I'm still alive!!!

Hey guys just thought I'd make a post to say hey, I'm still alive! honest!

It's been insanely busy with trying to organise my party and German Play and essays and exam preparatons (sort of) and work.

I have been working on some awesome stuff to continue the "21 Chapters of Childhood" saga but I wanna make sure I flesh them out fully with proper artwork before I post them so you have decent stuff to read.

Here's a pic of my self that I cartoon-ified of me as Asuka Langley Soryhu (or Shikinimari, if you're watching 2.0) just to bribe you for patience.

Also, I have glasses! I got them on Tuesday. Here's a pic of me wearing them that I took just now and uploaded, it's 250 am. So be gentle with your judgement. 

Until next time!

21 Chapters of Childhood, Chapter three.

Children are cruel.
Especially when you are extremely short, have frizzy, curly brown hair and serious social ineptitude.

My first day of school was traumatic. This is fairly evident in the fact I still vividly remember it.

My primary school was made up of several buildings placed in two rows to kinda look like a giant equals sign. Each building had two classrooms back to back and it's own toilet block

So I arrive on my first day and my Mum takes me to my classroom to meet the teacher.

Then something awful happens, while I'm utterly bewildered by these strange, feral creatures my Mum calls "other children" the crafty tart sneaks out and ABANDONS ME!!!

                               

                               

I was very quickly shaken out of this clearly terrified state by the teacher turning to me and demanding I "Stop being such a baby!" I very rapidly became a pro at disguising fear among elders. 

The next onslaught came at lunch time when I no longer had the teacher to act as a buffer and security blanket between my self and The Others.

It was days before I was able to work out some sort of rudimentary communication system with these strange beings. I couldn't understand a word they were saying except that it seemed to be a jarbled mix of English words but at 10 times the normal speed.

                               

But back to my first day. The key thing that was missed out on my first day was a tour of the school and an explanation of where things were.
One thing I most definitely had not expected was multiple options when it came to toilet choice. Most homes have one kind of toilet and usually only toilet one per room.
This wasn't helped by the fact that the toilets, while separated into Male and Female, did not having signs on the door indicating which was which.

When lunch time came it was followed swiftly by the call of nature and I sought out the place to do my deed.
I found what appeared to be the communal bathroom and went in.
On my way I noticed that the toilet was in a stall and the wall by the door was covered entirely in shiny metal which had a trickle of water running down the center.

I though there must be a broken pipe or something.
I went into the stall, made my sacrifice to the tinkle fairy, washed my hands in the sink and walked outside where I was met by a circle of The Others, all giggling and staring at me.

The one wearing purple seemed to be their leader.
She pointed an accusatory finger and me and yelled amidst a fit of giggles "She went in the boys toilets! She did!Are you boy or a girl!That's the BOYS toilet!"
"N...no...it's... it's boys and girls..." Foolproof defense Jepha, foolproof.
Despite my excellent defense the taunting continued.
"The new girl goes to the toilet in the boys toilet!What a weirdo!"

At this point I start to cry, just a little (I lie, I was bawling my eyes out.But wouldn't you?)
"No... see...that part is for boys *points to shiny wall dripping water* and the other one's for girls..."
Another solid defense from future Wonder-Lawer, Jepha.

Needless to say the horrendous taunting continued until lunchtime ended and I was once again safe under the watchful eye of the teacher until the end of the day or they forgot about the whole thing, whichever came first.
At the end of the day I decided was NOT fond of  this whole school thing.

21 Chapters of Childhood, Chapter two.

When I was 12 years old my Mum had her first baby with her new partner. She's now 8 and drew a picture for you all. This is Karlia's picture that she drew by herself on MS Paint with no help from me cos she's THAT awesome!

Sorry that today was such a short post but I had my 21st family party to attend and I have a longer post coming for you tomorrow promise. It's about my first day at school.
Hope you like Karlia's Picture!
Here's a picture of the two of us I took just now, we're all snuggled up in bed listening to the rain outside! Cosy!

21 Chapters of Childhood, Chapter one.

So tomorrow is my 21st birthday and I figured there must be some sort of way to mark such a momentous occasion on such a public forum as teh blogosphere.
The answer is apparently 21 short stories from my life.
There is no promise of any sort of linear time line to these stories despite the fact that goes against my blog title.
The idea came to me at about 3 on Tuesday morning so it may turn out to be an entirely horrible idea and I withhold the decision to pull the plug on this at any stage.

 ON WITH THE SHOW!!!

When I was younger, I wasn't all that fond of clothing. Now, I'm not talking about when I was 1 or 2, I'm talking about when I was 5 or 6.
I was Pedobear's dream come true.
The first chance I got I would discard every item of clothing my parents had forced upon me and would then take off at lightning speed, or as fast as my chubby little legs could take me, it's all relative.
These actions were not reserved for in the home either. In fact my favourite place to display my nudist tendencies was my Fathers workplace, Street Electrical.

