Dreams, Memories and Otherwise...

Ramblings 2

2011-08-12T05:24:00.001+10:00

The feeling of self-hate and worthlessness are pretty frustrating to deal with… You have dreams and aspirations as to who you wish you could be and how you wish the world around you could be, about how you could play a part in the lives of the people around you… Yet you don’t feel worthy or fitting for such a role, the feeling of inadequacy seems to snuff out the smallest spark of hope and confidence that you might have had. You feel like no one would need you around, that no one would even notice if you were gone. That you don’t feel like anyone would see anything within you, that they wouldn’t see the potential that is buried deep within.

The pent up whirlwind of emotions can become so volatile. Some days you just want to explode and scream… Or to just beat your fists against the wall. You just want some way of unleashing the tightness in the chest and releasing the burden on the shoulders.

As the idiom goes, “a face only a mother could love”… Sometimes it does feel like it rings true. Speaking from a christian perspective, it feels like at times that only a Creator would love what he has made. For those without the knowledge of Christ it would be even harder to make it through. Even those who don’t have a choice in whether your part of their life or not cannot guarantee their support for you, even the idiom says “could”, as in possibly.

Recent Gaming Addictions

2011-07-28T04:51:00.001+10:00

Well… I recently started playing games in the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series. It’s a weird crime solving visual novel kind of game where you basically solve crime cases that always involve situations that are more than meets the eye. The games generally involve finding yourself so far up the creek without the paddle that the situation always seem hopelessly lost as you try and work your way out of a case and try to turn it around and find the true criminals. For some reason, I can’t get enough of these…. seemingly tragic, hopeless scenarios that get turned on its head. I dunno if I have mentioned in the pass about my pure hatred I have for romantic movies… anything that has a fairy tale love story I tend to utterly despise…. But… I find myself finding these set of games…. likeable… The main focus of the game is of course, not a love story but a story about the life of a defence lawyer. Somewhere in the background, the tragic love story of the lawyer is woven into the fabric of the story, but as the nature of the game goes of course, the tragedy gets turned on its head. Somehow, I think I only find this story more appealing due to the amount of problems and complications that arise and interfere… Perhaps it is because it’s a story, albeit a fantastically intricate tale, that reflects reality ever so slightly. It reflects the imperfections of any meeting, of how more often than not, things cannot be ideal and comfortable. Fairy tale knight in shining armour type romance just makes me cringe violently to be honest… But somehow… this story I found quite moving… the story kind of ends with the cliffhanger… the girl was in prison for being an accomplice in a murder case in which the victim had murderous intent to kill an innocent girl, and the lawyer was on visitations. But that was where it got left at… So I suppose because of the less than ideal circumstances, I have this nagging wish that the game producers continue to unfold this story arc. Alas, I don’t think that’s happening… It was only a visit with some implied remnant feelings… but nothing explicitly stated the nature of their relationship and is all left to the speculation of the player. So I guess I still find the ending slightly unsatisfactory… but hey… I don’t normally like romantic stories so this is a first in itself I guess…

Ramblings 1

2011-07-15T15:21:00.001+10:00

I’ve been thinking about how the human spirit seems to be solely driven by love or the need to feel loved/need to love. While I suppose that finding someone who reciprocates love could possibly be one of the greatest joys in this life, the catch is that unrequited love also feels like a sledgehammer to the face. I wonder, what was God’s original intention for creating this man-woman relationship?… Sure humans have clearly fallen from perfection and have chosen not to follow God and therefore miss their life purpose, but unrequited love seems like an inherent component to love that is unrelated at all to the imperfections of mankind.

Where am I going with this? well… In the bible, Adam and Eve (first humans) were created in the Garden of Eden. They were perfect at the time and had not rebelled by taking the fruit of the knowledge of Good and Evil. They were commanded to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth and all it’s creatures. Adam and Eve are the first married couple right? They were created to be in relationship with each other. Now with only 2 people that were a match made in Heaven, not much can go wrong, but what if they did not rebel and continued to multiply and prosper? With a larger pool of people that are trying to find partners is it not inevitable to reach a point where unrequited love exists?

So why am I thinking about this? well… In the last book of the Bible (Revelations), it mentions that when believers reach heaven they will be in fellowship with Jesus and will be made perfect (as Adam and Eve were also perfect at the time of creation).

Revelations 7 :17

“For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’^[b]
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”

That verse about wiping the tears away, well apparently according to commentaries its about how, in the perfect renewed life in heaven, believers will have no more sorrow and tears. Well the thing is, in the beginning humans were perfect before God to begin with so by being renewed we are made perfect again… So that would mean they had no sorrow or tears either at the beginning, at least not until they turned away.

So back to the speculation of whether unrequited love would exist if humans never rebelled and simply multiplied and enjoyed life as it was intended. It’s a mind boggling bit of hypothesising really. Well it is mind boggling if you read it as “unrequited love is bitter, therefore it could not exist if there is no sorrow.” since it is counter intuitive to the fact that as a population gets larger, conflicting (love) interests are almost guaranteed. However, I suppose there is another reading of Revelations 7:17… God will wipe away the tears… which means that the tears have to be there in the first place. As in God will comfort those with a reason for sorrow in person. In this perspective, I guess its not as confusing really… It’s more about God being a source of comfort and guidance for those who are wallowing in sorrow.

I guess in light of the second reading of the passage, unrequited love could possibly coexist with perfection (in the scenario of humans having never rebelled). The bible states that marriage is specifically related to the existence of a physical body on earth and hence this whole rambling so far is merely based on the speculation of what would happen if man never sinned in the first place. For the believers who enter the Kingdom of God, there will be no marriage since there is no sin (lust) that needs controlling, and there is no death that there is no need for reproduction. God is the Heavenly Father, so to enter Heaven is to be invited into his family… So there is no longer any need to be married, which is used to form new families.

I suppose unrequited love and rejection is something that seems to be intrinsic to the nature of love. So the sadness that is also linked to it has been a source of fascination to humans since the dawn of time basically… In theatre and drama as well as art, in fact any creative medium has long been created around the exploration and expression of the joys and sadness that comes with love and love unwanted.

Aura

2011-06-05T19:34:00.001+10:00

Have you ever noticed that some people naturally just cheer up the entire atmosphere of a place they walk into? Or perhaps a person who seems to calm and tame a situation merely by presence alone. It seems this ‘aura’, that I’ve come to acknowledge it as. exudes from a combination of mannerism as well as personality. It’s like a subconscious tendency of a character that has been refined their personality, mannerism and speech over time to produce that aura. A childhood friend of mine emits a kind of happy, comical kind of aura… His mere presence in a place seems to make everyone he communicate with very cheerful and naturally makes people laugh a lot, which is pretty cool and works out great. Another friend, who’s a bit older but also a childhood friend naturally has this quality that makes people want to look to him as a leader.

This aura thing also seems to work in reverse too though… Some people just make you feel irritated by how they act and talk… Or sometimes just brings this depressing air that trails around them.

Just a random thought I thought about.

The Hardest Part…

2011-05-23T01:18:00.001+10:00

The hardest things in life, it seems, always has something to do with relationships. No matter who you are, it seems the most painful thing is not death but separation, rejection or fear of separation or rejection. I guess overtime the feeling of worthlessness builds up as it feels like noone would ever want to be with you and that the people you try to approach seem to just brush you off. Whether there is any truth to those feelings is another story completely, but it feels so hard to figure out what someone thinks of you from one’s limited perspective.

It always feel like such a gamble to chase after someone, like you’re speeding through a minefield and just hoping you get lucky and survive, or like your speeding through a busy intersection on a red light and hoping you don’t get killed. Maybe I just suck at reading hints and clues but… it feels like it’s always bound for failure. Maybe it is just a big gamble in which you throw all your cards in and hope that you have the winning hand, just hoping that the thought that you were a pretty nice guy that she’d be willing to go out with had occurred to her.

You’d think if someone liked you then they would at least open opportunities to converse. I for one know that I am mostly terrible at hiding my interests… So I’d just assume that if I was so obvious that it would be easy to reciprocate if they were themselves interested. So this feels like it drags full circle and that all that invested emotional energy has gone to waste. I suppose it is worse to be lead on, to have false hope and then crushed… like having a straight flush only to be crushed on an all in by a royal flush…

I suppose as a guy, it’s expected of us to put ourselves on the line to give that proverbial loaded gun to the opposite party… But it gets harder and harder to drag your bullet-riddled body back out in front of the death squad to face the music each time… I suppose perhaps things may change and new light might be shed on the situation as time goes on… but the tearing fear of getting shot down doesn’t feel like it will go away any time soon…

Well at least it gives me some respite having just thrown it out there. To just say what is on my mind…. I should use this space more often… even though I don’t know who reads this… or if anyone reads this at all.

Time to Face the Truth

2011-02-17T15:08:00.001+10:00

My life is brilliant.
My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.
Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was, Flying high,

And I don't think that I'll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.
You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.
But it's time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.

Where to from here?

2011-02-13T19:02:00.001+10:00

They said, it’s not over till its over… well… I guess that’s the end of that…

Now what do I do with myself…..?

Hong Kong 2010

2010-12-10T04:48:00.001+10:00

Well, back in HK for Christmas this year. Gymming every single day. Most people associate HK with shopping and eating :P… I’m spending like 2 hours in the gym basically everyday. Normally I absolutely hate gymming… it just feels so boring. But I suppose here, I have nothing better to do. It’s like my yearly weight training program hahaha…

It’s actually quite ego boosting being here in HK… lol… whenever I go shopping for clothes, sports gear in particular, shop assistants seem to always note on our physical prowess. lol… It’s actually quite amusing. I suppose the average population don’t look particularly strong or muscular considering how small the asian frame is lol… In Australia, I’d be guaranteed not to receive that kind of response as its much more common to have people who are quite visibly fit.

o wells…. lol… Hopefully I’ll be stronger and faster by the time I get back.

The Curse of Beauty

2010-11-27T00:31:00.003+10:00

Haven’t blogged in month… i think the last post was in may… so its been agggeesss.. half a year…

Well i was just doing some chores for my parents, while I was pondering something that was spoken to me many years ago… well about 3.5 years ago anyways… I was at the time consulting the school psychologist at the time… and she mentioned how she rarely had to counsel anyone with any serious degree of depression or any fears of rejection or peer opinion. I asked her what the the most common cause for counselling was, and her answer was that most of the students that seek counselling are girls, girls that most would consider very beautiful. Apparently, those people struggle to socialise, particularly with the opposite gender, because people do not feel like they are good enough to be around them.

For a while, I couldn’t understand why that could possibly happen. It baffled me that those girls, whom are extremely popular and liked by all, would struggle with anything social. They had such power and influence. Although, at the time, even though there where people I liked, I wouldn’t socialise with them or hang around them… I’d say like an awkward greeting and walk off… and the feeling was the constant gnawing thoughts of “why would she even like a person like me?” or “what chance do I have when there are so many other guys who are stronger/smarter/sportier/better looking/more outgoing etc.?”

I suppose beauty in such a sense… is very much a curse. Noone seems able to relax or be themselves around them, especially when interacting with the opposite gender. Maybe that's how girls would find it, I dunno. You either get guys that are just sleazy and just plain creepy, or they are withdrawn or stuttering messes around you. Awkward either way, and uncomfortable in some cases.

I suppose I’d formerly categorise myself as the latter, withdrawn and stuttering… but I suppose even now, so much energy and effort is required to be myself and not relapse back into the old. It’s like a struggle between wanting to talk and socialising… and why bother trying… you feel inadequate to approach, yet you want to… You talk and you feel like a nuisance… and you try to be yourself and to get to know them, yet constantly expecting to be rejected or cold shouldered/ignored…

Its intriguing and kind of sad how those who aren’t extraordinarily beautiful would be envious and jealous of those who are, or be unable to be themselves around those who are. And those who are beautiful can find it such a burden to carry.

There is no analogy that I can think of that can describe Love… It’s something that we crave for it, we strive for it, we live and die for it. It might feel fantastic and cause your spirit to soar when it is reciprocated… Uneasiness, discomfort and awkwardness when it’s unrequited… Or soul crushing, draining and shattering when rejected. There is nothing that can be used to compare to it. Yet there is nothing that can replace it… this urge and desire for love is almost primal…

Being a christian and all, some might say “well, we have Jesus, isn’t his unfailing love sufficient?”. Well, Adam, the first man according to the bible, even in direct communion with God and all his creation, was given Eve as a partner and helper. There was an urge for a relationship other than the one with God and nothing in all creation, other than Eve, would satisfy that urge. You can’t get away from it… You can’t try and ignore it by filling your life with something else, like pets, or hobbies or games.

Anyways… I’ve sidetracked a fair bit… I suppose the point is that, beauty can be such a curse. Yet it is only a curse because we desire love; and love… is something that one cannot run or hide from. Well you can try… but you can’t run.

That is all…

Computer has Returned

2010-05-25T20:50:00.001+10:00

After investing just under $500 on a full system upgrade, my computer is back online now… Ok well it might not have taken $500 if I went for a more economical solution rather than… Overkill… I got a new 2TB 7200rpm sata hdd, additional 9800GT 1GB, new wireless adapter card, 2x2GB of DDR2 800MHz ram to boost to 6GB of ram… the mother board now only has space for additional hdd’s and 2 more GB of ram… The next time i upgrade my computer… it will be a new tower and motherboard. and possibly investing into some cooling systems… :P

Most of my software has been reinstalled… but yeah the new configuration is actually quite beneficial as i can put everything in its own partition and defrag each partition separately leading to a more efficient computer in general :P

That is all…

Gaming shall be epic on this machine now :P gotta wait till those holidays… and not get distracted before hand…

Computer Viruses

2010-04-15T21:37:00.001+10:00

Man… so pissed off… wasted so much time in the last 24 hours trying to fix my computers… tried taking apart my laptop to fix the keyboard to no avail… then realised my usb had infected my desktop with a virus cos my msn was spamming links… had to leave my computer on all night to do a full scan… cos i didn’t know it was my usb, and then i installed kaspersky onto my laptop and found 2 more viruses on my laptop… yeah… hopefully my computer is clean now…

But yeah… still pretty pissed cos my msn is always getting all these adds from bots… and this blog… is always being spammed by bots… some more discrete then others… and its piss annoying… I think its just really sad and low how some people find it so amusing creating and spreading these retarded bots and viruses around just to make people’s lives hard.

Ah well… whatever…

This thing called love.

2010-03-19T23:57:00.001+10:00

I think most of us would agree that our lives are driven by love for something or someone. Whatever it is that you like most during that period of your life will be the driving force of that period of your life. It is something you will almost constantly think about whenever you have a spare moment or even when you should be focusing on something else. Whether it be your family, friends, loved ones, or even material objects like cars etc. I guess most people will want to find someone they love and to be able to spend time with the people they love. Love can bring great joy and comfort into our lives.

However, love can also bring great pain and sorrow into our lives as well. If a loved one is suffering you will share their burden. If a loved one passes away you will grieve over them. If someone you loved turns away from you, you will feel broken because of them. If you like someone who doesn’t like you back, you feel empty because of that.

