Well, it's been over two weeks now and I still haven't been called in for work. Me thinks I'm out of a job, which is okay, it lasted a bit longer than I thought it would. Four weeks to be exact, from October 22nd to November 12th, 2008...that is, unless I get called in, but the chances of that are pretty nil.
But enough about my unemployment. During my employment I encountered a lot of mail, thousands a day actually and when dealing with that much mail, you're bound to stumble upon interesting letters here and there. One type of mail we sorted through were the Return To Sender (RTS) mail, basically the mail that doesn't get delivered, and winds up back to us. We usually sort through RTS when we're done with proper mail, so RTS became our work when work was done work, and I usually took my time to do it, looking at names and such when I felt like it and the inner childish boy within me had a giggle with some of the names, which I tried to take photos of, but they all came out blurry, such is the pain of a bad camera on a phone! So I'll just type down the names I happened to see.
Mrs Joanne Lisa Fullalove
Julie Gay Styles
Fleur Laninazzo (It just sounds cool)
Chika Maree Emeach (Bully's would have a field day with Chika)
William Whitehead
Mahadevan Venkataraman & Kalyani Venkataraman (Those aren't even names)
Mr Robert Freak (Freak-out!)
Most of the RTS we got were from Australia, but some of them were from overseas, which must've taken quite a bit of effort to return them. There was mail from London, Hong Kong, Japan, America, and Netherlands. Then there are cheques that we send out, but become RTS. Those are fun to look at to see how much money people aren't getting. Most of the cheques are for a few hundred dollars but these are the two extremes that I've seen.
The paper for this cheque costs more than this guy is not getting!
I also saw cheques for 5 cents and 2 cents even, can you imagine the excitement someone would get when they open the mail to see a cheque for them only for it to be made to the sum of $0.02.
Just incase its too blurry for you, thats $10,557! This guy will definitely want to call up to fix his address because thats a lot of money to miss out on!
Lastly there's the mail that we aren't supposed to get, as they've been delivered to the wrong place. We just put them in a seperate tray for it to be re-delivered, hopefully to the right location. On my second day at work, I didn't realise this and proceeded to open the letter, and discovered an iTunes gift card for $40 I think it was, suffice to say I was told off for opening mail that didn't belong to us. So I learnt from that mistake. However, when we use machines to cut up the envelopes, they usually cut them open irregardless of whether they're for us or not, and therefore we get to have a peek inside. One particular letter that provided amusement was addressed to this person...
How it wound up here I don't know, but I'm glad it did, because it was hilarious. Especially when we looked inside...
A wish list! A kid who wants Miley Cyrus stuff and a kid who wants books, generic books with no specific name! I should've taken a picture of it too but right under the Santa colouring was written "I love you Santa very much!", I'd like my kids to be able to do the same, except replace Santa with Daddy, Mummy or Jesus.
I'm assuming this note was meant for us, which was nice, and we left it on the table side for people to look at as they walked past. Ironically, this note came on the day that I was told I didn't need to come in anymore because the workload had died down. So it was a great day, in a bittersweet kind of way.
You're probably wondering why I haven't blogged in a while, well wonder no more because I have the answer to that question! The answer is in the title, I've got a job now and thats been taking a bunch of my time, more than half of my day actually, which is ludicrous, so I'm just going to go on a riff now. *tunes guitar*
My last post about my unfortunate work mishap, but the next week on the Tuesday (day of Passion) I got a call from work asking if I could start the next day, which I said I could. It didn't help that Passion ended at 11pm and I arrived home at 1am, needing to wake up at 5am, giving me 4 hours sleep, so I didn't look too great for my first day at work.
Basically the job at Link Market Services involves opening up mail for our shareholder clients and sorting them into trays for our companies. So its a very repetitive, pretty much mindless job and I'm alright with that because its a temporary job, lasting a few weeks. How many weeks exactly is unknown at this point, it seems that it'll end when a bulk of the mail stops coming in, as this time of year is apparently busy with mail, hence the need for casuals.
Now to break up observations by points, for easier reading because I write too much.
- When I applied for my job at Datacom I didn't know I would be working for Telstra, so it was a suprise that when working for Link Market Services I started off opening mail for Telstra.
- I work from 7am till 5pm, with a 15 break at 8:30am, then lunch at 12:30pm, so in a day I get paid for 9.5 hours of work, if I take a 30 minute lunch break. Money is good, so I usually aim for 30 minute breaks.
- Waking up at 5am, then getting home at around 6pm means more than half my day is dedicated to work, whether its actual work or travel.
- Unlike most people who just go home, I still have (BJJ, Kickboxing) training after work, so I don't go home after work, I head straight to training and then get home at 9pm, shower, eat then sleep, so I'm not getting very much sleep at all. My panda eyes are going to become permanent at this rate.
- At work we have cool letter opening machines, I'll need to grab videos of them in action at some point.
- Most of the people at work are Filipino, so that's all I hear all day, with a bit of Cantonese and Mandarin thrown in, then there's English too.
- We work in a distribution centre which is despite being on level 8, is still underground, so I don't see sunlight until lunch time, and if I've brought my lunch I don't see sunlight until I finish work. I feel like a vampire.
- If I'm opening letters and not sorting them then I can close my eyes and do it for a while, gotta get as much shut eye as possible!
I have no idea when this job will end but I'll continue to work the 5 days a week until it ends, and at this point I've heard another 2 or so weeks. No sleep and no play make David go something something...
As requested by Dewey Griffin
On the 12th of September, over a month ago now, I engaged in a friendly fight with my friend Andrew Ha, to those who don't know him, he's 2-3 years younger than me, weighs something around 20 kgs heavier than me, and is built like a tank. To those that know me, I'm skinny, lightweight and built like a twig. So agreeing to a fight like this probably wasn't the smartest thing to do, but in the spirit of fun I decided to take the fight, knowing I'd lose eventually, it was just a matter of when and how.
Being so long ago I don't remember the fight from start to finish in immense detail but I'll point out what I remember in a hindsight kind of way. Just incase you didn't know, I lost. (OMGOSH SPOILER)
In hindsight I should've warmed up a bit before fighting, if only to get my body ready for a beating, but I didn't, but I don't think Andrew did much either.
Our fight had the rules of no headshots, no elbows and to go 100% because thats what Andrew wanted, and we wore MMA gloves, which are smaller than boxing gloves, and thus would hurt a bit more. We started off standing, trading shots with Andrew getting the better of me, despite my long arms, I'm still hesisitant to close the distance to get my shots in, something that will come to me more so if I keep sparring, which I rarely do these days.
At some point I get taken down, so I pull guard, wrapping my legs around Andrew, to keep him from raining down punches on me, but he still managed to do so, and in the heat of the moment punched me in the face. In hindsight, I should've wore my mouthguard, but silly me I believed in the no headshot rule, but didn't forsee accidental shots occuring. So we paused for a minute so my face could heal a bit, and I could regain composure before starting in the same position again. Prior to Andrew's punching of my face he was trying to break my legs by standing up, so I knew that he would go for it again when we started back in the same position. I used this to my advantage and swept him by pulling his legs causing him to fall on his bottom, and I tried to get on top to gain a better position, however we scrambled and he got back up and we were standing again.
