then there was light

it was an eerie feeling driving through a few blacked out suburbs - no house lights, no street lights, no traffic lights. only some moon light and the headlights from other vehicles caught in traffic and jams. there were people directing at the major intersections - they had no/barely visible lights, no reflective gear... better than nothing though. i decided to forego the right hand turn towards the church, an intersection that had no such assistance, and which has bad visibility at the best of times. went the long way to double back courtesy of a roundabout, and joined with the rest of the CWMC folk to ponder our options in the glow of the tea candles supplied by renai. we were already running late, and could either make the trek to an alternate location and start even later, or postpone the session. i personally was not keen on the implication of option 2, which would mean 5 hours worth of back to back sessions on top of an already full sunday. but that's where the majority leant, so...

then just as we had reached a decision, the lights came on! what timing :)

when daydreams turn sour

i don't know if i have an overactive imagination, but on my good days i certainly think i could mount a pretty strong case for such an argument. by good i mean the days when said imagination is being particularly active. it has a tendency to distract me from what i need/ought to be doing, and sometimes in keeping me awake, even creeping into my real dreams (ie the ones you have when you are asleep) on the odd occasion.

the subject matters vary, but the topic of romance is a definite 常客. not that daydreaming, or romance, in and of themselves are bad/unhelpful things, but i am aware of my soft spot for the odd rom(-com) movie... and knowing that the problem of romance is something that girls (generally speaking) find greater struggels with, to the point of it venturing into "female porn" territory... i can't help but wonder whether someone affected by both physical and emotional stimuli is a particularly rare and wretched creature, doubly cursed...

the strength of this course is in the reading

so reiterated our facilitator at the conclusion of the first session of CWMC (condensed world missions course) currently being run at church. heard about the course two sundays ago, and was mildly interested but non-committal. then last week an old school mate of mine suddenly told me he had quit his job overseas and was moving back to aus, and will have some time up his sleeve being unemployed. his situation bore some similarities to mine a few years ago when i quit my job, went on a short term missions trip, and was unemployed after that for some time (much longer than i initially intended!). anyways, he asked me for some input as to what he could do with his time... his pastor also suggested for him to take advantage of the opportunity to go on a STM, something i encourage wholeheartedly - esp. since getting decent blocks of time off is so much harder to arrange once you are in the workforce.

the course is being run primarily for those in my church who are taking part in a YWAM Christmas Outreach program in dec this year, as part of their preparations. but it's open for other ppl to attend as well, and through that encounter with my friend i was reminded that i need to not let missions take such a "back seat" in my life/mind. hence the decision to commit to attending the course. after all, with a promise that it will change my life (or my money back), who could resist? ;)

so anyways, i've just added even more reading to do, on top of my already overflowing backlog...

at least it's for good/noble purposes huh? have stopped watching grey's anatomy and alias, which frees up 3hrs of my week. this will give me more time to read (though my efficiency in using this time remains to be seen...), and will also help fight against the "poison of pre-packaged entertainment", as spoken about in this article (which is actually about the place of children's literature in education, but read the quote and i think you'll see the principle):

Prepackaged entertainment poisons the wells of learning; it dulls our faculty for receiving and appreciating art and literature. Each of us knows the lyrics to a thousand pop songs; but how many poems do we know by heart? The radio has made us deaf to the music of poetry. To spend one's free time reveling in popular music, watching television, and going to the movies, and then to attempt to read Shakespeare for a class assignment — this is an exercise in futility. It is akin to drinking Coke all day, while intermittently attempting to develop a taste for fine wine. Like the palate, the mind must be cleansed if we are to develop good taste.

which got me thinking... how relevant is this idea to the reading of the Bible and other good Christian literature? (these being the "poetry", the "Shakespeare", the "fine wine"etc of a Christian's life)

the journey of 10000 steps...

begins with the first.

my workplace is participating in the 10000 steps challenge, and i have joined a team at work. went and bought myself a pedometer and i'm now counting my steps :) don't think i'll quite hit that 10000 per day mark though, even with my walking to and from work.

funny to think that less than a week ago i was seriously thinking about giving up this walking thing. been walking to/from work for the past 5 months, and it's been ok in the cooler weather. now that it's warming up though, i'm not liking the idea (which turns into reality all too often) of arriving at work on the wrong side of hot and sweaty. plus i've never been keen on exposing myself to the sun too much - and my ~25 min walks is definitely a much higher continuous dosage of UV than i'm happy with. so i was tossing up options like

• starting later so i can drive and park in the adjacent shopping centre once their general parking areas are open (which some people do, but technically we're not supposed to...), or
  
