Gundam Wing

Now I will be asian and talk about anime :P Gundam Wing would be about the 3rd anime I had ever watched, and also the reason why I also started listening to music... I think it was grade 8 or something... 2003... was when it was first released in australia on cartoon network. Also the same time Linkin Park first came out big time with their Hybrid Theory album. Invariably, Linkin Park's song Crawling was used for the trailer for the anime. I liked the music (which would explain why I have all their albums :P) and was intrigued by the sci-fi setting of the anime. Although at the same time was other sci-fi stuff like cowboy bepop or some crap like that, it was the whole war philosophy and stuff that really got me into it. Although I have become an avid Gundam fan, I still don't think that the storylines of the newer Gundam series can even match up to the depth of the story in Gundam Wing, although I haven't watched Gundam 00 yet so I could be wrong. The anime shows so many different perspectives on war in light of all the other opposition around them, hardly any of the characters have only 1 sole desire to fight or to prevent fighting. It actually gets hard to identify who is really on the "bad" side until extreme measures begin to get taken near the end of the series. While GSeed simply tries to obtain pacifism and for people to drop their weapons and live in peace. Gundam Wing and Gundam Wing Endless Waltz go even further than that to show the weaknesses of each perspective on fighting and the how's and why's for fighting. I reckon this sets it far above any other war anime out there although I haven't seen enough to be sure of it.

As you can probably tell, I am a massive fan of this series :P Rather than your typical "civilian" character somehow getting his hands on military equipment during a distinct enemy raid on an experimental mobile suit factory and becoming the hero while learning how to fight on the field (which btw is virtually impossible as you will die the second you step outside lol) and inevitably being a civilian doesn't want to be there and takes the deaths of his friends extremely hard and breaks down, eventually finding the pacifist girl (most likely someone influential on the opposing side) and falling in love and then breaking away with a few close allies to stop both sides from continuing their conflict by neutral intervention or by defending the oppressed,(massive sentence) Gundam Wing is more realistic about well planned revolutions, governments, corruption, ulterior motives, indirect approaches to a long term goal of domination as well as your direct, take over the world goals and with people debating constantly about ethics and sacrifices of war with romance taking a relatively backseat in obviousness and shows only very subtlely but extensively :P For the less philosophically and politically minded of us, this might be boring cos we just want to see things blown up and straightforward character development/relationship development between characters. But for people who like to think... or like to know reasons and impulses behind the actions of others then I say this is the best anime ever :P

Photos of Our Christmas Dinner

I said I'd post up photos for yesterday's dinner thingy, particularly the fish and the chocolate fountain :P so here they are... My photography skills are coming along, learning by experimentation, though the chocolate fountain photo is still slightly out of focus :P... I also made a chocolate banana bread today too and that tasted pretty darn good haha... Anyways... yeah...

Christmas Dinner 2008

Well, tonight we had dinner at home, and my bro and his fiancee was with us. We had smoked turkey, ham, salt baked rainbow trout, prawns and chocolate fountain type fondue. I have photos... but I am currently too tired to be bothered to upload them here... So... maybe tomorrow...

Speaking of tired... When I get bored I think about all sorts of stuff... Thinking about stuff that I'm uncertain about, stuff that I don't know the answers too... And just mulling unresolute over these answerless questions... Suprisingly, it takes alot of brainpower to do that and I'm running out of it... But I'll ramble on about this another day...

I feel dead...

Pre-Christmas Dinner with Neighbours...

Our neighbours are all taiwanese... and so they all speak mandarin... And I for one, don't understand mandarin, only extremely limited excerpts of it. So tonight my parents cooked up dinner and invited the neighbours over to our place. They are all pretty old might I add. My brother wasn't home as per usual so therefore I was the only youngling/teenager at the table. The only interesting thing for me was the food pretty much, cos I barely understood the conversations. Normally I can fit right into conversation of "adults"/elder people, but with a defining language barrier it was not possible, and so I was pretty much zoned out for the later 2/3rds of the dinner. During the first 3rd of the night though, I attempted to understand and surely enough I understood the topic that was, at the time, currently in conversation. From travelling to the cost of airfares, to shanghai holidays, etc. etc. etc. But what made it rather depressing though is that when every single person, that is significantly older than you, has asked you whether you have a girlfriend yet... I understood all those parts in mandarin, but one of the neighbours (who could actually speak english) asked me that question in english as a direct question, what can you do but have a hysterical grin and shake your head? It is depressing because it seems as though it is like a measure of reputation relative to age. After that the conversation continues in mandarin and my mum says that I don't have one because I seem too "childish"... I'm assuming she thought I wouldn't understand. But yeah... I've lost the direction that I was trying to head for this blog. But either way... It is rather depressing to hear that question from so many people so frequently... I might have blogged about it before, but I think I spoke about how whenever people talk about my brother's wedding when I'm around the question of "When will it be your turn?" inevitably rears it's ugly ass into the conversation.

O well... *sigh*...

Christmas Present Wrapping...

just finished wrapping those christmas presents... took me like 2 weeks to eventually get around to all of them... not that there are many presents mind you, it's just because I am so damn lazy haha... Having done that I still need to write the cards and stick em on the presents still... but that can wait to tomorrow :P O well... I wonder how much I actually spent on presents... must be a good 100 or so dollars all up... and I still owe my mum 240 bucks somewhere along the line... so I still need to get that back before I actually start saving again... guess I need to work hard afterwards to raise my bank balance back up to scratch...

O well...

Capturing Lightning

Last night when I was taking photos of my massive steak dinner, I realised that I had some older photos from another time when I was trying to take photos of lightning strikes a few weeks earlier during those stormy nights. I was hoping to catch fork lightning... but obviously I was unsuccessful cos lightning is lightning quick. I did get a few flashes tho :P but yes... here is a few more successful shots...

I was doing this from my room so I had my window open while it was raining and taking photos of nothing :P I would've looked like an idiot haha o well...

Carnivorous Dinner...

Yes... Last night my mum cooked steak... She visited the new Audi (not the car company) store at Sunnybank Hills shopping centre and bought a bulk pack of rump steak... 1.5kg of it. And so I had on massive piece of steak all by myself... Must've been close to 700g. It was biiigggggg :P I've attached a photo onto this blog so you guys could check it out :P Also this is for Derek who wanted to challenge me to a Steak eating competition some time ago so I reckon this might scare him off :P So yes... haha... It might be disgusting to some, might be jaw dropping for others, or considered pure manliness by some others still :P hahahaha... Meanwhile I also had to eat some vegetables with it so I could avoid getting colon or bowel cancer :P... hehe

Rusty Tennis Skills

Heh, today we went to play some tennis with the guys... I've played once in the last 5 years so I was pretty crap haha... The only relatively decent shot I could play was the slice and my 2-handed backhand, The rackets I used were all high tension rackets so the weakest of touch would send it flying... But yes... I wanna get back into tennis now :P My skills are majorly degraded :P

So much to do and so little time to do it...

And I also did a dive on the grass court, so now I have a nice bruise on my hip from the impact lol... O well...

Neways, I'm gonna go shower...

Alive DVD

A week or so ago I bought the Alive DVD by Louie Giglio, who is the same guy that did the Indescribable DVD that I blogged about a few weeks ago. While the Indescribable DVD talked about the greatness and power of God glorified in the stars above, the Alive DVD was about the intricacies of our human body. Again, I encourage people to watch it of course, and although he didn't have as many incredible images like the Indescribable DVD, he talks about some pretty important stuff. There was two parts to the DVD, first part was explaining how there has to be a God, no doubt about that. Watch for yourself. Now if there is a God and there is, then heaven and hell also exists. The second part of the DVD explains eternal life, heaven and hell, and also dispels some myths amongst non-believing populations about how to gain that eternal life. Great stuff. I won't go into any details and stuff which would spoil the DVD should you go get it yourself or ask to borrow it. But yeah... I believe last time in the blog post, I told you guys about that image he showed in the DVD of the Whirlpool Galaxy. Well, this time, go look up laminin. It is a protein compound in your body that adheres and holds every part of your body together. The very glue of your existence. But yer.. go watch it.

Early Morning Work...

Normally, during the semester I only work in the mornings on saturdays. However it is the school clinics right now and they start at 8am in the morning which means I gotta wake up at like 6:50 to get there on time and I'm doing this 5 days a week. I guess that doesn't really agree with my nocturnal sleeping patterns. So I end up getting 6 hours sleep max on most mornings... And I would be REALLY dead. Welcome to the real world I guess... Cos once you get out into the workplace I don't think it gets any better lol... O well... gtg sleep...

Our Weed and Strawberry Garden

heh I disrupted my daily blogging yesterday... too busy playing games... lol... anyways...