One particular day, Dad was unable to find anyone to take care of my brothers and I, so he had to take us to work with him. This also happened to be the day a rather large client was coming in to take a look at the workshop and potentially make a rather large, expensive order.

As soon as Dad took his eyes off me for a second I was naked and off like a shot.

A few minutes later Dad caught me and began the process of putting all my clothes back on despite my protesting. He was about half way done when we heard a sudden crash form the back of the van were Dad had left the boys sleeping in their car seats, figuring that was the place the could get into the least trouble.

Within the space of fifteen seconds it had gone from relatively calm to all hell breaking loose.

My brothers had managed to pull a tray of nuts and bolts out of Dad's storage rack on the side of the van, spilling them everywhere.

I was once again running joyously naked and free throughout the shop and Dad was standing there not knowing where to even START trying to put it all back together.

This is where the boss walks in.

Imagine you're the boss of an electrical supplies company, bringing in a large client who plans to make a very expensive order for good and services from your establishment.

You're showing him around the place to prove his needs are in capable hands.

Then you walk in on this: (click to zoom in)

Luckily the client himself had young kids who he'd had to take to work so e completely understood and laughed about it with Dad afterwards.

However Dad didn't take us to work with him again for many,many years.

This blog post took me way too long to write.

Was trying to think of a clever segue/entry to this story but screw it let's just go with a cold opening.

When I was in high school we had a totally awesome pot belly wet back fire place. For those of you who aren't familiar with fireplace design, it's a big black box that looks something like this:

It has a door on the front for loading wood and a little round hatch in that door to leave open if it's dying down a bit to let more oxygen in.

Once Dad showed my brothers and I how to load it properly,we were allowed to tend to the fire ourselves.
Dad made the mistake of keeping a fully loaded squirt bottle full of methylated spirits next to the fire and teaching us the equation; meths+fire=awesome! Which is true but potentially extremely dangerous to teach to your 16 year old daughter who is also a budding pyromaniac.

One night I was home alone as Dad and my brothers were away for a week at a school camp.
It's pouring down outside and pretty cold so I start loading the fire, soak everything in meths then light it and smile broadly at the satisfying "whoooosh!" sound.
After awhile the fire starts to die down a bit so I open up the door to put more wood in but get slightly distracted by the pretty dancing flames, I'm talking moth to a flame here.

I thought I should be kind to my friend the fire and give it a little extra help. By help I mean I had a little game of "Let's see how big a controlled burst I can get by strategically spraying meths on different parts of the fire".

You may have noticed by the above pic that I was wearing my lovely, snuggly, flannel dressing gown at the time. I should also mention how amazingly flammable flannel is. Back to the story.

Naturally the several sudden spurs (heh) of flames causes a few embers to escape from the safe confines of the fire box. This goes completely unnoticed by myself until one lands on the sleeve of my dressing gown.

This is where all hell breaks loose.

I notice my dressing gown has suddenly become extremely hot and developed the ability to glow, this is quite unusual for a dressing gown.
I look down to see my sleeve has become wonderfully adept at setting itself alight and my first instinct is "Cover the ember so it cuts off the oxygen and dies" unfortunately my choice of flame cover was poor in that I used my other hand to try and pat it out. My hand naturally gets quite painful because it is being burned by the ember so I remove it which then means there is no longer anything stopping oxygen getting to the ember and my dressing gown is even more on fire now.

The next few moments were a furious blur of the following thoughts:
"holy crap my arm is on fire!"
"Damn it my hand freaking hurts!"
"Oh shit how do I get to some water without setting everything else on fire as I run past?!"
"Shit! The fireplace door is open!"
"I'm still on fire!"

If someone had looked in the window at that point it may have looked something like this:

I don't remember how I eventually put it out, all I know is I had a wicked burn on my palm and was hella carefully around the meths from that point onwards.

7.1 Magnitude Earthquake hits New Zealand South Island.

This morning sometime after 3AM a giant earthquake hit the South Island and my word, those things are insanely destructive. Here's a before and after of Christchurch's Repertory Theatre.

The writing saying Before and After is a lot smaller than I thought it would be...
Here's a link showing how extensive the damage is http://www.crashbang.co.nz/quake040910/index.html

In places the road has actually split and lifted in two different directions. There's a picture in the above link that portrays Christchurch youth perfectly, a group of drunken boys standing over a gap in the road. Oi Vey.

My 94 year old Great Grandmother lives in a town just south of Chch so I thought I'll be a good granddaughter and call her to make sure she's ok.
One problem here.
I couldn't find her phone number anywhere.

