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.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
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...
Thursday, November 27, 2008
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...
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...
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
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
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
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
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...
But yeah... Can't really it chilli... and can only handle miniscule amounts of wasabi... but hey...
Monday, November 24, 2008
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...
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...
Sunday, November 23, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
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...
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...
Friday, November 21, 2008
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
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Energy Overhaul...
I think I've finally realised the reasons why I get so cold so easily... The average male energy intake is like some 3000 calories... which is about 12600 Kj (I did it in my head so it might be wrong)... I have a tendency to skip meals... since i eat dinner at 8-9 and I sleep at 12-2... and i wake up at 9-11... I've missed breakfast already. But I know I definitely do not have a protein deficiency... but I need more calories... I probably take in about 2600 calories a day... so I'm thinking I need to double that....
Junk food diet here I come
Junk food diet here I come
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Neatness of a Room...
On sunday, a few of my friends came over to my house and to just mash around for a few hours before we headed of to UF finale night. I gave them a fair warning that my room was a mess when we were walking up stairs cos we were just looking around n I find that my definition of "neat" and "messy" was vastly different from my friends lol... Cos they thought my room was "neat"... and the only tidying up I did was two days before when I chucked out all the loose paper that was fluttering around my room on the floors and crap... but yeah.. My table is pretty messy as well and my room is the hole of the house lol... my mum tells me its the eyesore of the house and my room being the first room when you go up the stairs its kinda unsightly lol... but I guess other people our age have less of an expectation than parents do :P which can't be helped haha :P
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Weak Immune System...
I think working as a swimming instructor makes your immune system incredibly weak... I say that because you are constantly being frozen so your bodily functions are impaired and you are also constant exposed to viruses and bacteria from the hundreds of kids every week. I swear that our (my colleagues and I) bodies are just barely able to hold off the endless waves of crap, and the ones that work for longer hours are almost constantly sick. Which means that chances are that when your body's immune system is pushed at any other time, your screwed and your bound to get sick... which is the case now... bleh... Only the second day and I know I'm going down big time...
Monday, November 17, 2008
Living Lies and Covering Them Up...
I think humans were not created to sin, which includes lying... consciously, you know that your not meant to do it, and when you do it, you are filled with guilt and shame. Consequentially, you create all sorts of measures to cover up your own tracks, to hide your lies from your peers or family. Your thoughts filled with nothing but concern about the consequences if your veil is broken and the truth revealed... The risks involved, the fear and worrying of the consequences, putting the trust (that is potentially already thin) in the relationship on the line... Although the moment might have been enjoyable... The guilt, shame, constant worrying and the effort you put to cover up, the damage that could potentially be done to your relationships and other things that you have to deal with after makes it not worth it...
Living through the moments... I'm a confused child, and I'm inclined to say it was not worth it. What did I gain, that is worth damaging the trust my family might have had in me? I have no defence this time... I can hide it from man, but cannot hide it from God. I will be held accountable for my lie, and in my lie I realise once again how short I fall of God's standards. However, I know that I will be forgiven, for I know and believe that God's own son took the punishment that I would have needed to face, and died for my sins of the past, present and future so that I could be saved, and still remain saved. I guess, in black and white, a lie is equally punishable as murder as both are sins and are obstructions to the purity and perfection that God so desires of us... so yeah... Thank you God for your forgiveness and mercy that I still remain righteous in your sight through the death of your son. Just hope if my parents find out they will be equally merciful... lol... Which probably isn't likely...
PS. Don't do it, you are bound to regret it.
Living through the moments... I'm a confused child, and I'm inclined to say it was not worth it. What did I gain, that is worth damaging the trust my family might have had in me? I have no defence this time... I can hide it from man, but cannot hide it from God. I will be held accountable for my lie, and in my lie I realise once again how short I fall of God's standards. However, I know that I will be forgiven, for I know and believe that God's own son took the punishment that I would have needed to face, and died for my sins of the past, present and future so that I could be saved, and still remain saved. I guess, in black and white, a lie is equally punishable as murder as both are sins and are obstructions to the purity and perfection that God so desires of us... so yeah... Thank you God for your forgiveness and mercy that I still remain righteous in your sight through the death of your son. Just hope if my parents find out they will be equally merciful... lol... Which probably isn't likely...
PS. Don't do it, you are bound to regret it.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Arguments with Parents...
