but this morning, there's a calm I can't explain

spam. yeah!

2010-12-03T15:02:00.000+11:00

EMPTY JYJ LET'S GO CRAZY CNBLUE COVER

2010-11-30T17:09:00.000+11:00

Redirect

2010-04-15T23:20:00.000+10:00

fueledbymaggi is dead.

see http://resurrectomy.tumblr.com

stormy weather

2010-03-29T18:14:00.002+11:00

i feel caught between a rock and a hard place, it's been tough. circumstances can be incredibly unkind and unyielding, and i wonder sometimes, what a fresh start could look like. for a while now, i've echoed the words with some hope, some spark of 'please-let-this-be-it':

"today is a new day. yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is yet to come. but today begins the first day of the rest of my life."

i long for fresh starts every time life gets difficult, but the problems don't seem to go away. the very thing that tripped me up yesterday is still weighing down my heart like a ton of bricks. all the triggers, the stimuli are still physically there, and i wonder sometimes if a fresh start means putting distance between myself and those triggers. perhaps an ocean in between might suffice? i suppose the technical term for this is "running away from your problems".

i came across an interesting passage of scripture last night, and it stirred in me. it's from paul's letter to the philippians:

"... that He who began a good work in You will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." (1:6)

the author of genesis presents in the first account God's work of creating the heavens and the earth as a day by day process, and on the day it was complete, he rested, enjoying the fruits of his work, the home he had carved out.

perhaps each new day is another day to co-operate in his work, his good work. amidst this wild baggage-storm, his steady hands work tirelessly across, through, over, within the being i call me. yesterday's problems inevitably lead to apoptosis (programmed cellular suicide), which is good, because it paves the way for new healthy growth today. yes, i'm a work a progress, but there will come a tomorrow, when God can finally rest in me and i in Him, a completed dwelling place. until then, today is a new day, another opportunity to work together with the force that brought form, function, and light from the formless chaotic dark.

yes, i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place; bruised as i am, i've begun to understand the source of my stability and unshakeable resolve. that rock happens to be on my side. God is my rock. amen.

I have a tendency to understate things sometimes

2010-02-22T18:49:00.002+11:00

to achieve some form of humor, but right now things are difficult, and there's nothing funny about it. Going through a rough patch sucks, and desperately trying to hold on to some sense of peace attained (or received) earlier to get through it is about as useful as throwing an I've cube at a volcano to stop it from erupting.

I'm really tired. I feel crippled.

But it'll all work out. It always does, one way or another.

Now, I gotta deal with plumbers and neighbours, telstra for a phone line, and buy a new computer.

Swimming in KK, its as dirty as malaysian politics

2010-02-08T01:17:00.002+11:00

This is a rant.

Forgive me if I get a bit erratic here and there, I'll do my best to explain how swim events work, but this post might be heavy on swim jargon. Basically this weekend was the 43rd Sabah Age Group Swimming Championships, and KIS fielded a team. Most people who would read this blog probably know my brother has been training long and hard on his swimming every morning at 6AM. When I say this kid has potential, its not just because he's my brother; every coach who's seen him knows it. In the short amount of time he's been training, for the hours he's put in, he's on par- in fact better, than swimmers who have trained many more hours a day for many more years. But its hard to prove it when they use disgustingly underhanded tactics.

To cut a long story short, in the KK swimming circuit, there are a few main clubs, and the two heavyweights are the Blue Marlin Swimming Club and the KKSA. The KKSA is affiliated with SASA, an organisation rotten the core with corruption. Their former president, who shall remain nameless on this blog, is infamous for threatening people (including coaches) with gangsters, overstepping his authority at swimming competitions, and forcing a coach on a government payroll to exclude all the other swimmers from the program and focus only on his son.

Now I don't really have a problem with the KKSA, most of the swimmers are buddies of mine, the current coach is one of my closest friends, I even train with them. One of the swimmers is in my brother's age group however, and his closest rival. This is where all the shit begins.

I don't have a problem with this kid, he's actually really cute, a little hyper, quite arrogant, but friendly. I even train with him. But, my brother's coach has warned before that this kid's (I'll call him Daz for now) parents would target my brother as an enemy. Before, when my brother was slower than Daz, we were all good friends; now they greet us with cold glares. And best of all, they were in the best seats in the house for the SAG Championships: The IT room. As the KIS "coach" I was assured that all officials would be fair and honourable in conduct. Sure.

So explain why, when provided with a seed time of 2:44:00 for my brother in the 200m freestyle, it still showed up as NT (no time) on the database, causing him to be shifted in the the first heat as opposed to the second heat with the rest of the fast swimmers. Based on the seed time, my brother would have been in lane 5 right next to Daz in lane 4. Did our data entry official make a small honest mistake?

I should probably explain how heats work. Basically, seed times are used to determine who the faster swimmers are. The swimmer with the fastest seed time is placed in the final heat in lane 4, then the next fastest in lane 5, then the next fastest in lane 3, then 6, then 2, then 7, then 1, and then 8, and then lane 4 in the next heat, and then lane 5 and so on, cause a pool has 8 lanes. Swimmers that do not provide seed times will be placed in the very first heats. The main reason its like this is because its a well known fact that athletes perform much better when competing directly with one another.

With my brother in the first heat, there was no competition, my brother led the whole race through, whereas Daz was in heat 2. My brother got silver in this race because he clocked in the second fastest time in the event, faster than everyone in the first heat except Daz. My argument is that if he had swum next to Daz, he could have beaten him, and that he only lost to Daz because he didn't have anyone to compete with.

I know it sounds like quite a wild accusation to make, but the whole thing was suspicious because the original startsheet had my bro and Daz together in the same heat, but the updated one given the night before had him in the first heat and Daz in the second heat. And there was no time to dispute the case because my brother's race was the very first one of the morning and the marshall (the official who makes sure the swimmers are in their events) was shooing everyone who wasn't a swimmer away from the start line, cutting off any chance of rectifying the situation.

It's a long post, but bear with me, there's more. This one is the worst.

Right before heat 5 of the 50m Freestyle, the billboard that displays the stopwatch froze. Apparently the computer that receives all the swimmer's clocked times from the touch pads were working, but the computer that transmits the information to the billboard broke down. What are the odds? Well, they call all the team managers into the IT room for a meeting to sort this issue out. AND THEY GOT THE EVENT TO START AS SOON AS ALL THE TEAM MANAGERS WERE IN THE IT ROOM.

So the marshall, who is also the former SASA president (you see where this is going?) chairs the meeting and says "look, the computer can still record the times that the swimmers clock, but not display it. You'll just have to trust that we'll post the accurate results later ok?" I was in no position to speak up because to do so would be to openly accuse the marshall of being corrupt, and he isn't exactly known for pacifism or being civil. So instead I ask if its possible to get updates of the results after each event, and he replies ok, but we'll ave to keep coming back to the IT room to check if they're ready.

Now, while I was in the meeting, my brother and Daz both finished the 50m Freestyle, and apparently they were neck and neck at the end. But most people said they saw my brother touch first, including the coach of the state team, my brother's coach who stood parallel to the wall solely to watch the finish, and various other people in the spectator stands.

When the KIS team manager (someone else's parent) went in to request for the results, they said my brother got 33.71 and Daz got 33.64 seconds. Of course the person who gave us this result, was none other than Daz's mom, who was sitting at the computer.

It's all very foul, I went over it really broadly because frankly I haven't got the energy to argue it any further, all I can say is I'm very very proud of my brother, and I know he should have won the best swimmer award for his age group, because he won 5 gold medals and 3 silver medals, while Daz won 5 golds and 1 silver. But, surprise surprise, Daz won the best swimmer award.

Anyway I've had a long day, I'm really tired, I haven't swam competitively in a long time, and today was a rude shock for my aging body. But I still managed to scrape a silver for 100m breaststroke, and bronze for the 50m breaststroke. Oh and a bronze in the 4x100m medley relay. I was forced to do the butterfly OMG I NEARLY DIED. But yeah. It was epic, but honestly I did it for the lulz. I managed to form a team with the blue marlin coach, the KKSA coach, and one of my swimmer's parents. I might get pics up later.

be a human being first,

2010-01-30T00:24:00.002+11:00

and everything else second, because humanity depends on it.

just saying.

Zombies

2010-01-28T12:19:00.002+11:00

In your heaaaad, in your heaaaaad, they are fightin'.... they are fightin'....

every night i go to bed feeling pumped with those silly endolphins swimming around in my veins, but sometimes i wake up feeling like a zombie. especially when bedtime is around 2 and then at 5.30 i'm up again getting ready to send some kids to the stadium for a swimming competition, and then having to chaperone little kids to the marshaling area before their events start, for the whole day... x2

not that i'm complaining. in fact the whole point of this post was cause i came across an interesting comic.

parking

2010-01-19T17:33:00.002+11:00

i have an issue with parking in kk. it looks like this:

of course problem is, when one car parks over the line a bit, and you park next to him, you're over the line a bit as well. and then instead of being the victim, you're also a culprit too now. do you get what i mean? sigh.

inspiration

2010-01-17T23:31:00.002+11:00

skirts around the edge of my consciousness. everything feels so stale or sterile. there's no freshness, none of the raw intensity i once knew. maybe its me. maybe i've been skirting around the Spirit of creativity. maybe that's the reason life stopped being an adventure, and started becoming a game of fear and loathing.

just musing.

blues.

yep.

yeah ok, thanks life, gg

2010-01-16T00:52:00.002+11:00

ok, people change. i know that. but now its like trying to still be friends with someone that doesn't exist anymore. what am i supposed to do?

sigh.

I'm done being frustrated

2009-12-14T22:21:00.002+11:00

So here goes.

This is me

+ my baggage
+ my set of problems.

Do I lose stuff or build bigger muscles?

Lorne

2009-12-07T08:38:00.002+11:00

Oh man, just spent a weekend in Lorne. The drive up was amazing, I guess I never took the great ocean road seriously til now, it really was prettier than I thought. We stopped by a couple of vineyards along the way, and did some tasting at Oakdene over lunch. I'm clueless about wine, but the food was good! So yeah, country Victoria's got pretty amazing scenery. Then we got to Lorne, and oh yeah, Julian came along too, with me, mum and my bro. Ok, its still pretty early right now I'm a little groggy, not even sure why I'm up.

Yeah we went up on Saturday. That night in Lorne we watched like 3 or 4 hours of old music videos from the 70s, 80s and 90s, maybe a couple of early 00's. Oh man, it was hilarious. MC Hammer, C+C Music Factory, the Macarena, it was all there.

And then the next morning we went to the beach and dug a hole. Wasn't as big as the one in Frankston, but it resembled a well. Oh well. Then we had really quick lunch and rove back home. Yeah I missed out some stuff but I'm really sore from all the digging and I feel like going back to bed. So yeah, bye.

Am I Just a Guitarist?

2009-11-28T22:40:00.002+11:00

I guess I have an identity crisis. Am I a son? A brother? A friend? A student? A teacher? A guitarist? A photographer? An optimist? A realist? A sceptic? A critic? A loser? A lover?

It all feels very fragmented, sometimes contrary and well, I don't feel whole. It seems none of it is really integrated, I have no integrity. I'm a broken fractured human being. But at least I am still human. If anything, no, if everything were stripped away, at least I still have the right to be called human, because the same Spirit that defined humanity by being breathed into it is still here.

And maybe that's where clarity will begin for me this time.

Teach me how to be a human being. To be fully human. To be whole.

And so summer approaches, with a hint of freshness and insight.

Clarity. I can't wait.

exams are over

2009-11-24T22:09:00.000+11:00

so why do i feel so meh.

Pharmacology Exam Tomorrow

2009-11-15T23:56:00.002+11:00

Was just revising a bit of brain anatomy and physiology for pharmalogical activity in the CNS. I think this video is boomz.

I'm not wasting (too much) time, I swear!

Movember

2009-11-12T02:37:00.002+11:00

I think number 8 might be my favourite.

That and the free Grilld bugers. AWESOME.

Clarity

2009-11-09T00:38:00.002+11:00

Focus. It shifts in and out, slipping between foreground and background. Where something was once clear, only a blurred artefact remains, while all the distractions surround it become screamingly clear. But I think today, I heard a click, an opportune moment to open the shutters, if only to capture just a few milliseconds of exposure. I know at times clarity will escape me once again, so if anything, let this be a point of reference for those times.

Suzanne prayed for me after today's programme, and I caught a glimpse of a big picture. A bigger picture than what I'd been contending with of late, it helped me make sense of the minute things that tugged and pulled at me. In a nutshell, she said I had a warrior spirit. It sounds a little spooky dooky out there-ish, but I think I understand. I understand now why I keep getting frustrated with the things around me, the things in me. I understand why I'm constantly skirmishing with every thought I think, every action my hands find to do. I understand why I constantly need to question and wrestle.

Thank God for Suzanne, and for His word of encouragement, because I'd come very close to raising the white flag. No, I'm not tired anymore. Paul's thing, in most all his writings, was the mystery of God's will revealed to Him in Christ, that is the intention of installing humanity into the status of sonship. Everyone experiences different pathways for the fulfilment as their adoptions and sons and daughters of God. I guess this is my journey.

This is my set of problems.

This is my blessing.

It takes my sleep

2009-11-02T01:35:00.002+11:00

It's bugging me, gnawing away in some dark corner of my very being, something's not right, I know it, but what? I can't live like this, I can't accept that this is it, there's more, there's got to be more. I was made for bigger things, how did my vision get so small? When did my scope get fogged up? I'm not a little upset, I'm downright pissed, angry at the world, at the systems that hold me down and bind me to the beast. I'm furious. Something's got to give. Something has to change. How could I drop my guard? I've been caught again, I've been bought and sold for months without realising it. I won't stand for it any longer, nor will my Father.

Redeemed.

Boulders

2009-10-30T12:53:00.002+11:00

The past two weeks have been the most trying I've ever had. I can physically feel my shoulders ache, its the biggest fight I've ever fought. The less than ideal sleep patterns, the neverending stream of assignments, projects, and its all culminates today when it'll all end. Supposedly. Top it off with a diagnosis of asthma and a prescription of inhalant steroids. All the coughing's really taken a toll on my ribs, I'm aching all over.

But all of this put some things back into perspective for me, reminded me of what I'd resolved a long time ago. At the very core of it, I've already got nothing left to lose. To the point where I'm broke, homeless and starving, the only thing worse would probably be to die. Which is ultimately my goal anyway. To let go of my life, lay it down, and take it back up again. Morbid, yep, but it does shape the way I spend my time breathing.

Anyway, the day isn't over yet. There's more to do, more to lose, but ultimately more to gain.

When an essay gets all Darth Vader on you...

2009-10-22T00:42:00.001+11:00

go Japanese police on his ass!

The path of least resistance

2009-10-18T20:08:00.002+11:00

is still about as easy as pushing a cliff backwards right now. Gosh this is really hard, pray for me guys, this physio assignment is taking a massive toll on me.

Discontent?

2009-10-12T00:31:00.002+11:00

Yeh, I am. Very much so.

I couldn't even begin to tell you why. I wish I knew. Maybe I'm just feeling a bit emo right now. Maybe I'm frustrated with my assignments. Maybe I fall short of my own expectations of me.

I don't know.

...where the spirit of the I AM is, there is freedom.

-2 Corinthians 3:17

I'm still caught up in what I should be, or what I was/did. I'm living and searching in the places that God is not. YHWH, the I AM, is only found in the present tense. He is not found in the past, nor does He exist in the future.

At the end of the day, I'm still afraid. Afraid of what, I'm not quite sure. But what I know, is I haven't enough courage. Courage to what?

I wish I knew.

Strengths

2009-10-08T17:39:00.007+11:00

I went for a run today, first one in ages. Except when I'm late for class or bored and forgot my music, but that's not very far. Today I ran to guitar paradise near Ikea in richmond. It's really interesting, I stopped by couple of places along the way, checked out the Australian Catholic University, the Salvos store (suit jackets for 10 bucks?!), the men's suit warehouse (compared to the $250 suits here?), and tried out a Cole Clark and an Epiphone Casino with a bigsby bridge. The Cole Clark was nice, but I'm very sure my new Martin is way awesomer. WAY. The epiphone was crap. Doesn't sound bad or anything, but the action's way higher than I'm used to with my electric, and the sustain sucks.