• borrowing access to the shopping centre's staff car park, or
  
• starting and leaving home much earlier to get a spot in the car park at work (tossed this option cos i value my sleep too much to wake up any earlier, esp. seeing as i never get enough as it is), or
• go back to paying for nearby parking (the kind my conscience need not worry about :p), or
  
• starting a bit later to better time the local bus - the one that only comes once in a while, and whose punctuality can't be relied on even though it's at the start of the route! so by the time i wander to the bus stop, spend my time waiting, and finally get to my stop... i pretty much may as well have walked the whole way and saved myself $2

so, essentially it boils down to: what price my physical comfort?

anyhow, now that i'm doing this steps thing, i guess i'll stick to walking. and since i always carry an umbrella in my bag, i suppose i could use it for shade as well as shelter from rain. it's just that i can't stop the pictures in my mind of me strolling with a parasol... *shudder*

another thing i can't get out of my head in relation to this emphasis on walking is the song 500 miles - originally by the proclaimers, and covered by steven curtis chapman on his "all about love" album. it's not a song that i'd have thought belongs on a "christian" album about love, but MB's (SCC's wife) comments in the liner notes sheds new light on its lyrics:

... it celebrates in such a fun way what I know to be true of our commitment to each other. What a wonderful gift it is to know in confidence that the man I'm married to is the man who will be "growing old with me".

beautiful saviour

while battling to stay awake and alert at BSL on friday night, tekken posed a question about ephesians 4:18, which says that the Gentiles "are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart." a dilemma is reached when we also consider romans 12:2, which tells us to "not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind".

in short: how can the alienated person ever reach the stage of renewing their mind when it's the hard heart which causes the ignorance in the first place?

maybe it's because i wasn't following as lucidly as i should have been, so it took me a few moments to go from "so what?" to "oh yeah... that's a BIG problem! hmm... good question!"

i pondered the impasse awhile, before the solution dawned on me from way back in ezekiel 36:26, where God, as part of his promise to act for the sake of vindicating his holy name, promises Israel thus: "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh."

a new heart of flesh to replace the old hardened heart of stone! and it's indeed the wonder of the mystery of the gospel, "that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel." (ephesians 3:6)

this thought and reminder of God's graciousness in dealing with humanity... in dealing with me... has been in my mind all weekend, and i was glad to be met in church with these words from our song of the month. oh what a beautiful saviour we have!

All my days I will sing this song of gladness,
Give my praise to the Fountain of delights;
For in my helplessness You heard my cry,
And waves of mercy poured down on my life.

maranatha, hallelujah, amen!

now in 5.1 channels!

these are the speakers i lugged back from sydney in my bag ~1.5 months ago, and which have been sitting around waiting for me to hook up. that day was today. it's a cheapie brand and most of the connecting wires turned out to be too short for me to place the various bits and pieces where i originally intended. but they were free (thanks to sandk), and so after a bit of rearrangement i have a workable setup. gave it a quick test with a couple of dvds i have, and they're a marked improvement over my previous 2.0 gig (which speakers are now used for the sound from the VCR) :D

what a perfect excuse to go and rent some dvds, hehe.

also did a bit of blogger hacking today and implemented a few tweaks. even though the instructions were pretty useful, i still had trouble with the inline comments, eventually tracing the problem to a code snippet placement issue. just serves to confirm that i'd never cut it as a coder, so i'm glad there's folks a-plenty out there with code-friendlier brains than i, who have been kind enough to share their wisdom.

all in all, a mildly sense-of-achievement-inducing day :)

a visit to chicago's

not the city across the ocean (i wished!), but a local eatery by the name of chicago's piano bar & grill. i'm not actually sure if the piano in the picture is a real one... but i thought the dancing blues brothers figures on top were kinda cute :) this is where i lunched today with an old friend, and my verdict is that the food was ok but overpriced at double digits for burgers and fries. maybe it would have been better at night with some live entertainment. might consider trying something else from their menu another time... when there's some music happening :p

after lunch i wandered around the shops a bit to do a spot of window shopping - something i haven't done for a while. also went to an ATM to withdraw some money. that might seem too insignificant a thing to blog about, but the last time i got cash from an ATM was more than 2 years ago!

then i dropped into my previous workplace to say g'day to some of the folks there. a lot of things haven't changed, and i'm glad it's not something i need to worry about any longer. might use my next flex day to do lunch with my old teammates.

ok time to see if i can claim some more $$ from mr tax man...

speedreader i am not

i remember getting flyers for speedreading courses when i was in uni. never could be bothered forking out the $$ to up my reading speed, and always a bit skeptical about being able to comprehend/retain information when reading at high speeds. sometimes i wished i had the skills...