I guess for me, my life has revolved around the very last one that I’ve mentioned. This thing called unrequited love is something that has always pestered me at every turn. It leaves a heart wrenching feeling every time you think about it. Every time you see this person you will keep wishing things were different, you try to be normal but instead you become extremely self-aware. Even after you leave the place where you saw the person, they are still constantly on your mind and you’re still agonising over the reality of the situation.

Some days I wish I didn’t have to love at all… to give up the potential joys of having love and bypass the guaranteed pains of love. But that would be impossible… because that would be desiring not to be human. I hate watching romantic movies because it causes me to think about where I am at… and thus it pains me greatly to watch those kinds of movies especially really idealistic ones like “a walk to remember” or stuff like that. But I guess if I was in a different situation then I would like those kinds of movies because it would relate positively to my own experiences.

But I guess these things can’t be helped… I guess all I can really do is pray that one day I will find what I hope for. nyeah…

Our so called Christian Country… and our self-proclaimed Christians…

2010-03-16T19:44:00.001+10:00

Western civilisations all claim to have a Christian heritage. They all have had some connection with the church… Nowadays our society barely recognises who they are and where they come from. Sadly still, many Christians seem to barely know who they are and who they follow. Of course there are a lot of Christians out there and the general rule of which the actions of a few ruin the reputation of many still apply which means that a majority of Christians out there are probably fairing ok. But enough beating around the bush.

So I went to uni today and I went to Koorong after uni to find 2 Toby Mac CDs (which btw are great). While I was in the store for the full 20 minutes I heard this woman who had a child with her and the kid was about 7 years old. Now I dunno if she actually has a mental condition which caused it but she was speaking very loudly and clearly wasn’t thinking through what she was saying. It wasn’t slurred speech or tourettes but more like she couldn’t be selective of what she chooses to say and what not to say… Lacking of social awareness I guess… Now apparently some other lady looked at her oddly perhaps because its an uncommon sight. You don’t see many 35 year old women talking so callously…

Now with a child, the women was married and the husband was in the store somewhere else… while the women was talking really loudly to her kid about how the other women was glaring at her and looked at her weirdly and about how rude she was etc. Meanwhile there were two other men in the store that I saw and overheard talking also very loudly about how annoying this woman was. They were complaining to each other about how much of a nuisance this woman was and how she is telling the whole world about a problem that they didn’t care about and how they which she’d just shut up etc. I was just happily leaning against a computer listening to music samples before I decided to buy the CDs.

Well as I was at the counter paying for the CDs the two men decided to approach this woman and basically they started verbally abusing her. Saying how she should get out of the store and take her problem elsewhere and whatever. The lady starts calling them unchristian and calling them evil and all sorts of weird things and saying how she has the right to speak loudly just as they have the right to drink and smoke (I don’t know but I think that was meant to be an insult…). The men respond by saying something like “Is that how you got your husband? Is that how you treat your husband?” and then the guy walks around the corner saying “I’m her husband” and the 2 men say to him “Well take her out of here!”.

I left before the episode finished… But since all of them were in a KOORONG store… which is a CHRISTIAN store… I’d automatically assume that they were all Christians… And that was the most disgraceful display of public behaviour by Christians I’ve ever seen. Those 2 men… no patience, no kindness, no gentleness, no politeness, no manners and no forgiveness... Luckily they didn’t say where they were from or else that would ruin the reputation of their entire church. These two men could’ve approached nicely and asked her to be a little more quiet because it was distracting… would have avoided the conflict entirely. They also should not request someone be thrown out of the store…

Now the woman (if she was able to… maybe she has some form of mental or speech impediment that prevents her from controlling what she says) should’ve not have verbalised her negative opinions about others so loudly… In fact she shouldn’t have verbalised them at all, not in public and especially not within earshot of the other person. When the two men approached she shouldn’t have replied so smugly to stir up the two men… She didn’t have the “right” to speak loudly and inconsiderately… she is in public and she is sharing the space with other humans and neither was anything she said beneficial and so shouldn’t have said any of it in the first place. Implying that the two men were alcoholics and substance abusers really didn’t help the case.

I was thinking about this on the drive home… and a myriad of bits and pieces of bible verses just flooded into my mind… so these are probably all paraphrased…
Blessed is the woman with a quiet soul… that is, to know what she ought to say and what she shouldn’t say and to say things only when it is appropriate.
Turn the other cheek, if someone takes your tunic offer him your coat as well. If someone forces you to walk a mile, walk another mile for him… Compassion? Grace? Selflessness?
If what you do will cause your brother to sin then it is better that you do not do it. (Something about stumbling blocks)… This verse is pretty self-explanatory…
Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, do not let Satan get a foothold in your heart. And can’t remember where but Jesus said that Hating your brother is as bad as murdering your brother. And so Jesus clearly condemned anger of any form… because as humans we are not capable of righteous fury that God is capable of.
Galatians 5:22-23 “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things, there is no law.”

I don’t understand how self-respecting Christians would ever allow themselves to degrade to something like that. But yeah I thought the bible was pretty clear on what kind of behaviour God expected from us.

Morality in Games

2010-03-10T00:05:00.001+10:00

Now as most people might now, I’m a pretty heavy gamer. I play a LOT of games. Many games now a days allows the players to make choices when it comes to important decisions in the life of the characters. It forces the player to live with the consequences of their actions. Now I also have spent a great deal of time watching other people play games and in turn the choices they make in game. Even though I know I am playing a game, I find it hard to force myself to make selfish or immoral choices in games however I know a few people who are more than willing to make those choices mostly just because its amusing to watch your character torture innocent people (and perhaps have a easier run through the game). Some might call me soft but perhaps its because I grew up being pushed around myself and perhaps its also because I am a christian but I find it incredibly difficult to harm an unarmed opponent that has no intention of fighting or hurting me. In real life I train in kung fu and most of the time cannot visualise myself fighting with a bladed weapon capable of killing my opponent unintentionally, I can only see myself using blunt weapons where I can control the amount of damage I inflict.

In the past when I play games I’ve only been able to make choices that are of high moral grounds or at lowest, relatively neutral choices. Many games like Baldur’s gate, Neverwinter’s Night, Knights of the Old Republic I & II, etc. etc. RPG games in general I find myself constantly playing similar characters because I cannot seem to make “evil” choices.

Recently I was playing a game called Bioshock 2, its a very sweet but extremely twisted story. There are these little girls in the game that gather some kind of medium for hosting genetically engineered organisms that give you special powers. Sci-Fi dystopian story blah blah blah. whatever. anyways, you get a choice to save them from their enslaved, drugged up existence or you can choose to harvest their bodies of the medium which you need yourself, essentially killing the girl in process. I played the entire game without harvesting a single one of them mainly because I couldn’t bring myself to doing something like that. Perhaps some would call me soft but hey..

Anyways yeah, I dunno what the point was for writing this but I guess I find is a lot more difficult to make “immoral/mean” choices that other people don’t seem to have any trouble making.

Road of Life…

2010-02-02T02:13:00.001+10:00

When one goes through hard times, one’s motivation to keep walking forward feels like a candle flickering in front of a cyclone. I guess when struggles are really tough, some people effectively get doused out… Those people fall, and like a fault shattering through a piece of concrete to release the stress of the weight on the concrete, and they seek out vents for the built up stress, tension and anxieties. Some people fall into drugs, alcohol and all sorts of addictions… work… whatever… in order to break off and vent like an overheated car venting out steam…. I guess as a christian, faith in Jesus is like having the best mechanic in the world with all the parts he could ever need sitting in your passenger seat… But one must still be willing to give him control of the car, and to let him maintain and keep your car in good shape… Although as humans, we tend to be stubborn… We like to take control of our lives even when the direction we take or our methods of doing things or the way we live our lives simply is not good for us or good for those around us. It’s like driving and ignoring all the warning lights, low oil, low coolant, low fuel etc. We have a tendency of being self-sufficient to the point of breaking down… Until we are stranded and have no where to go, with no help in reach… Only then do we realise that the pers0n with the ability to completely fix and top up our car has been sitting beside us the whole time. With Jesus, one is never alone… He will always be there to help you get through whatever your facing… But even in the face of trials, one must still humble oneself and admit one is lost and broken down, unable to move on by ourselves… We still must commit everything to Jesus for him to get us out. You can’t say, can you fill up my car… but don’t touch the radiator, don’t fill the coolant back up, because you’re bound to get only a few more km’s before your car overheats again. You must let him fix everything…

It doesn’t matter what kind of car represents your life, perhaps its a sleek supercar or its a rickity antique of a car. I’d gather most of us do not know how to maintain it. You’re life is a God given gift, the manufacturer is God… the chief mechanic is Jesus… and comes with lifetime warrantee… but you still need to let Jesus into your life to let him change and fix things.

If I go back to the candle analogy, we all know that putting tissue paper into a candle will cause it to burn up very quickly… Extremely effective fuel. But not everything burns up that quickly… Some things don’t burn well… they will cause the fire to diminish, like putting sand into the fire. Even as a christian, sometimes it feels like i’m being blown all over the place… You ask god for direction and he answers… but sometimes what he decides for you is hard to swallow… Like he’s putting in some unknown substance into the candle.. you struggle to break it down and burn it up as fuel. It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how God will get me through some situations… But when he does, you burn so much brighter than you did before…

Back to the car analogy, I guess even if you hand everything over to Jesus, the road you travel with him will still go through some dark and scary places… but you won’t be alone… and you know he will get you through it… You won’t be stranded because he will always find a way to get you out…

I think even as a Christian, I still struggle to give everything to Jesus… when life gets scary I’m still like a petrified idiot that doesn’t know what to do. When the going gets tough, I still feel under the weather… which is natural… But it’s tiring and nerve-racking… But I know that I am in better hands because Jesus is with me through it all.

BLT 2010

2010-01-23T23:14:00.001+10:00

Haven’t written anything here for a long while… but BLT was so good that I just had to blog about it :P

So yeah, just came back from BLT which is a week long conference on Christian leadership. The sermons that were given were fantastic and the strand group work that we did was really interesting and helpful for ministry, but the most incredible thing was the fellowship that we had with each other. You got to discuss and talk and share just about anything with people that were great examples of christian living and leadership and just being able to observe how they lived was so encouraging. Being able to listen to their stories and experiences with ministry and with Christ was a great blessing.

I just hope that this year I will be able to maintain daily bible reading and prayer and be determined to keep reading and praying and to continuously grow throughout the year.

But yeah… BLT is great.. can’t wait till next year

Bad Hair Day

2010-01-15T01:14:00.001+10:00

Woke up today with the worst hair possible I reckon… Funny thin was that one of my friend’s was over for a good portion of the day and never commented on it and I realised after a few hours how ridiculous I looked when I went to the toilet and looked in the mirror. I reckon it was my most super saiyan-isque looking hair to date. If only I had golden hair and green eyes and glowed lol…

Speaking of super saiyan, I have successfully used the blowtorch that we got to make creme brulee… altho I curdled the custard a little tinie bit… but it was the first time ever making custard so… I reckon it was pretty good.

You are an Idiot…

2009-12-28T15:16:00.001+10:00

That Is what I call almost everyone when they do the slightest thing out of the norm. I should stop doing that… they call me a joykill instead… which makes sense sometimes.

I pity the fool... I pity the world.

2009-12-19T00:51:00.000+10:00

Some days I see things that I wish I could step in and beat some sense into some people... Outright smash their face in... In direct proportion to the amount of putrid, fetid, disgraceful public display of uncivilised behaviour those people exhibit. This world should have no place for these kinds of pathetic lifeforms and to say that I'm finding it sad that there is such a place for these people would be an understatement of the resentment I feel towards society. I should explain why I am saying such words about society so here goes.

I went to a restaurant today for dinner with some family friends... This guy from the room across from our little reserved room came out and started yelling at the waitress that gave them their bill... He was this fat guy that spoke mandarin and it was clear as day that he was a mainlander... he couldn't have made it anymore obvious that he was even if he engraved it into his forehead. Now, where he is from is not important... I have nothing against mainlanders. I am not racist. BUT... he came out and yelled at the waitress about the bill being too expensive. I mean this guy, he obviously saw the prices of the restaurant, ordered food and ate it knowing exactly how much it would cost him. He would order drinks and what not, knowing full well that it was gonna cost him money. Now if he genuinely didn't know the prices then that's his fault for not reading the prices properly with the 15 other people he was with. But the fact that he raged at a waitress that a. had no control over the prices, b. was just doing her job and c. have no idea about your situation then I feel that guy should seriously think about what he is doing... but... he not only flamed her, he HIT her as well... Now that is the point were I almost picked myself up to go kick his ass and pin him by his throat to a wall... crush his ribs and possibly crush his manhood with my knee because no man like that should be allowed to call himself a man.

That of course would be illegal on my part cos I probably would kill him by accident in the process. But seriously what the hell is wrong with people these days... As it is, that guy is friggin hell-bound. Even if I bashed his face in so hard that he was begging for mercy & forgiveness, that would be the least of his problems....

As a christian, the above sounds far too hateful and violent to be coming out of my mouth. As a believer of Jesus, I'm suppose to love people... and hate sin... to be able to show love and kindness to sinners yet hate the sin that is in each and every one of us because even that ass-hole at the restaurant isn't technically beyond redemption. But I don't hate him because of who he is, I simply hate what he is doing. Perhaps beating the living crap out of him would be just a *tinie* bit excessive just to stop one guy from hitting one girl once (My judgement is far from perfect as you can see). People wonder why this whole place is going to hell... but it is clear as day exactly why this whole world is going to hell... We ourselves can be like that pathetic excuse of a man... but even if we arn't... We turn a blind eye and ALLOW such people to act that way... We do not do the good that we could have done to prevent such people from doing what they do... So I say with confidence that we are not good people... and couldn't be further away from perfect.

In my opinion, there is only one way to change this world.... I'm not saying this because I am trying to make people believe what I believe. But this is what I logically believe to be the only solution...

The solution is for ALL people to WANT to love and be kind and gentle with each other. It is for people to WANT to not act violently to each other. For people to WANT to not steal and covet the goods of each other. For people to WANT to not be jealous or envious of each other. This is not possible for humans as they are now and always have been... PEACE is not possible without the above becoming reality, and it will never be reality. In order for people to want to do the above, they must first agree that they are part of the problem, and they must desire to NOT live as they have in the past. They must desire to be free from the influences of the despicable culture and society that we live in.

I personally believe that there is a God and that this universe and everything in it, each and every one of us were made by this God. A lot of people think that there can't be a God because of how bad the state of the world is. I think it is our fault that the world is as it is today because we have chosen to live in a godless society in ways so disgraceful that it makes us cringe at how low we can get. If apocalypse comes I think that's a good thing cos the world is better off without us.