Action = height of strings above the fretboard (so the higher it is, the harder it is to play)
Bridge = the bit that holds the strings down on the right hand side of the guitar
Sustain = how long the note holds for after being plucked/strummed

What I understand, and this isn't always necessarily true, is that the higher the action, the better the sustain. So the trick is usually to find the right amount of action such that it's comfortable to play, but you still get enough sustain.

The Casino lacked both, and when I tried the bigsby whammy bar, there was this really loud snap. Scared the hell out of me, it's a freaking expensive guitar. I just pretended I meant to do that and carried on playing so the shop assistant wouldn't notice. And then I retuned it til it sounded decent again and put it back and ran back home.

That was my little adventure for the day, now, I took the strengths finder test just now too... my top 5 strengths are:

Developer
Connectedness
Adaptability
Empathy
Relator

It's odd. I never figured myself as much of a people person, I'm not one to strike up awesome conversations with strangers, and yet, these results do make sense. I guess I just need to re-think what I mean by "people-person". Its interesting cause it explains a lot of things about myself I never really quite understood. But I won't go into detail here.

I'm a strength hero. I'm a lycan. Vladimir's, Power Treads, Vanguard, Buriza, Assault Cuirass, Bloodstone +22 buffs. Pwnage. Not.

ENOUGH DOTA! STUDY! *HOWL*

I W I S H I W A S 10 F E E T S T R O N G E R .

ooh la lah...

2009-10-05T22:21:00.002+11:00

how did i play so hard despite drowning in assignments.

shucks.

on one hand, i think i ought to pace things out properly. but momentum's not the easiest foe to stand up against. coupled with the fact that i actually enjoy every second of the experience.

holiday's over, time to buckle down and suck it up.

no complaining, no hesitating.

it's time to kick ass.

FT

2009-09-25T17:03:00.002+10:00

Frank Tate. or Fail Time.

meh. physio article damn hard to write le. how howhow?

ok ok, man up chrissik- uh crap.

update? opening for juwita suwito and alarice thio at cafe crema on the 18th of september with ann was too AWESOME. still rattles me that we shared the stage with such big names. well, juwita's big in malaysia, and alarice is from sydney. anyway. WOOO.

uhm, what else. CHARLES WON STORYTELLERS 1!!! Congrats to the man! (Charles is the man)

relationship seminar's been going on. tim's pretty intense. so much stuff to do, so little time. it doesn't feel like a break at all, yet it feels like i'm being wayyyyyy too slack. time to roll up my sleeves (i loooove rolling up my sleeves) and listen to awesome synth music in frank tate while kick physiology assignment butt.

random song lyrics to sign off:

STOP GET UP AND MOVE!

not quite song lyrics. just the helpful tips on display at the frank tate lounge area thingo. BYE!

since i can't seem to get any work done...

2009-09-15T23:35:00.004+10:00

i figured a bit of shameless self promo couldn't hurt.

ripped straight from ann's blog, this is crema's flyer:

hmmm... there are timtam crumbs on my bed. i be a lazy lazy slob :(

anyway, here's a pic from joseph, check out the porridge and yu tiao, charsiew pau and lor bar koh!

mmm.

i started playing this game tonight (i know, wtf right? essay's driving me nuts) and within the span of 15 mins, i went from the very bottom, ranking around #9000 to ranking #6045 on the ladder. part of me is impressed with me. but most of me is thinking "i am soooooo stuffed."

anyway. i have a headache now. back to essay writing.

The Definition of

2009-09-13T23:36:00.005+10:00

ep.ic |ˈepik|

adjective
of, relating to, or characteristic of an epic or epics : England's national epic poem Beowulf.

heroic or grand in scale or character : his epic journey around the world | a tragedy of epic proportions.
the weekend Chris just had.

HAHA. I just spent an insane weekend with ann, joseph, doreen, egene, sarah, aidan, mike, steve, ivy, evie, jane, jen, and matt up in the snow at mt hotham.

oh man it was crazy, and i'm tempted to say it was a much needed break, but i've been having quite a lot of those eh... ahhahaha we were just at frankston last weekend. anyway this trip was awesome!

on wednesday night tim said there were a few empty spots for a snow trip cause chris (willis) and yuli couldn't make it, but it's already been paid for, so they were looking for people to go in their place. after... much thought, ann and i decided to go. we had to give up our relient k tickets! relient k on saturday (how did that go by the way?)! so i sent my lecturer an email explaining my "predicament", and he was most understanding, and so on thursday i managed to finally catch up with him and get an extension for my essay. awesome! so the plan was, we'd follow jason up to the snow on friday afternoon. except on friday morning he calls and says he can't make it on friday, and the earliest he could get up was saturday morning, and by then, there'd be almost no point in going.

so i call ann, and we're just kind of like mehhhhh, no point pushing him, it wouldn't be fair for him to have to drive up on saturday and not get to fully enjoy the snow. it is a 6 hour drive after all. so after being ultra-pumped and super-psyched, we sort of just started to accept the fact that we weren't going, and that we should try and salvage what we can of the weekend. we started planning to watch a movie that night, and thinking how to get our relient k tickets as well... and then tim calls and says there's a train that leaves southern cross station at 6 and arrives at bright at 11.30, and steve could probably pick us up from there.

things appeared to be picking up again, so i called ann, and she's like dunnoooooo, after all did just suffer a huge disappointment. but eventually we figured heck la, lets just go, it'll be an awesome adventure. so she begins packing, i call tim, and then start looking up the train schedule. then tim calls back and confirms that steve is good to pick us up from bright. checking online, i found that it was actually a train ride to seymour plus a bus ride from seymour to bright. so i packed my laptop so we could watch a movie along the 4 and a half hour journey. then i call vline to book tickets for the two of us.

and they were OVERBOOKED. WHAT THE-?!

i believe the technical term for this is "shit". so... i call ann again, and break the news to her, and she's like "whaaaaaat? i'm all packed, i'm standing at the lift! i don't care i'm coming over anyway." haha bless her. i was just about ready to give up at that point if not for her. so i call tim again, and explain to him, and i even searched for flights up to albury, but to no avail. so i decided we'd just march right down to the station and beg them to put us on the train or ask if there are any other lines that go somewhere nearby mt hotham. on the way down, we bump into chris willis at crema, and we dropped in to say thanks and kind of explain the situation.

and then he gave me his car keys O.O

he was like, "you can drive can't you? just take my car up." i don't have a legal driving license for aus unfortunately :( so he started making some calls to see if anyone wanted to drive us up to the snow. at this point ann and i are just like ahh well, if we can't go, we might as well hop on a train anywhere and just stay overnight somewhere. we're all packed after all.

after a long while, chris comes over and says joseph might be keen. that guy is legendary man, he is made of spontaneous win! so jo and doreen pick us up at around 7.30 and we pick up chris' car, get some food from the asian grocery (of course), and head up to mt hotham! and we made it to ray's ski shop just in time before they closed at midnight to hire snow chains and gear. was a really close shave! and then another 2 hour drive to get up the mountain.

saturday morning ivy cooked breakfast, OMG it was awesome! fried carrot cake, chicken congee and yu tiao! so so good. and then we went snowboarding! so much fun! haha the lift stopped at 4, so we went and played with aidan. what a cute kid! stomping on snowmen with aunty ann and uncle chris. and dinner OMG steamboat OMG! i'm hungry again just thinking about it. and then mike took us for a night run. i think we got in at least 10 runs on the slopes that night. night snowboarding is just way too fun.

because getting out of bed the next morning was like rolling around in a pile of rocks. i'm still sore all over, both from bruises and muscle aches. what a workout! we practically snowboarded from 10 in the morning til almost 10 at night. so yeah, if this weekend wasn't EPIC, well, i probably just didn't describe it very well. ahhahahaha.

pics when i manage to steal some.

dive

2009-09-02T16:51:00.002+10:00

greetings from ballieu again, i seem to ~~waste~~ spend too much time here.

anyway. here's an update.

i've just handed in 2 prac writeups, need to finish my assignment for youth arts, and i've got 2 midsems next week. there's more, but i don't have the mental capacity to deal with that right now.

woo. big week(s). i'm getting pretty annoyed with my assignment, i got no articulation skillz yo, my work sounds like a hippo stumbling through campus. geddit? hippo, campus? nevermind. i don't know why i try so hard to be all arts. its pretty clear writing ~~bull~~ essays is not my thing.

anyway. i'd better get back to it. sigh. i'm drowning.

bloop. blup. bloop.

the pebbles forgive me, the trees forgive me, so why can't you forgive me?

2009-08-27T20:53:00.002+10:00

currently in the ballieu working on my pharmacology prac writeup, its pretty nice around this time. not too hectic, not too crowded. pretty quiet. had a swim just now, i think i'm in trouble. my almost nonexistent fitness is slipping through my fingers again.

i have to say, i've been having a fantastic week. kicking off with anberlin, which was a success in the end, and house church in a car/airport was pretty interesting. wednesdays are always good. coffee early in the morning today, played guitar with zach, always something to look forward to, and then caught up with a really dear friend over coffee. was a really inspiring conversation. and then ann and i took brian on a musical tour of carlton/fitzroy/brunswick in search of a violin, and finally chilled at little creatures.

full of faith, hope, and love, i wish i could say my week has been. but its a real-time struggle to start off each new day in a posture that allows Christ's incarnational discipleship to seep into my veins. and yet, thank God for the events that constantly fill up my time, because they are opportunities for me to re-present the Creator, something i could not do cooped up at home.

and let me tell you something about home. don't take it for granted. for now, let me just say... i'm thankful for a pillow to sleep on at night, a soft bed to lie on, a thick blanket to keep me warm. things you might not find in the old engineering building at unimelb.

anyway. i shall get on with my work. but here's to exciting times up ahead.

in eager anticipation of the Spirit's work,
love,
chris.

BUMMER MAN

2009-08-24T15:06:00.002+10:00

no anberlin? :(

ohvvell. maybe i'll get a new guitar.
123456789795464531231
howwwwwww.

apparently that is what guilt looks like.

guiltar. heh. heh.

i know i can't afford it... yet. unemployment is actually becoming a concern now. what the heck gave me the impression that gaining employment as a lifeguard was cruisy?

WHAT SHOULD I DOOOOOOO?

anberlin... physics? anberlin seems fun and i dont wanna go for physics.. but i've been put into emotional turmoil over the past 15minutes. HOWHWOWHOWHOWHOWHOW?!?!?! CHRIS LAW WHAT LA?!?!?!

-Ann Boo, 24/08/2009

blahblah

ok. gonna try. *pleasepleasedon'tdisappoint*

meh, in the percy baxter right now. just finished my parmacology assignment. OH GOTTA HAND IT IN.

ok. gonna go mano mi tarea en a la medicina building.

bye!

FRUSTRATION

2009-08-20T16:15:00.002+10:00

*mightymightyroarofannoyance*

why can't we speak the same language? :(

why do you have to be so difficult?

why can't you just see things my way?

*ahem* "why don't you understand? why can't you read my mind?"

why can't we just get along, like we used to?

WHY WINDOWS WHY? YOU AND YOUR USELESS .EXE NONSENSE, WHY?!

Any Given Thursday

2009-08-13T21:50:00.002+10:00

God answers all prayers.

Sometimes the answer is no.

Thank God.

-----

New song in the works, smells like progress, after what seemed like a dry spell of false riffs and un-flow-etic lyrics.

John Mayer is a clever chap. Great musicality.

----

It's been a good week. I know I've dropped off the blogosphere radar for about a month, yes, mum was here. Uni's been really hardcore, and I'm just really thankful for the space I took for granted. It takes living with 2 other people in this tiny apartment for a month for me to really appreciate the stillness and the peace upon this humble abode. No more voices, no more TV (I really hate that box), just no more noise. I feel I'm finally home again.

---

I really wanted to write... but then I suddenly stopped feeling chatty. :/

i kiss you on the brain

2009-07-27T18:52:00.002+10:00

after i bandage it up good, cause i'm a certified senior level 2 first aider!

its been a crazy weekend, locked up in a classroom from 8AM to 6PM. i guess the whole ordeal's given me quite a huge chunk of stuff to think about, and its pretty effectively cleared my head of fluff and junk too.

i signed up for the course because it was a pre-requisite for the pool lifeguard course at the msac, and quite frankly, i only wanted to do the pool lifeguard course cause i thought it was frickin awesome being a lifeguard. but the first aid course was so full on and intense and i wasn't prepared at all. just about an hour into the course, i got really freaked out, because the responsibility of being a first aider began to dawn on me. well, now i know what i'm supposed to do when i see unconscious casualties, well... i'm supposed to do it right? but, what happens if the person has a spinal injury? this was the bit that really really had me terrified. a slight movement and the casualty becomes paraplegic. and you can tell from the instructor's tone, that this always brings up the question of legalities? what happens if i stuff up?

he was very reassuring, in that the approach that should be adopted as advised by all first aid councils is "any aid is better than no aid". the only way a first aider can be sued for negligence is firstly if the casualty is owed a duty of care, and no care is given, and secondly, the first aider misrepresents himself as having a higher qualification than he actually does, and thirdly, he does not act within what his qualification indicates he is capable of doing, otherwise known as standard of care.

a duty of care is owed by the first aider to anyone with whom he has some sort of relationship, eg: relative, student, friend, colleague etc. technically, i have the right, to walk right past a complete stranger having a heart attack in the gutter. however, the moment i come to his aid, a relationship is established, and i now owe him duty of care, which means i'm not allowed to abandon him, and he remains in my care until the situation is considered stable, ie. the ambulance arrives.

and of course, whatever happens to the casualty, especially anything undesirable, even if it weren't the result of my actions, i am afraid that i'll find myself in a position where i'll have to justify myself. of course, when filling in a first aid log, the first rule is that you never justify your actions. and yet i can't help but think what if i do find someone who already has a spinal injury, and its my job to keep him alive? how do i explain to a distressed spouse that i managed to keep the bloke alive until the ambulance takes him away, fixes him up, for her to have to care for a quadriplegic for the rest of his life?

no clarity yet. but if ephesians 2 and romans 3 is anything to go by, i shouldn't be worried about this should i?

i claim to be a life-loving human being, and yet could fear of the judgement and hostility of other human beings be enough to paralyse and prevent me from stepping to support the precious life left in another?

in any case, i scored pretty high on the first aid test, and i now have a paranoid urge to keep a triangular bandage and resuscitation mask on me at all times. maybe a ventolin as well. and if the nagging voices in my head don't stop i might just get a defibrillator as well (that would be that thing paramedics stick on the guys chest and go "clear!" and *poof*). all the same i'm really glad i did the course. because despite the complexities and intricacies of what keeps a person ticking, despite al my fears and insecurities, life is still precious to me.

long rant. anyway, classes have started, timetable looks much better than i'd anticipated. looks like its gonna be a fun semester. hope everyone's had a good rest, now its time to dive back into the pile of books and lecture notes.

chris out, and wishing you well. blessings!

chicken rice

2009-07-19T21:40:00.002+10:00

whyyyyyyyyy poh!!!! woman why did you leave the sorbet to the last minute? and follow instructions dammit, if it says don't put in fridge, don't put it in the fridgeeeee! :( i'm sad for you.

anyway, coincidentally mum cooked chicken rice for dinner. haha. anyway, good for julie. and poh, i'd still eat at your dumpling stall. she's done really well though, she done malaysians proud.

ook. glee looks like a pretty cool show.

oh

2009-07-18T17:15:00.002+10:00

i have a blog?

uh, sydney was awesome. mum's here. for... a while. class starts soon.

i know stress. stress knows i. we're cool.

*deep breath*

maybe i should blow off a little steam first then. so, results came out, rather unexpected, not great but not bad either. headspace is a little crowded of late, but not filled with meaningful worthwhile thoughts. they're there, scattered about. but its mostly just whinging. i whine to myself a bit too much lately, its so not me. i've grown soft.

time to man up chrissykins.

oh eww. i just called ~~myself~~neeeeevermind.

i have awesome friends. thanks for being awesome! i have no pictures of us in sydney because... i've still got 7 shots left, and then i can send in the whole lot for printing. sigh. the inflexibility of film.

also, i might not be able to write a proper post for some time. please be patient and put up with fueledbymaggi until i've unloaded all the rubbish cluttering the cookie jar i call my brain.

as you might have gathered, i've nary a point to make, but should thy pretty eyes thirst for more words of wisdom (not that you've found any here I'm sure), please be redirected by this link to Meld Magazine. it's cool.

