Sunday, February 26, 2006

Of cars breaking down and engagement parties

Saturday was a rather eventful day, not an overly eventful day, but one of those days eventful enough to be worth blogging about.

So yesterday for me started with our first Glue music team meeting of the year, which went alright I think. It was a pretty small group but I think that made it easier for some good discussion to get going.

After that, went home for lunch and got ready for Alan and Alex's engagement party, which needless to say, is the first one I've been to. Kat, Karen and I all went in Trees' car, and off we were to Alex's....that is, until we had to stop to look up directions, and Trees' car wouldn't start again.

We were parked on a relatively steep hill, facing downwards, and thought it would be a good idea to try undoing the hand brake and letting the car roll for a bit, before trying to start it again. Minor panic set in when we started rolling down the hill and Therese said "The brakes aren't working..." Luckily the car stopped again with just the hand brake, albeit accompanied by noises that didn't sound too good and the smell of burning rubber. OK, so we weren't going to try that again...

Thankfully it turned out we were only just around the corner from Alex's house anyway, so after hurried calls to Trees' parents and the NRMA, who said they might be a while, we walked the rest of the way to Alex's and joined the party. But before long the NRMA called to say they were at the car already, so Trees had to dash back out.

The problem turned out to be a flat battery....OK, I have no idea how cars work, I'm going read this article, when I get the time, to find out what was going on with the brakes...but anyway, after the NRMA left, Trees spent around 20 minutes driving around the block, but obviously that wasn't long enough, because it wouldn't start again after she had stopped it again, so then her dad came to jump start and swap cars....meanwhile, the rest of us were enjoying the food and the people and the party...poor Trees :(

But it was all OK in the end...now on to the engagement party side of things. Actually, I can't think of that much to write about the party itself. I guess structurally an engagement party is similar to a birthday party...food, drinks, mingling, photos, cake, short speech, us making Alex and Alan open our present in front of us =P (glad you liked it!)....but of course, going to these things, you're going to be talking about weddings, and other people who are getting married, or are already married, about people who aren't married, and who's going to be married next...

And you know, it all just seems kind of surreal. In a strange way, it made me feel like we were leaving school again. In the car on the way back home, we talked about what would happen to our group once people got married, whether we would drift apart, whether we were drifting apart already, and how we have been/are currently riding the wave of 18ths, 21sts, other birthdays, engagement parties, and later it would be weddings, baby showers, christenings, kids' birthdays, funerals...

I think about the people we were at school, and the people we are now...the things that defined us back then, and the things that define who we are now. Have we changed? I guess we have. I know I have. At least we don't run away screaming every time the word "change" comes up somewhere. (The Board of Studies...how do they come up with such fantastically vague topics? *shakes head* )

So it looks like a new part of our lives is coming up once again, as the first few of us graduate, and the first of us gets married. What will we be striving towards in the future? What sacrifices will we make?

As the officially youngest member of our group (even if it's only by a day, hehe), I hope that we're all still friends when I get married...cos you guys will be waiting for a very, very, very long time.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Tagged...

OK, so I see this pass-it-along-questionnaire thing on church people's blogs...and then I get tagged by...Alicia?? Wow, these things travel fast/are very ubiquitous (my word of the month, for some reason I've been using it more than usual) ...

Four jobs I've had: (and have been paid for!)<--Is this part of the original survey or a Leach addition?? You know it makes it a lot harder to come up with four...
1) Tutoring (= chatting, finding out what's happening at PLC, revisiting Cambridge Latin course)
Umm, errrr...Ok, struggling like Pun did on this one...quite sad really....Oh wait...
2) PSYC 1611
3) 1st year pharmacy
4) Studying 1st year + completing pharmacy degree
LOL, just as sad really...

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1) I don't like watching movies over and over...
2)
3)
4)

Four places I’ve lived:
1) Hong Kong
2) Summer Hill, Sydney
3) Strathfield, Sydney
4) In God's grace (A very good answer by Leach, so had to steal it =P)

Four TV shows I love to watch:
OK, I don't watch a lot of TV, but anyway...
1) Winter Olympics figure skating (it only comes on every 4 years in Oz....and it's so pretty!)
2) Getaway/The Great Outdoors type travel shows (see the world from your living room)
3) Brainiac (not on anymore, hilarious British scientific investigations...)
4) Um, dunno...Beyond Tomorrow or Clever....I've only watched like one episode of each, but I like the science stuff, as you can tell...oh yeah, RPA is pretty good too, gotta love surgery.

Four places I’ve been:
1) Houston (we go there like people go to Hong Kong...almost =P)
2) Las Vegas
3) San Francisco
4) UK

Four favourite dishes:
1) Um...
2) Um...
3) Um...
4) Rice!