there's too much to read and not enough time to read it all. maybe i need to be a lot more selective. just like when i got a bit excited about a recent discovery (from which i decided to follow the blog of a person who i actually saw in real life a week or so later), tonight i've clicked my way to singapore and a bunch of christian bloggers there... the trail i followed (aka stuff i want to read, but not so fast that it goes in one eye and out the other!):

• gracenotworks (new "issue" just released)
• christ hacks (see here for explanation of what this is -- cool idea what)
• associated material from christ hack's contributors, eg. singapore living, which looks like it has some good stuff to explore before my next visit to the island nation (but err... i'm from an island nation too...)

meanwhile i think i'll go ahead with the 30 days of prayer during ramadan, which kicks off today. hmm... that actually seems like a good idea/contribution for christ hacks, might try and get a submission in :p

- - - - -

work bites. days are long. breaks are few and running on bare minimum. i want out of peak. badly.

but i did have the pleasure of telling one client today that they are getting a small refund instead of a bill for a few hundred dollars, because two weeks ago something they said triggered a suspicion in my mind which i've been following up, and this eventually resulted in an amendment done to correct an error and making their day. they remembered me, and thanked me for doing my job well. i guess, after all, that is what i'm getting paid to do.

still, i'm glad i don't have to go to work tomorrow - the joys of flex time :) i'm going to sleep in, have a lazy morning, hopefully meet some friends (visiting from overseas, but rather busy/packed schedule wise) for lunch, and set up the 5.1 speakers i lugged back from sydney more than a month ago. but i should probably take care of doing my tax return before indulging in too much play...

- - - - -

p.s. yeah... 90 mins later i'm still up... adding a "small world" update -- just discovered that one of christ hack's contributors seems to be friends with a guy who i knew from church here (when he was here for uni). shouldn't be too surprised cos i'm pretty sure they all go to the same church in sg. ok head starting to hurt. must sleep before i find even more things to add to my reading list!

watching grass grow

i generally like the few chinese music CDs i own. my "most wanted 2001" double album from sony music took badly to living in my CD wallet in the car some years back, they've never quite looked or played the same. hoping it was just a dirty surface, i decided to try resurrect them by giving the surfaces a bit of a clean/wash. inspired by a spot of googling for tips (and getting some conflicting advice!), i employed a tag-team combination of listerine mouth wash and soap resulting in two shiny and fairly promising looking discs. disc #1 passed a play test perfectly, so i was expecting similar results for disc #2. unfortunately looks were deceiving and this disc was causing all sorts of problems for the two drives i tested it on. another wash followed, with similar results. even EAC is struggling - would you classify 4.4% of one track (about 12 seconds of audio) read in 90-odd minutes a bit of a snail's pace? now i'm beginning to suspect that the damage goes deeper, and i may never be able to listen to these songs again. shucks...

so i actually spent a good part of my evening listeing to the best of electric light orchestra, while reading through the instruction manual for my new tough solar pathfinder watch by casio, which arrived in the mail today. it's been some two years since i first considered getting a tough solar watch, and thanks to ebay, this journey is over :) it's not actually a g-shock, which i think i would have ideally liked, but then again i don't exactly expose my watches to the sort of treatment that necessitates g-shock protection. i loved the solar power and the idea of the full auto light feature, but can see how the novelty (and perhaps usefulness?) of it can wear off very quickly :p the other features such as tidal graph, moon phase and bearing function (which i'll have to try out one day), which interesting, will probably see very little productive use also... anyways, i am satisfied with the purchase (only ~60% of what my original g-shock cost). only thing is, why can't the light stay on for more than ~1second? surely it couldn't have been that difficult to have the light stay on as long as you kept the light button depressed?? i think that would have been more useful than knowing tide times...

getting a move on?

halfway through reading the rebuttal/defence to the original article, i'm struck by a comment about proverbs 18:22 -- is the "find" really meant to be read in an active sense? a dictionary and concordance check later, and i remain skeptical about this being the definitive reading. i certainly don't dispute the fact that the guy has a responsibility to pursue, i'm just not sure that this is what this verse is saying/advocating, in the same sense that the author is using it.

the other thing that struck me was the next paragraph advising women to not advertise/glorify their single years, for the reason that it gives guys reason to leave them alone. food for thought, and i'm actually quite ambivalent (in the technically correct sense of the word :p) about that statement.

in any case, the article raises some important issues about the cost of delaying marriage... issues worth another look. i think i'd class myself as generally pro-young marriage (assuming spouse-selection principles like those of 1 cor 7:39), so to all those who are/have gotten married at a "relatively" young age, God's grace to you :) and to all those who aren't like Paul, but are yet to leave behind the season of singlehood... gambatte yo!