In our household, in terms of knowing about each others personal lives, I'm probably the most distant compared to my brother. We do not generally have many arguments apart from the nagging of mum trying to get me to do chores immediately rather than in a few hours time. But there is one topic that, even after a year of its explosive (in a bad way) beginning, every time it is bought up, heated arguments are thrown across the house. That one topic is about schoolies last year. As you may or may not know, I graduated last year, and the intention was that a group of us from church would head up to the sunshine coast for 5 days to celebrate schoolies together. It was a once in a lifetime chance and experience. You cannot repeat schoolies, you cannot repeat the atmosphere, because the context in which that event occurs has come and past and never to come again. My mum believed that I did not put any effort into my schooling, and therefore did not deserve to have that opportunity to relax and chillout with my friends for a few days. For the whole schoolies week, I was at home all day every day except on one day, I got some of my school friends together to hang out for a few hours... That week I did not speak to my mum with out giving extremely crude and sarcastic remarks and would spill out into red hot anger at the slightest provocation, entering arguments with nothing but bitterness and using it to demonstrate my continuing distain. Even 3 months after schoolies, I was still dark and still slightly bitter for that decision that she made. Even a year after, when schoolies is bought up in a conversation, the arguments are still heated, with mum giving me crappy excuses now that apparently I was not trustworthy and apparently didn't know what hell I would raise while I was away as well as saying that schoolies wasn't safe and crap even though we were not anywhere close to where the masses went ie. Gold Coast. Neither of the last two excuses by the way were any of her arguments at the time to defend her decision.
But being the person I am, I will present an argument in the most unbias way possible, providing key points of both arguments as well as defenses for each statement I made against my mum's comments.
But being the person I am, I will present an argument in the most unbias way possible, providing key points of both arguments as well as defenses for each statement I made against my mum's comments.
- You did not put any effort into you schooling particularly grade 11 & 12 and did not get good marks worthy of celebrating and so you shall not go and celebrate. (Main point)
- Firstly, if I had paid no effort into my schooling, I would not have passed any of my work. It is true that I had 3 C+s but I also had 3 Bs... Bs don't grow on trees, they are worked for and so I did put effort into school. It is true that I did not achieve great, but not everyone is capable of being OP1s and Duxs, in fact only gifted/talented people with the right attitude and persistence can hope to achieve the top as there is no room for two at the top. A lot of people are only capable of average, that is why its called an AVERAGE. Is it fair that just cos your average that all your efforts are for naught and are worth nothing? Of course not. When you celebrate, you do not merely celebrate the destination, but the journey. There is more to a goal than the rewards you reap. Its not about how far the effort got you but the quality of the effort, and also the mistakes that you made and reflecting on the things that could have been better. Just cos I did not get straight As as every ASIAN parents would wish/(demand), does not mean I put zero or next to zero effort into school. Just because my brother did much better than me does not mean I put zero or next to zero effort into school. Its not always about the ends, but the means to the end. First defense...
- Secondly, I spent 13 years at school, at the same school in fact. What is the purpose of schoolies? to celebrate the end of school, to celebrate the conclusion of those 13 years. By saying I do not deserve to celebrate schoolies, are you discrediting those 13 years as worthless and wasted time? By saying just because I did not do so well in senior that I had paid zero effort in the 10 years before that? Did I not have state topping performances for numerous competitions? Did I not have state records and national level sporting achievements during those 13 years? Are they meaningless as well? If so then why did you waste money in giving me the opportunity to do those competitions and to go to states and nationals for those competitions? Do they deserve no recognition? My middle school years were by far my best, apart from teh few subjects I disliked, like japanese and german... I aced almost everything I touched. Does THAT effort mean nothing? Was that EFFORTLESS? no... Effort does not always mean success, but I was not without success, just not at the time when it mattered most. That doesn't mean I paid no effort. Second defense...
- I was under circumstances that prevent me from focusing on my schooling that you have no idea of yet. And will not know of until you hear my testimony. It is true that in senior years my ability to put effort into schooling was diminishing rapidly. I could not focus, could not perform. Why? Because I was severely depressed, to the point of 2-3 months of counselling. And that held me down during all of my senior years, and I was not dragged off to counselling by a friend until during the most CRITICAL stage of term 3 in which results meant everything for OP. How could I possibly have performed well under those circumstances? How can you perform when you felt like killing yourself? How can you perform when you felt no meaning, no sustenance, no energy? The fact that I pulled of an OP10 should be a friggin miracle in itself. Of what effort I could spare, I used it all. It was well below my potential, true. But potential is crippled and disabled under the weight of depression. Third Defense...
- You were not trustworthy and I would not have known what you would have done up there.
- Firstly, I was not by any means a disruptive or destructive person, secondly, think of the people I was going with... They were all friends from CHURCH, seriously if I said I was going with school friends, then you have a case for concern. But even I had the intelligence and the wisdom to know that that would be a BAD idea to go schoolies with them... and I chose to go with my church friends... does that not indicate my intentions at all? Do you think I would go with other christians to raise hell? Of course not... Do you think my church friends would let me raise hell? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't. Just because I failed to do chores the instant you command me (and I did alot of chores, the only things I didn't do was operate the washing machine and clean the inside of the toilets) doesn't mean I'm not trustworthy. A lot of kids at that age DO NOTHING at all to assist at home. My BROTHER did NOTHING during and after his senior years. I did not stop doing chores in my senior years, in fact I did even more! My brother did not TOUCH the garden after grade 8... I kept doing the gardens and mowing the lawns and everything in the house, the dishes, vacuuming, hanging out clothes whenever I was told to, mopping the floors, cleaning windows, etc. and you consider that "untrustworthy" and "inadequate". That's just ridiculous, and insulting to hear from your own mother. First defense...