If I was God, I would have blown this place to hell a few thousand years ago and not bother with trying to clean up this mess. In fact he has stopped us from flattening the earth ourselves, considering how much nuclear weapons are still in existence. But from what I know, God hasn't annihilated us yet... cos we are still here. But I don't think any single one of us humans can say that if they were to stand trial before God, that they would be completely clean... It's not possible. From what I have read in the Bible, it becomes obvious why God hasn't screwed us all over yet even though we all deserve it. He has chosen to give us a second chance to beg for forgiveness. Now if you commit a crime, you have a sentence and you can pay for bail... in this case it is a death sentence and to bail, someone else who is "innocent" must die in your stead.

God sent Jesus to live amongst us 2000 years ago, our timeline of our existence is measured relative to the lifespan of this guy if you didn't know what B.C and A.D meant. Jesus was essentially God in human form. He, being God, overcame the pathetic-ness of our existence ie. He was perfect. Truly innocent in every sense. He was killed by us, so that he could be the "innocent" death required for your bail so that you could actually beg for forgiveness and actually receive it.

If you tell me, I can't prove this... well I can blog about that another day.
But for now... Let me say this much about the crap we are force fed through our "education" systems... and everything we know about science.

IF something is not true at a small scale, it cannot be true on a large scale and therefore is not true at all. Let me give you an example, Carbon 14 dating will not work for a corpse of a cow that died two days ago. Therefore it will not work for a cow that died 200 years ago and will also not work for a cow that died 2000 years ago. Let me give you a counter example, Gravity works on the dust that is in your room, therefore it worked for the cannonballs dropped by Galileo Galilei dropped from the top of the Tower of Piza in the early 17th century and has also worked for all the moons, planets and stars you see in the sky at night as they are still there after all these years.

But back to my original topic, humans as they are now have NO future that they will EVER be proud of. Looking at human history, I don't think that there is a period or era that everyone on earth can agree upon completely as a proud moment in history. No, not even the Renaissance... As in the end we only thought of more ways to kill each other. Society as it is, is doomed and, if you'll excuse me, F**KED. Perhaps we should open our eyes to what is happening around us and see that we ourselves are the ones in need of help the most.

Perhaps I wouldn't be so keen about learning martial arts if everyone was perfect. But as it is, I do learn martial arts and am keen about being good at it for my own sake and for the sake of the people I cherish.

Hong Kong Wedding Celebrations

2009-12-13T01:56:00.001+10:00

Well, today has been thoroughly hectic as... I've taken probably some 600+ photos today with just under 400 shots in my final count... All this composition thinking all day is so draining... Intense photography training... I could probably become a wedding photographer or something after this lol... Now I'm editing all of those photos and yeah... I'm getting lazy and just batch editing it all in one fell swoop lol... and picking out all the ones that need individual finishing... I'm generally too lazy to do anything dramatic tho... but meh...

The results will probably be up on facebook by like.. tomorrow hahaha...

All in all it was a good celebration. Particularly amusing at the tea ceremony bit, and Rebekah was trying to say the names of all our relatives in chinese :P or at least their titles :P but its all fairly straight forward, I guess due in part to traditionally massive chinese families. Which means aunties and uncles are given a title depending on their "tier" on the family tree and which side of the family tree they are on... then it's a simply method of giving a numerical number based on the age of the uncle or auntie in question relative and that number is transferred to the spouse of that uncle or auntie. I'd have to say that Rebekah improved pretty quickly :P the first couple were not pronounced that accurately but the others were getting pretty darn close haha

anyways, they got all sorts of expensive gifts during that ceremony :P the perks of having a chinese style wedding banquet i suppose :P hahaha Probably enough there to buy a small car haha ok maybe it would be second hand but who cares :P

anyways :P
its taking an age and a half to process all the photos...

Hong Kong

2009-12-10T03:48:00.000+10:00

Well... I haven't been bothered updating my blog yet since I've arrived... I've been pretty lazy... I've spent a lot of money on stuff... like HK$3300 worth of stuff... probably more. My bank account is probably hurting... seeing how I just paid for BLT Jan a few weeks ago as well... so yeah...

it's almost 2am over here... so about 4am Aus time. so I should probably sleep soon. I have pretty pitiful self-control to be up at this hour in the morning so regularly.

I'm starting to get irritated with the bombardment of hypothetical girlfriend situation/questions I'm getting from my relatives... It's making me think too much about where I'm at. Looks like I won't be seeing the end of it any time soon.

Vincent C

Self Reflections…

2009-11-22T19:14:00.001+10:00

Some days I feel that deep inside I’m a perfectionist… Crushing myself over every little mistake even if the consequences of those mistakes didn’t matter. Some days I still feel like I am weak and pathetic, unable to live up to my expectations of myself. It’s those days and moments that make me act the way I used to act before I became a christian. I feel that if I am unable to meet even my expectations, what would other people expect out of me and what would they think of me… It’s why I hate team sports… you have other people’s expectations to meet… You are expected to be at a certain position or to know where a certain teammate is and you are expected to move and perform in a certain way… I was bought up playing individual sports… and so I have trouble keeping a wide perspective on the game, to be able to focus on the peripheral activity and process all the team information at the same time as focusing on the opponent right in front of me… When I fail to do something properly (not counting when I’m clearly outplayed, that’s fine… I can admit to losing, its when I screw up personally that is the problem…) I beat myself up over it… When I feel tired from running around, I feel like I shouldn’t be feeling the pressure… that I should be better than I actually am… that I am weak…. If I do talk to anyone, I always end up talking about my mistakes, and trying to make excuses for them….

Its time like this where I can barely communicate with anyone… I avoid people’s glances out of fear of their comments on my lack of ability… I feel really awkward and hesitant to talk about anything with anyone because I feel like I am inferior enough as it is… and that they will somehow, for some reason brush me off… It’s times like these that make me feel really anxious…

Before I became a christian, this was my everyday life… I hated who I was…. but even after being a christian… this… old self of mine… resurfaces every once in a while… especially in times when I need to work with other people… doing things that I am not particularly good at or brilliant at…

I don’t even know why I’m typing this… I just feel like I should spill this out somewhere… I feel like I have giant attitude/mood swings…. but its more about how I perceive myself. One moment I am optimistic and carefree… the next second I am a pessimist and emo….

nyeah… that is all…

FREEEEEDDDOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!!!

2009-11-20T01:02:00.001+10:00

I AM FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

ITS OVVVEEERRRRR hahahaha yeah! lol.. the stress is OOOVVVEER i feel like im going insane but im FREEE!

ahhh… now what do i do with my time…

*sigh*…

i still hav ea resting heart rate of 78… which is massive… i need to rest… and sleep alot… o well…

zzzzzzz

i shall sleep…

BTW my bro’s getting married this saturday.

Stress…

2009-11-18T13:46:00.001+10:00

Hmmm… It’s almost at the end of exam blocks… I still have assignments stuff to do… and I think I’ve built up alot of stress in my body… I don’t know how that possibly works but it does… I feel so frustrated and irritated all the time… and my resting heart rate is through the roof…. I woke up this morning with a resting heart rate of 70bpm… that’s absurdly high… and during the day my heart rate is around the 90’s… so one feels like he’s constantly burning and feels like he just finished some intense exercise and constantly feels like he’s trying to catch his breath….

bleh… architecture… I know why they say the job satisfaction rate for architects is so high… the course is so long that everyone who didn’t like it dropped out long ago and only the diehards remain haha… I still like architecture don’t get me wrong… especially the theory part of it… but damn there is a lot of work to it…

anyways.. I better get back to it… I need some kind of muscle relaxant i think… if they exist… o wait… their recreational drugs… lol

anyways… back to it…

One down, One to go!

2009-11-16T22:22:00.001+10:00

ALLLMMOOOOSSSSTTTT THEEREEEE!! and the last one is a group assignment… so wheee!!!! I CAN TASTE THE FREEDOM!!!! lollll…. that is all

Allnighters 4 & 5

2009-11-12T21:08:00.001+10:00

GAAaaahhhh FINALLY 2009 semester 2 FOLIO is done… friggin hell… and it was a day late too… Mann so much trouble to get through all that… Everything always chooses to screw up when you need them to work the most… AND I spent friggin like… $240 on printing this assignment… so expensive…

Annd I handed in my assignment at like 5:40pm… I was surprised my lecturer was still at uni…

Annd I’ve had 3.5 hours rest in the last 60 hours that I’ve been awake… sooooo frigggiiiinnnn tired….

anyways here are more sunrise photos… 2 days worth of them too..

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

View Full Album

All Nighter No.3

2009-11-09T22:54:00.001+10:00

Well well well… As the title suggests, I did an another all-nighter… and that was last thursday/friday… so as usual here are 2 photos of the glorious sunrise…

Annndddd I have another all-nighter tomorrow… Arn’t I screwed?… lol…

SWOTVAC 2009 Begins!

2009-11-02T00:34:00.000+10:00

Yeah not the most exciting time of the year... Today is already technically monday, so SWOTVAC has technically already begun... and I can tell you I am so friggin screwed for my archi assignments... I'm pretty stressed out at my lack of self-control over the last month... to get things started ahead of time... Anyways, I thought I might leave a few final words before embarking on the next 2 weeks of Hell on earth lolll... Pray that I come back in one piece and breathing hahahaha.... or at least that I have finished my assignments by then lol... Else I fail and I would have wasted a year of my life. That wouldn't be nice lol... anyways Ima go sleep now and go to uni tomorrow... sucks that I still ahve to pay for carparking during Swotvac.... anyways at least I will get one since most people don't go lol... anyways sleep time... Good bye for 2 weeks...

I also just realised I've made the same number of posts on this blog in the last two months of last year than all of this year combined... so thats some 46 posts in two months last year and the same number for the whole of this year haha... I guess I kinda ran out of things to talk about :P anyways... gtg...

Footsteps in the Sand

2009-10-22T20:03:00.001+10:00

Today I was driving home in my car and I was listening to Relient K in my car and it got to the last song of the album… And the song is called Deathbed. It’s a fantastic song in my opinion… and it’s about a guy who’s life couldn’t have possibly gone more wrong… A life that is truly pathetic and pitiful… yet its a life you see so commonly around society… His father left his mother when he was 8, he gets addicted to alcohol and smoking at 14, gets married at 21 after getting his girlfriend accident, his relationship with his wife is very tense and unloving, he ends up getting divorced and the wife takes custody of the children and he ends up spending his days drowning his sorrows with whiskey and trying to distract himself by playing bowls. He eventually contracts lung cancer from his years of hardcore smoking and his lying on his deathbed. He reflects on how hopeless his life was… How sad and miserable it was… but as he was dying he remembers that at one point in his life he had accepted Jesus Christ as his saviour. And he clings to the hope of going to heaven because of it… and surely enough, as he dies, Jesus appears before him and takes him up to heaven with Him because of his faith. and the song ends with the famous lines from John 14:6 but slightly modified for the song “I am the way, follow me and take my hand. And I am the truth, embrace me and you’ll understand. And I am the life, and through me you’ll live again. For I am Love” … John 14:6 is “I am the way and the truth and the life. Noone comes to the father [In Heaven] except through me.”

It also reminded me of a poem named “Footsteps in the Sand” and it goes like this.

“One night a man had a dream.
He dreamed he was walking along
the beach with the Lord.

Across the dark sky flashed scenes from his life.
For each scene, he noticed
two sets of footprints in the sand,
one belonging to him and the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him,
he looked back at the footprints in the sand.
He noticed that many times along the path of his life
there was only one set of footprints.
He also noticed that it happened at the
very lowest and saddest times in his life.
This bothered him and he questioned the Lord about it.

"Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you,
you'd walk with me all the way.
But I have noticed that during the most
troublesome times in my life there is
only one set of footprints.
I don't understand why when I needed you most
you would leave me."

The Lord replied "My precious, precious child,
I love you and would never leave you.
During your times of trial and suffering,
when you see only one set of footprints in the sand,
it was then that I carried you."

Now you might be wondering how these two even relate to each other… So I will explain myself.

Like the song I see that so many people have seen so much pain and suffering in their lives, with no direction and no hope or reason to live… and it’s very disheartening really. Life is like an obstacle course, and a very difficult one at that. and Jesus is always near us whether we believe in Him or not, whether we trust Him or not. He has already gone through the obstacle course of life as a human 2000 years ago and he passed with FLYING colours because He is God and He came down here to save us from ourselves. He wants to help us through life. And when we hit the part of the obstacle course where you have to cross the Grand Canyon on a tight rope, we struggle and we are clinging to the rope by the tips of our sweaty hands, Jesus is standing next to us with arms reached out waiting for us to reach out to Him so that He can carry us through to the end of the course. All we have to do is TRUST that Jesus can do it… Because we know we can’t do it ourselves… So you have nothing to lose.

The picture above is of Charles Blondin. A legendary tightrope walker… He is carrying his manager on his back as he is walking across the top of Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Life will push you into these hard times, imagine crossing the falls by yourself… I know I’d be crapping my pants, almost paralysed with fear… But like the image above, Jesus can carry you across… and although it would still be scary as hell, I know I trust Jesus to carry me through life more than I’d ever trust Charles Blondin to carry me over the Niagara Falls.

But yeah… That’s my interesting sharing for today…

All-Nighter’s so far…

2009-10-20T01:18:00.001+10:00

Well, I thought I would start a new… “tradition” so to speak… and that is to take a sunrise photo each time I do an all-nighter. I’ve done that in the past, but from now on, I will try to take a photo of the sunrise every time haha… with my phone or with my camera, which ever is available… So I guess today I have claims to 2 all-nighters this semester already….

The first one was at uni… 5th of October…. and the second one was at home 16th of October… yeah… lol archi sucks like that…

neways here are the photos
the first two are from my phone… 5am… at uni by the lakes… and the last one is from my room’s eastward window… 5am also. lol…

Adrenaline + Shooting Games

2009-10-11T20:30:00.001+10:00

Now those of you who know me would know that I am a big fan of those console shooting games like Time Crisis and the like where I have a gun in my hand rather than a mouse and keyboard… I own every Time Crisis game ever made except for the first one, I think I have project titans somewhere tho which was the expansion to the first game… But yeah… I have pretty darn good accuracy even if I do say so myself… in TC 3 I have over 85% accuracy and I do headshots like 70% of the time… so I am fairly good… Although the dodging still gets me at times so I still need like 2-3 continues to get to the end of the game… which is sad…

Neways today a bunch of us went to a friend’s place and they had a Wii, and we started off playing ghost squad… Being a Wii the aiming was crap as crap can get… but the crosshair was on the screen so you could kinda just swing the gun around by the hip and aim on the screen. Neways I was absolutely owning them at the game… I’d shoot 3 of the enemies before they fire and kill one opponents sometimes… This is a typical shooting game, about terrorists, big deal right? its not scary or anything…. and I had about a 30-50% score lead on the other player

But we got bored of it, so we played House of the Dead: Overkill…. Now the crappy aiming system transfers cos its still a Wii and it still sucks… But of course its meant to be a horror game right? Well, it wasn’t really that scary or anything… its just zombies and you blast them to pieces. Well my friend, she suddenly just started to play like crazy… I was playing as normal… 50-70% headshots… but she had like a 30% score lead on me… I had less shots fired, more kills, more headshots and a bigger combo/consecutive kills but I was way behind on the scoreboard… I didn’t understand why…

But somehow I think adrenaline must have a big deal to do with it… a shooting game is a shooting game… but the content was farrrr different. The fact that I played as I would normally play and she went nuts and went insanely trigger happy probably indicates she had alot more adrenaline and also she got 80% of the bonus items on the stage and health packs so I probably died a few more times than I should’ve… so that probably explains my score but yeah… It wasn’t expected… at all lol…

Adrenaline does crazy things… Adrenaline is good… Anyways that is all :P

Skirmish!!!

