/karen/

Your love is the place where I belong

Wednesday, 23 April, 2008

Lately I've been thinking about belonging and our desire to belong. I know that it's because instinctively we want to be comfortable; if you feel like you belong, you feel at ease—at home—accepted—even loved. If you don't, you feel the opposite: uneasy, alienated, ostracised, ignored. Michelle U was talking about this yesterday in the session she led: she shared with us her experiences of finishing college and going with her husband to their first parish where he serves as the assistant minister. She talked about how, for her, it was a huge shock: all her life, she felt like she belonged because she grew up in a Christian household, attended a Christian school, went to a close-knit church, engaged in ministry like leading camps, then went to college where she studied with like-minded people who were as keen about doing ministry as she was. All of a sudden, in this new parish, she found herself somewhere where she did not belong. She was not like these people in any way, and really struggled to relate to them. For example, she didn't know what to talk about with the women. Her natural inclination was to talk about the bargain purchase she made the other day while shopping, whereas these women were so rich, they didn't need to go bargain shopping. She wanted to talk about the new recipe she tried the other day, but these women all had cooks. She wanted to talk about the dramas of child-rearing, but these women all had nannies. Discovering all this was quite a culture shock for her because, for the first time, she was in the minority.

In contrast to Michelle, I'm used to not belonging. I've not belonged for most of my life. In Canada, I was probably too young to notice difference and being a western Asian there seems to be less of a big deal (or so it appears to me; Jose can correct me if she wants!) However, the sense of alienation I felt when I came to this country has stayed with me throughout my entire life. I was from an Asian background living in a predominantly Anglo Saxon society (this was in the mid-80s when there weren't a lot of Asians around). I still remember crossing the street one day when this boy came rolling along on his skateboard; he saw me and immediately he began to kowtow in a parody of a chinaman. Most people would ask me whether or not I spoke English when English was the only language I knew how to speak. And this meant that I didn't fit into Chinese culture either. I had the trappings of Asian-ness but not the upbringing. My father would take us back to Hong Kong and the natives would laugh at me pathetic attempts at Cantonese. I not only had to adjust to the Australian cultural norms (e.g. cutting down the tall poppies, people teasing you because they like you), I also had to be mindful of the Chinese cultural norms (e.g. greeting your elders whenever you entered a room; calling people who are not your relatives “uncle” and “aunty”). Oh, and deal with the differences in food and traditions. And to make matters worse, my Canadian-ness (or what I like to think is my Canadian-ness) marked me as different again.

I never fitted in in primary school. I had one or two friends but I felt the difference between myself and my other classmates and that wasn't only the Chinese thing (there was only one other Chinese kid in the school for quite a number of years). It was also because I was smart and got good grades, and the rest of my year group ostracised me for it.

In high school, I did feel like I belonged a bit more because I went to school with girls who were a lot like me: highly intelligent, often bookish, usually socially inept in their nerdishness. (All right, I hope the other STGGHS alumni who are reading this aren't offended by that!) It also helped that my high school had a significant Asian population and strong ethnic mix. I stood out a little for getting good grades but I wasn't ostracised or alienated for it because academic achievement went with the culture of the school. It was an interesting environment as well because the “popular” group didn't hold quite the social sway that they would have in other schools. I was only vaguely aware of who they were and I certainly had no desire to be part of their clique.

That said, I did feel a bit different in high school because of my family background. I did have an inkling that it wasn't normal for most of my friends didn't have parents who were divorced. I don't think I realised the full extent of the difference between my friends' home life and mine back then, and it certainly didn't matter to them (I don't think they really knew what was going on in my home life back then; certainly the mother of one of my closest friends in primary school and high school was flabbergasted when she found out years later because she had no idea that was going on), but I think I still felt there was a difference there. For example, my parents didn't drive me around as much as their parents did (because they often weren't around), and my parents seemed to be more permissive than their parents were (because I don't think they really understood the nature of some of the things I got up to and they raised me to be independent. For example, when I was 16, I caught the train to Wollongong by myself and stayed overnight down there because this ex-STGGHS student invited me: she was doing the degree that I wanted to do, and she invited me to the Big Read so I could see what it was like).

The feelings of alienation increased when I went to Uni and discovered just how sheltered my life at high school had been. I moved into residential college which was a huge shock to the system because it was so much like an American high school: there were cliques, there were popular people and unpopular people, there were jocks and nerds, and the dominant culture was about getting drunk and having sex (and I wasn't interested in any of it). There was a diverse group of people because of the international students who lived there, but they were natives of their home country, not Australian-raised like me. I hung out with them (I would hang out with all sorts of people) but not feel like I belonged.

It was around this time that I started taking Christianity more seriously. And I did feel like I belonged among Christians for, after all, Christians form a spiritual family with God as our Father. But there was still difference: I could feel it around the edges. Many of the Christians I associated with had Christian parents and had been raised as Christians—had been brought up in a culture of Sunday school attendance, church-going, beach missioning, house parties, conferences, Christian in-jokes, and so on. I felt the difference most acutely when I did something which was a little abnormal in their worlds—odd, perhaps erratic behaviour which they then politely ignored—and when I tripped on something I didn't understand but which everyone else all seemed to understand. I belonged and yet I never felt at home.

In the workforce, I've often stood out as well—either for being fast and efficient, for being young (for some reason, most of my jobs have been among people who are older than me), for being knowledgeable (e.g. in website stuff), etc. And at college we were different because we weren't on the same ministry path as the rest of the people in our year and we didn't fit the primary demographic (i.e. married with children).

I'm used to not belonging. And it's interesting that the people I feel the most comfortable with now are my school friends, and people like Elsie, George, Guan and Bec—people who are used to grappling with the Asian/Western divide as well as the divorce/dysfunctional family aspect.

Now, please don't get me wrong: I am not saying that there is something wrong with difference. Difference is great and should be celebrated. Nor am I advocating for homogeneous cultures and groups. The gospel is for all nations, and we need to learn to live with and recognise diversity. Nor am I saying that you need to change yourself to suit the dominant culture or dominant demographic (e.g. joining in with the Australian drinking culture by going down to the pub and getting smashed like the rest of the people in your office if that's what they normally do). I guess at times I just get sick of feeling different all the time—of continually working to have others understand me and my situation—of the constant negotiation and re-negotiation that I do every day as I move through life. Michelle found it tough when she experienced that feeling of difference—that culture shock (or culture stress, as Mike Raiter called it)—for the first time; imagine feeling that all the time.

But, as Michelle pointed out, Christians are always going to be aliens and strangers in this world. We don't belong because the only place where we do belong is in heaven—our true home, where the house of our heavenly Father lies. Peter wrote:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

(1 Peter 2:9-11; emphasis mine)

Similar language appears in Hebrews 11 (after the long list of heroes of the faith):

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. (Hebrews 11:13-16; emphasis mine)

It seems to me that the Bible seems to be saying is that difference and alienation is the normal state for the Christian. We do not belong to the world; we belong to Christ, and so of course we are going to stand out (salt, light, city on a hill—Matthew 5). Indeed, we should.

This doesn't make it easier, but in a sense it's comforting to recognise that home is not here—that belonging isn't something I should be striving for while on this earth. Sure, it's lovely when I can find it (and I am fortunate to have good friends with whom I feel “at home”). But I know I shouldn't get too comfortable; here is not where I'll be forever.

Knowing this helps me to grieve for the “loss” of belonging. It helps me to see the concept of belonging in a realistic light. It may not relieve the burden of difference that I carry, but at least I know, in part, why I feel it and why, in a sense, that's okay.

Blinks

Sunday, 20 April, 2008

Food (and food-related)

• I Love You, but You Love Meat: Interesting article about what you do when you and the one you love eat different things because a rejection of the food you serve feels so much like a rejection of yourself. I found it interesting that one woman said, “I need someone who is ethically on the same page” (i.e. vegan). Yet some couples learn to make compromises. Certain Ben and I have done that: he mostly went off wheat and dairy but we still keep milk in the house because I can't live without it.
• Of Valentine's jinxes and packaged gnocchi: I love this piece of writing—I love that it's about relationships and learning stuff as much as it is about cooking.
• Free Lunch Isn't Cool, So Some Students Go Hungry: This is article is so sad. It talks about how, even though there are programs set up to provide free food for poorer students at public schools, a lot of them forego it because it's not seen as being “cool”. They'd rather starve than let their social standing slide.
• Google's free beer and ‘big-ass’ barbies: An interesting (and slightly disturbing) approach to boosting work productivity: offer free, really good food: “They explained my job was to create this ambience, to build this captivated audience where people wanted to come in super-early and stay super-late.”
• Can Sips at Home Prevent Binges?: One journalist wonders whether teaching his sons the joy of fine wine at home will prevent them from wanting to binge-drink later. One man argues,

  “If you are taught to drink in a ceremonial way with food, then the purpose of alcohol is taste and celebration, not inebriation,” he added. “If you are forbidden to use it until college then you drink to get drunk.”

• How the fortune cookie crumbles: Is American Chinese food really Chinese? (Apparently not!)

Fashion and style

• The Sweet Smell of ... Nothing: Why sales of perfume are in decline. Why? Many don't want to wear perfume for the sake of other people who find it a bit too much (plus when many women are wearing perfume in the same room, it starts to smell like “a fruit salad gone wrong”!) In addition, “As people's lives have gotten busier, their relationships are less intimate, and you have to know someone pretty well to walk into a store and explain what kind of fragrance they might like or not like”
• Everyone's a Critic: Bloggers are increasingly becoming a voice which perfume-manufacturers can no longer afford to ignore.
• The Bride Wore Very Little: Women are starting to wear racier gowns at their wedding because “Women now are looking at their weddings more like a movie premiere”. It goes with the trend of fewer nuptials taking place in churches and hometowns, and more destination weddings. Isn't it interesting that people want to look more like celebrities do!
• French fashion industry signs anti-anorexia charter: And it's about time! Hopefully this will lead to sensible minimum body mass index. However,
• Wasn't Skinny Supposed to Be Out of Fashion?: Ali Michael, the toast of the Paris fashion shows last year, was sent home for gaining five pounds. So now “we have bodies being formed to fit clothes, rather than clothes designed to fit bodies.”
• Smoking doesn't make girls skinny: study: If more girls knew this, would they quit smoking?
• A Girl's Life, With Highlights: Girls are getting highlights in their hair from as young as 10. Where do you draw the line??? (Well, we are becoming more of a salon culture ...)