- What do other people do at schoolies? Drugs? Alcohol? Smoke? Fight? Sex? Party like retards, drunk and disorderly? Do I look like a person who would do ANY of those things? Do you think I chose a bunch of people who would do these things to go to schoolies with? NO... If someone told me to smoke I'd light it up and shove it up their ass. That is my attitude to those sorts of things. Do you seriously think I would do ANYTHING like that to pollute myself? That is an insult in itself to even CONSIDER the possibility that I would do something like that. Second defense...
- Schoolies week is unsafe, therefore you should not go anyways, even if you deserve to celebrate.
- Tell me, does that mean during schoolies week, the world suddenly becomes a war zone? Do you not go shopping in safety at sunnybank plaza? Do you not eat dinner at a restaurant in safety? Sunnybank is 50km or so away from the Gold Coast and is SAFE... then would Sunshine Coast be any different? Its true that it is also a favourable destination for schoolies, but the place where all the main crap that we get told a million times about at school before graduation was about GOLD COAST schoolies. It is a hole down there, and I NEVER intended to set foot in that place during schoolies week. And besides, we would have been a group of 6-8 or something, safety in numbers. Weaponry optional... But seriously it would not have been unsafe if you had half a brain and a controllable ego. I had no ego and am more than capable of making sound decisions in terms of safety. I'm not completely socially retarded. First defense...
- Think about everyone that is going to graduate. You have your bad kids and your good kids. Think about all the people who are going to schoolies to raise literal hell. Think about all the people who are going to consider doing drugs or doing sexually immoral acts at parties and crap. Think about all the people who intend to spike drinks. Where do they congregate? Gold Coast. Who are the people who avoid Gold Coast schoolies? People who do not LIKE the atmosphere there. Why? COS IT IS A HOLE... So the people who don't go are gonna go elsewhere to celebrate away from the crowd. Do you think that the people who avoided GC schoolies would act in the exact same identical fashion as the animals down there? no... I'd hardly would have worried about getting bashed walking around Sunshine Coast relative to if I was at GC. People who go to GC want to mix with strangers. People who go elsewhere don't necessarily want to actively interact with other groups on an excessive level. Sure you'll run into them and maybe exchange a few words and greeting, but apart from that you stay within your own groups. And so why would it be excessively unsafe, if unsafe at all? It's just merely paranoia that is influencing your decision. And look they have all returned in one piece with no problems... So that proves your paranoia even further. Second defense...
- Your brother did not go to schoolies, so why should you go?
- Firstly, he did not go because most of his closest friends all stayed behind in brisbane to be game freaks. And he joined them. So he had no reason to go to schoolies. Who the heck goes to schoolies without his friends? What level of a loser would you be if you went to some random place all by yourself to celebrate all by yourself? First defence...
- Secondly, the friends of his that did go (from memory) went to the Gold Coast schoolies. All the more reason NOT to go. And so with no reason to go to schoolies at all, why go? and thus he stayed behind and mashed around in Brissie instead. A very logical choice and course of action, predictable too. Second defence...
- My friends are not absolute computer nerds and would not want to sit down for a WHOLE BLOODY WEEK playing computer games NON-STOP. So why not go somewhere else and hang out together and enjoy each others company? Sure they played abit of games... singstar and random group interactive games... Just cos my brother's friends did not choose to go somewhere reasonable to celebrate or did not want to go anywhere to celebrate doesn't mean my friends are identical... So applying my brother's friendship groups interests to our friendship group's interests is just plain stupid and lacks wisdom altogether. Do I apply your set of interests towards all your friends and assume that "all you old people are the same"? NO, cos I'm not that naive. Do everyone not have a different way of using their spare time? If yes (and I hope it would be, cos you'd be incredibly naive to suggest otherwise), then why can't you see that groups of young people are different from each other just like groups of older people are different from each other? Third defence...
Wetsuits!
Woot! I finally got a wetsuit today... which means I will hopefully no longer freeze to death every day at work now haha... though those things are bloody darn expensive... a long sleeved upper body shirt costed me $99.95... good thing I had a $20 discount... What WAS rather amusing was when I told my mum that I was gonna go buy a wetsuit, she told me to buy it in 2 pieces. So I thought for a minute, why 2 pieces when I can just buy a full suit which will probably be warmer and cheaper than seperate pieces?... When I enquired, the reply I got back was one I (if you know me well) should have considered the very second she said buy in 2 pieces, but it didn't occur to me until she told me... and it was "Don't you think you need to go to the toilet?" And truth be told going to the toilet with a full wetsuit would be a big pain in the ass seeing how the zipper is on your back below your neck... and you'd need to practically take the whole thing off lol, and when you haven't been to the toilet in 5 or so hours... you don't want to waste that much time on getting the thing off :P... Kinda amusing my mum thought of toilet stuff before I did though... considering me and my brother's reputations... haha
O and about updating this thing everyday or sometimes even less?... It'll probably die down soon... lol... we'll see how persistent I am :P haha... and it kinda is the holidays so I guess I have more than enough time to blog :P
O and about updating this thing everyday or sometimes even less?... It'll probably die down soon... lol... we'll see how persistent I am :P haha... and it kinda is the holidays so I guess I have more than enough time to blog :P
Friday, November 14, 2008
Dumb drivers... + exam results
In Australia, you keep left... and at a round about, if you're in the left land u can only turn left or go straight... and when you're in the right lane you go straight or turn right... some retard today almost crashed into at a round about because I was in the right lane turning right and he is in the left land and does a 360 around the outside... and cuts my off in front of me...so I have to stop in the middle of the round about...
