Seven years.

(1) VII, You are decked in a brand new uniform and you live opposite your new school. You spend countless hours that summer looking out the window making up scenarios. You're in the same tutor group as the girls that you think are your friends. You laugh very loud and get a reputation for being super smart but you're really just good at making people think you are. You get into several petty fights with those girls but to you they're the end of the world and you convince yourself that your life is just as dramatic as all the tv shows you watch.

You want to change your look so you curl your hair and it looks awful and you feel stupid and people mock you, so you go home and write rude things and mean punishments in a bound notebook. You worry that someone will read your punishments so you throw your notebook in a hidey-hole you've discovered in the ceiling. You need to put a stool on your bed whenever you want to retrieve it.

You have plenty of school spirit and run for class council. You go to a few meetings and then get bored and stop going. No one cares. You suck at sports so you don't run or swim or participate in any of the interhouse activities but sometimes you go and support. You cheer loudly when it is announced your house wins the house cup at the end of the year.

(2) VIII, You turn up expecting something fresh and new. You get your new schedule. You analyse the new kids. This year, you will drift away from that group of girls and separate into forming a twosome with one of the other girls. She will continue to be your friend for a while and you are grateful for that.

You breeze through and enjoy year eight. In your mind now, it is just a mesh of the same-as-year-seven-but-a-year-later. You run for student council again and get it. You attend meetings but you're so shy and awkward so you normally just keep quiet.

(3) IX, You hear whispers of how this is the last easy year because of GCSEs next year and how you can slack off in subjects you're not doing next year. You delve into emo music and just about drown yourself in self apathy. This is the period you will look back on and laugh at the most. You dye your hair black black black like your soul and play guitar and write terrible, cliché songs. You convince yourself how life is so dark and difficult and you sit on your computer and complain. You refuse to go anywhere without a thick layer of eyeliner, a habit you will never quite drop.

(4) X, You become part of a group of girls you are convinced will be your friends for life. As time passes, you will come to care for only a few of them. On the other hand, you befriend someone unexpected who will become one of your closest friends ever. GCSEs have started and you come to find out what you're good at and what you're not. You mellow out a bit.

You discover anime and begin to play video games like never before. You become obsessed with escapism. You write stories constantly and visualize your imagination pouring out your skull like an unstoppable force. You are the oppressed artist stuck in the real world. You read the Harry Potter books back to back in a cycle in between pausing Final Fantasy VIII.

(5) XI, For some inexplicable reason, you begin to dip your feet in insanity. Your brain starts moving at 200mph and nothing else can keep it. You start to feel detached from everyone and everything and suddenly you are the outsider again. You do all your assignments but you have so many PLANS and IDEAS and not enough TIME. You sleep less and less and get a crazed look in your eyes that only you notice. You depress yourself because you will never SUCCEED because there isn't enough TIME and you're not GOOD enough to do everything you're MEANT to do and you HAVE to do. Your thoughts keep you up half the night.

This is a confusing year. You spend a lot of the time thinking to yourself. You take long, long walks and just ponder your life and your decisions and everything you've done so far. You stop talking to your friends as much. You inexplicably stop trusting people as much and start to pride yourself in closing off. You resolve to never cry again.

(6) XII, You start IB and you love the change. You dress brightly and try to act overly positive. It doesn't work too well. This is the year you really stop caring and stop trying to please people. You develop a 'fuck everything' mentality that you will later keep with you. You develop a strong distaste for your whole school and year and become convinced you are above everyone else. You are still awkward and shy and terrible in social situations.

You apply to be first a prefect, and then a head prefect. You get the position of head prefect. You tell your parents at the dinner table and they smile politely. Your first year is relatively easy. You like most of your subjects and you make other friends outside of school who's company you like a lot more than a lot of your school friends. You do graphics in the school's fashion show. You opt not to go to the dinner dance and stay at home and play video games instead.

(7) XIII, You are so close and you need to leave. You cannot stop thinking about the future and the idea of reinvention stresses you out and you try it again and again but you're just too yourself. You become obsessed with life and death everything in between and you can't stop thinking again. Your brain begins to run ahead and nothing can keep up. You never lost that feeling of detachment and it comes on stronger than ever.

You become so tired all the time and just want everything over and done with. You become a bit of a misanthrope and spend all your time complaining. You do your exams and you're just so tired and you can't be fucked to revise but you do and suddenly it's over and you have no attachment to the school and you leave everything behind.