OKAIIII. i really can't take it anymore, the longer i sit here, the more, as brian would say, junk i'll spew out. punk.

so byee. (bye, miss american pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry...)

Easy

2009-06-17T01:09:00.002+10:00

With gritted teeth and teary eyes, I'm still ploughing through as best I can.

My best might not be enough, and yet stubbornly I refuse to accept defeat.

But who's really doing the fighting eh?

Does my shameless arrogance know no bounds?

Humble me.

Easy win. Easy loss.

Humble me.

"It is finished."

2009-06-04T15:00:00.003+10:00

Said Jesus.

I concur. At 1969 words, my essay titled Language Development in Sight-Impaired Children: Verbalisms is now complete. Ish. I should probably read through and clean it up, but I think at this point, I'm alright if I don't get a mark reflective of the amount of effort I put into trying to understand and wrestle through these issues. It just means I didn't write it out that well.

I'll have to learn how to articulate my thoughts properly at some point, but right now I've got a bio paper to study for. Excitement!

Really.

In the meantime, this song's been playing through my head. Read into the lyrics how you want, but I resonate with them right now.

Doubting Thomas - Nickel Creek

What will be left when I've drawn my last breath,
Besides the folks I've met and the folks who know me,
Will I discover a soul saving love,
Or just the dirt above and below me,

I'm a doubting thomas,
I took a promise,
But I do not feel safe,
Oh me of little faith,

Sometimes I pray for a slap in the face,
Then I beg to be spared 'cause I'm a coward,
If there's a master of death I'll bet he's holding his breath,
As I show the blind and tell the deaf about his power,
I'm a doubting thomas,
I can't keep my promises,
'Cause i don't know what's safe,
oh me of little faith

Can I be used to help others find truth,
When I'm scared I'll find proof that its a lie,
Can I be lead down a trail dropping bread crumbs,
That prove I'm not ready to die,

Please give me time to decipher the signs,
Please forgive me for time that I've wasted,

I'm a doubting thomas,
I'll take your promise,
Though I know nothin's safe,
Oh me of little faith

SOAP Psalm 45:1

2009-06-03T11:47:00.002+10:00

Psalm 45:1

Scripture:
My heart is stirred by a noble theme
as I recite my verses for the king;
my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.

Observation:
God has a knack for stirring up things inside of us. He fills us with dreams and visions. If we should choose to receive His Spirit, there is no way we can not be moved by His mercy and His justice, His grace and His compassion. And then the things we do begin to reflect more and more of His nature, and our love for Him begins to take shape like the infinite depth of His for us. And we sing and dance praises to Him, lest our hearts grow restlessly agitated from the uncontainable joy.

Application:
I think its no accident that I'm writing my final essay in First Language Acquisition about the acquisition of language in blind children. I think its no accident that I'm doing the subjects that I'm doing at all. The two things that have really stirred in my heart up til today have been vision and generational responsibility. I'm believing in a future. And it takes vision to steer in the "right" direction. It takes vision to build over the foundations that Christ has laid, such that our future generations are one step closer to the promises we all hold on to. Without vision, we may well be settin our hands to building the wrong house for our children to grow up in (see Haggai 1).

Prayer:
Creator God, who has made all things good, and who has already laid down the foundations upon which our work is to be set on, all praise my little heart can sing be to You. May the purposes and meaning that You intended for this Earth be advanced here, just as You imagined, just as You desired, just as You promised. For the children whom Your Kingdom embraces, give us the wisdom, the necessary resources to equip them, to raise them up as sons and daughters of the most high King. Forgive us Lord, for our distractions with our own selfish agendas. Restore to us again the correct blueprints for the right House, and burn the contracts that seek to distract and bind us. And all we strive towards Father, all that we hold hope for, all that we have been called to work and steward, they are Yours and for Your Kingdom.

Amen.

PRAY

2009-06-02T16:08:00.002+10:00

Pouring: my adoration of the Creator
Father above my world, above my understanding, above my all, you are holy. You were at the beginning, and you are the same all the way through, complete and whole. No entity has seen the beginning of Your work, no one advised You. God with no equal in wisdom and in love, holy is Your name.

Reaching: my adherence to Jesus' way
Extend Your Kingdom, and let me proclaim its arrival! Fulfil Your purpose for the earth, just as You have imagined. Let me hold on to Your ways and bridge the gap between the present reality of my world, and the fullness of Your Glory revealed in Christ. The tension of what is, and the tension of what could be, what will be, already demonstrated by the Saviour King who laid down His life.

Asking: my co-operation with the Spirit's leading
So give me the necessary tools to participate in Your work; enough for today, with no worry of the past, and confidence for tomorrow's portion. Set on me Your Holy Guide as I set my hands to the task that You've called me to. Fill me with dreams and visions of the immensity of Your grand project, and the role I am to play. But where I have stuffed up, where I fall short of expectations, forgive me please. As I am forgiven for the massive chasm between who I am and who Christ is, instil in me that kind of depth of forgiveness for those who offend me and fall short of my selfish expectations.

Yielding: the consecration of my world
With all I have been given, my skills, possessions, I did nothing to merit them, and yet I have been given this much to steward over; they are Yours. With every piece of land that I set foot on, as a representative of Your Kingdom, let meaning and life be injected in once again, for they are Yours.

For Yours is the Kingdom, the power, the glory forever. Amen.

I worry, I weigh 3 times my body

2009-05-28T13:56:00.003+10:00

I was studying Romans 8 in Crema this morning, and I just thought I'd share some of my reflections here.

Psalm 44 - By the Sons of Korah.

1 We have heard with our ears, O God;
our fathers have told us
what you did in their days,
in days long ago.

2 With your hand you drove out the nations
and planted our fathers;
you crushed the peoples
and made our fathers flourish.

3 It was not by their sword that they won the land,
nor did their arm bring them victory;
it was your right hand, your arm,
and the light of your face, for you loved them.

4 You are my King and my God,
who decrees victories for Jacob.

5 Through you we push back our enemies;
through your name we trample our foes.

6 I do not trust in my bow,
my sword does not bring me victory;

7 but you give us victory over our enemies,
you put our adversaries to shame.

8 In God we make our boast all day long,
and we will praise your name forever.
Selah

__________________

Sound familiar? It pretty much sums up what we've been working on in Expedition, going through the Abraham to Joseph to Joshua and Caleb story.

But the psalm doesn't end here.
__________________

9 But now you have rejected and humbled us;
you no longer go out with our armies.

10 You made us retreat before the enemy,
and our adversaries have plundered us.

11 You gave us up to be devoured like sheep
and have scattered us among the nations.

12 You sold your people for a pittance,
gaining nothing from their sale.

13 You have made us a reproach to our neighbors,
the scorn and derision of those around us.

14 You have made us a byword among the nations;
the peoples shake their heads at us.

15 My disgrace is before me all day long,
and my face is covered with shame

16 at the taunts of those who reproach and revile me,
because of the enemy, who is bent on revenge.

17 All this happened to us,
though we had not forgotten you
or been false to your covenant.

18 Our hearts had not turned back;
our feet had not strayed from your path.

19 But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals
and covered us over with deep darkness.

20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,

21 would not God have discovered it,
since he knows the secrets of the heart?

22 Yet for your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

23 Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep?
Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.

24 Why do you hide your face
and forget our misery and oppression?

25 We are brought down to the dust;
our bodies cling to the ground.

26 Rise up and help us;
redeem us because of your unfailing love.

__________________

Key things to look out for here are verses 22 and 26. Paul writes about this in Romans 8.
__________________

Romans 8:

17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs.
In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory.

But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love?

Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death?

36 As the Scriptures say,

“For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”

37 No,despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.

Neither death nor life,
neither angels nor demons,
neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—

not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.

39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

__________________

Christ was the one faithful human being, who was able to finish the work he had been given. His faithfulness demonstrated the faithfulness of God. Looking back at verse 35, was there anything Paul mentioned that did Christ not face?

I've run out of time, so I'll leave it here. But let me know your thoughts! There's a lot more to Romans 8, ad I'd love to chat about it over a cup of coffee :)

Love,
Chris.

Epic FAIL

2009-05-26T00:10:00.005+10:00

As Greg and I are just about to walk out of Arrow to look for a place to study, we spot Aun with Leanne in his office and stop by for a chat, and he pretty much offered to lock us up in the back office and force us to get work done. After a bit of taunting, we yielded and set out to prove our awesome studying prowess.

The first hour or so went alright; Aun dropped in every time he heard something and yelled "Stop speaking!"

Eventually he starts playing Warhammer Online with his headphones on. Hilarity ensues.

Greg gets the bright idea to scare Aun. Sure it'd be funny, but Aun might ~~beat~~destroy us by accident if we tried to sneak up on him.

So he blew up a balloon as quietly as possible (just imagine trying really hard not to laugh at this point), and it ended up being too big. He put a cap on it, but on the bottom end cause it wouldn't fit on top, and left it on a chair behind Aun, without him noticing. Seeing as I hadn't done anything sufficiently courageous, Greg made me draw a smiley face on the balloon behind Aun without alerting him.

Then Greg sets his iPhone on the flashlight app and turns on the strobelight effects and places it under the balloon.

Eventually we just started talking really loud to get Aun's attention.

All we heard was a sigh. And Aun comes in with Greg's iPhone like... "What's wrong with you boys? And wouldn't popping the balloon have been more effective?"

So obvious... and yet...

Oh man it was so funny we couldn't stop laughing.

*stealth win* snapping a picture of Aun behind his back, Chris and Greg: 1, Aun: 0. Well, actually more like Aun: 4.

So we figured the balloon could represent Aun, and Greg found some ribbon, so we decided to tie him up somewhere. I got on the chair to tie him up to the vent on the ceiling... and couldn't reach. Dude! I swear its funny! Greg tried to sit back down to stop laughing and... well... I had the chair, so he fell down. ROFLing.

Anyway, Greg also found a balloon pump, which was pretty hilarious considering all that effort inflating "Aun". So we figured we'd make "Aun" a "Leanne", again silently so as not to attract Aun's attention.

But she exploded.

We eventually made another "Leanne", and tied her up with "Aun".

So as you can see, our study time was ~~not~~ unproductive.

But of course, its week 12 folks. Buck up and hit the books. But not too hard, they're pretty expensive.

Later!

Depth of field

2009-05-19T23:12:00.006+10:00

Some big things were spoken at a meeting with the boys tonight, and there are some thoughts I'd like to capture, and maybe delve a bit further into. I mean, I'd like to capture all of them, but it's a bit too much to share, and I probably can't relay those thoughts intelligibly right now.

But what if 'the world' does not exist? Most of us experience this physical state of existence through 5 senses, and that is our perception of the world; or, in other words, that is our world. But the colour red itself does not do anything, neither does the scent of a rose, the taste of honey, except what you make of it. It's the meaning you give it. It's your perspective.

And so with perspective, you deem your pillow comfortable, you call the sound of waves crashing against the cliff serene.

What if you bought a new TV one day, brought it home, only to receive a message that a good friend of yours had just died in an accident. Suddenly, the TV that you'd been so excited about becomes invisible, and the intangible thoughts, memories, love become so much more real. According to your perspective, certain things have more meaning than others.

Depth of field is a crucial part of optics, especially so in photography. Quite simply, when you look through a lens, only a section of the image a certain distance away (called the focal length) from the lens will be clear, while everything in front of or behind will be blurred. Here's an example of some tangerines:

Anything at the distance where the tangerines are from the camera is sharp, while everything else is blur. The section of the image that is in focus is called the depth of field. A wider depth of field is simply a wider section of focus, e.g.: I can see the whole table instead of just the tangerines.

And so with an SLR, when you adjust the 'focus', or your camera auto-focuses, you are adjusting the focal length. The depth of field itself, however, is adjusted by the aperture. A smaller aperture corresponds to a larger f number, and a larger f number corresponds to a wider depth of field. But the 'focus' will also have an impact on the DOF. When the lens is set to the hyperfocal distance (max focal length setting for the given f number setting), the DOF will range from half the hyperfocal distance to infinity. Meaning, you'll see lots of stuff clearly.

And so if a tried to draw an analogy of perspective as being your current depth of field, what would you see?

What did Christ see?

What does God want us to see?
Check out Hebrews 12:

1Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

2Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

3Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

In my life, I guess certain things have been set in motion, and the trajectory of this path I'm currently on will take me through optometry as a vocation. The choice to enter the field of optometry is largely driven by my passion for finding vision. But I guess this is something I'll have to share about another time, when I've found more clarity. Or my depth of field is adjusted.

Love,
Chris.

P/S. I thought I'd leave you with the message translation of Hebrews 12:1-3.

Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

Intense huh?

Chlorine Therapy

2009-05-15T19:33:00.003+10:00

Gosh, its been a hard week, but rejoice folks, the weekend is here. So we can study more.

Haha. Anatomy test today. Woooo. It's done and that's the end of it. Well, not really, there's the exams.

Today was a pretty awesome day. Winston gave me a free guest pass to melbourne city baths, and I got a free swim, spa, and sauna entry! K, when I have to pay for my swims, I feel like I have to make it worth whatever I paid. So I'll push myself really hard and just go all out, but today I had early dinner plans, so halfway through my swim I decided I had to cut short my training.

Because I wanted to use the FREE JACUZZI TICKET!

Hehe, it was so hard to get out of the jacuzzi, seriously, I really had to struggle. But, I am so chilled out right now, it's just woaaaah. Sigh. It. Was. Awesome.

I think I'm going for a run tomorrow morning, anybody keen?

Between Here and There

2009-05-14T01:21:00.005+10:00

I just want to say that things cannot possibly get any tougher than this. At least on some level, there's a bit of comfort in that.

But I'm scared I'll be proven wrong, almost know I'll be proven wrong.

To say things could be worse is, as well, somewhat comforting; until it appears that things will get worse.

A rock. A hard place.

I'm just not strong enough to pull through.

Good.

Brothers

2009-05-12T12:50:00.002+10:00

I was really touched by Julian's last post about being Kel's brother, and as an older sibling, I know my little brother has been going through some, if not all of what Juls mentioned. Please check out his blog under my links.

Be warned, there will be a fair amount of bragging in this post, but I'm not going to lie about how proud I am of my brother.

Ok? My brother can't really be bothered to read yet, so I'm not worried about inflating his ego right now. So let's go.

Nicholas Law is a special kid. Perpetually happy, hyper, potentially insane, and good looking. I honestly feel he's got all the good genes. He got the tall genes, the handsome genes. Me? Jealous? NAH. I'M NOT JEALOUS. *sulk*

But all the same, and I'm not sure how he feels about it, but simply because I popped out 8 years before him, there's a pretty big shadow cast over him. It's as if he's got 8 years of my achievements to outshine. When he goes to school, everyone first recognises him as "Chris' brother". All the teachers ask him "how's Chris doing?", or "when's Chris coming back?", or at least that's what my mom tells me. And when people find out that he swims, they ask "oh, just like your brother?". Our family friends, even my parents tell him, or us, "oh, your brother was much quieter and well behaved than you at your age..." and I always get a bit irritated, just leave the little dude alone right? They'll tell us, "oh, Chris was very smart in school, but you keep getting x% for maths?"

So my brother's a bit dyslexic. This one time, he wrote a short story in school about Dragonforce and being epic. It was EPIC! Dragonforce as in that epic power metal band (Yes, I share my music with him)! It's like something I could only dream about. Ok, so everyone struggled through the spelling and grammar... it was funny, but I think no one really saw the genius of it.

One person I really admire though, is my good friend Albert, who's teaching my little bro the drums. He gives my bro the right mix of discipline and praise. The kid is 10, ok, how many 10 year olds can get a grip on Latin beats? In the short span of time my bro has learnt drums, I reckon he's advanced much more in technique than I have in guitar playing. Only his rhythm wavers now and then, but those skinny chicken arms are pretty powerful. I'm not trying to brag, really, but my bro is probably the best 10 year old drummer I've seen. Outside of youtube. If you're interested though, search Igor Falecki.

And swimming. Oh man, the kid used to be such a wuss. But when he came over during easter I was pretty shocked. Just to test him, I went, "ok, 20 laps warm up, go." and he was like ok, and left and finished 20 laps no problem. We later went on to train in sprints and other stuff, doing at least 1km a day. And you know what, coaching my brother that week inspired me so much. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be swimming as regularly as I do now.

