clarity

yet another hazy city

2007-05-06T08:10:00.000+10:00

I'm currently sitting at a computer in the Cathay lounge at Hong Kong airport. Its very near the end of this (rather quick) journey, and to quote cliches, feels like two weeks since I sat at this same computer blogging about the impending excitement that was this trip to Europe.

I've spent the last day and a half in Hong Kong, trying to adjust to the time difference and to find some cheapish electronic goods and a PS3 for Jenni. One thing that was rather difficult to get used to in this country was the busyness of the place. Its a really cool place, but I definitely couldn't live here. I'm way too westernised as an asian to get used to this country. It may be the fact I'm exhausted and sick of re-packing my luggage to make the most of the limited space I have, but I am ready for home. I'm sure I probably won't feel that tomorrow when I go back to work, but meh, it'll be nice to be in clothes that are clean! :P

The first night we were here, Danny and I went to the Sony store in Causeway Bay (which was cool) and around the Times Square mall looking for prices. PS3, camera and W880i phone was the enquiries and the prices were all high as they were all pretty much the same! I had major trouble getting to sleep that night, and the jet lag caught up with me as my body kept telling me it was only early evening, when it was supposed to be 2 in the morning. Arg.

Yesterday we went to Wan Chai to look at computer stuff, had dodgy "yum cha" around there and then went to Mong Kok. Mongers was quite good, the prices were good, so we got a few things here and there. Even funnier were the markets in the street, where I picked up a number of mobile phone accessories and a mad stuffed toy for Jenni. No more PS3 was required, so I was less worried about luggage space at this point.

We ate at Cafe Coral at night, which is this funny chain sort of Hong Kong cafe restaurant, and the food was quite good. After that Danny left to do some shopping as we shopped for business shirts and trousers. I think to get the most out of shopping in Hong Kong, I really need to spend near to a week here and have lots of luggage room!

Anyways, I had to get up before 5 this morning to check in early for the flight, and I'm about 20 mins away from boarding the flight home. One thing that struck me this morning ont he train to the airport, is that Hong Kong would rival the UK as rather depressing due to the lack of a visible sun. It seems to be always overcast here, and very hazy. While I won't relish going to work tomorrow, I'll be glad that I'm back in Australia, if only for the clear horizon and clean air(comparatively).

Cheers
-d

the land of tea, fish & chips and bangers & mash

2007-05-03T16:56:00.000+10:00

After our quick Germany stop, we came to the land of the Eng, and its capital: London.

The first day evening was a bit of a writeoff, so all we did after trekking to the hotel by train was to have dinner across the road and then sleep.

Sunday 29th
The next day we went out to Winbledon to visit my cousin Karen and her family. That is, her husband Tom and her 13 month old daughter Grace. I had wanted to check out Wimbledon tennis centre as well. We took a train and got picked up from the station by Tom. I hadn't met her daughter before (and I don't think my dad had either), and so she was very shy at first. Which Karen said was quite weird as she was normally quite rowdy. They decided to take us on a walk past Wimbledon and I was quite amazed at the whole town itself. It's a really nice area and I could see why they chose to live there. We walked past the tennis centre but I didn't feel like going on a tour then. We trekked to Wimbledon village and had lunch at an american place Joe Schmo's. After lunch we walked back and most of the afternoon was spent playing with Grace as she had gotten over her shyness and spent a lot of time poking the Aussie animals on my Socceroo jersey.

After visiting them my dad wanted to go to Chinatown so we went to get some dinner. One thing I had to get used to (but still haven't) is that many of the restaurants here allow smoking. I'm glad that isn't the case in Syd, heh.

Monday 30th

Danny Lee arrived in London from DC in the morning, and came over to our hotel after he had found his hotel. We decided to do a bit of shopping (well I did, I was looking for shoes). So we went up to Bond St station to go down Oxford St to check out the shops. We went down here for a while (their Niketown is massive!) and found our way to Regent St, which contained the Hamley's toy store. When I come back to London in the future I'm so going back there, hehe.

Picadilly Circus was the next stop and then we felt like being touristy after lunch by checking out Big Ben at Westminster. I had no idea of its true scale until I saw it in person and was quite impressed by the architecture of their parliamentary buildings. We also saw Westminster Abbey and walked around a bit before separating from my dad as I followed Danny back to help him check into his hotel. We searched for a good pub dinner after that and found a place where we could have two meals for 6 pounds 95p. Good deal that was, so we both had bangers and mash. The cool thing was that Oasis was being played and so I had my proper "I'm fully in England" moment. That was cool.

Tuesday 1st
Buckingham Palace was our touristy objective for the morning as we viewed the changing of the guard. Well, it was more the marching, as we weren't near the gates to see the proper changing.
After the excitement, we went to Picadilly Circus to get the shoes I wanted, and went back to the hotel to drop it off. We found a pub to have lunch at where I had a massive Guiness Steak pie and mash. That also felt very English.

Went walked along the waterfront after lunch and made our way to the London Eye. It was great being in it at the height it got to, but losing battery in the camera sucked. It was Chinatown for dinner again in the evening.

Wednesday 2nd
Manchester was our sole objective for the day. Old Trafford!
We all took a train in the morning, and it took us about 2 hours to get to Manchester. At the ground, we stopped by the megastore, where I picked up a jersey with Rooney number, name and Champions League arm badge for 61 quid. My gosh that hurt the bank. But still, I figure it was worth it. :) We took the stadium tour and this was incredible, as my dream of coming to Old Trafford and seeing the ground was fulfilled as I got to sit in the player's dugout on the side of the pitch and in the dressing rooms.

The dodgy thing about the day was that my sickness that was developing for a bit hit me fully today and put a dampener on things. Anyhows, we got Burger King for dinner before getting on the train back. We went to find an internet cafe so that my dad could online check in for our flight to HK, but could only find one in the hotel near London Euston station. While he used the computer, we found that they were showing the Milan v Utd Champions League match. We got to see Utd go down horribly for the 2nd half and we (well, just me) trudged back to our hotels to pack for leaving the next day.

Today (Thursday 3rd)
As I had packed my stuff the night before, I met with Danny and we shopped for last minute souvenirs and stuff we can't get in Sydney. Then I went back to the hotel to get my stuff as we trained it to the airport.

And that is where I leave you for now, as I'm sitting in the Heathrow Cathay lounge. If I have time I'll blog from HK.

-d

germany

2007-05-03T16:43:00.000+10:00

Ahoy. As this is the first time I've gotten to a computer with time to blog, I figre I'd fill you all in about where I've been to in a couple of parts. First its Germany.

After Glasgow, we flew out to Berlin last Thursday. We flew first to Heathrow, then connected to a flight to Berlin Tegel airport. At the British Airways lounge at Heathrow we also saw a former Bond. That was amusing, he didn't seem very nice though, pity.

In the air on the way to Berlin, we met this nice middle aged German woman who we spoke to for a while. She offered to help us get on our way to our hotel which was really great, as we learnt that the transport system is very confusing for those who are unaccustomed.

With her help, we managed to make it to our hotel quicker than if we tried to get there ourselves. Berlin is a really interesting city, and the side we were on was East Berlin. The area was considered a "trendy" part of town, and it sort of showed. Being an asian in Berlin is like being an NBA basketballer in China, you stick out heaps. As a result it felt pretty uncomfortable getting around for much of the German leg of the trip, especially since we couldn't read any of the signs or anything (apart from some words I picked up through logic).

The day after arriving (Friday) we took an Inter City Express train (man it was fast) to the town of Wolfsburg, to check out the Volkswagen centre, the Autostadt. It was an amazing place to go to, and many of the pavillions were really cool with the factory tour being the highlight I'd say. Great for car fans. I managed to get a headache through the day though (which may have been a result of being upside down in a harness), and when heading back to Berlin I felt really icky and sick. I recovered with some meds and stuff, and tried not to do to much when back at the hotel.

Our trip to Germany ended with our flight to London Heathrow the next day.

quiet day

2007-04-25T23:18:00.000+10:00

Ayyy, the last night in the land of the Scots. No tour for us today, just a large amount of cruising the shops around Glasgow looking for stuff. Like the rest of the trip so far, this place amazes in me, just in a different way to the rest of the place. It was odd that in a city that really isn't that large, there seems to be multiple locations of the same stores.

So yeah, all I mostly did all day was just walk around a lot. Lunch was at a chinese place, which is really funny, as nearly all the meals I've had so far has been asian food, hehe. Not too much else to mention I'd say. Was watching the Chelsea v Liverpool Champs League match on Sky Sports HD. Man that was cool as. If only Aus had decent quality pay tv sport like that.

Tomorrow we're off to Berlin in the morning. To get there we gotta fly to London then change plane for Berlin. We'll have a bit of time once we get there and look around, and then we go to the VW Autostadt the next day. Not sure how my access to the internet when I get to Germany though. Hopefully I've be able to eat some German food when I'm there tho, ehehe.

I'd put up photos of stuff so far, but I can't get to a mem stick reader. Dodge. I'll get some up when I find one hopefully.

-d

wonders of scotland

2007-04-24T23:00:00.000+10:00

Maan I'm exhausted. Lots of walking around everywhere in the past couple of days. On the day of my last blog, we went up north towards Stirling. On the way we visited Bannockburn, the site of Scotland's battle for freedom over the English when led by Robert the Bruce. (The stuff that Braveheart was based on). It was pretty interesting stuff, and the hertiage centre there had chain mail and helmets from that time period which you could try on. Way cool.

After that, we went up to Stirling Castle to have a look. We were lucky that it just happened to be a free weekend to visit it, and we didn't need to pay the £11 each to get in. It was okay in there, but there wasn't a lot of things due to the ongoing renovations of the place. That night I got to try one of my uncle's guitars, his Gibson ES-335. Unbelievable instrument, so incredibly nice!

The next day we had to be up early to follow my uncle to his asian grocery store. As his staff had not made it to work yet, me and dad had to help him with a bit of work at the shop, including unloading stock from a truck, ehehe. At around 12pm we went off to the train station to take our trip to Edinburgh.

1 hr later, we got to Edinburgh with the intention of looking around the place for a bit and then heading to St Andrews to stay the night near the golf course. We took a hop on-hop off tour bus around Edinburgh to see the place, and it was really nice. Heaps different sort of city to anything else I've seen, the architecture and history being the things which really stood out for me. We visited Edinbugh Castle, seeing the Scottish crown jewels amongst other things. As it got later in the day, we realised that we should try and find accomodation. We weren't able to find anything in St Andrews that wasn't heaps expensive, so we stayed in Edinburgh for the night and decided to go to the course in the morning.

The next morning (which was this morning) we trained it up to St Andrews to try our luck with golf. The good news was that we were able to play if we really wanted to. The bad news was that it was £125 + £30 for club hire if we wanted to play. Incredibly expensive for two ppl who haven't played for a while. Hehehe. As a result, we had a look around and while at the main clubhouse found out that there were different golf courses that weren't the famouse Old Course. I really should have looked it up on the internet before we came, haha. We thought to have a go at one of the other cheaper courses, but my dad didn't feel up to it (he hurt his shoulder carrying the bag he brought up there with his golf stuff!). We shopped around at the various golf shops in the town centre, and I picked up an Adidas cap and shirts.

After lunch, we tried to rush back to the train station and get the train back to Glasgow. Like what seems to happen to me quite a lot back at home, we missed the train by 1 min! Ah well. On the plus side though, the Tornado jet fighters from the nearby air base did a number of fly bys as they landed at the base. We had the same in the morning when we got off the train, as a couple of them flew by on their take off, with full afterburner. The noise was incredible. Anyhows, we got the train back an hour later, and soon after getting on I was so tired and just slept for most of the trip.

As I'm really tired at the moment, I'm not really concetrating well on what I'm writing right now. But how good was Man Utd's win over Milan! Awesomeness!

-d

laggin of the jet variety

2007-04-22T11:02:00.000+10:00

Ahey there,

Sitting in my uncle's living room watching tv atm, feeling a lot better than I was last night. I hit the wall around 6:15pm yesterday while on the plane to Glasgow and felt really tired. That continued for most of the night, but I was a bit more awake when we got back to my Uncle's place after dinner as he was showing us his home entertainment system and array of guitars.

At this point, I think I've mostly gotten over the jetlag, but we'll have to see how it is later on in the day. Apparently it hasn't been raining much here, but since our arrival its started to rain again! It feels like Melbourne at the Aus Open again, bringing the rain and all.

I think the plan for the day is check our some castles at Stirling and maybe check out the city. I'm watching Narnia on SkyMovies HD right now, which is cool as. They have HD channels on their tv here, soo cool! In a bit I'll have a go at my Uncle's guitars.. his Gibson ES-335 looks incredible.

Anyways, time to get more socks on, its 13 degrees today, nice springtime day in Glasgow, hehe.

-d

yum cha breakfast

2007-04-21T06:41:00.000+10:00

Ahoy all those people who have decided to follow my trip (or are just bored at work)!

I'm currently in the Cathay First Class lounge and I'm just marvelling at the stuff they offer people here. I'm so lucky my dad is an uber frequent flyer. Anyways, we begun this trip waiting for the check in gates to open at Sydney. We had tried to avoid traffic so much that we got to the airport way early. It was good though, and we spent plenty of time at the Qantas lounge as well. After a nice bit of food, we got on our plane to HK. This flight was actually a bit icky, as it was really uncomfortable to get to sleep, and my butt is still feeling the after effects of a bad sitting/reclining position. Otherwise the flight was great, and they had dinner served (at 10:30pm) and breakfast as well (chicken rice congee! my gosh that was cool I'd have to say).

We arrived in HK right on the anticipated time they had planned, at 5.05am local time. After which we mafuddled around until we got to the Cathay lounges here. I could not believe what I saw, there was an entire games room, with banks of tvs and PS2s to be played! Also, there was a full seat/wheel/pedal set up for Gran Turismo 4! Crazy.

The great thing about these crazy lounges is that you can shower here with everything provided, and I'm really feeling heaps better now that I'm not cramped in economy anymore. The flight later this morning will be a killer though.. 13 hours to London!

Back to brekky now. Har gou, noodles, etc. for breakfast! Crazy

Will post more once I get there.

-d

hmm

2007-04-20T08:41:00.001+10:00

maan
stupid email disclaimer..

So it (nearly) begins

2007-04-20T08:25:00.001+10:00

Heyheyhey

This place certainly has a lot of cobwebs ay..

Well! I'll amake sure this is updated in the next few weeks at least. Heaps of things have happened since I last posted, the Aus Open has come and gone, and so has my life as a bumming uni student. I began work on the 5th of Feb at the most sustainable bank in the world (5 years running). I'm part of the grad program, and while it has its heights, I'd say that there are a number of lows too. Lets hope it evens out a bit :)

Work has sorta sucked a lot of my time, but I currently have a good schedule. I start around 7:30-7:45 and finish around 4:15 or so. I'm savouring this until I get to an area that is more pressured. It will get long then.

Oh, the exciting part now, I'm going to be off to Europe for the next two weeks (as many of you know).
I fly out tonight at 10pm, to London with a stopover in HK for 4 hrs. Then change planes and go to Glasgow to stay with my uncle for a bit. Then theres golf and castles (St Andrews GC!!) and then off to Germany to see the Volkswagen Autostadt in Wolfsburg. Then back to the UK to see London for a while and then stopping in HK for a couple of days before coming home.

It doesn't seem very long, and I'm sure that it will go faster than I realise, but I'm grateful that I can take the leave so soon after starting this job!

I'll try and put up pictures too ay.

-d

sick

2007-01-22T20:51:00.001+11:00

Ahoy everyone. I'm back in Sydney again,

2007-01-22T19:35:00.001+11:00

aus open adventures - day 1

2007-01-19T23:23:00.000+11:00

Another year, another Australian Open. After a number of complications which saw Justin pull out of the trip (as far as I know, he didn't actually confirm if he could or couldn't go) and James and Candy delay their departure until Saturday, I arrived as planned last night here in Melbourne on the plane that you see to your right.

First thing this morning i met up with Andrew at Maccas on Swanston St and then made the short tram trip to Melbourne Park for the tennis. We were all set to see the pride of Chinese women's doubles (The Sun sisters) when the rain came and prevented their Russian opponents from being (solar) eclipsed. Ahem, yes, just an example of what spending a day with Andrew results in........ The picture shows us braving the crowds, and obviously before said rain fell.

We decided to go and get some lunch and snacks in the city as it would be much cheaper than at the open. It was a great decision since the rain was coming down and we weren't able to see much tennis anyway. More importantly, we had ramen which was pretty good. gigi noodle place or something. When we arrived back at the courts, it appeared that the animals were let loose. Or rather, Optus had brought their usual zoo with them. I'll let this picture explain it.. :)

Due to the wet, we decided that we should try our luck with getting into Vodafone Arena, which is the only covered court available on a ground pass. We were confronted with a pretty large queue which we patiently sat in for 1.5 hours.

As you can see I was absolutely thrilled to be there..

As was Andrew.. hehehe

We did finally make it into the place, where we saw Mauresmo polish off her opponent and Dementieva destroy hers. Its odd how the womens draw seems to be so completely one sided.. It must be because its out of 3 sets.. Anyways, we decided to check out the Wayne Arthurs farewell match since Gasquet vs Monfils wasn't for 45 mins or so. We were rather stunned to witness Arthurs sort of fall apart on court right in front of us! We couldn't get in, but we did see it from the entrance. Sad to see him go out like that.

We went back to Vodafone Arena and managed to get great seats for the Gasquet vs Monfils match. I was pleased with this achievement. The match was what I was waiting for since I saw the schedule this morning and it promised to be a cracker of a match.

It didn't disappoint (much) as there was some completely awesome shots played by both players. Gasquet was dominant in the first set as he smashed Monfils, while Monfils came back in the 2nd. I wanted Monfils to win but he was just too inconsistent, and keep up with Gasquet.

I ended my day at the Open by watching some of the Roddick vs Safin match on the big screen near the entrance to the complex. I was planning to watch it all and then meet up with Andrew, Marty and Lou but I was too buggered and decided to just head back and watch it on tv. Tomorrow is another busy day with James and Candy arriving so I should probably sleep now!

-d

P.S. I apologise if the pictures and text look all out of whack on your browser.. It works fine in IE i think, but in Firefox its a bit stuffed.. I'll be a bit more straight forward on the next one

melbourne escapades

2007-01-12T00:21:00.000+11:00

I thought I'd share a bit of my trip to Melb with you all, as I've just downloaded some of the photos I took down there.

This is my cousin Wendy's silly and bratty dog Astro. He's an old man now, about 8 years old. At this point it was late and he was sleepy.

Much of the trip before Jenni came down on the 27th involved waiting around at my uncle's place doing a lot of nothing. It wasn't too bad as I spent a great deal of it annoying my bro. As you can see, I was highly motivated while doing nothing at this point.. :)

When Jenni came down to Melb, we went down to Mornington to visit the Strawberry Farm, and had this cool Devonshire Tea thingy. The scones went down well and I made sure to finish all of the delicious jam. Man I'm getting hungry just thinking of it now. How cool is the teapot jacket thingy?!