Exercise (and exercise-related)

• Finding May Solve Riddle of Fatigue in Muscles: Why muscles get tired (it's the body's way of protecting itself).
• Yes, Running Can Make You High: It's the endorphins (they think).
• Latest Reality TV: Dancing (Along) With the Stars of Nickelodeon: There's a new TV show aimed at children, encouraging them to dance and participate in dance. The moves aren't too racy either. In addition, the behind-the-scenes footage give kids a good incentive to practise if they want to be as good as those on the show.

Travel

• Overnight With Frank Lloyd Wright: Want to stay in a house designed by a world-famous architect? Now you can.
• Going Green in Australia's Blue Mountains: This journalist takes an eco-holiday in the Blue Mountains. It amused me she spent the first third of the article fretting about whether or not to travel because of the environmental impact that planes have (what clinches it for her is Qantas's carbon offset program and her desire to help the tourism industry), and that the state of our public transport system horrified her:

  Buoyed by our rugged hike, the next day we ventured into the town of Katoomba, a backpacker's paradise filled with cafes, restaurants and shops, to say nothing of the mountain scenery—though sorting out an eco-friendly way to get there, or anywhere for that matter, from our lodge proved impossible. While the train from Sydney had dropped us right in Blackheath, once there, we had to take a cab from the station to our lodge, and to reach Katoomba (a 10-minute ride away) we again had to call a taxi. It was obvious that public transport was not a priority here, as no one seemed to know when or where there were buses, and even the locals seemed to wait forever for a bus that might never come.

Music

• Shared Song, Communal Memory: Despite the rise of the iPod, community sing-a-longs are coming back into vogue, helping people to feel like they own the music.
• Rock vs. jazz: An interesting article about how to listen to and appreciate jazz with lots of gems in it, like:

Unlike rock, enjoying jazz didn't come naturally to me: I had to learn how to listen to it.

And I wasn't always sure I wanted to. Part of me secretly thought that jazz was a little, well, square. At its worst, it just seemed to be a bunch of technically proficient middle-aged men taking turns soloing on schmaltzy old tunes. Where was the drama, the storytelling, the creative compression, I was used to in rock? It could seem rambling, indulgent, a mere vehicle for an expertise whose sophistication had a faintly musty air. Compared to the supernova Rimbaud rush of Hendrix, the nasty sneering lust of the Stones or the miraculously protean Beatles, jazz felt like yesterday's drug, one that might be able to get me high if I knew the password, but whose shelf life might have permanently expired.

and

Still, I must confess to sometimes feeling a bit of non-purist guilt about my predilection for what I've clumsily called dramatic jazz. I sometimes wonder if rock, with its powerful simplicity and aura of authenticity and transcendence, was too powerful a drug, if it made it hard for me to appreciate the quieter virtues of less conceptually ambitious jazz. Besides, conceptual ambition can be seen as a limitation on the most essential thing about jazz: freedom, exploration, improvisation. If permanence is a virtue, so is the transience of improvisation.

and

Rock is all about drama. It's one climax after another. While jazz musicians' personalities disappear behind the music, rock puts those personalities front and center. It derives from the ancient tradition of the troubadour, while jazz draws both on that and on the classical tradition, with its emphasis on mastery and formal exploration.

This doesn't mean there's no mastery or formal exploration in rock—it's just usually in a different place. As great artists like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen demonstrate, the troubador's persona can be as complex as a Sonny Rollins solo. But only rarely is the complexity found in the music. Most rock eschews advanced musical knowledge or technique. It's both voice-centered and communal, which limits its range: Songs that can be easily memorized or sung are not usually musically complex. This gives it a greater immediacy and accessibility: Unlike jazz, most rock does not make you work to understand what's going on.

• Life Imitating Film: A Night Out With Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglov: (Glen Hansard is the lead singer of The Frames. He and Marketa starred in the movie Once together and are now a couple. And they performed “Falling Slowly” at this year's Academy Awards and won Best Song.)
• And the Band Played Badly: which asks “Why should real musicians—the ones who can actually play their instruments—have all the fun?”. So a bunch of amateurs got together and formed the Really Terrible Orchestra.
• Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing: In this age where buying a song is only a click away, independent record stores are struggling. Yet up-and-coming artists owe them so much, and their staff usually have such a wealth of knowledge, it would be a shame to see them disappear. Hence Record Store Day.
• “I quit being a musician because I couldn't play without drinking”: Cary Tennis responds by saying they're quite alike:

  I was drinking for two reasons. One, I had alcoholic tendencies. I responded to alcohol abnormally. But two, I had not developed the artistic skill required to contain my feelings and direct them into expressive form. My feelings frightened me. I had a narrow emotional range—I could do rage and I could do joy. That was it. I could not handle the middle feelings.

  And here are some clues about what it means to handle adulthood:

  And I had to find some love for myself, dude. So the bit about your relationship with your parents, I relate to that. Somehow you have to give yourself what they didn't give you. You step in as the adult and say, OK, man, I know you are suffering here, and I give you permission to be only yourself! You move that relationship out of the past, which you can't change, and into your present, your inner life, your symbolic life so you can change it.

  Try that. Just step in there as the adult figure and give yourself what you need. You are the only one who can provide that now. Your parents are not ever going to do it. You have to move that whole struggle into your own sphere of influence.

  For instance, in my own case, I now have to parent my dad—literally but also figuratively. I have to help the actual dad. But internally, I also have to create for myself the decisive, clearheaded man I once needed him to be. He is never going to give me that. I have to create a decisive, clearheaded persona to guide me in the present so that, in a sense, I become my own father.

  We have to become for ourselves the parents we need. In your case, you need to become for yourself a parent who says, “My son, even if you didn't have an ounce of talent or brilliance I'd still love you without reservation till the end of my days.”

Whistle while you work

Saturday, 19 April, 2008

People say I do a lot. I don't know what the rest of the world does with their time, but the number of comments I get on the topic seems to indicate some sort of disparity. In part, I suppose, it could be attributed to my structuredness. That's one of the things I like about myself: I'm organised (mostly), systematic and efficient, and I find it easy to sort and slot things into categories to help me deal with things. Combine that with lots of self-motivation and an ability to grasp new things fairly quickly and—well, you've seen the results.

I realise there are down sides to all of this. I'm not heaps relational (but can pass for being so), I'm not good at being spontaneous and sometimes I can be incredibly inflexible, and certainly these days I'm finding it harder. But nevertheless I thought perhaps it might be beneficial to share some of my working habits so that you out there in cyberspace can benefit from them. The pace of life is getting faster and the trickle of information that comes our way every day has turned into a torrent. Here are some of the things I do to stay on top of everything:

(Oh, and please note: I'm not saying that this is the only way or even the best way; it's just my way—what's worked for me so far. This might not be the case in 12 months ...)

Got time?

I'm not one of those people who can hold their diary in their head. Mine's too complicated. I used to keep a paper diary (external mnemonic) but then Ben complained he never knew what was going on. I think it would be just brilliant if someone invented a mobile phone application for couples and families whereby you could put your calendar on it and it would sync with the other person's calendar so you would always know if they had to get up early to go to a meeting or whether you're having dinner with the Joneses on Thursday. Until that day, however, we have Google Calendar.

I was quite reluctant about switching to an electronic calendar. You can't carry it around with you, and if anyone tells you important dates or asks you if you're free on Saturday 3rd May (which is, by the way, Free Comic Book Day), you can't tell them immediately. But there are lots of wonderful things about using Google Calendar.

Firstly, I love how you can create multiple calendars. I went a little overboard: we've got one for just me, one for just Ben, one for both of us (for the things we do together), one for my work at MM, one for birthdays and anniversaries (and it's great because instead of me having to painstakingly copy the dates from year to year every time I started a new diary, Google Calendar will just repeat them yearly for me), one for Word by Word and then (to help me work out Word by Word dates) ones for Moore College, the University of New South Wales, University of Wollongong, University of Western Sydney and Katoomba Christian Convention. Other people create calendars which are publicly available to share so we also have the school term dates and Australian public holidays, etc.

Secondly, you can share calendars with other people and invite them to events if you want to. This is useful for the writing days that Guan, Bec and I have.

Thirdly, Google Calendar can send you notifications of upcoming events to particular calendars via email (to your Gmail account) and, in the US, to your mobile phone. Though I don't find these reminders/notifications of my daily agenda hugely helpful, it still registers in my brain what's going on on any given day. It can also generate RSS feeds but they aren't that useful because they give you all the events at once, not when they're about to happen.

Fourthly, you can plan stuff years in advance (like my 2010 party which only exists in my head and may never happen ... *sigh*). If my in-laws tell me their travel dats for 2009, I can put them straight in instead of having to retain that information for when I buy next year's paper diary.

Fifthly, it ties in well with Google maps so if I'm going somewhere I've never been before, it's easy to look it up and, perhaps, get directions (bearing in mind that Google directions aren't always the best).

And sixthly, because it's centralised, I don't need to be at home to access it; I can access it anywhere with an internet connection. It will also sync with iCal (but you can't edit events in iCal).

The unfortunate thing is that, at the moment, Google Calendar isn't playing nice with Firefox for Mac, and occasionally will crash the browser when I try to edit an event.

What am I doing?!