On a side note, my exam (no 's') result came out today... 35/50 lol... which is a 5.5 lol.. MCQ... I can't say I studied for it lol... so I guess its pretty good... lol...
Neways... should sleep realll soon... got work tomorrow morning... another 4 hours of coldness...
On a side note, my exam (no 's') result came out today... 35/50 lol... which is a 5.5 lol.. MCQ... I can't say I studied for it lol... so I guess its pretty good... lol...
Neways... should sleep realll soon... got work tomorrow morning... another 4 hours of coldness...
Holidays...
I finished exams like.... 2 saturdays ago... so for the last 2 weeks I've been working like 20.5 hours a week... but apart from that I've done practically nothing exciting... sure I played heaps of computer games... finished Crysis, finished Assassin's Creed, and half way through Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance... but, those things simply kill time... and have no lasting value... so what if I finish a game? Soon after you'll be bored again and it isn't that exciting or beneficial to reflect or even vegetate on how u played that game. I'm pretty sure I need to get out of my house more often and interact with some real people... but work gets in the way to frequently... And I kinda feel bad if I skip work just to hang out with friends... If you could see the look on my face right now its probably the most dull, monotonous and tired look you'll see me have. Even the sound of a message coming through on my phone breaks the monotony, and gets me slightly excited cos I'm communicating with someone... how lame... ... ...
uber bored... which means I should be using this time to do the things I said I will do these holidays... like... clean my craphole of a room, and practise guitar... but it's still stuff you do alone... so its still boring and very unmotivating...
uber bored... which means I should be using this time to do the things I said I will do these holidays... like... clean my craphole of a room, and practise guitar... but it's still stuff you do alone... so its still boring and very unmotivating...
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Throwing Cards
Those who know me well would know that I am an avid ninja fan :P and have ceaseless bitter arguments with pirate supporters for some reason they have pirates vs ninjas thing going and believe (misguidedly) that they are superior. However that's beside the point :P I could blog endlessly just on that topic alone haha... In any case, I am a pretty darn good card thrower, and last night I was throwing cards around my room, which resulted in 3 cards being stuck in the blinds that cover my windows... they are stuck cos they are paper cards and they hit with enough force for the blinds to cut into the card and hold them there haha... good plastic cards could actually start doing some real damage to plasterboard walls if u throw them hard enough... and for the absolute freaks out there that manage to get their hands on metal cards? they could probably kill someone with them... and have them stuck in like bricks and stuff lol...
in any case here is some proof :P
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Moon
I noticed that the moon was full tonight, and so I decided that it was perfect time to start practising photography skills... using a 200mm lens (which is moderately powerful zoom tho the moon was still tiny...) I began experimenting with a different settings, like aperture, shutter speeds and stuff like that which on one of those dummy cameras, as my mum calls them, would never have available. Technology is getting quite incredible, as the vibration reduction (or steady shot on dummy cameras) was so noticable that even when using quite slow shutter speeds like 1/100 or 1/80 that they were still quite ok with a bit of blur cos I'm still a noob at photography. But yer... So I thought I'd post a few cropped photos of that wonderful rock floating above our heads in the night sky. I eventually got some settings that could really pick up all the details on the moon's surface. Looks pretty neat
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Shopping
Today, David Jones was doing one of their pre-christmas sales... late night shopping... and I went there with my mum to do some shopping... I swear that the electronic department guys mustve thought we were absolutely loaded lol... cos we bought so much stuff haha... Well, shopping with parents are a good thing, some times its rewarding too :P well my mum said that she'd get me a SLR camera when I get into architecture... well I guess I have one now haha... Gives me some time to start practising and learning how to take good photos... from none other than my mum... who seems to be able to do absolutely everything better than I can... except for swimming... yes my mum did photography and even did film exposure stuff... and has several of the old film type SLR cannons... I am the noob of my family haha... o well... I guess you guys might start seeing random photos appearing on this blog... lol...