This is my cousin Kevin (left) and my chunky bro, doing their best to look as charming as possible. My bro likes showing off his false teeth. He does well when he scares little kids with it by telling them what happens when you eat too much sweets. Ehehehe.

The spectacular drive back, with me at the wheel for part of the time. Jenni took quite a few random photos in the car of the countryside. They were pretty random.

My bro pointed this out on our last stop before we got back to Sydney at Gundagai. If you're only glancing at the pic, look closely at the front wheel and bumper. Such a brilliant parking job.. :) The driver must have been itching for a coffee!

Well, that was a sample of my Melb trip quick smart. If there are good pics on Jen's camera, I'll put those up, otherwise the next lot I show will be camp photos or my Aus Open trip! (Which I'll photo-blog from definitely!)

-d

funfunfun

2007-01-10T23:47:00.000+11:00

omg I'm exhausted.. just came back from driving 3 ours from Huskisson where the usual crew are holidaying for the week. Took Jen, Candy and Ken boi down for the trip and it was cool to finally get to the beach for the first time this summer! Although I think if I'm going to visit ppls on holidays next time I'll just stay over for the night. Driving for 6 hours in total is very tiring.

^-- Part of the Husky crew

Plans for the next few weeks before i start work..
- Cleaning my room up PROPERLY
- Playing some golf
- Going to Melbourne to see the tennis at the Aus Open

Oh, and I'm on a fairly large 3 mobile cap now, so I'll hopefully be picture blogging more often via mms. Woot for cappp!

Anyway, need to sleep

-d

results revealed

2006-12-22T01:12:00.000+11:00

Well, for those who have spoken with me in the past month or two, they will know of the tremendous worry I had regarding whether I would finish uni this year or not, given the difficult subject I encountered this sem (Tele Channels) and the problems associated with it. Well, judgement day did finally arrive on Wednesday and I am glad (and relieved) to report that I came through successful!

When I saw my results I sat there a bit shocked and definitely delighted to have finally passed everything, but with a rather large feeling of disbelief that I have finally finished, after 6 years at the great concrete monstrosity that is UTS.

So whats the plan for me now? Well, I start at the Pac in February, so I have a bit over a month to relax heaps before I begin full-time, real work for the first time ever, free from the distraction that is uni. Oh man I can't wait. Although I'm sure I will be feeling differently by about March! I go to Melbourne this Saturday with family for a week until the 30th, and then theres church youth camp, and then I go to Melb again a few weeks later for the Aus Open tennis! Exciting :)

I just got a SE K800i phone (woot) on 3 so I have a cap plan finally (woot x2) which means I can now make calls without worrying about spending way above my call limit (woot x3). Plus I can photo-blog to this very site, how mad is that!

Time to sign off and install the latest build of Firefox. Will hopefully blog with added enhancements now that I can photo-blog :)

-d

the return

2006-12-04T01:06:00.000+11:00

omgomg

Can you actually believe I'm writing a blog again! AMAZING.

Anyways, enough with the stupidity, its time to update whoever is out there reading this and has not spoken to me in the past few months.

I have finished uni.

I think that sums it all up! Well, I've finished uni pending my exam results which (hopefully) have gone okays. I'm sweating on Tele Chans which was a bit of a worry. Otherwise I'm freeee! My thesis wasn't as much of a worry at the end, and was completed quite in advance of the deadline! Well... a day or two :)

What has been up since then...?!? Well, as you can see on the left of the screen, there is something weird that if you are familiar with Xbox 360, is my gamertag profile. This means.... that I have a 360!! Haha, duhhhh. Well yes, I have a 360 and its been good to me so far, no problems really as yet. I got a number of games, including Pro Evo 6, Gears of War and I'm getting Elder Scrolls: Oblivion this week.

So naturally, since the end of uni my days have predominantly comprised of playing 360.. Except last Friday! Why was I not playing 360 last Friday..? No, it wasn't because there was a blackout, or that I have RSI.. (which around the time of my thesis submission and exam study, I sort of did and it caused my tennis grip to be almost unbearable).. buttt, last Friday was my Westpac grad welcome function! It was a pretty cool day, meeting a number of new people, getting to know a some guys that I already knew a bit better, and checking out my first rotation! I'll be at the Concord centre, which is awesome as, since it's only half the distance than my house to the city, and I can drive there as well! NiceNice. The atmosphere of the place was really nice, and it felt like a good place to be ay. Definitely looking forward to starting.

Anyhows, I should sleep, need to catch up on z's since I've had an average of about 4-5 hours since last Thurs!

-d

ole!

2006-10-04T02:08:00.000+10:00

Haha, how good is this, from ESPNsoccernet's EPL Team of the Week

"Another man with a brace (2 goals) is Old Trafford legend Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, back in the goals after three years of injury hell. The 33-year-old who needs his driving licence to buy 20 Benson's of a morning, scored one opportunist strike and another which he didn't have any idea about. Now that's true class."

True class indeed Ole. Its good to have you back for United.

-d

trickle

2006-09-06T23:21:00.000+10:00

And so it begins..

No, it isn't the rather futile push for Shaun Wright-Phillips to break into the first team squad for Chelsea..

Nor am I talking about the start of the AFL finals (with which I will not watch with great excitement due to the absence of my Bombers)..

What I'm referring to is the beginning of the Mega Down Pour™. The constant, depressing type biblical style rain that was forecast for today through to next Monday. The rain that is threatening my tennis match tomorrow and the Amazing Race thingy that my church is running on Saturday.

It started out innocently enough, a few trickles of drizzle as I was walking to the station after class tonight. Its developed into full blown rain and now I'm starting to consider what will happen if it does rain on Saturday. It surely will be fun, running around in the rain all day. It will probably mean that I will have to listen to quite a few whinges about the weather from the two girls that are on my team for the race. Sounds like fun ay.

I think on a level that is more pressing, it has dented my ambition to do some exercise outdoors tomorrow morning, if the rain keeps up like this. I went for a run on Sunday for the first time since Credo's Easter camp this year. I was pumped after that and had huge ambition to continue on Monday, determined that the excuses I used to use won't be applicable anymore..

Then Monday morning came around, and I woke up in time (around 8 something). What was the reason I didn't run? My back was hurting in a single spot and my right arm was aching. Both probably from tennis the night before.

"Okay" I thought. "I'll just go tomorrow! Rest up today ay? Its important to have rest days to allow your muscles to strengthen up and not burn yourself out" I reasoned.

So Tuesday rolled around and once again, I woke up in time. Except what happened this time?

"Maaan, I'm tired.. I'm going to just sleep for another 15 mins.. its early!"

45 mins later...

"Oh crap, I need to go to uni! No more time for a run! I have to go tomorrow!!"

So, today rolls around. I set my alarm earlier! 7.35am. Time for many things, running, shower, a nice breakfast...

*beep beep beep*

"Maaaan, so tired.. I'll just nap for a bit more..."

1 hour later...

"Ugh.. I'm so lazy.. How did I manage to do it again??"

I think I need to stop planning in such a way, so I don't disappoint myself and just get up no matter what my body protests with..

I read somewhere once that the difference between someone who is too lazy to get out of bed and exercise and someone who does get out of bed to run, is that the person who does run manages to ignore the lazy protests his mind puts up and just pushes himself to exercise.

Something to keep in mind eh?

As for this Saturday, I'm ignoring the faint lazy protests my mind is trying to throw at me about running about in the rain and telling myself that its all about having fun :) And... testing out the waterproofness of my asics eagle trails :P

-d

mutter

2006-09-04T15:54:00.000+10:00

I'm sitting here at my desk at home in a bit of a kerfuffle over what I want to do next. Its sort of reflected this semester where I am simultaneously (and paradoxically) both keeping up with and way behind on my work. I've managed to sort of keep up with my Capstone project, but I have no idea how I managed to get so far behind in my Telecom Channels subject.

A lot of the time when I sit down to do work (like now), the following goes through my head:

Dan 1: "Time to do some work!"

2nd Dan: "Really? Well, what work do you want to do?"

Dan 1: "Er.. I didn't think that far, what work is there to do?"

2nd Dan: "Well, there is your capstone documentation, your blog software evaluation, the learning of php, the investigation of authentication linkages with punBB, understanding telecom channels, your tele channels assignment, your global strategic management readings..."

Dan 1: "Crap"

2nd Dan: "Yeah I know ay?"

Dan 1: "Well, how about you choose?"

2nd Dan: "What? Can't you make a decision?

Dan 1: "I would rather you do it"

2nd Dan: "Ok, ok.. do.... your documentation.."

Dan 1: "But what about the authentication thingy?"

2nd Dan: "You told me to decide, so I'm deciding for you"

Dan 1: "But don't I need to do the authentication thing? I'm really worried about that!"

2nd Dan: "Fine! If you're not going to do what you asked me to do, then do what you want to do!"

Dan 1: "Er... where did you go? Come back! I don't know what to do now!"

Well, that is approximately what goes through my head. I worry so much about doing one part, that it affects my ability to do what is in front of me and therefore it suffers.

I'm really starting to get stressed out by this whole last semester gig.. the pressure is starting to get to me..

-d

oops

2006-08-03T23:47:00.000+10:00

Hehe, yeah I have been rather slack in keeping my blogging promises ay. Thanks Rone for the heads up, hehe.

Well, as for what went on in the past month.. Hillsong conference was pretty maaaad. Rick Warren, Bill Hybels and Louie Giglio were my faves. Jentezen Franklin was good as always, and I really enjoyed the songwriting session with Amanda Ferguson, one of the teachers at the college.

At the end of that week was Jenni's bday party, which was a cool night in more than one sense of the word. I think I got sick a few days later because of standing out in the cold too much. Anyhows, it was great, and my speech was accepted well, so thats a success ay.

Lots of nothing has happened since then. Well, things have happened, but its been a bit of a blur cos it was holidays, so I'm not sure what happened really..

Today I sorted out my capstone project for this sem (finally, such a relief). Which is to improve the blogging system of a software education site. Sounds pretty interesting. We'll see how it goes, I'm required to blog on that 1-2 times a week, so I might just repeat the blog here.

I should sleep, so time to sign off for now

-d

speechless

2006-06-28T22:53:00.000+10:00

Well, what can be said for the end of the Aus vs Italy match? I sat in Ronnie's loungeroom in stunned silence as the end of that match unfolded, and with everything that has been said in the media about it, not much more needs to be said either.

Now that the initial reaction to the match has dissipated, the ref (who was quite good as far as the referreeing standard at this cup has been) made two crucial decisions which changed the game itself and were probably his only flaws. The red card to Materazzi and the penalty were both 50-50 decisions that could have gone either way. The red did seem a bit harsh and a yellow was probably more deserved. In turn, that penalty was probably given because as Neill went to ground, his left elbow came out and may have looked like he tripped the player. Anyway, whats done is done and its good to reflect upon how the boys went in this campaign. They surely did Australia proud and never have I been more happy about the state of sport in this country.

Anyways, that was just a quick two cents about the football, I'll blog more about the Cup and Hillsong Conference next week.

-d

what colour is it?

2006-06-24T22:28:00.000+10:00

Well, the goals have gone in, penalties not given and 3 yellow cards to one player. Did we see one of the most remarkable matches of the tournament? I think so. Its amazing to see how, even if you subtract the media hype and coverage that our Socceroos are receiving here at home, the 3 Group F matches that Australia played were all ones that ranked up there as the best of the tournament. 3 goals in 8 minutes, frustrating Brazil and almost shutting down Ronaldinho's involvement and getting through a match which was, by all intents and purposes, unbelievable. I realise there were lots of commas in that sentence, but meh.

The Brazil match was a great performance, despite the lack of goals and the conceded goals to some world class strikers. Theres been a lot said about the German ref, and I really wonder how he managed to be World Ref of the year for 2004 and 2005. I'm not discounting the fact that he's a competent official, I know that it must be really difficult to officiate any game on this stage. But I think he must have been influenced by the (misplaced) reputation Australia have as a dirty side. I mean, nearly 3 times the foul count of Brazil? 2 in 3 fouls were borderline dives. Bluntly put, its true. The amount of fouls given for an accidental collision, or the slightest touch were ridiculous! Yet when we had the ball, was there consistent protection for the ball carrier? No. I know Brazil are streaks ahead of Australia in terms of everything football, but anyone watching the game could see how easily they went to ground.

Henri Michel, the coach of the Ivory Coast (who I was very impressed with, they were oen of my favourite teams to watch), stated something that many Australians were feeling after the Group F match: "I am under the impression there is a favouritism for larger countries over smaller ones when it comes to refereeing." The performance of the said ref was quite costly for the USA as well. If he referees like that, I don't know if he'll be the best choice for the World Cup Final.

The Croatian match. Maaan, where do I start? I made the claim that this match was simultaneously both our best and worst refereeing performance of this tournament. Why am I praising the ref when so many are bagging him? Well, in true English style, Mr Poll let a lot of the play flow back and forth between the two teams: not stopping it unnecessarily and allowing advantage; not being swayed by dodgy opinion in thinking Australia were dirty; and being quite consistent in his foul giving. That was for most of the match however. His definition of "denying a scoring opportunity" needs a bit of work I imagine. Simunic's rugby tackle on Viduka in the 6 yard box was so blatantly a penalty it was ridiculous. Tomas's handball right in front of Josh Kennedy's face? Isn't that deliberately denying a scoring chance? If Emerton gets his 2nd yellow for "deliberate" handball (which by the way, was like 10-20 metres away from the box and in a relatively neutral position of the field), how come Tomas didn't even get a yellow for his first? We got the penalty yes, but that was as deliberate as they come.

Back to Simunic. Lots has been written about the defender's 3 yellow cards, so I don't need to repeat too much. It is disappointing that England's best official could make such a schoolboy error, and it seemed as the match got more tense, he made some judgement errors in trying to control it. Some have said that Simunic refused or didn't leave the field. I say that if the ref doesn't tell you to go off, then why bother. I can understand why he'd stay, his country was on the brink of elimination. There were 5 officials in charge of that match and all missed the error. It was an extremely disappointing error which marred the result. The decisions about the penalties happen in every match, but the card one was one that should not happen.

Kalac. My gosh, I feel sorry for the poor guy. He finally gets a run on in what is perhaps the biggest game of his career, and he falls apart nearly. He must have trained well for Guus to choose him, but I think the lack of big game (and even first team) experience must have played a big factor in his nervousness throughout the match. Its unlikely he'll get another chance in this World Cup (and the next, as he's getting 34 in December) but I hope that he can bounce back from this.

On the whole it was an exciting game, and despite the decisions (and I'm not saying this because we're through, I'd be the same if we missed out), I still think Poll is one of the best referees on the planet. He will probably be sent home due to his error and not take part in the later stages of the cup, but if England are chosen to send another ref to the 2010 cup in South Africa, I'd hope Poll is at the top of the list.

Much of this blog has been rather one-eyed Aussie I must say, but I felt the need to rant about some of the flak that the Aussies have been copping. The Aussies have made some mistakes and their finishing on the whole hasn't been that great (lots of squandered chances), but I'm so happy that the boys have proved their character by responding to the criticism, media scrutiny and reputation by mixing it with the best. Good luck against the Azzurri, no matter what happens you've made the nation proud.

-d

winner!

2006-06-13T20:17:00.000+10:00

It is a very good day to be a long-suffering Aussie football fan today. Finally, after so long of telling other people that football really does have a chance in Australia, and countering claims of "Australia is crap" with my own claim that "we have heaps of good European based players", the roos have finally broken through. And how good a feeling it is!

Last night my dad saw the match before I did, as a group of us watched it on delay from a recording. He told my mum to expect 3 screams from the group of us, as each of the goals went in. Funny as. I'm so glad I didn't see my dad's reaction when he asked us whether we wanted to know the score, as that probably would have given the game away for me. He's done that to me when the team I'm cheering has lost as well, so I wanted to be surprised either way.

Anyways, back to study, hopefully this is the re-opening of blogging regularity, but I doubt it, seeing as I said that last time, hehe.

My decision to get Cahill on my jersey, best ever. :)

-d

yaarrrgg

2006-03-06T22:50:00.000+11:00

Oh man, uni is now officially back, and thankfully I've sorted out my timetable. Still working 2 days a week (Friday and Satday) and I have a class at the Kuringai campus of UTS on Thursdays! Exciting.

Yes, anyhows, went to the Hillsong recording yesterday in the city. Was pretty cool, and it will be interesting to see how it came out when the cd is released.

I'm sitting here, attempting to make some sense of the tutorial questions for Comm Theory (a subject I'm attempting again). The problem is that, it seems as though the lecturer is expecting us to do these questions before the lecture explains the concepts. Man thats annoying. Ah well as long as I work through it, it will be fine. Or rather, it will have to be fine :)

anyhows, I'm off to play guitar before sleep

-d

Guitar tune: "Wholly Yours" by the David Crowder Band

returnnnnning

2006-02-16T17:37:00.000+11:00

hmm..
I believe it is a quite a mystery how I've managed to be so busy over the holidays, and thus not able blog or even go online much. Ah well, what have I been up too...?

Well, I think I've officially retired from baseball now, I don't have the passion to go back to it. Playing tennis on thursday nights now.. It hasn't gone that well so far, but I believe we'll improve as the season goes on..

The weather outside looks cruddy atm tho, I hope the rain stops so that we can get out there tonight...

hehe, I played tennis today socially with Dave, and at the start I missed the ball, swung up too much and caught my left shoulder! Man I'm unco. It still hurts, I'm not quite sure what I did to it.

Anyhows, as always happens after long lay-offs, this won't be too long.

-d

linking

2005-11-05T15:20:00.000+11:00

arg, stupid law exam, need to start getting productive on it..

Can't wait till Monday, as it means that I'll have 3 weeks to study for two exams, and thus it will be somewhat relaxing (I hope).

I've been looking at other ppl's blogs, and realised that they all link to me, whereas I really haven't updated my links for an extremely long time. Will hopefully have time to do some sort of a revamp of this blog in general (mebe a nice background) in the holidays.. Then again knowing me, it will never happen, and if I clean my room i will be good enough, haha

Oh man, i just realised I have none of my Counting Crows CDs on my iPod.. Tragic. It'll be interesting to see how many Gbs of stuff I have in the CDs that I own.. I've spent too much on music, haha

anyhows, I really should do some work now

-d

2 down...

2005-10-27T12:29:00.000+10:00

woot, two assignments down, now the 3rd and probably the one which i have least idea about is coming up... atleast they won't collect it till Monday, so its an extension of a few days.. which is good considering so much of my time in th latter half of my week is work, eek

I'll need to work though, after the annual 30% koorong spending yesterday. a lot more subdued than last year as I only spent $160.

