The final stretch

Well the end is near for year 10 with our end of academic year exams commencing tomorrow afternoon with English which should be overall a relatively easy exam but lots of writing its like 3 essays in 90mins. Luckily i get 2 days off during exams Tuesday will be good as it give me an opportunity to study between blocks of exams. House competition is also coming to an end with academics the last item for the Thomason shield where Sholto has the chance to take the lead and win over Rendall (we are smarter than them, arent we?)

After exams its 2 weeks of holidays then a week of work experience, im going to Computer Initiatives in Berwick which should be good as i get to go out on service calls and stuff like that. Then comes 2 weeks of a maths and english program then its straight  into Yr11 the Monday after APS aths where i hope we will have a decent cheer squad this year.

Its amazing how fast time goes especially at school. It seems like not long ago it was term 4B and i just started all my yr 10 subjects. This school year has been great with both Fame and Inheritance which were fantastic production.

- JD

what a busy time

The last few weeks have been flat out with the school production of Fame and this is the first time i have had a chance to really reflect upon the amazing show we put together it really has been a memorable experience and it is a shame that it is the last show that people such as Luke, James and Alistair will get to work on, but I’m sure they’ll be back next yr as old boys.

The show went really well except for some sound issues that could not be solved due to the fact the set was made of out metal which interfered with the radio mics. All 3 nights went pretty well except for the curtain closing too early at the end of act 1 on opening night which was not Luke’s fault but Belly’s explanation of when to close it. It has been such a great show to be involved with from from set construction, bump in to bump out, to breaking into Luke’s car, to the XLR-Cat5-VCR-Coax CCTV, to listening to the most annoying feedback ever, to confetti and king cow. There have been so many good moments and it has been a learning experience for me with moving lights and the like.

On the last night the techies gave gifts to the major people involved with Tech Crew vests for Don, JP and Pullyblank. Venue Manager for Pant and Director for Belly, which they all really loved and Pant wore his the rest of the night.

This weekend i have also had Haileybury Aths Champs which consisted of a generally poor turn out from the senior students and it has also been my sisters 21st which was good to catch up with extended family.

I look forward to finishing bump out this week. It amazes me how long it takes to put stuff together but how fast it can be taken down.

All for now

- JD

Dr Pargetter

Yesterday we were notified of the sad news that Dr Pargetter had passed away. Many of us never knew the Doc on much of a personal level but overall he has been one of the better things that has happened to the school. There has been so much change with Dr Pargetter at the helm, the introduction of girls, parallel education, lecture program, and term 4B which gives us such an advantage. Dr Pargetter was the perfect person at the right time for Haileybury and under him the school has grown so much and would not be close to where it is today. His pioneering ideas and visions will be greatly missed within the Haileybury community

On a more positive note the musical ‘Fame’ is getting very close. Opening night is Wednesday next week. Lighting wise is pretty much done. It was completed on Thursday and Saturday last week. (see james’ blog for more info). Sound is due to be done on Friday and the full dress rehearsal is on Sunday so it looks to be a busy schedule before opening night but all in all should be a very good show.

Fame: The Musical

The main purpose for this post is to talk about the rehearsal for fame but first i will mention x country from yesterday. Yesterday was the second last round of APS cross country which was hosted by Haileybury at Edrington. The head of cross country had put in a load of effort with a digital clock at the start/finish, 2 hay bayles as obstacles, and even had vests for all the officials. One detail he did have though which made the whole team laugh was he has written H2XC on the hill (dont ask about the origin of that its quite sad). Overall we beat caulfield and MGS and if we beat St Kevins next week we will win the premiership. The girls are also in a position to take their premiership.

Today was a rehearsal for fame in which we got alot of work done. We managed to hang the blacks which will need to be fixed with the cougar because some are hung at angles and just cant be fixed from the roof. More of the walls went up on the set. All the remaining lights from Inheritance were lowered. The 2Ks got a well deserved clean and 22/40s were hung on the side perches which was a major task. Lukes rather genious idea for the ladder worked quite well but Belly insisted that we use the harness. After a decent days work i now have some rather severe rope burn from lowering so many lights and hanging blacks. Thursday looks to be a good day because it is our major bump in which means we get all our hired lights which will be my first experience with movers so that should be good fun.