I was training him that week for a competition in Bangkok last weekend. And when I called mum on mother's day, she told me about the competition. Listen to this:

His teacher accidentally sends him up for 50m butterfly against an older age group because he heard the PA wrong. Against these big boys, in that crazy ass event, he came second. And just as he came out of the pool, his name was called for his next event, the 100m freestyle. At this point everyone was just going crap! Shouldn't have sent him for the butterfly! But the little champ went for it anyway, and at the start of the race he was just kind of lagging behind last, and everyone thought aww what a waste. But towards the end of the first lap, he catches up with the person in front of him, and now he's second last. By the end of the second lap, he catches up again with the next guy, and now he's third from the back. And then as he kicks off the wall for the final lap, he begins to overtake heaps of people, until he's finally neck and neck with the race leader, and in the last few metres he overtakes the guy and wins the race!

Is that freaking amazing or what?

His overall spoils from the comp are 2 golds, 5 silvers, and a bronze in swimming, 2 silvers in athletics, and gold in soccer.

I think my bro is well his way to making his own mark.

Of course, he forgot about mother's day, and I am therefore still mummy's favourite.

Just kidding.

I'm Chris, and I'm Nicholas Law's brother.

Awe

2009-05-11T13:48:00.002+10:00

Matthew 18:18-20 (The Message)

18-20"Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this. When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action.

And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I'll be there."

Brian, Greg, Winston and I met up for lunch today. It was a good time of eating, sharing, and dodging bird droppings. Brian brought a bottle of juice, rice crackers, and some cups, and we had communion right outside union house (comm-union house?). It was incredibly thoughtful of him, and I do miss having communion as well. Later on, we took some time and prayed, and after we were done, a lady who had been sitting next to us the whole time came up to us and essentially said,

"Are you guys christians? Make sure you keep in contact with each other, even after you finish uni, because the friends that you pray with during your time in uni will be the strongest group you'll ever find. Even if you meet other christian friends after you graduate, life will still be much harder without each other."

It's funny how easy it is to forget that, in the midst of a crazy machine driven world, there are still agents of a different Kingdom placed around you.

Thank you for the encouragement.

Blessings,
Chris.

A Man's Gotta Do

2009-05-08T20:33:00.005+10:00

What a man's gotta do.

But what does a man have to do?

Is it to

love the Lord your God:

with all your heart
with all your soul
with all your intellect

and to love your neighbour as yourself?

Wednesday night's worship session was great. I think for me, nothing beats sharing a meal with good friends.

And as for "praise and worship", well, these days it's hard to escape from the whole corporate deal of getting as massive a herd of people as you can to get into it; it's been popularised, reduced to some CCM chart.

I'm not trying to say there's no authenticity. But I probably don't believe it's really authentic either. But Wednesday night really gave me something to think about.

It begins with an invitation, into the presence, the peace, the power of a Creator who is actively working in the people you're surrounded by. In a posture of adoration of the Creator, with trust in the friends surrounding you, well, a song is just a song. But in that moment, I rediscovered joy, and joy is not a word I use very often.

So thanks to all my friends who intentionally took a night out of a busy week to gather together and worship. And for everyone who couldn't make it, so sorry about the timing, but we'll definitely do one again soon.

Love,
Chris.

Seize the Day!

2009-05-01T17:02:00.004+10:00

Ann, I dissected a rat with gloves.

It was pretty funny actually. We had to figure out if we were dissecting a male or a female and let everyone know; that way, those who got males can look at female specimens later on. So... mine didn't have the typical male genitalia. In fact, it looked a lot like the female one (we had diagrams in the notes). On this basis, I concluded it was a female. Fair? (OH, I'VE GOT ANOTHER STORY TO TELL ABOUT DECIDING THE GENDER OF A SUBJECT, but it's rather embarrassing and involves arts students, so ask me about it some other time.)

So to cut a long tale short (get the pun? HEHE), I cut it open, made a diagram of its insides, and... discovered fat pads. Now, the demonstrator mentioned that his specimen was a male and had fat pads, and suggested removing the fat pads. So, I pull out the fat pads, and lo and behold; the thing has balls.

Hmm. So it was a male reproductive organ after all. Oh.

Also... I can't think of a worse time to have been hungry. :(

Anyway, I went shopping today. And by shopping I mean I exchanged money for material goods. And by material goods i mean some shiny new batteries for my Nikon and a few prints of film taken with my lomo. Here are the firstfruits of my coloured flash!

Blue and Pink flash, featuring a Winston. I think its a male.

Ditto.

Yellow flash. Yep, my room was intentionally messy. It's a lot neater now. Really.

After "shopping", I took a walk this afternoon, around Carlton, exploring backlanes and whatnot. I figured since it was such a grey day, it'd be good to take some photos with my Nikon, since I had a whole stack of ISO 3200 film.

(high ISO = high film sensitivity = good in low light)

On my walk, I found something rather interesting, though I think its been there a while. Just thought I'd share with you guys.

Somehow, (I couldn't possibly fathom how, its a mystery) I wound up in Music Swop Shop on Elgin street. There are some really cool secondhand guitars there. I tried out an unassuming no-name (possibly homemade) acoustic, and it blew my mind when I first strummed it. But then I couldn't get it to make that sound again so I decided to put it back. I probably just wanted it to sound good and started imagining it. Then I tried a banjo.

I now want a banjo.

See you round folks!

At the Beginning

2009-04-26T17:26:00.005+10:00

of a remarkable project known as Earth, it was a bit of a mess. A bit of matter here, some particles there.

And a word.

Collisions, a spark; the word took on form, took on flesh. It brought form and function to stray photons; it brought light. It brought purpose into a heap of rubble, so that it was no longer debris, but a space filled with life. Life that took form in the tallest of trees, drinking from the earth and rinsing the heavens; the smallest of prokaryotes, thousands of miles beneath the ocean, shifting through molten lava and frozen rock.

And there was life that reflected the word. Life that bore the image of the word that gave it purpose.

The word saw everything it had done.

The word was God.

"Good."

All of it.

"Very good."

Love,
Chris.

Calm down

2009-04-24T22:43:00.004+10:00

Deep breaths.

I was late for my prac this morn-

Ok, I think I'll start where it all started.

I went over to Greg's place last night... to play dota. You know... that thing used to be worth driving down to damai and skipping classes for? That thing that I haven't touched since... that time during A levels? Yeh. Bunch of scary looking characters, running around beating up trees and ghouls and each other...

Well, we played til 3.30 AM because we kept losing. I woke up at 8 today, ready for my 10 AM prac. Almost. Except that I woke up again at 10.15... like omgomgomgomgomg, I reached the redmond barry building at 10.30. And I was told to come back and try my luck again at 2. If some unlucky soul misses his/her prac, I get pretty much get 10 free marks, just for making the prac. I got my 10 free marks. Well, maybe 10, depending on how the test went.

Anyway. The point is, there's a lesson to be learnt here. Don't play dota.

Ok. So I'm at Winston's place now, no, not playing dota (yet). He cooked dinner.

It.
Was.
Awesome.

You know that sea cucumber soup that you get in expensive chinese restaurants? Yeh. And lamb chops man. Good stuff.

(Yes... I wrote that because I know you'll read it Winston... cheeky manipulative ass I am)

Yeh, so, Aun's getting married tomorrow. Woohoo! Congrats to Aun and Leanne. Also there's an Anzac memorial service tomorrow at 6 AM I think. And I think I will be there (yeh, and I couldn't make it for a 10 o'clock class...)

Hmm. I think that's all for tonight folks. This is Chris signing off...

to play a round of dota before bed. XD

Later guys!

Much love,
Chris.

Nice and easy

2009-04-23T20:20:00.004+10:00

Ok, I'm gonna make a start.

There's a huge gap from where I last left off, and I have no intention of filling that in. In detail.

So uhm, holiday, fun, sun, back to uni, omg, omg, uni, and then easter break, easter camp (rocked) and then uni started again, and then Jason Mraz.

I'll start there. Jason Mraz was amazing. He's come a long way, and you can see the experience in his staging. And yes that opera bit was totally wtf, I was just blown away. Good stuff.

Moving on. Had heaps of tests. Now I don't. WOOO.

None for the rest of the week that is.

I drew on Coraline, my acoustic guitar. Check it out:

Tried to get a rough idea of what to draw. I intended to do a couple of sketches and pick the best one, but it was massively time-consuming, so I just stuck with the first thing I drew.

Coraline before.

Coraline after.

- edit: I was inspired to draw on my guitar because... Jon Loo drew on his classical. Haha.

What do you reckon? It's drawn on cellophane tape by the way. As in I stuck tape on first, then drew over the tape. That way, when I get bored of it, or I find the inspiration, and the bloody time, to draw a new one, I can just take it off.

Yeh, see what happens when Chris is done with his tests?

I'm not usually this smug mind you, its just been poo-loads, and i really mean loads, of tests and studying, and my brain looks for painstakingly painstaking ways to unwind.

Ok. That's all for now. Later guys.

A New Day

2009-04-23T18:56:00.002+10:00

Today is a new day.

Yesterday is gone.

Tomorrow is yet to come.

But today begins the rest of my life.

Fueledbymaggi is live folks. Here's to a good year, strong relationships, and pure awesomeness.

Love,
Chris.

Time to move on

2009-02-11T03:49:00.002+11:00

Ok, watch this space (or don't, I'd rather you didn't) cause it's about to undergo some renovations. Can't do much right now cause my macbook is flat, and I managed to destroy the charger. So how am I posting this then? Hehe. Heh. It's a secret.

Changes have to be made. Lifestyle and everything. Once i've got that covered, then I'll work on getting this ship running again. Til then, this is chris, signing off for a few weeks, after being absent for a few months.

Sayonara.

[Day 4] Daniel 1 and 12

2008-10-26T02:00:00.000+11:00

Daniel 1 describes how Daniel came into servitude of the king of Babylon at the time, Nebuchadnezzar. He was of Israeli royalty from the tribe of Judah, and apparently good looking and smart:

1.3 Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring in some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility-
1.4 young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.

The king also allocates a portion of the food from his own table to Daniel and his 3 buddies, but they refuse to eat it, instead asking for vegetables and water. This freaks the chief official out, because if Daniel and his friends look any less healthier, and the king finds out, he's dead. But Daniel insists that they'll be fine and asks the official to test them out for 10 days on veg and water, and it turns out they appear fairer and fleshier than all the other guys who are still feeding off the king's table.

This is significant, firstly as a sign of independence from the luxuries and produce of this kingdom, choosing instead to live off what is readily available throughout the land. Secondly, as a sign of protest, to say that they are not of this kingdom and are not going to be bound by the rules of that kingdom, despite the fact that they are exiles who have been captured. Daniel shows strength of character and integrity in choosing to remain upright in the face of all this, in resolving not to defile himself with the royal food and wine [1.8].

Scripture goes on to say that Daniel and friends are gifted with incredible knowledge and understanding of literature and scholarly things by God, and Daniel can understand dreams and visions [1.17]. I reckon that's pretty useful. This pretty much reflects what Solomon writes in Proverbs 2.7;

.7 He stores up sound wisdom for the upright and is a shield to those who walk in integrity-

In fact the king finds that Daniel and his friends are unrivaled in matters concerning wisdom and understanding in all the land, securing a fair bit of the king's trust I'd imagine.

Daniel 12 describes a vision that Daniel has about a future time. The vision is very cryptic and even Daniel, who in verse 1.17 was said to be able to understand visions and dreams of every kind, doesn't quite follow!

I think its clear that v12.2 talks about the resurrection. What worries me how it talks about 2 distinct groups, one awakening to everlasting life, the other to shame and everlasting contempt... which group will I find myself in? It goes on to say that the wise will shine, the ones who lead many to righteousness like the stars.

Another thing that I should note is that Daniel 12 takes place around a river, the Tigris. When I think of river imagery, I'm reminded of Ezekiel 47, which talks about a massive river that flows to the Dead Sea, that will fill it with life.

Finally in verse 12.9, it talks about how the wicked will not understand. Proverbs describes the wicked, as the foolish, morally deficient people who insist on ignoring wisdom, the ones who do not fear the Lord.

In light of these 2 chapters, I think we could all stand to gain from understanding "understanding" and "wisdom".

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. [Proverbs 1.7]

[Day 3] Proverbs 3

2008-10-25T20:42:00.001+11:00

.28 Do not say to your neighbor, "Come back later, I'll give it tomorrow"- when you now have it with you.

I felt a bit of a pang when I saw this one. This week alone, I think this scenario has been played out quite a few times. I'd either be busy doing something else and reluctant to stop what I'm doing to attend to someone else, or I'm feeling lazy, or I simply can't be bothered to help, when it was really within my capacity to help anyway. I think what is even more perverse when I actually then decide to "help" my "neighbor" on the basis that they're nice to me, or I stand to gain, etc.

Father I come to You with a heart that is not content remaining this way. I'm sick of procrastination, I'm sick of excuses. Show me how to love my neighbors as You have loved me. Teach me to stand firm with strength, and not to lie back and seek and sink into comfort.

[Day 2] Proverbs 2

2008-10-23T18:15:00.001+11:00

.7 He stores up sound wisdom for the upright and is a shield to those who walk in integrity-

.20 This is how you will walk in the way of good men and will keep to the paths of the righteous.

Solomon insists that fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Chapter 2 starts off with a whole sales pitch for knowledge and understanding, the benefits of embracing wisdom. Wisdom comes from God, and He speaks understanding and knowledge into our hearts. He guards and protects those are upright and walk in integrity (remembering that in chapter 1, Solomon indicates a wise person as one who is morally aware). Solomon then begins describing paths that we shouldn't go down, ending the list with adultery, specifically warning men to avoid slutty women. A man who can steer clear of all these things, the upright and people of integrity will live in the land, but the wicked, the people who act against wisdom, will perish and be removed.

I think wisdom is now so much more to me than just being clever. And I think especially now, wisdom is crucial in my life. To walk upright is incredibly hard, considering the lies that are piled over us every single day. But if we seek the right stuff, the righteous stuff, then there will also be wisdom to reject those lies, we can trust in our Creator's unyielding steadfastness. I believe that money does not equate to success. I believe that self(ish)-gain is self-destruction, especially if that gain involves someone else's loss, as is often the case. I believe that sex was never meant to sell, and neither should selling have anything to do with sex.

Creator, You are holy. Help me understand what You have purposed for this Earth, and allow me to align myself to Your agenda. Father, pour out Your wisdom on me, fill me with understanding of the times. Show me where Your Kingdom has begun, where it will be advanced. Open up my eyes that I may see, and unblock my eyes that I may hear, so that I do not treat Your sons and daughters as any less than the children of the most high King.

[Day 1] Proverbs 1

2008-10-22T20:08:00.000+11:00

.23 If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured my hear out to you and made known my thoughts to you.

.29 Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord,

.31 they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.

I think, often wisdom calls us, nags at us even. But there are many times when our hearts have already determined what they want to hear and ignores it. Solomon gives wisdom a personality in the passage of scripture, and Wisdom seems to be quite eager to speak into us, but she also indicates that many reject her. In this chapter, Solomon actually refers to fools, the Hebraic word for which indicates one who is morally deficient. Does it mean then, that wisdom is tied to goodness? Wisdom also makes it clear that there are consequences for those who do not listen.

I've been in many situations where I had already known that things would turn out badly if I did a certain thing, but sometimes, be it out of curiosity, arrogance, or pride (not stupidity mind you), I'm just "need" to see what it feels or looks like. And of course, things turn out badly. I'm sure we've all been in some situation like that. Call it instinct, insight, a feeling, I think I could do a bit better (i.e. my thumb wouldn't be wrapped in bandages right now) if I took heed more often. Of course experiences can serve to teach as well. And oftentimes Wisdom is drawn from experience. But if Wisdom calls out... I believe it's best to listen.

Father, for all I've done, all the times I've screwed up, all the people I've hurt, all the horrible things I've said, forgive me. Forgive me the depravities that plague me on so many levels. Creator, giver of all life, thank You for Your grace, thank You for your healing. Increase my wisdom and understanding, and then increase my willingness to listen. Fill my heart with awe and wonder, and desire to learn more and more. Amen.

Expeditioners are go!

2008-10-22T14:13:00.000+11:00

I believe that our community has actually come to a point where it is crucial for us to see. In the midst of all the shaking and exposing of our weaknesses, I believe that it is important for us to discover what is truly good and stable, to re-discover the foundations that were laid before us that still remain, and will remain. And I saw this for myself last night. As many members of community gathered to pray, I saw the desperation for revelation of a desperate people, ready to lay down and crucify their comforts and cravings, ready to deny flesh leadership over our lives. Ready to be set aside for a holy purpose. We are a people who are deeply dissatisfied with the state of the world, the city, and even our community, and we are a people who have begun preparations. Preparations for change, for reform, for a revolution.