Once again standing, Andrew got the better of me, pulling off a good combo, getting me in the shoulder and body with his very hard shots. Each time he came at me with a flurry of punches I'd end up retreating, bumping up against his fence at his home. Eventually this bumping up against the fence worked against me even more so, slipping and thus lowering my body one of Andrew's punches got me in the face again. Not feeling too good at all, copping two headshots I felt like stopping, as my head was spinning a bit, and my mouth was quite sore. But I kept persisting, seemingly wanting to lose properly. After my break we punched on again, trying some kicks at some point but to no avail, I eventually get taken down again, but fail to pull guard, finding myself in side control, and eventually mounted by Andrew. I instantly try to bridge and roll him over, but that didn't work, then kept holding him down, so he couldn't punch me anymore, but being much stronger than me I could only hold him for so long before he broke my grip and started punching again. I then held him down again, by this time I was very tired and wanted to give up, so I decided to hold on until he broke my grip and started punching me to then say "I give up". In hindsight I should've tried to bridge and roll him over or attempt an elbow escape on more time but I was too tired, and all the odds seem to go against me. I realised throughout the whole fight I wasn't going 100% like Andrew wanted, I'm never a person to punch someone 100% without a good reason to, so while Andrew's punches to me were painful thuds, my punches to him would've felt quite light I imagine, thats just how I fight I suppose.
After giving up I realised my lip was bleeding, so that wasn't great, but wasn't anything I hadn't experienced before. I had a minor bump under my eye, that was quite unnoticeable unless you stared at me, and bruises on my body from the body shots courtesy of Andrew Ha. That brings my unnofficial fight record to 1-1, and it looks like it'll stay that way for a long while.
A few months of solid kickboxing training should help my form and confidence in attacking, rather than trying to counter punch. They say you always learn after a loss, and if anything I've confirmed what I've pretty much known before but suprised myself in a few ways.
After essentially bludging a chunk of this semester I finally got a call back from one of the numerous jobs I applied for, for a mailroom clerk role at Links Market Services, lasting roughly three weeks. I had the assessment interview on Monday and that went over well, with a call later in the day saying I got the position and would start on Wednesday, 7am.
7am, in the city, Ernst and Young building, that requires a wake up time of at least 5am and training catching time of at least 6am but I was willing to do it for a temporary amount of time just to get some work and money. I was told the department I was to work for would call me on the Tuesday but for some reason they didn't, I didn't think too much about it at the time but in hindsight, it would've been good to think about it a bit longer.
So today I wake up at 3am, sleep, then 4am, sleep then 5am, wake up. I have a habit of waking up earlier than the intended wake up time if I've got something on the next day, which has its pros and cons, the con being I could've gotten another hour of undisturbed sleep but time goes on and you can't waste it. I got to the Ernst & Young building at 7am, got into the elevator and pressed 11 and 12, none of them lit up, proving my intuition right, that I needed a swipe card to get up. I told the security guard but he couldn't swipe me in on account of "I don't know who you are" but told me to wait until 8am or until I saw someone I recognised who could swipe me in. Not knowing anyone made the latter option quite impossible so I sat on the couches and waited. Half an hour later the security guard told me to hitch a ride with someone who was going up to my level, so I did.
Got to level 11, and saw that there were two door thingies with the swipe, of which neither I could get into, so I was stuck. Fortunately a lady got off on the level and I told her my plight of being a new employee, she swiped me to level 12 and we waited for the receptionist who wasn't there. So we went to find her, I sat and waited around, reading some HRM magazine. Eventually the HR lady I saw on Monday came out and apologised for the wait and said someone from my department would see me soon. Five or so minutes later a lady came and apologised, saying that I "shouldn't be starting today", and there was a "miscommunication between HR and their department", and basically told me to go home. Living an hour away, I had wasted my morning, my very, VERY early morning...
Lesson to be learned - Always wait for the call, or call to confirm, either way don't waste $9.20 for nothing, that's a lunch, or a bunch of lollies!
After four and a half years of transferring Universities, transferring courses and transferring my career goals I have finally done the deed of graduating, something I probably could've done a year or a semester earlier had I known what I wanted to do, and was smart enough to not fail a few subjects (but lets not dwell on that part), but I suppose all that played a part to get me to where I am now, jobless and still in need of study to achieve my career goal.
Onto the day at hand, that handed me my degree, with high degree weather, and what a day it was!
I didn't really tell anyone about my graduation thing, mainly because I'm not the type of person who wants to celebrate anything to do with me, which may seem ironic with me having this blog to make an account of all things to do with me, but I guess that's just the way I am. Since I didn't tell anyone about my graduation I therefore didn't invite anyone to my graduation, except for the obligatory family and girlfriend. Girlfriend!? Yeah, someone I've been meaning to blog about but haven't done as yet, but will eventually, so the little blurb is her name is Rose, she's a Christian, not married, not divorced, not a blood relative and is female.
I set my alarm for 9am, but woke up a lot earlier, at around 5am or so, something I've had a habit of doing lately, but then fell back asleep knowing I didn't need to wake up so early. At 9am my alarm went off, I turned it off and laid in bed with my eyes closed, hoping this would help restore all my energy and make me less tired. I played Muse's "Falling Away With You" to help me start my day and got up, got ready, shaved and showered, which is important for photos and events such as your graduation and soon enough the rest of the family got ready. Left the house at 10:40am or so and headed for Rose's house, picked her up and continued our drive. While in the car I got handed a gift from Rose, wrapped in tissue paper, the fancy kind, and wrapped with tape, the double stick kind.
Now what could that be?
Trying to open up a gift wrapped with tissue paper and double stick tape in the cleanest way possible is nigh impossible and ripping was to be done, and it was done good, and what was inside was very very awesome indeed. Coming off my first BJJ competition win there were official photos taken, which I took off the site and was content to have the low quality versions, but Rose, is her sweet wisdom bought the photos and framed the one of me with my hand raised in victory. The frame is very very fancy and apparently costs a lot. I spent the rest of the drive up holding the frame and marveling at how someone could be so awesome (Rose, not me).
How awesome is that!
We then headed to the city, specifically, Market City, for parking. We had Yum Cha at the restaurant on the third level which was also eventful. I almost had my lap burnt due to spilt tea, courte
sy of Rose but reacted fast enough to avoid the tea getting my lap and it hit the chair instead. I switched chairs, which was later sat on by someone else, but I think it had dried up by then as the person didn't react like I wanted them to when they sat down.