David Crowder Band - A Collision
Planet Shakers - Evermore
Anberlin - Never Take Friendship Personal
Switchfoot - Nothing Is Sound
Brooke Fraser - What To Do With Daylight
Jeremy Camp - Restored
Jack Hayford - The Hayford Bible Handbook
CS Lewis - Chronicles Of Narnia
CS Lewis - Surprised By Joy

Hm, it doesn't sound like much when you look at it like that

ohhh, daylight saving begins this Sat night.. Remeber to put your clocks forward! Or you'll be late to church on Sunday morning! (which never happens to anybody does it? *cough*)

Maaan, I wish it was end of exams.. My room is a mess again, atleast Jen doesn't threaten to throw stuff out like my Dad does, hehe. How understanding <3

heyyy, I just worked out you can tell between a mobblog and a standard blog. Standard one have less space inbetween lines... fascinating *collective wooo*

anyways, time for some food, then a bit of study, see Jen mebe and work.

-d

tune stuck in my head: Switchfoot - "Stars"

tearful musi(c)ngs

2005-10-19T17:13:00.000+10:00

Greetings to the 2 ppl who read this blog, hehe. Yes, I know it has been a long time since blogging.. the last month has been really busy, as will be the upcoming month too.. Working 22 hours, 3 subjects, Credo committee/SG leading, Church and a gf is really taking its toll on me at the moment.. if I was anymore burntout, I'd smell rubber, hehe.

God will get me through it, nothing else can, definitely not me, heh

I'm on the way to UNSW library to study with Jen this arvo. I have to say, UNSW is a really nice campus, so much better than UTS (not talking about course, just campus :P). It's just so darn far away! ah well, I'm still happy with the big brown solid rectangular poo prism.. uniqueness is priceless :P

Sad news recently though.. Motor Ace broke up! *sobs*
One of my fave bands, I remember disovering them when I turned on Video Hits one morning and Chairman Of The Board played. I got their EP when it was released and saw them four times: Triple J L@TW 2001 (1st day of uni!), Castle Hill Tavern in 2001 and Virgin Store appearance and the Eastwood Hotel in 2003. So many great memories guys, you will be missed *sniff*.

Anyhow, time for a long walk through UNSW to the library, catch you all soon hopefully

updatability

2005-09-20T10:26:00.000+10:00

Wellll, its been a little while since the last post. This is going to be a rather quick update as I really should be doing some work for Management Skills.

The last week has been.. for lack of a better word.. interesting, hehehe. Jen and I met with our Pastors on Tuesday to talk about stuff, the usual sort of relationship talk you get from pastors I think, but I guess I was only really concerned whether they would think its a wise idea to go ahead with anything. They thought it was fine so that was cool, and we made it official shortly after that :) Er, there is more to it, but I don't feel like spilling everything :P

So yeah, lots of attempting to study, hanging with Jenni, getting exhausted from lack of sleep... Ohh, I went to the Storm vs Cowboys match at Aussie Stadium last Satday. Good match, disappointing result.. but ah well. Tickets were free too! There must have been heaps of people who got tickets for free I'd say. I got mine through work.

Anyhows, I'm doing an assignment about time management at the moment and I'm behind schedule, so I've gotta get back to actually scheduling it, hehe.

If you're interested in considering more deeper Christian issues (well, deeper than what we talk about when my church ppl are at Maccas :P), my mate Jimmy has a cool blog, Jimmy's Thoughts. Check it out ayy.

-d

comfort

2005-09-12T18:07:00.000+10:00

haha, oh man.. last night was terrible.. I stayed up until 6.30am to work on my OS programming assignment.. and it wasn't even completely done! I probly only answered about 70% of potential marks.. ah well, I really suck at programming I've found.. I just don't have the mind for it..

As a result, I skipped my class this morning, and didn't actually go into uni at all.. I planned to get work done, but I was only partially successful.. It was good to have a relaxing arvo though.. as otherwise I would have only gone in for Credo forum, and I would have had to travel 2 hours to come in just for 2 hours. Whats funny at the moment though is that I'm also journalling for my management skills assignment, hehe.

In other news, I met Jenni's parents yesterday.. It was so awkward, haha.. Her mum apparently said that I don't talk much. I didn't know what to say really :P Ah well, she felt much more uncomfortable, she had to have dinner with my family, which was rather amusing. Especially when Toni is constantly making stupid faces at the two of us. Man she's annoying sometimes... er.. most of the time :P haha

anyways, back to the journal.. I gotta do my literature review for this subject in the next few days so that I can start journalling about actual time management techniques (how ironic).

-d

On the box: The replay of the Swans vs Cats Semi Final from last Friday. The most exciting bit too - last quarter!!

exciting work

2005-09-10T16:22:00.000+10:00

Hi there movers and shakers.. ohh man I sound like my manager, hehe.
I'm trying out this whole blog from my mobile through mms thingy.. if it works and you want to know how, I'll tell u what I do.. (it's not the same as the standard mob blg i think..)
Anyways, work as always is mega exciting..

Well, it isn't as sarcastic as it sounds.. quite a bit is fun, sports related stuff is always fun to some degree..

lala, i just spent 10 mins trying to retrieve price stickers that fell behind the stationary cupboard. Silly ay..

I think its time for my 15 min break...

-d

because I'm unco

2005-09-08T23:47:00.000+10:00

My eyes are currently burning from the fumes of dencorub that I've put in on my calf muscles. Why did I have to put this stuff on my legs you ask? (I'm assuming you are, I don't get that much conversation on this thing.. :P)

Welllls, as per the subject, yes I am indeed unco.. I was talking to Uday at work about golf stuff, while practicing my swing with one of the clubs there... and usually I stretch my lower legs before playing golf... so lo and behold what happens? I stuff my legs up... I have no idea how, probably something to do with the twisting of my legs as I swing...

Either way, its a terribly stupid excuse, and I'm just plainly unco for doing it :P
Ah well, I could have done worse things, like hit a customer with the clubs. Haha lucky I didn't do that.

anyhows, back to watering my eyes with dencorub fumes

-d

noobs anonymous

2005-09-06T11:21:00.000+10:00

I am the biggest programming noob

Haha, in direct response to Jenni's assertion that I am in fact a nerd, I really am not, geek maybe, but not nerd as I have no idea about all this academic computer stuff

I'm currently sitting in the UTS library in this way cool laptop area doing my OS assignment, and its way exciting cos I'm actually learning something! Wow!!

Anyhows, I really need to time manage better after this week (this assignment is due friday). What is funny about time management is that I'm 3 weeks behind schedule on starting my Management Skills assignment, which is probably (ironically) going to be on time management. Hah, how convention defying am I? :P

Thats me, full of revolutionary, convention busting ideas. Go me.

Ahem, enough shenannigans (I have no idea how to spell that word)

I should get back to doing some work

-d

iTune: Chris Tomlin - "How Great Is Our God"

NZ

2005-08-31T01:21:00.000+10:00

I'm still up late trying to finish this law assignment thats due in about 12 hours.. As I'm doing it, my Queenstown screen saver on my PC is ticking away (I'm using the iBook atm), and I just thought I'd state how incredibly amazing that town is. I was supposed to blog my journal of my trip to NZ, but I still haven't yet. I'll hopefully get to do it later and put a link to it from the front page. Although, that may take template editing and I suck at that.

Anyhows, I truly am in love with that quaint little town in the middle of NZ's south island, and I soooo can't wait to go back :) Its also funny because the topic of my assignment deals with the Remarkables ski field :P

-d

rambling thoughts

2005-08-29T00:27:00.000+10:00

I need to randomly note down some things.. as my blog tends to be rather sparsely populated with posts atm..

I made my first staff purchase at work, hehe. Man Utd kit, home shirt. It rocks to the max dagnabbit. Hope they win tonight.. I was considering staying up till 1am to watch it.. tho that would mean I won't actually sleep until after 3.. which may not be that good considering I have class at 9am, haha

I have this mega long 15-20min presentation for law due on wednesday... which I'm reaaaallyy worried about actually as I don't really know how to find cases to back up any arguments! hmm.. its worth 20%.. tricky ayy

I'm like in half a mood to put in some depressing thoughts at this point.. but I can't seem to gather them... haha.. I have no idea why...

I just seem to feel like hiding under a rock for a little bit, I think have a reason, but its just a bit like its at the edge of my consciousness.. its there but I can't form it into words...

I dunno, my last few weeks have been quite possibly the most interesting of my life for a long long time.. what does this mean for me? I don't know, do I look like I can predict my life effectively? I have no idea what I want to have for lunch tomorrow.... hmm, that makes me sound really random and unprepared for things ay.. its not that bad.. but I'm way over trying to predict what will happen to me, when I've done so in the past it's just gone all pear-shaped.. so I've just tried to trust God with what will happen, whatever happens.

I realllllly need to get back to try and write songs.. I'm lacking a release point for my thoughts... then again, I've never actually had any really good stint of song writing, so that could be why I've never had a good release of my thoughts :P

Never fear, for my thoughts will indeed fly flittingly into the wind in a midst of melody (at some points) and tonally consistent open string guitar chords.
Preferably in the key of G with some D/F# chords and stuff.. that chord is the best

hmm, this ramble just sounds odd now, so I'll sign off

-d

tune - Paul Colman Trio "Fill My Cup"

take a deep breath

2005-08-20T23:42:00.000+10:00

ohhh man
FINALLY, a night that I can like relax (thought I still have to do some study).
Since I've gotten my latest job a couple of weeks ago, I've been so completely flat out, and it looks like much of this semester will be like that.
If you have the patience to read my blog, given the infrequency of updates, then you may remember where I set out my timetable last semester. Much of the time actually consisted of bludge time, which would explain how incredibly broke I am as I didn't work all that much. Now that it looks like my timetable has settled down and my job is working out great, I'll set out my timetable for this semester.

Monday -
6 something: Wake up to get the 7:20ish bus. This bus (hopefully) gets into the city around 8.30, allowing me to walk leisurely (and therefore free) to uni by 9.
9am-12pm: Management Skills seminar
12pm-1pm: Credo Small Group
1pm-4pm: Lunch and study and bludge
4pm-6pm: Credo SG leaders forum
6pm onwards: Go home, bludge/study, sleep

Tuesday -
5:50am: Wake up and try and get the 6:35ish bus. I try and get to uni about 7:40am
8am-9am: Credo committee meeting
9am-1pm: Format committee meeting minutes, do some study
1pm-2pm: Credo public meeting
2pm-5pm: Operating Systems lecture (there is sooo much content, there is hardly any break time at all)
5pm-5.30ish: Credo Chill Room
6pm onwards: Go home, bludge/study, sleep
9ish: Play tennis with normo guys maybe

Wednesday -
Sleep in (the only day I can really do this)
Miscelleneous things either at home or uni
1pm-4pm: Law and the Digital Economy Seminar
4pm onwards: Go home, bludge/study, sleep
This day is probably the best day I have for any sort of social outing.
Whether I have any opportunity to is another story, hehe

I made myself available to work at the hotel on Tues, Wed and Sat nights. I have no idea how buggered I'd feel if that availability actually translated into actual shifts. Or if theres any point to working this much. Apart from the extra money that is, hehe

Thusday -
6 something: Wake up to get the 7:20ish bus. This bus (hopefully) gets into the city around 8.30, allowing me to walk leisurely (and therefore free) to uni by 9.
9am-12pm: Operating Systems tutorial
12pm-4pm: Study and stuff
4pm-9pm: Work at Rebel
9pm onwards: get a lift from Jimmy on his way home from uni

Friday -
6 something: Wake up to get the 7:35ish bus. Try and get into the city by 8:45am.
9am-5 or 6pm: Work at Rebel. Finish time depends on whether I am in the worship team for youth
6.30pm or 7.30pm - late: Youth group

Saturday -
7 something: Wake up to get the 8:23am bus from Oakes.
9am-6pm: Work at Rebel.
6pm onwards: Social stuff or study. Probably study for most of the sem. I have no life :P

Sunday -
Similar to last sem.

Thats about it. Man that took a while to write. Its because I'm doing this while watching the Man Utd vs Villa match... which we won! Wooot! Go Ruuuuuud!

I should go now and attempt to look at my OS assignment

-d

poetic

2005-08-14T23:54:00.000+10:00

Man, I'm behind in lots of things.
Especially this.
I have a headache.
I'm tired.
I have uni tomorrow.
I have a heaps mad job now.
Which means I'll be less broke.

I feel like I just wrote a limerick.

cools

-d

FM05: up and down (like a sinusoidal wave)

2005-07-22T03:11:00.000+10:00

FM2005 diary
13th March 2005
Funny how things have an odd way of turning around. Momentum is definitely a huge factor in a team's mentality. This has been proved by the performances of Cardiff in the past few months. Shortly after my last entry, Cardiff went into a downward spiral from the heights of promotion zone, down to as low as 11th place. Nothing seemed to go right, hardly any goals scored, players getting injured, my senior players being in terrible form as well as discipline, with quite a few red cards. The morale at Cardiff had turned from top of the world down to the pits.

When mid-February came around it was a different story. After a disappointing (but valiant) loss to top placed Sunderland, a 4-1 win over Coventry was the kick start we needed, as we're now in a 6 game winning streak and back to 6th spot in the Championship. I've been very impressed by the performances of some of my players, especially Richard Langley. Paul Bosvelt has been the find of the season, being rated amongst the top 7 players in the Championship and looking like he will challenge for player of the year honours. Not bad for a 34 year old.

Up next is a huge match against Leicester, who is right below me on goals scored difference! (Our GD is the same, so i'm above cos I've scored more).
It will be huge, but first I need to tinker with training..

-DL

it has begun...

2005-07-19T03:05:00.000+10:00

hmm, with my recent acquisition of Football Manager 2005 (the actual sucessor to the Championship Manager series of games by SI Games) my sleepless nights due to tinkering with my team and trying to take my beloved Cardiff City Bluebirds (well, I don't actually support them, but I played them in CM4 as well, so I have a soft spot) to the top of the English Championship league. I've decided that I'll blog the actual in game progress about the trials and tribulations of my team, from the perspective of the 32 yr old (at this time of the game) relatively unknown Australian manager, who just HAPPENS to have the same name as me.. :)

Yeah, I'm a complete geek for doing this, but I really don't care cos I like it :)
(Note: this is fictional, as obviously I don't manage Cardiff City, or know any of these players :P)

FM2005 Diary
11th December 2004
Stoke vs Cardiff
Today we take on Stoke, who are currently running at 9th place. Cardiff City have battled valiantly to reach 6th spot. The board and the fans have been happy about that, they only expected a mid table finish. The TV pundits have predicted us to lose, but I'd say we have a chance, despite a few key injuries to Bosvelt and Rhys Weston.

14th Min: I'm starting to get annoyed at this Boland. He's rated highly by my assistant (who is pretty ordinary I'd say, the only reason I haven't replaced him is because I don't have the money to compensate Man Utd for the one I wanted) but his performances on the pitch are sub-par at best. He just took a pass from Junior and then made a meal of it, turning it over. Grrr

Half time: Well, 1-0 down at the break. They deserve it, since they've played much better than us. I decided to get the boys to mark up tighter, in the vain hope that they can hold out until they can find an opening to counterattack. We'll see how it goes.

58th Min: Haha, the irony. After my bag out of Wille Boland, he just put in a header from the cross of Fernandes. Brilliant!

61st Min: Woot! Go ahead goal by Alan Lee, who I was just questioning the finishing skills of.

64th Min: Arggg, from triumph to tragedy. Ball fouled some mong in the box to give them a penalty. . . . which was saved by Margetson! Legend! THAT is why you aren't my first choice keeper Neil Alexander. Stop whining.

88th: Own goal! I heard a collective groan and curse from my opposing number as Stoke's Darel Russel put the ball past Ed de Goey while trying to block a pass by Parry. As I celebrated with Terry, I was glad my defenders haven't put in an errant pass this season so far.

Full time reflections: 3-1! With a top performance from Parry and my strikers. Who seemed to get a lot of media rapts despite a rather quiet night. They were the catalysts for many of our runs, starting them out of defence, so I'll be sure they know I'm happy about that. All in all a great game which consolidates our position in playoff territory on the table at 5th and only 3 goals out of 4th on goal diff. The chairman came down to the rooms after the game to congratulate the boys and was delighted with how we went. He's been doing that a lot lately, due to our performances. I hope he continues to.

-DL

pod this!

2005-07-01T01:35:00.000+10:00

I have discovered the world of podcasts.
Well, consumer podcasting, I doubt I'm interesting enough to put up my own podcast, hehe.
But how cool is it! Theres one for Aussie Rules footy, maaad
Its funny how using Apple stuff has finally got me discovering these things that have been around for geeks for so long. hehe, yay for iTunes 4.9

Things I've been up to..
Bought a few things from ebay, iBook protective glove thingo, iMic sound input device for the iBook (it has no audio inputs), and Football Manager 2005. Thinking about getting a simple mixer thingo, a Behringer UB502 or the UB802..
Will it be useful? I don't know, thats what I'm trying to determine.. as it will cost about $70 or $100 respectively.

Exams are done! Woot! Now need to do some organising thingys for Credo as well as prepare for Hillsong Conference next week. Sooo excited about it! Also have dinner for my bday with some ppls and other stuff. Waaay busy. Tomorrow night I'm not going to youth to go to a concert thingy that Jen, Joel, Jimi, Dibs and Steph are organising (I think all of them, either way I just lump them all in the same category, hehe).

Maan, I want to play golf. The rain has probly washed out the course heaps tho. Ah well, the rain is more important for us all :)

I'm tired, but I don't really care cos my exams are over :P Woot!

-d

podcast: footytalk.com.au Rd 13

introspective insights

2005-06-23T22:56:00.000+10:00

I dunno what introspective means at the top of my head. It just came to me :)

I'm feeling tops right now, even though I'm in the middle of exams. Finished my 2nd today and next one is Tuesday, so feeling sort of free tonight. So free I'm clearing the iBook to reinstall Tiger. Hahah, I'm a geek.

OH GUESS WHAT

I'm even more geeky, I discovered that Mac OSX has a speech commands thingy, and I've been mucking around on it all night!

Dan: "Computer... What time is it?"
iBook: "It's 10:10"

Woooott! :)

In other news, I got a new pair of shoes. Hehe, kathmandu sale time once again.. I can't afford them, but my mum got them for my bday! :) Here is a pic

A dilemma I have though, is trying to work out what to do about a job interview. The date for it is on the 23rd of July at 10am or 12pm. Its also the day Markets getaway starts! eek! The dilemmas, argg. I'd better contact them to see how long it will go. I'm not quite sure how getting this job will go though, since its so late in holidays I wouldn't start until uni went back, and I'm not sure if I'd have time for it... Ah well, it's in God's hands, He'll help me :)

Now, back to tinkering with the iBook

-d

streaming video tune: Brooke Fraser "Lifeline"

woooot

2005-06-19T01:35:00.000+10:00

God is tops
Simple as that
Mike prayed that God would speak to me in my quiet time today (Sat) and he was right, I found Psalm 51, and especially verse 17

"The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit.
A broken and repentant heart, O God,
you will not despise."