And so for the next 40 days, as we stand together, bound by our deep desire, for fresh insight and for glimpses of what our Creator has begun in heaven, we also join in fasting. Some of us from food, some from facebook (myself included, you'll notice that my profile has disappeared), some from chocolates or snacks. I myself am fasting from my snooze button and I intend to wake up at 7 every morning in order to create space to seek.

Fueledbymaggi will now be a space that will (hopefully) be updated for the next 40 days with my SOAP entries, beginning tonight. As we embark on the journey, I pray that wisdom will not leave us, that understanding will fill our minds. I pray for clarity to be poured into our minds, I pray that our hearts remain pure, I pray for strength each day, I pray that Christ gives us rest, and I pray that we will become a people who find favour in the eyes of our Creator. Father, drop Your thoughts into us, show us Your heart, and lead us on.

And now folks, on with the journey!

In Expedition, ideas think of you.

2008-10-13T00:55:00.000+11:00

I had a really good chat with Nick on thursday night, we played around with a some ideas and here are a few we discussed.

Sonship.

Here's an idea Nick put forward. Suppose circumstance puts you in a position where on one hand, the law dictates that punishment is required, and yet on the other hand you're holding on to grace. Like the example Nick uses is the worship team. Practice time begins at 7.30 AM, not any later. And then one of the guys show up at 8 with a hangover. On one hand, do you show grace and forgive and say "hey, it's ok, just get set up and let's go."? On the other hand, the law in this case is very clear, so do you punish the guy and not let him play? And either way it's difficult, it's got pros and cons. After all, it was by grace that the law was given. Well maybe not in this case, but for arguments sake anyway.

But what if its not even about deciding between grace or law at all? Nick describes this concept he's been thinking of, sonship. What does it mean to be an heir of the Kingdom? What does it mean to be a son, and where then is our place in our Father's house?

It's not too simple, we still have no idea what it looks like, how it's lived out. As Nick puts it, it's just words that haven't been made flesh.

I've given it a bit more thought, and it makes a little bit more sense now (to me at least). Suppose you have a friend over at your house. Legally your father is the owner of the house, but he is your father after all, and you call it your own house as well. Now, say your friend has this urge to draw on your wall or set your rug on fire for whatever reason. He can't, it's against the rules of the house, it's against the law, and there will be undesirable consequences should he try. But for you, you wouldn't want to draw on the wall or set the rug on fire at all, its your house after all.

And so, may be that's what sonship looks like. You take ownership of the law, and it just becomes your lifestyle, and you don't even want to do anything that isn't good for your house, your Father's kingdom.

Then again, your house is also a house of grace. If your friend spills coffee on the rug by accident, then really, so what? Your father doesn't mind, the rug can be cleaned. And you can even make your friend a new cup of coffee. And after all, its not as though you've never spilled coffee on the rug before, and when you did, its not as though your father didn't forgive you.

So you still hold grace in one hand and the law in the other, but they belong to your Father. If you take up your role as a son of God, you also take up ownership of these family heirlooms.

I still can't imagine living this out, but it sounds like its going somewhere.

Right it's really late, we talked about some other stuff but I'll save that for another time, I'm really tired right now. Lack of sleep has finally caught up with me. Class again.. first thing in the morning, booooo.

Right, bye.

record low/high in chris' wanttopunchsomethinginthefaceness

2008-10-08T14:04:00.001+11:00

its pretty simple. chris (i will refer to myself in the third person for the duration of this post, no particular reason other than i'll fuhuhuhuhucking do what i like) spent the whole night/morning working on a japanese assignment and finally retired at 6.30 AM. well no, he laid his weary head to rest at half past six, but only fell asleep much later, most probably due to his immense disappointment in not being able to accomplish what he sacrificed so many hours of sleep to do.

and then he woke up at 8 to go for class. and now he's just arrived back home to print out some lecture notes (and rant at you of course) and he'll be off to class again in another 15 minutes.

low. yes, chris feels so low right now.

but at the same time, he's feeling pretty invincible. no way in hell would chris ever go for a full day of class on an hour of sleep. never. look at him go. woohoo. physics lab was a breeze for him, look at him go! wooohooo...

ahem.

excuse me while i go bury my face in a pillow and allow my brain the luxury of collapsing.

right.

2008-10-08T01:45:00.000+11:00

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit is all i can honestly say right now. cause everything else going through my mind right now conflicts with everything else going through my mind right now conflicts with everything else going through my mind right now conflicts with everything else going through my mind right now conflicts with everything else going through my mind right now conflicts with ev- wait.

shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

here's a thought experiment. every 10 seconds i'm going to jot down what i'm thinking.

how are you feeling yes i'm feeling how are you feeling yes i'm feeling how are you feeling are you feeling ok...

... maybe i should turn off the music.

nghhh. incoherence i'm so today tired.

pressure cracking weight burden roar.

think i want you to think i want you to think i want you oh no...

oh nooooooooooo oh no oh oh oh.

why? so hard... think i'll wreck i think i'll wreck you i think i'll wreck you oh no.

this sucks. its not going anywhere.

dammit i really should turn that music off.

too catchy. oh noooooooooo oh no oh oh. i love kaisercartel.

what a mess. guitar. wooo guitar.

noooooooo guitar... so much stuff.

women's conference. busking. spring concert. need to practice.

dammit need to study. stop procrastinating.

definitely need to stop procrastinating. soon.

guitar. need a new phone. phone's gone haywire.

how are you feeling yes i'm feeling how are you feeling yes i'm feeling how are you feeling are you feeling ok?

kaisercartel on repeat?

need to sleep. now. seriously.

melting down, i'm burning out.

i'mtooproudtoaskforhelp.helpme.helpme.help.

here comes excuses... why i let you down.

standby for another breakdown.

standby. i think.

i think i'm shutting down.

OH. Before I forget.

2008-10-01T22:39:00.000+10:00

Guess who got a busking permit?

Hehe. I'll see you on Swanston Street.

What if it was you? (ooOOooohOOoooH)

2008-10-01T21:41:00.000+10:00

Forgot about the pictures again, sorry. Still out using wireless outside cause my internet's still not good.

[It Had to be You - Motion City Soundtrack] is playing on repeat on my iTunes. My heart's in a really weird state right now. I have no idea. I can't get [Sometime Around Midnight - Airborne Toxic Event] out of my head either. Why? Hmm.
__________________________________________

I had a great time frightening possums, learning the 8-step, and mucking around on swings and slides last night. Gelatti at Freddo's first, and a good time at the Carlton gardens. Singing about... Kookaburras on gum trees.

Kris was telling me about this time when she saw a Sudanese family at the playground. A Sudanese woman, covered from head to toe, was sitting on the swing and laughing and having a great time with her kids as they laughed and pushed her. It's a beautiful picture that Kris described as what humanity could look like.

I'm going to hold hope for that. For humanity. For love.

Excursion

2008-09-30T18:28:00.000+10:00

It's nice to get away from the city. The city's just so full of students/middle-aged people, and the only time people seem to stop is for a coffee or something. Or. I don't know, life's just too fast-paced. I really enjoyed today's little excursion to CERES. It's a really nifty community type place, where everything's green, solar panels, organic vegetables and all that. It's a pretty hippie type vibe, but it's probably the first time I've actually seen kids playing here. Kids out with their families having a good time.

Pictures I have, but some other time. Internet's still down and I'm out somewhere using a wireless connection.

Studies. Please get a move on Chris. Time's running out. Enough chill, it's time to buckle down and knuckle down some work. Electromagnetism. Genetics and Evolution. Entropy and Gibbs Free Energy. Japanese Assignment. 5 days to go.

Please refresh me... please restore me... before I burn out.

New Season

2008-09-23T00:36:00.000+10:00

So the layout is a lot simpler than what I had originally envisioned, but my half-hearted efforts at learning blogspot-friendly html couldn't get me very far, so this will suffice for now.

The songwriting thing isn't going too bad, but I'm not exactly overflowing with ideas and inspiration either. I need some time off. The workload really got to me, and even though I'm supposed to be on holiday, I'm finding it really hard to just hang loose. Plus, I'm so unprepared for this Friday. I don't know what I'll do when I apply for the permit.

I'm off to a rocky start.

I need space.

Safe space.

Room to grow, and room to break.

A fairly accurate representation of the current situation.

2008-09-16T21:18:00.001+10:00

Assignment due tomorroooooooooooooooooooow! i'm gonna kick some ass. i don't care.

sleep is for the pwned.

i'll stay up all night if i have to, i won't be denied my 1337ness.

please save me. =(

i'm a liar

2008-09-12T14:28:00.000+10:00

so... i'm more than a week late. things are crazy, assignments, tests and all that jazz.

so i've only uploaded one song (that i finished on time) on purevolume. the other one will have to wait til a more opportune time. critique please. i was going to say i'll probably get more done during my midsem break, but i can't, cause i'm so behind in physics and bio... and chem... and jap. so chlorineyes will probably have to go on indefinite hiatus. just like system of a down. though, it's rumored they'll play together again. really soon. at eurovision or something, or is that already over? i have not time to know what i'm talking about, so instead of talking more ass i'll be heading off for my last class for today and then it's off to the dandenongs for the weekend! bye guys.

chris out.

One down

2008-09-02T13:16:00.000+10:00

One more to go.

Aiming to get it done by Wednesday noon time, and then it'll be on purevolume. I'm beginning to realsie for every lecture I missed, it takes at least an hour and a half to catch up. I have missed I think 9 bio lectures. Chem is much easier, I think about 3 hours should be enough to catch up everything I missed. And then it's around half an hour revision for every lecture I attend. Physics is a bit of a problem though, I've missed some critical lectures and I haven't even gotten round to printing the lecture notes. Can't wait for the midsem break... to study.

Heart of Worship

When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come
Longing just to bring
Something that's of worth
That will bless your heart

I'll bring You more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what You have required
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear
You're looking into my heart

I'm coming back to the heart of worhip
And it's all about You
It's all about You, Jesus
I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I've made it
When it's all about You
It's all about You, Jesus

King of endless worth
No one could express
How much you deserve
Though I'm weak and poor
All I have is yours
Every single breath

Creator, all that You've imagined and invented, I can only scratch on a microscopic level. Who could know the depths of Your wisdom? Father, come and save and know my deepest thoughts, and think to me Your thoughts. Reveal in your creation Your nature, Your heart, Your perfect love.

Proverbs 25:2
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; To search out matter is the glory of kings.

Oh its been a while

2008-08-31T17:55:00.000+10:00

Everytime I meet a singer-songwriter I get all inspired, even if I've never heard any of their songs. Maybe not inspired, but reminded, cause everything's I can see is inspiring. After all, the spirit in me is the spirit of the Creator.

Hoping to record another 2 songs soon.

And. Winston would like to make a shoutout: HARROW WORLDDDDDD!!!!

Anyway, last night I thought Jane and co. did a great job of hosting a discussion about Batman and the kind of saviour we need today. Was really enjoyable watching everyone dig so deep into the movie for truths and gold. And the night before, we (being mostly Aaron and Devon) rearranged the stage, the drum cage is now in the middle and overall it just looks and sounds brilliant. Then we jammed, and I reckon everyone was just waiting for that moment. Was really cool, I swear, Devon, Guo Jin, and Aaron are the funkiest trio I've ever seen. Their groove is just so tight, it's incredible. And then Tim, Ann Boo (what a kickass name), and I joined in and it was all so much fun.

So I've begun writing this song and I'm not entirely sure what it's about, just like how I'm not entirely sure what's happening right now, spring seemingly approaching and Uncle David's passing (rest in peace). Hmm. New season. Quite excited to see what's in store.

Friend.

Hey winter,
There's a spring in your step,
Where are you going?
Can't we weave though the city,
One more time? Like we do every sleepless night?

Hey winter,
Friend, it seems your frozen heart is warming,
Still you took another man with you,
And though I didn't know him, many I know knew.

But no you're not getting any further now,
You still linger like storm clouds of perfume.

Ok, so I think I'll stop here. Hopefully, will finish up the song and start recording. Took a video of the rough gist of the song. So, yeh. Hopefully I won't be too swamped with stuff this week. Bye.

The iPod Game. (tagged)

2008-06-26T17:27:00.000+10:00

oook lol, i usually ignore being tagged but this is too (potentially) funny to pass off.

The Measure of How Well Your iPod Really Knows You

1. Put your music player on shuffle.
2. Press forward for each question.
3. Use the song title as the answer to the question even if it doesn’t make sense.
4. Write the answers down, or even comment on it.
5. Tag 5 people.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. How are you feeling today?
Bad - U2

hey, that's not true. i'm finally done with exams! but i suppose jap was pretty sucky.

2. Will you get far in life?
There is a Light That Never Goes Out - Anberlin

oh yeh.

3. What’s your best friend’s theme song?
Ada Apa Denganmu - Peterpan

oh wow... interesting.

4. What is the story of your life?
You Are My God - Planetshakers

yeh, my mbp does know me well.

5. What was school like?
Noise and Kisses - The Used

oh shit. getting a bit too honest there...

6. How can you get ahead with life?
The Little Things - Colbie Cailat

well... yeh, i guess. could be the big things too, i wouldn't know.

7. Whats the best thing about your friends?
Automatic Heart - Goodnight Electric

uhm... why? but... sort of i guess... as in they know what to expect from me?

8. Describe your grandparents.
A Message - Coldplay

no idea.

9. How’s your life going?
Been A Son - Nirvana

as opposed to... i'm a daughter now? i mean. yeh... i have been a son all this time.

10. What will be played at my funeral?
White As Snow - Jon Foreman

yay! a sad sounding song about great stuff! its perfect.

11. Will you have a happy life?
Must've Done Something Right - Relient K

WOOHOO!

12. What do your friends really think of you?
Rooftops - Lostprophets

"Will we make our mark this time?
Will we always say we tried?"
I guess with all the big questions that we wrestle through in life, we're in it together hey?

13. Do people secretly lust after you?
Your New Twin Sized Bed - Deathcab for Cutie

oh... i guess not...
"With a single pillow underneath your single head...
I guess you decided that old queen was more space than you would need...
Now its in the alley behind the apartment that says 'free'..."

14. How can you make yourself happy?
Laser Gun Electro Boy - Goodnight Electric

yeh! ...sure...

15. Will you ever have children?
Super Mario Bros. Theme - Konji Kondo

hehehe

16. What song would you strip to?
Heart Songs - Weezer

I don't think so...

17. What does your mom think of you?
Sleep - Taking Back Sunday

well, yeh, she does complain that i sleep too late. too late being later than 9.

18. What is your deep, dark secret?
Wow - Snow Patrol

AHAHAHA are you serious?! I haven't played for like... oh wait. as in... world of warcraft right...? oh shi-

19. What is your enemy’s theme song?
The Change Inside of Me - Mercy Me

considering i haven't had an enemy for ages... i guess that's kind of true. people change.

20. What’s your personality like?
Mungki Nanti - Peterpan

er... i... i dunnooooo =(

21. What will be played at your wedding?
The Light That Blinds - Shadows Fall

not a chance. possibly the first 30 seconds. but any further than that and my guests would probably drop dead.

see for yourself.

anyway, that was fun. i now tag:

1. Chancey
2. Ooi Didi
3. Douglas
4. Gabriel
5. Mop

I'm still in the middle of writing a proper long post. actually, i might have to post some stuff parts at a time. Bye!

What's with these homies dissin' my girl?

2008-06-08T01:19:00.000+10:00

HAHA!

Pork and Beans by Weezer. This is officially my favorite music video. Today. I don't know bout tomorrow. Or what it's like to be. Ahh.

Oh sorry.

Here.

Earth

2008-06-06T18:06:00.000+10:00

Home.

I'm a permanent resident.

Hmm. I'd like to complain about increasing fuel prices. But really. It's not like we've got a whole lot of it left anyway. Electricity costs have also risen. I suppose one solution would be to use less. Hmm. Making changes to our incredibly comfortable lifestyle?

No way! It's our right as citizens to use as much electricity as we want... right?