Our garden is probably the most overgrown garden in our neighbourhood. Cos the weeds are immensely overgrown and we have in some places really bad planting arrangements. Like 5 mulberry trees grown about 0.5-1m apart, and mulberries grow into massive trees. Under the mulberries are a few rosemary bushes. The hardiest of hardy plants pretty much, but it likes full sun. And its grown under the shade of 5 trees. Naturally the rosemary becomes prostate, and will grow along the ground until it gets to sunlight, then grow upwards. Which means that the lawn in between the garden bed has been almost completely overtaken by rosemary branches. Which in turn kills all the grass that the rosemary branches smother. On the garden bed opposing the rosemary is a weedmatted area that has been infiltrated by a certain type of weed that could grow through the mats. We didn't add wet newspaper underneath the mats so that was the solution to the problem. the be is only half covered with mats, and so the other half is like a low herbaceous field. And throughout that half-matted garden bed that has been absolutely overgrown with weeds is our strawberries. Now some of us may know that strawberry is actually a wild plant, and its a herbaceous plant which means it can grow at incredible speeds. It grows like grass in the sense that it uses runners to sprout more and more plants. So even amongst the incredibly dense weed populations, our strawberries have resilently stood against its oppressors :P. I just harvested some strawberries while I was mowing the lawns. But yeah, since our gardens recieve a lack of attention, it doesn't get weeded and doesn't get fertilised and gets mowed every like... 2 months almost and hardly ever gets trimmed. Our strawberries are rather small in size but have good flavour, but if we weeded out its evil competitors, it would grow like, 3 or 4 fold in population and possibly after a while be dense enough to stop weeds from growing back. Also when you fertilise strawberries they grow a spine and stand to almost knee high rather that ankle height, and also have much better flavour too. lol... enough of my strawberry ravings

O and I also got new glasses today :P It has a magnetic sunglass clip on, perfect for driving :P.

O and about that pay rise, lol, it was a "one week special" cos that week earlier the boss screwed up my pay and put in under my bro's name, so it went into his account. The week after she must've made a mistake and paid me according to my bro's pay, and he's 22 so the $20.95/hr thing was probably he's rates. So unfortunate I'm still on 18/hr so yeah lol. Got my hopes up for a little bit lol...

Slept In..

Yeah, today I missed church service because I slept in by like 2 hours. Which is a lot lol... Bad thing was I was the rostered bible reader today and so someone else had to do it for me. It kinda makes me feel bad, cos I kinda distrupted the structure of the service as well as missing out on apparently a good sermon. Bur I guess however bad I feel of think I feel, it has happened and nothing can be done to change it. But life throws stuff like these at you, probably one of the devil's pranks. mehs... just shrug the little bastard off and keep going I guess.

Maybe I shouldn't have slept at 2am either... So I guess that didn't really help. I am at least partly to blame I guess :P Won't let it happen again though. O well.. My mind is kinda dead today... so I don't seem to have much to blog about...

Weddings...

As I said this morning, I went to a wedding today as well as the reception and the couple that were getting married was the older sister of my brother's fiancee. So therefore I did not really know her personally nor do I know the groom personally either. Therefore the wedding was of no real significance to me. But I dunno, maybe I'm just cold and heartless but while some people would be saying "Oh I am sooo happy for you!", I don't feel any joy or happiness or excitement watching someone else's wedding particularly when I don't know them very well. I guess the fact that both families were christian families of incredibly strong faith as well as the groom being a chaplain and a youth pastor and the bride is also a youth leader in her church does help me feel a bit more happier for them. But otherwise, I barely feel the joy. I guess I'm not a very normal person... I feel no happiness watching a couple exchange vows and rings. What I do feel happy about is witnessing the implementation of those vows. Even if I didn't know them personally, I would be absolutely delighted to be at a 10th wedding anniversary, probably even happier than being at the actual wedding.

I don't know why I feel this way... I can trace no logical root for this kind of mentality, I just think like that. I guess if a really close friend of mine was getting married then I would be happy for them. But only under my own personal psychological standards of whether I thought they should be getting married or whether I kinda anticipated whether it would happen or not. I wasn't expecting my brother to propose when he did, so when he told me that he was engaged, I was kinda surprised, but in my mind I was surprised in a kinda negative way. I felt it was too soon. And so I never really developed a great deal of joy from the news. I dunno... I felt much happier when I saw photos of another friend's 5th anniversary, and it wasn't even a wedding anniversary, it was just a dating thing. I guess I prefer to witness the test of time rather than listen to people promise that they will stand that test of time. I'm not sad or unhappy for them don't get me wrong, I just fail to get excited that's all. I guess the whole marriage/divorce rates thing has kinda numbed my sense of joy for these occasions and if I percieve something as hasty, I won't really enjoy it greatly.

But yeah... That's what I think anyways...




O btw, I have finished Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warrens, so now I can finish the rest of What's So Amazing About Grace

Weird Dream... About Swimming...

Last night I had a really strange dream... I had the worst possible bunch of kids in the world swimming together in a squad... And I was getting so angry and frustrated while trying to coach them. I would have to dive into the water to make them actually do anything that resembled swimming. But yeah... I was just yelling my lungs out on the side of the pool like a madman. I woke up thinking, "Thank God they aren't real kids!" But yeah... my work has began invading my sleep lol... Which reminds me that one of my fellow workfriends is getting fired over arguements about the manager changing her hours when the time sheets were signed by her and the swim school supervisor. But yeah... My workplace can get pretty bitter at times.

Neways I have a wedding to attend to soon... You can expect another massive blog post later tonight though haha... I have become very outspoken :P You'll see why. Neways gotta go

Some Observations...

From an observational perspective, there aren't many great outspoken christians in our society. It seems as though the secular culture blanks and muffs out christian values and beliefs on which our social heritage stemmed upon. When you walk through shopping centres, you see nothing Godly, nothing distinctly christian at it's core. I guess society nowadays deem "political correctness" as an absolute necessity, and christianity doesn't quite hit that mark. It's why the fatasses in the big, red suits have invaded and destroyed Christmas. It is a politically correct fantasy of a fat guy in a flying sleigh with magical reindeer that gift gives to little kids by squeezing down chimnney stacks. And it doesn't offend anyone. Christianity definitely offends, no doubt about it, people don't like to relenquish control of their lives until they have no other way to go, and until that point, christianity does offend. Until they realise how weak we really are, until we crash, we don't give the steering wheel to a better driver (Jesus, the best driver this universe has ever seen in fact). Walking down our streets/shopping centres, everyone just looks the same. Christians by no means stand out at all, you rarely hear about them or see them do something that is different from the rest of the world. They don't say anything different. And while I sound critical here, I know well clear that I am exactly what I am saying here, I look no different and don't really speak much different apart from the lack of profanity 99% of the time, and although I do argue with non-christian friends about lifestyle choices and choice of leisure activities, slowly nudging people towards deeper and more spiritual conversations. But on the surface, I don't really sound any different from anyone else. Anyways I've kinda sidetracked from my initial purpose of this blog. What I was really trying to say was that, I went to WORD today. A christian store that sells heaps of books, music, dvd and bibles which are obviously christian at it's roots. And I was actually surprised at the patronage of that place. Cars just keep coming and going with people of all ages there. Which is a fantastic sight, don't get me wrong. It's great to know that there are so many christians out there that would actively visit stores like WORD and Koorong to find new resources to learn more and strengthen their relationships with God. But I guess what kinda saddens the wonderful picture is that it doesn't reflect at all in our society. Even though presumably, Christianity is the world's largest religion standing at some 33% of the world's population, society definitely doesn't reflect that at all. If 1 in every 3 people are christian... Then why doesn't our society show any signs of this spiritual connection? I have great respect for UQ christian groups because they really get out there and showing their allegiance with pride. At the UQ open day there are hundreds of stalls with heaps of Christian groups openly advertising and evangelising, a wonderful sight. Although some activity is better than none, sadly enough, this is only one university and only a minor fraction of our society. If that 33% of society could do stuff like that... well that would be just amazing. I guess that is what some churches do, like RICE Sydney & RICE Brisbane in which heaps of churches in their respective cities come together to hold events.

I believe that sometimes people use prayer as a kind of procrastination tool, people would rather pray about something that picking up their faith and take a step let along a leap and do something. After becoming a believer myself, the underlying impulse to do things that are pleasing to God is great. But it's those second thoughts that hold some of those actions back, the human shell that remains holds back those impulses and in the end nothing is done. While it is true that something are well beyond our human power to perform, like physical treating AIDS or as an average person treat cancer, and there is really nothing you can do but prayer for them. There are many things that normal christians can do in society that are well within their power, but they are just suppressing it. You don't need to do things by yourself, likewise the Salvos don't work as indiviuals but as teams. As a member of the body of christ, as one part works, the rest of the body can't just sit and pray, although prayer is important, prayer (in my opinion) should support actions. Sitting in a corner praying that your friends will get to know Jesus isn't really going to help, if you, who might be the only christian they know, don't find ways of letting it come into their lives. Sure, praying about it is immensely important, but so is getting your hands dirty with the work God has given us to do.