2009-10-04T00:03:00.001+10:00

Hmmm… First time using this… Windows Live writer thing for blogs…. We’ll see how it goes…

Neways, yeah went to skirmish today… and as always, I tend to cause more injury to myself than the paintballs could injure me… Not that I’m a retard mind you… Both my knees are fully bruised from sliding and diving onto them for 3 hours of skirmish… and also I have scratched all up my arms from sliding around… annnddd I have a massive graze on my hand from one bad dive… lol… and I also managed to rip several holes through their overalls around the knee area from all the sliding around but nyeah… lol…

I guess next time I just need to wear gloves and perhaps a knee pad on my left leg… and I can avoid environmental injuries… and focus on shooting the other team and not get shot…

Altho I only got hit a few times… 1 close range shot by some idiot who couldn’t remember the surrender rule when within 5m or something… and i got a good one on the back of my shoulder cos i was running as low as possible and i got unlucky lol… the other shots didnt really hurt… and i left my box behind at the skirmish place accidentally… lol…

Neways… gotta go sleep…
Gnite all

Convienience is Bliss

2009-09-23T21:36:00.001+10:00

Welcome to my new blog :P everything looks the same as my old one, down to the url and everything :P enjoy... anyways i wont be posting much for now cos ARCHI is killing me and I'm getting owned so I better do some work...

maybe ill post later...

O and UF camp is this weekend so can't wait for that either :P

edit: OK not completely true.. there is a 2 on the end of my new url... cos they cant seem to get rid of my old one even tho i changed it before i deleted it...

Eye of the Relational Storm

2009-09-16T21:23:00.000+10:00

Recently I have found myself falling into this state of anxiety almost... Perhaps I'm starting to feel almost envious and a bit hopeless as well... I once wrote here about weddings once... about how I can only feel happy for someone else's relationships when I can see a blossoming relationship that has developed lasting and strong bonds like the roots of great trees... Well recently it seems like there has been so much news about relationships and engagements going around, both good and bad news, that it has kinda made me feel a bit lost... Not knowing where to go almost...

I've had people come to me for advice on relationship issues... and while I only would want to help my friends in the best way I can... and I try to give the best advice I can through... it feels so ironic and a bit saddening, because why would you ask me? (Well ok, maybe thats not entirely true, as more often than not the other person would only say they don't feel to happy and then I ask why... and eventually they ask for my opinion/advice) It's ironic because what do I know? I haven't actually had any experiences with relationships... I don't know what they are actually feeling... I only try to imagine or speculate... For me, deep inside, I feel frustrated because I have no idea what's really happening... it's like the blind leading the blind... I guess I feel a little saddened and a perhaps a bit envious because they had a relationship to start with.. but still I guess one of the real reasons is that I always get left wanting...

Yet I hear news about friends and people I know that are getting engaged and getting married or have just started dating etc etc etc... While I feel happy for them... I still feel similar feelings as what I just said above... I feel two faced... Deep inside, I'm still don't really feel happy... I dunno....

Ah well... maybe one day... I should go eat dinner... its 10pm...

I R Monster

2009-08-23T21:57:00.000+10:00

You know something is wrong with you when people are afraid of you, and it got me thinking and I've come to the realisation that I have a severe lack of control over the amount of force I utilise. I have come to dread to game of touch footy, reason because people complain against me for using too much force... In fact I think I get that/will get that reaction in almost all social team sports games I play. I seem to accidentally hurt a lot of people... and I swear it must run in the family somehow, cos my brother had similar problems I think :P. It makes me afraid of making physical contact with anyone, particularly girls... I've accidentally hurt someone from a nudge, to a poke, a slap on the back and all sorts of relatively normal gestures.

I've even hurt myself because I got over-excited once... Last year at UF camp, we were playing dodgeball... And I managed to give myself an extremely bad grass burn on my knee that I still have quite a big scar from now. I crouched down as I pegged the ball and being overexcited I scrapped my knee on the grass... Didn't notice the burn until like 30 minutes later until I calmed down from the excitement...

It's probably a result of simply excessive amounts of adrenaline I guess... But yeah... When people tell you they are genuinely afraid of you when you play sports... You know its a bit of a problem...

See, if a task requires me to be gentle and controlled then I can force myself to do it but most of the time there are no restrictions... And I will inevitably use excessive force. I mean this problem even carries over to my talking and me playing instruments or in any activity I could potentially get excited over... I can talk really quitely and suddenly just talk like a megaphone... and when I play guitar I always get told that I'm strumming ridiculously hard... yet I feel like I'm just playing normally.

But yeah... I don't think there is any kind of way of restraining it... Which is kind of annoying... So yes... I hate playing mixed touch footy... cos I always end up hurting someone...

I mean I am much better at individual sports/challenges that require no restraint whatsoever, particularly full body exercises... Stuff like obstacle courses and rockclimbing or just running around like crazy or martial arts. The reason for that is probably the fact that I do not need to restrain or be gentle because I don't need to make contact or friendly contact with anyone...

But nyeah... I dunno... Random thought...

RICE 2009 Review

2009-08-09T22:27:00.000+10:00

Well RICE is over for the year... I guess I haven't documented any of it on here really... but yeah, it was an amazing experience of what God can do and watch Him touch and change the lives of people.

There was this kid wondering the streets outside the church during BDO, and apparently he heard the music and he came in to check it out. And he heard the gospel preached... I'm not sure if this was the kid that said he became a christian that day at BDO but man, it was amazing to see God working. I mean the kid was not with any adults or anything... just this lone kid in a stripey shirt all by himself. I mean only God knows the reasons why he was there that day but it was truly amazing that God did bring him there and intended for him to hear the gospel.

and then at the Rally. It was just amazing to see so many kids, 292 of them gathering there to listen and here the gospel, some of them for te first time. Some 32-40 kids said they wanted to know more about God. That night, something inside them stirred, perhaps we'll see them again next year at RICE 2010. 16 kids that night said they wanted to become christians, that is, to dedicate their lives to Christ. For those who don't know what that means, it means that they have recognised that they are lost in this world and lost to this world and that they wanted Jesus to save them. There is no amount of emphasis at the joy it brings to us to see even just one of those kids there to choose to follow Christ. For those who thinks that this is just silly superstition then I'd have to say, go hear the gospel for yourself before making any bias judgements. But yeah, to see God working and transforming these kids is just truly amazing and a massive blessing for us leaders. Last year I was one of those kids in the seats and yeah, the reality of the gospel hit me harder than a sledgehammer could ever hit me. I'd have to say RICE played a huge part in my own walk back to Christ.

But the God's blessing wasn't just in the events... It was amazing how everything we did just came together, even when things weren't going as we intended or imagined, in the end God was the one in control. This was God working through us, our eyes couldn't see what God could see. In the end I, personally, was stunned by how everything no matter how inadequate it felt just fell together.

Our God is truly amazing... anyways enough of this rant.
Go RICE! and I pray that God will keep working through RICE to win over the city of Brisbane! RICE 2010!

Weird Dream II : Talking Mice...

2009-07-28T00:25:00.000+10:00

You know you have strange dreams when you start dreaming about pet mice that talk and cause trouble all over the place... lol... why (or perhaps how is more appropriate) a mouse would be on roller blades and tripping people over in public places is beyond me lol... I tend to have crazy dreams... Before I woke up from the weird dream I was saving the mouse from playing with a mousetrap... by sticking my hand in the mousetrap instead... lol and normally you wake up from your dreams just before your about to have a painful experience right? or maybe just me... but strangely enough it felt pretty convincing in my dream for some strange reason and I didn't wake up from it, then I snapped out of it and realised that I was late for Uni haha...

Altho it isn't nearly as strange as my gokart driving, skateboarding, and lightsaber 2v2 duel against sith drug dealers in a state school with Obi Wan Kenobi on my side... now that was a WEIRD dream lol...

People Dying.

2009-06-26T22:04:00.000+10:00

So I heard from someone and from facebook that 3 people in Hollywood died today. People make such a big deal over it, "O I'm so sad, MJ is dead... The prince of pop is dead" or whatever. But really, is it really that much of a deal? When I heard it I just went "meh..."... Because I mean, people are dying every minute anyways so is it really anything out of the ordinary that some famous guy dies as well? Famous people are just as weak as us non-famous people, we are all gonna die anyways. Sure if your a personal friend of someone who dies then mourn. If your wife died then yeah, mourn because a part of you died with them. But I mean, tomorrow could be your last day, and while your reading this, some homeless guy just died somewhere out there. Do we feel sad or affected? Perhaps I'm just a cold-blooded, heartless person, but one of my grandfathers died when I was a kid, one of my aunties died when I was in grade like... 6 or 7? and one of my grandmother's died last year. I never shed a tear or felt sad, I mean everyone's loved ones will die eventually, so is it so special that one of my own family members died? Perhaps I see the bigger scheme of things beyond the immediate impact the death has to myself, I dunno. Or perhaps I'm just special, and couldn't care less... But I don't think that's the case. Perhaps I am just desensitised somehow...

But yeah... I dunno... I guess its because it was a natural death... all of my extended family died of natural deaths... stroke, breast cancer, lung failure. But perhaps I would be more affected if they weren't natural, but probably more so if it was because I couldn't stop the unnatural cause, ie. died from getting mugged. But yeah... anyways... That's what I had to say for today.

Screwed Up World

2009-06-26T02:40:00.000+10:00

You hear it in the news all the time, and you figured that mannn this world is going down the crapper. People getting stabbed and bashed everyday n crap, and I mean it feels distant from us until you see these things with your own two eyes first hand. I mean about 2 or 3 weeks ago I was driving home from uni at night, and I was driving along Hawken drive, and I suddenly noticed that on the sidepath was some guy getting ganged up on by 3 other guys... First thought to pass through my mind was... "Crap, should I help him?"... but I realised that I was but one man, I would not be prepared to fight off 3 other guys, sure I do martial arts, but I ain't no Bruce Lee right, and it's not like I had a weapon handy to bash some skulls in either. So I didn't get off and help him. On the other hand I should have called the cops as well. But I don't understand why I didn't, in fact I guess I was kind of afraid to stop... It was the kind of "What if they came after me?" or some lame silly excuse that comes up when your in unexpected situations like this. In hindsight I wish I was a little braver and at least called the cops... Perhaps getting out to fight them off would have been a silly idea... And pulling a baton or a non-lacerating weapon (blunt) and smacking them probably would get me in trouble as well afterwards. But I dunno ay... It's days like these that makes me train extra hard at kung fu, to ensure things like these don't happen to me or my friends... But yeah... this world is pretty screwed up... But I wonder... for a christian right... in that situation should I just simply resort to violence to (assuming I can) incapacitate the 3 guys ganging up on the other guy? I mean, in this case I would be fighting fire with fire right? I could've like hung around and helped the guy after he got beaten... which is pathetic and sad and just dude wth... or I could go in and Chuck Norris their asses... In the end people are gonna get hurt so would it be so wrong for me to be the one dishing out the pain? It's not like I hate them, I'm just stopping them from hurting the other guy right? by beating the living crap out of them. I mean the bible is probably one of the most violent books you'll ever have the good fortune to read. So I mean... doesn't that mean violence can be done for good? I mean forgiveness is something you do after something has happened... but isn't prevention the best cure? If you can prevent something from happening then why wait until after the damage is done and forgive?

My interpretation is that everything comes down to intentions. I mean the army had chaplains and they have their services and what not... You have christian soldiers on the frontline killing other people... You have christian police officers resorting to lethal force... But what are you doing it for? For me, as long as you are doing it out of "love" so to speak... ie. out of care or concern. I mean whether my actions are justified in the eyes of the law is one thing, but if I did intervene that fight and did "win" I would have been doing so because I was concerned about the situation and what would happen to the other guy... It's not like I'm doing this out of "evil" desires, I'm not there to mug anyone, or to exact revenge or to do anything apart from wanting to help the person in danger so to speak.

But that's all talk anyways, all talk and no walk. I didn't end up doing anything at all. And that makes me just as useless. The good I wanted to do I could not do. By standing on the side and turning a blind eye, I might as well have been the person beating the guy up in the first place. So I'm just as pitiful as they are. This whole ordeal just makes me a bit guilty and a bit tight in the chest... A bit disappointed in my own lack of courage... and sense of justice and urgency... It makes me angry that I was too chicken to get out and help, not necessarily to fight but to even call the police... It frustrates me every time those 10 seconds of the night resurface in my head...

I remember recounting it to some friends and even to my mum... and they all responded with "Did you help him? Did you at least call the police? Why didn't you help him?" etc... Like being poked in the side by a red hot iron rod... Makes me want to turn back time, get out of the car, and just roundhouse kick them in the face...

Neways... I need to sleep... Just had to rant a little to get this off my chest... It is a pity that violence or threats of violence are the only things capable of preventing more violence... Such is the state of the world...

Finally! Holidays! Woot!

2009-06-25T03:09:00.000+10:00

Ahhh... holidays... couldn't start it without a few rounds of gaming lol... Now I can finally relax for a bit lol... Stress is over! and it is 3am in the morning! and I am tired... lol... I should sleep... but still! I'm FREEEEEE!!!! WHEEEEEeeeee! lol...

Aite...

Folio... All nighters...

2009-06-17T18:36:00.000+10:00

Gah! Finally handed in my folio... Massive relief... 64 A3 pages of work... and a model as well... gah.. so tired... I did two all nighters to get it done... and saw two sunrises.... luckily i slept for like 5 hours in during the day in between... gah..

And there is some pictures of the sun out of one of the windows in our house...

so tired...>ZZzzzzzz

RICE GOES LIVE!!!

2009-06-12T00:29:00.000+10:00

Well on Wednesday I talked about something about designing a poster right? RICE has officially gone live and entered its promotional stage so I believe I can stick my design up here now :P

so for those who were wondering what I was talking about here you go! Hope you youth people are interested in coming! The event is aimed at high schoolers, so if thats you then you should probably check out the website or the facebook page! www.ricebrisbane.org is the site to go to haha

anyways... yeah
gtg sleep lol

Wanted: Miracle -> Result

2009-06-10T19:22:00.000+10:00

Well... I haven't been on here in almost 3 weeks... and alot has happened during that time. If you read the previous post, I was quite literally drowning in work from both Architecture and RICE. Luckily for me the Archi final review was formative and I got most of it done, I guess I didn't have enough time to finish my model that I was meant to do for it, but all my drawings were completed which meant that I could still get decent feedback. But this was my own pursuit and for my own earthly future, what really amazed me is that, as you guys know I am part of the RICE design team and I had never used photoshop before (sure I've used fireworks heaps but never for this type of work) and I had no access to any software to create the designs. Even though I had such a short time frame to do the tasks and had to learn how to do everything from scratch, I reckon God did some serious blessing here.

