First year law student Lily Cain is a student in the weekdays, and on the weekends she trades her university books for a sword? No joke. It's part of her Crusaders Maidens cheerleading outfit.
What do you study?I am just studying an LLB and seeing how my results go. I might consider doing a double degree next year but I am just focusing on law this year.
Is it hard balancing university and cheerleading?At times it can be quite a lot, as when we have two or three home games in a row, we have to learn new dances. So we will have two or three two-hour rehearsals a week on top of having to study and get essays done. It can be quite a lot. It is just knowing what is a priority and what is not.
When did you get into cheerleading?You have to be 18 to be get into [the Maidens] and I only just turned 18 this year, but the choreographer was my dance teacher for a while so that also...

While Kusaka Tadaaki is a name you may not know, his passport photography business is hard to miss when walking down Waimairi Road. Come and meet this local whose bright banners on the footpath outside his house are almost as awesome as his photographs.
Kusaka is a familiar face to any uni student who approaches University from the West. He works out of his garage-turned-photo booth on Waimairi Road, just past the Ilam stores and just before Westburn School. He offers cheap passport and ID photographs, and a friend of his offers haircuts as well; hence the somewhat curious combo on their sign.
Tadaaki has been a photographer for over 30 years; he left Japan and moved to America to learn English when he was 21. He first lived in downtown Los Angeles, where the landscape and city life stimulated him. "Every view was very interesting for me, because it was so different," he reflects. He...