You are an Idiot…

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.

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

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

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…

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!!!!!

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…

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!

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

Allnighters 4 & 5

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

 

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All Nighter No.3

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!

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

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…

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

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!!!

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

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

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

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

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...

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.

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

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!

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...

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!!!

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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...

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!

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

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...

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...

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

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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...

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...

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