I first learned about Remember the Milk from Rachel and it's proved remarkably invaluable. It's a site where you can make To Do lists but I have ended up using it for more than that because electronic To Do lists aren't always better than paper ones. I like that you can set it to send you email reminders (e.g. I've set it to send me a reminder email to write to our sponsor child once a monch. The reminder function is so useful, I've set up a separate account which emails me at work to remind me to do various work-related tasks). But I also like that it's a central repository/database for things like recording Word by Word attendance (when people RSVP to each meeting), making packing lists for when we go away, making lists of fun things to do when we're on holidays, etc.

But, as I said earlier, sometimes paper To Do lists are the way to go. I use 7.5 cm x 7.5 cm PostIt notes for these at home (easy to tear off and take with you), and then my scribble pad at work. It just helps focus my brain—especially when I'm stressed, there's a lot going on and I'm not sure what to do first. If I sit down and write myself a To Do list for the day (and it has to be a reasonable one) first thing after I enter my office, I'm more likely to be productive on that day. Sometimes I do it at home just as I'm turning on my computer because I'm more likely to be distracted by the internet instead of doing what I wanted to do (e.g. pay this bill) when I turned on the computer in the first place.

If it's a larger task I'm faced with (e.g. do the advertising for The Faithful Writer), I'll break it into smaller tasks—e.g.

• Create 370 x 210 pixel banner ad;
• Arrange ad for May issue of Southern Cross by (insert date);
• Create Facebook group.

I'm not sure why crossing off things is so satisfying, but there you go.

I also sometimes acrry around an A6 black spiral notebook which acts like a back-up journal to my A5 one. (The A5 one is getting too heavy to carry around. I really must finish it—I started it in January 2007 and unfortunately I'm not using it that much.) The A6 journal has a dedicated To Do list page where I scribble down things I need to remember when I'm on the go. When the page gets too messy, I cross out the entire page and copy the outstanding items to a new one.

You've got mail!

I read some article a while ago (can't find it) which talked about how people these days are so overwhelmed with email, they find it hard to get anything done. I'm not quite an Inbox Zero sort of person but I come close. My email client of choise is, of course, Thunderbird. If only there was decent support for conversion from Entourage, I would use it at work too (Entourage is awful). Thunderbird has your standard features: you can store all your contact information in the address book, including addresses, phone numbers and notes; you can create lists with multiple addresses (other people do know how to do that, right? So if I want to email the rest of the MM staff, I create a list called “MM staff” with all their addresses in it, and then when I compose the email, I just type “MM staff” in the “To” field and it will send it to everyone on the list ...); it's easy to search for one particular person (and it will find someone much faster than Entourage will); it's got a junk filter you can train to spot stuff so that some messages will automatically go to junk without you having to sort through them; you can create multiple folders and sub-folders; you can get it to check multiple email addresses (and these addresses can have their own inboxes or you can tell them to go to a global inbox); you can set up custom filters for your mail, etc. etc. It's just really easy and fast to use.

I started using email back 1996 and I've pretty much kept them all—not spam or company newsletters (which get deleted) but personal mail. I don't understand people who keep all their email in the inbox and just delete stuff when they don't want to read it anymore; no wonder they get overwhelmed! I file everything into folders. All my folders are organised into one of two sections: organisations and personal mail. The organisations are split into Christian and secular, and the personal mail is organised alphabetically into subfolders by surname. Whenever I receive e-mail, it gets filed into those folders. Whenever I send email, it also gets filed into those folders. Anything that stays in my inbox is stuff I need to deal with. (Unfortunately some stuff sits there for a while.)

I used to do all the filing manually but then I discovered filters. So over time I gradually set up filters for the people who email me the most often so that their messages land straight in their folder. There's a setting to enable you to view just the folders with your unread mail, and if there's something I need to reply to, I hit the reply button and save it to my drafts folder, then go back later and write the email (I learned that trick from Tony). The nice thing about filters is that you can give them multiple conditions so that email from Bec doesn't just land in there but also the comments I post on her blog (which get sent from Blogspot) and the comments that other people post on her blog (if I've subscribed to a particular post).

I keep all my email so I have a history to refer to. I can go back and check what was the last thing I wrote or what I said to so-and-so back in July 2003. Thunderbird makes it easy to search messages (unlike Entourage!) so if I know I included a quote from some book in an email I wrote to Guan five years ago, it's easy for me to find it again.

And while we're on the subject of email, I find it interesting that so many couples have one email address for both of them (I mean, it's not like we're going to run out of email addresses; there's always room for 20 more!). I understand that it may be because one of them wouldn't get much email and so wouldn't check her account (and it's usually a her) that often, so the husband can let her know about anything important, but why so many people think the rest of the world operates like that is baffling. For example, it took a little while to train our relatives on both sides of the family to email both of us instead of just one of us, even though we've always had our own separate addresses. Sure, we could just talk to each other to let the other one know what's going on, but if you're talking to both of us (and most of the time they are), why not just put the two addresses in?

Go surfing

Firefox is my browser of choice and not just because I'm anti-Internet Explorer. Tabbed browsing, plugins and extensions are all great, but one of the best things about Firefox is keywords. When you save a bookmark, you can also assign it a keyword in the “Properties” field (you'll have to go into Bookmarks > Organise Bookmarks to do this). Whenever you type the keyword in the address bar (e.g. “mm” for the Matthias Media homepage), it will load that URL for you automatically without you having to type in the full address. I use keywords for all the sites I use the most.

In addition, Firefox also has smart keywords. They cut down the time I spend looking up stuff quite significantly. I use them for Google, the Internet Movie Database, Wikipedia, the Dictionary, the ESV and the Matthias Media online store. If, for example, I want to look up John 3:16 in the ESV, I type “esv John 3:16” in the address bar and it takes me straight there. They're fairly easy to set up; this page teaches you how. I only wish the Macquarie Online Dictionary had more search-friendly URLs so I could use them for that site too.

Take a shortcut on the word processor

Shortcut keys: without them, I'd have seriously bad RSI. I only wish my work computer had an operating system modern enough to install Quicksilver; it might break my prejudice against Macs. I like that Windows has them all built in—ALT + TAB to switch between windows, CTRL + w to close tabs, ALT + F4 to close programs, etc. I also like that Microsoft Word (which I'm stuck with because I don't own a Mac and can't install Scrivener) has standard shortcut keys for cutting, pasting, navigating with your cursor and, most importantly, applying styles from your stylesheet and running macros.

I get the feeling that most people don't know how to use Word styles and templates. (Well, I'm going off Briefing submissions and letters to the editor—many of whom are still using US Letterhead for their paper size. You do know how to change that, don't you? You need to find the Normal template which, in Windows, usually lives in C:\Documents and Settings\[your username]\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates, and on a Mac lives in Applications > Micosoft Office > Templates. Open it and change the paper size in File > Page setup and re-save the document template, making sure that the file actually saves as a document template, not just as a document—i.e. .dot, not .doc.) Templates are one of the great things about Microsoft Word. In them, you can specify what a Heading 1 should look like, what a Heading 2 should look like, what's your default paragraph font and font size, etc. Every piece of text you designate Heading 2 will look the same, and if you decide you would rather the font was Verdana 16 pt and bold with 6 pts of margin above and below rather than Times New Roman 14 pt and in italics, once you update the stylesheet, all your Heading 2s will change automatically. Furthermore, you can assign shortcut keys to your styles (e.g. ALT + CTRL + 2 for Heading 2) which makes formatting a document (e.g. raw text for a Daily Reading Bible) a lot quicker.

You can create as many document templates as you like with different styles and paper sizes in them. At work, I've got the standard MM one, one for Daily Reading Bibles, one for letters I need to write, one for “with compliments” slips (which aren't A4—210 mm x 100 mm), etc.

Macros are only something I discovered last year thanks to Dave. They're like a collection of processes that you want to run again and again, activated with a few keystrokes. For example, if I want to replace all the double spaces in a document with just a single space, I could go to Edit > Replace and type in “  ” in the “Find what” field and “ ” in the “Replace with” field, or I could just hit ALT + CTRL + spacebar and it will do it all for me. At work, I've got macros that will replace the current document's stylesheet with the MM stylesheet, re-size the window to the full height and width of the screen (which my Mac never remembers), change the view to “Normal” at 200% zoom, etc.

When I see you smile ...

Friday, 18 April, 2008

Sunday 6/4/08

Ben was up early to go hear his brother preach at our old old church. I needed a rest so I stayed home and slept in. The rest of the day was spent doing laundry, ironing and dealing with various computer-y things. Ben made risoni for lunch. I really needed to get into the knitting though—I was making this scarf for Bec and I wanted to finish it before she left for Paris on Sunday. So in the late afternoon, I finally sat down with Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7 and got some serious knitting done. By the time church rolled around, I had two episodes of the series to go.

I went to church, stayed to help clean up afterwards, then came home and got stuck into some work for C.S. Lewis Today, and ended up going to bed way too late.

Monday 7/4/08

Back at work, I got stuck into Briefing assessing. I met up with Elsie to read the Bible (Ezekiel) and pray. Our Briefing meeting in the afternoon was postponed because certain key people were away. Then in the mid-afternoon, Toby messaged me and said he had extra tickets for So You Think You Can Dance? that evening and did I want to go? Well, Bec and I had already arranged to go several weeks ago, and Toby has gotten us tickets, but extra ones opened up further possibilities. Anna couldn't make it (and was fuming about it) but Jess G could so we arranged things transport-wise with Bec, and then I elft at 4:15 to avoid the traffic and hang by myself for a bit in Newtown.

When I got out of my car, I noticed Bec had called several times so I called her back. She said she was feeling sick but would drop Jess off and then go. That was a shame! I wondered who else I could ask, and then thought of Crystal who, not only was a big fan of the show, but lived close enough for it to be convenient for her.

I went to Champion Textiles looking for yarn for my bag (they didn't have any either), wandered around Goulds for a bit and then picked up dinner from Urban Bites (they have a $10 pasta/risotto special Monday to Thursday, 4 pm to 7 pm) and a small bottle of water from the local supermarket. Crystal messaged back an affirmative wild-horses-couldn't-keep-me-away “Yes!” I started walking down towards the Carriageworks. Jess rang to say she was there and where was I? “I'm on my way,” I said. I had to wrap my cardigan around the food because it was so hot.

