Parnell Student Village

My Flat

Finally! Time for the good stuff! No more boring (awesome) vacation activities. This is real now. Let me show you where I live. My flat is in Parnell Student Village, a place that looks like this.

My flat is hidden by the tree. I'm a good photographer.

My room is the top-left

Front door (around back)

The kitchen is nice when the oven isn't broken.

My balcony. I use it for balcony-stuff.

Did you like the tour? What do mean I should clean my room? Well joke's on you; these pictures were taken over a month ago!

This is where I go to after I'm done with school stuff (except for the heaps of homework I have). So what do I do here?

Cooking

Due to a goof I made in applying for student housing, I have no meal plan. I am responsible for all of the food I eat that doesn't come from some event (but they usually give me pizza, which is poison to me now). Surprisingly, I am still alive and well (relatively) due to my willingness to learn how to cook. My friend pointed me to Allrecipes and I got started. Here are some results.

The giant container of table salt makes it fancy.

This pasta includes: Pasta (duh), parsley, lemon juice, chili flakes, pepper, salt, garlic, and delicious (and more importantly super cheap) imitation crab. Fun fact: There is a very clearly defined difference between fresh parsley and rubbed parsley. If the recipe asks for 1/5 cup of fresh parsley, do not use 1/5 cup of rubbed parsley! Needless to say, the pasta was a lot greener and tasted like...parsley.

It hasn't been easy (for me), but I'm slowly gaining a competency in making a select amount of meals by reading and performing instructions verbatim.

Laundry
Why do I have a section on laundry? Because laundry isn't free anymore! One load of laundry costs $2 to wash and an additional $2 to dry. So...

It takes a few days, but I save money for more food!

Community

Residents of PSV

We as a community like to occasionally assemble to participate in some activities. Here are a few:

Superhero Scavanger Hunt

On a Sunday a week before Uni (University) started, we were split up into groups of four and given tasks to do in public (superhero costumes were optional). Among these are:

Taking pictures with random people. Conveniently, they were shooting a video in costumes. Our group was the four in the middle (including Cat-woman).

Taking dramatic pictures in random locations. The three in the back were another group doing the scavenger hunt.

Also included is pretending to fly. There are some videos of other stuff I had to do that will be posted on Facebook.

PSV Fair

On Saturday 22 March, we gathered together as a collective student village for fun and games.

Slip-n'-Slide

Carrying eggs with spoons

We were tasked with carrying an egg to a table, going around the table, and coming back to that line. No eggs were hurt in the process.

Bobbing for apples

We also competed in apple bobbing (two at a time get six apples each, best time wins). Since some apples had Hepatitis A at the time, it was not recommended to actually eat the apples, but biting them for leverage was probably fine. Here's something you should know about me: I am either moderately good at an activity, or mind-numbingly awful at an activity. Not only did I get last place, but my time was about 2.5 minutes, in contrast to the next slowest time at 1 min. 12 seconds or so. But I (eventually) finished and received an appropriate amount of (pity) applause.

A baking contest with one participant

These cupcakes were chocolate peanut-butter cupcakes with individual Oreos in each cupcake. Though I wasn't able to eat a cupcake, I learned a very important fact about Oreos here. Oreos in New Zealand are vegan! That means that Oreos have no milk in them! I can eat Oreos with no fear of negative consequences that wouldn't happen to regular people!

But is the rest of Auckland like? Maybe you'll learn next time! Kia ora!