chance meetings

I randomly ran into the following people today:

- Mum
- Bronni Curd
- Luke Scandrett
- Laura (an old church friend of my ex Jess)
- Joel Riley
- Katherine Fitzmaurice
- Jaime Santibanez
- Vincy Li

That's a lot! Sure cool.

français

Je pense que tout le monde peut parler français meilleur que moi. :o(

ponderings of mr bite-me

I've renovated my other blog!

Bite-me & Angst has now become...

Ponderings of Mr. Bite-me

I'm going to use Ponderings of Mr. Bite-me for thoughts on theological, social, political, world, etc. stuff, specifically from the first-hand point of view of a semi-angsty twenty-something Christiain like myself. I've put a new post on there just now - my first venture into serious thought about something I've been observing. Please comment if you've got something to add... I'd love to hear from you!

It's kinda still going through the renovation, so the format may change, but the concept will stay the same.

Peace be with you :o)

doing nothing

It's amazing how much doing nothing can have a negative impact on your day.

I mean, usually when I'm talking about doing "nothing" I'm talking about sitting in front of my computer wasting time doing menial or useless things. Just like I did today. I spent about 3 hours trying to do something that I could have done in 15 minutes, had I known. ARGH!!! I have a love/hate relationship with my computer, but that's not reflected by the amount of time I spend on it.

No, in comparison, doing "nothing" would probably involve just sitting somewhere outside and pondering life and the things I see, and that's one of my favourite things in the world. I've been doing it a lot lately, particularly at night when it's cool, dark and serene. It's a salve for the busiest of minds - among which mine has an honorary life membership by virtue of the fact that it used to be but has gotten too slow and cluttered to be busy anymore.

Last night, had I been in Hollywood, I would have spotted a dead body floating in the bay, and would have calmly alerted the police while keeping an eye on it. I wasn't really in an excitable mood last night - probably would have just said "poor bugger" and kept pondering the reflections of the lights from the bridge. Well, maybe not, but that's what I felt like at the time. Actually, that scenario reminds me more of a British TV drama than a Hollywood movie.

What better thing to do when you've spent your day doing nothing than to write about nothing, hey? :o)

hollywood

If the events of Hollywood were the events of everyday life, then on my walk tonight I would have been wrapped up in a turtleneck jumper and not been cold. I would have sat by Blackwattle Bay for a few minutes, pondering my life and the events of the last few weeks with quiet confidence, before the girl of my dreams came and sat next to me and started a conversation. That conversation would have been short, concise, free from misunderstandings and would end in some kind of cautious romantic tension.

If the events of Jane Austen's novels were the events of everyday life, then it would have been the girl of my dreams who had gone for a walk tonight, despairing that I would never return after she called me a pompous arsehole and wishing she were able to undo what she had done. And lo, I would come walking out of the shrubbery and tell her how ardently I admire and love her, et cetera, and then I'd walk with her back to her house and ask her father for her hand.

Novels and Hollywood films are not accurate depictions of life.

My dream girl (with whom I would never have any problems - isn't that what everyone means?) probably doesn't exist. Even if she does, she didn't meet me tonight. And if she had, the conversation would have been quite sparse, allowing plenty of time to ponder the lights from Anzac Bridge reflecting from the water in the bay, shifting slowly with the ebb of each tiny wave. It would most certainly not have ended in cautious romantic tension, because I would tell her that my emotional state is to fragile right now - that I need time to rest, and to refocus my life, perhaps for the very first time, away from the ideals of romance. And nothing would change... the cold night air would remain on my skin; the futility of ill-trained thought would have little chance for escape or correction; somehow, I would still feel lonely.

Forgive me, I'm very tired and hardly thinking straight.

back home

I got my comp working again :o)

I've realised, though, that I don't really need my computer as much as I'd thought. For instance, right now I'm going to go and enjoy the cool night air, and let my emotions be soothed by the calm of the bay, and I'm really going to enjoy it.

Do any of you, my readers, if you exist, have any favourite non-technological relaxations you'd like to share?

foreign correspondence

My computer is currently having the poos. Many of them.

