kid stuff

* I always wanted to dress up as Pippi Longstockings during Book Week in primary school. I never had hair long enough to do it. Plus, I have black hair. I'm Asian (stating the obvious..) And I don't actually know the story.....

* When I was going into year eleven, I pretty much had to decide which instrument I wanted to continue at TEE level. I'd always been better at piano than violin, but knew I had to do the performance stream for school assessment, and thought that playing solo piano would be too lonely. [Hah! Even before discovering chamber music for real I knew I enjoyed playing with other people!] My mum even talked to the director of music at my school to ask what he thought about taking both instruments, whether that was viable. It was, but wasn't recommended. And so I chose piano, and I chose to focus mostly on piano (even though I kept playing violin) and here I am today, playing the piano.

* Some of my favourite books while growing up were: The Velveteen Rabbit (don't ask me what it's about anymore, I can't remember), Charlotte's Web, Sleepers (actually fairly disturbing for a 11-year-old girl to read), The Power of One

* We used to have junior and senior choir in primary school and I was always in the front row of the sopranos. But for fun, as I had a few friends sitting close to me, I'd sing the alto part because it was far more interesting.

* I almost lost my recorder in grade five. I was absolutely devastated - I didn't want to play a spare one with somebody else's germs all over it. We had played in a concert or something and I'd given it to somebody to look after for me, but somehow couldn't find the person anymore. And then as we were lining up for our music class, I saw a recorder sitting on the window ledge and it was mine! What joy! The lesson learned here: don't trust somebody else with your instrument.

* Wooden spoons make fantastic oars when the couches are the boats.

* Once we went to Singapore zoo and we went on an elephant ride. There were a whole line of children sitting on this elephant's back, sandwiched between two 'professionals'. As I sat on this elephant, I was gently running my fingers along the length of elephant hair, not quite pulling it out. I wonder if the elephant could feel that. Hopefully not, or there might have been quite a disaster.

* Our year four camp was to Rottnest Island and my first trip on a ferry. Admittedly, it doesn't take long (about half an hour or so) but I was a little nervous. A couple of my friends had been before, so they could tell us all their experiences. They warned me that if the day was windy and the sea was choppy, the ferry ride wouldn't be smooth. So we practiced getting used to the up and down sea motion on the logs. I was so scared - I didn't want to get sick! One kid did, and I remember sitting in the ferry thinking, "Come on, don't be sick, it's ok, it's ok!" to myself. The beginnings of a worrywort? I think so.

* I used to hate getting my hair cut. We used to (and often still do) go to a family friend who runs her own hairdressing business. Her daughters went to school with us, so we'd organise it so that mum picked us all up from school and we had the appointment straight after school. But mum, being practical (as mums are) insisted that it was cut fairly short (about chin-length). Yes, I had the Asian bob, but to me, it was just short. It was awful - I hated it. And every time I used to come home and cried and cried and tried to pull out my hair (as if that would help my cause, but anyway). And since then, I've really hated getting my hair cut. [Except, perhaps, this one time I went to the hairdresser at the shops near our house and I thought the lady was so nice because she told me I had such nice.]
And which is why I insisted when I got to high school that my hair had to be long enough to tie up in a ponytail because that's what the school rule was.
And that's also why when I got to university and my mum didn't really mind what I did with my hair, I've kept it quite long.

* Going on exchange to the USA during year ten was one of the best experiences I had during school.

* I had two (real) math teachers in high school. I specify 'real' because of that time in year ten I was taking an accelerated math stream and the classes didn't all completely match up, so I still had to go to one or two of my 'normal' classes where I could pretty much do anything (although I think the intention was to work on math). The thing I also quite enjoyed about that was that I missed out on one PE class :P Those two math teachers were amazingly wonderful and teachers that I caught up with even after leaving school.

* I didn't do much as a Math and Science Councillor in year seven.

* I really wanted to do singing lessons in year ten. And I thought it would have been cool/amusing to learn the tuba in year nine. Hah.