Well, I’ve started to get a bit more sleep, which is all to the good… still waking up early in the mornings, though. This week I’ve had coffee with Maureen from the Japanese Consulate, dinner with Grandma and Grandad, visited Daniel, wandered around town for various bits and pieces… including my regalia for graduation.

Graduation was this Friday. The day started off well – I woke up to a nosebleed. I walked into town after getting all dressed up (I actually did my ironing the night before and everything…) and met up with Mum on my way to the Arts Centre, where everyone in the procession had gathered. I hung around talking to all the Computer Science people around me for a while – that was kind of weird, I hadn’t really thought about it, but most of the people my year had already graduated long since. Still, I knew quite a few people who were graduating, which was nice. I even saw Nik briefly, as he had come over from Melbourne to watch his brother graduate. Everyone then marched to the town hall, filed into the main auditorium and we had the ceremony. There were a few things which I found odd about the ceremony. For one, we sang the national anthem in Maori first, English second… when I left for the US in 2005, it was the other way around. We also (tried to) sing Gaudeamus, which is apparently Canterbury University‘s song. It was kind of appalling to realise I didn’t know any of the words, at all. I guess the school song just doesn’t get used all that much.

As a side note, I can still remember all of the words to the St. Andrew’s school song. ^^;

Anyway, back to the ceremony. Our speaker was the Governor General, who wasn’t particularly good at all, which was a shame. Afterwards I heard a few people saying they thought he did a good job, but I thought he was rubbish. I had way more inspiring and invigorating speeches at St. Andrew’s prizegivings… a little scary, that. Anyway, lots of names got read out, I recognised a whole lot more people in other departments than I thought I would. Time came, I did my bit and walked across the stage to receive my Bachelor of Science, First Class Honours in Computer Science. I even managed to forget that my face got plastered all over the massive screens when I did it, which was a plus… I didn’t really want to be self conscious about that.

After the ceremony I met up with my attending family upstairs to partake of the provided refreshments, talk for a while and take a few pictures. From there it was off to drop off the regalia, then back to Mum’s for a long, late lunch with Aunty Dee and Nana. Unfortunately Siobhan, Dace and Dad were all not in attendance, as Siobhan and Dad were out of the country and Dace had work. After lunch at Mum’s I came back to Dad’s and talked online with Anastasia for a while, it was good to see her right after the graduation. I had dinner around at Ruby’s house that night, then went to the Ric (Rach’s flat) for a party. No drinking or anything, just a good chance to catch up with some more people. During the course of the evening, my voice proceeded to re-break itself. Or that’s what it felt like, anyway. Instead of the previous voice-break (which took some 6-8 years to go through all of it) being young boy to man voice, I went from man voice to Barry White voice in the same cracking pattern… was very, very weird. Turns out it was just my body being messed up from being sick, as the next day I woke up and had no voice. ^^;

Saturday Nik and Ian both came over, we talked through a whole bunch of stuff to do with the company that we want to create together, how we’re going to proceed from here, etc. It felt really productive, and really reinforced the idea that at least the core team for any company really does need to be in the same place instead of being halfway ’round the world from each other.

Yesterday I was a bit domestic and did a lot of laundry. I very unfortunately missed seeing Hera play in the Arts Centre because I didn’t check my to-do list early enough. Ah well, luckily I’ll be here for a little while and should be able to see her live again before I leave. I had dinner at Mum’s again (is it just me, or do most families do the whole Sunday-dinner thing?), joined by Nana which was nice.

Today I went shopping with Dace in the afternoon, got some Christmas stuff (I know, I know… left it to the last minute – hey, my being in NZ was my main Christmas present to most people), then Nik and Ian came over again in the afternoon, we talked a lot of crap and then watched Gargoyles into the evening.

So, I’m all graduated (finally) and my voice appears to be (nominally) back again. Hurrah!