Yummy-cha
It was just after 1pm when we finished eating and I needed to get to the University to register and get my academic dress on to look like a person who was graduating. Leading to the graduation I had a fairly 'meh' attitude to it all, and didn't know anyone who was graduation as well as I had pretty much no friends in university. But lining up for my academic dress and registration I spotted a guy who I met in my first or second semester back in 2005 and somewhat befriended but hadn't spoke to since, and things hadn't change all that much. I was then fitted into my academic dress, gown or robe, whichever you want to call it, then further adjustments were made by my mum with pins to make my gown more cool looking, then the pictures began, we took our shots, then let the professionals take their shots, which I'll purchase later when they're out. A good thing about my graduation was that it allowed for us to take a family photo, something we hadn't done in a loooong time, so that was good indeed!
Being a graduate!
Fast forwarding along, we took more pictures, then headed for the hall place, to get graduated, I sat between two people I recognised over the years at UTS so we chatted a bit during the ceremony, which was long. I was in the third last row to have my name called and it sure took a while to get my name called that I passed the time by playing around with the camera overlooking the crowd, making faces and what not, hoping that when I watch the DVD of the ceremony for the first and last time I'll be able to be amused by my own antics. Eventually our row was called up and the nerves kicked in, with new shoes on which were quite slippery I was afraid of slipping as I walked to shake the lady's hand. My name was called, I tipped my hat to him, something I was practicing while waiting and walked over to the lady to shake her hand, on the way, and forgot to look at the camera as a picture was taken, it'll be interesting to see what that picture looks like, if I ever get to see it. I was then handed my degree thing and then walked back to my seat. Heard a speech from a former UTS student, and then left, heading for the refreshments to refresh ourselves. Which was packed with people, so moving around was tough, and getting to refreshments was tougher, but we managed.
Graduated!Unfortunately, the whole throwing our hats into the air as a group could not be done as it is deemed a potential hazard so we had to resort to doing it by ourselves. With the wonders of the continuous shot function we were able to capture this pretty well with nice results.
However, a second throw, with the plan to throw higher didn't prove too well with the high winds that day...
After mucking around more, taking random photos and the like I had to return my gown and revert to being normal David again. As normal David we all went shopping, Rose got shoes, I carried the shoes and then we had dinner at Wagaya I think was the name, which had cool touch screen ordering menus, which my brother and sister had fun with, ordering all our meals. Following the graduation dinner we walked around Chinatown, as they had their Friday Night Markets open, Rose and I wandered up and down, then found a spot to sit and relax while waiting for my parents to finish shopping. We were called to the Y2K place for dessert, so all that walking helped get dinner digested and our bellies ready for more. Rose and I shared a mango pudding and green tea icecream thing. Rose thought it fun to give the pudding a face, before we devoured his smiling face.
After dessert we went home, to end what was a tiring, yet enjoyable day.
Having finished university some months back the whole graduation excitement was lost on me, but being there on the actual day made it cool. Now I have the next phase of my life to look forward to, which involves more study with a Masters degree which I better get in to. The weather was alright, and being indoor most of the time was fine, and rain didn't happen until late into the night, and by then I was safe at home. So that's one graduation down, hopefully another to go, let's see where life take me, hopefully to a place called Home...
Today was my first Brazilian Jiu Jitsu competition that I have participated in so far, and it was quite an experience indeed. I was originally going to enter a competition a month earlier but fell sick during the week and didn't feel physically ready to compete, that and I didn't really have $50 to pay for the competition. Then along came this competition, run by our trainers and they really encouraged us to compete so I figured this would be the best time to start my BJJ competition career.
I decided to enter in the under 61kg adults division, which was the lowest weight division possible, and I knew I was pretty light from all my Wii Fit sessions so I knew I would be able to make weight just fine. However, it wasn't until the last week that I re-weighed myself and found I was over the 61kg weight limit by a few kilograms, leaving me worried. Fortunately there was a 3kg allowance because of my Gi that I wear, so I could weigh up to 64kg. So I tried to eat a little less before the Sunday, and that didn't really help that I had a birthday party to go to last night, I didn't expect a lot of food but there was tonnes of food, and good food to boot but I didn't eat much. Anyways, all that worrying was for naught because I weighed in at 62kg this morning, and my Gi weights 1.6kg, so I was fine.
We (my brother and I) got to the venue all the way in Five Dock, to Five Dock Leisure Centre, which I had never heard of before, and I'm sure neither you have, but all you need to know is that it's far away and my sense of misdirection kicked in and we got lost for a little bit.
OH! We also got to find out who we are wrestling against the night before online and how many people are in our divisions. And my division consisted of two people, David Ung, and some guy named Jerome from some club called Boxing Works. So basically, if I beat this guy, I win gold and can claim victory over my weight division! Or just victory over this one guy, but I digress...
We got to the venue, signed in and watched our friends fight in the kids/teen division, of which two of our club members were in. They both won handily and came first for their respective divisions, raising the bar in the process. After the kids got out of the way it was time for the adults to roll. I thought my match would've been first but nope, it was going to be later, after the more bigger divisions wrestled their matches.
So I watched other matches, like my brothers, in the 61-67kg division, he ended up losing to a cuff choke, and in the end lost to the guy that came first in the division. Other club members won and lost as well but since you don't know them I won't talk about them for your sake. Eventually it was soon time for my match and I didn't know whether to be nervous or excited or both or neither but in the end I didn't feel either, I was just lost and somewhat ready.
My brother recorded the match, and was more into watching the match than recording the match so excuse his cinematography, we should've brought a tripod but oh well, at least I got my first match on camera. For those who don't know anything about BJJ (which I think is most of you hybridites) I'm willing to record a commentary over the video so you have an idea of whats going on, and there's a few things I'd like to point out but can't be bothered to do in text form because it'd be weird, but I'll only do it if I get a substantial amount of interest from you, and a good microphone I suppose.
But for now, watch, enjoy, and try to understand whats going on.
Triangle choke finish!!
Just incase you didn't know, I won the match and hence became number one in my division, continuing the Gold Standard for SPMA (our club). I was so lost in the fight that I forgot to put my mouth guard on, and ended up leaving in my Gi, and it fell out when I won and stood up, which suprised both my brother "what the hell!?" and I. After the match I was so tired, and basically collapsed, my legs were dead from the triangle choke and my arms were gone from all the pulling and controlling my opponent, even now my forearms are still dead tired, if I stretch or put pressure on them it just burns! You can see how tired and lost I am in the video, but happy to have won, and in a convincing fashion no less!
I was so tired I couldn't open the cap to my bottle at times, it was hilariously bad. But at the same time was a lesson in conditioning, I've got to work on my conditioning so that next time there are more than one person to fight I won't be so darn tired if I make it past the first round. I've also got to work on my arm and leg strength too, so they don't tire out so fast. I also suffered a little injury too, at some point during the match my foot got cut, presumably by his toe nail or something. Which is another injury to add to the list of my injuries (yay).
The cut without the blood
At somepoint our club members found the time to get together and take a group picture, which was cool, and was my first group picture as well, and helped make me feel more like part of the club, so going to competitions like these are great for building friendships!
Some of the group!