I met Jess just outside the entrance and we went in and were told to take a seat in the café area because the people who were giving out the VIP wristbands hadn't come out yet. I'd never been to the Carriageworks before; it's certainly a very cool place!

We ate our dinner hastily (but enjoyed every minute of it)! Finally two women set up a table to give out the VIP wristbands, crossing off our names. We picked up one for Crystal and waited for her. She showed up while I was using the amenities but fortunately Jess had my phone so she wasn't left hanging.

We still had a bit of time, so Crystal got herself a drink and bought us cookies. Then we headed in—through a different door to the hoi polloi because we had seats. The set was a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but Toby says that's because they use wide-angle lenses. One of the security people in black (he was a lot more stressed than the security people outside who were very nice and helpful) asked me where we'd gotten our tickets from and seated us in the area with Fremantle Media Australia people (whatever that meant). So we were seated on the far right hand side facing the stage three rows from the front next to the aisle. We had an okay view—we couldn't see the stage, and when they started filming, our view was blocked by two cameras—but it was still fun to be there with all the crazy people who were so enthusiastic about the show—about as enthusiastic as we were.

The warm-up guy came on at about 7:15 and got various people up to dance on the stage—Khaly from the Top 20 (Stephanie and Anthony were also there, seated in the bleachers with us), then mothers who wanted to win a Sony bag with stuff in it for their kids, then kids, then dads. I think they did that so they could test the cameras and shots, and get the crowd excited. It was certainly very amusing for us in the audience.

Then the show started, with the pre-recorded packages showing on the big screen, along with the various screens around the set. When the opening credits started rolling, they got us to clap and cheer and scream (I never realised they recorded that bit live). The opening group number was pre-recorded (they do that on Mondays in the middle of the day, along with the guest performance), and then they switched from the recording to Natalie Bassingthwaite walking across the stage. And the show unfolded from there.

It was a bit weird being there—I'm so used to watching it on TV—and, in some respects, being there wasn't so different to watching it on TV: it felt a bit unreal. All around us, there were people screaming out the names of the contestants. Onstage, everyone looked so tiny—especially Rhiannon. When things happened, I wasn't sure if the contestants were acting or whether it was real. We noted with some amusement that those who were safe for another week danced their way offstage with joy, while those who were told they were in the bottom four who had to “dance for your life” practised their moves when off-camera while sitting on those white bar stools. We had to crane our necks to see those solos—we didn't get to see that much of them—but it was just nice that we got to see a bit of live dancing, since so much of Monday night's show is pre-recorded.

I don't think the verdict (Rhiannon and Henry) surprised very many people, though we could see that Rhiannon was very disappointed. (I loved the dance they did together in the Top 10 performances.)

The show wrapped up and everyone filed out. At one point, Kate walked straight past me and I thought I should have told her how much I loved the dance she did with Graeme to “Fix You” by Coldplay (one of the best dances of the season, along with Vanessa and Henry's African Samba).

We said goodbye to Crystal and I took Jess home, getting a little lost on the way because part of Botany St was closed off. Then I drove home, played on the computer for a while and went to bed.

Tuesday 8/4/08

We woke to pouring rain (it's so nice sleeping in to the sound of rain outside!) We had arranged to meet with Tim, Liz and their two little girls for breakfast, but I hadn't heard from them since we last spoke. They did email us but for some reason the email didn't get through. We sorted it out, though, and met them at the Flower Power Garden Centre in Enfield. We parked in their carpark and went across the street to the park to eat in one of those covered areas with the table and benches. Tim and Liz supplied the food; we supplied the picnic set. And we got to meet little Lucy for the first time.

Fortunately for us, the sun came out as we ate and it was beautiful and bright. Little Miriam got to run around for a bit, and play on the play equipment.

After breakfast, we went into the Flower Power Garden Centre to get a hot drink at Cafe Belle Fleur, the café inside of it. Miriam insisted on pulling out all the sugar packets from the holders and Tim and Liz kept coming up with ways to keep her occupied. After downing our hot chocolates, lattes and milkshakes, we went for a wander in the garden outside where there were some very beautiful fountains and an aviary with all manner of birds inside it.

I played with Miriam for a while and we all took some photos together, and then Ben and I had to go. We stopped at home first to pick up our lunch and Ben's computer, then headed in to work, arriving at around 1:30. I continued with the Briefing assessing. Bec stopped by and I casually hid her scarf from her and gave her a badge I'd picked up from the Carriageworks because I knew she liked badges.

We stayed back until 6 pm, then came home and ate leftovers for dinner. Ben left for Bible study and I watched taped television and, once again, ended up going to bed later than I should have.

Wednesday 9/4/08

Day off! But the pest inspector was coming so I couldn't sleep in. Ben went off to meet Richard B about a website. I got up, did laundry, worked on the computer and watched Buffy. I finished Season 7 and watched the special features. In the afternoon, the plumber turned up to fix something in our bathroom and to seal the taps in the kitchen. In the evening, I made chicken drumsticks and vegetables for dinner, and we watched Law & Order and Numb3rs and went to bed too late because I found a site called Zoho Creator that will let me make online databases using drag and drop, and I got excited about it because it meant I could have a centralised database for The Faithful Writer conference that I could access from both home and work. (Yes, I know; I'm such a geek!)

Thursday 10/4/08

I went in to work early because I needed to make up the hours from Tuesday. But I ran out of urgent things to do (thank goodness!) Tony and I met in the morning to talk Briefing things. Then, because I didn't have any urgent things to do and Emma was overloaded, I got to do Briefing cuts and fills. Apparently the issue was meant to go to proof-reading that day. And I had three meetings to attend: Briefing, staff meeting and Product Development meeting.

I had lunch with Bec and Guan (once again having to hide the scarf, or at least not draw attention to it), and because I was tired and dopey, it was easy for them to poke fun at me. After my last meeting for the day, I worked on cuts and fills and ended up leaving at around 6:30 after everyone else had gone home.

I drove to Glebe to have dinner with Marinka, Rosey, Fiona, Jan, Bron and Araya. Somehow we got our wires crossed: I didn't realise Ben was invited too. Oh well! Ben P was also there, and we sat around in their kitchen talking, then moved to the lounge. Rosey made a very delicious dinner. It was nice to spend time with all outside of the church context and to get to know them better. They gave me the house tour and it was interesting to see how the different rooms reflected the personalities of the different girls.

At 9:30 they kicked me and Ben P out which was fair enough because it was a weeknight. I dropped Ben P off at his house and then drove home, finished Bec's scarf while watching TV with Ben and blocked it in the study:

I don't feel like I'm a very good lace knitter—I think my tension must be way too tight because if you compare this to the pattern, her holes are much bigger. Hmm, maybe I should have used bigger needles (the pattern recommends 3.25mm and I used 4mms; maybe I should have used 5mms. I'll have to experiment next time).

Friday 11/4/08

The scarf was still drying when I checked it again the following morning. Ben and I drove into work together and got there around 8 am. I worked on cuts and fills, and on the new Briefing blog, and did some resarch on the formatting question. See, the internet is filled with bad code. Blogger, for example, is just dreadful with the way it nests tags and uses deprecated tags like <b> and <i> for formatting (interestingly enough, Expression Engine does too if you use their toolbars). LiveJournal is worse; it still uses tables for layout (tsk tsk!) And it's weird that so many content management systems don't recognize <cite>. The thing is, the bad code is not a problem because we have such forgiving web browsers which cover over our mistakes instead of drawing attention to our errors. So things don't break and most people are pretty happy with that because they can't see anything wrong; if they saw something wrong, it would be more of a problem.

But because the web is changing, and because the general direction of things seems to be towards XHTML and XML, it's becoming more and more important to have good code. Unfortunately we don't seem to be at the stage yet where there are HTML editors out there that will spit out nice code without you having to look at it in code view (and, indeed, is there anything that can always accommodate human error? [On second thoughts, maybe I shouldn't be talking about this; I know some stuff but not as much as some webgeeks out there who will probably shout me down.]) Nice code won't break your site in obscure browsers (because, remember, your page has to look halfway decent not just in Internet Explorer [evil!], Firefox and Safari, but also Comino, Opera, Netscape, Mosaic and a whole lot of browsers you've never heard of (as well as their different versions). Oh, and other devices like mobile phones, PDAs, screen readers for the blind, etc. (I learned on this day that the organising committee of the Sydney Olympics was sued for failing to provide an accessible website for disabled people.)

Of course, most of the people who write for the internet don't know how to code in HTML, which, I suppose, is fair enough (though the purist part of me grumbles and thinks, “Come on, it's not that hard to pick up, and then maybe you'll put things in <blockquote> instead of misusing italics!”) And these days most content management systems have all these plugins that are supposed to help you by doing some of the coding for you—inserting paragraph tags and the like. But they can only go so far. They can't do things like em-dashes properly (you're supposed to use &#8212;), curly single quotes (&#8216; and &#8217;), curly double quotes (&#8220; and &#8221;), etc. I normally have to put those things in manually. And here's where you enter the fuzzy area of shady characters and what to do with them. If you were cutting and pasting your blog post from Microsoft Word, for example, Word would retain the curly apostrophes and insert them in as ’ (as opposed to '. And, oh my goodness, the debate over the curly apostrophe vs. the straight apostrophe! I never realised. It's amazing that one little symbol is so loaded with such a semantic range). Certain browsers don't recognise ’ (though a lot of the modern ones do), and they may load them as question marks, empty boxes or collapse them into the nearest vowel to produce things like è or é or even ’.

So the formatting question had to do with the new Briefing blog and whether it would be coded to the same exacting standards that I apply to the rest of the Matthias Media website. (Remember, I'm a purist: when I blog, I code everything in HTML because I find it's neater and cuts out a lot of the problems later.)