That has been especially true of me lately. And I rejoice in the fact that I can only depend on one alone, and He's tops :)

Forever and ever amen (I love that line)

-d

iPod tune: Relient K "For the Moments I Feel Faint"

"hello? anyone around?"

2005-06-17T23:25:00.000+10:00

heh, guess i shouldn't have expected too much
think i'll withdraw into a shell for a while. just as well, silly exams

just.raw.me

2005-06-14T23:45:00.000+10:00

I'm currently spending the last half hour I have as a 22 yr old alone on the train with only pete murray's deliriously happy music to keep me company.. An end to my 23rd year on earth that fairly typifies me to this point sadly. Alas, this post isn't all like this, but it might. I apologise in advance.. I need to get this out. I am genuinely happy about what God has done in my life in the past year, don't get me wrong.. truly amazing

I guess I'm still insecure about the fact not many go out of their way to take an interest in my life..i know some do, but its few and far between considering how many ppl i know..Why should I care? I ask that myself sometimes.. This stems from deep seated worries, so nyeh

What I'm worried about is the fact I'll probly spend my 23rd birthday alone and bored (tho bored is my own fault :).. ppl have most likely forgotten.. I hope it isn't true, but if it is then.. what can I do? I've had nearly 23 years of making really close friends then losing them or growing apart due to distance or life.. Really close friends are usually defined as me being close enough to talk about my deep ideas and issues, but not that much vice versa.. I've largely suppressed this thing from crippling me but it is so discouraging and downright painful at times.. Is it the calling God has placed on me? A means to grow me? Perhaps. It doesn't stop it from cutting deep though..

Hopefully the next year will be better, but precedent is a cruel thing.. Theres a purpose in why I've been through this and I am thankful I know the friends I do, they are a blessing.. Its probly down to me not making enough time for them and something I'll work on in this 24th year of my life.. I've said how it's the cool age..let's hope I'm right :)

(Once again, sorry for its depressive undertones..)

-d

Discman tunes: Pete Murray "Feeler"

hi ho, hi ho, a bludging we will go

2005-06-12T22:06:00.000+10:00

How tremendous
I've spent the past 1.5 weeks doing absolutely nothing, even though I have exams to study for.. Yes, they are late, yes, they don't start for another 1.5 weeks still, but argggg. I feel so unproductive. Hooooowwwww tragic.

In better news, I'm ALMOST 23!!!
Oooohh *dramatic shiver*

I feel almost special!

Okay, extra special.. I know we're all special...

But wednesday marks my ascent to the... *dramatic pause* c o o l a g e

ehehe. For exactly a year, I will officially be cool. Old enough to be mature, but young enough to not be over the hill. Once you're 24 and over, its all downhill.. Well, this is all according to my rather immature theories :) ironic ay, heehee

As for what presents I'll get. Pfft, I doubt I'll get many if any. Ah well, I can't afford to get anything for my friends anyway for their bdays :(

Being a cool age will be a present in itself :) Hopefully I can get a dinner organised for after exams with uni friends and church friends (separate ones probly)

Oh the music front, there are some awweesome cds just come out.
Foo Fighters - In Your Honour
Coldplay - X & Y
I looooveee that new Fooeys single "Best Of You". Soo cool
And Rob Thomas's new solo single is pretty cool. Well, I like it anyways

And as for other stuff I need to get
Pete Murray - Feeler
Brooke Fraser - What To Do With Daylight
Relient K - Anatomy and Two Lefts
Some Jack Johnson cds

But even more exciting news... MOTOR ACE ARE BACK!!!!
They have their new single coming out soon (or it just came out) as well as a new album, "Animal"! Their home page has some samples of the new stuff as well as an explanation of where they went the past couple of years. Welcome back boys. We missed you terribly.

Wooot. music = yay! I neeeeed to geettt loosstt in the mooosic..

ahem

-d

tune: Gladiator soundtrack "Track 14 :P"

a r g

2005-06-05T01:07:00.000+10:00

hmm

arg

pretty much sums me up at this point

it could be contributed by the footy, but i'm pretty much used to the bombers underperforming..

no, what is causing this is just an utter helplessness... what does God want me to do...? why am i feeling this? should i do something about it?

ARG

time to have a long conversation with my guitar..

-d

In the valley at the moment.. PTL.. :)

2005-05-15T21:42:00.000+10:00

when death, like a gypsy
comes to steal what I love
I will still look to the heavens
I will still seek Your face

but I fear You aren't listening
because there are no words...
just the stillness
and the hunger
for a faith that assures

I will sing of Your mercy
that leads me through valleys of sorrow
to rivers of joy

Alleluia...

- Jars of Clay "The Valley Song"

a day of honouring and of revelation

2005-05-08T23:59:00.000+10:00

Hm, revelation ay...

What day doesn't come with a revelation though? Oh wait, many of mine don't. Well, you know, revelation. I was rather harsh with my comments on Carlton yesterday. And I probably had no place in commenting, considering the Bombers are in worse shape than the Blues atm. Can you tell that I'm apologising to a Carlton fan? Hehe. I'm a softy really.

hmm, the song "For The Moments I Feel Faint" is actually quite versatile. It can sound sad but its probably not intended to really.

"Never underestimate my Jesus
You're telling me that there's no hope,
I'm telling you you're wrong"

Thank God I'm so incredibly wrong when I let doubts and fears overtake me. The only hope that matters is in God, so pffft to what I was thinking before.

I'm filled with the Spirit, so I should be doing my best to live in a way that lets that pour out of me, not leak out in a trickle. What causes that trickle? Letting worries, doubts and fear cause blockages in my soul (like artery blockages so to speak) and thus hampering the flow. Hmm, I don't know if that is theologically sound.. (:P someone gets what I mean by that) but it sounds pretty accurate in describing me and what I need to do more.

One of those is encouraging people and thus I now present my top 10 list for the week.

10 reasons why my Mum is tops. (No real order, except like, numbers 1-3)

10. We always have meat pies in the freezer! (ie. meat pies are always on special)
9. She always makes sure theres food that I'm not allergic to when it comes to dinner either at home or out
8. When we're at camps or stuff, she'll always give me some of her food cos I'm hungry
7. She does housework for us and does it really good
6. She's beautiful
5. She's faithful to God
4. I give her 2 mins notice to drive me to the station with only 10 minutes until my next train (we live nearly 10 mins away from the station) and she does it
3. She puts up with the childish moods and behaviour of me and my bro
2. She puts up with the childish moods and behaviour of my dad
1. Two simple words: Child Birth.

Woot! Happy Mothers Day mums! You all rock and we really do appreciate you :)

-d

"Gather my insufficiencies and place them in Your hands" Same song above by Relient K

there are FOUR quarters to a footy match, NOT three thirds

2005-05-07T22:47:00.000+10:00

I cannot believe what I witnessed tonight. Actually I can, I've seen it for the past year, Essendon cannot finish off a match. My gosh, they completely folded. No other team in the competition just sit happy with their 3/4 time lead and decide to take a 30 minute nap. It's taken my most depressing day in months and made it even more depressing. There really needs to be a change in the mentality of that club. I hoped to now have to say this, but it we might be looking at getting good draft picks with our ladder position this year..

Shocking, absolutely shocking. Actually, Sneds had a good word to describe the Swans performance until 3/4 time: Abysmal. Completely and utterly abysmal. The only thing that rescues this day (apart from hanging out with Sneds of course) is the fact that the Blues got so incredibly whipped they only kicked 1 goal in the first half, while Richmond kicked 13 goals 8 behinds. Unbelievable. How good are the Tigers?! Or rather, how bad are the Blues?!

..

*looks at the ladder*

Okay, they're no where near as bad as the Bombers at this point. Oh how it pains me to say that.

I hate depressing days. It makes you even more depressed just thinking that its depressing. Such a vicious cycle..

-d

tune: "For the Moments I Feel Faint" by Relient K

"Frustrated and tired
Where do I go from here?
Now I'm searching for the confidence I've lost so willingly
Overcoming these obstacles is overcoming my fear"

Its depressing to think that as confident I can be in God, I can never measure up to human ideals.. Should I care? No I shouldn't. But not much is going to stop me from caring about this particularly though

oh man

2005-05-01T01:52:00.000+10:00

haha, oh man, its been soo long since blogs. I guess its what happens when my life is as filled out with stuff as it is. I'm currently watching the Southampton vs Norwich soccer match at the moment, and its way cool, 3-3 at half time!

Anyways, what has happened in this somehow incredibly busy life. Its this busy and I still manage to have no social life, how greats that(!)

Ahem.

Well, been cool stuff happening, like church camp last week and other interesting events in my life. No, I don't feel like really saying anything about those events :P

Oh, but the definite highlight for the last month has definitely been..... the arrival of our iBook!!! Man it rocks, sooo much. Especially since I'm completely sick of windows after the amount of crap I've had to deal with it in my IT work. I'm typing on the iBook now actually while watching the soccer. Yay for wireless! It's a 12" iBook with extra 256 RAM and built in bluetooth.

Also, cos we bought the iBook so close to the release of Tiger OSX, we get it for only $15. Maadness. If you're reading this and you just got a mac recently with Panther, you can get Tiger sent to you for lots cheap, ie. not $200. Woot.

Next week is the Essendon vs Sydney match! I turned down work that night so I can go to the match.. Its the only time they come to Sydney this season! I have to be there!! I hope I can get some people together to watch the match.

Hmm, speaking of football.. the match is still 3-3, and its 80 mins into the match now. It turned out quite a bit more uninspiring this 2nd half.

Think I'll read the book I got from Koorong today on how to read the bible. Or maybe I'll actually do some bible reading, hehe.

-d

car tune: Shawn McDonald "Take My Hand"

"Fall to my knees and I'm begging You please oh Lord,
won't change me, make me, new from the inside out,
I wanna shout out Your name (I need You)"

hmm, soo been feeling that lately

Score after Round 3: 4

2005-04-13T15:39:00.001+10:00

I'm currently in the time bit in between the end of my Org Structure & Change class, and my group meeting at 4 for Corporate Strategy. Thus, I am trying to wake up. I didn't fall asleep in class today (praise God), but I came close. Wooot for 9am-9pm days.

Last night I worked a shift where we catered for the nearby department store. There was a cocktail party sort of event and it was the 2nd time I had to even carry a tray of drinks (the first being in Round 2 of my job). After Round 2 I had broken 3 glasses. Last night I added to that score by breaking one when I was putting the dirty glasses back into their racks. Maaan I'm clumsy! Atleast no one saw but my coworkers, haha. The shift was quite short compared to what I expected it to be, but just as well, as my arms are stuffed at the moment due to carrying that much weight for an extended amount of time... I soooo need to get back to working out.. The worst thing about the work last night though, was that I was serving the drinks from the main entrance, which is right next to the display for Britney Spears's fragance. Thus I heard her songs Toxic and My Perogative constanly for a couple of hours. Arg I hate her. The woman is evil.

Stayed at HQ (Kim & Bec's place) last night cos I have 9am class this morning and something really funny (or annoying, depends on perspective) happened. I had set an alarm on my phone for like midnight last night, but was in the other room talking to Kim so we wouldn't keep ppl up. The only problem was that I didn't hear the alarm, and it was in the main room where Gary was trying to sleep. My phone was silent, so it would have been vibrating for a few minutes every 5 mins! He tolerated this for half an hour, and then found what it was and told us. Ohhh man I'm stupid. If you're reading this Gary, sorry! It wasn't intentional to keep you up :P

I sooo need to sleep at like 11 tonight.. or maybe 12.. and get atleast 8 hours of sleep, I'm getting headaches due to fatigue.

-d

iPod - Switchfoot "Adding To The Noise"

Red wine is a great fashion accessory

2005-04-08T11:37:00.000+10:00

Hohoho, Christmas has come early for me. Okay not really, but I did get a shift at work yesterday, so I was quite happy about that. It was a rather unique day at work though, and as usual, part of the "So many things I go through teach me new things" sort of line of events.

Anyway, to the point (yes, I do have points to what I say Becca :P)

There was a cocktail sort of party for 150 ppl that we were catering for. They came out from their conference earlier than expected to get the drinks and refreshments, and so we were running around like headless leprechauns trying to get drinks out in time. I had to take a tray of drinks out (my first serving task ever), which had Two glasses each of white wine, red wine, champagne, beer and one of water and orange juice. I got rid of half of half of it okay, so it was down to water, 1 red and 2 whites.

So far so good.

I then let a lady take the water off my tray... What I didn't take into account was the fact that a glass of water has substantial weight to it compared to wine glasses, something which I didn't anticipate.

I lost balance of the tray, but in slow motion (funny that). I seemed to watch the glasses rock around on the tray, and I swear I was standing there for like 10 minutes before it fell. Before I knew it, the two whites were broken on the floor, and the red had poured all over me!

What a thing to happen on my 2nd shift ever.

Now, my uniform consists of black pants and a WHITE jacket. I looked like Barney the Dinosaur. If anybody can remember that far back. Anyhows, it was down the right side of my pants, half the jacket front and my right arm of the jacket.

I just stood there a bit shocked, and my colleague was really quick in telling me that she'd clean it up and that I go to the back and clean myself up. I went back to the kitchen to get rid of my tray and go up and get new uniform, but my boss told me to stay in the kitchen and just pour beer, cos it was flat out in serving the function. Fair enough I thought.. I was just thinking that I was a bit worried about how I'd go about serving drinks since I hadn't done it before and God has a funny way of teaching me about it. Atleast I got to play with the beer tap the whole rest of the time :)

I also broke a glass during cleanup of the conference room, so all in all, not my day :P. Darn, and I had such a good start!

Ah well, I've learnt from my exp, I'll be better next time :)

Hehe, and I had a good chat to a security guard cos he was from NZ. A really top bloke, I think it probly comes in handy knowing security staff :P

-d

Streaming tunes - Fresh Radio

Where has the time gone? Oh, right behind me..

2005-04-06T08:48:00.000+10:00

hmm, I can't believe its already week 5 of uni. Well, week 6 since it started, but you don't usually count the Uni week (VC week) as a week of uni....

*hint hint* mr coordinator of SE... sif have an assignment due in VC week, grrr

Anyhows, where was I.. Yes, time going by fast. Its been amazing how much I've packed into my weeks since uni started. Going to NZ, ETC, Easter mini-mission.. And thats all in addition to my standard week.

My standard week is as thus follows:

Monday -
6 something: Wake up to get the 6:55am bus. This bus (hopefully) gets into the city around 7:45, allowing me to (sometimes) get to uni by 8. Traffic permitting of course.
8am-11am: bludge/study/find ppl to hang around with (b/s/f)
11am-12pm: Corporate Strategy tute
12pm-1pm: Corporate Strat lecture (I've realised these aren't that useful)
1pm-4pm: bludge/study/find ppl to hang around with (b/s/f)
4pm-6pm: Credo SG Leaders Forum
6pm onwards: Go home, bludge/study, sleep

Tuesday -
6 something: As above
8am-9am: Combined Prayer Meeting
9am-11am: b/s/f
11am-12pm: Small Group
12pm-1pm: b/s/f
1pm-2pm: Credo Public Meeting (in Room 2.4.11)
2pm-6pm: Credo Chill Room (in Ashmore-Smith)
6pm onwards: Go home, bludge/study, sleep

Wednesday -
6 something: As above
8am-9am: bludge/study in library
9am-12pm: International Management (interesting)
12pm-1pm: Lunch!
1pm-4pm: Org Structure and Change (not so interesting)
4pm-6pm: b/s/f/get dinner
6pm-9pm: Sustainable Enterprise (interesting.. more environmentalism than business)
9pm onwards: Go home, bludge/study, sleep

A lot is packed into those three days. eeeek

Thursday and Friday is reserved for work (usually). Whether I get shifts or not is an entirely different matter. Thus these days are flexible. If I'm not working, I'll go to uni on Thurs.

I stay home on Fridays usually. Friday night is youth group, and I have to be there at 6:30pm normally due to band practice.

Satdays are more free now! No more baseball! (I'm still sorta considering if I want to have another season or not..) Satday nights are available for work though.. (its not like I have a social life or a gf, thus this time isn't really essential)

Sundays are usually packed out to the max.
*If I'm playing on the Sunday music team*
*6 something: Wake up*
*7am-9am: Practice and prayer*
*9am-10.15am: More rehearsing*
Otherwise:
8 something: Wake Up
9 something: Try and get to church early to relax, do reading, muck around on guitar
10.15am-12ish: Church service
12ish-12.30ish: bludge/pack up music stuff
1.30pm-2pm: Rehearsal for Friday Youth music team
2pm onwards: buy lunch if I can afford it/bludge/study/do family chores

Hmm. And that there is my week! This obviously is altered when major events are on, like the Credo mini-mission over easter, and holidays and stuff. But that there is where I will leave this post, because I really should get some reading for International Management done before class which is in 12 minutes..

-d

iPod Tune: Switchfoot "Amy's Song"

lack thereof

2005-03-04T00:01:00.000+11:00

Man, blogging really took a backseat in the past month... been soo up to my neck in helping with Credo stuff before semester started, thus why I haven't even thought of much to blog at all.. I'll try and catch up tomorrow (hopefully... I've said this sort of thing before)

But most importantly, Switchfoooooooot was on last Tuesday night! And we were there. And it was awesome. To the max. Hahah. I'll put up some pics since I actually brought a camera this time! Woot!

Also, my new job was confirmed and today I went in to do misc admin and uniform stuff. So excited! Yaaaaaay!

Tomorrow will be a nice catch up day on blogging.

-d

tune: Hillsong United: "There Is Nothing Like" (I love this album!)

email addict?

2005-02-12T02:08:00.000+11:00

omg, this is sooo me (except on a PC, not a handheld device :P)

I'm such a geek :P

-d

tune: Adrienne Liesching and Geoff Moore: "In Christ Alone" (such a nice song, and one of my favourite from NTE)

changing rooms (or careers)

2005-02-09T23:19:00.000+11:00

okay, I'm annoyed, I typed out everything and lost it

again:

Missy concert was cools. Afterwards we went to HQ to hang out and have dinner! Thanks to the girls who did that for us, sooo appreciated :) My cuz Jason came too, and I'm sure he had a great time. The next day I went to the LOTR exhibition with bro and Jason at the Powerhouse. Its soooo mad! Especially the swords! OOOoooeerr (will put up a couple up pics I took of the exhibition on my phone, you couldn't use cameras!).

The rest of the week was working and helping with Credo enrolments. On Monday I had an interview tho! Its at a hotel doing banquet function waitering. Its just pending the getting of an RSA.. I'm so excited to be changing industries (I'm sick of IT) and so looking forward to the new experience! woot!