At the start I had no idea what I could possibly do for a theme that was significantly more complex than last year's theme, and I was consistently being bombarded by uni work and was running around in circles in anxiety about what to do and all that. God gave me new insights and new perspective on how to interpret the theme. People began offering software and equipment for me to use, I mean I just randomly got a call to go somewhere to get photoshop elements off a friend. I had no idea how to pull off the concept that was in my head, so I hoped online and i just typed in the style and instantly it came up with tutorials to do all the technical stuff required to get all the effects I needed and gave me links to all the free brushes and tools I needed to do everything. I really hardly moved a finger and everything was provided for me to start working.

In my head, the idea looked fantastic and incredibly cool... But I am in reality a REALY CRAP painter. I cannot paint for the life of me. This design was a digital painting, and a REALLY hard one at that. But things just happened, and it actually looks better in real life now than it did in my head. But while I was making it I was really doubtful about whether it could actually happen, and all the other members of the team were quite doubtful of the idea as well. It could of ended up really good or really bad, and I got quite nervous at one stage when we were showing mocks because I wasn't confident in the idea. But, that didn't really matter because clearly God was confident where I was not. I guess I just really stuck with what God gave me and just did it and it worked out well. So praise God for that haha, cos I don't think I could've done it on my own, especially knowing how great (or lack of great) my art skills are.

But yeah... thats my bit for today...

Wanted: Miracle

2009-05-24T17:09:00.000+10:00

Apart from emu gully last year, I don't think I have ever been pushed to the limits before. But that time was a physical strain in the sense of exercise and pushing my body to the limit for the sake of the team. But this time, I think I stand in front of a period that requires more mental strain then I've ever faced.

Just a list of stuff I need to do in the next 2-3 weeks.
- An architectural review to a panel of professional architects (ie. working)
= 6 sections
= 4 floor plans
= Site plans
= 1:100 model of the site and 3 buildings
= all the above arranged for a presentation due by June 1

- RICE design team
= Flyer design
= Poster Design
= Gotta meet the design deadline of June 10... but thank God I'm not working by myself on this one... but I have to learn how to use photoshop properly.

- Church Worship team
= Gotta try and practise songs at least once every 2 days lol... cos one of our members have other commitments and I am filling in for guitar.

- Bible study
= I am the bible study leader for this coming week... So I gotta prepare answers and discussions and stuff for the topic so I need time to do that.
= Also we have a memory verse "pop quiz"... and gotta memorise 4 pretty long passages...

Seriously I doubt I will have enough time to do everything. Such a coincidence that everything should collide on this fortnight... I swear I'm gonna need a miracle to do all these things... and although I know God will provide and make things work... but I think I'm getting pretty darn anxious lol... Just gotta pray that I can do everything. Hope those of you who read this will also pray for me lol... I think I'm gonna need it.

Anyways MUST get back to work...

Focus

2009-05-18T23:12:00.000+10:00

Some days I find that life as I know it is so distracting. I feel that there are so many petty desires in my life that just bog me down and hinder my every movement and every thought. Just to think of all the things that one doesn't have, material or not, just really puts a hole in the hull. Just thinking about these things causes me to trudge through a day in misery unable to work or be productive, unable to feel joyful. Thinking about me, and the things that I wish I had, that I don't have makes me sad.

I find that I can only really become joyful when my focus becomes fixed on something greater than myself. When I devote my time to conversing with people about God, doing research and doing my best to spread God's word I find that I experience a joy that I cannot normally feel in my life. When I go to be part of worship at church, I feel a joy that I cannot find anywhere else. I just wish that there was no need to do anything than to do these two things in this life. I wish I wanted nothing more than to do these two things and nothing more. Life would be so simple, so joyful. But yeah...

I heard a passage on sunday, went something like this. Philippians 1:21 "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." Some days I just wish that I was able to be an unrelenting disciple, wanting to serve and nothing more. I have prayed that God take my worldly attachments and desires away from me, that I could live solely for Him. But, God has chosen not to do that, though I know not why. But nyeah.... Confusing... When one doesn't know what God wants of him...

Life isn't a walk in the park huh? With the storms and the calms... The highs and lows... Sometimes God feels so close, yet sometimes feels so distant... But hey... Enough of this..

Spritiual Warfare : Online

2009-05-13T15:22:00.000+10:00

No this is not the newest MMORPG out on the internet. Instead I am referring to forums online in which christians and non-believers wage spiritual wars upon each other. Youtube is a massive spiritual battlefield and over the last few days I've been posting replies on one song on youtube and have been defending the faith and have been using bible references to "fight" these "battles". But it has come to my attention at just how ill prepared I actually am for these things. Sure I am a staunch christian, and sure I now quite a bit of stuff about what the bible says about certain things. But everytime I was about to make a point, I always realised that I didn't actually know where in the bible it says something and anything. I've heard or read about a verse before about a topic, but I don't ever really remember where in the OT or NT it actually says that. If you go to Youtube and look up any christian song, you wouldn't need to scroll down past about 5 lines to find some heated arguements to and fro between non-christians and christians.

But yeah, I guess most importantly though is that there is probably nowhere in our society that has more open and intense spiritual warfare than there is online. Unless you in Pakistan or something or your getting martyred somewhere for your faith. But in a first world country, you won't find and place with more open spiritual warfare than online. Why is that? well I reckon it's because you have a false identity, noone knows who you are and noone is going to remember you for who you are. People have nothing to lose but perhaps have something to gain. They can safely hurl insults or perhaps share something that's of importance because noone knows who they are and they will never find out. It's probably the same principle as to why people wear ski masks and stuff to perform bank robberies and to mug people. To hide their identity.

But I guess to tackle these things, and doing apologetics related stuff, is to be prayful about it I guess and wear the Armour of God in the most MMORPG sense possible haha.

Read Ephesians 6:10-18 :
The Armor of God
10Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.

Mother's Day Speech...

2009-05-10T17:50:00.000+10:00

Yeah I did a mother's day speech at church today... it was kinda funny I think... but yeah... ugh... so tired... I can't be bothered writing any more... lol...

For those the people who wants to know what I said... I'll just copy paste it here

When I was very young, like when I was 5 – 6 years old, me and my brother would drive my mum up the tree with some extremely silly things. Like clogging toilets with rolls of toilet paper and throwing things at neighbour’s houses. One time we were playing some game in the backyard, like throwing rocks at the fence or batting rocks with wooden planks at fences, and one of my brother’s rocks, being thrown quite hard, would fly over the fence and go through the neighbour’s window. I remember the neighbour coming to our house at night and raging for like 5-10 minutes talking about how some rock flew through his living room like a bullet. So thanks mum for being so patient with us and our antics.
I was also probably too curious for my own good, and would always have really random accidents like being bashed by the handle on the tennis net because I wondered what would happen if I unlocked the net in like grade 1 or something, so my mum would have to take me to the doctors and get stitches on me head and stuff. And perhaps it was because of all those stupid accidents involving stiches on my head that made me so forgetful, and so my mum would come to school and look all over the school for me to remind me whenever I had competitions in school like those maths and science competitions and whenever I had music lessons. But since I had multiple music lessons a week for percussion and mum wouldn’t have been able to make them all, I’d forget to go 7 times out of 10.
My mum also gave me heaps of opportunities to basically learn everything that I wanted to learn yet still gave me a lot of free choice, and considering how quick children can change their minds, I can imagine it was probably very frustrating for my parents. I wanted to play the piano so my mum would buy a piano and take me to piano lessons every week, then after a few years I’d stop playing and then I’d say I want to enter those lego robotic competitions and my mum would get all the parts and take me to the competitions and stuff. Similarly with sports and co-curricular activities that I used to do and my mum would always get me to them, like getting up at like... 5:30-6ish to try to get me to cross country and athletics training and taking me to swimming squads after school and to badminton and tennis and all the competitions for tennis. I remember that during the tennis tournaments the temperatures would on some days be like 3-5C while we played. And the parents would all just be sitting outside freezing their butts off watching us and cos I was so skinny back then my mum would always prepare all these hot drinks and stuff in advance that we’d have during our breaks. I guess our parents really do a lot of work behind the scenes that we don’t always immediately appreciate so thanks mum for all the time and effort spent for these things.
I guess one more important thing to add before I finish was that mum did all this but at the same time was doing so much other stuff as well like doing additional studies like doing a master’s degree and graduate diploma and helping dad with his books and still had time to join us in whatever we did, like go for like 4-5km runs or something with me and while other mums would just sit and watch us train, my mum would always train with us or practise with us for whatever sport that may be. So I guess that’s why mum would be so fit as well haha. I guess one other thing that I never really worked out is that whatever I seemed to study, my mum always seemed to know more about it than I did, which I never understood how that could possibly work out. Even though my mum hadn’t touched chemistry and physics for like 20+ years of something she’d still be able to find all my mistakes that I’d make. So I guess she’s kind of a supermum to be able to do practically everything. And one time in like grade 4 or something when we were doing times tables, my mum put up these posters in the garage for the times tables and would make me memorise the times tables and recite them to her while she waited and the funny thing was that once I got passed the 6 times tables I would start getting them all wrong and all my answers would instead be prime numbers, which no doubt would send my mum, who used to be a maths teacher, insane. Stuff like 6*7=41 6*8=59 7*7=47 and stuff like that.
I should thank God for having a mum that is so patient and so self-sacrificing to enable us to do so many things and always being 100% behind our dreams and aspirations. Not to mention providing for all of our everyday needs as well. So Thanks God :P

Have a happy mother's day u people.

Mum's Birthday

2009-05-02T21:23:00.000+10:00

Today is my mum's birthday... and so we went to dinner at the sofitel... and as always my brother eats so much that he practically needed to be rolled out the door... and it was a seafood buffet and it was a HUGE seafood buffet... recession actually leaves more goodies to be sold on the local market... normally the best seafood are all exported but whenever there is a recession the locals get the good stuff. Neways my brother at like 12 whole crabs by himself and a whole heap of other junk and I had 1.5 crabs and 3 dozen oysters and some hot food... I wasn't practicularly hungry because I had a big lunch only 4 hours earlier so my appetite wasn't horrific... or else I couldv'e matched my bro probably... neways... I have some photos from my phone... The first photo is of the buffet section that I missed walking through the front counter... lol... and the two others is a display case that should go on failblog.org... because the description just sounds reallly bad... if you can read it, it says "Designed to add energy and excitement to the Vodka drinking experience, the Belvedere Jagger Daggers have been crafted, each boasting 12 carats of inlaid white topaz, 42 pieces of aquamarine and a solid silver hilt............."... lol... a dagger???? adding to the "energy & excitement" of drinking vodka??? either you drink vodka and turn emo or you drink vodka and turn homocidal... lol... such a badly written description...

neways thats my stuff for today...

God answers prayers...

2009-05-01T23:14:00.000+10:00

I do a little bit of serving at my church, only little jobs here and there really... but one of the things I do is to organise some weekly prayer gatherings. But sometimes uni rears its ugly butt in the way of my organisation and also certain aspects of my own personal life that inhibits my ability to serve. I haven't been doing this role for very long... only like a few months really... during this meeting we talk about the general state of our church and upcoming events and how the different fellowships are going and what kinda of things are being planned and then we pray for the various needs of our church and the fellowships as well as more worldly affairs that affect people in other places of the world etc. \

One thing I noted was that really, people arn't motivated to come together and pray unless it is extremely convenient for them to do so... ie. they already are gonna go to UF so they might just rock up half an hour earlier to come to the prayer meeting... During the holidays, there is no UF and therefore prayer meetings are placed on another day... which means that almost nobody shows up... like... 1 other guy does... and that's it. This made me think about the reasons why that's the case... and I realised that our church and more particularly the younger congregation which we are part of was in desperate need for revival. I remember talking both to a close brother in christ and a pastor about it and it occurred to me that the passion for Christ in our church seems to only fall to a handful of people and that passion seems to have trouble spreading throughout the group. And while we are all mostly christians there, it became apparent that every person had something inhibiting their growth, something that they struggle with yet stand alone and try to fight it off alone and can't win. I find myself standing in that category most of the time as well, but I realised that to keep fighting and winning, you need brothers and sisters to help you fight. God designed His church so that we could have brothers and sisters to help us and for us to help them.

I knew that God had placed this passion into my heart, and so I prayed about it and asked what God wanted me to do about it. I felt that God wanted me to try and talk to my bros' and sis' and to help them share whatever burdens they may have. I dunno what occurred to me but I thought that I should perhaps stop the prayer meetings to try and focus on doing what God wants me to do... And one of my brothers even offered to take over the organisations of the meetings as well.

I was almost about to send a massive spam email to everyone on the prayer meetings mailing list to inform them of the change. I had typed the whole thing up and was about to hit send when I felt as if a voice was telling to not send it. I prayed again to ask for clarification... and withheld from doing anything and to keep running it for just one more week at least before deciding whether to stop it or not. We had the meeting today, and I felt God respond to my prayer and I knew that God wanted me to continue running the prayer meetings. At the same time our old CAG group is gonna try and start up again and hopefully the fellowship will take away some of my more personal anxieties and allow me to serve God better and continue to grow as a christian and maybe even find some answers that I've been praying for.

UQ Archi Camp!

2009-04-29T20:22:00.000+10:00

Hello all!
As some of you may know, I havn't been here for the last 2 days, and as the title suggests, I was away at Archi camp. It was pretty darn fun I'd have to say, although I did forget to bring plates and cutlery which made eating a little bit problematic. But that aside, I reckon we had fun. We went to Yarramalong, which I can hear alot of you saying "where the heck is that?" and it was indeed in whooooooopppwhooop cos it was like 40 odd minutes past Ipswich I believe. South-west of Ipswich. However I'd have to say it was pretty "back-to-nature" as there was about 3 actual buildings there which were basically tin sheds... a hall, a toilet/shower and some random cabin haha... The water to the toilets were cut after 8pm and weren't turned on until 8am each day... which caused abit of toilet problems haha and apart from hilariously disgusting spraying urinals and random crap like that it was quite enjoyable haha. Now that I've been to two Design Camps since I went to the QUT camp last year, I can say that in terms of natural exposure, the QUT camp was much closer to nature than this trip... This trip... I saw one dragonfly, a few crickets and one mouse. Last time I saw hundreds of insects of every kind, and goannas that invaded tents and all sorts of stuff... And the reason for the insects was that I have a battery powered fluro-tube lamp... and fluro tubes are insect magnets... last time I turned it on at the QUT camp, 2 mins and I could hardly see the lamp with the amount of insect swarming it... This time... 30 minutes... and not a single insect on it.