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Minds of Children
Some of the kids I teach are rather excitable and kids in general do not think before they speak once they enter their excited states. I was doing school learn to swim today, and one of my classes consisted of grade 1 kids. Children are quite forgetful and will take ages to remember your name. Children also don't listen or pay attention to their environments while they are in their excited states, which means that groups of children tend to ask the same questions 2-4x the number of children there are in the group cos they ask you a question and get distracted while you answer them and they ask you again.... and again and one more time just to see if you get annoyed. And so even after 2 lessons they still didn't remember my name, which wasn't an absolute surprise. But then they began asking a million times "what is your name?" to which I would answer "Vincent" half a million times, cos most of the time they would ask the question simultaneously (You learn to become really patient). Then for some strange reason, a child asks "What's your mum's name?" and there I stood thinking "wtheck does that have to do with swimming?" so I answered "Does it even matter?" and a loud "YES" came from the kid. I didn't end up telling them my mum's name lol. But 2 seconds later, a kid yells "How old are you?", being honest I said "eighteen"... then the kid asked "Are you a teenager?"... You'd think even a grade 1 kid would know that if you're in your teens, you're a teenager right? So I gave a blunt "yes". What started to get me worried was when another kid went "Does that mean you smoke?". That's when I really thought "WTH... where do these kids learn these things from?" cos they do go to a private catholic school, so you'd think their parents wouldn't be that bad if they would send them to a private catholic school. Of course my answer was "No, I do not smoke"... But then what followed was "Do you have a girlfriend?" and this was coming from a grade 1 girl... Instinctly telling the truth I said "No, not yet anyways"... Immediately, "Will you have a girlfriend soon?", I wasn't getting annoyed by the billions of questions that were being thrown at me, but I was wishing they would stop asking these weird questions that I didn't expect to come out of a 6 year old. But being completely honest I said "I don't know, I don't know" and the same girl made a rather surprising outburst in an extremely loud voice, "HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE A GIRLFRIEND?" like it was a crime to not have one lol... And some other kid asked "Are you married?", which I simply took as naivety, cos wtheck I'm 18, and how many people get married at 18? Ok so you do get those rare NAIVE people that do that... but... It's not common and I'd say it's defnitely not recommended from both secular and christian worldviews.
These definitely weren't things I'd expect to hear from a group of grade 1 kids. But it got me thinking, what on earth at their age could possibly make them have that kind of impression or expectation of a mere 18 year old boy? What are they seeing or hearing that would make them link teenager = smoker? They don't comment on me being asian (as some kids do ie."why do you have black hair?" (yes I've been asked that before)), but they think teenager = smoker?
Also, what are they hearing or seeing that makes them think of "romantic" (and from the discourse you hear occasionally, potentially sexual) relationships at THAT age?? What would make the kid even ask whether I have a girlfriend or not, like it was vastly important to them? Why would a child of their age even value romantic relationships on such a high scale?
What do these kids being exposed to in society that would lead to that kind of thinking? What kind of TV programs are they watching that would lead to this? Are mere children's programs and cartoons enough to create this kind of thinking pattern? I think not. Children are sponges, they absorb everything they see, and copy everything from people and things they like or respect. That could be a cartoon character or a person from a TV show, but what about parents or older siblings as well as celebrities in the media? and those accursed children's magazines that they read. And maybe we ignore it, but music too. Why do you think we have see so many try hard gangsta kids these days? Think about popular music, think how much of it is about love and relationships... and gangsta music? how much of it is about sex and other dirty, unholy things? And children seem to pick it all up. I cringe at the sight of a 3rd grader trying uber hard to be gangsta. And those magazines, are filled with crap about the private lives of teenager celebrities and mostly about their relationships and other crap that noone with an ounce of wisdom would give a crap about, would poison the mind of children to think that is a norm... Such is reality... and such is this generation. With such wide access to overloading amounts of information, one has to be seriously wise to know what is worth knowing and what is not, what is true and what is a lie and what is the reality of their lives and their environment and what comes from other place and is not applicable. Children.. generally do not have that kind of wisdom, they are naive by nature as wisdom comes with age, exposure and mistakes.
Even at our age, late teenagers and early twenties, we are still being influenced by all the above immensely but perhaps at a less naive level as we have made plenty of mistakes by this time. But seriously, we have been or are still being influenced greatly when it comes to our expectations of other people, ourselves, relationships, whatever...
God help us all... cos this world that we live in is one bloody screwed up place...
These definitely weren't things I'd expect to hear from a group of grade 1 kids. But it got me thinking, what on earth at their age could possibly make them have that kind of impression or expectation of a mere 18 year old boy? What are they seeing or hearing that would make them link teenager = smoker? They don't comment on me being asian (as some kids do ie."why do you have black hair?" (yes I've been asked that before)), but they think teenager = smoker?
Also, what are they hearing or seeing that makes them think of "romantic" (and from the discourse you hear occasionally, potentially sexual) relationships at THAT age?? What would make the kid even ask whether I have a girlfriend or not, like it was vastly important to them? Why would a child of their age even value romantic relationships on such a high scale?