I reckon of the 33% of the people of the world who claim to be christian, I'd say most of them are sunday christians at best, if there is even a regular church attendance. If the whole 33% got really serious about their faith, I reckon there would be alot more than just 33%. But enough speculation from me.

Crazy Vietnamese Karaoke...

Tonight our family went out to eat dinner at a chinese restaurant at asian central (ie. sunnybank) at Landmark. At the same time was this large function by some company like Tissue Australia or something weird. When we were almost finished they started doing speeches and stuff, and of course most of them were asian of some kind. I believe they were Vietnamese, judging by their dialect that was definitely not canto, mando, jap or korean. It had to be some kind of South-East dialect. Either way, it was probably safe to say they were Viets. Cos as soon as the speeches finished there was this massive cheer, and the Karaoke started lol. We bombed it out of there as soon as we could haha. For Viets, and a lot of south-east asians, karaoke is like some kind of universal way of celebrating anything and everything. I mean, they were celebrating a work christmas party, karaoke. Weddings, karaoke. Pretty much any function will somehow involve karaoke. I remember one of my school friend's 18ths, he held a dinner thing at Landmark. Same time as our party thing was a Viet wedding, and as soon as they started, the karaoke began straight away. It's absolutely hilarious in my opinion.

I include other south-east asians in this kind of "stereotyping" if you like to call it that because of a group assignment we had to do this semester. It was the EWB challenge for Cambodia. One of the "KEY" important factors for providing solutions was the fact that they "LOVED" their karaoke. Villages with no running water, no grid electricity, no proper sanitation, etc. would have a massive station of like 20 odd car batteries hooked up to each other to a TV, so that they could WATCH and LISTEN to karaoke channels. I thought it was hilarious. Apparently they can use karaoke as an educational medium too. Karaoke was some kind of communicational medium to them and everything could be celebrated or transmitted via singing. They must be remarkably creative to make some kind of rhyming tune from just about anything, but it is still funny as to observe.

Neways, it was a funny moment from today.

Yay! Pay Rise!

My paycheck today indicated that I had just recieved a pay rise :D rather than the old $18/hr, my new pay rate was $20.95 :D now freezing my ass off in the pool is finally worth it :P

More money is always nice, but I guess it comes with greater responsibilities too. Money is empowering, with money you have power and command. But power corrupts, therefore money can corrupt too, if your inclined to being "corrupt" that is. With money I guess you have the power to make a difference. Or you can be selfish, and hoard it to yourself and indulge in it. Which brought up the thought of tithing...

Nothing happens without God's permission. Even the fact that we are in a position to recieve money from work, has occurred because it has been allowed to happen. As christians we are meant to tithe, that is setting aside a percentage of our earnings (which is recieved from God) to further His kingdom and to assist your home church. I believe the percentage was something like 10% or something or rather. If we are all meant to do that then why do churches have funding issues? I remember a guest pastor coming into our uni fellowship and talked to us about tithing, apparently that guy had like a seperate bank account set aside just for that purpose. Now I know for sure that I haven't gone to that extent yet, although I simply stick approx 10% of that week's earning into an offering box instead. But since fellowship isn't always on, I guess in total of a year's earning, I come short of 10%... way short actually. Anyways, back to the thing about church funding. If everyone in the church, physios, doctors, engineers, etc and all, all placed a full 10% of their earnings into building our church and funding activities and fellowships and stuff, I'm pretty darn sure that our churches would be able to do so much more, and taking up a job of a pastor would not be such a financial uncertainty for people who might be interested as churches would be more than able to pay for their salaries. Church events could be done extremely well and the impact that could be made would be amazing. The church would be able to do community service as well as they have the money and supplies to do it. Sponsoring missionaries and other international aid programs would also be well within the reach of the church too.

Just random thoughts that occurred to me. But hey...

Drawing lines, Helping Hands and Showing Off

I like helping people do things (with a few exceptions), and I like serving a cause. When I start doing something I like doing or want to do and do well with, I just keep going and going and going. But sometimes, after I say "I'll do it!" or "I know what to do!" and spontaneously volunteer to do something. I feel a sense of... withdrawal... like sub-consciously I think that other people see me as a show off when I'm simply trying to help and putting in effort. These kinds of thoughts occur to me even at church. I know that boasting is bad and that service done without being "seen" (as in kinda behind to scenes-ish) is good. Service done to be seen by men to achieve the recognition of men is bad. But, when I jump the gun and overkill on a job, big or small, I just get a feeling that maybe I shouldn't be diving head first into stuff, and appear "showy". But at the same time, if everyone thought like that and held back, waiting for someone else to do it, who's gonna do it? It feels to me like one of those situations with the little angel and devil on your shoulder, debating over the matter. But problem is, which side's the devil and which side's the angel? Am I being too "showy" or appear as that and should just hold back and let other people do those jobs, even if it is simply stacking away chairs after service? Or should I be keeping up my efforts and keep doing these jobs regardless of the reactions that I might be percieving from people? When I say "I can do that" or "I know how to do that" or "I know a way of doing that easier", afterwards sometimes I feel like I'm boasting, kinda full of myself. And while it would be true and I would know how to do the job, I feel as if I should just hold back and let them do it for a while before I join in "camoflagued" by the crowd to avoid drawing attention to my efforts. But then again, unless your all the same ie. clones, someone is gonna stand out more than others, and someone has got to draw attention for someone else to work without drawing attention. Someone has got to be a leader for someone else to be a follower. But if everyone held back and wait to follow, then who's gonna lead? If everyone thought "I should let someone else do the leading" then the end result would be that there is no leader to follow. But I dunno... It's a bit of a dilemma for me at the moment.

While I admit I do have trouble controlling my pride at times which does make me boast about things whether it's a strength or a weakness/past weakness, boasting occurs in hindsight. I don't perform a task for the fact that I could boast about it afterwards, I do it genuinely, but sometimes I guess afterwards I tell people about it and end up boasting about the things that I did.

The Weak and The Strong...

From what I have observed of people is that people always want to be self-sufficient. They want to be strong, guiding themselves along their own paths. I'm certain that is true, who wouldn't want to be strong? Who wouldn't want to be able to control their lives and do what they want to do right? This is the way most people seem to think. And although everyone has a conscience and knows (to an extent) right from wrong, we want to be able to do what we like to do, and have what we want to have. We'd all wish we were perfect, or think we are perfect, or try to be perfect. This is what being human is all about. We do what we want, we indulge that innate, inborn, sinful nature of mankind. We want more material, we want hot girls/guys (and the inheritant sex drive that comes with our sex-driven culture), we want to follow and have the latest trends, we want respect and we definitely want "love" or what we may percieve as "love". But, what is the point of these things? Following culture, trends and the like, nothing we gain out of these things will last, or indeed will breakdown and change very quickly, or otherwise we will be dissatisfied with it and want more and more and more. The people who see the above list and think "yeah, I like living like this, this is THE life", the ones that think that they are strong, and self-sufficient and independent, they won't see God. They think the way they are living is good, but yet they are always craving for more, but they can't see the need to reach for something greater than worldly things because they are still standing on their own (limited) strength.

Often people who find God find him when they realise that worldly things mean nothing and will not satisfy them, when they realise that material means nothing, that all the lust means nothing, that money means nothing, and that having the respect and "love" (and "love" in this case is interchangeable with lust to an extent) of others don't mean much either as humans are not perfect and will disappoint us. A lot of people find God for who He really is in the time of their most dire need or in their most depressing and straining times. The ones who realise they can't live like the did anymore and don't want to live like they have been living (I was one of them), it's then that we realise we don't have the strength to stay standing on our own, and we reach out for something greater, and find God's grace and realise that living God's way is JOY in its purest form. Well I reckon this is how it is anyways, cos until you realise you NEED God and reach out for Him, you probably won't take God personally even if you grew up in a christian family.

People who think they are 10 foot tall and bulletproof are probably the least likely to experience God. They probably can't see much of God over their ballooning egos, but when we are weak we realise just how great and powerful God really is and see his grace, mercy and love (true, unconditional love in its purest form that transcends all levels of human affection, this one is NOT interchangeable with lust). They don't see a need for God to be in their lives. Depression is a great thing, without it I would not have experienced the love of God through Jesus. But its also a pity when you realise that there are alot of people who will never be able to experience God and enter into his kingdom into eternity because they were too blinded by the world to realise that there were far greater things to be had beyond secular things.

Why Do People Like Clubbing?