We also found why James failed his P’s the first time, indicate then turn! and yes we can flash our brake lights too. Luke on the other hand is a much safer driver.

It looks to be a short but intense time until opening night but will be worth it in the end. Only 17 days left until opening night.

Bye for now   - JD

Update!

well its been 9 days since i last updated my blog and now monkey wants me to update so just to make him happy i will, even though i dont have much to write about.

Its seems that my slack start to the term and my high hopes for it to remain that way have come to an end. Fame is coming up in the middle of August which will take a good chunk of time before opening night with rehearsals and car tasks such as hanging the blacks. I also have an outcome to prepare for history. Our teacher has set us a really strict timetable to get all the stuff done but i dont know how ill go with it because it looks as if it will take forever.

Today we had an R&S lecture (monkeys most favorite subject of course) which was pretty much a chance to catch a few Z’s.  I wasnt really paying a whole lot of attention but the general gist was bhuddist core beliefs.

In other news it seems that another interesting sport has been added to the list of house activities. Rock, paper, scissors. Yes you heard it. Today was the final in assembly and im glad to say that the mighty SHOLTO won. Rock paper scissors is right up there with lawn bowls, who wants to be a millionaire and chess.

And congratulations to James who finally got his P’s today.

Thats all for now

JD

Edrington Concert

Today me and monkey were down at Edrington to do lighting for their concert which is on tomorrow night. The day was pretty much a bludge. The lighting rig is pretty much parcan galore with a few borrowed fresnels because Edrington has very few of its own lights. The new hall at Edrington has some really stupid stuff. They have a whole desktop PC set up just to control the temp of the air con, there is a talkback socket on every second wall (eg there is one right under the mirror where makeup is done, theres a heap of them that will never get used) , fire extinguishers behind locked doors with the sign on the outside of the door, and an exit sign that is nowhere near an exit. The house lights have their own sheet with all the abbreviations for the switches and turn turn off the houselights for the concert you need to press seven buttons. The rig is a pain to focus because it is like Newlands where the bar lowers so u have to eyeball it to get it right. Also the patching panel and dimmers have been put under the stage which is like a bloody maze. But other than that it is a pretty good hall for what it is designed for.

Whilst at Edrington we were treated like royalty and it was totally different to what we were used to there. We were asked if we would like tea or coffee and the art teacher who is normally really strict on supplies and cleaning up let us just have some metho and a cloth to clean the profile and she even cleaned it up for us. We are also invited to dinner tomorrow night before the concert. It was a good chance to catch up with staff members that we get along with and haven’t seen in a while. So all in all it should be a good concert but theres like 20 acts so it could go forever.

- JD

Yr 10 ‘Leadership’ Camp and X Country Relays

Thursday and Friday saw the annual Yr10 ‘leadership’ camp. Which really involved nothing to do with leadership at all. We were down at Phillip Island adventure resort (same place we had yr6 camp). The camp was pretty lame and our group didn’t even get to do the good activities like the giant swing and the crate climb because we weren’t there for long enough. On Thursday night we had a disco and karaoke night which was really bad. The girls didn’t turn up until there was only 25mins left because of their guest speaker. Friday was time for more activities and then off to home. But it also involved a bag check which took 3 hours because someone had their ipod ’stolen’. So all in all a pretty average camp that didnt live up to its intended purpose.

Now this morning i am a bit pissed off because it was cross country road relays in Bundoora which took ages to get to. I was forced to run a 3km time trial by myself because the other members of my team were no-shows. It went alright and i was quite happy with my time but thats not the point. If people are going to pick a sport for school then they should at least bloody turn up so that it does not disadvantage other members of the team. School sport is compulsory and there is no reason whatsoever to not be there especially when you have said to the coach that you are available to play. Hopefully heads will roll on Monday. Well done to the U16 boys who won their race by a very convincing margin.