Also, today was Intro-Day for Credo 1st years, and it went really well! Stacks of students from Sci and Humanities faculties (we don't get many usually), and just a great day all round! 2005 is looking aweeesome :)

Okays, I think thats all, Dave and Amy's bday is on tomorrow! That will definitely be fun.
I'd better check on my hat I'm trying to wash stains out of

-d

Guitar Tune: Ronan Keating "When You Say Nothing At All" (I like it, so nyeh :P)

trips and all that gear

2005-01-31T18:01:00.000+11:00

My first experience at an interstate music festival was, to put it in one word, ace. Sonfest was so incredibly cool... well, everything except the weather, which was extremely hot. It was stacks of fun, and the best acts (I thought) were Crying Out Loud and Maverick (I'm biased since I'm friends with them :), Audio A, Third Day, Revive, Nikki Kumerow and Shawn MacDonald.

anyhows, i haveta cut this short because i wanna get to the city to see Missy Higgins FREE at Darling Harbour! (eeek!)

-d

flyyyying

2005-01-19T19:08:00.000+11:00

Hehe, I once again leave the supposed familiarity of my home tonight, as I prepare for another trip (!), this time to Boonah, Queensland for Sonfest!! Tonight I'll be staying at James' place first, as we gotta be up around 3 something tomorrow morning to try and get to the airport around 5ish!! No point in sleeping really. Then we fly up to Brisbane, get on a bus at 7am Brisbane time, then travel about 1.5 hours South West to the town of Boonah, where Sonfest awaits. 4 days of awesome music, camping, dodge food, mozzies, flies and bad jokes between the three of us (Me, James and our mate Eunice). Ace! I'll be back on Sunday night if any of you are wondering

Until then, YAY!! (I get to fly in a plane again! :)

-d

Stuck in my head tune: Third Day "Sing Praises"

heatstroke

2005-01-15T02:49:00.000+11:00

hmm

You will all call me a complete nutcase, but I played golf in the incredible heat that was today..er, yesterday now, or Friday 14th of Jan. It was quite excrutiating, and the only reason why i kept going was because I needed to finish the round because my handicap had lapsed, and thus I need to put scorecards in. It was truly an experience though... every chance I had, I'd rush to the shade and proceed to try and catch my breath. The only reason I didn't collapse in exhaustion was because I drank like 3.5 litres of water and powerade. The stupid things you do for golf ay.. hahah

My Dad's 50th bday party is on tonight, which will be interesting. I don't remember ever being at any sort of party for my dad... I went to get his present today from Golf Mart. I'm expecting there to be stacks of golf related presents.. One I'm worried about is something Ali said about ppl getting him a golf bag.. which he really doesn't need and will take up lots of room which we don't have.. Ah well, we'll just see. The good thing is that they're being thoughtful for what he likes :)

I realise I've been really slack in finishing off my NTE posts. Not to worry! I'll have them done eventually, hopefully before I go to Sonfest. Lucky I took notes though, the memory jus gets jogged easy as. Heheh

hmm, my face is burnt..

-d

ramblings....rumblings? humblings....

2005-01-12T02:24:00.000+11:00

Why am I still up? I ask that question of myself way too many times, so I'm not going to ask that of myself. *spluuunk*

Thats the sound of that question being taken back..

Okay, what is on my mind at this moment?
The question, "Why do I get myself in these situations?"

I don't know, why do I get myself in these situtations?

Oh that repeated it.

Well, its all quite simple really.

I'm an open book apparently.. and even though I'm well aware of this fact, it doesn't seem to stop me doing things which will cause ppl to talk. Seems to be becoming a pattern almost. Perhaps. Maybe.

But I really shouldn't worry about what they say or think.. but I can't help it, weight of observation flattens me like an anvil... like a giant thumb is upon me and pushing me down.. I guess that would be a pet hate.. I figured out one! (I had a convo on pet hates two days ago, hehehe).

I can't handle ppl thinking bad of me at any time, let alone times that are a result of my own behaviour. That is why I am in this situtation.

I think this would be the 2nd in my series of posts which make no sense whatsoever unless you're me or those that are very close to me.

Hope you all have a more realistic grip on the world than I do at this point :)

-d

Tune: Chords in the key of G... I haven't figured out lyrics for my song yet..

filling in the gaps

2005-01-08T02:17:00.000+11:00

Well, too many things have happened (again) since my last post..

I'll go in most recent order back to like the 26th..

Thursday 6th to Now
I have had just an awesome time the last two nights after being at the Planet Shakers night rallies (which I'm going to tomorrow as well), where it was just huge nights of praise and worship as well as just feeling the prescence of God just move and stuff. Wooot. And I decided to sponsor a kid through World Vision! His name is Somchai and he's from Thailand. I had been thinking about it for the last two day and I realised that $39 a month isn't really all that much money to me but it is a huge amount to this kid and his family.. So I hope that it will be make a difference :)

Sunday 2nd to Wednesday the 5th
Youth Camp!! It was just a great time of really growing inside of us all, and the speaker Phill was just awesome. We also got to fit in beach time (it was at Collaroy) and Warringah Mall, where I bought a Billabong hat.. Which has a matching design to my Billabong jumper I bought in Melbourne. Odd that, I didn't intend it. But I'm all rustic now, heeheehee. It was a stacks tiring (but fun) camp, and as a result of playing my guitar for nearly every session, I have to get it fixed (the strap lock screw thread is stuffed)

Sunday 26th to Saturday 1st
Had our annual Melbourne pilgrimage via the Hume Highway. Intersting trip, mostly because we encountered a swarm of locusts around the Wagga area. When we went to clean them off the car at Albury, there was stacks just stuck in the grill... and still half alive... ewwwww. Anyhows, had a good time of catching up with family and stuff down there, as well as meeting up with Rene. That was quite cool because he wanted to see art galleries. I have never done that before. So it was a good experience for my first non-school art gallery visit. Did some shopping and stuff (getting a rustic Billabong jumper) and going around the peninsula. We stayed past Rosebud, near the National Golf Club at Cape Shanck. I was cut, I didn't have my golf clubs and I was next to some of the best courses in Australia. Oh well, next time ay.

We were in Melbourne for NYE and it was also the night before we had to leave for SYdney again, so we didn't do anything on NYE except an extended family asian bbq (you know, like ht korean style thingo) and then just watching the fireworks on tv. How can I put this nicely... The Melb fireworks were.. disappointing really. I think I've been desensitised by Sydney's or something, expecting the best all the time. They did show the bridge part of the Sydney's right after Melb's fireworks finished, and they were spectacular. WHat is so funny is that my friends thought Sydney's were crap... which goes to show just how disappointing Melb's was. Oh well, atleast lots of money was raised for the tsunami victims, which is far more important than the quality of fireworks. That whole tsunami thing was just freaky and its scary to think its the worst natural event in modern history or something and we're living to witness it. It just shows that us humans don't run the world or anything.. there are stronger forces in this world than us and we're really quite fragile creatures..

Wells, thats that for all that, time for me to sleep or something

-d

Stuck in my head tune: Planet Shakers "Always and Forever"

the obligatory Christmas greeting :)

2004-12-26T01:56:00.000+11:00

Yeah, I know the topic sounds cynical, but hope everyone has a Happy Christmas and all that stuff! :)

I'm going down to Melbourne in about 6 hours by car, so when I can get to a PC next I'll blog a (hopefully brief) summary about my trip.

-d

Stuck in my head tune: Anthony Callea "The Prayer"

parody

2004-12-23T01:18:00.000+11:00

Just quickly, check out this blog, this guy posts up music and stuff, including parodies to some famous songs. One that I love is this parody of Wheatus's "Teenage Dirtbag", but with lyrics changed to describe the minor prophet books of the bible. Its really well done! Another clever one is the LOTR Rhapsody. So incredibly good!

-d

car tune: Delirious "History Maker"

Credo events and testing tunes

2004-12-22T23:59:00.001+11:00

Too much has happened since last week, but I will summarise as much as possible.

Last Sat's baseball was neat, as we managed to beat Mac Uni, who smashed us with a score of lots to not lots last time. This time around, we played amesome, and beat them 6-5! I also had a great running to my right and backwards catch, which was just the most fun thing I've done in baseball for a while. You had to be there I think.

Following on from my testing of guitars last wednesday, I also stopped by Turra music store on Thursday to look at guitars. I was trying to compare the Fender I saw at Venue, but they didn't have it. The guy there told me his opinions on Fenders, and pointed me int eh direction of a Yamaha for a close price to the Fender. After testing it for a while, I think I was quite sold on the Yamaha..

I finally decided to go back yesterday morning, but not before praying about whether it was the right decision at this time, since I don't have all that much in the way of funds. Well, God was sure it was the wrong timing, because the guitar was sold out! They should get more in next Jan, so will probably go back then.

Credo Christmas party was fuuuun. It started with a photo and item scavenger hunt (I got no idea what to call it), where we journeyed from Uni to Hyde Park, then the Opera House and to Manly! My team arrived first, and we ended up winning with the best collection of items and pictures :) Yay team 3! We found ourselves finishing at Shelley Beach and had lunch then a salty swim (the water was extra salty). After lotsa beach stuff, as well as farewelling Kat (we'll miss you next year!), Kim, Grant, Amy, Ken, Phil (not Harding) and I had gelato from Gelatissimo at the ferry terminal. We found the worker ppls there really amusing.. as they all wore t-shirts saying "Get fresh with me!" or something along those lines. Quite shocking really, hehehe. You just don't expect that sort of fashion in public, let alone by a company trying to market something.

The inaugural Credo golf cup was held yesterday at North Ryde Golf Club and there were only 4 contenders for the title; Stu, Ben, Sneds and I. This was because we were the only ones to play 18 holes. James G, Andy and Carl played 9 holes and Eades only played like 13 holes. Eadie would have won (pretty much by default) if he played 18, but it was Sneds who was consistent all day and took out the trophy over Ben by one stroke! (Which is Stu's golf buggy at the moment actually) Well done Sneds! Afterwards, we went back to Stu's for a bbq where we were joined by Kim, Kath, Elise and Amy. What was funny about the dinner was the topic of conversation, where half of it was about chick flicks and Notting Hill in particular. The way its going there will be a screening of it by Sneds or Ben. The funny thing is that I'd probably go to it, haha! :)

Now, I'm way too tired at the moment and need sleep

-d

Envelopes, curry, guitars and cartoons

2004-12-15T23:59:00.000+11:00

woowww, so much stuff has happened since I got back from NTE.. well, the first two days after weren't all that exciting.. but today was pretty funny.. (and way packed out)

I went in to hopefully finish off EngSoc financial stuff so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore but it turned out that there were missing receipts and stuff.. how incredibly convenient!!
nah, it didn't matter really.. it gave me more time to do what I wanted in the city. . . . bludge of course!

So I met up with Kim who was stuffing envelopes for Credo down at Barneys church. I also entered this production line of enveloping and it was funny when Jono turned up in his only break between summer school class to join our enveloping efforts. When that finally finished I had lunch with Kim at broadway, where I had butter chicken. Now, this butter chicken wasn't that crash hot (the saying, not the spice) and indeed ranks quite low on my scale of butter chicken awesomeness (BCA). Off the top of my head:

1. Sidhu's North Indian Express (branches at Castle Towers, Parramatta and somewhere else I forget)
2. Some place in Parra that my mum buys from occasionally (I'll figure out what it is some day)
3. Gday or Happy Indian diner at UTS cafeteria.. I forget what its called, but its a funny name :)
4. The stuff my mum makes from Maggi seasoning mix
5. Macquarie Centre food court near Maccas
6. Hornsby Westfield food court
7. Broadway food court

hmmm, and thats only off the top of my head. There ya go, my butter chicken preference. The Sidhus stuff is the best in my opinion. If you disagree, then yay, just tell me where is better and why, so I can try it and work it out for myself :)

Anyways, back to today.. after lunch, I decided to go up to Venue music near QVB to look for a Dunlop guitar strap (you may remember my post a while ago about the Dunlop products, if not, click here) and I found them for only $20! Pretty neat for stuff which looks and is cool. Being in a guitar shop, I naturally had a look at acoustics and the prices. I was noting down some prices when a guy there asked if I would like to try some guitars out. I ended up staying there for like 45 mins just testing out Fender and Washburn guitars. I wasn't expecting that going in actually, hehe. Anyhow, after a while I decided to put the guitars down and think about what I wanted, and went back down to the Broadway district.

I picked up the passport photos I took at Broadway earlier, then headed back to HQ. I have to comment at this point... apparently for Australian passports you aren't even allowed to smile! Huh? I find it difficult ot understand this. Is it because people going through customs are always in a bad mood? Or people travelling overseas are incredibly blank and miserable? Its quite baffling really. Who knows the reason?!? I NEEEEED to know!!!..... :)

Well, after waiting at HQ for a little while... Kim, Kath, Gaz and I made our way down to the weird art deco golden tree with tongue at the bottom of sussex st. This was our meeting ppl place. I've already commented on how art in Canberra was odd. I think just art in general is odd. After everyone arrived (Kat, Phil, James, Grant and Graham.. Jenna met us after) we walked over to "Eating World" (don't you love the names of asian places? ), but not before having to combat the Dixon street gauntlet of every single restaurant trying to push you into their place to eat and assuming you are going to eat there by indicating with hand gestures how big a table you will be requiring. Argh I hate that. If I wanted to eat at your restaurant, or even CONSIDER going, I would walk in or stop near the menu.. not walk PAST the place. *random grumble*

Eating world had funny moments like the drink shop sales person who was wearing a see through black shirt with sequins on it (I thought I was looking at an asian Prince!) , but this post is getting too long already, so I'll just summarise. After dinner we went to the arcade! Yes the arcade, which was great fun; watching Graham DDR to exhaustion and playing Daytona where I was alll set to win, when Phil out of nowhere knocked me aside and claimed victory like 50 metres from the finish! Well, cool for us anyways..

We ventured back to HQ after our Daytona run, where we saw a 1986 anime called Tenkû no shiro Rapyuta (or Laputa: Castle in the Sky) that Gary loved and wanted us to watch. At first it looked a bit dodge, and we proceeded to bag lots of bits by implying it took things from other movies, like Titanic and Lord of the Rings (it even mentions GONDOR, that took the cake and I cracked up so much at hearing that). References aside tho, it turned out to be a reaaaally good movie, and I'd like to see it again actually. Especially since I learned James Van der Beek was the voice of the kid in it. I thought he sounded familiar.

This is a very long post now, and will probably rival my NTE posts, which I am still in the process of putting together. So I'll sign off now

-d

disclaimer

2004-12-15T00:32:00.000+11:00

it has been brought to my attention that these posts are extremely long (duh, I knew that, hehe)
So I apologise for that fact, its just a bit hard to cram it any smaller considering so much happened in each day.. I might condense it all down a bit later, when I complete the epic journalling... so yeah, if the length offends you (like I know it does to you Phinners, and Jimmy too :P) Then yeah, do what you did before and jus not read it, hehe

-d

tune: Third Day "Show Me Your Glory"

Day 9: Countdown to the big night

2004-12-12T23:59:00.000+11:00

I was up bright and early this morning as I had to be at church by 8am for music practice! I was singing for the service and it was rather interesting, especially considering I couldn't hit the note for one of the songs. Singing is tough, hehe. I always get nervous before singing during church and try and practice as much as possible, which isn't that good as I stuff my voice up during practice sometimes, heh.

The service was good, Gary did a talk on work and Ed talked on the passage of Luke and the coming of Jesus. It was funny that Rene got a bit confused during the service, and actually forgot the offering! This was rectified quickly though, to the amusement of all.

After the service, I had planned to go to lunch with my host and her grandkids, I just had to be at our team meeting first. After the meeting, I went by the house and no one was home! So I went out with Ed and Gaz to Eadie's place. We had lunch at Dee Why shops where I spent waaay too much on two gourmet pies (The Steak & Guiness was good, teh Mexican was ick).

I still had to keep working on my talk, so as the guys went off to the beach, I kept going with writing my talk with a plan to go down to the beach later on when I had finished or come close. Well, I was really struggling for progress. Eventually I got to a point where I had done a decent amount, and I had to leave the Eadie's house. I rushed off the Warringah Mall first, then off to the beach where I continued on my talk for a little while more.

We went back to the church at 5 something, and I was still finishing my talk! I finally finished it at around 6.25pm, the service was at 7pm! I just had enough time to run through it with Bec, Kim, Amy and Lisa to get some feedback, and then rushed through a hot dog for dinner. I was also fitted with a cordless mic, which was way cool.. I hadn't done this before!

I was anxious throughout the service until the time of my talk. I was interviewed by Kim during the service, and then after there were some skits performed about bad leadership, I went up to give my sermon on good leadership (Jesus). I started off rather nervous and I'm pretty sure that it showed, but I got into it and I ended up being quite happy with it. The pastor was also happy with it and thought that the message really connected with some of the young people in the congretation. Talk about encouragement! I also had some comments from people later on that said my talk was quite good, so praise God for that :) I even got a tape of my sermon! Woah!

After chatting with a few people after the service though, it was time to say farewells to the team and the church. It has been one of the best trips away I've ever had and such an awesome experience! I learnt so many new things about both God and myself and will definitely be back next year!

Previous: NTE Day 8

NTE Day 8: Generosity all round

2004-12-11T23:59:00.000+11:00

I began the day rather lazily. I tried to get up at 7am, but I looked at my phone as the alarm went... I shut it off and went back to sleep. (It was a rest day!) I finally woke at 8, and got ready before getting to the church at 9.45 with a lift from Ed.

We looked at the rest of James from 4:13 till the end in the study. We then had a team meeting and decided to do door knocking because the weather was good (big contrast to yesterday). I was excused from the task because I had to work on my talk. Only problem was that I was struggling a bit with progress in relation to the talk.. I managed to find some verses to help my talk a long, but before I knew it everyone was back!

The team came together to discuss the experiences of the door knocking. There were some good encounters had by the team, which was cool. We then discussed the rest of the day and the preparation for tomorrow (Church Sunday!). It was time for free time after that, and we decided to go to Dee Why beach!

Lunch was caught at Dee Why shops (it was just floating all around us) and we went down to the beach playground area to eat at first. After lunch, we went down to the actual beach for an arvo of waves, sun and funny water soccer games. However, it being mission time for NTE, we decided to be extreme and carve out the Two Ways to Live symbols in the sand! Unfortunately we didn't get to talk to anybody about it, but it did draw some attention :)

We left the beach just in time as the weather started turning dodge. We went to Warringah Mall to get presents for our hosts! I got my host Queen's greatest hits because she's a fan and is going to see the "We Will Rock You".

