Week 42- Fresh Prince of Auck-Land

I began the week with an early morning coaching session with St Peter’s College. I have to admire the commitment of these boys as they go to play hockey in an indoor hall (rather than an outdoor pitch) twice a week at 06:30. It was our last session before the first league game on Wednesday so we went over some baseline offense and defence and talked through the presses. I was definitely concerned about the length of time we had to work on them before Wednesday. After class I did some work and bought some food for our group dinner. I just had time to fit in a run before Bridget and Alice joined the fray making it a dinner for 6. Alice was mainly in charge and she did a stellar job, making a delicious meal with real pastry. I’m delighted that they are able to be part of our group.

At this point the ducks have grown quite exponentially and have taken over so they were firmly moved from the bathroom to my windowsill. I have a feeling that they will continue to multiply.

On Tuesday we held a training session for the engineering faculty ultimate team ready for the weekend. In the evening I attended the 90s themed faculty of engineering table quiz run by the Women in Engineering Network (WEN). When I told my friends that I was going I was twice told that I wasn’t a woman. I was on a team with my biomedical classmates from last semester and consequently was the oldest on the team. Before the quiz started there was a warm up round where each team had to send up the person on their team who knew the most about the 90s. Despite only living through three years of the 90s I was deemed to know the most so I went up on stage. We were told that we’d be competing to see who knew the most words of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song. Immediately about 15 of the 20 competitors left the stage and those remaining prepared to rap. We took it line by line, struggling our way down through the first verse with no one dropping out. It looked like it was going to be a tight contest but them as soon as we started the second verse I was the only one who knew it. So that’s how I found myself on stage, in front of close to 150 people, rapping the entire Fresh Prince theme song on my own. I won a lovely WEN bottle for my efforts, a bottle that was quickly taken away from me and put outside as bottles are not allowed in the bar. The team also managed a strong 3rd place.

I had my usual 9-1 classes on Wednesday before having vegan lunch where they ran out of food for the first time this semester. It meant that I only got a half helping for seconds. I was then headed for my first game of the season coaching as the head coach of a senior boy’s hockey team. We got the bus to Mt Roskill and, when the pitch was opened, got ready to play. My mantra is to play as a team and for me that encapsulates both tackling and defending together, but also attacking as a team and passing the ball. We played an incredible first half of hockey, Botany looked down and out. After we conceded a soft first goal we built a 3-1 lead. The team was playing as a team. Sadly, in the second half we conceded a short corner and another soft goal to draw 3-3. We had plenty of chances to score and will regret those that were missed. I was still delighted with the impact that I feel I’m having and went running after.

No rest for the wicked as we were back training first thing on Thursday morning with the entire squad in attendance. We worked on drop passing, defending as a team and played games. I was only 10min late to class in the end. I had another lovely lunch with Marlene as we had scrambled eggs on fresh bread. I spent most of the afternoon trying to do my polymers assignment before going to my tutorial and then to another quiz. This time it was a fundraiser for Jack’s frisbee team that are headed to Canada in August to compete in the World u20s. I was happy to support and I felt the quiz went pretty well. They had a great idea that you could buy answers that you didn’t know for $5. We would have won had it not been for this rule but we were happy with second. I also won a New Zealand jersey in the raffle!

I had my usual classes on Friday morning, had some needles stuck in my arm at physio before heading home to do some work. I spent the afternoon with Cooper, helping him move home. He’s started renting a new place with two other frisbee friends but it’s completely unfurnished. He hired a van, picked me up and we set off on our quest. Having driven all over the north shore, visiting friends and charity shops we ended up with three pallets, a bed, a mattress, a table, six chairs, a chest of drawers, a bed side locker, a mirror, a massive coffee table, two drying racks, Cooper’s bags and a load of bedding. The van was full to the brim. We got Indian for dinner though we had to get a second portion as the bag split as she was handing it to me. I got to see his new home. It’s very spacious so I’m looking forward to spending more time there. We had one more stop to get a sofa and a microwave. We were also supposed to pick up another sofa but the owner was a no show. He dropped me home around 23:00.

I spent the early morning with Marlene before she went surfing with Alice, Bridget and Fitree. For a change of scene, I decided to work from the engineering building and made a small nest there for the day. When Cooper was finished with dealing with new-home-business we went to watch the Avengers Infinity War. I really enjoyed it but will not say more than what I said to Sam which was that it was ‘good’. You’ll have to watch it yourself if you’re interested. When Cooper and I got back to mine the surfers had returned and were eating. While they then watched a Tv show, Cooper and I played cards until Fitree brought Cooper home.

Emma gave me a lift to the pitches on Sunday morning so I didn’t have to get the bus. We were in a tough group with Science and Arts (two of the top four teams) but we were ready to play. We beat science in our first game by a single point before having more comfortable victories against Arts and Property. Stocking up on free pizza for lunch, we prepared for a semi-final against Education. Again, it was a relatively straight forward match before we squared up against science once more. In a tight final it was the Engineering eagles who prevailed! Cacaw! There were great celebrations and we won sizeable medals. We stopped by Cooper’s on the way home before Cooper came to mine to use the internet for a quiz and then we played more cards. We plan to do regular card nights in the future. Later in the evening Ulysse arrived home from his trip away to discover that he had a new pillow case, courtesy of one of Cooper’s donors.