) I also had my own private celebration by ducking into my favourite second-hand bookshop and buying myself two Dorothy L. Sayers books I'd put on hold. The joy of possession - I has it.


Three Whole Weeks. To do Whatever I Want. I think the occasion merits the gratuitous capitalisation. 

What have I done with my freedom so far?

Some looong over-due editing, some slightly tardy betaing, and even some of my own writing has finally been done. Yeah! I am accomplishing stuff!

I got sick. Blech. Every time I travel from home to uni or back again, I end up a sniffing, miserable mess. Could it possibly be the climate differences? Pass the echinacea, plz...

( I read Memory and Forged In The Fire and witter about them here in a slightly spoilerific way ) 

My school friends Ducky and Bear and I watched all three Lord of the Rings movies, back to back. Note well, not only did we watch all three, but they were the mega-awesome extended versions. We started at 6.10 in the evening and finished at 5.30 the next morning, still arguing over who was best: Aragorn, Boromir, or Faramir. (Yes, that is the kind of deep meditation Tolkien's epic inspires in our fangirl-y hearts. I am only slightly ashamed.) By the time we finished, we were holding our eyes open with our fingers, although I had slept right through Helm's Deep. That's what comes of living near a hospital - when the emergency helicopter doesn't wake you at night, it's a fair bet that 10,000 screaming Uruk-hai won't either.

( I baked, and took pictures )

Matariki, the Pleiades' rising, and Maori New Year, has come and gone. It's not an official holiday in NZ, but not for lack of trying, and has got increasing press these last few years. Seeing as we live in a part of the world where Christmas falls in Summer and Winter has no bright spots, my family always celebrates with a meal for the extended rellies, games and general jollification. We had a hangi (Maori roast, traditionally steamed underground, but we do it in an old beer keg with manuka sawdust) for dinner, and included mussels. Look what I found in one:
( Warning: may include close-ups of a crab ) 

And, just to complete the pic-spam, tiegirl  asked for some non-identifiable pictures of the area I live. Excited at the thought of exercising my camera, I immediately dragged tencups_i_swear out to take some snaps. We only managed to get a couple before the batteries died, but I found some other fairly generic pictures kicking around the hard-drive. They're all from around my home-town, not the city where I go to Uni.

.( Image-heavy! )
( Image-heavy! )
And that's all, folx!

*which exists in fiction only, yo. London in real life still looks pretty good.

PS: Happy Independence Day, Americans!

A tale of daring, derring-do and cultural diversity

As I am a poor benighted person, who lives neither in the USA or the UK, there are many things the folx over at sounissay that make me go 'bwuh?' and wander down strange and foreign paths. thelasteddis 's mention of  V8 vegetable juice was one of these. She was referring to this veggie drink ad campaign in the US pitching the drink as one of those 'make-you-smarter' things. Apparently the ads show people doing dumb things and then getting bopped on the head by someone who then says cheerily 'coulda had a V8!' i.e 'If you'd had a V8 you wouldn't be so dumb!'
Of course I was totally ignorant of all these subtle cultural overtones, and our conversation went something like this:

TLE: 'Coulda had a V8!'
Me: Bwuh?
Tiegirl/Philia/Ninedaysaqueen/TLE: *explain*
Ninedaysaqueen: *suggests how I can find out for myself*
Me: But, guys, this stuff sounds disgusting. Besides, it reminds me of racing cars. Hey, they're cultural... a bit.
Checkers: Lolz, you missed your chance to get your very own shipment of yuck!
Philia/Tiegirl/Checkers: *continue discussing it*
Me: Hey, people are still talking about this. Mayhap I should assuage my curiosity and expand my cultural horizons (Two birds with one stone! Oh frabjous day!) by trying some. Okayz, everyone? I'll tell you all if it tastes horrible.
Philia: You'll love it, really.

( A cultural lesson )
I feel all warm and fuzzy and culturally aware now. Thanks guys. XD


PS: The transcript is only loosely based on what people actually said in Sounis. Sounisians are very nice and give very helpful suggestions.
PPS: Heehee, the V8 website makes me giggle.
PPPS: Yes, I do enjoy gratuitous pic-spamming.

Hi, everyone!