A return to the church was in order with the intention of spending the night there hanging out, but Gary's host veryvery generously offered their house for us to hang at! How mad! Thus we had a night of pizza, card games and stupid conversations. Way cool :) Ed came by later and went through his talk so we could hear it and give suggestions. We had to get some rest for church the next morning, so we made our ways to our homes at a reasonable hour :)

Next: NTE Day 9
Previous: NTE Day 7

NTE Day 7: Starting the day afresh

2004-12-10T23:59:00.000+11:00

The day began bright and early at 6am... Carl and I were planning to nip down to the beach for a possible swim and stuff, and Justin was also up for the idea. Man it was early. No matter though, as it was the beaches, and how many times do you get to wake up on a beach? Well, for me in the hills anyway, no chance whatsoever. So we took our opportunity and went down to Dee Why beach. The water looked too cold to swim in (ie. we chickened out) so we had a nice jog up to Long Reef, then back again. It was such a relaxing and top way to start a day, and I'm loving this area of Sydney more and more. I wonder what it would be like to live up here...

We went back for breakfast and Carl got his stuff all packed up as he was leaving early for work! It was sad to see him go, but he had a great time atleast so that was good.

We went up to the church for our team meeting, where we did more of the book of James. It was then time for visitations. Along with Rene, I went to visit Mark who lived nearby to have a chat to him and stuff. It was great to hear how happy he was for us to be there to provide company. We were there until lunchtime, where we ventured back to the church to eat. I had some rolls that Faye had made for us. We seriously get spoiled for food by her, hehe.

We had another meeting to discuss the plan for the arvo but it was raining! We were supposed to go out and do door knocking to tell the community about a carols service that the church was running.. with the rain though we decided to look at it again tomorrow.

As a result, we had the arvo to sort of bludge and stuff. It was a pretty nice relaxing time, and some of us planned for skits that would be associated with my sermon on Sunday night. Maaan, I still haven't written my sermon, I'm scared as about it! :P

The skit stuff was way fun, and we raided the kids costume box for things like stuffed tails and stuff. Skit people were Bec, Kim, Amy, Grant and James. They came up with some wacy things!

After the festivities of the afternoon, I got a lift back with Ed so I could have dinner and change before youth group! Another great dinner later, and after Ed was a little late in picking me up (he went down to the beach again), we were off to Ignite!

There was a cool chair related get to know your game (will definitely hold that for future ideas), donut on a string eating competition (I came like 4th!) and rolled up newspaper hockey! Soooo much fun! Snack food was served after that, and then a talk was given by Amy on Micah as well. Heres took on a different approach than mine, which was good, aimed at the youngsters around us.

After the meeting, some girls were eagerly chatting about Switchfoot to me. Its so cool meeting other Switchfoot fans :P hehehe! Half of the team went out to maccas when everyone went home. We tried to find a 24hrs maccas, and we were in luck as there was one on Pittwater rd. We hung there for a while, witnessing a weird guy who was quite angry with the fact he didn't get any free chips get very violent with a burger and the wall. Some people, seriously.

Home awaited, as well as a shower, and then zzzzzzzz.. I hope the rain stays away tomorrow for beach action on our day off!

Next: NTE Day 8
Previous: NTE Day 6

NTE Day 6: Oh how I love the beach

2004-12-09T23:59:00.000+11:00

I woke around 7ish (I like this sleeping pattern, it does wonders for your health, and I don't mean that sarcastically :P). While we didn't go to the beach, I did step out into the backyard of Faye's place and jus soaked up the air. Such an awesome place to live I think. The whole place just seems to have this different vibe to it than back home in the hills. More laid back and stuff. It must be the beach.

After a nice brekky with Faye, Carl and I were off to Narra for a team meeting at 9ish. We studied the first chapter of James, discussed about it and prayed. We split into the two teams for our morning visits, a Nursing Home and a Special School. I was in the nursing home team and we had to sing carols! It was funny because the carols list that we had had heaps of these odd ones that no one had heard before. I think they were like Aussie carols sorta.

We went off to the home, and I got to drive Ed's car there! (which is heaps fun to drive, hehe). Upon arrival, we filtered throughout the room amongst the residents and sat with them, attempting to get some conversation going.. This did prove to be difficult, as many were very hard of hearing and due to my rather quick and mumbling voice, they had no idea what I was talking about! Not to matter, I did manage to talk to a few of the residents after we had the carols part. We didn't have to all stand in a choir and sing or anything, which was good.. we just sang at the tables along with the residents. They were very happy with our visit and it was great to see them just enjoying our company. During the carols there was one old lady who didn't sing, she just kept watching me sing. That was funny I thought, hehe. Each of us also got interviewd by the minister who ran the service. A question I got was "Sum up your course in one word" I said "Difficult". Heehee

Some of us went back early to Narra to get ready for the outreach luncheon. I was actually leading it, and we had to figure out the order of stuff. It went well, except for the carols which was a bit of a shambles :) But it was cool, a learning experience, heh. Met some really nice people, especially Colin. He had gone to church when he was a kid, then found the local surf club and was in that for like 40 years or something until he retired, then came back to the church I think. Since I'm not from this area, its interesting to hear stories of that.. its not like many people I know are that involved with surf clubs :)

After our lunch we had an earlier team meeting to allow us all to have more free time (!!). We reviewed what happened in the morning and discussed how each visitation went. It was really great to hear of the success of the special school visit, as well as how the Credoites found the experience. They did a skit at the visit as well, which was very funny :) (Gaz as the baby Jesus! haha!)

With the meeting done, Justin needed to get boardies and Bec needed stuff for the kids on Sunday, so half of us went to the beach while the other half went to Warringah Mall. We eventually made it to the beach after a while, as the shopping trip took longer than we thought. It was a brief visit at the beach for Carl and I though, because we needed to get back for dinner at Faye's with her son and his family! This was easier said than done though, as we had to take some people back first..

Dinner was so great, one of the best roast dinners I've ever had (truly). And my brief conversation with her son and his family revolved mostly around baseball! So good to see another baseball family :) All three of his kids play and he coaches, so we got all got along great. He had to leave soon after we got there though, as he had to take the eldest son to a performance sorta thing at CCC I think. The other two kids stayed behind and we had fun hanging out with them.

The rest of the night was a pretty relaxed affair, watching tv and doing a bit of reading. I managed to get onto a PC and checked up some uni stuff and blogged! I'm such a geek. I didn't manage to go a week without using a computer, hehehe. Sleep awaited after I finished my blog post... zzz

Next: NTE Day 7
Previous: NTE Day 5

NTE Day 5: Promising talks, tribal beats, farewells and greetings.

2004-12-08T23:59:00.000+11:00

I managed to get up at 7:30am, so I got around 4 hours of sleep. I was praying I wouldn't fall asleep in the talks and stuff.. I tried to work on my talk a bit more.. or atleast look at my notes... and then had brekky a little later.

I made my way over to LH for what would be my last strand sessions for NTE. Sniff. I wasn't thinking this at the time however, as I was quite worried about how my talk would go. We split into two groups, guys and girls, with Tim facilitating the girls and Rowan taking us. We found a spot in the main hall of LH, where only one other group was (Leah's coincidently) and who had taken the main stage area but didn't use the lectern!. Such a waste, we would have :)

Matt has his talk first, which was good and complete (and also managed to fit in his own pre-NTE story as well, good work :) I had my talk next, and only had like half of it.. the background parts.. so I had to pretty much make up the application sorta thingy.. hope I can remember it for when I give my actual talk. Anyhows, it went rather well, compared to my first strand talk in Strand 1, which majorly bombed since I was trying to memorise points. I also got some good tips in the feedback on improving it, especially about using the method Phillip Jensen said about talking about Gospel arcs, without actually having to explain in stacks of detail about stuff Jesus did for example. So yeah, all in all, cool! Sam had a great talk considering he didn't really have much prepared at all, as did Rowan (but he's a strand leader, so we all expected that... :P). With all the stressful part of NTE done, it was time to go back to our usual strand meeting spot. The girls were majorly quick and had been waiting for us for a while (I thought we would have been quicker than them, hehe). Then after some words of thanks and praise to the rest of the group and to Tim and Rowan, as well as giving Tim our emails so we get the group photo and all, strand was over! Sniff². We bidded farewell to each other and made our way to the main hall for the final talk from Phillip Jensen.

I started off quite well in the talk but after a while my lack of sleep really hit me.. I think it was around 30 mins or so in.. Its funny because my notes are all messy around a certain point in the page, and quite neat before it. I do this in all lectures and stuff. Its always funny to see the words I've tried to write while half asleep. But its bad that I did fall asleep. Oh well. I woke up properly a bit after that episode, and was right there at the end with the stuff he said about God's mission and message, not our own. Heaps good stuff, and lots of it you just don't think about normally.

And with that, NTE's conference part was over! The time seemed to go quite quickly, since we were doing stuff alll the time (me anyway). And now we have the chance to put stuff we've learnt into practice on mission! Woot! We all got a self served packed lunch, which was quite nice actually and gathered as a large group of Credoites for the last time before separating and making our way to mission locations.

Oh, I should mention the drummer in the NTE music team at this point. Throughout NTE, Phil, Dave and I savoured the moments when the NTE drummer would crank out these killer drum beats, like the tribal one in "Rock of Ages" (I think). I joined this all late though, as the others already heard her at the last NTE. Some of the best times was the air drumming when we remembered great beats from songs that we just weren't expecting them from(!). Okay, it sounds silly, especially considering I have drums in my youth band all the time... but the ace beats were given out sparingly, so we weren't overwhelmed by it. See, its all about what you don't play, as much as what you do play.. I always hear that in regards to guitar, hehe. Anyway (I've diverted again), Dave came up to me and Phil and wanted us to get a photo with the drummer! I was definitely up for it, as was Phil, but then Dave chickened out and said he was joking! Disappointing mate, we missed a chance at history. She may go on to great things. Heehee :)

There were many hugs and words of encouragement exchanged amongst the Credo crew. After many moments were had, Amy hurried the contents of her car (Me, Angie B and Kimmy) so that we could get to Narraweena without encountering mega traffic and thus being late. We left around 2 something and took our leave of ANU.

The car ride was pretty standard, we stopped for petrol before leaving Canberra where we ran into James W's car (saw them, not actually hit them) and stopped at Goulburn maccas where we saw Rowan and his friends. And Kim knew him from school or something as well! She knows too many people. We also decided to put up a sign to see who else driving past us went to NTE, and we got a few responses! Yay! I'm going to make sure I put up a sign in whatever car I'm in for the next one.

On the way, we stopped at Ben's place to drop off a present and then on to battling traffic on Lane Cove Rd. Our original plan to try and beat the traffic wasn't working so well, as the traffic was reaaaally bad. Amy decided to take a shortcut through Lindfield and we ended up being at Narraweena around 6:35ish. There was a dinner that was put on for us by the church, and it started at 6:30 so we got there just on time (we thought we'd be stacks late actually). Before the food though, we got details of where we were staying, as well as name tags. On the details for my billet, my surname was spelt kim, not an lim. Which was incredibly funny, as I had been turned into a korean by the typo! Ok, not that funny, but it was the subject of many icebreaking jokes with us all for like the first half an hour or so..

The dinner was cool (yay for bbqs!) and then there was some formal sorts of welcome stuff for us all, as well as a testimony given by Gary and an interview with Cindy. Justin and Grant had fun at my expense at dinner when they told me to sit near a bunch of Narraweena girls then proceeded to continue giggling, so I had to do my best not to laugh as well. Turned out Justin was just in a massively giggly mood.. must have been the real meal we had :) Met some cool people though, and it was quite a good first event.

A funny thing to note is the message that Eades put into the church's bulletin a week before regarding us.. "This could be your chance to meet a nice Christian guy or girl!" or something to that effect. Funny guy that Eades, funny guy.. :P

After dinner I met my billet host, and along with Carl (my billetmate) followed her back to what would be our home for the next 4-5 days. Her house was realllly nice, and whats more, is that we had this full den sort of downstairs room to ourselves! Complete with like tv, stereo, bathroom and everything! Cool as. Carl and I discussed with Faye about the week, as well as any food requirements (me being the difficult one of course :P). We also talked about the possibility of going down to the beach in the morning, which sounds so great considering I never ever get to do that sort of thing! We decided not do to it tomorrow morning but maybe the next one. I was pretty buggered after the hectic day and the fact I got little sleep the previous night, so after cleaning up and all that, sleep awaited!

zzzzzz

Next: NTE Day 6
Previous: NTE Day 4

NTE Day 4: Salty fruit and the people who run our country

2004-12-07T23:59:00.000+11:00

I was up even earlier this morning at 6:30, so after a shower and all that getting up stuff, I wandered around the two levels of CCA because it was wet out on the balcony, and didn't get any reading done, despite my repeated attempts.

Breakfast was interesting.. I was eating with Kat, Amy, Gary I think, and was tucking into watermelon in my bowl when Glen came along and put vegemite on the watermelon.. I am quite game to take chances on food these days, so I ate the piece which had vegemite on it. It was quite nice actually, and the taste of the salt with the refreshment of the melon went well together. So I still maintain Kat, it wasn't as bad as you think :P

We started the day with a talk from David Cook again, and he gave us more great teachings on troubled times and how to behave in a way that sets a great example in times such as those. I loved the bit where he was talking about the Scriptures, and he said they weren't inspired by God, but expired (breathed out of). I thought that was a neat way to consider it.

Strand time was cool, but the pressure was on.. we had to start writing our talks, and frankly I was no where near prepared to start. Tim asked me how I was going just as time to work on the talk started, and I really had no idea what to write about. He gave me an awesome idea to look at the leadership aspect of Micah and the bad kings that Judah and Israel had through their history. As I thought aobut it and jotted some notes down, this idea really came together and I hope that I will be able to craft a decent talk out of this idea.

After another great packed lunch (I wish it was like this alllllll the time back home. . . ) another two hour chunk of free time awaited us. Some decided to go to the Art gallery and others (including me) went to Parliament House for question time. These socially conscious and politically savvy (or just bored) individuals included myself, Ange D, Kate, Angie B, James W and his friend from USyd, Alan, Jono, Paul and someone I forget.. maybe Rene. Anyways, we ventured to the seat of Australia's power with the sun and blue sky blazing against our heads.. We were so in the mood to roll down the sides of the building but the grassy areas were all barricaded off! Tragic. We entered and made our way through to the parliament chamber after passing through many security checkpoints and droppping off phones and stuff. Darn, I wanted to take a photo of Johnny looking dumbfounded or something. The time started off pretty dull, with some routine stuff about policies and funding given to some rural area in Queensland for roads. Then this seemingly rural issue became the hottest news as that responsible, D Kelly, was accused for lots and lots of things. It was exciting to see such events unfold but it did get tiring after a while as they all just ran in circles arguing the whole thing. What was brought up was an interesting constituitional issue about accountability of MPs but wasn't really considered much at all it seemed. I don't have all that much faith in Australian democracy after seeing that drama.

After that educational experience we had to get back to CCA for a mission team meeting. The weather had turned incredibly bad on us within 1.5 hours, quite a stark contrast. Upon getting back to CCA, I found Phil and Dave who had gotten coffee for $1. I didn't need anymore encouragement than that for a caffeine hit.

The mission meeting was more like a big Credo summary for the year and for 2005. I had to explain about some of the happenings that we are doing for Uni-wide mission next year and we heard about MYE, the mission trip and ETC. ETC was interesting, as Becca, Paul, Jono and Amy sung a song to the tune of Bob the Builder about ETC. I won't really comment about it really but it was brave of them to do that :P hehe. We broke into mission team groups after the summary and some prayer time, and decided on tasks to be allocated to for mission. I was put on the team for the nursing home visit to sing carols, as well as leading the 'outreach' luncheon and a guys discipleship session with Rene. This is in addition to the night service talk which I was still thinking about.. but I decided to do. It would teach me stuff :)

We journeyed downstairs after the meeting for dinner, where fish was served (again), and was ordinary (again). It was hot atleast... that was a plus. The last talk by David Cook followed dinner, where he told us (or it could have been in Q&A) something which really stuck with me, that God takes our greatest perceived weakness and leaves us where we have to completely call out to or rely on Him. This hit me hard because one of my biggest perceived weaknesses is public speaking and due to the fact I get nervous easy and lose concentration, I absolutely suck at it. This is why I was so terrified of the Sunday night talk. I knew this had to be the way it is though, because I knew the only way I could do it is not on my own but through God's strength. That definitely was a revelation to me and made me feel much better about the talk. Speaking of the talk...

After David Cook's sermon and Q&A, we went back to CCA and many people were planning to stay out and bludge or play games and stuff. I knew I wanted to get my talk done, so I committed to trying to get it done. This meant sitting in the cafe attempting to learn and read the bible and writing my talk, while the others did fun stuff. The worst thing is that I didn't even get it finished! I did a lot of things to pretty much bludge though: like go to the vending machine, make tea, talk to people, listen to music. I stayed up until 3ish, when Jono (who napped on a cafe couch) had to leave to get his bus back to Sydney for summer school class. This meant I couldn't hear his speech but I had about half a talk prepared and sounding okay. Well, I hope it did, I ran through it with Jono and made a change as a result. Sleep was defnitely sounding good and I hoped that I would be somewhat alert in the morning.

zzz

Next: NTE Day 5
Previous: NTE Day 3

NTE Day 3: Tangy antics and crashing the house of random Canberra residents

2004-12-06T23:59:00.000+11:00

The morning started a lot better than the previous, as I managed to actually sleep for a decent amount of time and got up around 6:45.. meaning I also didn't have to contend with mega shower queues. Being the opportunist that I am (of course), I took the chance to go up to the balcony to read over Micah again (I didn't read it all during the Strand time) and to jus wake up on a good note pretty much. It was cool, and I need to do this sort of thing more often :)

We started the day off differently, as we had strand time straight after breakfast until lunch time. There was a lot of searching through the passage to answer questions regarding the context at the time.. Which I didn't really do properly, and looked at questions from a wrong page. But it was okay still, I did sort of work out the structure for the passage. Got to do it out in the sun, which was neat as Canberra's weather was being quite damn good actually. Apart from the pollen. Damn stupid allergies. I rebuke thee. Ahem, yes, moving on.

We returned to CCA to get ready for our free time, and to eat our packed lunch that we picked up before going to strand. Apparently the CCA cafe opens to the public on weekdays, thus we couldn't eat in there, and had to have some sort of roll with stuff in it, a muesli bar and a drink. I got an awesome blue drink, which had an interesting taste to it. A texture, a zest, a kick!

It had. . . . tang.

Everybody else said it tasted like Windex or Toilet Duck or , but unanimously they all hated it. But me, along with Grant, could see past the ordinary horribly sweet and artificially coloured beverage.. we saw something which transcended normal human understanding and we could only see it because we could appreciate the importance of this aspect. The tang. This "flavour" (if you can describe such a thing in such base words) or as I prefer to call it: "spice of life", may be just what the crowded beverage market needs... something which really will give you the energy to go off the deep end. (No, I'm fine really, just over caffeinated at the time of writing this)

Er, okay, back to NTE again... It was time for major Credo NTE group activity!! (yaaay!!!) This consisted of going to Em's place and pretty much taking over her house. It was prety cool, the place was practically chill room relocated to the ACT.. Groups formed everywhere to play games and stuff and it was just a great vibe around the place. Thanks Em for opening your place to us all! You were a great host :) There were lotsa cool stuff that we did, but my highlight was probably attempting to sing along with Kat on that Moulin Rouge song. And I was actually seriously trying for like, half the song as well! Eeek, shocking, heheh.