So the thought that occurred to me today was "why do people enjoy or want to go clubbing?" I mean, what do you do at clubs? So you dance, you drink, and you interact with random strangers that you most likely will never meet again. So unless you are like a uber pro street dancer and like to show off your leet dance moves... What do you go to clubs to achieve? What do you gain from going to clubs? Are you there thinking that you will somehow meet the guy/girl of your dreams and just somehow meet up like some kind of fairytale? Are you there just to get wasted? Are you there just to check out some "hot" guys/girls? Or are you there to just flirt around with randoms? Is it a combination of the above or ALL of the above? Well, logically, there is no real overall gain in doing any of the above, and there is no way in the world that fairytale relationships can possibly come out of clubbing. Sorry to burst the bubble, but love at first sight is a load of crap and does not happen. Do you enter a relationship with the intention of it being temporary? For the general, sane, population I would think the general consensus would be no. (I guess some really insecure people who think that having a relationship is the only thing that matters even if they don't like it, but as a public image, must have one anyways). So if you go to a club to look for a relationship, what are the underlying desires that trigger you or "magnetise" you to a particular person? Their looks of course. But since when has the look of a person ever defined them as who they really are, you know nothing about them, and you don't know what they are like apart from the particular mood that person might be in at that particular moment, in that particular environment at that particular stage in their life. So what makes you think that if you get into a relationship with this person that you think is the hottest person this side of the milky way, that they truly are who you think they are? With utmost certainty, that relationship will fail, and you will be shattered and depressed by it, and by nobody else's fault will it be that it failed apart from the fact that it was a stupid place to look for a relationship to start with.

As I said above, the people that go to clubs do not have any great intentions in mind. The guys that are there, if they are single (and most likely so), what kind of things do you think are going through their mind? Being at a co-ed school and being the giant sponge of a human that I am, I soaked in the rumours and gossip by merely passive unintentional eavesdropping. Just the "rowdier" boys and the kinds of things that they say and talk about was enough to disgust me. All they cared or wanted from a girl was pretty much in one word, sex. (It's the way of the modern world if you haven't already figured it out for yourself). Now you go to a club, and you have hundreds of these like-minded people, I'm REAL sure your gonna find that brilliant, fantastic, flawless, guy of your dreams that has real dedication and commitment to you and truly loves you for who you are... Not... lol... You are pretty much dooming yourself to a failure of a relationship before you even start. I guess this is why there are so many darn divorces these days, people just don't use their brains to think things out and to delve into the culture and the minds of others to understand the motives of people and their desires.

Now, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that people who go to clubs, will be flirting away at each other, and "checking" each other out. Some looking for one night stands (mainly guys? I dunno about the girls on this one, but I guess if your a slutty one then sure you'd think like this too), others (pitifully) looking for relationships. So, you supposedly indulge in this "eye candy" stuff. But... how great do you feel after the night is other? When your in that taxi heading home, half drunk, how do you feel? At the time you feel, high? I guess, but... long after, you don't feel happy or any happier. If your taken, then I'm sure you would feel guilty, since you know how weak you are... How easily shaken your supposed dedication and commitment to whomever you are with is... How pathetically weak your mind is... If your single, well maybe you might feel a bit guilty, and at the same time depressed. Clouded by your lust, you WISH you had her/him. You waste your time speculating as to what kind of person they are. You hunger for some kind of affection/love that comes from a relationship. And also you realise just how desperate you have become for it. Sounds kinda pathetic doesn't it? Well, that's because it IS pathetic.

Well, if you go to clubs to drink, to get drunk in other words. Then why do you need to get drunk? Does it make you happier? Do you think it will somehow solve your problems? Do you think that being drunk will make you more appealing in anyway? Do you think you are even likable drunk? Sure, since you forget everything when you are absolutely smashed, it's like a temporary distraction from whatever is going on in your life. But do you think that it will somehow make bad things go away? No. Rather than drinking away your wealth (probably hundreds upon hundreds of dollars) and your health and your livelihood (drunkenness causes much domestic distress), shouldn't you find better ways to deal with problems, finding a better source of strength and dependence? (I sure wouldn't depend on alcohol to solve my problems and I definitely wouldn't use alcohol as the strength upon which my life stands, I'm sure a lot of people so though). Besides, being drunk and disorderly, changes you. You are not who you really are, you get angry easier, you lose your judgment, you lose your intelligence and whatever brainpower you have. When you are drunk, you do really, really stupid crap, a lot of which are unsafe or dangerous. Like I said before, about the intentions and the sleeping around stuff? Well, even if you wouldn't do it while you were sober, if you are drunk, you are capable of doing all sort of stuff. It's what a lot of people go to these places to do... Get drunk and get laid. Sad truth.

So what is a GOOD reason to go clubbing? I (in my biased christian perspective, though my christian perspective is biased in a good way) can see none. There is no JOY in clubbing. If coming out your none the happier, then why did you go in the first place? Sometimes some things just seemed like a good idea at the time to do, but you have done it you think "Oh my god, what have I just done?". You feel guilty, you know you have done something wrong, something you shouldn't be doing. And the intentions and thoughts that people carry into clubs are sinful, and dirty. They are stained black with lustfulness and sexually immoral ideas. But, for most people, they don't know any other way apart from this. They are but slaves to the devil. Sure they think they are enjoying themselves, but are they really? Do they feel content? To enter repeating cycles of doomed relationships, to be drunk and disorderly, to feel like a desperate animal during mating season with nothing but sex in mind, would you really be content? Do you feel loved or wanted for who you really are? Would you want to live like this every week or to some, every day? Well, I'm sure my answer would be a big NO! You might think it's an over-exaggeration... But, look around you, you see so many broken relationships, one after another, you see families being torn apart by substance and alcohol abuse, you see people's ruining their lives with this kind of lifestyle. This is the worldview, this is our secular society.

I remember my maths teacher, Mrs. Taylor, telling us these great words of wisdom. "You do NOT fall in love, you GROW into it, the ONLY thing you FALL into are potholes." So if your looking for something that would even remotely last, I'm certain clubbing definitely ain't the place to look. Of course there are much more that I could blog about on this topic... But I think I'll spare us from a massive unending stream of text... at least for now anyways... (As you can probably tell, this blog isn't really here to make friends haha... I like a bit of controversy... Gets people thinking I guess...)

First Proper Training Session of The Year

Well... It is December, and throughout the whole year, friday nights have always been fully dedicated to UF, whenever there was uni anyways. And so I've skipped training for pretty much the whole year and thus my aquatic endurance had gone done the drain. Today, was the first FULL training session all year. I've cut into several training sessions half way because of classes, but this is the first time I've been able to get into the squad at the very beginning. Surprisingly enough, today I swam the fastest 25m's of butterfly I have ever swam. 14 secs... Now unless your a super pro swimmer and your reading this, that's pretty darn fast. My best freestyle 25m was like 13 secs... and that was at the beginning of grade 12 when I swam 3 times a week during my preparation for my school swimming carnival. Butterfly had never been a strong suit in my stroke repetoire, while backstroke was my best relative to everyone else. Although my freestyle was the fastest, a lot of people were wayyyy faster than me, the friend that I train with is 2 years younger than me, and he's best freestyle 50m was 26.6, my best 50m freestyle is like... 28.8... wayyyyy slower. However, I can easily kick his butt at backstroke though my backstroke was like 29.something or something around that time. Even in 25m I could still beat him by like 1/4-1/3 of the length. I believe all my 2nd place (and possibly all of my 3rd's too) ribbons from swimming carnivals were all either breaststroke or backstroke, cos relative to everyone else my freestyle and butterfly was too slow.

neways... It was a proud moment for me :P Though now I'm really dead and my muscles feel mildly numb from overexertion lol... yer...

Amazing Grace

A friend of mine gave me a book by Philip Yancey called "What's So Amazing About Grace?". And as the title implies, the book is about conveying grace, and understanding the very nature of the unconditional love of God towards us, and the unflinching forgiveness and intentional overlooking of our shortcomings by Him. Grace is to recieve what one has in no way deserved, Philip describes that the very nature of our secular world is one of ungrace, where you will never, ever recieve anything that you have not earned. No position, rank, job, promotion, etc. will ever be given to you out of grace. Respect and status is earned, we conform to society (which means you are constantly working to try and fit into the shape society says you should fit), all of these things are ungracious. The book talks about how even many christians, holding so tightly to their doctrines and to their rules and laws to become like the world, ungraceful. This is only the first 4 chapters of the book by the way :P. One of the paragraphs talked about a discussion between C.S. Lewis and some other people about what was so unique about christianity as a religion. The answer, was grace. To recieve the forgiveness we do not deserve, and to gain a relationship with God that came at no cost to us, all we had to do was to accept it. One of the first lines in the book was about a prostitute, wretched, homeless and sick selling of her 2 yr old child to support her drug addiction. When asked about whether she ever considered going to a church for help, her response was "Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse." I guess I'm simply repeating the authors words but I guess it just sheds new light upon old things. I'm becoming less and less coherent... I'm not sure if I'm actually making sense anymore... it's 3:13am... I'm tired... I need sleep...