What do these kids being exposed to in society that would lead to that kind of thinking? What kind of TV programs are they watching that would lead to this? Are mere children's programs and cartoons enough to create this kind of thinking pattern? I think not. Children are sponges, they absorb everything they see, and copy everything from people and things they like or respect. That could be a cartoon character or a person from a TV show, but what about parents or older siblings as well as celebrities in the media? and those accursed children's magazines that they read. And maybe we ignore it, but music too. Why do you think we have see so many try hard gangsta kids these days? Think about popular music, think how much of it is about love and relationships... and gangsta music? how much of it is about sex and other dirty, unholy things? And children seem to pick it all up. I cringe at the sight of a 3rd grader trying uber hard to be gangsta. And those magazines, are filled with crap about the private lives of teenager celebrities and mostly about their relationships and other crap that noone with an ounce of wisdom would give a crap about, would poison the mind of children to think that is a norm... Such is reality... and such is this generation. With such wide access to overloading amounts of information, one has to be seriously wise to know what is worth knowing and what is not, what is true and what is a lie and what is the reality of their lives and their environment and what comes from other place and is not applicable. Children.. generally do not have that kind of wisdom, they are naive by nature as wisdom comes with age, exposure and mistakes.
Even at our age, late teenagers and early twenties, we are still being influenced by all the above immensely but perhaps at a less naive level as we have made plenty of mistakes by this time. But seriously, we have been or are still being influenced greatly when it comes to our expectations of other people, ourselves, relationships, whatever...
God help us all... cos this world that we live in is one bloody screwed up place...
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Uncanny Coincidence
A few weeks ago marked a very significant day in my life, I was baptised on sunday the 26th of October. I did not recieve the opportunity to deliver my testimony on the day. Thus I was suppose to deliver it today, but due to a guest speaker that came into talk to us about ICC (International China Concern) and their programs, I have been postponed till the 23rd of November to deliver my testimony. Now you'd probably be wondering so what's the uncanny coincidence?... Well, my testimony involves the sermon of one particular speaker that came in many months ago, and had I been able to deliver my testimony today, I would not need to reiterate his sermon in front of him, which is what i was hoping to avoid doing. But... specifically on the email about getting postponed... it specifically noted... "when the speaker will be Liam"... Which was when I went... "O crap..." cos, I was hoping to avoid the awkwardness, the irony, as well as the potential that I my memory might have mixed up information from other significant references between then and now. So... IF my memory was incorrect then it would be baadddd lol... but what was the chances of me getting delayed and that the new date would coincide with the day that Liam comes to preach to us again? lol...
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Rain!
Ahhh... the sudden rain was so awesome ay... I was helping mum with the gardening when it started to rain and I ended up spending about half an hour just standing in the rain just for fun lol. I haven't been drenched in the rain since I graduated last year so it was a refreshing experience :P
Rain is such a unique phenomenom, without it humans could hardly survive as well as all these emotions that we have attached to rain and storms... like... "it was a dark and stormy night..." lol... evil stuff... dark stuff... supernatural stuff... as well as romantic stuff I guess or unromantic stuff... typical romance movie scenes... meh... o and traditional war stuff... it always rained during the WWs... cos of so much gunpowder in the atmosphere
neways...
Rain is such a unique phenomenom, without it humans could hardly survive as well as all these emotions that we have attached to rain and storms... like... "it was a dark and stormy night..." lol... evil stuff... dark stuff... supernatural stuff... as well as romantic stuff I guess or unromantic stuff... typical romance movie scenes... meh... o and traditional war stuff... it always rained during the WWs... cos of so much gunpowder in the atmosphere
neways...
Friday, November 7, 2008
Re:Fear
If water is a strange medium and you are scared of it because you are uncertain about what will become of you when you enter it. Then the future is also equally strange and uncertain and we are equally afraid if not more afraid of what will become of us when the time comes. Every day of our lives have be preordained, God knows exactly how much suffering will come upon you in your life and will not give you more than you cannot handle, always providing a way out of trouble.
Having said that, some might ask "but what of the people who commit suicide?"... well, more often than not, especially when things are uber tough, the way out and the only way out is to trust God's guidance and depend on his strength that he willingly supplies in overflowing amounts should we choose to take it. I can't really say that suicide is trusting and depending on God to do his work and so we fall when we don't trust Him. In the past I could have been categorised as that kind of person, things got tough and I tried to stand on my own legs and struggled... So to speak, a year ago, my legs would then get broken until I realised I couldn't stand anymore on my own, looking elsewhere I came back to God to pick me up and used his strength to stand stronger than I could have ever stood apart from Him.
Having said that, some might ask "but what of the people who commit suicide?"... well, more often than not, especially when things are uber tough, the way out and the only way out is to trust God's guidance and depend on his strength that he willingly supplies in overflowing amounts should we choose to take it. I can't really say that suicide is trusting and depending on God to do his work and so we fall when we don't trust Him. In the past I could have been categorised as that kind of person, things got tough and I tried to stand on my own legs and struggled... So to speak, a year ago, my legs would then get broken until I realised I couldn't stand anymore on my own, looking elsewhere I came back to God to pick me up and used his strength to stand stronger than I could have ever stood apart from Him.