I went out at lunch time to buy food for Word by Word. Unfortunately the ATM swallowed my keycard so I had to spend longer than intended sorting that out. I ate lunch on the go because I had to get The Briefing to proofreading that day. Fortunately it wasn't as complicated as the last time I did it; I must be getting better. It was out of my hair about an hour before we had to leave, so I spent the rest of the afternoon tackling Briefing meeting minutes.

Ben and I drove to counselling, and I found it was a very productive session compared to the previous week. It seems I'm a bit of an enigma though: in general, I do like myself—I like how God has made me, and even though there are bits of me which I think could be better and areas that definitely need improving, overall I do like myself. However, I find it incredibly painful when I'm not valued, recognised or acknowledged. I have no idea why.

We drove home, and I played piano for a bit before Elsie turned up. I made her a very basic dinner—noodles with vegetables in soup—and then we drove out to Canterbury Racecourse for the Sydney Vintage Clothing, Jewellery and Texiles Show (Ben went to have dinner with Luke). Google's instructions weren't very helpful but we eventually got there. The signage to the entrance wasn't very clear and we were stumbling around in the dark for a while. Finally we were inside, and we spent almost two hours wandering around the different stalls looking at stuff.

There were lots of racks of clothes, jewellery displays, shoes, luggage, bags, knitting needles, jewellery chests and an entire stall devoted to parasols (very expensive parasols ...) I bought some jewellery as a present for someone, buttons, black suede gloves and a brooch to go on Bec's scarf.

We left just past nine. Elsie dropped me home and went home herself because she was tired. I did computer things to prepare for Word by Word the following day, I dried Bec's scarf a bit further with a hair dryer and turned it over so it would dry on the other side, I wrapped the rest of her present (an Odessa hat I made last year for a stall Marinka was going to run but never did, and Armchair Apocrypha by Andrew Bird) and wrote her a card. Then I went to bed.

Saturday 12/4/08

It was hard to wake up this morning because I was so tired, and I only woke up because Ben was poking me to turn off the alarm. I got up, unstacked the dish rack, pulled my stuff together—tea, Word by Word folder, Bec's present, iPod, etc.—and then we were out the door. As always, all these people SMS-ed to say they couldn't make it for whatever reason, someone called for a lift and someone even SMS-ed me to see if they could still come. I need to remember for future meetings to be more prepared for this sort of thing because I know it's going to keep happening.

We picked Ben M up from Newtown and drove in to Kingsford. George called just as we arrived, wondering where we were. We set up—unlocked the doors, put out the food, turned on the coffee machine, etc. The meeting ran very smoothly because I had delegated everything to everyone else: Dave looked after the coffee, Guan did the devotion, Bec did the writing exercise, George took us some through excellent training on how to write training courses (which will come in handy when Bec and I do our seminar at The Faithful Writer) and Ben went to get the food when it was time.

After lunch, we sat around and talked about the things we were currently working on (which I found hugely interesting; not sure what the others thought of it). We workshopped one piece by one of our newer members, then wrapped up for the day and went home.

I spent the afternoon/evening doing laundry and chilling out in front of the television, getting a well-deserved rest.

Sunday 13/4/08

Ben left early to go have breakfast with Nancy and Rosey and talk about their band. I tried to sleep in (and failed somewhat), then got up and did Faithful Writer stuff for around five or six hours (because registrations were due to open the following day). Ben went off to band practice in the afternoon. We had church in the evening, then helped pack up and headed home. Ben watched Lost while I kept at it with The Faithful Writer. It was another late night.

Monday 14/4/08

I got to work at around 7:30 and spent the morning writing a CHN and editing the rest of the CHNs for the week. I also worked on the new Briefing blog, then met with Tony in the afternoon for my 15 minutes of fame.

Toby called my mobile while I was in the meeting and couldn't get through, so he called our customer service line and they put him through to me. He had tickets to So You Think You Can Dance? for that evening, and did I want to go? Definitely, I told him, and then went to check if anyone else was free. Once again, Anna was not (and was very unhappy about it) but Jess was and was keen to go again. So instead of going out to buy the fruit and vegies before I headed home, I stayed back at work until Jess was ready to leave, and we drove to Newtown, parked at the Carriageworks, ate dinner at Urban Bites ($10 pasta special!) and walked back down to the Carriageworks to pick up our wristbands and wait for Judith. She soon turned up and we headed inside and managed to get a better seat that last time (more towards the centre, four rows from the front, right in front of the choreographers. Rhiannon, her friends and Henry were at the other end of our row, and others in the Top 20 were across the aisle).

My goodness, it was such a great show! The opening group routine was choreographed by Jason Gilkinson and it was marvellous (but unfortunately it's not online). Jason was filling in for Bonnie while she was at her son's wedding in Las Vegas so we got to see him in the flesh. In addition, while I knew that Cirque du Soleil were going to be on the show that night (the week before, I had entered a competition hoping to see them but guessing that I probably wouldn't win), I had thought that that segment was pre-recorded but no, they came and performed live!!! I was so excited, Jess teased me mercilessly. But they were so good, and when they finished their routine, we gave them a standing ovation.

The other wonderful thing was that the Top 6 all performed solo for us so we got to see them all dance. The atmosphere was just fantastic as everyone was so excited to be there and to support their favourite dancer. Whenever each of them came out to perform (which they did on the other side of the stage as Natalie interviewed the one who had just danced), everyone just screamed and clapped. And there was such enthusiasm as the Top 4 were revealed—those who were safe running up to our side of the bleachers to be congratulated by friends and family during the ad breaks.

At the end, squealing fangirls (carbon copies of one another—like in Josie and the Pussycats) came up to Henry and Rhiannon wanting photos and autographs. We hung around a little because they were so funny to watch, but eventually made our way out of the theatre, saying goodbye to Judith and heading to my car. Once again, I dropped Jess home (this time not getting lost), then drove home to go to bed early (or, at least, earlier) for once.

Tuesday 15/4/08

Back at work, I tackled the rest of the Briefing minutes from the week before and then tried to see if I could create an online database for the Briefing articles. I experimented with Zoho Creator, and though it took a couple of tries and much tinkering, I managed to import all the data and set everything up so it was a lot like our existing Briefing database. I left feeling pretty proud of myself, then went and did the fruit and veg shopping, bought some fish for dinner, went home, washed the sheets, vacuumed the bedroom, put away the clean laundry and made fried fish for dinner with bok choy.

Ben was sick so didn't go to Bible study, so we watched Law & Order together. Then I watched Samurai Champloo and Monday's So You Think You Can Dance? and other TV while sorting receipts (I haven't done the accounts in about two and a half months).

I started doing the accounts and managed to get quite a bit done before I went to bed. And Bec emailed me from Paris with a photo of her wearing the hat and scarf:

They look so good on her! I just wish the scarf had more of the lace pattern in it—more holes.

(Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that she really really liked her present!)

Tube duel

Wednesday, 16 April, 2008

Saturday 5/4/08

I got up, showered, did breakfast/Bible/pray, turned on my computer to print some things, then caught the train to Circular Quay and walked to the Customs House Library where Bec and Guan met me for our writing day.

In our continuing quest to find new and interesting places to write in, we thought we'd try it out as we went to the State Library last time. My goodness, I don't know why I haven't been sooner! The place is so cool and everything looks like a designer thought long and hard about it. As you go in, there's a café on your left—

—which we didn't have time to try. On your right, there's a nice little waiting area for reading and other stuff:

—and then above you three storeys up there's a skylight and a box kite-like sculpture suspended from the ceiling:

The floor is glass, and under your feet there is a full scale model of the Sydney CBD, complete with little fairy lights:

On your left there is the magazines and newspapers, with this incredibly funky chandelier hanging from the ceiling—

—and then next to that, there's the computer terminals for the catalogue—

—which are probably the funkiest terminals I've ever seen. Even the toilet doors are cool:

We headed up to the Reading Room which is on the third floor and it was divine—up high, with plenty of light streaming in through the windows, dark wood tables with neat little white lamps, the walls completely covered with bookshelves.

Oh, did I mention that they have free wireless internet at the moment? They're trialling it.

So we sat in the Reading Room with our assorted paraphernalia and wrote for around one and a half hours which is, in my opinion, a good stretch, and then we walked up to Pitt St for dumplings and yum cha. (It was sunny so I had my black lace parasol out, and we were stopped by some American tourists who had been admiring it for four blocks and who wanted to know where they could get one. They also loved the rest of my outfit: I broke out the black lace thing I bought in the Dandenongs for the first time and wore it over a black singlet and long black skirt. But they didn't like my Kinokuniya bag—“No, she needs Prada,” said the man, and I almost started laughing.)

We went to Sky Phoenix in Skygarden and consumed our fill of dumplings, mango pudding, tofu dessert and custard tarts, and then went our separate ways—Bec and Guan back to the eastern suburbs, me to Tapestry Craft to see what they had by way of yarn. It wasn't just the American tourist's comment; I know I need a new bag. The little handbag (more like a pocket with a shoulder strap, really) I bought in 2005 for $8 finally carked in a couple of weeks ago (the zipper gave out) and I'd been thinking for a while I should make one for myself and customize it so that it had enough room to fit my wallet, mobile, A6 journal, pen, keys, lip balm and tissues—something like this (but in black) and perhaps felted (yes, I keep talking about it and never do it!) I wanted something wiry and sturdy to knit with but Tapestry Craft didn't have anything like that. I wandered around the store twice—overhearing a knitting lesson in progress and being rather amused by it. In the end, I just bought a row counter which I thought would be useful for knitting on the go (it is!)

Then I walked to Bathurst Street and caught a bus down Newtown, alighting at the southern end. I was looking for the At The Vanishing Point gallery because a girl at church told me that she was having some of her work hung there. It took me a little while because I got the address wrong, but I finaly found the place and took a look around. I also stopped in at Etelage, a jewellery making and bead store run by a lady from my old old church, and bought a book on beads and jewellery making for $10. And then I made my way back north (stopping in Tree of Life to have a stickybeak) and wound up in Camperdown Memorial Park just on 4 for the start of Cardboard Tube Fighting League—the Australian branch.