Some of you have heard of this already, so a brief explanation. For my little sister tencups_i_swear 's birthday the other day (ahem. Happy Birthday, tencups!) I gave her copies of our favourite books, The Thief and The Queen of Attolia. Before I sent them, I printed off some chapter headings kindly translated from the Japanese edition of these books by ninedaysaqueen , and illustrated each heading with a scene from the chapter, and slotted them and some other surprises between the pages.

Those of you who know tencups know that she's a MUCH better artist than I, so my efforts aren't anyway near such entertaining caricatures of the characters as hers are (try http://goat-foot-baa.deviantart.com/gallery/#Queens-Thief ) but here they are!


( The Thief illustrations )
( The Queen of Attolia illustrations )Tons of thanks (and international cookies) to everyone who contributed to the present, and also to the people whose work I used without warning them, namely peggy_2 (for the original Japanese photos) and ninedaysaqueen . Also, thanks to thelasteddis for her very helpful feedback on the pictures. She'll have noticed that I didn't take her advice, for which I can only defend myself by saying that I ran out of time, and ink drawings unfortunately don't lend themselves to much last-minute revision. But it was very much appreciated :D

Also, I *am* aware that I spelt 'thief' wonky. Mea Culpa!

Why yes, I *do* get very bored on the train.

 

 

With grateful thanks to K, E, R, and Mum for ideas, PR (and Ro) for number 98, and Sir Terry Pratchett for number 7.

Edited umpteen times because a) LJ still hates me, and b) I can't count.
 

( Number One: Understand It... )

 

I *still* can't get over how awesome this is!






Edit: And I managed to embed it properly on only the third try! Go me!

Those of you who know tencups_i_swear  may also know that she has a Deviant Art page on which she posts quite a LOT of Queen's Thief art. http://goat-foot-baa.deviantart.com/

Being her big sister, I'm biased, but I think a lot of it is quite good. She's also made a Queen's Thief picture meme! Now, I don't even draw, but I had heaps of fun filling this in, even with all the ink and scanner and cropping dramas it entailed.


I do apologise that it's so tiny. Clicking will bring it up larger, but I can't figure out how to make it bigger on the page...
 

Why is it impossible to keep time in this city?

A.  The University does not appear to have ANY wall clocks, anywhere, excepting, of course, the ones handily placed BEHIND the projector screens. WTH?
It also has cellphone coverage that is patchy to say the least, so I can't look at my screen to divine the time. Everyone on campus must own a phone - what is wrong with this picture??

B.  I spent two hours tramping around the central city this morning trying to find a pendant watch. Why is that so difficult? This *is* an honest-to-goodness city, don't people need to get to, I don't know, appointments and meetings on time? Without having to fork out $200 for precious ones from actual jewellers?

Also, it would be nice if Metlink didn't randomly cancel the off-peak trains. Ok, some of them were replaced with busses, but NOT the ones from my station, and more importantly, HOW in the world would I have known if they had been? So I had to wait 40 minutes (in a freezing cold wind, I might add) to catch the next, and missed my tutorial. Which was compulsory. Gahhhh...

*headdesk*

Ok, complaints over.

I'm living with family who are very scientifically-minded, and put up with my Arts degree with some joking eye-rolling. When I moved in, I bought a bookcase just so I could fit in all the books I brought from home. I've also been book-shopping today, to spend the book vouchers I got at my school prizegiving last year.


Tonight I had this little gem of a conversation:

Sceintifically-minded Uncle: It's nice having you, Te Aroha, cause you've brought all these great new books to the house.
Me: (looking around happily at my stacks of books) Yeah, they're fun reads. Feel free to borrow...
S-M U: It reminds me of when (Scientifically-Minded Aunt) was studying environmental sciences. She'd bring home all these books...
Me: Environmental Sciences?
S-M U: Yeah, great books, and - (catches sight of my face)
Me: *Is laughing hysterically*
S-M U: What? What?

To each his own, I guess...



For anyone interested, today I bought:
 A lovely copy of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S Lewis, my absolute favourite of the Narnia series, and the indispensible Penguin History of New Zealand, by the great and sadly lamented Historian Michael King. This is pretty much required reading for New Zealanders, and still in the top 100 NZ best-sellers list 5 years after publication. Not bad for a History book :D

Dear Sounisians: You won't believe this. 

Remember this post?

Looks like our esteemed authoress has taken a break from 'Eugenides and the Bath Bomb of Doom', upped sticks and taken a stealth visit to New Zealand.

With her knitting needles.