big day out

no sleeping in today - it was up at 7:30am, head out ~8am to paddington flowers and cafe for a breakfast with the SWANS crew. the claimed "city views" weren't that great, so i don't feel we missed out on too much with our indoor seats. after a bit of a feast (their big breakfast was of filling proportions), general laments about the loss of childhood in today's society, playing spot the politician look-a-like and trying to scare i mean warn yannie with stories of pickpockets and assorted scammers she might encounter in her upcoming trip, we parted ways and i caught a lift with the hebrew judge to join the chews in their brisbane pit stop + brunch do. more food (this time consumed at a slower pace) and conversations. 'twas good to see some people i haven't seen/talked to in a while (i still feel like i've been out of it for ages with my recent block of being away), but also a reminder of the distance that continues elsewhere. after giving yung some impromptu mando tutoring, and loitering around until the last remnants of the guests, i left with the nenes and hung out with them for the rest of the afternoon (lol... that was an unintentional pun, but only appreciable if you know the real people :p) to run a few errands before coming back to my place for a sit down and wander around the backyard. watched GITS-SAC over dinner and i understood it! unlike the first episode which i had to rewind and watch a second time, and am still a bit hazy about... anyways the website has been redesigned since i last visited, and there's a funky backing track to which my leg is shaking along as i type... but i'll probably get sick of it very quickly and in any case my net connection has been patchy all night so i think i'll get off now.

the bible, abridged version

at BSL tonight shte2 mentioned the recent launch of the "100 minute bible". in a moment of diversion, we came up with our own abridgment attempts...

• the bible in 5 seconds, aka elaine marie benes version:
  God creates heaven and earth, yada yada yada, God creates new heaven and new earth...
  
  
• the bible in sounds:
  yay... awww.... YAY!!!
  
  
• the bible in MSN emoticons (variance of the above):
  :) :( :D
  
  
• the bible in 5 letters:
  J-E-S-U-S

well, frivolity aside, my real reactions are echoed by the words already published by the good folk at CHN. that plus being reminded that if i really believed the worth of God's words, i'd read it more... seems to be one of those things i'm always striving to maintain and improve. anyways it was good to get back into BSL meetings cos i've been away from it for over a month.

speaking of studying, i got my test results back today. initially put off opening the envelope cos i didn't want to risk being disappointed after a flustering end to my working week. when i did open it, i was stunned...

in a good way, so yay :)

God (and the examiner!) is gracious.

*chuckle*

well, given my pitiful score from yesterday, i don't think geek girls are an option! it's funny reading though, hehe.

but i should really sleep... and initial plans for an early(/ier) night are a distant memory...

plain old middle-of-the-road

i didn't think i'd score that low... :|

i hope i do better in tests that count :p tonight shte1 asked me again whether i've got my ITB results back, and i haven't. i'm hoping to score somewhere above 50... as long as it's a pass, i'll be happy (though i'm sure i'd be happier if it's more than a pass, but let's be realistic here...)

anyways, i'm pretty sure that she beat me... not that it's a competition :) i'm pretty sure she's also my first official passenger, and the first to sit on my new car seat covers, which were freshly installed this afternoon. the astra upholstery has too strong an affinity to fluff, so i decided that maintenance/cleaning wise it's easier to cover at least the front seats. i ummed and ahhed at supercheap auto for a good while, before finally settling on a silver dragon design, which looks very similar (except for the headrest part) to this. then i spent probably the best part of an hour putting them on! and that despite my relatively small/thin hands/digits, because the fastening of the straps required a lot of reaching and poking under the seats, and there's really not a lot of room down there, not to mention the fact that cars aren't really designed for people to be trying to peer under the front seats and reach in and do stuff in that small space... i just hope i won't need to remove/reinstall them in a hurry.

good timing and other coincidences

have encountered some comments spam in the past, and yesterday got one mere minutes after posting my most recent entry. so i've been wondering what can be done about it... and today i happened across another blog with word verification, which i found out is now offered by blogger and so i've turned it on quick smart. now i can get back to seeing my comments counters stay at zero :p

in other "small world" news, i was viewing jan's photos of her recent trip to brissie, and discovered a pair of faces i recognised! this couple are friends of a friend, and i had accompanied said friend to visit them in toowoomba last year. turns out that the wife is jan's sister-in-law! whoaness...