- JD

Weekend and V-Tech Rampage

Greetings

On Saturday i had cross country. It was a very muddy track and you had to stomp every so often to get the mud off your shoes otherwise they would get too heavy. Haileybury was against heavy weights Scotch and Xavier. We beat Scotch but narrowly went down to Xavier by 4 points. The good thing though is St Kevins drew with MGS leaving a good chance to win the premiership if we beat Caulfield and St Kevins in the final two rounds. Once home from Geelong i had a rest and did some homework. On Sunday afternoon i went to the football and saw St Kilda take on Geelong. The Saints played like shit and the umpiring was just as bad with the controversial hands in the back rule.
Today i had school. Double Geog, Electrotech, Double Science, English and Geography. I eventually got my History done throughout the day and it took me forever to print in the library because the computers are so slow and take forever. English was a waste of time where we spent the lesson talking about mobile phones for some random reason and had to write i story that involved a mobile phone.
I also saw a link to this game on overclockers.com.au today. Yes, this game is in bad taste but it intrigued me and i had to try it out. It is a flash game about the Virginia Tech Rampage and it is quite controversial it can be found HERE on the newgrounds site.
Well thats it for now. Happy Gaming
- JD

St Margs Deb / Geog Field Trip

Well ive been pretty busy in between posts

On Saturday night I had the annual St Margaret’s Yr10 Deb Ball. The afternoon kicked off when we got to Bella’s house to have photos and about half a million photos later to catch the limo. The limo was pretty cool it was a stretch Ford LTD, one of the other groups had a stretch Ford Territory which was pretty cool. When we got to the venue we had a while to practice and refine our dances. That didn’t really help me and my partner Kim coz when we had to do them properly for the actual performance we screwed the waltz up at 2 or 3 different points but it was all in good fun. Other dances included the progressive jive, 3 step and samba. The main meal was ok but the deserts were pretty damn good I had a really nice orange cake. After we had finished the evening we had free reign of the dance floor and the DJ got going. We had an awsome time and then at about midnight we left to go to the after party which was being hosted by Kim. By this time some of us were pretty stuffed but still had a good time. It was a fantastic evening and I eventually got to bed at about 3 for some well earned sleep. Hopefully ill be able to post some photos of the evening soon.

Today, still tired from the deb, I had a geography field trip which started in Berwick so i got on the bus there and got to have a bit of a sleep in.  The whole purpose of the trip is about Human Environments and the green wedge and the rural urban fringe.  After starting at Berwick we moved onto Officer, Cardinia and Moorabbin. We then had lunch at south land and while we were there we saw Robert Harvey who is and AFL legend that plays for the mighty Saints. After lunch we went onto Toorak and looked at some of the massive mansions and then onto Docklands. We then made our way back to school in time to catch the early buses. It wasn’t too bad of a day and was better than having English and double Science.

Well thats about all I have to write for now and I’d better start some maths homework and my history outcome.

Until next time                - JD

House Performing Arts

Well today was house performing arts so from recess onwards I was helping set up some lights and stuff for that. I managed to get out of history(thanks to James, you legend it was so boring) and science in order to help but decided to go to maths in period 5. Performing arts kicked off at lunchtime with drama which was themed Monty Python which was pretty good but got boring towards the end. Sholto Black (my house came 2nd). Next up was house dance and there were some really crap ones like Castlefield and Rendall which hardly involved any form of dance at all. Sholto got jibbed in this as it was clearly better than most of the others but only managed a miserable 7th. There was also a heap of complaints about the projector screen and how people couldn’t read it and they wanted it fixed but its a bit had when whoever made the damn power point used a black background with dark font.  House music was a bit better and some houses were quite good Rendall’s song about Watto was good but I think Sholto was the best with our lead man Kog, we don’t find out the results until tomorrow but I think we will definitely be up there.