After a bunch of waiting through the other White belt matches, then blue belt matches, purple and brown belt matches it was time for the awarding of the trophies! Since my division was first I got to receive my trophy first, and it felt pretty great hearing my name after the words "First Place", I also got a pair of shorts too, that I can use for training, they likely cost over $50 so that pretty much paid for my $50 entry fee I'd say. Then I had to sit through all the other trophy winners, which took a while. But I got to talk to my opponent more, he had only been training for 5-6 months apparently, and I suppose like all people who have lost he requested a rematch, to which I replied with a hearty "Ha Ha".
As things wound down and people were leaving I got a picture with my club instructor and MMA fighter Anthony Perosh, I wanted one with our other head instructor Elvis Sinosic but he was busy talking and I was in a rush to get home and eat something, and that something turned out to be McDonalds in the form of a double quarter pounder burger.
So my BJJ career is off to a good start, with one win and no losses, and an earning of a pair of shorts, I'm on my way to becoming a champion! Can't wait for the next competition to burst my ego. (Don't worry, I don't think too highly of my win)
So awesome I don't need to look at the camera
Watching the television last night on one of those channels that have the news over and over, probably ABC or SBS there was some report about some nations joining forces or something, big stuff, but not big enough for me to remember the details BUT the one detail I remembered was seeing a person in the bottom corner doing sign language.
Which got my mind thinking, if two deaf people from two different countries (preferably with different languages) met each other, would they be able to communicate through sign language alone?
Someone find out for me, then we can both learn something interesting!
Sign language is something I wouldn't mind trying to learn, I already use my hands for many things, I might as well add another talent to my hands. And it'd be the one time I can talk with my mouth full without seeming rude or disgusting, unless I'm talking with food in my hands...
Over the last nine months now that I've been doing my Hybrid Martial Arts I've had my fair share of bumps and bruises as one would. And this blog is a list of the injuries I've had so far, with many more to come I would assume.
I remember after my first few weeks of training I discovered bruises on my arms while taking a shower, this would then become the start of a long string of injuries to all different parts of my body. Bruises soon disappear and no one ever sees my arms anyway, so I wasn't too worried about my bruises.
I've had cuts on my feet, and the ways I got them were quite weird, though I only remember one, which was from someone else while wrestling with them. Apparently, they somehow, using their toenail, assumingly on their big toe, dug it into my foot and cut it. Which I didn't feel at the time, until I looked at my foot and saw blood. But cuts heal pretty fast and didn't require major medical attention. I've also had a cut on my hand, which I've now forgotten how I got, except that I know it was from training.
My other toe injury was similar to my toe tombstone blog back in March, where my toenail bent backwards, except this time it was only the top part, so I was easily pushed back down and is currently healing itself. Must remember to keep my toenails cut short.
Other cuts included my elbows, the first time due to elbow training where we practiced elbow shots on a pad, to the point where it started to bleed, showing both my seriousness in training, and silliness at not knowing when to slow down. Those healed up eventually, but soon enough, getting thrown onto the ground during training, landing on my elbows and scraping them lead to scraped elbows, eventually leading to scabbed elbows. Those heal okay over time too.
Then there are cuts that matter, because they're seeable and generally don't look very pleasing. The only seeable cuts I've received were to my face, the lips to be exact. The first time it was cut was when I was wrestling a rather aggressive person, who I've continued to wrestle, despite my not wanting to wrestle him at times. At some point I was on my back, and he was on top, he came down with an elbow to do a move and must've mistimed or something and instead came down with the elbow to my face, specifically my mouth. He looked up and said "You're bleeding!!", I touched my lips and saw a lot of blood, and got up to clean it out with water. Its quite amazing how much blood can be in your lip, my instructor took a look at it and said "It was alright", but then he would've seen much worse himself, I hadn't. But basically I had a piece of my lip skin hanging out, which stung when water was applied. That took a while to heal up.
Other occasions with a busted lip were of less drama, either me bumping into someone with my face, or them bumping into my face causing the lip to bleed. I've since started wearing a mouth guard to give my mouth a bit more protection and to protect my lips a lot more. Don't want to hurt my lips!
The other type of injury I've had are ones that no one can see, and only I can feel, those being that of pain. I've had both my arms stretched out a lot due to arm bars, possibly leaving my elbows to deteriorate slowly but surely, but most people are good with arm bars and won't crank my arm to the point of breakage. Though one time at training someone had their arm broken, resulting in a visit to the hospital.
I was once thrown onto my head, which hurt, a lot, and probably rattled my brain. So I try to be very cautious with takedowns and the like now. I've also hurt my pinky toe, due to a takedown where the guy was trying to take me down and I tried to stop it and post with my left foot, but it kinda got stuck and my pinky toe got stretched backwards, which hurt, a lot.
One submission we do a lot in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu are chokes, usually finding someway to constrict a person's breathing and causing them to submit. These are probably my favourite kind of submissions, but not favourite to receive and often after training, I would wake up the next morning with a sore neck due to the chokes I've received.
Last, but not the least is my most recent injury. One that I wanted to avoid since getting into this martial art, and that is cauliflower ear, which if you get a lot of, results in a pretty ugly looking ear, all puffed up and whatnot. The way you get this is if you suffer blows to your ears, or pressure put upon them, which can happen a lot during wrestling. I had always been careful, or at least tried to be careful and protect my ears as best as possible but at somepoint I developed a little 'lump' in my left ear, but it was very small and I thought it was nothing of concern, except that when I put pressure onto it, it would hurt. So sleeping on my left side was often difficult because of the lump. However, this got worse last night, after training, while I was at bible study I reached up to feel my left ear and felt what was a pretty substantial lump, at some point during wrestling I must've put a lot of pressure on my ear and the lump grew big. This lump, is basically a blood clot, so it was filled with blood, I didn't want it to hang around anymore or else it would've settled and I would've had a slightly fatter ear than my right ear, something I didn't want.
Today I went to see the doctor to get the blood drained out, which the doctor did, but only found there to be a little bit of blood inside, according to the doctor it'll take 10 days to heal, so I'll try to limit my physical activity over the next 10 or so days. Which is quite difficult, with a (un)friendly bout with Andrew Ha tomorrow and my third stripe grading on Monday for BJJ, followed by Thai Kickboxing grading on the Tuesday, and a BJJ competition that I want to enter at the end of the month, I'm going to have to protect my ears very well. I'm not a vain person, but I'd like to keep my facial area generally intact, not for my sake, but for yours, since you guys have to look at me from time to time.
My goodness it's been a while, a long while! There's so much to blog about and I've got so much time to do it, but too lazy to do so. But here we go, hopefully I'll be able to throw up everything my mind can remember from the last month or so. Lets roll out to get the lol out!