You see, because I have an external CD drive, it's hard for me to do a clean re-install of Windows. When I finally made some progress in this regard, I got as far as formatting my hard drive (for those who don't know, this is basically erasing everything on the drive), and there was an error with some installation file on the CD. Not happy. So now I have a completely empty hard drive. I would happily just try again, but I have an Upgrade version of Windows, and you need an old version of Windows to upgrade from. My old version of Windows is now in data heaven, and it ain't coming back, so I have to borrow one. I am remembering why it is that I'm not going into a computer-related profession.

So, due to this fiasco, I'm blogging from Sydney Uni's Best Kept Secret Access Lab*. Hence the title.

I went paintballing on Saturday... sooo much fun!!! I loved working as a team to achieve an objective of some kind, and particularly working with a smaller sub-team to take care of each other, providing covering fire and working forward while being each other's auxiliary pairs of eyes. Oh the rush... hiding behind a wall of tyres and shooting someone who thinks the gap between the two barrels they're crouching behind isn't wide enough for someone to shoot through... lying behind a barricade and looking across the field, seeing your teammates lying in the long, south-Asian-looking grass picking off enemies across the creek... running through trenches between earth mounds and hiding just behind them while looking around the corner and trying to pick off the enemy hiding around the corner of another mound... Pity it's so expensive, or I'd do it heaps.

I'm tired, so I'm going home.

*No, I'm not going to tell you what I'm talking about.

orange juice

I mostly use orange juice for its medicinal qualities. It has stacks of vitamin C in it, so whenever I get a sore throat, that's where I go. I've also got an ingrained sense that sensations of stinging are produced by something good acting forcefully against something bad, and its acidity lends itself quite well to that mentality. Right now, I'm sipping a wineglass of pulp-filled orange juice, because I feel awful. I've got a sore throat, a temperature, no energy and I've taken the day off uni (my one hour of it today) because I couldn't stand the thought of it and my head hurts too much.

For some reason I just felt like I should blog.

I've been listening to a recording of C.S. Lewis' novel The Screwtape Letters, read by John Cleese. It's great :o) It's also pointing out many areas of my life that are out-of-shape - the most prominent of these being prayer, contentedness and the purpose of marriage/relationships. It's quite a journey at times, doing my head in completely.

For instance, one point he made was that while we are lead to believe that the future is for the taking, and that you should reach out and grab the future with both hands, and as such the future is something which only hero-like characters tend to attain - well, the future is coming to all of us, "at a rate of sixty minutes every hour", whether we fuss over it or not! When I heard this, suddenly what Jesus said about not worrying about tomorrow made a little more sense to me. It's totally unnecessary to worry about tomorrow, not only because God's going to provide all that you need for tomorrow, but also because all that He has planned for you tomorrow will happen! Only He knows what that is, but so what? If He's going to give you what you need to deal with it anyway, why worry? So there's a 100% certainty that some kind of future will be your present before much time has passed, and there's also a 100% certainty that you don't have to worry about it.

Now to someone who doesn't like change, those numbers are pretty darn encouraging, so I should let go of that petty fear and just take care of what's happening in the present with what God's provided for it.

It also states a good case for why we should be content in all circumstances. If God thought you were lacking anything that you really need at any point in time, He would give it.

He tells us that if we lack anything, we only need ask and He will give. This almost seems like a stop-gap! But it isn't really. God is aware of our needs even before we are, but I think often God withholds some things because our need for strengthened reasoning and strengthened faith is greater than our need for what we're asking for. So, when we see something we lack (not want, mind you - different kettle of fish), we reason that God is good, that God has said He would give if we ask, and then we make our reason grow courageous - we ask in faith that God would give that thing which we lack. How gloriously merciful is God to make a mechanism like that - that in one process He calls to our minds His goodness, He grows us in Reasoning and its big brother Faith, and He gives us what we need to live in the day He's given us. He's taking care of more of our needs that we're even aware of at the time.