This was something wholly instigated by Fish. A couple of months ago, he kept saying to us, “Cardboard Tube Fighting League!” and we both said, “What?” and then he set a day, advertised it online and advertised it on Facebook, and then the media got in on it and ran a story in the Inner West Courier(plus a photo where Ben's face is completely obscured by Fish's cardboard tube on Facebook). Then the Sydney Morning Herald picked up the story with a massive amount of space being devoted to it on page 3 (with a great photo of Fish decked out in cardboard armour profiled against the sky). Then ABC Radio rang, wanting Fish to talk on air. He didn't want to, so he got Ben to do it, and Ben was interviewed on ABC Illawarra and ABC Adelaide the Tuesday before this (he did an excellent job too!)

No one was sure how many people were going to show, so it was a nice surprise to see that all these people had turned up to watch, and a stack of people had turned up to participate—old and young. Some of them had gone to a lot of trouble too, sporting cardboard armour, shields and helmets of various kinds (I liked the Thor-like wings that one guy had!)

Ben was helping out, dressed as a cardboard booth. He got people to sign waivers before they picked up their standard cardboard tube:

Notice the cardboard toast on the front of the booth.

This guy went to a lot of trouble:

And here was Fish all decked out in his cardboard armour:

Here was the prize: a cardboard tube sword:

Before the battle began, everyone posed for a photo, tubes raised high in the air.

(I think this was mainly to satisfy the media people who were there, which included, I was told, BBC Radio, The Sun Herald and—get this—the National Archives of Australia.)

Fish went over the rules (no jabbing; no grabbing the tube; avoid the head; if you hold your tube out horizontal and it is dangling at a 90 degree angle, you're out) and then everyone paired up with someone of comparable size (so that grown-ups weren't battling kids). Then he and Marty called out them out pair by pair to duel it out.

Most people went for the hard slashing which was a bad idea because their tubes broke pretty quickly. People soon found that the best way to preserve their tube (as the aim was to be the one with the last unbroken tube), they had to not treat their tube like a sword.

At the end of the first round, Marty and Fish duked it out:

Then the second round began. I found it terribly funny watching everyone fight because some people were so into it. I don't think I've laughed that much in a long while!

While the fighting was going on, Ben and Duncan F were walking around recording the first episode of their podcast on Ben's iPod. There was this boy being chased by two girls who had joined themselves together with cardboard tube armour, and Ben and Duncan stopped them to interview them about what was going on.

Eventually a group of people were left for the third round which was a free-for-all. And then finally one guy was declared the winner and was given the prize.

Clean-up followed but thankfully there weren't too many cardboard scraps that needed to be picked up off the grass.

Here's me in Fish's helmet:

Christie took some of the cardboard her car, and Duncan dropped me and Ben at Fish's in their other car so we could retrieve our car. They invited us over for dinner and a movie (which I said was fine as long as I could get a truckload of knitting done). At their place, we decided on Indian, and walked down to the video store to rent a movie. We settled on Ratatouille which none of us had seen (and even though Ben isn't fond of animated movies, he went along with it). Then Duncan and Ben went off to get nibblies and drinks, and Christie and I went to pick up the food.

It took us 45 minutes because traffic was a nightmare and we got lost in Newtown's back streets on the way. But we finally got it home, and we ate a very yummy dinner along with Duncan and Christie's friend Warren, before settling down to watch the movie (me knitting away furiously).

I enjoyed it very much but think I'll have to watch it again. Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and headed home.

Ebullient

Wednesday, 16 April, 2008

This is the chocolate bunny I won on the Easter long weekend for being the only one in the church who answered all the questions correctly in a True or False? quiz on the resurrection (and, yes, the contestants included two ministers and three Moore College graduates). I think this is the first time I've ever won anything for knowing stuff.

Wednesday 2/4/08

Rose later than intended, then caught the bus and train into work because Ben was putting the car in for a service. I think I was listening to Saturnalia by The Gutter Twins. I got into work by 9:30, then worked for an hour on Faithful Writer stuff. I walked to New College at 10:45 and met with Mark Tredinnick and Trevor Cairney to talk about the conference. It was good to meet Mark—he's a very interesting person and has worn so many different hats throughout the course of his career, it has given him a varied perspective on life. He even signed my copy of The Little Red Writing Book for me.

After the meeting, I caught the bus to Taylor Square. I walked to 118 Campbell St (which was where the Hope Street Markets were held this year) because I wanted to see what it was normally. Turns out it's a restaurant but a very different sort of restaurant: Table for 20 is more like rocking up to have a meal with a bunch of people you've never met before—trying to build community in a postmodern world (the link explains it). I thought it was an interesting concept.

I walked up Oxford St and stopped in Berkelouw to have a look around. I considered having lunch there but I wanted to get up further so I kept walking. One shop had a bargain basket of books out the front and I found a Peter Dickinson novel for $2.

By now, I was pretty hungry. I decided to treat myself to lunch at Micky's (a place Emma R took me to once years and years ago ... she's the one who introduced me to fruit frappes there). I had a delicious chai tea and a haloumi salad—yum! It wasn't cheap but it was worth it because it was so nice and it was just what I felt like that day.

After lunch, I walked further up Oxford St to Palm Beach to look for sandals. Of all the different kinds of shopping that I am forced to do out of necessity, shoe shopping is by far the worst. I always know what I want but have no idea where to find it. (Maybe I haven't done it enough ... I really don't know anything about shoes.) I wanted a pair of sandals to replace my black Colorados which have served me faithfully over the past three years. I remember buying them from my brother-in-law when he used to work for Williams the Shoemen and he got them for me at a discounted price. Since then, I've managed to create the shoe equivalent of the Grand Canyon in the sole, the split running rather uncomfortably just below the ball of my foot. They're good shoes but they're pretty much unwearable now. I needed sandals like that—tough, durable things which are still relatively stylish—and preferably in black.

Unfortunately, Palm Beach, which is where my mum bought me my boots for my birthday last year, was filled with pretty frippy useless excuses for footwear. My refusal to wear heels ruled out two thirds of the merchandise in the shop, and the rest was ugly, impractical or both. There was a nice pair of black thongs (US readers: read “flip flops”) for $20 but I could not bring myself to pay $20 for thongs—especially as the pink thongs I wear around the house sometimes only cost me $10 and have lasted me almost three years (that's just under $3.50 a year—bargain! *Sigh* ... I'm so Asian ...) Speaking of those, they were starting to fall apart too ...

I gave up on Paddington (I knew the rest of the shoe shops there would stock more exorbitant useless stuff) and caught the bus into town. I looked in Centrepoint and then Myer (who, funny enough, were having a shoe sale so the place was swarming with women), the shoe emporium on Pitt St (three levels of shoes and all of them completely unsuitable!), and then Hype where I spotted some Birkenstocks. I remembered that Elsie, Marinka and Mary like Birkenstocks, so I thought I'd try them out. Hype didn't have any in black, but the girl behind the counter said there was a Birkenstock store just up the road. So I headed in that direction (stopping at Dirt Cheap CDs on the way where I got Tori Amos's American Doll Posse). The store was at the back of the little arcade where Rockbottom CDs used to be. The guy serving there was very nice and polite, and he patiently watched me walk around and around in them before I made my up my mind to buy them.

I caught the train home and spent the rest of the afternoon watching taped So You Think You Can Dance?. Ben went to pick up the car but he was told he had to bring it back the following day because they had broken the inside handle on the driver's side. We had leftovers for dinner and spent the evening watching TV, then I curled up in bed with Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor (D.A. Carson) and went to sleep.

Thursday 3/4/08

Because the car had to go back to the mechanic's, I caught the bus and train into work. Unfortunately one of the buttons came off my red velvet coat and lodged itself in the back door of the bus so I could not retrieve it. I should have said something ... oh well.

Work was filled with Briefing stuff and compiling The Daily Reading Bible (Volume 16) (DRB 16). Over lunch, I chatted with Alison (Tony's wife) and got a glimpse into what it's like to bring up teenagers. I was on phones during prayer meeting, then the afternon was filled with more DRB 16 compiling.

Ben came to pick me up but he wasn't feeling too well so I took the wheel. He went off to Julia's 40th while I cooked and spent the evening relaxing—well, blogging talking on the phone with Tim and Liz, cooking and watching two episodes of Buffy.

Friday 4/4/08

I got into work by 7:30 and ate my breakfast there. The day was filled with more Briefing stuff, making Faithful Writer images and finishing the compiling for DRB 16. I had an early lunch and didn't participate in Thai Day Friday because I had to leave early—at 1 pm. I drove to North Sydney and parked on Bridge St near the oval, and walked down to the Centre for Public Christianity to meet with Vaughan and Anne about the C.S. Lewis Today conference. It was good to get to know them in person as before I'd only ever corresponded with them via email.

That meeting didn't take as long as I thought it would, and I went downstairs and had a chai latte in the café. Ben joined me there; he had been in a tax seminar all morning but wasn't feeling well. We walked to the car and I drove us to North Ryde, listening to The Gutter Twins. We were an hour early so we sat in the car and I knitted.

Counselling was frustrating. I drove us home and did computer things for an hour before going to meet Little Rachel in Newtown in front of Moore Books. We had dinner at the Green Gourmet and talked for hours and hours. It was so good to catch up—to be listened to as well as to listen—just the thing you need when you've had such a trying week. We moved to the Ice & Slice for dessert, then Seamus came to pick Little up and I went home.

I tried to read Eddie Campbell's The Fate of the Artist (which Guan gave me for Christmas last year) but kept falling asleep so in the end I put it down and turned off the light.

Blinks

Thursday, 3 April, 2008

I know some of this is old news but these links have been kicking around in my inbox for a while ...