August 14th, Simon Ha's funeral service, which I shan't dwell on for too long, except that it was sad, but I'm very glad he accepted Christ as his Lord and Saviour in the end. After the funeral we went back to the Ha's house for what I like to call the after-funeral party, just because it was so laid back, with food and drink and socialising it just felt like a mini party. Anyway, in the previous few weeks there were talks of me fighting Dewey Griffin, who has been wanting to fight me for a while and what better time to fight than after a funeral. I accepted his challenge and we both took our shoes and socks off, got our fancy shirts off so they wouldn't get dirtied (I had a singlet type thing on underneath), got my gloves on and got ready. With a crowd of well dressed people I didn't want to look bad, but didn't know how things were going to work. I knew Dewey had flexibility of gymnastic proportions and could kick faster than I could punch, but I just didn't know how hard we were going to go...until he kicked me in the leg.
From then on it was basically me trying to punch him, but not in the head because of the no head shot rule, which I found hard because I was taller than him, and needed to reach lower to punch him, leaving me open to get kicked, which I got a lot of. Also, having not sparred in over a month I wasn't doing very good in the standup exchange, so if anything Dewey looked a lot better fighting me when we were trading kicks and punches.
After he axe-kicked me in the chest, which didn't hurt, but provided a nice thud to make the crowd go "oooh", I decided to try take the fight to where I would dominate, that is, the ground. So we took each other down, and ever so slippery like a snake Dewey managed to get on top, and mounted me and began raining down punches on my head, though lightly, the referee Adam stopped the fight as there were to be no headshots. I remembered at this time how tired I was, and how much I wanted to rest, the adrenaline must've got to me, but there was no rest to be had. With the intent to keep the fight on the ground I took off my gloves, no longer needing them, and so did Dewey, despite my telling him he didn't need to, but he didn't hear me. We locked up again and I found myself on my back, but this time I had Dewey in my guard, and in my legs were wrapped around him, protecting me from his attacks, this was where I worked best and due to his inexperience with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) I locked a Triangle hold on him, which was basically my legs wrapped around his head and one of his arms, choking him slowly, however it didn't seem to be on tight enough so I tried to go for an arm bar instead, but soon found that wasn't working (I haven't yet gotten an arm bar on anyone in training), I then attempted to transition to an Omoplata, which is a shoulder lock but having never really pulled the move off before Dewey squirmed out and we started again. Eventually we locked up and I caught Dewey in a Guillotine, which sounds like what it does, my arm was wrapped around Dewey's head with my forearm in his neck, my legs were wrapped around him and then I slowly began to tighten and pull, cutting off his head so to say, forcing the submission, and rendering us both extremely tired. I got up and found a cut on my arm, most likely from rolling onto the concrete, which was nothing really. My other elbow suffered a grazing, which was a bit more painful, especially when you apply water to it, you know the feeling.
So I won in the end, in what was a fun fight. And now I face my next challenge, that being Andrew Ha, where I feel I have a losing chance, if only because he has the strength advantage. It's such a shame I never got to wrestle with Simon Ha though, because that was something I really wanted to do at some point, but I guess that'll have to wait until we get to heaven. In the mean time, his brothers will do.
Last Sunday, the 10th of August, the children's ministry at our church, SonRise held our latest Evangelistic Event, meaning an event for the kids aiming to tell them about Jesus.
The event itself started with a cold morning, at the school across the road from our church so we were all shivering while setting up each game, which were bean bag throwing (skill), running (speed), quiz (mind), balancing challenges (balance) and lastly cup-stacking (team).
At 9am we started, and kids started trickling in, we broke them up into groups, so we had a blue group, red group and yellow group.
One thing we found is that holding events early means that kids take a while to arrive, but once they arrived it was all good. Prior to this event we did a lot of advertising, and it paid off with a few new kids coming which was awesome indeed, and they looked like they had fun too, which was even better.
We had planned for running each game for 10 minutes but some games ended up running a bit longer, and because of our time flexibility we just allowed them to stay on each game a little bit longer, and scrapped our cup-stacking game, saving it for another time.
But of the games we did have, I think bean-bag throwing was the most popular, if only to watch the kids try and aim beanbags into a hoola hoop. Relay was good to get the older kids tired, but kids these days recover pretty quickly so they weren't tired for too long.
Following our Olympic games we headed into the school hall for the talk, done by yours truly, and a puppet originally name Donny, by my sister, and then renamed Sonny, pronounced Sunny, by Lisa S, because it fits the SonRise thing.
I decided to try and do the whole ventriloquism thing, which I think worked pretty well, originally Sonny's voice was going to be more squarky like a parrot but 20 minutes of practicing the voice destroyed my throat, the voice I ended up on kind of came out of nowhere when I was practicing so I don't know how to describe it, other than 'easy on the throat'.
The talk itself I think went alright, trying to stay inline with the Olympic theme I talked about a race, and how in the Bible if we run the race and win, we get a crown, that gives eternal life. The passage below was where most of my talk influence came from.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27 (New International Version)
24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
25Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. 27No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.
So how do we get this crown that gives eternal life, lasting forever? Well, we have to trust in someone, and who that person is, is Jesus. We told this to the kids through a skit, which, due to my poor planning had me running up to people and enlisting their help, explaining their role to them in the morning. So big thanks to Julz, Wendy, Sylvia, Billy and Mr Patterson, who is always willing to help. The skit turned out well, involving the main character wanting to play Trust with people, Trust being the game where you fall back and someone catches you. Julz was the main character, and I was the narrator. With no rehearsals beforehand things were interesting, and it ended up being a combination of the characters working off my cues, and me working off their acting. After the skit I concluded my talk, getting the kids to acknowledge that we should trust Jesus, because he will catch us, more so, he will look after us, and give us salvation forevermore!
My attempt at ventriloquism After the talk we handed out ribbons to the winners, which took a loooong time, then ended with food, a lot of food, so much that I wish I was a kid and could stay around eating and eating, so I settled with 3 cups of jelly, which I ate during morning service at 11am.
Overall, the event was good, and is only just the beginning of the direction we want SonRise to head, with post-evangelism events the following two weeks, to ease the new kids into the way we normally do things. So big thanks to those that helped out and pray that the new kids that came will continue to come and find a new friend in Jesus, as he could possibly be the best friend you could ever want to have, water into wine, mass bread and fish, one-way ticket to Heaven? I'll follow that, and so should you!
Finally, after two years and a little bit of green P plates I've upgraded to the status of Full Licence, earning a nice yellow streak on my licence, and even better, a slightly decent looking photo of myself, more so than my other licences.No more plates, its all good. I'm now an adult! Check me out!
My sense of direction when walking has gotten slightly better as I am now more familiar with places where walking is required, such as the City, Cabramatta or my house. But now, my sense of misdirection has evolved, or devolved to my driving skills.
It's not that I'm bad with directions or anything, I feel I have pretty good direction skills, I can read a street directory just fine and can work my way out of where I am when I'm stuck. It's more my ego getting in the way of driving properly, leading me to unknown places.
When I'm driving with someone, I usually can rely on them to help navigate when I'm not sure where I'm going, and with the mass amount of slightly long distance driving I go on, I tend to rely on others than try to work out how to get to places myself, only because there are so many others who know the way, my services as a driver should be enough that I shouldn't take the role of a navigator too, though logically the driver should know where he is going, but I'm not always logical.