You would think by now that there would be online phone directories which I could search for numbers outside my region? Nope. Business directories sure but residential?Nada.

I found Dad who was finally able to find her number in his cellphone.
Call her to discover she's fine, she was awake when the quake hit so was able to stay in bed and not be in the way of falling objects.

So Nana's fine haha my cousin called her at 5AM to make sure she was ok. My aunt was meant to fly to Sydney this morning but all flights have been grounded so no air hostessing for her today.

The good thing in all of this is that, so far, there have been no fatalities and only two people have been admitted to hospital with serious injuries. In a city of 30,000 people that's pretty good figures.

Dad poked his head in while I was on the phone to Nana and cheerily informed us we're next.

The length of New Zealand runs along a massive, highly active fault line and so earthquakes are nothing strange but a normal earthquake would be around 4 on the Richter Scale so 7.1 is huge.

The Earthquake Commision keep telling us "the big one" is coming. After this large one in Chch we can expect it to now hit Wellington because Wellington is the city which sits most on the fault line, does that make sense? Other cities aren't on the fault line as much as we are, that's what I mean.
Chch is lucky because most of it is very flat but Wellington is built almost entirely on hill sides and all of those hills as well as our main highway are directly on top of the fault line.
So basically if "the big one" hits, we're screwed haha

This post is more informative than humourous but these are pretty serious concerns

home alone horror movies are fun.

Kinda.
Depending on the type of person you are really. I like them as long as they aren't the "there's a creepy slasher guy who has decided he's going to attack, torture and kill everyone in the 38th house on your street,oh shit, that's your house" type film. Certain types of supernatural films get me too. Not Paranormal Activity cos that was just crap but films like that.

I just watched Dark Water which has Jennifer Connolly as a woman going through a messy post-divorce child custody battle with her husband and moves into an apartment building which is haunted by the spirit of a little girl who died by falling into a water tank.It's very depressing and it's meant to be more of an intellectual "make you think about the human mind" film but doesn't quite meet the mark though it makes a decent attempt.

Dark Water is based off an Asian horror novel and I can imagine the original would've been a lot better as with the Grudge and the Ring etc.

I'm also watching it home alone at 2:09AM and if it were a better film I think I would be shitting myself right now. But this is not the type of film to leave me wanting to run to my friends house in case the same plot suddenly takes place in my house.

The few sane readers I have are currently asking "why the hell are you up at 2:09 in the morning watching horror movies home alone?"

Well partially because I'm making the most of my Dad and brother being up at a hockey tournament and the fact I'm still on mid-term break, that explains the home alone part. 

Also I'm still desperately hoping that my cat, Frei, will come home and as I never know when that will be, I am terrified to go to bed or leave the house in case he comes home and I'm not here so he leaves again.

I keep hearing the floor creak in the corner of the room behind the fridge and automatically my brain associates that with the noise Frei makes when he's under the house coming in through the old hot water cupboard. 

But of course then I remember that the noise is coming fro the wrong end of the room and the no, it's not Frei coming home and I'm just hearing things.Again.

Those of you old enough to have your own pets will know why I'm so desperate for him to come home. I don't mean people who have a family pet that was given to them for a birthday or is just considered 'their pet'.

When you get your first pet and you raise them and toilet train them and take them to their first vet visit and you buy them the food and their toys and their collar and watch their personality come through, it's heartbreaking to think of anything happening to them that you can't help them with.

I guess it's the same with kids, you take them to their first day of school or their first sleep over and you wait... and wait... and wait and you're terrified something is going to happen and you just want them to come home.

A 4 year old was in the news last week because he went missing and 6 days later they hadn't found him. Eventually they discovered his body in the river that flowed past the back of the family property.

I can only imagine how awful it must have been for his parents just waiting and every day the not knowing.

By no means am I comparing my missing cat to a 4 year old drowning and being found 8 days later.

However, it is a good example of what I'm going through and I feel I can understand his parent's dilemma a bit bitter.

When you wait day after day and just don't know what's happened it's just awful... awful. You want to go out and look because you feel so helpless sitting at home doing nothing. At the same time there are only so many places you can look and only so many times you can check the same place.

Sometimes the answer IS to sit and wait. That answer isn't always helpful though because you feel like you're not doing enough or there is something you should be doing and if only you knew what it was then maybe that would get them home sooner.

I'm sorry guys, these posts have been slightly down but I am kind of going insane waiting for Frei to come home. 

I promise I'll get something super cheerful and awesome up soon.

In the mean time, check out Allie's latest offering at hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com she currently has a mini comic strip about being careful what you wish for but from a funny new angle. 

Also if you see my cat bring him home damnit!!!