I don't feel talking about it because there's still so much that I myself need to resolve and reconcile, but I really need to get this off my chest. Like, what are we doing about our neighbors who don't even have electricity? Or clean water? Why is it such a big deal that our "necessities" come at a higher price when we deny these necessities to others. Ah forgive me for being cryptic. I'm trying to see how far I can go without being a hypocrite.

My point is... ok, I'll admit, this was more or less because everyone started complaining about the 2.70RM/litre price hike. It also reminded me of the miniature world video Greg put up.

43% of the world live without basic sanitation.
30% of the world have bank accounts.
7% are educated at secondary level.

If you have a fridge to store food, closet to keep clothes, a bed to sleep in, and a roof over your head, lucky you.
Cause 75% of the world doesn't.

18% struggle to live on 1USD or less a day. (about RM3.20)
53% struggle to live on 2USD or less a day. (about RM6.50)

Granted, these stats are old, and are probably much worse now. That's the way the economy of the developed world works, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

I used to think preventing global warming was important, but not a huge priority cause I was gonna die before the shit hits the fan anyway. Well, that was pretty selfish, and in fact foolish, cause... I've only got one home.

Sustainable Development is defined as meeting the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations ability to meet their needs. Learnt that in the second week of engineering. That seems like a perfectly normal thing to do right? I mean, obviously never intend to make life hard for our grandkids. But humans are just so shortsighted. No one really worries about the consequences if they can make a quick buck. No one worries about the consequences unless its immediately and obviously harmful. And no one worries about the consequences until the shit hits the fan. And even then, some are still capable of pretending there are no consequences.

I don't know folks. I've just yelled an incoherent mess. And in some sense, this is the beginning of my apology to my home, for all the damage I've done. It's also the indication that I've got my foot somewhere along the journey of the redemption of my home.

Am I a treehugger? How many people strive each day to put money into a dream retirement home fund? I know where I'm spending retirement, and retirement's gonna last an eternity. Can you blame me?

Laminin

2008-05-29T10:43:00.000+10:00

Okay folks, biology lesson today. Let's talk about my favorite protein, Laminin.

They [Laminin] are a family of glycoproteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding in almost every animal tissue. [1]

Basement membranes are basically dense layers of protein sheets found underneath organs, like your lungs, or your blood vessels, or even your skin.

The laminin in basement membranes is produced by many different cells, and is involved in just as many activities, like cell adhesion, migration and differentiation, embryonic development, and forming or re-forming blood vessels during healing of wounds. [2]

Laminin is pretty much what's holding your body together, and repairing it.

Great stuff isn't it? In other words, without laminin, you're fu (i believe the technical term is) screwed.

But that's not all. You know what really gets me about laminin?

Take a look.

Incredible huh?

There's a video about it on youtube by Louie Giglio.

Now to practice my referencing skillz.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminin, 29 May 2008.
Li J, Zhang Y-P, Kirsner RS. Angiogenesis in wound repair: Angiogenic growth factors and the extracellular matrix. (2003)

Hey Everyone

2008-05-24T05:15:00.000+10:00

Go click on that button on the right there, the purevolume one. I just wrote a new song and its called The Orphans and the Widows. Try and guess what its about. It's not funny at all. In fact its about the homeless people on the streets. Kind of. But I wrote it because of the cyclone in Burma and earthquakes in China that have orphaned and widowed so many people. I was kind of inspired by Ai Hui actually, just went for her pre-album launch mini show.

Click Here for Ai Hui's Myspace.

I really love her stuff, I'm so getting her album. It's worth a listen, she's a terrific songwriter and she's got a beautiful voice.

So yeh, I've kind of picked up my guitar and pickled my brain a bit more, and hopefully more songs coming. By the way, I'm kinda happy with how the song turned out, but I think it's not final. Will be adding more touches to it, debating on whether to add drums and bass or not. i should probably get a semi-acoustic.

Love, Chris.

edit: note the new banner up top. watch the video and find out more...

reflectivejournal?oplz.

2008-05-18T17:57:00.000+10:00

i'm in the middle of an engineering assignment, its called a reflective journal. basically its an almost weekly thing and we get different things to write about each time. it just so happens that this time we're supposed to write about academic honesty?

"academic honesty? wtf is that?"

like... plagiarism and stuff. but how do you write 2 to 3 paragraphs on academic honesty?

omg. i just got an idea.

i'll just look for someone else's writings on academic honesty and paraphrase it and then cite it, awesome!

honestly. what can i write?

"oh gee yeh, its really important that engineers don't take credit for other people's work even though they do it all the time anyway."

anyway.

Colossians 3:23
And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men;

so i'll stop whining and get to it as soon as i post up pictures.

Dandenongs trip!

Climbing up the hill! From left, Paul, Aileen, Me! (in a beanie), George, and Greg.

Sarah, Josh (kneeling), Vinay, George, Isaac (bald guy =), Aileen (kneeling also), Kyrstal (in blue), Cheryl, Shin Yi, Me (beanie), Greg, Roshan, Paul, and Brian. Missing Tim again cause he took the photo.

Greg, beside the fireplace.

And Tim teaching.

Autumn trees.

Vibrant coloured bird on the deck.

Another cute little bird next to the breakfast table.

At breakfast, Aileen and Jason.

Roshan, Brian, Tim (lol) and Cheryl (lol).

Vinay, Joshua, Shin Yi, and Greg.

edit: PANORAMARAMARAMAshots. By Tim.

So yeh. The Dandenongs. Had a great time there, thanks to Tim and Isaac and al the 101 folks.

oh by the way.

Check it out! Flower on my macbookpro!

Mmhmm.

I got my Jim Dunlop Jazz III's! YAY!

ook

2008-05-11T15:54:00.000+10:00

i won't shut it down.

haha.

had a gig on thursday night. quite fun, should've focused more on the show than the music though. music was gonna turn out pretty bad cause of the equipment anyway. ah well. i bought a multi effects processor prior to the show, so i worked some wah into my solo, which was pretty cool. too bad i couldn't really hear me throughout the show anyway.

don't think i'll post the video cause the quality's not very good. you can't really hear much of the music, mostly random background conversations.

had a great time at the dandenongs over the weekend with tim and the other guys on the life 101 course. such a beautiful place.

i think i've used my brain much harder over the few weeks on the life 101 course than the entire semester at uni. i've come to realise how much i've let my mind be dulled over the years. sad to think that sometimes i get to the point where i'm tired of thinking. oh well. i've been thinking lately. what am i doing in engineering?

i want to be an arts student.

but ~~i'm~~ my parents are asian. haha. classic excuse.

no i don't know if i want to be an arts student, i don't know what i want anymore. clearly maths isn't my strong point. but clearly people get good at maths after insane amounts of practice anyway. i just don't. want. to. do. math.

hmm. i don't think engineering was my decision though. it was my choice. chose to do it despite knowing i fail at maths. now i need more faith to carry this through.

oh well. physics test on wednesday. gotta start studying for that.

later folks.

The Heart of God

2008-05-04T18:52:00.000+10:00

"Creator... Father, Abba... Abba... how? I love you, my God, I long to worship You... but how? I can't see You, I can't touch you... no image I can conjure up in my head can even begin to scratch the surface of who You are... how do I worship You?"

Can you see yourself giving Me your heart?

"Yeh, but look God, I've got my heart out here in front of me, my hands are outstretched, holding my heart out to... to... I can't see past that God! Beyond that is just... unknown..."

Good. That's what I want from you.

Just a few weeks ago, the space that Life* Expedition uses for its sunday meetings hosted a massive gathering of the church of Melbourne. An incredible weekend, I was given a chance to work at the Forge Grassroots Festival and listen to all the speakers from all over, and to meet sons and daughters of God from all kinds of cultures, dreadlocks, fire twirling. The churches around Melbourne are becoming THE church of Melbourne, and this unity is not some far off dream. This is a vision coming to pass. And that's what The Gathering is about, uniting the church of Melbourne.

I had an opportunity to lay down everything I was carrying, and really just have a chat with this God that I tell people I love.

Giving God our heart is risky business. But not really hey. I was confronted, and I came to a point where I had to ask, am I ready to give m heart to God? To take all my worries, my desires and lift them up to this being I can't see? To give my heart into an unknown future, to trust a plan in which I have no control of?

Well, its not very hard to give someone 10 dollars for a roast chicken. But if you give a million dollars not knowing what to get back... it's a little tougher.

"Well... ok God, I'm ready. I have faith in You... wait... what... what will You give now that I've given You my heart?"

Chris, I will give you My own heart.

Friends, I really just want to call your attention away from all the distractions, problems, inconveniences of the world and take a moment to scale up. What's going on that is bigger than you? And bigger than that?

I've got a God who promised to resurrect me after I die. Friends, I love you, and my love is inspired by a God who redeemed (re-valued) me. He loved me so much that He sent the only son He had to die. And His son, willingly laid down His life for me. Why? I'm a sinner, I lie, I lust, I fall so far short of the mark. How does someone willingly die like that?

Because He understood that death was temporary. He knew the God of life, of resurrection.

Guys... I didn't mean to get preachy, but you have to understand, I'm filled so full, I'm bursting with love...

God loves you. I know because the moment I began to receive His heart, I was overwhelmed with love.

Love and blessings,

Chris

Once again

2008-04-28T18:37:00.000+10:00

FBM has died. I'd hate to shut it down though. I don't have the time or the means to create a new layout (no photoshop), and without a new layout i simply don't have the mood to write. that was pretty much the reason why my layout would change every now and then.

i guess... we'll wait and see. i may move over to purevolume from now on. unlikely though. until i get some recording done. a cover song is currently in the works. we'll see how that goes.

i suppose a final* update would be good.

i'm in a band called S.O.U.L.** as guitarist who just doesn't feel that emo vibe the songwriters churn out, i get through about 3 assignments a week, i've pretty much mastered the art of kolo mee, i think i got sunburnt today despite the fact that it was 9 degrees Celsius.

hmm. interesting times.

----------

*most likely not final.

**stands for sorrows of an unforgiving lifetime. no, i was not involved in the naming process. yes they- we write our own stuff.

Happy Easter Folks

2008-03-26T10:53:00.000+11:00

First, let me tell a joke.

What do you get when you cross a bungee cord, and an owl?

anyway, watch this:

its so funny.

and this is really true.

ok then, well i hope everyone had a spectacular easter (break) hehe.

i did.

weekend i was at camp Manyung, an hour away from Melbourne. beautiful place, look:

drive down to Mornington

view from my room

my roommate Chua

walked down to the beach

beautiful, no?

later that night

aaron su, on the last day

isaac su, haha they're brothers

tim took us to a nearby vineyard to have a look

really sweet garden

the guys

macro skills

with a digital camera? pfft.

so the girls had a good time there too

guys were just like, yeh its a garden

finally

2008-03-20T17:45:00.000+11:00

the weekend is here! oh man. such a long day. oh so looooong. and now, i'll not be around for the weekend. tomorrow morning i'm leaving. somewhere. back on sunday. will take pics, should be nice. bye.

chris needs your help.

2008-03-18T17:46:00.000+11:00

if you have experience with MATLAB, please contact chris at chlaw@student.unimelb.edu.au

if you've never heard of MATLAB, you are very blessed.

i mean.

Calculate the mass of CO2 used per day for using disposable paper towels
on MATLAB. Submit your script and answer.

srsly?

but i mean yeh. just. i.

i dunno what to do.

pictures

2008-03-16T22:37:00.000+11:00

looks very black and white... so i thought i'd post some.

welcome to tha hood, son, this is strictly 4 my ninjaz.

ninja transform!

ninja shred.

more shred.

even more shred.

so i really like my milk tea.

but i only had water.

so i drank the water.

how was it you ask? hmm...

it was good.

there, i wasted another 5 mins of your life telling a pointless story using *clever* subliminal pictures.

sup tulang is an art

2008-03-16T20:27:00.000+11:00

its not easy folks. i mean, i just had, really awesome fish for dinner. i got a fillet of basa and i lightly rubbed curry powder and salt into it and let it sit there. in the meantime, i fry some sliced potatoes in rosemary infused olive oil. oh so nice the aroma. sprinkled salt, and done. get the potatoes on the plate, leave the pan on, and chuck in some onions. few seconds later, in goes the fish, pan fried on both sides till the fish is nicely done, not overcooked, but not raw either, just perfect. that's what i like about basa. so easy to cook. when it was done, i contemplated taking a picture. but i was too hungry. all this time i'd been stewing some oxtail soup. some onion, tomatoes, and of course, the oxtails. i added the carrots later when i remembered. but yeh. shit. so hard to make good sup tulang.

so yeh. expect a lot of food to pop up in my posts. not much else to blog about.

Joshua 1:9
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; Do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

props to cheekoh for sending that verse to me. just looked at it and thought "wow. that's awesome timing."

life ~~in melbourne~~ alone is generally kinda boring wherever you are i guess. sure there's friends around, but everyone's just too tired to get up and go see each other... then you bump into each other in the market and you're like "oh... hey... haven't seen you in a while. oh you're busy... yeh, k bye."

of course there's that other crowd, "lets party yeh! go clubbing and get wasted and laugh about it tomorrow!" i don't drink. i'm not an idiot either;

Matthew 5:
33"Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' 34But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; 35or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. 36And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. 37Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

"I promised God i wouldn't drink... until my a levels are over." oh yeh. real tough chris. foolish. pfft. oh well. you learn as you go along. but yeh the point is. my human reasoning for not wanting to drink was cause it was expensive and i didn't want to risk letting it get in the way of my studying. and beer makes you fat. almost as bad as coke.

so... the point of this ranting... is lost to me. really. uhm. i dunno. i guess what i'm trying to say is i'm happy with where i stand, and i'm sort of still in the process of mapping out where exactly i'm standing.

but one thing's for sure. its time to cultivate a discipline. i'm ready. i'm just sorry it took so long. thanks for waiting. here i go.

Elections?

2008-03-10T23:42:00.000+11:00

First of all, poor show Sabah. poor show. 51 or 52 out of 54 seats... to BN?

Secondly, Anwar's performance was quite impressive. managing to forge a loose alliance with the other opposition parties was most probably why they managed to win so many seats in peninsular.

seems they're ready for change... what happened sabah? beloved homeland? what's this "why the fuck are you still talking about politics? its so boring, you think they give a shit what you think? nothings going to change anyway" attitude?

are your ready to eat your words yet? cause your west side counterparts are moving forwards, and we... still lag. lag because of political apathy. political nonchalance.

if you think about it, really BN has been really idiotic in that they kept lashing out at bloggers. well hello, old skoolers, the internet wins. Opposition, through the internet, managed to get the other side of the story across, with far more compelling evidence, despite their lack of radio/tv/newspaper accessibility. opposition was basically winning over most of the younger, educated generation.

but chris, surely we got those in kk too right ya is it not? we got internets?

yeh... internet... what do you do with it?

1. friendster
2. facebook
3. uhm... limwire...
4. ... porn?

hmm. you didn't know what anyone from the opposition was talking about did you? cause you never really heard what they had to-

oh yeh chris wait, youtube!

-ok, you never really heard what the opposition had to say. i lost my train of thought...

anyway, i'm stereotyping grossly unfairly. but the truth remains, that most of the votes in sabah came from the rural hoods, the kampungs, where BN funding and socio-economic policies are beneficial. and when i say funding of course i really mean bribe money. hmm... what happened to the educated people? oh right, they figured out that anywhere is better than sabah right? THAT, is unfair. even if you don't want to live there, at least send in a vote for that other guy.

you know, the clever one? yeh, i want a clever guy running my country someday. not someone who'll spend millions of dollars on a mosque with a crystal dome and then smile at you and say "see? what would you do without me?" when the ROADS that lead to that mosque, or everywhere else for that matter, are badly damaged, poorly maintained etc. and we're talking about roads that malaysians use, all malaysians. do all malaysians use that mosque?

priorities?

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- An international human rights group said Wednesday it fears Malaysians will not get a fair vote in this week's general elections because of an uneven playing field favoring the ruling National Front coalition.

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged Malaysia to eradicate bias from the electoral process. Opposition and activist groups say the process is rife with irregularities.

Malaysian law minister Nazri Abdul Aziz denied the allegations, accusing Human Rights Watch of discrediting the elections because "they know the National Front will win."

"To me, Human Rights Watch is biased. They are not important at all. It's only their opinion," he told The Associated Press.