And so we come full circle! If God's taking care of what we're not even aware of, why worry about what we are aware of?

music

Actually, I just love music. I love relaxing to Beethoven or jazz. I love banging on the steering wheel of my car to some awesome rock song. I love thrashing a guitar to let off steam. I love the way that music can make a less-than-ordinary piece of poetry come to life.

In life, I guess some things are bound to change. Some things come, and some things go. Nothing is certain but God, and nobody but He knows His next moves. I wish this were an easier thing for a mere human such as myself to understand. I wish the changes that He makes in my life were easier to deal with. I would just love for life to be easy and simple and still rich and beautiful, but that just doesn't seem to be the way it is. I guess you learn to predict the patterns and to guess what's around the next corner, but you're never certain and it doesn't make it much easier - just gives you more time to brace yourself.

Why isn't it raining today?

I guess it's because there's more to the world than me.

i love beethoven...

Nuff said.

global warming

I was talking to a friend yesterday and we stumbled across a disturbing trend that could significantly affect the rate of global warming - vegetarianism.

As the number of vegetarians increases, the number of cows, pigs and sheep left unslaughtered due to reduced demand would increase. Until these animals die from old age, the flatulence from these animals would cause a sharp increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere above developed countries, where vegetarianism is more common. If current global warming theories are correct, this could increase the rate of global warming beyond previous predictions.

Your planet needs you... don't become a vegetarian!

N.B. My sincerest apologies to all of my vegetarian friends, who are in all likelihood far healthier than I am!

underground

unseen
below i lie
waiting
watching
silent cry
wearing down
breaking down
tearing down
never found
always there
never sound
always where?
underground
underground
underground
deep deep down
underground

day of O

EU O'Day was today, and it was good :o) As I really didn't do much today, all I can say is that the tour was good, Anderson Stuart has a sick courtyard, being a fourth year is great because you get to choose what you want to do, and there are some pretty great first years coming to EU Science this year! And that's really what it's all about hey.

I think the first part of this year may be interesting in that the people who I hang with will be different - either younger or just from different faculties of the EU or both. I think that may be the story of the rest of my arduous *cough* i mean excitingly long uni career.

In other news, I just made a sunshield for my computer. I wish I could draw and colour stuff well...

I think God is great, in that He is so gracious as to stoop down and fix up our tiny little problems when He knows how great our other problem is - I guess He is even more gracious in that He's already taken care of that one :o)

changes

Over the last few days I've been contemplating many things, and one of these is that life changes. Many things happen in life to bring about changes in who you are, who you know and what you do, and often there are times when lots of things change all at once. A number of things have changed in my life recently - I might share some of them with you.

1. Changed name - I'm taking on my mother's maiden name as my surname. This is just basically so my future family doesn't have to endure what I and the rest of my family have. It's really weird and is taking a while to get used to. Guess you could say I've had a Hart transplant :o)

2. Changed friendships - the intricacies of which I won't divulge to the whole world (eeek...). God is good - for better or for worse in all of it, blessed be the name of the LORD.

3. Changed house - I'm further into Glebe now.

4. Changed staple diet - I've moved on from sausages and noodles to pasta and pasta sauce with cheese mixed through, with or without sausages as well. It's healthier, but still isn't heaps great.

5. Changed hair - I got my first professional haircut since May 2004 - that's right, over two and a half years. It's short, but not too short. The kind of short that you don't have to worry about much, but which you can do just enough with when you go out.

6. Changed observation - it's becoming clear that the way I see the world is changing for the worse. At least, my capability to see the worst is increasing. Sometimes this leads to awareness; sometimes it leads to pessimism.

...and there are others.

I never really have liked change all that much. It's just interesting to see how things that change can affect so much of life. Any thoughts?

P.S. My venus fly trap has one healthy-looking new leaf growing on it :o)

venus fly loser

My venus fly trap, mentioned in an earlier post where I mentioned my botanical aspirations, is in a bad way. It has two non-rotten traps, neither of which will shut even when you stick something in them. There are a number of new traps sprouting from it, but I don't know whether the poor thing has the stamina to grow them at the moment. I guess time will tell...

If it survives, I'm going to call it Percival.