Freezing at Work

Teaching Learn to Swim is a tough job. You get sick often and your attendance at work has to be consistent with as little interruption as possible since there are significantly low staff numbers. Unlike working at coles, where employees are like ants and are everywhere. Swimming Instructors cause great distress when one of them can't come to work. Today I taught at like 12:30 and was meant to be able to go home by 2:30, and by that time I was already out of my gear. But I was told to do an assessment at 3:15 and then was told to start the squads off because another teacher was outside doing another class and was behind. Then my boss tells me she wants me back in the water for 2 hours because another instructor was sick. So I reluctantly agreed and I hadn't had a chance to eat lunch yet so all I had eaten all day was 2 bowls of cereal and 3 eggs at like 10:30 or something. So my energy levels were rock bottom, and I was absolutely freezing, like struggling to speak coherently cold. My voice was shaking from the coldness... So I was in the water till 5:30... and I was hungry as heck. Unlike other jobs where you can eat on the job, you can't eat in the water (obviously) and even though your surrounded by water, you can't actually drink it. And since you lose energy at more than 4x in air... you just yer... die lol...

If we did chemistry, we know that the heat capacity of air is 1.012. Or if we use the volumetric heat capacity of air, it is 0.001297/ml. The volumetric heat capacity of water is 4.186/ml... The surface area of an average male is 1.9m^2, and if we multiply that by 0.01m just to consider the volume of stuff surrounding us, we have 0.019m^3 of space surrounding our body. If we convert that to cm^3 to make calculations easier, we get 19000cm^3 I think... (I'm just doing this off the top of my head)... so if the energy required for the body to heat up just the water touching your skin which is the 19000cm^3 of water, assuming the water is 28C and the body is 37C would be E=19000*4.186*9 (now I need a calculator) which equals 715.806 kJ. The same equation done with air would be E=19000*0.001297*9=221.787 J

Which means that room temperature water is 3227.44 times colder than room temperature air. Which means that you lose energy 3227.44 times faster when submerged in water than when you are in air. 28C air is quite comfortable as your body does not need to use much energy to maintain core temperature, in fact it's actually quite hot. 28C water is extremely cold if you are not exercising. Also remember that the water around you is constantly moving which means that the water that warms up around you gets washed away and you get cold again and continue losing heat. I had no energy left after not eating since breakfast so I was cold, very cold.

If the water was to be made to the level of comfort as if your in 21C A/C (E=19000*0.001297*16=394.288J) the water temperature would need to be body temperature (36.995C). I haven't done maths and chemistry in ages lol... But I still remember how to calculate this stuff. And water is cold stuff...

Neways... enough from me...

Indescribable DVD

Well, last night I was up watching Louie Giglio's Indescribable DVD from his Passion series to about almost 4 am (yes, I am crazy and I did actually sleep at 3:45am)... I can say for certain that it was absolutely amazing. The images of space and stuff are just incredible, and like he said, their existence just screams of how huge our God is. Clearly noone can say, all of that could have possibly come about out of pure CHANCE in which trillions upon trillion of stars and bazillion tonnes of mass came out of nothing spontaneously with no stimulus. And that these trillions upon trillions of stars just by pure chance arrange themselves into the most incredible and beautiful celestial collections we know as galaxies. We are so insignificant by size in the scope of God's creation, our pale blue dot of a planet is so miniscule and insignificant, yet God loves us and called each and everyone of us into being and knows each and everyone of us by name and knows everything about us, sending his son to pay for what we deserve and have rightfully earned from our sins, and to invite us to have a relationship with him. I'm sure most christians would say that they have heard of stuff like this before, and before watching it I would have said that too, but that talk just placed things into their true perspective, to really show how big God is compared to us and how great he is. That X-formation in the whirlpool galaxy thing was really something too. Just incredible, a galaxy at exact 90 degrees to us, in its very centre habouring a cross. No way that things like that happen by chance.

But yeah... I'm gonna need to go buy Alive, Hope, and How Great is Our God from Word soon. Great stuff

Which also leads me to taking photographs of the Venus and Jupiter thing next to the moon. So here's a few snaps that I took tonight on my camera.

Remembering Instructions...

I understand why my parents would sometimes get angry at me, sometimes I intentionally postpone and procrastinate from doing what they want me to do, like doing chores and stuff. Sometimes I unintentionally forget about things, which sometimes has resulted in me double or even triple booking a specific time frame because I have forgotten my previous commitment... (which shows how things I find highly important can override the memories of the less important things to me that I am still obliged to do.)... Sometimes I remember parts of the instructions and forget the other parts... Which is what has just occurred to me... Tonight my mum is away at a competition and won't come back home till 8 or 9 or something... And she said that dinner will be steak, and told me to prepare in advance so that when she gets home, she can cook quickly... She told me to cut up some stuff as well as prepare to steam vegetables... Well... I only remember that I need to cut onions... but I don't remember how many... I know I need to steam cauliflower for 4 minutes... and I assume that she meant use the whole thing... But yeah... When she comes home, mum will be frustrated again lol... Ah well can't help it... I've cut the onions... now I should probably go and cut up the florets of cauliflower... I think that's what they call em...

Talking to other parents

Our little group organised a little gathering night on sunday to do some cooking... and we had heaps of fun and laughter as well as some fails because of retarded ovens that overheat... But in the end all the food turned out ok and edible. But after dinner while everyone else was watching School of Rock on TV... I winded up in like an hour or so long conversation with their parents, talking about all sorts of random things like from the acquiring of occupation permits for our new church from the council to the landscaping, to my study of landscaping, to my plans to transfer to archi at UQ, to my grades, to design and subjectivity, amongst other things. I reckon it's really cool to talk to the parents of other people if they are willing to mix with you because they know quite a bit too, and have their own distinct perspective moulded by years of personal experience and the experiences of other people close to them. Though I guess it probably made me a little odd, to see me just having proper "mature" conversations with parents while my friends are in another room watching TV.

But meh.. lol...

Pleasing People...

Today at work I was given a private class at 12:00... It was of a kid, whom unbeknown to me, had had an accident with large bodies of water before and was pretty much petrified of the pool. I simply assumed he was the typical freaked out kid and simply analysed what he knew and just used one of my regular programs (each instructor is slightly different in how they teach the same skills and different approaches) for a child of his ability. At the level he was at, all we teach is pretty much kicking on their stomach and on their backs and learn how to paddle... But he didn't have goggles for one, and was petrified to go on his back...

One thing I hate about private classes is that parents are watching even closely as the only kids in the class are theirs and they pay like 4 times the price for the same half hour so they make sure they get their "money's worth" and they try to tell you how you should run the friggin class when they have no darn clue what is involved with swimming. And so rather than being bent around the will of the child and not do what he's afraid to do, I try to ease them into the exercises slowly and gently so they aren't as scared... emphasis on the AS, since learning means changing, and as we know, humans don't generally like change and the unfamiliar can be scary. But in swimming sometimes certain skills cannot be... reduced or simplified or stepped down any further for the beginner, such is to kick on your back... you're either on your back or you aren't... And some kids don't like the feeling of facing the roof in an unfamiliar medium not knowing whether he's floating or sinking or where the ground is or where the teacher is or where his parents are or other random crap (although if you were sinking its quite obvious lol...). And so swimming on your back is probably a relatively big step particularly for this little kid that I had today. He had a pool noodle under his back and around his waist and he was holding on to it and he is meant to lie down on it so he's floating on his back on top of the noodle while I held on to him to stabilise and support him cos face it, without certain skills, even a noodle can't hold him up completely (that's why it says "use under competent supervision" on the noodle). But that kid was kind of freaking out a little, making weird whinging noises, telling him that everything is going to be fine and told him that it is easy if he's just tries it (because everything will be ok, and it is actually incredibly easy (remember that video about the limbless guy, he swam on his back! because its easier than on your stomach)if you just brave it and give it a go.)

I was trying to get him to simply put his legs out straight and get his back straight so he can float... and although he would have whinged he would be able to get used to it and realise its not so hard to float on your back with a floatation device. But the dad interrupts me and starts telling me how I should run my lesson, telling me how I should let him swim on his stomach more first to build up confidence... But the thing is, he didn't even bothered giving his kid some goggles and unless you put your head into the water, you cannot swim by yourself sustainably unless you are remarkably strong (relative to a child's strength). There are some reason's for this, any gymnast, diver, decent swimmer and decent athlete would be able to tell you that the movement of your head determines where your body goes. When you play ball games and you try to evade someone, the first part of your body that moves is your head, then your torso and then your legs. Only cartoon characters can run with their feet in front of their body fast. Your head has to be first. Gymnasts when they do flips and stuff, their heads determine their direction and most of their success, no head movement = painful stacks. Divers will tell you the same as gymnasts. And the same goes for swimming, if you swim with your head up, your feet will naturally sink to the bottom, and unless you have powerful legs, you won't be able to swim with your head up for very far before sinking to the bottom. Without goggles most children refuse to put their face in, and so there was no point for me to teach that kid to swim forwards cos we wouldn't get anywhere and he wouldn't learn anything. So swimming backwards was a good option to teach him something without goggles, and the dad goes and interrupts me and makes me change what I was doing. I wasn't about to rip back at him, so I just changed it and wasted the rest of his $45 bucks on activities his child would not benefit any more from.