The time seemed to go really quickly while we were there, and before I knew it we were off again back to CCA and culinary bliss once more.. Except, it actually WAS culinary bliss! In my opinion anyway. Chicken Parmigiana and chips and stuff. Truly inspiring stuff. I'll stop exclaiming about the food now.

The talk tonight was by Phillip Jensen again, on the Content of Evangelism. It was also heavy (as his talks are) but reaaally good. A great thing that I learnt tonight was of talking about different arcs of the gospel in evangelism or giving a talk which imply the whole gospel. I think one would be like Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. I never thought about it in ways like that before, and its quite a great thing to remember when sharing. After the talk there was a short time of Q&A with Phillip which posed some big questions and answers, but I can't really remember the responses well. Maybe I could listen to a tape of it later.

One thing that was particular about tonight was when Rene approached me to do the 'youth' night service talk on Sunday night at Narraweena. Now, I have only ever done one bit of talking in front of youth roup, a testimony. I haven't even really said anything in front of the whole church before but I was being asked to do not just a talk, but a sermon! (Ok, same thing but it sounds more dramatic like that :) Needless to say, I was terrified and unsure, so Rene told me to pray about it and get back to him. I was quite relieved at the chance to think about it.

It had rained while we were in the meeting, and walking back to CCA, I was in a really jumpy (literally) mood (I think I forgot about the fact I had to do that night service talk), and proceeded to jump into about 3 or 4 puddles, soaking my socks pretty good. I later paid for this, as my ankles got pretty itchy while we were in the Credo-CCA cafe. I was feeling unconfident about my ability to understand Micah, so I tried to get some help from Sneds and Kimmy. Then I tried to work on it myself as well. This didn't really go to plan, as I kept getting distracted and Phil or Paul said that it was NTE policy not to do work outside of strand time. At this point, that sounded like a really good idea, and thus I went back to bludging. I then went up to get to bed at an early time for once for what looks like a huge day tomorrow (staying up late to do my talk for Wednesday, haha).

-d

Next: NTE Day 4
Previous: NTE Day 2

NTE Day 2: Got it stuck in my head...

2004-12-05T23:59:00.000+11:00

When I tried to get to bed last night, I was full of optimism.. Figuring I would get about 6.5 hours of sleep to make up for the 4 that I got the night before due to last second packing.. waking up at 7am, to shower, then read my bible for a bit or something.. How my plans went out the window, or more specifically, in the window (cue laughter.. yeah, that was a bad joke). I was kept up till about 2-2.30am due to the fact that Canberra had decided to have its only party in the entire city.. right outside my room.. below my window.. ARG... Canberra cafes shut at 11 but people insist on making a complete racket outside CCA.. Yes, I'm still quite bitter about it :P Add to that that a car decided to treat the road outside CCA as a roundabout (like the rest of Canberra is), and drive past CCA about 100 million times, each time with its turbo cutting in and out (I think)... well... I'm not going to say anymore, it was plain annoying

Anyhows, after that truly refreshing and enlightening experience, and waiting in the shower queue (other guys had the same idea that I did), I had breakfast, then walked off to LH for the first meeting of the day.

At this point I would like to comment on the incredible amount of traffic in Canberra.. I had many close shaves with death, many of them occuring with cars within 300 metres of me even! Like, the amount of traffic almost rivals that of County Drive in Cherrybrook... at 1am. Gasp.

Seriously though, Canberra is pretty darn dead, I know its probably because it is the weekend but after what I saw of Saturday night, and what I heard of Friday night, I think I would go nuts in a town like that!

The talk was given by David Cook on 2 Timothy 2, on what to do when you hit hard times. It was really good to learn what he said, as it told us of many things which we should do when challenged in our Christian walk and stuff.

After a morning tea break, where I felt energetic and walked back to CCA and then back to LH again (10 mins each way in a 1 hour break), we had strand stuff again. Yesterday after our strand half time, we found a really cool spot to have our strand meetings on the ground floor of LH, so we didn't have to contend with the noise in the room where 5 groups were crammed in. This little spot had like a semi circle couch sorta seat, and windows which made it look like a bunker. Very cool. Anyways, during the strand time, we did a "place the event or people in timeline order" like I did in strand 1+. Except instead of pieces of paper, events were fruit bars and people were freddo frogs.. mmm.. edible history.... After that, we did an great timeline of the entire bible based on what we learnt.. we were going into quite a bit of detail with it all, but it was cool, and taught me quite a lot about some stuff I thought I knew, but obviously didn't know :)

After the session, back to CCA for lunch, where an absolutely wonderful soup was served. If you like that sort of thing.

..

After the quest through culinary bliss, free time awaited us all! A group of us: Glen, Graham, James, Kimmy, Justin, Jenna and her friends (I forget your names sorry),.. I forget who else.. went to the shopping mall behind CCA.. Jenna had told Justin about the fact Sportsgirl sold guy's accessories, so she took him in there to find out.. I forget why that was funny, haha... umm, the most important part of going to the mall was to get... instant noodles! Graham and I went looking for food while the others waited, and we decided to pretend to be English (seeing as we were staying at a backpackers hostel).. tho my accent has gotten shoddy, I've been in such bad form with accents recently, ah well.. after that, some of the group went back to CCA, while Glen, Kimmy and I followed Graham to the arcade to watch him DDR. He is scary on that "dance" pad. I won't say anymore :P

Walking back from the arcade, we observed some really odd art.. one of them being a statue of sheep sitting in a rather provocative position, with another sheep staring at it... Also, a giant metal pillow (that was cool however) and a wall that had speakers playing the voice of someone trying to get the attention of a dog or a monkey or a Port Adelaide player... Canberra is odd moments #2, #3 and #4... THey'll probably argue that Sydney has weird stuff, but still, its fun to bag Canberra :)

At about 3pm, the middle of this free time block, I met up with my strand group, as we had decided to do a social sorta thingy. So I went back to the mall and we decided to go to the food place for ice creams. Except.. no one wanted ice creams... hahah... but I got chips from some place called Kingsley's tho.. which were expensive and loaded with salt.. but alright I guess.. We played a hide and seek sort of game in the mall, called sardines or something, where someone hid and we had to find them, and when we find them, we had to hide with them in the same area. I sucked at the game :) At the end, everyone had found Prue (who had done the hiding) except for Cindy and I. Ah well, it was pretty funny though :)

We all then went off to our electives. Because it was my first time at NTE, I had to do the "How to give a testimony" elective. I had thought that I didn't really need to do it, because I had given one at youth group before, but I was pleasantly surprised that I learnt quite a bit through it.. and I also learnt from helping those that I was partnered with in their own testimonies, so yay!

Dinner was "apparently" veal schnitzel. We'll leave it at that.

The talk tonight was pretty full on. Phillip Jensen spoke about the doctrine of evangelism part 1, telling us of the purpose of evagelism. He spoke really well about things, and really got us thinking about many things, one of them being deduction, induction and revelation. Actually, it didn't get me only thinking, but plain confused. Thankfully I got it after a while :P

We visited the Groombridges after that, who are going to be missionaries to Slovenia next year. Mark is an ex-Credoite, so we all went to support them, even though we heard their mission stuff in small group this year when they visited :)

We once again claimed the cafe in CCA when we got back there, and hung about, with Phil dispensing his huge knowledge of music as usual. Sniff, you'll be missed next year Phil!

-d

Next: NTE Day 3
Previous: NTE Day 1

NTE Day 1: Journey to the centre of the nation... or a dwelling place of rather odd people...http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

2004-12-04T23:59:00.000+11:00

(Warning: this post is long and all of my NTE posts will be.. as well as backdated)

Had a reallly early start today, where I woke up at around 5:55am (actually really got out at 6am, but 5 something sounds better :P), rushed through breakfast and extra packing, and was ready for Alan to pick me up at 6:30am.. I then had to wait about 20 mins because he was late. Hehe, funny since I was actually on time for once!

We had to then go down south to pick up Jenna on the way, and when we got there she was just a little (read:extremely) agitated about the fact we were late but after much plugging of ears, we finally got on the M5 then onto the Hume, putting us on our way to the nation's capital!

After a session of singing along to U2, Pete Murray and U2 (again), we found ourselves at Canberra with Alan and Jenna trying to remember how to get to our rego spot, based on their knowledge of last year's NTE. After rego (and running into Glen, James, Graham and Dave.. well, waving at them), we raced to drop off our bags at Canberra City, a backpacker's hostel in what is (apparently) the centre of Canberra... this was all amid continual complaints from Jenna that we did not get allocated Fenner Hall, where you are given individual rooms. I personally was quite happy at Canberra City, as bunks and dorms are allll part of the camp experience!

We ran into Becca and Rene outside Canberra City (CCA), and after check in and stuff, we made our way over to ANU's Llewellyn Hall for the first meeting/talk of the conference.

When I got in to the hall, it was so cool just looking around and seeking over 900 other uni students just gathering together in a place and praising God! It was quite different to what I'm used to though (but expected), as both the style of the songs and the mood of the students quite sombre compared to my church, hehe. But it didn't matter of course and it was so incredibly good!

We had the welcome and all that stuff, and then a talk from David Cook on 2 Timothy 1, on loyalty to Jesus. We then went back to CCA for lunch, which consisted of a wonderfully delicious bread roll.. (note: some details in the previous sentence have been extremely exaggerated) After lunch, we had free time! I spent this going to the shopping mall which was really close to CCA, with Kate, Becca, Kat and Jono. This was a short free time, and before you knew it, we had to go off to strand group, which met back at Llewellyn. But I still had to time to get some sunscreen and socks from Target... which also are the same pair that Jono got as well.. heehee

If you don't know, strand time is the main chunk of NTE, and we study a bible passage intently, then have to give a talk based on it! My group members were Matt, Ruth, Kathryn, Cindy, Virginia and Jono from Credo, Prue and Sam who came later, and of course our awesome leaders Rowan and Tim! Hi there guys if you're reading this!

After a few get to know you games, learning such crucial things as what was wrong with Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne (all members were from one of these places) we got stuck into the teachings, and the passage we had was Micah 4:6 to 5:9. I knew it was going to be tough to understand, with it being OT, but when we started it really did hit me, as just trying to read the whole book of Micah was tough enough to understand!

After strand we went back to CCA for dinner, and had some half fried fish and chips.. I won't comment on the merits of that meal.

A REALLY odd thing happened as we just left CCA to walk towards Llwellelyn (LH from now on) for the evening meeting. Outside CCA there are like two blocks, I think they might be gas line or fire hydrant related. Well, these two concrete blocks are about 2 metres high and about 3-4 metres apart. Anyways, while walking past, a teen about 17-18 was trying to leap across from one block to another. For no particular reason whatsover. Needless to say we were completely shocked, with Becca especially shocked and pretty much screamed as we all witnessed this guy nearly axe himself, and barely land on the other side with one leg! That was Canberra is odd moment #1.

The meeting was quite good, as Phillip Jensen spoke about the future of AFES, which actually turned into a past of AFES, or Uni evangelism in general. At first I was confused as to its relevance, but by the end I found it really cool how so much of the growth of Christianity over the years is due to Christians around my age! Truly inspiring stuff.

Afterwards, a large group of us were waiting around for Jono to purchase a book (on femanism funnily enough) and as a result were really late for our first Credo meeting for to discuss issues and mission. Actually turning around the corner in sight of CCA, Paul was waiting for all of us and I actually thought he would bite our heads off! He didn't, so it was all cool :)

The meeting went good, and it was funny when we split into mission groups, as Kimmy (who is leading the Narraweena team) wasn't at NTE yet, so Rene just told us what sort of things would be happening, without really knowing what was going on! :)

Afterwards we just hung about in the cafe area, talking and all that sort of stuff before going to bed around 12:30..

-d

Next: NTE Day 2

Guitar tune: Hillsong "Perfect King"

the complete and incomplete happenings of an exam completer

2004-12-03T13:41:00.000+11:00

Finishing exams is fun.. and hectic
Today is the first day I have had at home since exams finished. My exam finished at 12:40pm Monday and as I was running out of Uni at about 12:45pm, on a bus at 12:55, and at Dee Why Beach at about 2ish. Since then its been like, do as much stuff possible, which has beeen awesome. Went to Kathmandu (shop, not the city) twice this week to get stuff, and yesterday while I was there I had to hold off my tendency to buy geeky stuff (I was thinking of a bright led keychain doobie).. Also yesterday I helped out at an Auslife program for YFC Australia, which was pretty neat to do.. and Morgs' 21st last night, which was THE funniest party I've ever been to I think. The speeches were absolutely top notch comedy, and just capped off a great night spent catching up with some Credo ppls I hadn't seen since... the previous 21st, Robbo's... (um, two weeks ago, hehehe)

I'll be going to National Training Event (NTE) on Saturday morning (leaving at 6:30am!) and will be away until the 12th of December.. I'll try and journal when I can about all the goings on at what looks like an awesome conference and mission (whether live there or delayed), so if you're bored, you can come see what I'm up to there, mebe photos if I can manage to get any put up :)

as for now, I should get back to packing

-d

tune: Jars of Clay "Liquid"

thats a booking, 10 mins in the sin bin

2004-11-25T01:00:00.000+11:00

I'm really over studying for a subject I won't understand for the final.. so this is a promotional post about a band I absolutely love atm.. Yellowcard... will be buying their album from hmv tomorrow, yay for $20 albums, hehe... actually, something really funny happened jus then, I checked out the hmv aus website just to see how much they sold it for (if they sold it) and right there on the home page, the album is listed under $20 tunes.

woah.. (keanu reeves style)

yeah, that was cool, it must be meant to be for me to get the album, heehee! :P

"Here I go, scream my lungs out and try to get to you
You are my only one
I let go, there's just no one who gets me like you do
You are my only, my only one"

streaming vid tune: Yellowcard "Only One"

seriously, how awesome is a punk-pop-rock band that can pull off having a violinist? (an extrememly energetic one at that, he absolutely rocks!)

-d

wildfire

2004-11-21T01:45:00.000+11:00

omgomgomgomgomg

tonight I had a work Christmas party dinner (early yes, but who cares, I got to go), and it was at the Wildfire restaurant, at Circular Quay.. and omg it was swanky, I'm soo not used to that sort of place :) But it was cool as! There was fully like a buffet thingo where they brought the food to you, and you got to pick which ones you wanted and stuff.. and the food was sooo nice, chicken especially, best I've ever had! Man, just a great experience all round, I had to really savour it, cos I doubt I'll be in such a place for quite a long while :P

anyhows, sleep.needed.indeed

-d

iTune: Foo Fighters "MIA"

tuning: BDDDDD

2004-11-18T23:38:00.000+11:00

this semester has been sooo weird for me
I'm just not into studying at all (not like anybody ever is) but no motivation in the tank whatsoever... *checks again* yep, its not there..

all I keep thinking of is the freedom I'll have after the 29th (my last exam) and I frankly don't care if I fail that subject either... its so annoying... in the past I was able to drum up some emergency motivation, and get through... I doubt that will happen this time... all I wanna do is sit down outside with my guitar and write some songs...

I soo need to write some by the end of the summer, there are too many things floating in my head, hehehe

back to my state of trying to study

-d

tune: Missy Higgins "Scar"

scar

2004-11-17T20:34:00.000+11:00

ever do something that is like, cool and fun.. then you just don't think you should do it anymore, because you feel like a you're being a burden or imposing..? even if others continue to do it? that you think you're unique, realise you're not (as far as you know), and come to the conclusion that this whole thing is just another stepping stone in the lesson that is life... and you should just pack up your bags now and just watch others more qualified and interesting have the chance.

confidence really is a shaky attribute... it can drive you do the most awesome or stupid things... but without it, all that is left is the stupid things.. and what becomes of you when all your life has become is the stupid things? when what you had confidence in just confuses you so much that you just don't know what to do, what to say, how to think, how to decide... when every fibre of your being wants to, but you don't want to be just part of the crowd, just doing it because everyone else does because everyone else feels that way. what if you want to be different to all of that, have your actions stand out on their merit, for them to be noticed because it was something others in the same situation wouldn't do...?

how your world changes so much when you discover an entirely different set of things to what you knew before, and see how much it opposes world views. what will happen by living to these things? acting them out, staying true? will I find happiness? will I find destruction? only 1 person knows the answer to all of this. and I hope that He's reading..

-d

tunes: Missy Higgins "The Sound of White"

%

2004-11-16T22:37:00.000+11:00

funny outing I had with the family tonight...
Myer had running an "exclusive" shopping night for Myer one card holders, which was all good, cos by getting the free card we got a night of shopping with lotsa % off lotsa stuff!
As a result, I have now entered the world of anklet socks, as I got a pair of Human (the brand, not the species) shoes which require socks like these, or i'll look like a dork. :) Man, I'm feeling fashionable. I even got a couple pairs of neato shorts which I had REALLY been needing (I only have one pair of decent shorts).

ohohoh, and I got Jimmy Eat World's latest album "Futures" which is sounding awesome up to where I've heard so far (3 tracks). But who cares, its JEW! Also got Missy Higgins' album as well, yaaaay.

hmm, I just completely posted about shopping. I have a worrying feeling that I sound like Michelle at this point.... :P

who cares, my shoes rock!

-d

tunes: Jimmy Eat World "Futures"

leave of absence

2004-11-16T19:16:00.000+11:00

hmms, haven't posted for a while.. lots going on, as well as not much going on.. such is the life of exam period... I'm also dreading/looking forward to my comm theory exam.. which I seriously (and realistically) doubt I can even pass

sigh

the dilemma of Distraction comes out about now.. it sort of gives me comfort at a time like this, as well as making me have no motivation at all to do any work :P

anyways
food

-d

kate

2004-11-09T20:16:00.000+11:00

(This is in relation to Monday, I'm not actually backdating it on blog time, as Monday's post was important.)

Productive day today, I'm actually making progress with my comm theory assignment! woot! Nothing to write home about of course, but yeah, atleast I got stuff done today.

Spoke to Dave (one of the many I know) today about Something For Kate, and it just reminded me of all the music I was listening to before my two shopping sprees at Koorong, hahaha. So I've gone back through all my singles, listening to the b-sides and stuff - as we had a long discussion about their b-sides and concert performances.. Can't wait to go see them again sometime next year...

Had a funny memory while I was walking home from the bus stop today, the same bus stop I had for so many years walked home from after school before 2001...