Cuba Mall, Wellington

( Looks like this is the Summer version of the tree cosy ( )
I think this was actually part of the Cuba Street Festival, which was on last week.
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Yes, I'm bored :D


Optional RULES:
1. Put your MP3 player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS.
4. Tag at least 10 friends (make me #11 so I can see your results). Gah. Do I have to?
5. Everyone tagged has to do the same thing.
6. Have Fun!


IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY?
'Cloud Nine' - Evanesence. Well, that's pretty chirpy of me :-)

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
'Reverie' - Brooke Fraser. Well yup, most of the time I am off in my own world, thank you very much.

( Cut! Cut! CUT!!!! )
Hum. I think this proves more than ever the utter randomness of things more than anything deep and meaningful :-P

Please, let the heat stop. It's past ten at night and must still be up in the high twenties. I am suffering.

For Northern-Hemisphere People: that's around 80 degrees F. AAAAARGH.

I finished my map!!!!!!!!!

Yes, I officially have too much time on my hands, and so I tried to research and map the geography of Eddis, Attolia and Sounis. And tried. And tried. And screwed up drafts and threw them at the walls.
And finally, I have something geographically coherent. Even if the river does run uphill. 

Anyway, I'm going to wait till the results of the song contest on Sounis are up (lol. I can't wait to see who wins!) and then I'll post it on there. I just wanted to celebrate!

Here is a snippet of what the finished map looks like:


Since I drew it longhand and scanned it in, the colours are just slightly off - a bit faded, I think. Ah well!


Edited: Exclamation mark overload, anyone?

Yes, it did take me an awful long time to decide on some resolutions, didn't it? 

1. Learn to touch-type (sample of current touch-typing skills: 'Leaitn tyo touch- ti[a[-ope.'  Nuh-uh.)

2. Wean self off emoticons - perhaps a ration of one per day? :)

3. Enrol for university - note to self: HURRY UP OR APPLICATIONS WILL CLOSE. It would be so embarrassing if you had to take a gap year because you forgot to enrol!

4. Finish read 'War and Peace'. And since I've been stalled at page 138 for a whole year, it's back to the beginning.

*turns to face year, determined expression firmly plastered on*

Also, me, tencups_i_swear ,  maccalla , ardie_bea  and the rest of the family are all going to the beach for two weeks tomorrow! *is very excited* Sun, sea, surf, sand in the spines of my books, starry nights and huge skies, here we come :D (gah! my emoticon for the day!) I now have a camera, so I am definitely taking photos!

YAY! Anachred has explained the internets to me, and thus armed, I now present: A quiz stolen from checkers, because it is awesome. You are hereby tagged :)

Your result for The Pop Culture Archetype Personality Test...

The Tinker

Ninja, Robot, Punk, Cowboy

Take The Pop Culture Archetype Personality Test at HelloQuizzy

(Edited twice, once for ignorance, and once for stupidity.)

I was having an argument with my History teacher and it got me thinking.

Of course you'll all know the old question about the tree falling in the forest. Well, I have a different question about a tree.

Q. If a tree falls in a forest, and no-one saw it fall, DID IT STILL FALL?

...this is not a trick question. Really, it's not. Myself, I'm positive about the answer. But my teacher disagreed, and I wonder... what does everyone think? Can anyone help?

... I am trying to map Sounis, Eddis and Attolia! 
After tearing out my hair over my first draft, making notes from all three Queen's Thief books the morning before my NCEA Geography exam, and extended discussion on Chatzy... I am trying again.
AND ... I AM SO EXCITED! I JUST PUT IT ALL TOGETHER! ATTOLIA'S BORDER FORTS WITH MAGYAR ARE IN THE NORTHEAST!
And... this is the border that Eddis is NOT...
Ergo! Eddis is South of Attolia, and Sounis South of Eddis, which fits with what I originally thought!
We are getting somewhere!
*goes off to scribble more notes*

Because people on Sounis made some and reminded me that I love wordles. Go here to make some. What you do is just paste in a bunch of text and it'll make a word cloud out of it. And the cool bit? The more you use a word, the bigger it will show up in the cloud. It's very awesome.

And here's one I made earlier:


( Wordles under the cut, so I don't spam up people's flists... )

Hmm, these uploaded piccies are not so awesome. I think I may have to learn to use photobucket before I post any more. Edit: Oh, look at that! You can click on them and it will take you to a better version. Goody :)