Often times I drive alone, whether it is a case of I'm going somewhere, or I've dropped someone home and have to make my wake home by myself. In slightly local areas I'm fine with where to go and how to get there but with other areas I'm in a suburban jungle, lost amongst the tree-houses and viney roads. I know that if ever I dropped someone off in the Bossley Park area I'd never find my way back home without a street directory. I have a bad habit of when I drop someone home, I would try to get home on instinct alone, and most times I do alright, because you just go back the way you came. Other times the road orientation changes, such as in Bankstown, and because I drive at night, it's even worse for me, and instinct alone usually finds me on the side of the street with my street directory out, trying to work out how to get back onto a main road.
Getting lost when I'm alone is bearable though, because it's only me that's getting lost, but when I'm with a passenger, not knowing where to go, the line, "I think it's this way" may not be the most comforting line to hear when you're driving about.
Some people would recommend a GPS to help guide you around, but my experience with them haven't been that great, mainly because they never go the way I want them too, and their instructions aren't very clear, "Bear right at the next turn", the first time I heard this I didn't know whether to turn right or to watch out for a bear, needless to say there was no bear, and I turned right, where upon the GPS scolded me and told me to go back, not happy with their weird instructions I wanted to turn it off but doing so would've left me even more lost. I think the idea of following a machine's instructions turned me off from GPS's, that or the fact that I don't have my own GPS has turned me off from them.
The way my mind works is like a videogame's map of the area, it's all covered in fog, unseen to the eye, unseen until you reach the area and then the fog clears and you know the area and what is in it. Unfortunately, when you don't visit the area often, like a video game the fog consumes that area again, becomeing unknown to you, leaving you to go back to it to discover it again. Unlike a videogame, the changes in the area aren't so big like a new enemy base has emerged or a hoard of enemies have been waiting for you.
Either way, until I get a GPS, memorise a street directory or my road instincts severely improve I'll be relying on my passenger, the car leading infront of me or my already known street smarts to get to where I want to get to. Lets hope I don't get too lost on the way there.
Past Posts is going to be my way of archiving posts from a past blog that I'd like to keep, for fun, and for memories sake. Memories of how bad my writing was, and a reminder of how bad it is now. It also serves as a way to throw up an entry after a while when I'm too lazy to type something up.
Originally Posted 4th August 2005, it was during my first year at UTS, second semester, so I guess I didn't venture much out of uni during the first semester. But I guess it was the start of my getting to know the city better.
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Well, i've started Uni this week, 2 days a week yo! But ever since my first class on Tuesday its now bumped up to 3 days a week because i've got team meetings with the team. I'm a team player now, go A-Team fool!
So anyways, Tuesday i have 3 hour massive break and i decided to go on an adventure, the kind where you walk on your feet and look for stuff, good stuff! So with many hours to spare and no map in hand and no knowledge of my way around the city besides that short walk from the train station to the University off i went! Just as a beginning i wanted to get to Town Hall okay? okay? okay.
*Walk walk walk*
Oh, an intersection! Which way will i go? Town Hall seems like its this way, so off i go that way!
*Walk walk walk*
I see a sign, whats that it say? 100m till Martin Place station? What the hells a Martin Place? Martin Prince's home? Obviously this wasn't near Town Hall. Luckily i found a map on the sidewalk. YOU ARE HERE (complete with arrow)! Ohhh! So thats where Town Hall is, lets head in that direction!
*Walk walk walk*
I think i'm lost...
*Walk walk walk*
I know i'm lost when i look up and i see the CENTERPOINT TOWER RIGHT ABOVE ME. How i got here i have no clue. But anyways lets walk through it.
*Walk walk walk*
I've walked to England! Its the Queen Victory Building! Gotta keep walking! Change countries!
*Walk walk walk*
Somehow i ended up walking into Myers, but no time to look at plates and bras! I saw bras by the way, lots of them, so i ran. To the escalator! George Street! Why hello George, i recognise you, barely. So i follow George.
*Walk walk walk*
I see the Telstra building, which at the beginning of the adventure i marked as my way of saying "You are near the uni if you see this building" So since i can see it, i must be near my University! So i head towards it.
*Walk walk walk*
Liverpool Street! I have a suburb near where i live with the same name as you! You must be related! Oh, and whats this? Comic Kingdom? Huzzuh!
The geek inside me (which incidentally is pretty much all of me) smiles with glee and enters. I look around for comics (duh) and end up buying Countdown to Infinite Crisis, only $2! I'd collect the rest but i want to wait until it all comes out in a pack. Comic Book Guy gives me change and off i went again.
*Walk walk walk*
I end up back at Uni, eat lunch (SUSHI) and go to class. My legs are tired. So what do i do? I do it all again the next day. I end up finding the other Comic Book store through sheer luck and best exploration skills and spot the Sony Centre! Complete with nobody in the gaming section, except for the register dude/person/man who was bored out of his mind. Like i was when i stepped in.
And somehow amongst all the walking, i never did find Town Hall station thing. But then again, i didn't try now did i?
-----------------------------------------------------------Reflective thoughts time! Only because I can and want to.
Three years later and I know the city a little better, its interesting to now realise I walked seemingly around Town Hall, completely missing it. But its also sad to realise that after three years my knowledge of the city only goes up to Pitt Street and the Centrepoint Tower, I haven't had time to walk past there to find out whats out there, mainly because there doesn't look like anything too interesting. Also interesting is my sense of misdirection still lingers, but has grown out into other things besides walking, but that'll be a sequel, three years in the making now.
You might be thinking why write about a movie for, isn't that like reviewing a movie? Well, technically yes, but in the case of The Dark Knight, it's an experience, an epic event, and when its The Dark Knight at IMAX, it's a moment in ones life. 16th of July 2008 is the date, IMAX at Sydney is the location, The Dark Knight is the movie.
Just so you know, I'm a huge Batman fan, so this will be very much a biased review, if it does end up sounding like a review in the end. How huge a fan? Well, that explanation would take up another blog, so I'll save that for another time.
In preparation for this movie, I didn't do much preparation at all, I didn't watch any trailers, read any articles, look up pictures and whenever the commercial turned up on television, I'd change the channel, all just to give myself a completely Bat-free until I watched the movie. Heath Ledger dying didn't help as any news reports of him often played footage from the movie, but I pulled through and went to see the movie with no knowledge of very much except who was in the movie and comic book references for the movie.
All I knew was Joker was the main bad guy, Sal Maroni was the mob boss this time and Harvey Dent would be around doing his DA thing. Knowing the Killing Joke was the reference comic book for the Joker's character and The Long Halloween was the reference for the mob boss side of the story I had a rough idea what the movie was about anyway, having read them before.
But even then, nothing could prepare me for the awesomeness of the movie, especially on IMAX, which a few scenes for filmed specifically for. So a concern with the switch between IMAX and traditional footage lingered for a while, but was soon forgotten when I realised that I didn't notice the change at all because we're all too busy looking at whats going on the screen.