You write about your experiences and they don't seem like you but you remember bits and pieces and the finish was so long ago and the start even longer. And now you wait for your results and you wait for the next part.

Day & Night.

Day & Night. from Laura Grant on Vimeo.

Take On The World (Video Post)

Take On The World from Laura Grant on Vimeo.

Take On The World

Today was (a) something out of a fairytale, (b) an ideal summer day, (c) completely unexpected or (d) all of the above?

Now, some notes since last entry:
(1) The lovely Savannah is back!
(2) With her comes a whole new crowd of fabulous people.
(3) Said new crowd celebrated hard on Tuesday $10 vodka night

Said new crowd also conducted a plan to visit a waterfall. A waterfall in North Point, (relatively busy city area of Hong Kong,) you ask, surely it must be a prank?
Answer: no.
(Lian genuinely was concerned that it was a prank and asked Lizzy about it.)




Despite the weather sucking and being dumb all week, it was a pretty nice day which was okay, and not too sunny up there which was good because to be completely honest, I hate the sun.


After buying a fair bit of food but not spending too much money, this delightful group of 10 proceeded to hike up the mountain to find these so called waterfalls. Stop by at one and have our lunch. (Because we were all greedy and hungry people.)




It was pretty insane. Obviously high up in the mountains is a different story, but the fact the city was always lurking in the background made it all a bit surreal.



This was the main place where we stayed. The water got relatively deep enough and was, (and thank fuck too,) pretty damn cool. Chucked a few beers in and it was preeeetty nice.

Point proven.


Lizzy, dubbed the cake queen, also whipped up one of her masterpieces for today. In the past... 2 weeks or so, I've had about 3 different kinds of Lizzy's cakes and frostings. Rainbow cakes and her own buttercream made for a few vague squabbles on who got how many pieces and we may or may not have resorted to just scooping the extra buttercream with our hands...



Hey cool. I'm actually in a picture. When you're the one with the camera, suddenly it's hard to prove that you were actually there...



We then got a little bit carried away with how cool the cans looked next to everything else and uh,




yeah...

favourite...



In all, it was a surreal-y brilliant day, straight out of an ideal summer's day catalogue minus the rather irritating scrapes on my knees. I thought I'd been doing suspiciously well when 4 hours passed with me in a place full of wet, slippery rocks and i was injury-free. My suspicions were correct, for as soon as we stepped foot on straight, flat, path, I promptly fell on my knees and decided to bring home some of the sand and dirt from the path via my knees.

We then met up later, (the time in between these two was me editing photos, clearing up space on my computer when I realised I had 1.76gb left - Hey! That's why photoshop kept crashing! - and editing the stop motion - yes I'm addicted - and setting everything to upload whilst I was out,) to go to a place which had games and beer pong. Not sure who suggested/found it, but a far more relaxed night than usual.

And then I come home and find not only has facebook removed my video, but I'm now banned for copyright infringement. coooool. Thank god for vimeo.

And ... now it is 3AM. Sleep may be a good idea.

Colourful Trips

SO. Technically the contents of this post happened a good 2 weeks ago or so, but where my memory fails, I do believe the ridiculous amount of photos I take will help in putting this together.


It started out as the ugliest day on Earth, with rain in patches. When we got out the station it was raining a fair bit, resulting in half the mainland tourists lurking under cover. This put a damper on my mood a bit (plus the other two being late, as we got in for free and had to be on time etc etc,) but once the rain pissed off, it was pretty and sunny.

(And hot as hell due to the sauna effect which is dumb.)

I can get three people in free (including me,) which is an annoying number, but luckily Izzy had to renew her pass anyway so she made up our quartet. For an innocent Tuesday, it was pretty damn busy. There were many cries of "why aren't these people at work/school!" and I may have shouted "CAN YOU NOT" at the twelve year old kids singing justin bieber in the Space Mountain line. (Time and place for everything.)


I absolutely love Disneyland. HK Disneyland really isn't that great rides-wide, but no one goes for the rides; it's more about the atmosphere. Suddenly I can outwardly display my inner obnoxious persona by singing all day and skipping everywhere.



This is exactly what we did during the show of the lion king. A few years ago, my friend Ali pointed out how boring it must be for the performers. And - not to make generalisations, but HK audiences can be so meh. It doesn't matter what happens, it just results in polite clapping. Therefore, we stood at the back and sang along to all the songs and danced.
Result? Some guy comes up to us after and says Simba wanted him to give us stickers

Four years later or so we do the same. Same tactic at least, because I do believe my audience-performing has gotten better. We definitely caught the eye of all the performers and got a fair few waves. Was quite convinced for a few moments that we were going to be asked to join the show, but unfortunately they must not have been able to find us after we were not.