Technology

• How Sticky Is Membership on Facebook? Just Try Breaking Free: Apparently it's really hard to delete yourself off Facebook completely. Since this article, however, Facebook have amended their settings so now it's a lot easier. The issue is interesting because it raises the question of who owns private information: you or the one you divulge it to when you sign up?
• One Friend Facebook Hasn't Made Yet: Privacy Rights: Again, a bit of old news about how Facebook doesn't provide as much control over who can see what about you. Since this article was published, Facebook has slowly been improving.
• To Aim Ads, Web Is Keeping Closer Eye on You: An interesting article about websites collecting data about you, advertising and privacy. Seems like the boundaries of privacy are becoming more and more fluid. I wonder where the idea comes from, or whether it was a given because it was so hard to connect before the invention of the telegraph, telephone and the internet as we were all confined physically and geographically.
• Facebook Is Extending Its Network to Blood Donations: Useful for when there's a blood shortage in a particular area.
• Women flock to social networking sites: says the SMH, with this observation: “Sites such as MySpace essentially promote a fantasised identity where relationships are based on common network interests while Facebook is grounded in real identity and online connections are simply an extension of real friendships.”
• Osama bin Laden's “Second Life”: Should we be worried about potential terrorists communicating and networking in virtual worlds?
• A Hello Kitty MMORPG (via Guan): Go on, I know you're dying to join!
• Online Scrabble Craze Leaves Game Sellers at Loss for Words: An article about the rise and rise of Scrabulous with this telling comment about the board game industry:

  “The big thing that Hasbro is missing is that this is targeting a young audience that in general is not into board games,” said Venkat Koduru, the 15-year-old founder of the Facebook group “Save Scrabulous.” ...

  To some online marketing experts, Scrabulous represents a turning point for the board game industry, which has struggled for years to recreate itself as new generations turned to alternatives like the Xbox and the GameBoy. ...

  Jayant, who is responsible for the game's player interface and customer support, said, “People rarely find time to sit down anymore with their family and friends, to invite people over, to prepare the tea and biscuits.” Even though it is easy to cheat at Scrabulous, he says he thinks few players actually do. “You may be doing it for personal glory, but it really takes the fun out of the game,” he said.

• Desktop Darwin's surprise discovery: Nice that Google Earth can still allow people to be explorers in the tradition of Columbus and Magellan.
• Celebrities tell you where to go—on your in-car navigation.
• If You Can't Let Go, Twitter: It's good technology but why isn't Twitter catching on? Is it because it's more about having a monologue than a dialogue?
• The quest for the perfect game face: Meaning avatars in video games. The article had this to say about what people want from a MMORPG:

  Mori, a Japanese roboticist, was fascinated by the emotional and psychic reactions humans have to “humanoids.” Famously, Mori noted that “human beings themselves lie at the final goal of robotics,” but the closer roboticists came to simulating a realistic face, the more noticeably a human would recoil from its appearance.

  Players in “Second Life” don't care to move simply from A to B, and they don't expect a “game over” screen. Instead, they want to poke at the edges of their world and wander freely from island to island and house to house. They want, in other words, something like reality.

  Kind of ironic given that MMORPGs are about escaping from reality.
• However, this judge ruled that Facebook friends are not real friends:

  Dr Dick, who last year conducted a extensive study of MySpace use by teenagers, said most people now saw the networking sites as more of a communication medium than a circle of friends.

  Although many “friends” listed on users' profiles were really acquaintances, problems still arose if one was to conduct a “cull” of them.

  “Removing someone from your friend list is almost a declaration of war,” Dr Dick said.

  Interestingly in my early days on Facebook, I was called “tight” by someone for refusing their friend request ...
• That said, this article says that a whole new generation of web companies are working at 3D live chat rooms (how Futurama!) I love the second paragraph of this article characterising the current state of social networking:

  People visit each other's MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It's like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.

• Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain: Girls are more likely to run websites and design for other people's websites. Yet there's a gender imbalance in computing careers. Is this due to gender stereotypes? Or is it due to women being trained to make up narratives about themselves—to see themselves as “objects”?
• I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.: This New York Times journalist takes a secular Sabbath from technology, and discovers some surprising things about what the Sabbath is all about:

  On my first weekend last fall, I eagerly shut it all down on Friday night, then went to bed to read. (I chose Saturday because my rules include no television, and I had to watch the Giants on Sunday). I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven ...

  But recidivism quickly followed; there were important things to do—deadlines, urgent communications. You know how it is. I called Andrea Bauer, an executive and career development coach in San Carlos, Calif. She assured me that, oddly enough, it takes work to stop working. “It takes different formats for different people, and you have to build up to it; you can't run five miles if you've never run at all.” Increasingly, I realized that there is more to the secular Sabbath than an impulse, or even a day off from e-mail. And there are reasons that nonsecular Sabbaths—the holy days of Christians, Jews and Muslims—have rules that require discipline. Even for the nonreligious, those rules were once imposed: You need not be elderly to remember when we had no choice but to reduce activity on Sundays; stores and offices—even restaurants—were closed, there were certainly no electronics, and we were largely occupied by ourselves or our families.

• Brain cancer fears over heavy mobile phone use: And this article makes me think of the final scene in Thank You For Smoking ...
• Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK): How the rise of new technologies like the mobile phone has changed the way families interact. This is a fascinating article touching on things like mobile phone etiquette, communication misunderstandings (capital letters being interpreted as yelling), connectedness and secrecy:

  Children increasingly rely on personal technological devices like cellphones to define themselves and create social circles apart from their families, changing the way they communicate with their parents ...

  “For kids it has become an identity-shaping and psyche-changing object,” Ms. Turkle said. “No one creates a new technology really understanding how it will be used or how it can change a society.” ...

  “Cellphones demand parental involvement of a different kind ... Kids can do a lot of things in front of their parents without them knowing.” ...

  Text messaging, in particular, has perhaps become this generation's version of pig Latin. For dumbfounded parents, AT&T now offers a tutorial that decodes acronyms meant to keep parents at bay. “Teens may use text language to keep parents in the dark about their conversations by making their comments indecipherable,” the tutorial states. Some acronyms meant to alert children to prying eyes are POS (“parent over shoulder”), PRW (“parents are watching”) and KPC (“keeping parents clueless”) ...

  Ms. Blanton wonders if things might have been different if they had text messaging back then. Her son now sends frequent text messages to his grandfather, discussing baseball and fishing. “I can write better than I talk,” said Ms. Blanton, whose relationship with her parents is now close. “I think we would have had a better experience.”

• On a related note, Amy Goldwasser in “What's the matter with kids today?” explores what freaks parents out about their kids (e.g. that kids are documenting their lives and their parents' lives) and suggests the internet is not to blame:

  [W]e can't see that the Internet is only a means of communication, and one that has created a generation, perhaps the first, of writers, activists, storytellers ... When the world worked in hard copy, no parent or teacher ever begrudged teenagers who disappeared into their rooms to write letters to friends—or a movie review, or an editorial for the school paper on the first president they'll vote for. Even 15-year-old boys are sharing some part of their feelings with someone out there.

  We're talking about 33 million Americans who are fluent in texting, e-mailing, blogging, IM'ing and constantly amending their profiles on social network sites—which, on average, 30 of their friends will visit every day, hanging out and writing for 20 minutes or so each. They're connected, they're collaborative, they're used to writing about themselves. In fact, they choose to write about themselves, on their own time, rather than its being a forced labor when a paper's due in school. Regularly, often late at night, they're generating a body of intimate written work. They appreciate the value of a good story and the power of a speech that moves: Ninety-seven percent of the teenagers in the Common Core survey connected “I have a dream” with its speaker—they can watch Dr. King deliver it on demand—and eight in 10 knew what “To Kill a Mockingbird” is about.

• Tech's Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True: Why there are still people out there using Netscape 4: “New, of course, is not always better, and people hang on to existing technologies for a variety of reasons, including loyalty, satisfaction with what they have, fear of time-consuming upgrades and even inertia.”
• Why Old Technologies Are Still Kicking: Yes, there are companies out there which still mainframes. The development of technology is a Darwinian process: those that adapt, survive: “Television, for example, was supposed to kill radio, and movies, for that matter. Cars, trucks and planes spelled the death of railways. A current death-knell forecast is that the Web will kill print media.” I'm sceptical about the last one about print media, but it will be interesting to see what gizmos stick around 100 years from now. I'm particularly interested in what will happen to the car (this article talks about how people love the comfort and convenience of them so much, they probably wouldn't go back to things like public transport, despite the cost. Incidentally, this article claims that one of the chief reasons people are moving out of Sydney is the traffic).
• Why Apple fans hate tech reporters: Farhad Majoo writes, “[M]any fans of Apple often seem to want more. They care little for honest opinion. They want to pick up the paper and see in it a reflection of their own nearly religious zeal for the thing they love. They don't want a review. They want a hagiography.” Yes, I do find the zeal of some Mac users a bit over-the-top sometimes.

Hmm. It's interesting the patterns of thought that come out of this exercise every time I do it.

Blinks

Wednesday, 2 April, 2008

Writerly bits

• Pushing Paper Out the Door: An article about the move towards a paper-less world where everything is scanned.
• A review of the manga Bible with the intersting observation that “The medium shapes the message. Manga often focuses on action and epic. Much of the Bible, as a result, ends up on the cutting room floor, and what remains is darker.” Methinks it reveals something quite interesting about the Bible as a piece of literature.
• The rainbow bookshelf (via Philip): Now colour is an interesting way to organise your books ...
• An Interview with Timothy Keller, author of The Reason for God which reveals how reading habits have changed—

  In New York City, these are pretty smart people, very educated people, but even by the mid-nineties I had found that the average young person found Mere Christianity—it just didn't keep their attention, because they really couldn't follow the arguments. They took too long. This long chain of syllogistic reasoning wasn't something that they were trained in doing. I don't think they're irrational, they are as rational, but they want something of a mixture of logic and personal appeal ...