Four sites I visit daily:
1) google.com
2) mail.yahoo.com
3) WebCT (when I start uni)
4) dictionary.com (not daily, but more frequently than rarely =p)

Four favourite drinks:
1) Water
2) Tea/Coffee
3) Milk
4) Max Brenner's dark choc frappe....

Four places I would rather be:
1) Non-existence (occasionally)
2) the new creation
3) the Garden of Eden (pre-sin)
4) Um, better put something you can actually get to now....Houston! (sigh...for the family)

Transport: (what kind of a question is this? Don't remember seeing this one on the other version)
1) Walking
2) Bus (go the 480!)
3) Train
4) Metaphysical journey into the realm of dreams (bwahahaha)

Four people I’m tagging:
Arrgh, who am I meant to tag who won't get tagged by someone else??
1) Argonaut
2) Liz (I know you're out there...you can post as a comment)
3) Wes (ditto...ditto)
4) Alex[andra] =p If someone doesn't get to her first!

Thursday, February 16, 2006

A Short Film

This is taken from Dan's blog...

Yellow Fever

Goes for about 15 min.....soooo funny =)

(Oh and if you're wondering what his T-shirt says, it's "white people don't see/understand"....rofl)

Monday, February 13, 2006

Love is pain

They say that we might be too young
To truly know the meaning of love

But you can't be too young to know of pain
And perhaps somehow it's all the same


I've been told I should update my blog... *sniff* I bet you once uni starts I'll be blogging far more often than I do now in the holidays, when I actually have spare time to do stuff like blog...funny that...

Anyway...

People have always said love hurts, and I guess that's true, though I have decided to categorise them into two sorts:

One is the self-inflicted torture kind of love (or "love", or *love*, or l.o.v.e., or any other sort of love that gratuitously incorporates punctuation). This is the sort of love that gets sung about in songs on the radio; the boy-likes-girl-but-girl-thinks-boy-is-a-twit sort of love, the I-know-you've-left-me-but-I'll-keep-on-stalking-you sort of love, or even the I-love-my-guitar-so-much-I'm-gonna-play-it-till-my-fingers-bleed sort of love (although that last one is a bit tangential and would probably be in a spin-off category on it's own).

This is sort of love, while exerting a heavy emotional burden on the subject's consciousness, is in a way, completely and utterly useless, because it is focused on either the future or the past; it has no real relevance to the person's present existence (other than exerting a large gravitational force on the shoulders of one's soul, if indeed a soul could be said to have shoulders). So an example of Self-Inflicted Torture Love grounded in the future would be the person who wishfully hopes the object of their love would some day reciprocate their feelings, that all their dreams would be fulfilled...and an example of this sort of love grounded in the past would be someone pining after last season's relationship that went out of fashion in the worst way possible, wishing time would rewind to that wonderful place in history.


The second sort of love that hurts is self-sacrificing love. This sort of love, while absent of gratuitous punctuation, is in fact the sort of Love that deserves to be capitalised (if you're the sort of person who can be bothered to capitalise things). Self-Sacrificing Love is not trendy, sexy, cool or marketable (unless you are from Hillsong). I would say that it is patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast and is not proud, but that would be ripping off some dude called Paul. It is the sort of Love that makes a new mother get up several times a night to feed her child, the Love that sees you talking to a loner when you would rather be doing something else, it is the sort of Love that tells someone they've done something wrong even though they might hate you for it. Love serves others. Love is what nailed Jesus to a cross, to reconcile to God the people He Loves.

Love is not lost in memories of the past or dreams of the future, though it can look back and forward to these things. But Love is to be lived now, both in your mind and amongst other people now, otherwise there would be no future to long for and no past to cherish.

Love is not to be wrapped up in protective layers, as if it were a fragile moment in time, hanging on a wisp of silence, afraid to be broken in the way a gaze can be broken. Love cannot be afraid, because it seeks to speak to people's fears.**


While the first sort of love is not like the second sort of love, both are felt, and both hurt. So I guess both can be learned from, because pain, I believe, is what they call character-building stuff.


~Um, end of sermon....~


Sooooo....it's probably not all as simple as all that, I am only "young" after all....yes, disagree with whatever you like, there's probably more holes in there than in a piece of Swiss cheese.


**For more on love, layers and fears, see Encouragement: The Key to Caring, by Dr. Larry Crabb and Dr. Dan Allender, a book which has spread through a certain sub-sect of WS over the past few months faster than you can say "plague, without the negative connotations".

Tuesday, January 31, 2006