Kinda funny how all these "tough" guys seem to be afraid of these small little critters though... haha... I woulda just left the mouse in the tent for laughs... but then they'll probably have destroyed the tent :P

I got really bored on the last day and when we were packing up the stuff and destroying the shelters, I was practising my throwing skills with a big sheet of card board and some scissors :P But hey. haha...

When we got back to uni, first thing we did was go back to SLC though :P...

Frustration about Arrogance

2009-04-22T22:56:00.000+10:00

I don't really know, but recently I'm getting frustrated so easily by possibly ordinary things... But it's not like I get frustrated at everything... but only things that people say or do that to me feels completely unreasonable or unnecessary... The other person may mean to say things as crude gestures or perhaps humour... But I just feel a wrench in the gut and wanna slap the guy across the head... Or sometimes its just people showing off or being arrogant... and I just wanna knock some sense into them... I mean I don't get frustrated at work or at people who make comments out of reason or have a reason for doing things or are simply accident prone.

But I do get annoyed at people who make comments out of plain stupidity. Dumbasses who know that everyone would've figured out what's happening or would've noticed whatever is to be noticed but noone has said anything because it wasn't appropriate to say or to avoid making everyone feel awkward but still has to spit it out without a friggin thought and I just get so incredibly frustrated its not even funny...

Other times is just people doing things or saying things with no sense of humility whatsoever. Most of the time the things done is appreciated... but the way in which it is done is plain outright arrogant. Yes, you can arrange for certain things to be available for use, and that's fine, you know people that can help, you have connections. But you don't need to boast about how cheap you got it or what not... cos sure, you may be doing a good deed... but what is ur reason for doing it... if you are doing the deed just so people can see how well connected you are and how "influential" you are... then you're a fag... If you're truly doing it out of kindness, you do not need to walk in with a friggin spotlight on you, practically saying "Look at me! Look at me! Look what I can do! I can get it better than you can but way better deal" (reminds me of he friggin 7 year old kids I teach at swimming, "Hey Vincent, look what I can do! Watch me, Watch me!". In fact if you were truly kind, you would do things without as much as simply saying "Hey, If we need this then I can help with it".

What I hate is when people insist on paying for you, even when you don't want them to and you have the resources necessary to look after your own bills. It's ok to shout once in a while if you have the resources to do it and the other person doesn't mind. But when you refuse to accept the other person's money even though they can and don't want you to pay then that seriously annoys me. I have a friggin job... I can make my own friggin money and I can pay for my own friggin food... I don't need you paying for me... If you do it once in a while as a kind gesture then sure ok... I get to return the favour in the future sometime... But when you do it all the friggin time to everyone... then... (and maybe I'm just being unreasonable but...) I don't think your doing it because your kind... I think your doing it so that people can see how much money you have... enough to freely chuck it away and not care about it... If you are so friggin rich then go share your wealth to the people who ACTUALLY need it... go help the homeless and support charities, make donations, just don't spend it on me... and I'm not saying this as a cruel gesture at those people and organisations because they can't help themselves, but I am saying this as a SERIOUS note... Those people rely on others to help them survive. If you are so able, then indeed, go help them. But if you are just shouting other people non-stop so that we can see how rich you are then go shove your gold-plated vault up your ass...

Now I know I sound angry... and I actually am, which doesn't happen too often nowadays... and while there is nothing wrong with the deeds themselves... its just the way people do them and how they retell and talk about these things that really piss me off... I just don't like arrogance... and boastfulness.... Sure we are all human... we all fall into the same trap of pride... and I'm certain that I'm no exception and that people probably get annoyed at me sometimes for being up myself. But I acknowledge that and I try not to be like that... and while I can't avoid at least being mildly hypocritical as I am still very human, I guess this experience tells me what other people might think of me at times... It might be simply that they don't voice it as much as I do... but... yeah...

Or maybe I'm just being unreasonable or maybe I have simply completely and utterly misinterpreted other people and their actions and choices... Which is possible... I can't say I'm particularly sharp lately.

Neways... I am REALLY tired... Architecture is draining me so badly...
Alright... Rage end...

Crazy Hectic Day...

2009-04-18T23:42:00.000+10:00

Today has been crazy... I had an absolutely packed schedule... one of the rare few occasions that has ever happened.

Well first off... it is uni holidays and it is saturday... but I spend 10am-3pm at uni doing work.... then I went home... and had to get ready for my bro's engagement party at Rebekah's church... this is the second one btw. I left the house late at 5:25pm... I was meant to be there at 6pm... And then I got friggin lost... and ended up at friggin Mt.Cootha... cos I've never used the Hale street onramp before... and I stayed drove past it without realising what I was meant to do... and I realised far too late that I was ages away from it. And so I ended up at the Church at friggin... 6:24pm... lol... and I started the journey with 4/20 sections of my tank of fuel and finished on like... 2 sections... I was meant to be at a birthday party at 6:30... but because I was late... I was obliged to stay a little longer at my bro's thingy... so I left the Church at 7pm... and went to the city... and got frustrated with weekend street parking and ended up paying for multi-storey carparking... and I got to the restraunt at like... 7:30... which is bad... Buy the end of the dinner we went back to the Birthday person's house... and I arrived with 0/20 sections of fuel remaining... I was quite scared that I wouldn't have enough fuel to get home, or to the nearest petrol station. After hanging out for some more we all went home... and I was praying pretty darn hard all night to have enough fuel to make it... remember that my car is telling me that I have NO fuel left... and thank God that I made it to the petrol station lol... surprisingly enough I had been provided with 7.65L of fuel remaining in my tank... which meant that I could go for like... an additional 100km before my car died... Prayer work huh? anyways... yeah... Crazy day... Kinda stressful too lol...

Neways... thats my story for today...

God brings out the best in us...

2009-04-15T19:01:00.000+10:00

Sunday just past was a special day for all christians, when we celebrate Easter and what Jesus had done for us on the cross. For a few people at our church it was even more special because that was the day they got baptised. And a wonderful and joyous day it was. Baptism is a once in a lifetime event in which you acknowledge who Jesus is and how much we need Him and how He has changed our lives for the better. We announce to the world that we love Him and will follow Him for the rest of our lives, as have the 10 people last Sunday. It's awesome to see so many people overflowing with joy about Jesus. So many people, guys or girls struggle to hold back their tears of Joy when they give personal testimonies. Almost everyone gets a shaky voice trying to contain their tears, and a lot of the girls just can't even speak straight through their tears. I think it's awesome that it is such an emotional occasion and such a joyous occasion at that, and all because of what Jesus has done for us.

I volunteered myself to be part of the worship team that day for the baptism service. And during the practises and especially after the service was over. I was really reminded of what God has done for me in my life. I remember that even at the start of 2008 I was a wreck, I was quite literally scared crapless by the prospect of having to communicate with people who were not my closest friends or even to try and communicate without someone I was really good friend around. I would not even think about even touching a microphone let alone even start to think about singing. At my worse I wasn't able to communicate with anyone at all. But when I couldn't carry on anymore, Jesus came into my life and released me from those shackles and lifted my burdens. Before I knew that my miserable state was not what God wanted me to be. But when I was set free, I became almost opposite in every sense of the human character. Those who did go to the Baptism Service and the Sunday Service at BCAC last Sunday would know that I was singing loud and proud with not a drop of fear. Sure I made a few little mistakes, but who God intended me to be standing there on the stage singing His praises and who I was 1 year and 5 months ago are so different in the extreme and I don't think I would want things to be any other way. It is only because of God's grace and love that I am who I am today, and I'm sure every person who has experienced God's grace would say something similar.

God really does bring the best out of us. There is no greater Joy than to be able to become who we were created to be and there is also no greater Joy than to do what we were created to do. And that is to live lives of worship out of freewill.

Healing Wounds

2009-04-12T20:40:00.000+10:00

I was discussing with a friend today about relationships and what plans God had for them. Even BGRs between christians can fail, there is no arguing that, sometimes they just don't fit together well, some just undermine a good relationship from the inside. We are still fully human, fully weak and inadequate. That means that we still hurt each other all the time. We make mistakes, and we can make the same mistakes over and over again and in a way end up bringing our own pain upon ourselves by the lack of patience and self-control. God calls out to us (christians) and tells us when things are not right, when things are not pleasing to Him... And when things don't please Him, they are naturally unhealthy for you.

Humans have a habit of walking into beartraps of sin and disobedience even though we KNOW that it WILL hurt, we end up being spirtually emo in a sense where we are inflicting pain upon ourselves by not listening to God yet we feel so tempted into walking into them, you know a relationship isn't going to work, you know if you go out with that person again that it will not be better if they haven't undergone major change... You know your walking into a beartrap and you feel God calling you back and you have a feeling in your heart that God doesn't want you to do it... But... you go for it anyways, hopeful that he has changed but have no proof of it... and guess what? It ends up failing again and you are wounded once more.

These wounds bleed anger and clog up our relationships with other people, they make a mess of our emotions and we flatline our ability to be joyful. We end up hating each other, holding grudges against each other, and we always say things take time to heal. But... I don't believe that... When people say, things take time to heal it is only because they arn't prepared to be healed. They wish they were, but they are afraid of actually going to get healed. All that time it takes to heal these wounds and mend this relationships is basically people trying to build up the courage to step forward and accept the treatment. Its like a fear of needles basically...

I hate it when I see my friends who are in relationships fight over things in their relationships... If you need to be defensive in your relationships... If you need to defend yourself from the other person... Then aren't you basically hastening your relationships demise? Why fight over things that aren't important? Don't we all become absent-minded at some stage? Are you not being a hypocrite by saying "Why don't you do this?" or "How can you forget that?" and then sooner or later you forget to do stuff or say stuff? Of Course you are... Do hypocrites exemplify Godliness? no... Then what makes your relationships Godly if you continually judge each other? Isn't the aim of being Godly, being Christ-like one of the major side effects of knowing and loving our Lord Jesus Christ? Then if you are in a christian relationship, why do you fight? sure u disagree sometimes, different people, different opinions... but there is no need to be angry, to make each other guilty or to make the other feel bad for things that they do that don't agree with us... That is not Love... And Love is what God designed to make the world go round.

The emblem of BCAC is what we know as the Four-Fold Gospel. It exemplifies 4 Major "roles" that Jesus has. The Saviour, The Healer, The Sanctifier, and the Coming King. Jesus is the healer... all through the bible, Jesus healed the people who were faithful INSTANTLY. Those people WANTED to be healed, and they were willing to go whatever lengths they were capable of to get to Jesus. How many times has Jesus said "Your faith has healed you" or something similar or that the text says that the person was healed by faith? More times than I care to remember. So what makes our wounds any different? Whether its a relationship under stress or your in the aftermath of a broken relationship, just come before Jesus willingly without fear and be healed. It will only heal as fast as you are prepared to allow God to heal you. Cos seriously, if you are brave enough to ask someone out, then at least have the courage and humility to attempt to maintain it. Ask God to help you, as we are weak and face it, we are pathetic, good for nothing meatbags. But through God we have strength and power and JOY. Put God as number one priority and everything will fall into place.

Having said all that, and it may seem that I am speaking very aggressively about this. And maybe I am... As I feel somewhat like J.D to a point from scrubs... can't remember the episode but he goes hardcore rant about other people and their relationship problems. And truth is it is quite easy for me to say all this as a third party observer of someone else's relationship. And I respect that when it is actually you who is standing in those shoes that it is hard to see things wholistically... Your so close to the problem, with emotional attachements and all, that it is quite hard to be able to step back and see the bigger picture. And it can all be very overwhelming and it is very easy to become impatient with God and trying to do things in other ways and end up digging a bigger hole for yourself. And again having said all that, all is only my opinion, I have no proof of this and I don't actually know how hard it is because I've never been in a relationship before myself. So this is merely based on a mental construction of relationships that exists in my head, and it could be far from the truth.

Neways... That's my rant for today

There is no Luck...

2009-04-06T20:56:00.000+10:00

Today I went to kung fu... but that isn't the topic or reason for the post... I normally go with one of my non-christian friends to it and he studies the same course as me. I've had a few discussions about the spiritual side of life before and although he's been invited to a few church occassions, he classifies himself as atheist... Anyways...

The thing today was that on the way back to the bus station that I normally drop him off at, we were talking about him having not enough money, because of him not getting enough work and stuff... And how he was gonna try and bring his own lunch to uni to save money and stuff, etc. etc. And about a minute later, we drove over a speed bump and I saw something suddenly flutter before my car and disappeared under it. In a split second I recognised it as a $10 note. It was in a very, very small hole in the ground, and was under a few pebbles with one end fluttering in the wind. I stopped immediately and reversed (there were no cars behind me coincidentally) and I told him to get out of the car and grab it. After he retrieved it, he commented on how it was almost as if someone had placed it there, perfectly in the hole... with the number 10 sticking straight up the side of the hole in full view. And it made me think... that there is no such thing as luck or coincidence... and there is only a sovereign God who has a hand in everything... It couldn't have been pure luck and coincidence that 10 bucks was just sitting in a hole waiting for us to pick up at a time when my friend was becoming in need of aid... Of course, 10 bucks isn't very significant but money is still money.

While God cannot act in us unless we allow him to because we have free will... but God will act around us, to reach out to us... To get our attention... I didn't really say anything to him at that moment... but I wonder... I wonder what God has planned for my friend... and I wonder if I am destined/have been chosen to play any role in this plan.

Neways... as a side note, I recieved my first bruise today at kung fu... and ironically it wasn't from sparring... but during the warm up in our little soccer game, some guy pounded the ball into my right eye. And now I have a little bit of a bruise along the edge of the eyesocket.

Anyways, thats my story for today.

New Pool Heater

2009-04-04T20:30:00.000+10:00

Woot~ They have finally installed the new heater into the pool at work haha... no more freezing my butt off for 4.5 hours in cold water! It's set to 30.8 degrees which is awesomely warm haha. Although I do feel sorry for squad swimmers and lap swimmers as they suffer in the new pool. But I guess in terms of business, LTS is much more profitable than squad... so the little kids get priority :P.

Neways I don't have much more to add.

Parking Police Note...

2009-03-31T21:42:00.000+10:00

Normally, most shopping centres have rules against commuters using their carparks and say they'll tow your car away and what not. Now I have recieved a warning from a sunnybank plaza before for doing that, and they put the notice underneath your windscreen wipers so taht you can see it when you walk to you car. Today I did the same at Garden City. Now, I remember that Garden City doesn't have these kind of rules since they are situated on a major Busway station, or at least I don't think they have those regulations. Anyways, I got back from uni at like 6:30 at night... and I walked to my car, and I drove off and headed for Plaza for dinner. I got to plaza and I god out of my car and I noticed that I had a letter tucked in my windscreen from the Police... Now I was freaking out, cos wth was the police doing leaving notes on my car right? "What did I do?" Kinda went through my mind a few times. Then I opened it and it was actually some parking security patrol telling how well secure my car was... it literally says "SECURED - CONGRATULATIONS" on it... lol... makes you wonder... cos they had to have gone and tried all my doors and checked all my windows and stuff to know that it was indeed secured as they said... I thought it was really random lol...