And what was on the screen was Bat-tastic, the Joker oozes with charisma everytime he is on screen and you just can't wait to see what he does and more importantly, how he does it. All the Batman appearances are awesome and the moment when Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent and Batman are on the police headquarters rooftop, I personally, internally 'squeeled' (if thats the correct word) if only because I read a similar scene in The Long Halloween and seeing it on screen made the movie that much better.
Some may say 2.5 hours is too long, but I say it's just right, and should've been 10 minutes longer like Nolan's original cut was, but of course, I'm just being biased. So I'm looking forward to the movie coming out on DVD, or Blu Ray, and watching it again, and again and again in high definition.
Suffice to say, watching The Dark Knight at IMAX helped made that week one of the best weeks ever! I'd talk more about the movie, but I'd just be spoiling it for you, so I'll give you three reasons to watch it, in no particular order.
1. Batman 'Batpod'
2. Joker "How about a magic trick?"
3. Harvey Dent "Heads or Tails?"
Adding a forth
4. Because I've seen it.
On the 12th of July, 2008, Jeff and Kitty got married, and became one, hence the Jeffritty, though that may be a result of the trend of other couples merging their names together to sound more close. Though doing that would only work well with certain names, long names would be hard to put together, especially if they were foreign, but I'll leave it to your imagination to come up with a ridiculous combination of two names.
I was part of the welcoming team for the wedding ceremony, which meant I got to go to the church nice and early to help, which turned out to be standing around in the cold telling cars they can't park at the church because they're not part of the wedding or trying to remember where people should be sitting in the church, Jeff's family is left side, Kitty's family is right side, or was it the other way around? Soon enough people started to come, and we had to begin ushering them into the church before the bride got here. 
The Church!
Eventually the groom arrived, with his best boys and a bottle in hand full of water taking occasional sips, assumably to calm himself down. Which I suppose is understandable, getting married and all. Soon enough Kitty and her bridesmaids arrived, fashionably late, because they could. Unfortunately, other people thought they could outdo the bride and came just as the bride was about to enter the church, others came as she was walking down the aisle, and others came when we started the singing, which goes to show that no matter how late you think you have to be for everyone to get here, there'll always be someone who comes even later than you.
The ceremony itself was nice, Tom Tokura was the speaker, who did an evangelistic talk, which was cool, and hopefully through that some of the non-christians decided to ask a few questions about christianity, how we view marriage, why we keep sex within marriage only, contrast to this fallen world and who is Jesus and why do we regard him so highly.
After the talk we sang another song and then we had the bride and groom at the front with the minister doing his thing, that is marrying them together in holy matrimony. Interesting note, the minister David Yung, used to go to our church, Cabramatta Anglican Church, and taught me piano for 2-3 years when I was in early high school, so its always cool to see him every now and again. Jeff and Kitty both said "I will", exchanged their vows, then rings, were declared married and then had their kiss, which everyone had their cameras out for.
Cha-click!
Following this, they then sang one more song, had prayers done and then had the signing of the register to seal the deal officially. By this time we went from our seats back to the doorway to complete our ushering duties and listened to Chris B sing Amazing Grace, quite amazingly. Afterwards there was a benediction by the minister and then the recessional, with Mr and Mrs Fung walking together, up the aisle. I also got a good picture of them as they reached the door, I took a shot, saw that it was blurry, and then had them wait for me to take another picture, and they complied, proving what an awesome couple they are! An added coolness was the music they walked down to, which was the theme from the Superman movie, at first when I heard it I thought it was Star Wars but after a bit I heard the Superman kick in, which is an honest mistake, I mean, they both had the same composer in John Williams so anyone would've made the mistake! So if Jeff can have the Superman theme song playing as he walks up the aisle, I'll look to have the Batman theme song playing, whether the Burton version or the Zimmer/Howard version, which I've yet to hear until this Wednesday at the premiere of the Dark Knight! But I digress...
Newly Weds
Afterwards, it was time for refreshments, and boy were people hungry, crowding the table, grabbing food here and there. Being a helper, I snuck around to the back of the table to stock up on sushi, and pastry sweets, before getting shooed off by the people serving the food, only to return to get more pastry sweets. But in between getting food and being shooed off Jeff and Kitty took their group photos, and those are always fun, with the various different groups they have. After photos we had to leave the premises by 1pm, and we probably cleared everything out by 1:30pm, a testament to how much people wanted to stay around and just chat, take more photos or just be rebellious.
We then drove to Westfields because people wanted food, and fast, so we had the only fast food we deemed fit after an occasion like a wedding, McDonalds. Walking through a shopping centre dressed all in formal gear was quite amusing, with people giving us looks here and there, but I didn't mind. The girls on the other hand, had sore feet from their fancy shoes, and wanted to buy thongs to alleviate their uncomfortability. Claire had already taken the initiative and bought $30 thongs, a bit pricey for comfortability in my opinion but whatever meets her feet. We all soon arrived at McDonalds and imposed our formal will on those who also wanted fast food, and took up three lots of tables for ourselves and gorged on burgers, drinks and fries, all the while amusing ourselves with a Happy Meal toy. After stuffing ourselves we went into Borders, because it was right there and spent a lot of time inside, looking at books and magazines as you would and complaining about how tired we were and how we wanted to sit down, rest or nap. After 2 or so hours at Westfields we headed off to Jo's house to rest, while the girls did their makeup, and so did some of the guys *ahem*John*cough*. Before leaving we all took group photos, reminiscent of friends taking photos before off to their school formal, it was fun, and amusing, a word I've probably overused by now, and will continue to use, because it works.
Cabang - Class of 08'
We then drove to Oatlands House, where the reception was held and I came across two signs.
So I invariably had two choices, go the Jeff and Kitty's reception, or Michelle's 50th Birthday, it was a tough call indeed, I mean, my good friends, or someone I didn't even know turning 50. And yes, I know how silly this all seems to even think about crashing someone else's party but to me, it was, amusing. But in the end, I think I made the right choice...
Mr and Mrs Fung with Mr Ung!The reception itself was a blast, good food, good speeches and awesome entertainment. We had speeches from the best man (boy), best maid of honour, parents, the bride and groom of course and even the MC's decided to throw in a speech of their own. The food consisted of a seafood platter, of which Bryan slaughtered all the prawns of, quail or chicken for entree, lamb or beef for dinner, mine was made just right, Claire's was too rare, but not too rare that I couldn't finish it, and dessert was a pavlova or sorbet, I had the pavlova but it wasn't as big as I preferred with my pavlovas and never got to try the sorbet.