  Even Lewis, in his Weight of Glory series, Lewis said that, before World War One, the average educational experience was twelve or thirteen people sitting in a room listening to a paper by one person then tearing it apart till 2 a.m. in the morning. And he says, now, the quintessential educational experience is listening to a celebrity lecturer, with a hundred or two hundred other people taking notes and then taking an exam. Even he said, between the wars, he saw a diminishment in people's ability to really think hard and long about issues. People want you to get to the point quickly. And they want you to tell them what's going on quickly. And they just don't have the attention span. You can look at television, you can look at the Internet, you can look at the so-called rise of narrative and loss of trust in logic—I think it's cumulative ... I don't want to say it's all relativism or all the Internet because people don't read long articles anymore. But I just know that it's very hard to find people who can wade through—unless you're a professional academic, you're not going to wade through these books anymore.

• Celebrating the Semicolon in a Most Unlikely Location: For punctuation geeks. And the correction appended at the end of the article is just gold.
• Now that I've got my master's in writing ... I'm not writing!: And Cary Tennis has some good advice:

  The connection between writing ... and writing for money or writing for success has to be broken. You need a good, strong, regular writing practice. The ego has to be broken for the voice to come through. The voice is what you want. The voice that makes no sense at first is what you want. The voice that sounds a little crazy is what you want. Try it.

  Amen to that.

The Stations

Tuesday, 1 April, 2008

Monday 24/3/08

Easter Monday. I woke around 9:30, did the usual morning things (shower/breakfast/Bible reading/pray) and watched taped So You Think You Can Dance? because I was really behind. Ben got up a bit later.

We left to go to the Beilharz's place at around quarter to 12 for Hans's birthday lunch. He made stuff on the barbecue for us, and we ate and then had present-opening and chocolate-giving. (Side note: my family never really celebrated Easter. My friends would give me chocolate eggs and some family members would too, but it would never occur to us to go out and buy them for each other.) Afterwards, we watched Lizz who had been on TV as she had peformed with the Wesley choir at the Opera House for Easter.

I was feeling rather down so we drove across the bridge, parked a couple of streets away from my mum's house and went for a walk in Connell's Point past my favourite house (turns out Ben likes it too—yay!) We sat together watching the river for a while which was very soothing.

Afterwards we went to my mum's place for dinner. Peter made Tandoori chicken and lots of other stuff. There was so much food, we couldn't eat it all. Over dinner, Peter told us about his trip to Finland (he was there as one of the examiners of a student's PhD. PhD students there have to give a public defense and there are all sorts of social rituals involved in the whole thing which made for amusing retelling).

I helped wash up because my mum's dishwasher was on the blink. Ben and I drove home and I mucked around on the computer before going to bed.

Tuesday 25/3/08

I was in at work at 7:30, freaking out a little about my To Do list. In addition, I felt really sad—seriously so. I ended up having an IM conversation about it with Guan and Bec because it's easier to type than to talk when you're trying not to cry (or when you're crying). They decided I needed to get out of the office, so they took me out for Easyway (Bec paid because I was broke) and then accompanied me to the bank so I could get some money and then to the pharmacy so I could buy my cholesterol medication (joy).

We ended up eating lunch together in the MM boardroom and then I realised I'd forgotten about Elsie—I was supposed to be meeting with her. There was an email on my computer saying that she was tied up and couldn't make it, so it was good it worked out in the end and I didn't leave her hanging.

But work-wise, I did end up getting through a substantial part of my To Do list: dealing with my email, editing CHNs, finishing You off (hee hee, that sounds funny!) as Michael had sent through corrections over the weekend, and then compiling and cleaning all the articles for the next Briefing (May).

I left at about 4:15 or 4:30 and went and did the grocery shopping: meat and supermarket stuff. It was sprinkling by the time I was done but it wasn't too bad putting the groceries in the car and then later taking them up to our flat (it took three trips because Ben wasn't home). Ben arrived home soon after and we had dinner together, then he had to go to Bible Study, and I chopped up four kilograms of chicken breast while watching Little Black Book (which was pretty poor). I finished just as Ben came home.

Wednesday 26/3/08

Day off but I had work things to do. I woke at 8:45 instead of 8:30 like I intended, did the shower/breakfast/Bible reading/pray and then tried to get into it. But it took a long time and it felt sluggish; I didn't think I really got going until 11 am, and normally when I'm in at the office, my day is half over.

I edited The Daily Reading Bible (Volume 15) (DRB 15) for about two or three hours. Guan and Bec came on at various times and we IM-ed. I made Vindaloo curry for lunch but stuffed it so it turned out poorly. Ben and I watched taped NCIS over lunch and then he did the dishes. I continued with DRB15 until it was time to leave.

We walked to Newtown. I felt cranky. We arrived at Moore College and ran into the ECU Wollongong crowd who were there for the Don Carson events (as were we). The first thing wasn't a Carson thing though; Mark Thompson talked about hot theological issues and the state of the Anglican communion (which was very interesting, and gave me the background and context for what is happening and why it's important), Andrew Cameron talked about the work of the Social Issues Executive, and Peter Bolt talked about Thomas Moore, the guy that Moore Theological College is named after.

Afterwards, we headed over to the dining room for the dinner, catching up with various people who we ran into on the way. We ended up sitting on a table with Simon R, Craig L and a bunch of missionaries from Europe. Dinner was served buffet-style, and in between main course and dessert, Peter O'Brien interviewed Don Carson about his new book which is about his father, Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson and his work with The Gospel Coalition (which sounds hugely exciting). Over dessert, I got to catch up briefly with Ali, and we ended up sitting together later for Carson's public address. Unfortunately we were right under the vents and, as always, the DBK lecture theatre lived up to its nickname of The Kelvinator (good thing I was prepared!)

Carson's area was Christ and culture (probably stemming from his new book on the subject) but he just wanted to talk to us about one aspect of Christ and culture: church and state. And he said he wasn't going to deal with the whole topic either—he was just going to outline the different patterns of the relationship between church and state that you find in the New Testament. He ended up giving us seven of them. I was taking notes but he was going a little bit too fast for me. Still, I got a lot out of his talk and came away with the feeling of having been fed well from the word of God—something I do not think I have felt in a while.

Afterwards, Ben and I said goodbye to Ali and walked home.

Thursday 27/3/08

Ben needed the car so we drove in together, arriving around 8 or 8:30 (I think). My To Do list loomed largely over my head, but I got stuck into it. I ended up getting quite a lot done—and this in amid celebratory cake for Jess's birthday at morning tea and staff meeting. Ben left around morning tea to go to a photoshoot for the SMH with Fish (except they didn't use any of the photos with him in it. The photo they put in the print edition is much funnier than the one on the web, in my humble opinion).

By the end of the day, I had edited all the articles I had to do for the next Briefing (but that said, I didn't have as much to do on this one as I normally do) and I had done a fair chunk of the stuff I normally have to do for the issue that's just about to come out (April). E-news, for example, took less than an hour to compile (in comparison to the average time of three hours under the old system) thanks to the awesomeness of Campaign Monitor.

Ben came to pick me up around 6 pm but I kept him waiting because I was finishing the e-Briefing. We went home and had leftovers for dinner.

Friday 28/3/08

Ben was supposed to come into work with me again but he ended up going to bed really late so he slept in and I did some April Briefing work on my computer at home. So we didn't get in until 10:30 or 11 or something like that.

I had been trying to get to DRB 15 but April Briefing stuff kept happening. In addition, Bec SMS-ed to say she'd been in an accident on Houston Road, so Em and I went out to see if she was okay (she was, thank God! But the poor car wasn't.)

We left at around 3 and went off to counselling (another sad session; can you spot the refrain?), then drove home. Ben went to have dinner with Luke and I went to my church's women's fellowship to have a Slovenian dinner with a missionary. The demographic of my church has changed so much in the last three months, I half the evening getting to know new girls.

Naomi gave me a lift home and then I went to work on The Faithful Writer website. I went to bed around 1.

Saturday 29/3/08

I wanted to be up earlier than I was but anyway, I probably needed the sleep. We were having a work social that evening and I had promised my own version of Spicks and Specks, the music TV quiz show. After shower/breakfast/Bible reading/prayer, I got stuck into working on that, translating my notes from the last couple of weeks to MP3 files. The Samplemania round alone took several hours (15 songs in the space of one minute!) I might post it later so you can have a go; I don't think it's a breach in copyright to do so. One of the rounds—“Look what they've done to my song, ma!”—was scrapped because we realised it would be too hard for Ben to play “Amazing Grace” on what we have affectionately dubbed The Vegetable (it's like a gourd recorder thing that Miriam gave to us once).

At quarter to six, we hopped in the car, armed with speakers, iPod, game list and refreshments, and drove to Ian's place where other MM staff gathered. We had very yummy pizza for dinner (by candlelight; we observed Earth Hour for all of 20 minutes but I don't know why) and then got stuck into the game. Samplemania kicked it off, with hilarious results (one team identified “Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin as “Song in School of Rock” by The Velvet Underground and another identified “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen as being on their Greatest Hits [well, I suppose it is ...]) Samplemania was followed up with Substitute (that's when players had to sing the songs we told them to but they had to use words from Matthias Media books), So You Think You Can Dance? round (at Anna's request) where they had to do the routine from “Thriller” as seen on Suddenly 30, Covers (we played them a number of different covers and they had to guess the song and who did the original; unfortunately we overreached with Joss Stone's “Fell in Love with a Boy” [don't people know it's a White Stripes cover???] and “Twilight” by Elliott Smith [sung by Sad Kermit. Warning: the YouTube video on that site is a bit obscene]), Cover versions (i.e. Pictionary) and then we finished it all off by making everyone sing “Deck the Halls” as covered by Twisted Sister on A Twisted Christmas. (Yes, really MM Spicks and Specks was about me getting to make my work colleagues do silly things and then laugh uproariously at them!)

Dessert followed the frivolity, then we helped clean up before going home.

Sunday 30/3/08

Today's task was the C.S. Lewis Today website (2008 conference stuff not yet live). I had to remember how I did everything two years ago, and then compile content. I worked on it all day and only stopped for lunch to watch tape