Group Warns on Malaysia Elections, (March 4 2008)
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/04/malaysia.elections.ap/index.html as of March 11 2008

yeh. i laughed too. ridiculous isn't it, to think that this is the kind of response an authoritative figure in our country would give.

a lot of talk of racial tension too. we're not allowed to go celebrate or anything apparently. says the sheriff, the policeman all other police call boss. worried that another racially charged riot will ensue. let me tell you something about racially charged riots. they're started by people who feel there should be racially charged issues. ie. UMNO. nah ok, that's again another unfair accusation based on rumours. rumours? yes, i've heard some rumours. but i won't bother posting them. why? because i'm still afraid of the ISA.

yep. that draconic tool that allows ANYONE to be arrested with NO trial whatsoever. you are automatically assumed guilty, and the court doesn't even DARE challenge that assumption.

check out this article. written by an Australian political scientist in malaysia, specializing in malaysian politics. i have to say, when i hear about foreigners actually taking interest in how we run our countries, its quite encouraging. because it means we might one day actually have FAIR elections, because of their pressure. otherwise we 're bound to uncover some big election scandal and that could be ok too i guess. that way, we'd learn and progress you see.

BUT. now i want to write about me.

lots of not so nice things have happened to me in melbourne, far too many to list, i simply can't be bothered.

today, no exception, BUT, i'm still freakin happy.

lets take a look.

insanely far classes to walk to.
insanely hot dry weather.
insanely boring classes.
cooked rice and pak choy for dinner, and intended to make spare ribs, since i swam so hard today. well, got the rice, got the pak choy, but i burnt the ribs. BURNT. to the point where it screamed "I AM CANCER PERSONIFIED!" so i had to bin it.
i started opening a can of luncheon meat, but the pin was rusty and i cut myself. so much blood. and eventually, using my mad engineering skillz, i managed to salvage the pin, rework the tin a bit, and finish opening the damn thing. then i had to cook it. when i finally sat down to have my humble meal, the rice was cold and hard, and my veges cold and soggy.
i had enough sense to make soup as well, boiling some ribs to use as stock. so i figured, well, i'll still have some ribs at least. not nicely marinaded but good enough.. where's the soya sauce, mm ok.
but the ribs weren't cooked. wtf? i've been boiling the soup with onions and tomatoes for 3 hours and its not cooked?
and you know you can't eat uncooked pork.
i just patched up my thumb cause all that itching and throbbing finally got my attention again.

But you know what?

I just couldn't help but feel happy today.

because I'm God's beloved. He loves me as I am, whether I reciprocate His love or not. He's not out to make my life difficult like i used to believe (whether i realized or not), and somehow my whole attitude towards life just changed overnight.

and yes Gabriel, if you're reading this, it's largely because i was listening to the Grace and Favour sermons by Joseph Prince. but yeh, today, it felt like God was constantly prodding my back and going "Take it easy son. No big deal."

"pfft. yeh. you're right. HAHA."

don't think about how much you love God. think about how much He loves you.

so i kinda lied about no more food blogging... so i might as well tell you bout my awesome STEAK AND FRIES. yep, simple gravy this time, just a reduced red shiraz sauce, much nicer, and of course fries. i have a huge patch of deep fried skin on my middle finger now. stupid fries. ahah. oh and yesterday i had fish. bought a fillet of basa fish from the market. i have no idea what basa fish is but its consistency is that of dory fish. so i marinaded it yesterday afternoon with some of chris' magically awesome pesto sauce, and then lightly pan fried it last night.

in the wise words of Mr. Silver:

"You can't cook, until you can cook fish."

Oh yes. I can cook.

wait. i epic failed at ribs.

mmmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmm...

so. bye.

Another one about food

2008-03-06T18:13:00.000+11:00

I just cook an amazing breakfast. It was so amazing I had to tell you about it.

breakfast chris? at 4 in the afternoon?

yeh... i woke up when my alarm rang and jumped out of the shower.

and had coffee. so no time for breakfast. after the calculus tutorial (which i enjoyed actually. great revision. lol) i came home again, and instead of cooking, i just ate up some tasty riffs so righteous, my guitar got over her anguished self. oh yeh. i was really really upset a few days ago cause of some stuff ANDMYGUITARFELLANDGOTDINGED:(:(:(:(:(:(:( and there was that shitty first day. and the fuckton of work.

BUT I'm fine now. yep. got to know my neighbours and stuff, cool bunch.

now then. where was i?

right, i played guitar, and then it was time for japanese. so i went for my jap class, then went home. ok, why didn't you cook then chris?

well. i started crying.

why?

onions.

terrible stuff. and then i diced some tomatoes, and cut the other half of said onion into rings. and before proceeding, i decided i wanted to go for a swim.

how was the swim chris? never happened. i arrived at the gym after a long 15 walk. only to find out i left my trunks at home. GREAT. another 15 minutes and i get back home, half an hour wasted in stupid swanston street. i oughta start taking the trams. so, at this point, i'm like ok, i'll have some dunch (that's linner for you antarcticans). so i get out some potatoes and start slicing them finely after peeling them, and soak them in a cup of red shiraz. shitty stuff honestly. 6 dollars. but its great to cook with.

and i heated up the oil, threw in the onion rings that i stored in the fridge from just now. then drained the wine into the bowl of chopped and threw the potatoes in the pan and stir-fried with salt and pepper, and then on to the plate.

yep, that's right. Lyonnesse potatoes. good stuff. so the onions, drained, thrown into the pan. nicely caramelized thanks to the shitty shiraz, and i throw in 2 eggs beaten with soya sauce and pepper. and then in goes the diced tomatoes. then cheese (just those square singles from kraft). fold flip flip and on to the plate beside the potatoes.

while the pan was still hot, threw in a couple of slices of bread cause i didn't have a toaster. so the bread was nicely toasted with a really awesome aroma.

then the wine from before, instead of being thrown, i reduced it on the pan (that's when you evaporate it, gives you like a dark red syrupy sauce.) and then drizzled it over the potatoes.

to sum it up. most delicious breakfast i had in melbourne. breakfast. because they're all breakfast dishes.

SO. anyway. i chopped up another onion, and diced another tomato, plucked some leaves from my pot of basil, chopped up some garlic and threw it into my food processor, and then added some tomato based sauce from the supermarket, and poured in olive oil, a bit of salt. and PROCESSED it. HEHEHE so much fun. and hey presto, you have chris' magical AWESOME PESTO SAUCE. 1% stuff and 99% awesome. wanna know what it tastes like?

awesomesauce.

ok. well, i promise not to blog about food too often. its just, there's not alot else to do here. i mean everything closes at like 6. wtf? anyway. whatever.

bye guys. i'm off to study.

you never thought you'd hear that, did you?

i'm nissin my noodles

2008-03-02T20:53:00.000+11:00

i made myself a steak today, oh so proud of myself i am. the steak itself was nice. the gravy... a little unusual. i'll give you the recipe.

1 cup Mirin Sake
(dunno how big a cup is i just poured from the bottle)

6... blobs of HP sauce
(that's basically your Lea and Perrins or Worceister)

1 handful of fresh basil
(I'm growing a pot of basil on my balcony)

1 tablespoon of honey

2... shakes(?) of black pepper

1/4 cup of soya sauce

and.. get this...

2 cups of green tea.

yeh? yeh? you're itching to try my steak now aren't you? ADMIT IT.

anyway, i got this new program for free cause my old one wasn't compatible, so now on top of garageband i have another effects processor to add to my arsenal of brutal ear-flaying recording tools. its got WAH. i love WAH. i'm addicted to WAH. i'll show you soons mkay? soons...

bye

Oh well.

2008-03-01T02:09:00.000+11:00

i really didn't feel like blogging. first it was cause i felt like i needed to get into the swing of things, to acclimatize and stuff. when i settled in, i was just too busy. now, its 2AM, i'm jobless, bored shitless, but really lazy.

but because i'm such a hardworking person i will write something for people to read. because i know, despite the lack of solid evidence on my cbox, many of you still check my blog hoping for an update. and i do apologize for not updating, and disappointing you with every time you click my link.

hah. my arrogance is immense, just like the gaping void in my stomach that i attribute to the lack of MAGGI.

once i get a picture editing tool, i will change my layout, and probably the name of the blog too. it will be known henceforth as where'smymaggi.

anyway, bullshit aside, i'm in melbourne having a not so awesome time. not so awesome because i somehow imagined melbourne to be an awesome city with awesome people and awesomeness everywhere. all i see is people who can't drive and people who look good. and when i say look good, i mean better than myself, so perhaps not that good relative to the hot blonde surfer guy that just passed through your mind.

summer?

psh. at least i never really sweat. i mean. when its hot, its dry. when its cold, its dry. when its really cold, its wet. un-awesome weather.

other than that, i'm enjoying cooking. made really good fettucine today. without sauce reliance. and lamb rack. hehe. i swear! invited teo over for dinner. hope he's still breathing. oh well, its a good thing overseas health coverage was compulsory. wonder if it covers cancer...

uhm, i impaled my thumb with a steak knife while washing it. was really cool, i was wiping it really fast back and forth and then *splurt*, the sink and the wall tiles are dotted with crimson. or scarlet.

by the way. i need an opinion.

this is the vox pathfinder. 10W.

Orange Crush. Also 10W. about the same price.

they both have that classic look and tone. orange will give me nicer distortions (in fact, orange only gives me distortion) and looks badass. its orange! vox on the other hand just oozes vintageness. and vintageness is awesomeness.

which one? sigh. but they're both still expensive. just cheaper than everything else. except the micro-amps. you know those cute ones that fit in your pocket? yeh. that's gay. well, no, but just, not very proper. as in its not loud enough for my neighbours to hear.

this i would get in a heartbeat. if it weren't so damn expensive. of course, if you send me about 1500RM i would greatly benefit and probably be able to afford it. you will have my long term gratitude and i would repay you by playing you a nice tune on my guitar, most probably the theme song to space ghost.

i'm still looking forward to meeting up with people who are in melbourne. *hint*. if any of them read my blog. otherwise my blatant hinting will get me neverwhere.

OKAY. i'm gonna go sleep. have a great day/night (pick one corresponding to your time zone or the time you read this).

CNY 08

2008-02-14T21:02:00.000+11:00

was fuhriiking awesome!

i've got a house in perak. its real sweet. pics of my crib some other day. i hate posting photos on blogspot. it bitches out on me. so i'll post the really really important pics first. there aren't many.

i'd always thought my family was huge, i mean my dad has 4 siblings, and then there's his cousins and everything, like holy shit man, the ang pao money i get from perak each year. well guess what? it got bigger! so many more little ones! my little cousin has a little baby brother now! aww. they're both so adorable.

and in my perak crib is my kick ass ride: a Polaris Predator 90cc atv.

heh... so much fun riding the damn thing. so fun i nearly got myself killed.

yeh... that thing fell on top of me. haha.

anyway i bought ANOTHER guitar. from a supermarket. ahahahhaa. RM69.00, i couldn't resist! it's purple!

a lot more stuff happened, but i can't remember much... must've knocked my head pretty hard when the atv overturned. =/

but yeh, basically that's where i disappeared to those 13 days. =)

A Brief History of my Hair.

2008-01-30T04:31:00.000+11:00

In the beginning (of Chris' lief. yes, lief.), he had no hair. then he had a bit of hair. then he had no hair again. then he had hair. and then he had no hair again. if you can imagine this going on for about the first 12 years of his lief, then you probably know about his swimmerness. at 12, he did a german shepherd. but it just looked like someone pissed on his head, and thus he was granted the title of "Pisshead". title, bitch. title.

after some time, he gained paowurz lawl. ahem. like so:

but eventually he got bored of it and went back to having no hair. then he had a bit of hair. and it went all pink in front like a heliconia/exotic bird hybrid. and then... he had no hair again.

then he forgot to cut his hair (intentionally) for 23 years and 7 months, and it gave him wicked lulz.

of course, this lulz only lasted for so long. then he did the unthinkable. he halfed his lulz and added a quarter of Iran. but he was not complete. when his n00klier reached critical, the last quarter was filled with lame, and the end result was:

chris: actually, after i cut my hair, the guy went ahead and dyed it. and today i put on fake extensions so my mom wouldn't feel awkward doing it alone. now my mom looks great and i look like an emo mcr wannabe loser. /wrists. i used dragonball to make it seem a lot more epic. it worked didn't it?

Facebook? What Facebook?

2008-01-29T01:36:00.000+11:00

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

i love cyanide and happiness.

edit: just a few more that i really like. and i noticed the picture doesn't fully show... just click on them if you're dying to find out why its so funny.

this one i can relate to.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

and this, this is my personal favourite:

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

i wonder why.

Weekend

2008-01-27T23:47:00.000+11:00

well. i got a visit from Sean. yep. he came and visited me from Brunei over the weekend. so nice of him, yeh? he arrived on Friday and we went and watched Rambo. it was so retarded, it was funny. rambo can kill 15 men with a bow and 14 arrows! rambo can stab homosexual tyrants with his not so pointy machete! rambo can rip out people's throats with his hands!

anyway. while i complained to sean about my many many many complicated problems, he told me something that just made so much sense.

"God was kind enough to give men a brain and a penis. but not enough blood to use both."

women oughta be more patient with us.

Hong Kong: The Odessy [Part 4 of a trilogy]

2008-01-22T20:54:00.001+11:00

where do i begin? firstly, congrats to my homeboy douglas. don't let that rockstar status get to your head now.

secondly, apologies to everyone i forgot to inform about me going to hong kong. was ridiculously badly planned on my part and i basically left almost everything to will.

ok, here goes.

Hong Kong: a trilogy of 8 parts

2008-01-20T17:24:00.000+11:00

Part five

12th Jan.

KK Airport ----> HK Airport. Flight: Dragonair.

was so-so... 3 hours, good in-flight radio. average looking stewardesses save for one ultra-hot one. she asked me if needed an immigration card. and i said yes. whoo chemistry. ok, so, i'm not really that pathetic... its just, probably the most eventful thing that happened on the flight, other than queueing up to go to the bathroom. and eating the salad of my in-flight meal.

anyway, upon arrival, i bought a really crappy and expensive hong kong sim card. wait. i bought 2. one for will. so, will buys a train ticket to Central. wait. Kowloon. wrong destination, so we get off and get on the MTR to Central via the Tung Chung line, and then switch to the Island line at Central to get to Wan Chai. at the Wan Chai station, we look for a map. didn't help much because although the Renaissance hotel is supposed to be real close to the station, we just couldn't find it. so will goes "fuck it we'll take a cab."

"to the marriott hotel, harbour view." he says to the cab driver. and the cabbie takes us to J.W. Marriott. very very impressive place. will goes up to the check-in counter and tries to check in... and apparently the J.W. Marriott is NOT the Renaissance hotel. go figure. so we take another cab down to the Renaissance. check in, dump bags, and we're on the streets again. supper time: 2AM. we walk down the streets of Wan Chai and practically everywhere we turn there's neon lights. closer inspection reveals that the signs actually say things like "Cinta-J" and "Dragon Club". walk past, and you'll see pictures of girls in skimpy clothes. walk further down the streets and you'll see more "clubs" with indonesian, malaysian, philippino girls sitting outside trying pull tourists in. hence i arrived at the conclusion that the place of our temporary residence is in fact a red light district.

well, it's supper time, and will seemed to be craving some porridge. congee. whatever. porridge was great, but what made it even better was the yeo cha kuay. you know that deep fried stick of bread? yeh. its nice. its so good. i swear, its like HEWJ. one over there is the size of four of ours, and its crispy! at 2AM! crispy at 2AM!!! well after our little escapade, we return to our hotel and retire.

oh yeh, its winter in hong kong, but not unbearably cold. about 15 degrees. its like an outdoor air-con. i got by fine with t-shirt and shorts.

the view from the room during the day.

this is what the room looks like.