The father initially told me why he chose private classes over regular group classes was because his kid didn't seem to be progressing and he wanted him to learn QUICKLY because he was going into primary school next year (which means swimming carnivals). Now, unless you're really keen on learning, you CANNOT learn things quick. Quick learning means quick change, which means BIG steps. And his kid was not about to be able to take big steps. And so when I tried to satisfy the father's desire to get the kid to improve quickly, the kid will naturally be scared, which is reasonable, and my job was to help him get over that initial fear and get him to try the things that would get him improving. But, the father contradicts himself when he sees his kid getting a little uncomfortable with getting on his back and yaps at me. Which is ironic and stupid. I wasn't about to let a 30 min private lesson go to waste and was gonna get that kid moving along quickly as requested.

So I guess you can't please everyone, sometimes you can't please anyone, and sometimes you can't actually please someone. When I finished the lesson, I knew the father wasn't too happy about the lesson, and I saw him debating with my supervisor about the lesson, I would have butted in and explained why I thought it was necessary to progress quickly. But I thought I'd keep my mouth shut and not guilt trip the guy and make him look like an idiot with his inability to comprehend his own desires for his child's rapid progress.

Slllloowww Days...

For some odd reason some days appear much slower than other days... It's particularly noticable at work too. Today was one of those royal sloth days. It seemed that classes would never end, and they just came one after another, after another... Why is that ay? I wasn't particularly tired, and although I've slowly lost enthusiasm as the day went on, it was just so slow... I was at work at 12:30 and I finished my last class at 5:30... and between 2:30 and 3:30 I have nothing and don't get paid, so I only taught for 4 hours today... I'm sure we have all experienced that kind of feeling. But I wonder if it had to do with my food... I've been trying to overload on carbohydrates, which means I've also been eating alot of junk food... Which have an adverse effect on blood glucose levels, which cause an increase in insulin, which result in the slowing down of the body, or making it tired and lethargic... Meh, I dunno... I have eaten about 1000 calories of junk food today tho... but hey...

Work Dinner, Pre-Christmas celebration...

Well, went to a work dinner tonight... It was amusing and had a bit of a laugh, though it seems our work place is incredibly female dominated at all age levels... out of 17 people only 4 of us were guys, and 2 of them were like head coaches of the 40+ age group. The other guy was probably 20+ and I'm the youngest guy there at 18. It's funny how teaching jobs are generally so female dominated too. I'm pretty sure a school teaching staff would be highly female dominated as well, particularly primary levels, which are also the age of children we teach. I guess females supposably have that natural caring role, and most guys don't even want to have to put of with childish behaviour, or to some extent the childish behaviour of others. Meh...

But yeah, it was a good night, and again I overkilled on food, $22.10 got me a garlic bread that was about 25cm long as well as a 300g fillet steak plus an incredible amount of veges. Leagues clubs sell cheap, decent food. But yeah, it was a fun night and our workplace has some pretty crazy people too so it made it all the more funnier. But yeah... Cos some work people are going away early so they decided to celebrate, but then they are gonna do some more stuff closer to christmas... They like their celebrations I guess :P

That was as fun as my day got... Came home to complaints about me forgetting to wheel out the bin yesterday night... Can't help it...

On God's Calling...

I've heard sermon's and read books that talk about God's Calling for Christians, but more specifically our individual callings to serve our God... I've heard it said so many times about how your natural God given talents and skills are a clue to what your calling might be and other things along similar lines. But they are simply assumptions, no matter how many times other people tell you "Hey, your good at this", you can only assume that that is your calling from God unless you have a proper unambiguous encounter with God that tells you that is his will for you.

Sure, I've been told I have a natural ability to teach, and I am keen on being a leader. But, how would I know that that is exactly what God wants me to do? I hear stuff about how your calling will involve the use of the talents and skills that God has given you. But there are alot of things that can involve leading/teaching... I mean, as a raw example, I could be a sunday school teacher, I could be a Youth worker, I could be a leader for fellowships, I could lead bible studies, I could take up full time ministry like being a pastor, and that's just stuff within the church, God's calling might not be within the church itself, I could be a primary or senior teacher and be evangelising or something like that in my environment, and the list goes on ad infinitum. And all of the above involved leading and teaching... and utilising God given skills and talents... So sure I can take a leap of faith and just pick one and run with it... But how open-ended is God's plan for me? Is there a specific one God wants me to do, or am I meant to have this choice and the one I choose (and God knowing which one I will choose) is meant to be my calling? I read a book which talked about how God in his sovereignty moves our hearts to his will, moving us to make choices in accordance to our free will that will have consequences inline with God's will... So is that meant to be the case with our callings? Is it simply what God has placed within our hearts to do for him? The book mentioned Proverbs 21:1 "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases" as well as Ezra 1:1 "In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing:" and 2 Corinthians 8:16-17 "I thank God, who put into the heart of Titus the same concern I have for you. 17For Titus not only welcomed our appeal, but he is coming to you with much enthusiasm and on his own initiative". All of the above involve God moving the hearts of individual to make a freewilled act which was in accordance to God's plan. I guess I'd just preferred a more direct confirmation of a person's calling... But I guess, supposably, "Ignorance is Bliss" and "Knowledge is Power/Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"... Which in a way if God reached down and told us our calling, sure we would know what to do... But then... would we do it or more so would we want to do it? I feel like I'm debating against myself here... and I probably am... So I guess taking a leap of faith and do what I think I should and can do to serve and IF it is what God intends then it will work out fine. And if full-time ministry comes knocking on my door... well... It's a scary thought shrouded by great uncertainty and is pretty much all or nothing, and if you find out later (ie. half way through theological degree or even after you have got the degree) that it's not your thing or it's not what God has called you to do, then I dunno what would happen... But probably a very joyous job... I dunno if I would be the right person for that kind of job anyways.

One time at UF, a pastor came in to talk to us about full-time ministry. People tend to want back-up plans before undertaking it because of uncertainty... even the pastor used to be a electrician before he went to study bible college and became a pastor... but hey... I'm running around in circles now...

neways... enough from me today

Chilli and Wasabi...

Tonight for dinner mum made some taiwanese broad bean noodle with chicken strips or something like that.. And the sauce that came with the noodle was sesame oil + sesame paste... as well as another packet of oil... Being the idiot that I am... I poured in the oil thinking it was the sesame and that the other packet was just the sesame paste... When I ate it, it felt like I just squeezed half a tube of wasabi into my mouth... My mum later found out that it was wasabi OIL... Who the heck makes wasabi oiL??? But yeah, it reminded me of the Nando's night some of us guys went on last friday... Out of 6 or 7 guys I was the only guy to order lemon & herbs, every one else ordered like... Mild or Hot... While the other guys said to me that eating Nando's without chilli was a waste of money, I found it rather ironic as the amount of chilli that they have on those chickens would clearly overpower whatever flavour the chicken had... Defeating the purpose of eating good food... My mum made a comment over dinner about how with so much chilli they probably wouldn't have known if the chicken was off before cooking cos they wouldn't be able to taste anything else lol... I found that rather amusing and probably quite true :P

But yeah... Can't really it chilli... and can only handle miniscule amounts of wasabi... but hey...

Why Christmas Presents?

Now I'm sure it's nice to recieve presents, I mean who wouldn't like to recieve nice things from people right?... But why Christmas presents... Why do we do it?... Just because some Saint that lived in Turkey during the 3rd century gave gifts to the poor whom has now been overglorified into some ginormous tub of lard taht rides a sleigh guided by magical reindeers and give presents to "good" kids by sliding down chimneys and filling stockings that hang over fireplaces with random crap... And it has been overexploited as a commercial niche to make people spend money and buy useless trinkets to give each other during the "Festive Season"...

Christmas is the time when our Saviour was born into our messed up world to begin living his perfect life which was to be used to pay for our sins. Sure 3 wise men came and gave gifts to him, of gold, frankincense and myrrh... But these where offerings of worship to the Saviour of the World. So that has nothing to do with our "tradition" of gift giving and Christmas... Now I'm not saying I hate Christmas... but... What is our purpose for celebrating Christmas... When we gather around the table for our "Christmas Feast" what are we REALLY celebrating? Where are our hearts when we do that? What is the reason for having a christmas tree in your house and placing presents around its feet? Sure having 2-3 days of holidays is nice... but... why? Does any of it celebrate the real significance of Christmas? Does any of it remind us of the real significance of Christmas? I'm not so sure the answer is a clear yes...

This came to mind as I was thinking of what I was to buy for my family for christmas... seeing how i have exactly 1 month left... and I am obliged to buy presents just to at least save face... Yet Christmas presents have no meaning to me beyond supposably showing "love and generosity" to family members... but true love and generosity is not displayed through dare I say "ritualistic and obligated" seasonal giving nor is it shown through birthday presents... Real love and generosity is shown when you have no obligation to give but you give anyways, when you don't want to love but you love anyway or you see someone in need of care and you go out of your way to provide for it... But giving Christmas presents do not fall into either of these catergories... so I don't see any meaning for it... All I see is an invisible poking stick poking me in the back to buy presents to avoid being shamed... You do not show love by showing that you are willing to spend money on other people by giving useless trinkets... You show love by showing you are willing to help provide for them when they need it most...