Anyways thats my random story for the day...

Hardcore Shaolin Training...

2009-03-30T20:39:00.000+10:00

You know your gonna get owned when you have to do 75 pushups and 75 sit ups at the very END of an already tough session of kung fu... lol...

I bet you tomorrow, I will have trouble standing up straight lol... On the other hand, we learnt some nifty self-defence techniques today, like how to get people who like to bear hug you of your back and get our of arm locks, headlocks, and nugees lol...

yes... anyways... im getting rather hungry... and I smell lamb shanks...

You can tell awesome friends apart when you see them...

2009-03-29T22:35:00.000+10:00

Went to a uni friend's birthday party tonight... a friend of a church friend. I mean I hang around the SLC alot at UQ... and its really quite something else when you see such a large bunch of friends that are so close to each other. They are all high school friends with each other but yeah. When one of the birthday girl's friend asked me if I wanted to chip into some really hardcore expensive present that they were getting, I couldn't help but admire the sheer amount of effort they were putting into someone's 19th... So much thought went into the present, and some other people who didn't chip in made like, personalised presents like calendars with lots of photos and stuff which is quite awesome. So even though I didn't know the birthday girl extremely well, I still chipped in even just to support her friends in their plans cos she has some pretty awesome friends there. Kinda wish I had friends like that ay lol... but yeah... I mean the present was in the range of like... friggin $750+ or something... and all the accessories that went with it would have costed a grand total of almost $1k... And then they did like a special box/card combination which was pretty cool. Of course the group of really close friends are like... all girls, and girls generally are more inclined to do stuff like this, but still thats a pretty tight bunch.

Anyways, thats the story for today.

Shaolin Grading in 2 weeks...

2009-03-23T21:16:00.000+10:00

Just did my second lesson of shaolin kung fu tonight... and I just finished learning all the forms and techniques for the level 1 grading... but I'm far from perfect of course and apparently according to my friend, grading is in 2 weeks! I was hoping that I could be able to grade, but if it is that close then I don't think I can lol... a 4 week noob upgrading already sounds abit unlikely :P Otherwise I just have to be really pro haha...

o well :P

Shaolin Long Fist

2009-03-16T23:29:00.000+10:00

Today, I started learning shaolin long fist kung fu. I reckon I picked up the basics pretty quickly since I did karate like... 5 years ago... but at least I still remembered all the basic stuff from karate haha. It shall be very interesting, hopefully I don't get too many bruises though :P Makes you think quick though, which is good :P An architect rarely has to think quick, they can take all day if they like. But martial artist only get a fraction of the second from seeing a punch and getting hit by the punch to decide what to do to it, so we think quick :P And I learn something practical, it grants me the ability to defend and protect which makes me feel... secure... to a point. At least I know that I will gain the ability to protect something precious and I won't die as easy trying :P although I don't intend to throw myself at life threatening situations anytime soon, at least I know I will be able to should the case call for it (and I hope it never does).

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a violent person. I just like to be able to successfully defend something, and chose a martial art form that best suits my character :P

Black Cats

2009-03-04T23:40:00.000+10:00

Apparently, according to superstitious legends, if a black cat crosses your path, your doomed to bad luck for x number of years/its a very bad omen. Well, I've had two black cats cross my path in the span of like... a week lol... If I was superstitious about omens and crap then I'd be mildly afraid but it was an interesting thought that occurred to me at uni when a black cat ran into a garder bush in front of me. Neways, I have archi stuff to do... so I must take my leave...

Stupid Flies...

2009-02-26T16:30:00.000+10:00

I went to UQ today for my orientation for Architecture, and after about 4.5 hours at uni they gave us free lunch. Now today was a mildly hot day, and flies were pretty rampant. Just as the food was ready, as I was reading through the material that they had given us, a fly flew straight into my ear and lodged itself within my inner ear and I swear it was pressing against the cartridge and stuff in my middle ear. For 20 odd minutes, I was shaking my head around like a dog out of a pool. And it didn't work, I thought I was gonna need to go to the doctors to get them to pick out the fly for me.

Funny enough, it didn't really gross me out persay, at first you could feel it wriggling around as it was lodged tight in position, and making buzzing noises. And then once it started to calm down a little bit, you could feel its feet moving against the side of your ear. I'd have to say it was slightly tickly. yeah... it's not a common experience... not a really good one either... I was more worried about the potential ear infections though. Anyways, after deciding that I could possibly pinch my inner/middle ear by pushing into my ear from behind my jawbone, i managed to squeeze the stupid insect out.

Yeah... that's my tory for today...

Work training day...

2009-02-22T22:48:00.000+10:00

Yeah, I had a 9 hour training course today at work... Today as in Sunday... I was whinging for about a week and a half away from it because it killed my whole day, and I would miss out of going to church, miss out on the bible study, and miss out on the church worship team training sessions that I was meant to be at...

But I guess in the end, a part of me missed going to church because I couldn't be with other people... I couldn't be with my friends... And I know that these are wrong reasons to be wanting to go to church. And although I have significant genuine reasons to go to church, I still have this urge to be there just because of friends.

So I had a week of being pissed at work because of these arrangements. Though in hindsight I realise that I probably need to reflect on my priorities for going to church and how it will affect my christian walk. I guess I still have problems at times with letting God be number one in my life... taking priority over everything else... but hey... Nobody is perfect and I'm still "work in progress" I guess...

anyways... 9 hours was pretty crap :P
thats enough for now

Most accident prone day of my life...

2009-02-17T22:22:00.000+10:00

I hope it will be a long long time before a day like today repeats itself in my lifetime...

First... I accidentally reversed into a stopped car behind me... which screws my insurance up once more... as well as my bank account... Then we went Ice skating... and I stacked a grand total of approximately 21 times... 4 or 5 of which occurred during a massive game of red rover which I consider extraordinary circumstances... and yeah... i can feel those bruises... if all my stacks were recorded... I'd win funniest home videos hands down without a doubt.

I guess in hindsight, I'm more attached to the material world than I would think and hope... I feel so guilty over damaging someone else's property through my own incompetence, and damaging my own insurance rating which saps from my own future security. I had so much pride in my ability to drive and stuff, yet I realise how incompetent I actually am... That I am still just an ordinary human being with ordinary abilities. Little mistakes help avert future disasters by having protocols established to deal with these mistakes... It's days like these that makes me feel that life is far too fragile for my liking... Makes me look forward to the day this earthly life ends and a better life begins forever.

Ok that sounded very emo and masochistic... But I didn't mean it in that sense...

Taking a liking for Scrubs

2009-02-15T23:00:00.000+10:00

Went to a friends place today... And usually I almost never watch TV, but today we ended up watching like 7 eps of scrubs. I kinda like it now, its such an ingenious combination of dumb humour, witty humour and serious notes. Anyways :P, I find it rather amusing. And it also has little bits of unorthodox yet true wisdom.

Neways... thats all I had to say :P...

Blasted Ants...

2009-02-10T23:09:00.000+10:00

Now I dunno bout you, but as it stands it seems our house is under constant siege by hordes of ants of all kinds. I personally rather dislike ants due to bad personal encounters with them. While we noticed that ants were encroaching onto the kitchen bench where we were eating dinner, I didn't really expect the ants to go into our food while we were eating it... But that was just the side note.

I realise that ants are amongst the dumbest animals of creation. Seeing how they are willing to walk straight into their own deaths without reason or logic. Now ants drowning in honey... yeah that's reasonable... it's a food source right? But ants drowning themselves in a kettle filled with cold water? thats just stupid... I mean, animals that can't swim would generally stay clear of water or at least dislike water... But ants just wade straight into it...

The reason I don't like ants though, is because they are small and they bite. Being small they can get into places unnoticed, which is an issue. I remember I was wearing long trousers at school that day, leaning against a tree when I realised that there was a large number of green ants on the tree. I got most of them off me, but 1 had already got into my trousers, and proceeded to bite me 11 times as it journeys up my thigh... But I got rid of it somehow before it got too close although the last bite was about 1.5 inches away from the top of my leg.

O... and another bad experience with ants was at a year 8 camp... we had to go camping without tents for a night... and used tarps or whatever they were called to make our tent... That night it absolutely poured on us ie. rain, and my friends convieniently had chosen a site between 2 trees to set up our tarps... being tarps you have no isolation from the outside elements. And luck would have it, our site was right on top of a red ant nest. so through the whole night, we had massive ants of about 2cm+ lengths crawling through our tarp tent. I was the only person who managed to get any sleep at all lol... and I was lucky only to get 2 bites... But at about 3-4am in the morning my friends wake me up to tell me that they are gonna move the tarps away from the ants... Which by now was far too late lol... And got about another 2.5 hours sleep before we had to wake up lol... Not the best camp I've been on anyways haha...

but yeah... Ants are annoying to say the least...

Dream Comvulsions...

2009-02-07T14:50:00.000+10:00

For some reason, when I doze off and start dreaming about stuff, if it involves movement of my body, the muscles responsible for that action will convulse ie. jerk around abit. I guess it falls along the same lines as sleep walking really... except maybe not such an extreme case. I think my sleep movements are definitely not as powerful as they used to be though, as I used to send pillows and blankets flying across the room as I kicked something in my dream :P. But I definitely know of these movements occur, particularly when I'm just about to wake up naturally, I can feel the muscles move while I'm still asleep. Over the years I've had quite a few strange dreams that included some kind of violence I'd have to say :P Including random bits of media that has been ingrained in my memory, like ninjas and jedis and weird and wonderful stuff like that. But hey... I guess its normal stuff...

Which just made me wonder, about the thing that allows you to control your dreams. It's like a pair of goggles/helmet that monitors your rapid eye movements during your sleep and emits a faint red light through your eyelids to allow you to gain consciousness without waking up fully. Thus you gain control over your dreams and can direct it where ever you please. Supposably it would allow you to gain inspiration for creative uses. Like new paintings or stuff like that. It's probably just some scientific experiment at this stage anyways, but it'd be pretty awesome to get your hands on one and wield your dreams with precision.

anyways, ima go

Gundam Wing Part II

2009-02-04T01:56:00.000+10:00

When I lent the Gundam Wing dvd set to a friend of mine, I described the depth of the series and the fact that one actually has to concentrate on the story and the speeches of the characters to make clear the reasons behind each individual's actions. Once I gave it to him, I felt a very powerful urge to rewatch it myself, and after about 3-4 weeks my friend returned it unfinished. So the last 2.5 days, I plowed through the entire series, all 49 episodes of it. I believe I dismantled the series once before, however, that was drawn from my previous understanding of the series back in my Grade 6 days in 2001. One could say that as a 11 year old kid, one's understanding on the complexity of war and peace are severely limited. Having rewatched the series now 8 years later, I believe that I have a much more clear understanding of the message or theme of the series. One might be able to see the that I am rather obsessed with this series... Can't help it, I'm clingy :P

Neways, if the series had different core ideas and messages at different stages, I would split the series into 3 seperate ideas. the first third of the series focuses on the using of the name of peace and justice as a fascade for oppression and dictatorship. The pacifist leader of the space colonies was advocating a peaceful relationship with the Earth alliance, and to stop the oppression of the colonies. However, the leader is assasinated by OZ, a special forces division within the alliance military that is the strongarm of a foundation which seeks to gain power and establish a ruling class, a heirarchy of power & order. The Gundams were originally sent to destroy the entire alliance without mercy by rebel colonist opposed to the Earth alliance rule directed by OZ from within the alliance. However, the scientist and their respective Gundam pilots refuse to massacre and ravage the earth in revenge, believing that the peaceminded leader would never forgive them. They instead choose to attack OZ and OZ only, to attempt to foil their plans to establish unbalanced power rule on Earth and in space.

The second part of the series, as fighting escalates between the Gundams and OZ, peace ideals begin to surface within the alliance while the colonies, which the Gundams supposably protect, remain neutral. OZ and its Romefella foundation seeks to eliminate the pacifist as they oppose their ideal world in which power is ruled in the traditional way, unbalanced. OZ tricks the pilots into accidentally eliminating the peaceminded leaders of the Earth alliance and they assasinate the minister responsible for facilitating peace negotiations between the colonies and Earth. This allows OZ to dislodge the alliance and completely take over from within. The Gundams continue to attack OZ as it was their original goal. A nation that was previously destroyed due to its pacifism reignites its ideals of total pacifism, but proves to obstruct romefella's goals, and is quickly attacked and the nation desolves. Pacifism and the peace it produces is quickly obliterated in face of opposition.

The final part of the series shows as the colonist are tricked by OZ to arm themselves in defense to the growing strength of Romefella and the Earth. As minor powers gather together on both sides to form the Earth Nation and the revolutionaries of the White Fang (which reflect the anxious and retalitory intentions of a minority of the colonists) and tension rises between them. Unmanned weapons begin being deployed by the masses and war is beginning to be dehumanised as the major powers completely annihilate human resistance since a human cannot fight as well, with the precision and quickness of a machine. OZ's leader originally believed that pacifism was a cry of the weak, but strongly opposed the dehumanising of wars, making humans redundant on the battlefield. War loses its impact, and instead of achieving absolute victory with souless weapons, a demeanour to fighting is necessary. People will fight, and realise how pathetic and painful it is and choose to stop fighting. On a small scale however, history will repeat itself. But as leaders of both sides understand, they continue stir up a conflict of massive proportions just to get that point across to all of humanity. It states that certain conditions must be met in order for total pacifism to work and maintain itself. Certain foundations must be laid.

1. All weapons must be destroyed.
2. The desire to fight must be distinguished.
3. A heart that is capable of sympathise with people, kindness. And leaders with that heart.

One must watch it to understand. I would rarely speak of such medias with such high regards. However, the writers clearly thought long and hard on a storyline as politically and philosophically charged as this one. In a way, this storyline reflects what is happening in the world these days. War and Peace are constantly being toyed with, and "peacekeeping" forces are deployed worldwide in political "hot zones".

The feature length film that was created to finish off the series expands on these ideas. It's about the fact that peace isn't something that is just given to you. You must want it, badly enough to fight for it. And once everyone fights for peace, then you don't need to fight at all. Everyone means civilians, soldiers and politians alike.

Gets the mind thinking. It's why I like this series, and always will like it. Anyways I think everyone is sick of this "anime reviewing" crap that I seem to do for this series haha... like I said, I'm kinda obsessed with it. but hey... gotta go sleep.

Strange dreams...

2009-02-03T21:59:00.000+10:00

I think its fairly obvious that these posts are getting less and less frequent... I guess at the start there was heaps to talk about, but as time goes on, only significant events are new or worth noting... anyways...