PART TRES

13th Jan

ok, we wake up and shower blah blah and set off looking for shoes in Mong Kok. fairly easy to get there, we took the MTR (we realised it actually was close to our hotel. just a bit hard to look around with our baggage the night before) down to Central on the Island line and switched lines to the Tsuen Wan line to get to Mong Kok. oh man, at this point i tell you, there is this thing called the octopus card, and it is the best thing they've done in hong kong imho. all you do, is plop your wallet with the card inside on to this sensor thing and walk through. its like a prepaid credit card. you can use it at MTR stations, 7 eleven, and supermarkets. so cool. anyway we get to Mong Kok and look for the street with shoes. cause every street sells different things, but every shop in the same street will sell the same thing. like there was the pet shop street, which was probably the longest street that sold the same thing, there was a floral street, oh man, we just couldn't find the shoes street. eventually we did and we got some really cool shoes. i got a plain pair of converse sneakers and a really cool pair of reeboks.

its the pair with red laces. there's 2 pairs missing from the photo: beige converse low-tops and green adidas stan smiths (will's). but yeh, basically that's 7 pairs of shoes... in a room with 2 people. 5 of which we bought. haha. haha. by the by, i forgot to mention that we are staying in this hotel for free, courtesy of will's uncle. very very kind of him. and because we were staying for free, we got more money to spend! anyway, after dumping all our stuff in the hotel, we went to Lan Kwai Fong via the Tsuen Wan line to meet up with will's friend from singapore, Tim. so we met up with Tim and his friends and walked around a bit looking for a place to relax and have a drink. and you know what?we stumble into this alley with indian guys trying to hustle us into a malaysian restaurant. why the HELL would i want to eat in a malaysian restaurant, when i'm from MALAYSIA. but then, they don't know that do they? heh. the indian guy had huge sideburns and a fro. was funny. so we finally settle with this place whose name escapes my memory. but the floor was covered in peanut shells. yeh, we had like 4 baskets of peanuts between us that night. got back to Wan Chai fairly early cause the MTR closes around 12+

Part DEUX

14th Jan

so. we're basically rather free, shoes done, so we crossed that off the shopping list. the tailor was our next destination. apparently, the best place to find a tailor is in Tsim Sha Tsui. you know what, i'll just post a picture of the MTR lines and you can figure out how we get around.

as you can see, we didn't need to go to Central every time we wanted to switch to the Tsuen Wan line, so today we got off the Island line at Admiralty and walked right across the platform and boarded the Tsuen Wan line to get to Tsim Sha Tsui. got there, found a shop, and did business with a couple of indian guys who outsource everything to a local guy. will needed to get a suit made and some shirts, and i got some shirts made too. they boasted that hong kong tailors were the fastest in the world, and that they could make 50 suits in 7 days. nice. so we have to come back tomorrow to get our first fitting.

being done with the day's task, we looked around the area. it was full of dodgy hustlers and dodgy back alleys and dodgy shopping... locations. cheap jewellery, not so cheap weapons, like swords, scimitars, katanas, fishing poles... etc.

alright. so we met with will's friend Sunny for dinner, he takes us to this place called Red Ant for baked rice. its pretty good. crowded but good.

Part ichi

15th Jan

so we woke up and went to Causeway Bay. Took MTR via Island line. went shopping in Times Square, bought myself a nice shirt and a hoodie. just a plain black one. oh i also bought a nifty little camera here. so pictures actually only start from the next day.

met up with some of will's friends, Edmund and Jason for lunch. they were working and on their lunch break so we had a quick one. was really really nice. the lunch i mean. and almond milk tea.

went back to TST for fitting later, apparently they lost our measurements so we had to get that done again. and the tailor doing will's suit came in with a half made suit for the final measurements. so after that was done, we didn't have much else to do. so you know what i did? i went into one of those dodgy back alleys and bought myself a silk bath robe. with like chinese words one it. how awesome is that? apparently it says happiness and longevity.

ok... so we met up with Sunny again somewhere else for dinner. i forgot where, but we took a bus down to the place Sunny grew up in and went to an "Islam Restaurant". now i know what you're thinking: "but chris, you live in malaysia! what the hell are you doing eating curry in hong kong?! its not going to be any better than kk anyway you stupid idiot."

well guess what? it is! bloody hell, look at how packed it is!

yeh i had chicken curry there and it was so good! better then bloody salim's. or maybe i'm just sick of salim. either way. and they have these... beef cake things. its like a xiao long bau with beef instead of pork, and wrapped in a murthabak skin instead of the usual xiao long bau type. oh man, it was so good. i crave it just thinking of it. anyway, we take a bus to star pier and take a ferry back to Wan Chai.

pre-roast duck chinese tea session.

PaRT SeVeN

16th Jan

i'm going really spastic with the titles cause i'm not sure what to do... anyway back on topic. so today we decide to walk down to causeway bay to take a ferry to TST, cause its alot cheaper. anyway we sort of... mmfff... got lost in Causeway Bay. well no, we didn't, we figured while we were there, we'd have lunch and shop around a bit. had lunch at yoshinoya, that japanese fast food chain.

i had a chicken teriyaki meal. will had beef something i think. worst meal we had in hong kong and even then, it was delicious. so yeh, eating in hong kong was excellent.

so we looked around some more and came upon this tunnel.

hmmmmmmm. pipes? leading to the harbour? its a conspiracy of shitty proportions.

so anyway, we get to TST eventually via the ferry. this time we took a taxi up to the Peak. will pointed out it didn't make sense to walk up to the Peak. so we took a taxi up. heh. last taxi ride in hong kong. but yeh, we get to the top and it's like 5 degrees. great. so i took a few photos...

didn't expect to see jungle did you?

will found this spot, great view.

so we followed this path down. and down. and down.

saw some interesting things along the way...

a lamp post for instance.

alright i'm sick of waiting for the pictures to load, its take over an hour, i've spent almost 3 days trying to post this damn post.

no pictures for you!

you wait til next time. til blogspot stops glitching over.

ok, so we walk down the steep path and realise oh shit, we're not coming up this way, that's crazy! so will decides we go all the way down and take a bus up. cause taxis are rip-offs. guess what? at the bottom, no bus waiting for us. hmm. after walking around the town below the peak we eventually spot the tramline. so walk around and find the tram stop and press the button. lots of pictures to show at this point but TOO BAD. stupid blogspot. anyway. then we get on the tram and go up. by this time its rather late. so... that was rather pointless. also, i'd like to point out that the walk down was rather... well it kept me warm so i took off my jacket and stowed it in my bag. so here you have a dumbass 17 year old hero in a very thin lightweight shirt and boardshorts in winter. oh sure, it wasn't freezing at that level. and the tram stops inside the mall so it wasn't too bad. we head upstairs and take a look and lo and behold, its the EA Games Expo! so we spent 2 hours playing games, burnout, need for speed, etc. eventually we get hungry and look for a place to eat. the mall we were in was rather boring in terms of culinary delights. so we head across to the other mall. stepped outside and HO SHITWHOOOSH i'mfrozensolid.

idiot. a thin t-shirt and boardshorts? what was i thinking? in 4 degree weather! so we quickly make our way to the mall opposite. and then we decide on mackers. mmm... had my first big mac in ages. again, there's a funny pic i wanted to show you but blogspot is being a PMSy PSYCHOBITCH.

anyway, after our nice meal, we head back to the tram, and stop at the tram stop. from there we found a bus that goes to Central. so we boarded it and took the open air top deck. just so i could freeze and take trippy pictures. that i would like to SHOW YOU BUT BLOGSPOT IS *censored*.

anyway the bus stopped at the Central pier. couldn't take a ferry from Central to Wan Chai cause that's just stupid, its on the same island. so we wait at the bus stop for the next bus that goes to Wan Chai. get off at Wan Chai and head back to the hotel, shower, change and its out on the streets again! this time i wanted pork. so we went back to the same restaurant we had the duck, and OMG it was f***ing delicious! the charsiew there... they give you the whole strip, chopped in fairly thick slices and its so tender, the crust is perfect, it was, how should i say... good. better than good, but i can't think of a gooder word cause i'm tired.

P.a.r.t.8

So its the 17th, our last day here. things to to do, have lunch, pick up clothes from tailor, and... yeh, that's it.

lunch, we walked over to Causeway Bay, met up with Sunny, Edmund and Jason. five of us had lunch at this jap restaurant. it was so good. so Edmund and Jason rush off back to work, and Sunny needs to get to TST to get a card for his quiz and i'm not sure what that was about but we wound up in TST via ferry anyway. so we walk down the movie star avenue thingy, like the stars in hollywood thing, only this is with chinese/taiwanese/hongkongese actors. yes yes bruce lee was there, no i did not take a picture with him, and even if i did, it would be of little use because BLOGSPOT IS A BITCH.

anyway. eventually its time for Sunny to go, and me and Will just head into town to look around. i got magically drawn into Tom Lee music centre. and i bought a guitar. HAH. i wish it were so simple. we walked in looked around, i found a guitar that i've wanted for a long time, and i asked to try it out. at this point i'd phoned my mom to ask if it was ok if i bought a guitar, the verdict of course was, "sure, it's coming from YOUR savings." and my savings account is really a "chris' guitar fund" account anyway. so finally i try to pay for it mostly by my ATM card and a bit by cash.

didn't get through. so they suggest paying a smaller amount by card and more cash. didn't get through either. more time wasted and eventually Will realises he's running out of time because he wants to buy his nintendo ds in Mong Kok. so i told him to go first, and meet up at the tailor's. more time wasted, i go to Standard Charted bank to check my balance. what i found was shocking. i'd been robbed, swindled, my cash is GONE! i only had a meagre amount of HK dollars left in my account! more panic ensued, i called mom, she checked with bank, and apparently, my concern was unnecessary. the amount in my account was in fact correct, but in ringgit. so the ATM machine there was just being stupid. so i go back to the store, but the payment still wont go through! by this point i'm really impatient, Will has called and confirmed that he has his ds, and i have no guitar slung across my back. grr. so i head back to the atm and draw out cash. cold hard cash. and i use it to buy my guitar. in CASH. can you imagine walking around with more than 4000 HKD in cash? that's about 1800RM, about 800 Brunei Dollars.

this is the baby i bought. i'd show you pictures but BLOGSP- uh... i'm sure you've heard enough...

so yeh... isn't she pretty?

so i go in, get my guitar, walk out with my precious on my back and make my way to the tailors. Will was already inside. i try on my shirt, its nice blah blah blah, part with more cash, and we head to the MTR. get back to the hotel, and we go out again for the last time. walk around, find nothing interesting to do, and head back to the hotel. ok.

||P|A|R|T||s|i|x||

wake up at 4.30. shower. shave. brush teeth. board shuttle at 5.20. sleep. arrive at airport at 6.10. check in. THEY MADE ME CHECK IN MY GUITAR! i was horrified. reluctantly i checked her in at the oversized baggage place. had breakfast at popeye's fried chicken. its nice. really really good... for friend chicken. and the cajun fries. that was nice. and the gave a scone. scone + coke = awesome.

ok, so we get on board, flight was ok, i sat next to a total dick, who was too lazy to find out which channel the in-flight movie audio was on, so he had to ask a stewardess, who explained to him that it was all listed in the back of the in-flight magazine, but mr "...i can't even think of a name to call him" is not satisfied and calls another stewardess, who was not allowed to leave until she gave him the exact channel. other than that, touchdown, kk, yay, whatever. sigh. i miss hong kong.

so. there you have it.

did you all miss me?

Novus

2008-01-07T03:21:00.000+11:00

is that k- at waterfront, pretty new, like only came this year. sick though, cause the room we got, no doorknob. anyway, this was what? thursday night? i think. met up with kim and didi and krystal for dinner at kfc. then i picked up will and co. for karaoke. wilson can sing. like, holy shit, he can really sing. wanted to practice some jay chou songs for hong kong... but no pin yin =( i can't read chinese. sad. haha good time that night. take care kim! i'll see you again maybe around chinese new year? i'll be in semenanjung for a couple of weeks. riding my atv. smack in the middle of perak, where there's nothing to do. but ride my new atv. at least i think i have an atv.

went for a swim at sutera today with william. wilson and patrick just went off to sandakan and the rest of sabah. crazy... swam a few laps and then just talked til like sunset, then went gyming. managed to last an hour doing leg workouts. hah! as if i know what i'm talking about. all i did was random shit and random machines that i didn't know how to use... apart from the stationary bike. that shit was messed up. not as messed up as the jacuzzi.

man, just as i settle into the jacuzzi, this naked guy walks out of the sauna and i do my best to avoid eye contact. he exits the room... and i exhale... and then he pops back in... with no towel in hand. what the hell?! and then starts clambering into the jacuzzi next to me all slow and stuff. and he notices my uncomfortable-ness emmanating like some fearful aura... and says "no woman here?"

and i nod... not too sure if he's implying that i'm a woman or something.

he repeats his question(?) and i kinda just gaze over at his face. european man, maybe in his 50s.

"woman no come here, to this room? only man?" he asks this time.

finally catching on, i say "yes, this room is for men only"

"oh,good! cause i take off everything! ha ha ha!"

*nervous fake laugh* (at this point i'm thinking "O fucking RLY")

and he carries on, says "From you?"

"hmm?"

"From you?"

"uhm... i'm local, from here."

"oh! oh! local yah?"

"yah. you? where from you be?"

"i from russia! moscow!"

by this time his attention was grabbed by the newspaper being held by another nervous chinese man who just walked in.

"oh! that tennis yah? that woman from russia!" he exclaims, eagerly pointing at the sports page. around this time, will has walked in and got into the jacuzzi... between me and russia-man. relief.

oh well, paintball in the afternoon. gotta sleep now. so i bid you all... do svidaniya! that's til we next meet in russian.

New Year, New Stuff

2008-01-01T13:16:00.000+11:00

new layout, new song blah blah... i feel really sick so i'll just kinda blaze through what i kinda wanted to say, or what i remember of it anyway.

uhm. last night was good... had a... great... time. okay so it wasn't "sabah's most wanted rave party" but good company makes up for almost anything. and great company was what i had. then will, his bro and cousin arrived just before the countdown. usher them in, countdown, and head off in search of something better to do. at this point, i had already somehow managed to get a teh c ping into my system.

drive to shen's and couldn't get in. our good looking white friend, as touristy as he looked, was still denied entry for wearing flip-flops. after wandering pointlessly all over kk, we wind up in the blues in damai, chilled for a bit. 2nd teh c ping. hewj one too. it was HEWJ. i swear i overdosed on teh c ping. got home at 3... tried to sleep, i swear i was exhausted, but i just couldn't fall asleep. by 6.30 its bright as... well, morning. so i accepted the fact that i wasn't gonna fall asleep. so i just went down for a swim. 28 laps. you know. cause its like 2008. just chuck in a couple of o's in between. uhm. new year's resolution. not be fat anymore. so i can like wear speedos and not cringe. i'm getting very personal here. also i think there's a "you must be this hairless" rule for speedos. i = epic fail. hmm... very personal. anyway, i figured i can get somewhere with this resolution if i woke up at 6.30 and swam every morning. hah. hah. we'll see how long i keep this up. (probably only today.)

so anyway, after my swim, i took a cold shower. resolution no. 2. take cold showers from now on. its refreshing and i won't fall asleep and waste water. and then i laid out this new layout and posted this post. you like?

so. it's 2oo8. i do wish everyone an awesome year. i'm looking forward to one. of course, we're all gonna be heading separate ways soon. at least i am. i feel sad. i will miss everyone sorely.

This post is for chancey

2007-12-19T15:14:00.000+11:00

coz it her birthday! happy 18th chancey. you've already heard it by now, but that button up there takes you to my purevolume page. check it out. i promised that new layout, was supposed to be today, but been really busy fragging bots lately. i'm off to airport now too, pick up doug first.

anyway, all the best with your ib chancey! *keep shining brighter* miss you terribly <3

my head gonna asplode!

2007-12-18T01:12:00.000+11:00

FIRE IN THE HOLE the whole weekend. and today was the worst. best. same thing... at this point. k, so i finally seen Moe's recording studio. not too shabby. we each get an ultra metal pedal to play with. its pretty much the only place left to jam, maybe other than the rock school.

i'm really dizzy... i'm gonna go sleep now and hope for more trigger happy action tomorrow. bye!

O RLY?

2007-12-11T00:26:00.000+11:00

new layout coming soon.

today was a good day

2007-12-05T21:57:00.000+11:00

except when i got into a car accident and cut my forehead, had to receive 8 stitches, had my right arm and leg crushed and sliced open by twisted metal and glass shards.

relax i'm just exaggerating. i backed into a stationary car. the corner of my dad's car nicked the hilux's taillight. so i had to pay the fellow. thank God he was a nice guy. when i heard the sound i thought "hmm, i heard a sound..." and then there's this guy giving me the somebody-gonna-getta-hurt look. and then i turn again and there's this other guy going omgwtfnoobface.

i give everyone the "oh" look.

today was a good day nevertheless. met up with jill and ailyn after 23 years or so of not speaking. eh jill? *winkwink* got to catch up at city mall and stuff. and then when we're about to leave, she says "drive safe."

indeed. heh. heh.