Laziness
Man... although I've been at the pool 3 times a week almost every week this year to teach, I've only trained twice this year... All through high school I would train like 1-3 times a week and would be able to swim a 2-2.4km session with relative ease... Today I thought I'd join my old swimming buddies again for the second half of their hour long session after my last class which started at the same time (which goes for half an hour)... and by then there was only 500m left of their session as they swam the other 1.5km in the first half hour or something... and I was already buggered lol...
It is quite amazing how the body takes so long to train up... but as soon as you stop using it, it will degenerate so quickly to a weaker state. Also fitness in one medium doesn't seem to transfer over to other medium either, if you are a hardcore gymnast, you jump in a pool and you will be crap even if you know how to swim. I run alot, and although I don't have many opportunities to climb stuff, I do it when ever the opportunity arises, so I guess I should be pretty fit... But doing that half km of decent speed swimming, now I actually feel tired lol...
I reckon if I keep jumping in for the second half of their session every week I'll be back up there in a few weeks though...
It is quite amazing how the body takes so long to train up... but as soon as you stop using it, it will degenerate so quickly to a weaker state. Also fitness in one medium doesn't seem to transfer over to other medium either, if you are a hardcore gymnast, you jump in a pool and you will be crap even if you know how to swim. I run alot, and although I don't have many opportunities to climb stuff, I do it when ever the opportunity arises, so I guess I should be pretty fit... But doing that half km of decent speed swimming, now I actually feel tired lol...
I reckon if I keep jumping in for the second half of their session every week I'll be back up there in a few weeks though...
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
You know you are a swimming instructor when...
You know you are a swimming instructor when:
- Your skin smells like chlorine constantly
- Your tears smell like pool water
- You constantly have spare towels in your car
- You have 3 pairs of goggles in your swimming bag
- You have 2 pairs of togs in case you lose a pair somehow
- The boot of your car smells like pool water
- When you remember the names of every single student of the approximately 75 students you have
- When you walk past a pool and can see inside and you see crappy swimming you have the urge to correct them. And last but definitely not least;
- When you freeze to death for 8 hours in a giant puddle through the cold wind and rain survivng on a hot chocolate, a muffin and 2 nutella sandwiches.
- *EDIT* (I forgot the most important one.. silly me...) When you gain superhuman homeostatic abilities... ie working 6 hours without going to the toilet
- *EDIT2* (thanks for reminding me!) When your skin becomes so bloated and wrinked that the crevices and ravines in the skin begin to quite literally crack open.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Fear
Well... some people may know that I work as a swimming instructor, particularly for Learn-to-Swim... and so I deal with lots of kids, young and old, and there is one thing that really gets you thinking... and that is fear... Some kids are petrified of the water to an irrational level... and they will make your eardrums bleed and quite literally temporarily deafen you for a minute or two if they go off close enough to your ear... some kids are so scared that they stiffen up like a rock and whatever potential that they had to swim would be lost as they would just sink to the bottom and then get even more scared... some older kids that are just learning how to swim will keep saying... "I can't, I can't, I can't do it"... even on the simplest of techniques... like simply relaxing and lying on your back in the water and kicking...
What is interesting is that it the reason for that kind of behaviour is because of some kind of precieved outcome that they think will happen if they enter the water or if they attempt a particular technique... but the thing is that if they trusted the fact that the instructor would not get them to do something that they couldn't do without providing all the necessary assistance required, then they would all be able to learn to swim easily and extremely quickly. But to trust someone also means putting faith in their promises for action. Trusting that when the instructor says "I will catch you", that he will indeed catch you when you push off and swim out to him. The fear creates a sort of stubbornness that is in my opinion unequalled in anyway. A 10 year old boy today was in a class that I was taking and the other kids were several years younger... the other 2 children must've been about 6-7ish? and the other children when I said "OK, we are gonna go kicking on our back." and one of the kids would not even need to wait for my hand to be placed on their back before pushing off towards me. However the 10 year old kid would be telling me "I can't do it, I can't do it"... and even when I'm basically carrying him in the water on his back, he would still be as stiff as a rock and could not even let go of my arm to hold onto a kickboard with both hands just because I said I needed both hands on his back to hold him up (I had one hand on his back, one hand on his chest and his head was on my shoulder). But I knew that he could have done it, because every human being is capable of swimming, and swimming is incredibly easy... One time at school, some inspirational media people came in and showed us a video, and a section of the video was about a guy born with no limbs and only had one foot which was attached to his hip and it had 3 toes... and that guy COULD SWIM BY HIMSELF... now if someone with no arms and no legs could swim by himself... I'm pretty sure any able minded human can swim... The reason why that guy with no limbs could swim was because he believed he could do it... and trusted whoever taught him how to swim enough to actually give it a shot without holding back.