oh and i could well have missed this if not for a timely check of /karen/, and also being advised of it by ecnerwal, but ghost in the shell - stand alone complex starts tonight. i think i'm going to be thoroughly lost watching it, but what the hey... i decided to drop grey's anatomy from my diet earlier this week to make room for survivor: guatemala, and will give GITS-SAC a spin while i'm picking up new shows :)

relevant humour

yes it's still peak. no i don't like it (and there's nothing like having just taken a holiday to make the daily facing up to the busyness of work that much less joyous). this comic from a mass forward at least raised a timely chuckle...

having said that, i haven't actually purchased any petrol since late june! and that was still back in the day of being below $1.05 a litre. imagine that...

many thoughts, few words

there's a quote which says: The prolongated application of a polysyllabic vocabulary infallibly exercises a deleterious influence on the fecundity of expression, rendering the ultimate tendency apocryphal.

ie. If you use too many long words, nobody will understand what you are talking about!

it doesn't fully relate to anything in particular, but i've been searching for an excuse to use it, and right now there are too many thoughts in my head for the limited words i feel i have which which to express them, so that's enough of a tenuous link for this time of the night :p

anyhow, i'm back. no more travelling in sight... i'm supposed to be back at work in about 9 hours, and i wished i didn't have to. can't my holiday last a little bit longer?

*sigh*

:|

echo sighting

it's been almost a month since i sold my echo. today i saw it in the carpark of a local shopping centre - although i haven't really missed my echo (or even having a car at all) i was a little dismayed to see that the rear bumper has had a noticeable encounter with a hard object of some description...

anyways, while running around a few weeks ago trying to sort out selling this car, i realised that in all my almost 6 years of ownership, i have almost no photos of my car! so, armed with my digital camera, i took a few snaps for posterity (and to include in my for sale ads).

today is also the first day that i've driven my "new" car. it's not the first time i've driven it of course, and i still remember accompanying my sister some 2+ years back when she first bought it. but now that she's moved overseas, i've been the beneficiary of an echo-for-astra upgrade. when i got home from my interstate trip last weekend, i came in the front door and went into the garage to deposit my shoes, and then it hit me: the car in front of me is now mine... all mine! no time to enjoy it yet... that will have to wait until after singapore.

speaking of cars and driving, i emailed some friends in search of a lift to the airport for tomorrow, and for some reason prose turned to poetry... and since that doesn't happen all that happen i figured i may as well post my little effort :p

hello you, with (access to) a car
and who from me reside not too far:
i'm needing a lift to the airport
can you assist and lend your support?
friday 9-ish i need to depart
thanks in advance with all of my heart;
please let me know as soon as you can
answer "yes" and i'm your biggest fan!

and now... to the business of packing.

pit stop: brisbane

back from sydney (entry on that still WIP), about to head off for the malayan peninsular in a few days. quoting myself in an email to fom about upcoming trip:

i think i've been so starved of spending chunks of time just being with friends that i'm actually sorta looking foward to the high dosage of people time (+ enjoyed the bits from sydney)... kinda funny - almost seems like ppl here are too busy that the only way i get to hang out with friends is to visit them as an interstate/overseas guest (guess that makes me more "special" and a higher priority person to spend time with/on -- or maybe i'm just being cynical :p)

granted, i too would readily regard a "from out of town" visitor as higher priority, given that opportunities to spend time with them are theoretically significantly fewer than someone more "local". i guess i'm just lamenting the busyness of lives which results in the observable chasm between the treatment of the local and the sojourning friend.

where is the (local) community?

in greek: koinonia
the fellowship that i seek
should i instead be?

[ this haiku came to me while doing a 40 dop related bible study earlier this year, and i thought i wrote it down somewhere but i can't remember where... and i can't remember if the last line is the same as the original... how many variations of thoughts could i have expressed in 5 syllables? hmm... ]

All that iS

Should I run and hide,
or stand up and fight?
I'm totally confused
with the maybe and might,
plus the ifs, buts, et al -
just wanna do what is right.
Though not by my own sight
but in line with God's light.

- - - - -

i don't know if it's the fact i haven't had enough sleep, or that i'm distracted by certain thoughts occupying my mind, or maybe it's just not my day. work was a frustrating drag, even with two more breaks than i was expecting. seems like i had an unusually high ratio of long, teeth-gritting, fist-clenching, bury face in hands type of calls. was also a late finish, and i decided to treat myself to a bus ride home rather than walk it. sometimes it's just the little things that help... (as well as being the things that can get to you!)

i'm so glad i have some leave and holidays coming up - hope the time away helps to relieve some of this tension... or help me regain some perspective in a "turn your eyes upon Jesus" kind of way. things don't always turn out the way i want/hope, and the unknown is typically quite murky, but it's good to know and be reminded every now and then that i'm not in control :p

is it ironic that what should be reassuring can be frustrating as well? hmm...