Last night's dream was indeed strange, from driving and crashing into the car infront and having my car bounce back off his car, and only having minor dents and scratches to falling asleep with about 8 pieces of gum in my mouth and choking while sleeping, which causes me to wake up and felt as if something was indeed lodged in my throat and started coughing. In my dream, my crash was because of a miscalculation on the required distance to stop with half the brake pedal down and realising too late that I was still moving to fast and hit. I have no idea why that would come up in my sleep lol... and why I would be chewing gum in my sleep is beyond me, and it seems that I have a habit of dreaming of myself sleeping... which is kinda strange... And to dream of myself choking was even weirder... Haha... well at least I didnt dream that I died :P those of the superstituous kind reckon that when you dream of your death, you will die soon or something random like that. I think I stated somewhere before about my liking of the anime that is Gundam Wing, and I have watched 45 episodes of it in 2 days... There was a particular quote in it about fearing death. "That's right, you mustn't fear your death, because death is only an end result given to you at your birth". I find that quite interesting. But anyways... yeah... thats enough for today...

BLT!!!!

2009-01-24T18:30:00.000+10:00

Yes, I am back from 5 days and 4 nights of the BLT camp! And if you were thinking it, no this was not a subway apprenticeship training camp on how to make the best sandwiches in the world. In fact, it was far from it. BLT is the Brisbane Leadership Training camp, and it is a camp that brings together christians from various local Chinese churches to learn how to lead and teach ourselves and others on the Christian Walk. It is about bringing up leaders within the churches so that Brisbane and Queensland, Australia and all of the world would hear of Jesus and what hope, grace and salvation we can find in him.

The camp was split into 5 strands for people at different years of attendance at BLT, and as this was my first year at BLT I was in Strand 1. We learnt about how to interpret a passage by asking questions about it, about things we might not understand at first glance. By asking these questions, and reading the neighbouring passages and the book in which it is contained, we can find out the context in which the passage speaks from. We learnt that there was 3 types of contexts, Literary, Historical, and Theological Context with theological context being split into two sub-categories, which are Biblical and Systematical theology. Knowing the style in which the passage is written and who the author and audience was influences the way it is written and how the words can be intepreted. Knowing the timeframes and events that were occuring at the time during which the passage was written helps interpret the meaning and purpose of the passage. Knowing how it fits into events of the book as well as how it fits into the rest of the bible allows us to know what the passage's role in the whole bible is. Knowing what topics and issues the passage covers allows us to understand what the passage says and how it links with other sections of the bible that also talk about similar topics. Knowing what the context is allows us then to pull apart the passage into its individual sections of text that flow together to express an idea or concept. Having done that, you will be able to understand exactly what the passage is trying to say, after which you can develop further understanding of the passage and how it is relevant to yourself and others and from there begin to teach others.

The passage that we were learning to do all this was Hebrews 12:18-25. And it was exceptionally hard, which makes me believe that it is a BLT tradition to choose the hardest possible passages for it's studies. Which in turn makes things easier when you read simpler passages or passages with more context. It was a really challenging camp that really expanded my knowledge and changed the way I read the bible. To know how the OT and the NT have such intricate links. It even resurfaced the thoughts I onced had about considering entering full-time ministry one day, and had heaps of questions answered to help me consider whether it was the thing for me.

But the greatest thing about this BLT was the men's and women's workshops in which the guys and the girls were seperated into different workshops to talk about the differences and all sorts of gender related stuff.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed BLT and hope that I can go to BLT+ and next year's BLT as well.

4hr Cooking spree...

2009-01-19T00:03:00.000+10:00

Today was a good old friend's birthday, and I volunteered to help him with food arrangements. Expecting 18-20 guests, we went groceries shopping to buy food. And I'd have to say, as much as we seemed to have bought, ie. $100+, it was just enough... Or more accurately just over enough. With 2.8kg of chicken and 1.5kg of uncooked pasta, +8L of punch that didn't end up being made... I think we covered everything...

First time cooking without the reliance of recipes, and depending only on past experience and memory. And apart from a few kitchen booboos, ie. letting the pasta cook with my back turned and having it spill... twice... thrice... :P I think we did a good job of it. Suprisingly enough, the chicken skewers were completely gone as well as all the veges too. But yeah... haha funny thing was someone asking me for cooking lessons :P Though I don't think I have nearly enough experience to be teaching someone else how to cook lol... but yeah... It was fun though, although as the title might suggest, I was running around the kitchen for 4 hours :P Makes me feel sorry for the professional chefs really... Although it is the first time I've ever served so many people at once, ie. dinner for 18... Maybe next time I decide to jump in the deep end and assist with menu's and food, I'll be much quicker haha...

O, and if your wondering what I cooked, it was satay chicken skewers, triple cheese pasta bake, chicken and mushroom pasta bake, chinese veges, and the others prepared garlic bread and a snack of nachos.

Neways, yeah...

Product Design Fail

2009-01-13T22:50:00.000+10:00

For some reason, our family recieves some junk mail that advertises some of the most ridiculous product ideas in the world. I think the products they sell are all "experimentals", and granted some of them are rather ingenious, some are mediocre, and some are just plain stupid. Here are some examples of STUPID ideas.

SCISSORS with inbuilt LASER POINTER.
Now I have heard and seen of circular saws with lasers and other stationary hardware tools or large bladed motor saws with lasers, and they work because A. if the laser is stationary, then the line is guarenteed to be straight and the saw just has to align with the laser beam; or B. The blade is too large to actually deviate once it has entered the material at a specific angle. But on an implement like a pair of scissors? and remember also that even on jigsaws, the thing is that the blade movement is non-relient on the hand, where as scissors rely on the movement of your hand to produce its cutting force. Therefore that laser beam will MOVE while you are moving your fingers up and down and the beam will never be straight and is therefore redundant.

POT CLIP.
This is a clip that you attach to the side of a pot while you are cooking on the stove. The idea is that the clip is used to hold a spoon to that you have a place to put it when you are not stirring it. Basically this is for a remarkably lazy person who couldn't be bothered using a saucer or something like that to place the spoon down. So why do I say it is a STUPID idea? Because with a clip on the side of the pot, you CAN'T close the lid. So you have to remove the clip to place the lid on the pot. Now unless you intend to boil your soup or sauce or whatever into a dry cake of muck, you need a lid on it while it boils. Which means that you will still need a place for the spoon while u have the lid on... ie. saucer or something... so why have a clip? the only time this can potentially come in handy is when you are simmering something... but what good does a clip do lol... Useless...

SONICE KEY FINDER.
Just by the name, the first thing that comes in mind is WTH... basically, what this thing is, is a key chain attachment. Basically it has a mic and a speaker and a light. What's it good for? well, when you can't find you keys, you WHISTLE... and if the keychain is close then it will pick up your whistle and it will beep and the light will flash. However... what if you can't whistle? and thats not a silly question... alot of people can't whistle... and even if you could whistle, you would need to walk around to all the possible places you left your keys and continuously whistle. It's ok if your by yourself... but otherwise you look like an idiot. O and chances are, if you have some kind of barrier between the keys and yourself, it won't trigger, anything like keys inside bags or clothing, probably won't register. Another thing is, that keychain clearly does not have the AI needed to define a whistle and any other noise of similar frequency. so... either one, your watching some kind of sporting event on TV and everytime the whistle goes off, your keychain will go off. Or other high pitched noises like maybe instruments or anything will set it off. Inconsistent, silly stuff lol...

LASER PARKING SYSTEM.
This is just silly IMO. Basically what this thing is, is a ceiling sensor that goes on your garage roof. What it does is that when you rear your car into the garage, the sensor will detect your cars movement and shoot a beam of laser to where you want to park (obviously you have adjusted that point manually cos that think isn't military equipment). Thing is, a laser only shows up as a dot... and if you in a car in reverse, YOU CAN'T SEE THE GROUND. so how the heck can you see the beam? Ok, so some people might say, "well you can see it on the boot of your car", well depends on what car you drive, you can't see what is pointing away from you, so if your boot is slanted backwards then you won't be able to see. If you drive a hatchback, you can't see it, if you drive a wagon, you can't see it. If you drive a Van, you can't see it. If you drive a Ute... slim chance, but probably not. A novel idea, but in reality it's a useless contraption.

LED HAT LIGHT.
As the name suggests, it's a light that goes on a hat. So what's the problem with it? the problem with it is that it goes on the RIM of the hat. Basically its a clip with 5 LED lights on it. It works on baseball hats, because it has a solid rim. But what if the rim of the hat isn't solid? like those floppy rim hats? then your rim will basically drop and your lights will point to the floor. Ok, if you have a hat to clip it onto, then its a good hand's free alternative right? well... If you need a torch, then why do you need a hat? You need a torch when you don't have light, but you need a hat when the SUN is too bright. It's a mixture of conflicting usages. Sure, if at night and you need light, you can just find a hat and clip this on. But why don't you get a proper headlight with proper straps? they can fit OVER or go UNDER a hat if you must where one... and they can go on to things that a hat brim clip can't, like helmets. Another advantage that the headlights have over this hatlight is that headlights are strapped and buckled to your head, therefore it is hard to lose it no matter how hard you swing yourself around. Hats however come of easy, and even if the hat doesn't come off, the clip will. So just get a proper headlight... its so much more useful. So unless you CONSTANTLY wear a cap, I don't think this thing will hardly ever be useful.

While these are novel ideas... They are clearly less than practical... Each of them are something suited to extremely specific lifestyle and people... And definitely aren't successful commercial products. Figures why you would find it in some local, over the phone purchase catalog, cos no self-respecting and partially intelligent business man would ever mass produce something as crazy as these things and expect to make a profit and maintain the reputation of his brand.

Anyways, the end :P

Holiday Sleeping Patterns...

2009-01-10T15:02:00.000+10:00

Holidays would be the worst time of the year for my physical body I reckon. Why do I say that? Because of my extremely retarded sleeping and eating patterns during holiday periods. With no uni and no work, there is no reason to sleep early and no reason to wake up early... Hence I sleep LATE and wake up even later. When I say late I mean I've drifted from sleeping at 1am ish from the start of the holidays, to sleeping at 4:30am last night... which... is pretty bad... I woke up at 2:30pm this morning... so that's horrendous lol... church on sundays is the only thing that brings my week back into relative alignment but even then, I still sleep at 1:30am and sometimes 2am.. to wake up at 8am... either way holidays are really unhealthy for me. Because I'm only awake at those hours I only eat about 2 meals a day... so... thats also very unhealthy... While I'm working or at uni I eat 3 and sometimes even 4 meals a day and sleep at or before 12am... and waking at 7-8am... and if I have 8 am starts at uni or work then I sleep sometimes at around 10-11pm which is an incredible feat for those of you who know me and my nocturnal tendencies. So yes... I'm sure I've gotten skinner than I was at the start of the holidays, and I was already skinny then... Probably lost abit of muscle as well from the lack of physical exercise... At least I have work next week :P

Live Firefighting experience =P

2009-01-04T19:44:00.000+10:00

Today was an unusually exciting day... I was just hanging out with friends and having a bit of an afternoon snack at the soy custard place at sunnybank hills... which is across the road from the shopping centre. Well presumably a smoker drove by on the other side of the road and tossed a cigarette butt out the window and into the hedging around the shopping centre... We watched as the bush caught fire and started smouldering and flaming, but it wasn't a big flame and was slowly burning itself out. While some of us there were considering to call the fire brigade, one of my other friends yelled across the road and asked if I had any water... I so happened to have half a litre of water in my car and so I took it and we put out the little smouldering flame =P While we were doing that some random girls asked us whether we felt like heroes... which was kinda random... but yeah... It was enough excitement for the day lol... And while we were inside enjoying our snack about 15 minutes later, fire trucks began circling the shopping centre searching for a fire lol... yes... that's about as exciting as my day got... neways... I'm bored and tired...

I was debating in the car about smoking laws being an environmental issue or a health issue, which I thought was more health inclined than environmental seeing how cigarette in isolation is carbon neutral but burning of fossil fuels is not as it comes from outside our biosphere and fills it with carbon dioxide. However, after the little incident I would have to agree that smoking is also an environmental hazard as well... as is public drinking.... as live cigarette butts and glass bottles can set things on fire and cause damage to both environment and to other people... but yeah... thats all I can care to write for today...

New Years Celebrations

2009-01-01T22:28:00.000+10:00

Yup.... today is the 1st of the 1st, 2009... another tally on the wall. Didn't get home till 2:30am lol... And because I was driving, I didn't drink a drop :P not that I would have even if I wasn't driving... I'm sure those photos are on facebook already :P but yeah... some people were a tad drunk... but noone was disorderly... just slow :P Which reminds me I left that present behind AGAIN... I was meant to pick it up today... but I forgot again... I'd have to say both teams cooked pretty well too :P although personal bias... says that our team cooked better XP chicken + seafood risotto, satay chicken skewers and Chicken lasagne was our team's menu, the other team's menu was, soya chicken, chicken pastries and butter chicken... So I'd have to say our team (uni student team) had the more sophisticated menu :P but we did go overtime by a few minutes... but that was because of kitchen size... If it was in my kitchen we'd be done in half the time :P first because we have about 4 times the knives and alot more chopping boards haha... but yeah enough of the excuses and "whinging" from me. It was good fun all in all. Hope the new year has good things in store for me. haha... anyways Happy New Year to everyone who even bothers reading this... I'm tired...

Gundam Wing

2008-12-29T00:43:00.000+10:00

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

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

Photos of Our Christmas Dinner

2008-12-26T15:42:00.000+10:00

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

Christmas Dinner 2008

2008-12-26T00:32:00.000+10:00

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

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

I feel dead...

Pre-Christmas Dinner with Neighbours...

2008-12-24T23:04:00.000+10:00

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

O well... *sigh*...

Christmas Present Wrapping...

2008-12-23T21:57:00.000+10:00

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

O well...

Capturing Lightning

2008-12-22T14:58:00.000+10:00

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

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

Carnivorous Dinner...

2008-12-21T18:19:00.000+10:00

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

Rusty Tennis Skills

2008-12-20T00:13:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

Neways, I'm gonna go shower...

Alive DVD

2008-12-18T17:32:00.000+10:00

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

Early Morning Work...

2008-12-17T23:53:00.000+10:00

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

Our Weed and Strawberry Garden

2008-12-16T17:37:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

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

Slept In..

2008-12-14T18:40:00.000+10:00

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

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

Weddings...

2008-12-13T23:41:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

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

Weird Dream... About Swimming...

2008-12-13T12:23:00.000+10:00

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

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

Some Observations...

2008-12-12T23:50:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

Crazy Vietnamese Karaoke...

2008-12-10T20:53:00.000+10:00

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

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

Neways, it was a funny moment from today.

Yay! Pay Rise!

2008-12-09T21:19:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

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

Drawing lines, Helping Hands and Showing Off

2008-12-09T00:20:00.000+10:00

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

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

The Weak and The Strong...

2008-12-07T22:55:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

Why Do People Like Clubbing?

2008-12-06T22:07:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

First Proper Training Session of The Year

2008-12-05T19:33:00.000+10:00

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

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

Amazing Grace

2008-12-05T02:51:00.000+10:00

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

Freezing at Work

2008-12-03T19:38:00.000+10:00

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

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

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

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

Neways... enough from me...

Indescribable DVD

2008-12-02T21:24:00.000+10:00

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

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

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