As a christian, I think that this very situation also applies in all of our lives as well. Life isn't a walk in the park, and we all have times when we think that we can't make it or there isn't a way to do something. But if we just trust that God knows what he is doing and that if we believe in him and give it everything we have then we will get through those troubled times and we will learn and grow so much. I'm sure my students do not know how the various exercise will actually result in them learning how to swim, as they always say, "but I want to do this" or "But I can do that already" or "but I'm not good at that". They don't understand that it is not about the drills but about the outcome that the drills produce and they don't understand the 'plan' that we use to create the final outcome, which is when they can swim properly. Likewise, we will probably not understand the processes and the ways that God will use to bring out the things that he has planted in us. And we also don't always understand why certain things happen to us but if we just trust that God knows what he's doing and that we are in more than good hands then we can deal with those bad times with confidence.
All in a day's work
What is interesting is that it the reason for that kind of behaviour is because of some kind of precieved outcome that they think will happen if they enter the water or if they attempt a particular technique... but the thing is that if they trusted the fact that the instructor would not get them to do something that they couldn't do without providing all the necessary assistance required, then they would all be able to learn to swim easily and extremely quickly. But to trust someone also means putting faith in their promises for action. Trusting that when the instructor says "I will catch you", that he will indeed catch you when you push off and swim out to him. The fear creates a sort of stubbornness that is in my opinion unequalled in anyway. A 10 year old boy today was in a class that I was taking and the other kids were several years younger... the other 2 children must've been about 6-7ish? and the other children when I said "OK, we are gonna go kicking on our back." and one of the kids would not even need to wait for my hand to be placed on their back before pushing off towards me. However the 10 year old kid would be telling me "I can't do it, I can't do it"... and even when I'm basically carrying him in the water on his back, he would still be as stiff as a rock and could not even let go of my arm to hold onto a kickboard with both hands just because I said I needed both hands on his back to hold him up (I had one hand on his back, one hand on his chest and his head was on my shoulder). But I knew that he could have done it, because every human being is capable of swimming, and swimming is incredibly easy... One time at school, some inspirational media people came in and showed us a video, and a section of the video was about a guy born with no limbs and only had one foot which was attached to his hip and it had 3 toes... and that guy COULD SWIM BY HIMSELF... now if someone with no arms and no legs could swim by himself... I'm pretty sure any able minded human can swim... The reason why that guy with no limbs could swim was because he believed he could do it... and trusted whoever taught him how to swim enough to actually give it a shot without holding back.
As a christian, I think that this very situation also applies in all of our lives as well. Life isn't a walk in the park, and we all have times when we think that we can't make it or there isn't a way to do something. But if we just trust that God knows what he is doing and that if we believe in him and give it everything we have then we will get through those troubled times and we will learn and grow so much. I'm sure my students do not know how the various exercise will actually result in them learning how to swim, as they always say, "but I want to do this" or "But I can do that already" or "but I'm not good at that". They don't understand that it is not about the drills but about the outcome that the drills produce and they don't understand the 'plan' that we use to create the final outcome, which is when they can swim properly. Likewise, we will probably not understand the processes and the ways that God will use to bring out the things that he has planted in us. And we also don't always understand why certain things happen to us but if we just trust that God knows what he's doing and that we are in more than good hands then we can deal with those bad times with confidence.
All in a day's work
The New Beginning... of my second attempt to maintain a blog...
Well... Last time I tried to blog was using that space live thingy... but that was pretty crap and I didn't get past 3 posts... so I guess we'll see if I can do better this time ay? haha... I also wonder if people actually read these things... But since I am the king of procrastination and unproductivity, I guess I have nothing to lose here haha... I always wonder how other people can think of so much... stuff... to blog about... it probably takes practise to think of something... and vegetate on it for a few hours and then suddenly think... "I reckon I should blog this!"... cos I don't think that thought occurs to me that often lol... so this thing will potentially be forgotten about pretty soon ay :P but I guess if you have a diehard readership following you then your probably more likely to have more incentive to blog... ah well, I guess this could be an experiment to see if blogging helps to channel ideas... and give me an outlet to all those hours I spend on vegetative thoughts on practically every matter under the heavens and above... its not uncommon for me to spend like... 3 hours just sitting there starring at the ceilling thinking about the most random things like... how to make jetpacks... and how to make a stormtrooper suit out of coke cans... and other weird and wonderful things...
well... now that I think about what I just wrote... blogging might not be as hard as it initally felt... Maybe my vegetative tendencies give me a natural advantage :P haha...
anyways... its 1:20am and I should probably hit the bed... otherwise I'll end up hitting the floor and sleep there for like 3 hours before realising that I'm not actually on my bed...
well... now that I think about what I just wrote... blogging might not be as hard as it initally felt... Maybe my vegetative tendencies give me a natural advantage :P haha...
anyways... its 1:20am and I should probably hit the bed... otherwise I'll end up hitting the floor and sleep there for like 3 hours before realising that I'm not actually on my bed...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