*cue mid-90s to late 90s music, namely earlier Oasis, Foo Fighters and Matchbox 20 stuff*

As I walked up the street, I remembered back to the times when I was wistfully depressed about my inabilitytoknowANYgirls situation, with music about girls and being with girls usually occupying my Sony Walkman (thats cassette tape walkman, thus making it more originally genuine.. none of this new fandangled MP3 player stuff we have these days... You had to actually wait to get music on those things....) anyways, I would constantly dream about meeting the right girl, the perfect girl... and I would meet her because she would get off at the same bus stop (hey, it was my dream).. then, as we were walking up towards my place, I would strike up a conversation with her and have EVERYTHING in common, you know, sport, Victorianess, music... and discover she lived not just in my street, but right next door!! Yes very sad I know... This was the subject of many of my daydreams back then, high school naivety is so funny... especially when you don't know that many girls and therefore these sort of things just propogate unchecked inside your mind.. also, it wasn't helped by watching dramas aimed at teens (yes, I watched Dawson's Creek, Party of Five, Felecity... hahah, you've lost all respect for me ;P) and seeing guy girl interaction in all of that made me crave for any female friends at alll.. hahah, i was so sad.

(This is a tip for parents, if you are thinking of sending your kids to a single sex school, your reasons should be "I don't want my kids to be disctracted by girls" or "I want my kids to have no ability to communicate effectively with the opposite sex". Its not always the case, but its a good probability :P)

annyywayys, yes, I was continually depressed back then in my stupid little teenage world about girls mostly, ohhh and also the music propogated it, like Matchbox 20 stuff... maaan, what was the point of all this rambling on? Insight into what I used to be like? hahah, its so funny how much I've changed since then, except this time when I worry about girls, I don't wish that Miss Right moved next door to me, I've learnt that is one of those things that will NEVER happen :P

hmms, this ramble got misdirected, I'm sure I'll revisit it in the future when I have a proper purpose for it :)

-d

in tribute

2004-11-08T20:33:00.000+11:00

I had another post lined up for tonight... but I just found out something which has pretty much sunk my mood...

I've always been proud of how good my dad is at relating to non-asian people... probably due to the fact he has worked in many companies in finance departments during the 80s when there were not as many asians about (I think, its not like I was that conscious of my surroundings then)

Anyway, he's always had lots of non-asian friends, and me and my bro would joke about when he would put on his "Aussie" voice when talking to them, saying things like "telly" and "fair dinkum". I guess I liked to latch onto this fact due to my hanging about more in non-asian groups and understanding non-asians better (I refuse to listen to music in a language I can't understand :P)

One of my dad's best friends was Steven... they both followed rival footy teams (My dad goes for Richmond, him the Bulldogs), they played golf together and our familes went to dinner or even holidays when we were younger.. Both our familes even moved up to Sydney from Melbourne at the same time, but settled in opposite sides of the city, us in the north, them in the south... They had nicknames for each other too, which I thought was really cool, as not many people ever call my dad by anything other than his name...

Thus why it came as a huge shock to find out he passed away a couple of days ago after battling illness for some time, but it was thought he was on the recovery (I think anyway).. and it just came out of the blue.. you never get used to death happening to people you know, and thats two for me this year... its even more sad that my dad has never been able to visit him since he had found out about the initial illness, for fear of getting him sick with a cold or the flu or something...

Of all of my dad's friends he was the most awesome and funny, and really nice to us too, and even though we haven't visited them for so many years, I've never forgotten him..

I pray that he is in a better place now, and that his family are comforted by the prescence of family and friends in this time...

You will be missed Uncle Steven..

luck

2004-11-07T02:08:00.000+11:00

maaan, so just our luck
a distinct sense of deja vu about tonight..

had the Credo ball tonight, which was good fun... but afterwards when we got to the car.... well, if you remember back to an incident with my car a month or so ago, well, something similar... jus not my car this time...

damn annoying though... its just like... what is wrong with the world, seriously... argggg

yeah, nothing else much more to say..

-d

dil

2004-11-03T09:21:00.000+11:00

Dilbert rules. full stop

just take a look at such classic strips like this:

soo incredibly funny
I'd just like to add at this point. That I am a geek. Thus why I find this veryvery funny :)

Thank you all, you may go back to your non-geek activities now. If thats what you'd rather do. :P

-d

rail

2004-11-01T23:07:00.000+11:00

I hate City Rail

I think its rather ironic that the timetables were changed a few months ago to provide "more efficient service during peak hours", yet, the service at these times have hit an all time low as far as I've observed.. and many Sydney people would agree

I hate City Rail

-d

left..left......left..right...left

2004-10-31T20:21:00.000+11:00

hmmm

ever have the feeling of being incredibly left out?

if you haven't, then thats awesome..

but if u have, you'd probably know what i'm going through right now..

i'm not bitter or anything, far from it.. i understand its hard to include everyone

but it doesn't change how incredibly miserable i am right now..
when you're the only one from a particular group to be left out (as far as i know), it does cut pretty deep..

i guess i can react to this in quite a few ways.. one of them is not letting it make me close up from ppl... which is entirely possible... as after all the growth i've had in the past 6 months... i still feel like i'm on the whole outer... like everybody is in some nearly soundproof bubble, and i'm just outside, catching a few words here and there so I get a glimpse of the bubble, but not really being part of it all.. guess its the price i pay for doing what i did for the last few years up until 6 months ago... or mebe its jus me... maybe i'm jus not an engaging person... and ppl jus humour me when i try and interact with them....

i dunno, i'm majorly overreacting to this all... i haven't been depressed and majorly insecure for a long time, and i guess its just weird feeling like this.. not sure how to deal with it.... at all... thus why i am failing terribly at trying to deal...

er... hmm..

-d

authorment

2004-10-30T02:01:00.000+10:00

hehe, had like a major brainwave while talking with Jen just then..
Start up like, a story blog, where we write an ongoing, character driven story. Not sure what sort of genre, but with like, romance thrown in mebe, some action, some things depicting Christian struggles? Its all sorta up in the air atm, but I'm liking this idea more and more.

Sounds really neat, dunno if there are any sort of things similar out there (there probly is). If you find this interesting, then stay tuned, it may happen in the next couple of months (pending uni exams). If you're not, then pay this no mind :P

-d

in me

2004-10-29T15:26:00.000+10:00

I let go of my life
yes I gave it all
I let go of all I used to do
and I gave it all away

You want to know,
the differences between us
You want to know,
why these things have changed
You've got to know,
the One who lives in me
He lives in me, in me

- Kutless "In Me"

hawk

2004-10-27T19:34:00.000+10:00

omgomgomgomgomgomg!!!

I am so incredibly happy right now, even though I'm doing EngSoc financials.
I FINALLY found out who sang one of my favourite songs that I've been listening too on Way FM's internet stream (bit hard to get Colorado radio in Sydney)

The song was "Every Little Bit" by Hawk Nelson.

That has just rocketed to the top of my shopping list

With a bullet

aweeeesome

-d

shopping list

2004-10-25T01:15:00.000+10:00

got to use my 30% discount at koorong this week..

So far I have the following shopping list:

Books
Definitely:
Joshua Harris - I Kissed Dating Goodbye (read it, just gotta get one for myself)
Phillip Yancey - Reaching for the Invisible God (for JimTims)
Lee Strobel - The Case for Christ (for Credo, mebe)
God's Survival Guide - Criswell Freeman
Five Love Languages - Gary Chapman (both for Jen)

Thinking about:
Max Lucado - He Chose the Nails
Yancey - Disappointment with God
Charlie Peacock's New Way to Be Human looks interesting.. maybe its just cos I'm a Foot fan and I love the song of the same name. But the forward by Jon Foreman was good, and the guy looks like an interesting writer..

CDs
Definitely:
Hawk Nelson - Letters to the President(!!)
Kutless (self titled)
Kutless - Sea of Faces
Audio A - Lift
Audio A - Worldwide
Various Artists - In The Name of Love (U2 stuff by Christian artists)
Switchfoot - Legend of Chin
Jars - The Eleventh Hour
Jars - Furthermore (Live sessions)
Nathan Tasker's latest
Switchfoot - The Beautiful Letdown (both for Ali)
Chris Tomlin - Arriving (for Jen)

Thinking of:
Relient K (any album)
Rookie
Jeff Deyo

Other
SONFEST tix!!!

Okay, now that is gonna be a touch expensive list I think, considering I'll find stuff I want there, like relationship books; which I ALWAYS get attracted to (Hey, I'm a klutz with girls, I need to learn how to conduct myself around them :P)

Does anybody have any other ideas on CDs? Based on the artists I have listed? As you can see, I'm hugely into rock, hard rock, pop rock, punk rock... Just got the FM Static cd off ebay recently, looking forward to receiving that..

Its funny that.. In my experience, whenever I go to rock concerts or festivals, I can usually count on my hand how many asians I see in the crowd, or walk past. I severely buck the trend I think, since I'm not heavily into R&B, Hip Hop and dance.. Yes. I go against stereotype. I am such a rebel. yaargggg. Ohhhh, and I can't dance to that stuff properly either. Even more of a rebel. woot

-d

er...interesting...

2004-10-24T11:55:00.000+10:00

well, today certainly was an... experience...

to fill in, this week there is a wedding for two ppl from my church, and tonight there was a pre-wedding dinner. It was actually like, the chinese restaurant ceremony part of the wedding (I had been to one of these before), and I am SOOOO determined NOT to ever have anything like that for my future wedding.

Oh dear.

But my mum indicated it might be possible (*sob*) by saying

"These are the most cheapest type of wedding dinners! So much food for the price!!"

Oh dear.

Anyways, getting away from the nightmare which will happen in the not-too-distant to distant future (I'm covering all bases here, so I don't tempt God's wrath)... Tonight was probably by far one of the oddest nights I had experienced in a while.

Firstly, it was majorly embarrassing, as I was severly underdressed. I wore like a smart casual sort of button shirt, as I was told it was that dress code. Of course I didn't think to overdress just in case, and everybody else was in a shirt and tie. Ah well, my fault really.

It was very asian. Haha, yeah, I should get used to it too, as I can't really escape that fact in my case (it's funny to note that my church is mainly asian, yet most of us don't know how to speak a word of chinese, me included). But the food was good, and a good time was had by all.

One thing I noticed was these sorts of events must be pretty sombre and conservative affairs.. The only tables making any noise really, participating in games or dancing, were our tables. Maybe it depends on the familes. Either way, we just make too much noise, haha.

But yeah, it was fun attending the event, and I was glad I went.. but it looks so embarrassing for the main characters, and if my parents subject me to that...

I have no idea what I'd do... But I'll figure something out..

One thing I am cut about today.. Is that there is no more New Orleans KFC chicken anymore. That was like the best thing they brought out.. ever... since Popcorn Chicken.. hehehe... but yeah, waay cut, so cut that I'm going

-d

sick

2004-10-20T23:00:00.000+10:00

Today, I carpooled into uni again, with Ali driving (thankfully, as I was pretty sick) and Nicki not present due to an assignment she had to do. Yay. Quality time with Ali. Yay-O-yay. However, I was thankful for her prescence in the fact it woke me up rather well. I was dead tired for most of the trip, and her rather...ahem...audible singing was enough to shake me out of my socks, eek.

We had another amusing run in with our arch nemesis...

....

The E-Change Toll lane for the Harbour Bridge.

shock. horror.

Wait, u got no idea what I'm on about.

Well, let me explain. Here in Sydney, we have what is called the electronic toll tag system. Like there is in countless other cities around the world. This is designed so u don't have to stop, or stop for very long as u go through the toll gates to pay your toll for crossing the bridge or motorway. Now, this E tag thingo sensor, is usually placed on its own or with an auto (exact change) lane, where its quite quick to get through anyway. BUT, as shown below, they stuck an E tag lane together with a CHANGE lane.

Now, we just don't get the logic in this. If the E lane was available on all lanes, then that would be fine. But why on this lane? Why waste the person sitting in the booth who just watches people drive by with their windows wound up? Why waste the time getting us to wait for the silly boomgate to lift when we should just be able to drive through without stopping?!

Hm, we probably will never have the answer. But I do know this. Alison made me gripe about this. I really dunno how to carry the winge any further than this :P

However, I can state this: She is a complete drama queen. While singing along to "Beautiful" by Bethany Dillon (the song she boldly proclaims is her life story), she had the full range of emotional hand gestures going and was very passionate too. It was just plain amusing from my end. This is the person whom the high school girls at youth group look to as a role model... Well.. Or she looks to them.... I find it hard to distinguish these days. Either way, the future looks uncertain *cue x-files music*.

I think one of the guys at church has remarked this before.. Why is it all of the girls at my church are like.. different... :P luck of the draw perhaps, heehee!

-d

(This is a backdated post. I was sick all week and thus had quite a dull week..)

weekends

2004-10-17T23:27:00.000+10:00

holahola

I say

or rather, myself says

annnyyyway, what did I get up to this weekend...

Had baseball

In this said baseball match, we were downright cruising... 7-3 up, with half an hour to go and just dominating. I mean, I had two identical at bats where I hit it to short stop (and he subsequently errored, meaning they were both outs on the stat sheet), and beat out the error to make it to first. The only difference was that I scored off a hit from 1st base in the 1st inn, and scored from 2nd in the 2nd. Thats just weirddd. And I struck out on 3 pitches, on the 3rd AB! That really is downright weird.

Ah well.

Where was I.

Yes, winning. We thought we had the game in the bag I think. So natrually we let them back in, and they even scored a bases loaded grand slam home run. Maaaaan, it was a huuuge hit! No way anybody could get it. So we ended up losing 9-7. grr, very annoying.

Ah well, still a good match I guess, apart from therefore having an 0-3 afternoon. These dodgy stat arvos are.. well.. dodgy..

I need new adjectives.

I have new clothes!
And two of them, to be exact!
If you've been speaking to me recently, you would know how much of a big deal it is for me. But many of you don't, so don't worry. ehehe

As most of what I say isn't that interesting, I'm gonna start reviewing my CDs. My Switchfoot ones first I think.

I should start reading the thesaurus, then I will have a new set of adjectives with which to review with.

neato

-d

llama

2004-10-16T02:27:00.000+10:00

ahahaha

this is brilliant, the llama song

man, I'm soo gonna have that stuck in my head for a while

llama llama duck!!!!

-d

hola!

2004-10-14T23:20:00.000+10:00

After working 8 hours today (my first big slab of income in STACKS long) which = moneymoney to pay debts, I get the following news at my UTS email..

Considering the difficulties that you have had in our last night’s mid-semester exam, we have decided to choose the best THREE answers and the exam will be now marked for 75 Marks. Hope this helps!

How awesome is that! I may actually pass, hehehe
But yeah, great stuff, makes me feel much better :)

Went to the batting cages tonight for practice.. Either my reflexes just haven't clicked in yet this season, or I suck now... hmmm.. bit of both probly..

crud, I gotta go and pick up some comp hardware for a job tomorrow now... so laaaate :(

-d

saucy

2004-10-14T14:34:00.000+10:00

I'm currently on my lunch break while working, sitting at an office window in North Sydney looking out at the harbour bridge. Man, thats an awesome sight!

Buuuut, back to more pressing matters. I wanted to post to once again wax lyrically about the complete awesomeness of cream and tomato mixed italian pasta sauce. I went down to the food court and took a chicken, mushroom and sun dried tomato penne, and mixed it with a normal boring napolitana penne. This = awesomeness²!! That is, awesomeness x awesomeness = awesomeness². Don't you remember your algebra? Well, I don't expect that you do, unless you're in upper high school or doing a geek course or career :) Wait, the two original ingredients weren't awesome in the first place.. I guess that makes the end result even more remarkable, obviously food energy was not conserved in the reaction.

uhh, but yeah, this mixture took what was two quite ordinary food court pastas, and made them not bad...awesomeness² in fact...but then again, this sort of sauce is always awesome to me, you'd probably hate it.

hmm, mebe its the red bull that is making me in this mood... ah well, not like its bad, hehehe

-d

pickpickpick

2004-10-14T01:50:00.000+10:00

Weeeelll, thanks for asking about the exam Roofy.. I'll answer in this post...
examexamexam... I seriously am having a dodgy semester in terms of study.. I barely answered 50% of the exam, and am probly headed for fail.. lucky its only worth 15%.. but still, with only 2 subjects, I'm so incredibly unmotivated... I seriously think its related to just being sick of this whole field of study and employment that I'm doing! egads!

Anyways, on a brighter note, had lots of fun hanging out with Nicki and Ali today, its already been heaps of fun this semester already, but today was probably the funniest, thanks guys!

hmms, I need to get some guitar picks. I currently use green .88mm Dunlop Tortex Standard picks. But they seem to get ripped up really easily, cause of the unco way that I strum :P But I've been playing a lot at home with an old yellow .73mm Tortex pick, and it doesn't seem to rip up much. So I think I'll try and get some tomorrow, and hopefully they'll last longer than like, 5 or so sessions. (But then again, I don't think picks are supposed to last that long). Ohh, I wanna get a strap too.. but like, nothing has really jumped out at me all that much.. Dunlop ones are cool, but I think I'm waiting for something to scream "HEY! I'm gonna be awesome on your Fender Tele, mate! Now BUY ME NOW, as well as a big box of Dunlop Tortex Standard picks (72 of each colour), two Fender Strats, one Gibson Les Paul and a Maton Acoustic. Who cares if you can't afford it! Thats what asking people for money is for! Busk! muuahahaha..."

ahem.

That would be a very effective guitar strap. It would have a part time job as a salesman. Sorta like my bro. Which would make my bro sorta like a guitar strap... With hair... and who can throw a baseball really hard.. Which most guitar straps can't do.. Well, some can, but they've made the major leagues already..

I'm wondering if I should get food.. but its 12:50am, and i gotta work tomorrow... So I should sleep soon, hmmms

ah well, I've run out of things to think of right now, woohoo!

-d

music; lyrics

2004-10-12T20:58:00.000+10:00

I have a mid semester exam tomorrow. So naturally I'm not studying, and I'm blogging instead.
Good day today, tho it was pretty damn hot. It's still hot now speaking of which, arggg summer's hEEERReeEE!!!

My stomach still hurts from sit ups two days ago.. I hope that means that they had a successful work out. Or it could just be because I have weak muscles. Moohar. Probly the latter.

I have $30 in Grace Bros vouchers that I got for my 21st last year.. from June... Do you reckon they're still valid? They have no expiry date... hehe, hope they are.. I just found them a week ago when I was looking at boxes that sit on top of my PC tower... My room is so messy that I'm now losing practially money. hah

Spoke to Dave, the aforementioned trombone player from Crying Out Loud today (after getting kicked in Project Gotham on XBox by him, I will never ever drive a lexus darnit) and asked him his approach on song writing. Music first, lyrics second.. I think I should really commit to that approach, I was always doing it the other way, and came up empty. When I get around to actually writing a song, or starting to do it, I'll post up my thoughts..

-d