But yeah... that's my general... opinion on Christmas... rather than celebrating and pigging out on food and wasting money on useless trinkets... shouldn't we be worshipping and praising and thanking God for sending his son down to this hellhole to save us... Because if you haven't already realised... Without Christmas... there would be no Easter... and without Easter, we would be up the creek without a paddle, to put it in a nice way... And we would have no hope and no life... only death and eternal death would await...

My Testimony...

I presented my testimony at the sunday service today, and so I thought I'd also place it here as promised so that other people can read it as well as saving it for future reference I guess... So here goes... This is not word for word what I said because I have a habit of changing what I say on the spot... so yeah... This is probably better and more accurate.

Although I grew up in a Christian family, my church life had been shaky at best. When we first came to Australia in 94 we came to this church, but after a few months we stopped going, in 97 we changed to a mandarin speaking church for 2.5 years before the language barrier became unbearable and we stopped again. In 2000, we came back to Antioch. But after a year we stopped again. From grade 6 to the end of grade 11, my church life was practically non-existent, coming maybe 5-6 times a year. I didn’t start coming back to church consistently until around the end of grade 11. I had heard a lot of those bible stories from Sunday school and from reading children’s bibles when I was young, it was only head knowledge. I always thought that God didn’t particularly care about me from what I saw of my own physical deficiencies, extreme bullying, exclusion which all piled up into depression and extreme anger.

As a child I was incredibly slow and weak, and could not see without extremely powerful glasses as well as having hearing impairments as well. I was a walking skeleton and wore an eye patch most of the time which was meant to correct my lazy eye. I had to visit some hospital or clinic frequently to check my hearing and frequent visits to eye specialists to check my eyesight. I also had special PE classes in primary school for a few years as well. I was also extremely short and would only be armpit height of everybody until grade 11. I had a short temper and was quick to retaliate which was never helpful.

I got yelled at by teachers quite a bit because I could not hear them properly, and they would think that I wasn’t listening. Being the shortest, weakest kid with big, thick glasses and an eye patch which made me a 3 eyed kid as well as being one of the few asians, I was stereotype number 1 and being bullied would be an understatement. Retaliation to constant bullying was the reason behind me sitting by myself next to the teacher’s table or at the back for every grade up to grade 8. Retaliation got me into fights that I could not possibly win and every head of school knew me by name for all the wrong reasons.

For almost all 13 years I spent at that school, being friends with me was more than mere unpopular and I was excluded from practically everything by practically everyone. I had few friends, but most of them left before grade 7. Mum asked me whether I wanted to change schools in grade 7 but because of reasons and logic that escapes me now, I declined and decided to simply tough it out thinking that senior school would be all different. But, I still had uniform being flushed down toilets after PE lessons amongst other pranks and was simply ignored or avoided by everyone. All through school, all up, I would have received somewhere between 2-400 detentions or visits to the head of schools offices and I think about 65-70% of them were because of retaliation to bullying.

I tried to ignore the bullying and the exclusion and I just tried to excel and prove myself worthy of respect, and although I have received plenty of those NSW awards as well as national level athletics, none of it seemed to raise my standings. Being presented to the whole school at assemblies for rewards did nothing to help me. I had no more friends than before and I had no more respect than I did before and sometimes it felt like things were even worse. At some stages I stooped as low as bribing people to be friends and maintaining those “friends”. I was quite desperate for respect and was doing everything within MY own power to try and gain it like risk breaking ankles and jumping off storey flights of stairs and 2m high rocks just to be hardcore. Standing on my own 2 legs, by the time grade 11 came I was beginning to crumble and slowly became progressively silent and esteem levels plummeted. Grade 8 was my most brilliant year in academic and sports, from there it all went downhill. I couldn’t study and was thoroughly unmotivated. I couldn’t socialise out of fear of the opinion of others. And when grade 11 and 12 came and grades mattered, I crashed. In grade 12, I could hardly start conversations let alone hold them, and just stopped talking to people, spending most lunchtimes silent, I was surrounded by people but felt as if I was invisible. I fell into depression and anger and I remember crying myself to sleep numerous times, screaming into a pillow to muffle the noise, screaming at God, with inappropriate language, demanding answers to my problems; why is my life like this? What did I do to deserve this? What do you want from me? The love that I learnt about in Sunday school seemed irrelevant and I felt abandoned. I became extremely frustrated with my life, and I would have fits of rage whenever I made what I perceived as a ‘social mistake’. By August I was lashing out anger and frustration and was either pissed off or brooding, and I remember one time, I lashed out in the middle of the school throwing rugby balls that people were playing with onto roads and storming off and then sitting in a corner at school crying. On top of that I would treat most inanimate objects with utmost violence, punching steel poles, and locker doors to vent my anger.

About the same time as PPP was performed, a new girl in grade 10 befriended me of all people, because she herself was once severely depressed as well and could tell that I was down, eventually she squeezed my reasons out of me and dragged me to the school psychologist. But even after some 2-3 months of counselling, my improvement was minor. Before the counselling I would be too afraid of people to order at Maccas. Even after counselling I was only slightly better.

The major turning point would be during March this year. It was here on the 23rd of March, and if I recall correctly the sermon speaker was Liam and the sermon was on pain and suffering and why bad things happen to good people. I can’t remember the exact words but he talked about how at times God may not feel like he is there, but the truth is that he is always there and knows exactly how we feel. He talked about how Jesus loved us so much that he came down to earth to die for us and he knew exactly how it felt to be mocked, to be abandoned by his friends, to be falsely accused, betrayed, bashed and was killed. One of the passages was John 9:1-5 about the man born blind being healed by Jesus, verse 3 says: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life”, it was explained that God allows us to suffer so that we might be able to see his love and depend on the strength and comfort that he willingly provides in overflowing proportions. God uses our suffering to change us to become the people he wants us to be as well as being able to spread his comfort and strength to others once we experience it. The most impacting thing during that sermon was the animation he played. It was of a boy curled up behind a broken wall wallowing in self-pity with Jesus looking over the wall to see how he was going, but the boy tells him to go away, choosing to ignore him. Jesus then places a mirror in front of the boy and then sits down next to him and waits for him, watching over him. The boy eventually looks up and sees Jesus waiting for him in the mirror, smiling and the boy gets up and goes with Him. Liam explained that God is always in control, including our suffering, and always has a way out for us if we reach out and depend on him. Jesus is always there watching over us even when we aren’t reaching out for him, and that we only need to look up to see that he is there waiting for us and reach out for him, and that he is the great comforter and all we need to do is trust him and to give our lives and all our problems to him, because he is all powerful and that he always has a way out for us. I could see myself as that boy, wallowing alone and drowning in self-pity, getting nowhere. Crying through half the sermon, I realised that God did not abandon me as I thought he did, but allowed all of it to happen so that I might find his strength, after all my own strength had been exhausted, I found that all I needed could be found in Jesus and because of his love, what other people thought about me did not matter as no one could love me more than the one who died for me. From that point I realised that I couldn’t continue trudging in depression through my own strength. At that point I took up Jesus Christ as my personal saviour, friend, foundation and my source of comfort and strength and entrusted all my struggles to Him.

Trusting in him and drawing from his strength, I was pulled from neck deep back on to solid ground almost instantly. To those who remember the PPP after party celebration thing, I was there, and that night I could not say a single word even when I wanted to. I did not speak a single person there. After that sermon, I was like a different person completely, I no longer feared what others thought of me and the depression and the fits of rage were all gone. All the dirty and sinful actions and thoughts I used to temporarily cope with my frustrations and depressions fell well under control and were pretty much extinguished after that point. Though the means were painful, nothing compares to what I’ve found in Jesus.

Things I have learnt from teaching swimming...

I think I've learnt many things from becoming a swimming instructor... including somethings that other people don't get a chance to learn until they become parents, which in a way is a good thing. I guess personally, I find great joy in teaching in general, and teaching a life essential skill such as swimming makes it even better. So I guess the first thing I've learnt is how to reinterpret a concept into lots of different analogies and different approaches for people to understand. If a kid doesn't understand what needs to be done with one method of explaining the exercise, you have to reinterpret the exercise or the explanation in another way so that they get it.

The second thing I've learnt would be awareness, and I think I'm still working on it. Being able to monitor all the children in the class and make sure none of them have jumped off and drowned themselves, which proves to be difficult when you are distracted from monitoring because you are trying to explain or correct another kid. It's a real challenge on your peripheral vision as well.