My hair is really green here and this is the only reason I'm including this photo. Oh, and I look real happy I guess, backing up my earlier claims.


We went and met all the characters too which was cute. I always feel so awkward and it was so damn hot I felt bad for them. The parade too; whilst it was fun and all that, some of those people must've been melting inside the costumes.


More hair n_n

And then on the Friday, we headed to Sai Kung to our friend Allira's house for "camping" (indoor camping we decided, as the weather forecast showed rain.)
(I am selectively skipping over Wednesday night in which several unnamed people got a fair bit tipsy, resulting in much tomfoolery and general shenanigans.)

Whilst Sai Kung is miles away, jesus christ Allira's place was like a resort.

this is

someone's house...

We all got like... 3 hours sleep or so (Except Hayley or Roman who claimed the couch.) I claimed the small couch which was fine because I curl up when I sleep anyway. When I sleep.
And while it took me a while to get the settings okay, a 3AM walk up a pitch black mountain culminated in some badass light painting and light textures ~



I don't even care, I love this picture so much...


3AM walk was after 1AM night swimming and 2AM ice cream eating as well by the way.

I love the AIS crowd jesus they're all so fun. Day after we got lunch and then slowly made our ways back to wherever our ways are. That then gave me sunday to cool down BECAUSE monday was an overnight stay in Macau.

Basically, Anson, who is a magician, managed to magic us free suites at the venetian hotel, (not literally,) but yeah - we didn't have to pay. I think I summed up the trip quite well in a tumblr post:

"4AM, me and Esme are sitting in a free swanky hotel suite, eating chicken wings and naan bread, (her), and homemade vanilla gelato, (me), whilst some guy we just met sits on the sofa wrapped in a duvet watching a program about sharks on Discovery Channel."**

** It was cartoon network at first but they were showing absolute rubbish.


Suite was a tad bit trashed next morning.


So picturesque omg. This was where I filmed 'Adventures in Stop Motion,' from my last entry.

For anyone who doesn't know, Macau is like Asian vegas. Loads of casinos. Whilst me and Esme couldn't gamble, (being 17,) that didn't stop Anson and Tom losing some money whilst Roman didn't want to spend any. Because me and Es arrived late, we actually went into town and wandered the different hotels with Anson until about 2 or 3 or so. (Roman and Tom went back to the suite, and from the information we gathered after, Roman fell asleep straight away whilst Tom sat there listening to music. We came back in the middle of Mayday Parade's 'Miserable at best')

Me and Esme kept Tom up half the night, (although to be fair, he did drink a red bull,) by ordering room service even though it was 3.30, (well worth it though.) We all then therefore got up around 10.30~11.00 ish, (although I was up for a while, but everyone else's unwillingness to get up and my nothing to do meant I just went back to sleep - )

- actually, Esme got a phone call at 8.30 from a teacher at our school - yes, the one we graduated from already - which is another funny story...

We then went to lunch, sat on the grass waiting for cabs, took a bus instead after about half an hour, and then went to "Fun Ice World," which is a -15 degree attraction with loads of sculptures and things.


After that, it was back on the ferry, (after waiting AGES, and on which I educated and played "The music game" with Tom and Roman because I found they have similar taste to me,) and back home.

SO, I have now covered 3 big events in one entry. Macau was on Monday, and I literally don't remember the rest of the week. It rained a lot and I stayed home and painted zombies I'm pretty sure. I was cruelly pulled away from the internet this morning for father's day to participate in an activity that ranks very highly in my list of "activites I don't like": Going into the sea in the sun. 35 degrees and my hatred for hot weather made this uncomfortable, but I went anyway and just floated around in the sea. Apparently it wasn't good enough because my dad was being annoying and talking rubbish when my parents finally got back, but oh well.

And now I've reduced this to useless rambling and therefore should shut up. I get so off topic sometimes.

Adventures in Stop Motion

Adventures in Stop Motion from Laura Grant on Vimeo.

I've been busy recently!

hair

SO me and Lizzy dipdyed sort of highlighted our hair. We got the colours online... (but today I found some in hong kong yay redyes!) and had to bleach a few times. The bleach wasn't exactly as light as I wanted but as usual, I got too impatient and just coloured it anyway. Photos don't do it justice, but regardless:











Awards ceremony tomorrow, blehh. Plans for disneyland + partying next week!