George | Beach Haven

I like to carve, woodcarving. I think that’s surprising.

I only recently started, I started volunteering for Laura Fergusson Rehabilitation, in the workshop, and the guy there, he’s really good at carving, so I asked him to show me, and I made this really cool fishhook thing. It’s only recent; at the moment I’m making a tiger, which is pretty cool.

It’s not something I’ve talked about before, because it’s so recent. To most people, I’m the sporty one. I played football for 10 years of my life; pretty much at the club just five minutes’ walk that way. So it’s not, it’s not something sporty. It’s not really something to do with my family or anything that’s happened with my background and stuff. So those people who know me, they’d be like, oh. It’s just something random that they haven’t heard from me before, so I think that’s why it would be surprising. Maybe deep down there might be some kind of connection to culture, but I’m not too sure.

I’ve always liked to do things with my hands. I quite liked weaving as well, when I was bored, when I was younger, because we had a flax bush. I’d just go cut some flax and just weave stuff. So, I’ve always just really liked doing hands-on kind of things. I’ve always wanted to do carving. I used to scratch things into the corner of the table with a knife, but now that I’ve actually got the opportunity to try and do some real kind of carving, it’s yeah, it’s just cool. It just feels cool to make stuff, and then you can give them to people as gifts.

It’s a hobby; you kind of called it a passion. I don’t know whether that passion will last long, because I’m one of those people, I would do things for a bit, and then start doing another thing, do another thing. I still have long-term goals, but in terms of short-term hobby things, I just drop in and out of different interests, once I’ve learned about it and done stuff. I get bored kind of fast, and move on. So yeah, just a hobby for now.

I’m Samoan-Irish. My mum’s Samoan. My dad’s half Irish. I’ve lived in Beach Haven all my life, except for when my parents split. So now my mum lives in Māngere. I value family. It’s the most important thing.

Right now I currently work at an after school care, and plus my volunteering, and I also go to AUT, and I’m doing a certificate in social sciences. Then hopefully next year I’ll move on and do a bachelor of arts, majoring in criminology, and then maybe become a police officer and be a detective, maybe. I’m not sure yet.”

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