One of the major things you learn is responsibility. In a class you a responsible for the lives of 4-8 other children, and you are also responsible for their swimming "education". So by doing that, you organise your priorities differently, and you learn to put other things aside while you are teaching. No matter how cold I am, when I'm in a class, I've learnt not to care about how cold I am, because there are more important things that I should be concerned about. No matter how I would be feeling on that day, sad, happy, mediocre, depressed, excited, whatever, when I jump into the water, it all goes away and the focus is the kids and their swimming. Which has served as a great distraction I guess, and now that I've said that, I feel like a workaholic... lol...

You learn great endurance, because you learn to be able to do the same thing day after day, teaching the same thing all the time. And although the people change, the stuff stays the same. Like I said before, you learn to ignore your own situations and focus on others, enduring the cold, the heat, the sun, the rain, the wind and whatever else the environment can throw at you. Yer...

One of the major things that you learn is authority. Learning how to lay down the law is important, because face it, water is dangerous if treated wrongly, and you can die from it. You are responsible for their learning so, being able to show authority, and being able to deliver consequences to misbehaviour. You have to be able to command their attention and make sure they do what they need to do so that they can learn.

Gentleness is a major thing as well. You have to be gentle with kids, not in the physical gentle but the way you talk to them and instruct them. You have to be able to show authority and deliver consequences, but gently. Kids have no problems with showing emotions, and often show undue emotions. So gentleness is extra important. Also some kids are scared of the environment or certain skills, like swimming on their back. Without gentleness you would never be able to teach them those skills.

You also learn to multi-task with extreme efficiency as you have to do so many things at once, you gotta monitor the kids, correct their strokes, be yelling at some other kid simultaneously for misbehaving, and the hardest one is to simultaneously run two different programs for the same class if the needs of the individual students are too different. The later happens on a friday, I have 3 6yr old boys and a 10 yr old boy in that class, 1 6yr can swim, 2 6yr olds can barely swim and the 10 yr old can only swim breastroke, which is not the main stroke we teach in Australia but in most asian countries, it's the first stroke. So 3 freestylers, 1 breastroker, and the 10 yr old boy has a fear of water already so he is not capable yet of swimming on his back at all... and so I toss between 2-3 different exercises at one time and keeping an eye on all of them, which can get slightly stressful at times...

Last but probably the most important one, Patience. My patience level has gone through the roof since I've become a swimming teacher. Some kids learn like bricks, they never get it and no matter how hard you try to reinterpret things, they just don't seem to be able to coordinate themselves in any beneficial manner. But they come back to you week after week, and you have to keep trying, and trying... and trying... and hope that one of these days they might understand and be able to coordinate. It can be frustrating when they don't seem to understand and you've changed people several times in the classes yet one extra stubborn child remains while everyone else has come and gone to higher levels. You also have to be patient with their behaviour, you tell them not to do something but they keep doing it, and you keep telling them not to do it but they keep doing them. One of my instructors told me that what they would do if a child refuses to listen to instructions to stay seated for their own safety, you let them put themselves in a haarrdd place... A place where they struggle for air... Just enough to instill enough fear to not muck around anymore without drowning them... Which sounds extremely cruel... But, pain teaches lessons and we learn from pain I guess... I haven't myself tried that one out on live subjects yet and I'll avoid the need to...

I thought I might also include tolerance as a main thing. I have this one child... Who is extremely bad behaved... If you have seen worse, then you deserve a prize, If you managed to teach and make them learn, I will give you a medal. Because this kid and his little brother are hellish. Other children when they are bad behaved, you command them to stop and most will stop, and worse case you yell at them once or twice and they won't do it again. But this kid... The whole complex would be able to hear this class, generally he is by himself in this class too. He will not listen, he always wants to muck around and to wreckless things but he can barely swim. He will scream and cry unless he gets his way, and he will attempt to pinch and bite you should he get to that point. And he's also not afraid of running away by jumping out of the pool and running out. You haven't seen my commanding voice until you've watched this class, because it is hell unleashed. He will backchat every sentence you say. I have pretty darn good patience, and I have pretty darn good tolerance too... but I absolutely dread this class, every saturday. If I was that kid's parent, he'd get owned from slaps ay... I dunno how they were raised but they are monsters. Normally I could make sure he doesn't run away, because he's the only one... and no way I'd let a 4? year old kid get away from me, and I also have the necessary strength to control him as well. You'd be suprised how strong a kid can be when they are desperate, and this kid is desperate to do the wrong thing. Today, I upgraded one of my best students to another level which was to the level of this monster of a child. The good student was an indian kid and would keenly and obediently do everything I told him to do. And he improved so fast and he absolutely loved swimming and he would give it everything he had and he would have been absolutely smashed after his first lesson earlier in the morning with me. Some odd reason he had a make up lesson in his new level later that morning... same class as the hellkid. The absolute best and the absolute worse placed in teh same class... It was a waste of a make up lesson as I had to spend much of the lesson controlling the other kid and could only spare half of my attention and one arm to teach him. The kid ran off once, and almost ran out of the pool centre, though my boss prevented him from exiting, which allowed me to corner him (which meant leaving a child unsupervised which I really shouldn't have done but had no choice, but I knew the good kid wouldn't do anything and he didn't he sat and watched and waited, fantastic kid to teach). I then had to pick him up off the ground and pry him from the door frame which he was holding unto in hopes of not getting back in (not because he hated the water, but because he didn't want to do as I told him to and all I told him to do was to swim with a frigggin kickboard...)... Obviously he wouldn't stand a chance as I pulled him straight off by walking with him, he then started to pinch me, but I was wearing 3 layers of clothing so no chance there either :P... and I saw his head move towards my forearm, and in the most evil tone I could muster, I whispered into his ear "Don't you even DARE think about biting me, Don't you even DARE..." I think that scared him enough to not bite me but still he was a pain... I spent the rest of the lesson teaching the good kid with one arm while I constricted the other kid with my right arm to stop him from moving, which meant I used a fair amount of strength, but the more he struggled the harder I had to squeeze to keep my grip... Not my loss... (There is a time and place for everything, and that was not the time to be gentle... seeing I do have some legal responsibilities as well as moral and occupational responsibilities). But yeah... There was no other way to handle such a kid... I had the most heavy split personality in that class... I would have a cheery soft voice talking to the good kid and correcting him and laughing, and turn into heavy, loud, angry and hoarse commanding yells the next second with the hellkid... While I was constricting him I simply ignored his screaming and crying (fake) and tantrums... but meh... I simply took all the necessary steps in the gentlest way possible, because I generally reason with bad behaviour giving them a chance to change before I pulled out my angry voice/face to stand it down. But that doesn't work with this kid... So I took it to the next level lol... Physical "imprisonment" with a strong arm...

O well... I'm tired from work... I only had 5 hours sleep last night... I worked at reception for 2-3 months before I got my license to teach, and reception is getting busier and busier so my boss is thinking of switching me to reception because I know the computer system stuff and everything else... and thats for saturdays specifically... which means I won't get hellkid.. but that might mean I also lose teaching the awesome kid whom I want to teach cos he's friggin brilliant... so it's a toss up... lol... but given the choice I'll probably do reception... unless the awesome kid comes another day orrr I somehow get rid of hellkid and give his curse upon another unfortunate soul :P

*edit* What was ironic was that the hellkid called me "Bad"... for commanding, yelling, and punishing him for his appalling behaviour that no other kid apart from his little brother can show. Which means that hellkid here, thinks that what he is doing is RIGHT... and that he should be allowed to disobey instructions at his free leisure... And I wasn't about to have my authority undermined by some maniacal child... So I enforced it, with mercy and reason... but then with force when I had no other option... lol... but meh... My brother used to teach hellkid... but he was too lenient, never got him to do anything that he didn't like or didn't want to do... And pretty much just played with him... So the kid is always saying "I want Daniel, I hate you!" or other crap that I don't care about... Different approach I guess... I put learning first and use fun as a medium or reward... And since the kid never wanted to listen and learn, he lost all his rewards. I let my students muck around and have fun... but too a point... and only if they continue to do as I ask when I ask them to do it. So in the time that I'm not getting them to do things, they can do whatever they please within certain safety limits... so most kids like my classes as I am least strict on "free play"... At school, we always got told that whatever things we wanted to do that they let us do was a privilege and if we step over the lines, we lose it (like trip mines, you step over, you get your legs blown off)... I'm simply applying what I know is effective...

Baggage breakdown

I use a specific bag for work every day, and that bag is an old school bag at least like... 8 years old...so it was getting pretty old.. Today the bag would have weighed about 8kg maybe? so it was mildly heavy... and as I was leaving work, I thought it would be a good idea to try and run onto a wall (being the kind of person I am, it's not surprising). As I took off the ground The bag strap snapped in two... which was kind of weird cos I didn't think I jumped that hard... but yeah... I guess I'll need to change my stuff over to the other half a zillion sports bag we have stashed in our house... lol.. o well.. Anyways, here's a random photo of it lol... I was bored...

On a side note, I'm presenting my testimony this sunday :D, I shall place it on this blog when the time comes :P So those who bother reading this but can't come to listen to it, I guess you'll find it here on sunday arvo