The entertainment came in the form of a wedding medley by Cabang's very own John, Bryan, William and Chris, which was super entertaining and got a laugh from everyone and a loud cheer when it was all over. The other form of entertainment was in dance, after Jeff and Kitty had their first dance together as a married couple members from their respective churches crashed their dance with a danceoff, it was Cabramatta Anglican Church vs Chinese and Australian Baptist Church-West Ryde, which was hilarious and extremely entertaining, and I think that our church won overall, if only because we were more entertaining, that and we had a lot more dancers in Bryan with his months of breakdancing practice, David, Andrew and Dewey Griffin for their group based dancing stunts. Watching Dewey do the splits never ceases to make you go "wow", and then "owww" and he jumps and lands in a split position, seriously, does it not hurt when you grab your leg, stretch it up to your head then fall down onto it? Then we had Chris and DaH do their Korean dance routine, and John, ever the stage hog, had to do his attempt at an Indian dance. The other church only had two dancers, who were technically better, but entertainment wise, you gotta love our church!
I wanted to upload the video of the medley, but it was too big for blogspot to handle. So the only place to watch it will be on Facebook or my house.
Unfortunately the time for dancing was not a lot of time at all, and I spent no time dancing as I decided to record people dancing instead with Bryan's video camera. But that was still fun, just not sure how clear it'll turn out given the dimmed lights. Suffice to say, when the dancing was cut, everyone let out a collective "Awwwww".
The rest of the night was spent taking photos, and with the mass amount of cameras out there, there's a lot of photos floating around, most of which will, and has plagued Facebook like the locusts.
The other thing we did throughout the night was something I decided to start out of curiosity, when one of the speech makers were having slight technical difficulties with their slideshow I remembered something from Ken & Tania's wedding when I saw the mass amount of glasses on our table. I picked up a fork, said "I wonder if this'll work", and started to tap it against the glass, once heard, it wasn't long before other people caught on and started to tap their forks and knives against their glasses, this of course urges the bride and groom to share a kiss, more so for our enjoyment than for theirs probably, but it was fun to have started something like that.
Cutting the cake in style
For us, the wedding reception ended too early, we wanted to keep hanging out, people wanted to keep dancing, in the end we settled on going to Mounties to bum around, which I didn't mind, as I lived just 3 minutes walk away from there. Driving there was interesting, we plugged in Kathy's iPod and with John in the front seat, a little tipsy and still wanting to dance, he literally sang and danced (as best he could in a car) until we reached Mounties.
We got there and unlike Westfields earlier in the day, we looked a bit more normal walking around Mounties. We decided to relax at the Coffee House lounge place, and ordered chips and wedges and continued to enjoy each others company, for as long as we could. Claire and I, being ever so cheap looked for the free drink machine and stocked up on hot chocolate. Why they have the machine all the way inside the pokies area, where the smoking section is, I don't know, rewarding smoking gamblers with a free drink doesn't exactly send a good message in my opinion. It sure tests your breath holding skills though.
Midnight came by and because we had a minor with us, he needed to leave, so most of us decided to leave at the same time. John, ever still tipsy, broke a cup, and us, ever so sneaky made our escape into the night, to our homes, to reflect on the day that was, Jeff and Kitty's wedding. Congratulations!
No flash actually made this photo look nice (to me at least)
As you may or may not know, and whichever it is, it now doesn't matter because after reading this you will know, I teach the children at our church (Cabramatta Anglican Church), not alone but along with a bunch of other leaders. And we call our children's ministry SonRise, for a number of reasons, the main one being that God's Son, Jesus died and rose again to life to take our punishment for rebelling against God so that we can have a right relationship with God, and enter the Kingdom of God if we believe in Him. The other reason is a sunrise happens in the morning, and Sunday School runs in the morning, and puns are awesome, so SonRise it was!
So this year, our team of leaders decided to have a retreat, as an outing and a way for the team to really bond together, building in our relationships and get some planning done for the ministry, and also to just get out together and have a good time.
Our SonRise team consists of 10 leaders, but unfortunately 2 of them couldn't make it to the retreat, so we had 8 leaders go. Which meant two cars, two drivers, and once again I was one of those drivers, which I didn't mind driving, because I'd be in some sort of control.
So on Friday the 4th of July, we met at church at 7pm, which meant everyone got there at 7:20pm, we had dinner and then got into our respective driver's vehicles and drove off towards Terrigal for our retreat. I had Billy, Kathy and Li in my car while the other car consisted of Emma, Lisa, Julienne and Sylvia. The drive up was dark, since it was at night, and quite uneventful with Billy skipping my music or criticising our driving, or making random comments to sort of keep me awake, or maybe to just annoy me, or Billy just being Billy. When we reached our destination it was quite a feat to get into the driveway, when I read the details of the parking in the information rundown we got earlier when they said it would be quite hard to get into the place, they weren't lying. It didn't help that we were trying to get into the driveway at night too, so that made seeing extra hard. Lisa parked her car in first, then I followed afterward, and I had no idea what the driveway would look like, so I was just going on directions from Billy and everyone else, basically I had to reverse into the driveway because it's the most efficient way to park and I took pictures, but I think a video explains it better.
Note: I took this video the next day and not while driving, as if you watch you can plainly see.
(For those reading this on Facebook, read the original post for the video.)
Driving Experience Points +100 (Level Up!)
So we got to our destination at around 10:30 or so and got unpacked and checked out the place, which looked pretty good. We also discovered a balcony, with a view of the beach, but since it was night we couldn't see the beach, so we looked up instead and saw stars, which never ceases to amaze us everytime we look up, goes to show you how amazing God's creation truly is!
And of course, we took photos. Julienne and I had cameras and she's more shutter happy than me so she took more pictures, and was better at getting us together to take photos.
The team, against the night sky
Our first night mainly consisted of unpacking, working out who sleeps where and then just relaxing, and how we decided to relax was by playing Taboo, a board game where you try to get your team mates to guess what word you have, without using the words they list on the card. So an example would be "Father Christmas", and you have to explain that without using the words "Santa, Presents" for example. It's easy to pick up but hard to be good at, but its very fun, and we ended up playing until 1am or so that night, which meant getting up would be a bit hard.
The place had a two bedrooms, which the 6 girls took, leaving Billy and I with whatever was left, which was a sofa bed, so thats what we had to sleep in. I'm sure there's a joke you can throw in here about two guys sleeping in the same bed, and a sofa bed at that but I wasn't too fussed about it, I trust that Billy's attraction to females were on the right orientation and that my sleeping bag was always zipped up. Once again my height and my slight insomnia prevented me from sleeping early but eventually I fell asleep, probably 3-4am?
Our uh..sofa bed
The funniest thing, to me was that where we were sleeping was pretty much the living room, which meant we didn't have a room to put our bags or sleeping bags in, and when everyone else woke up and say wanted to get a drink or cook breakfast, they'd have to walk through the living room, which was where I was sleeping, and me being me, I liked to stay in bed for as long as possible so I had people walking around while I was trying to get those extra few minutes of sleep, and I was fine with that, just building up the comfortability factor of having a person still asleep while everyone else is awake. Anyways, Hannah Montana on tv woke me up with her bad show and since I couldn't turn the volume down, I could wake up and escape the acting.
Our uh..roomAfter breakfast we got down to business and began the planning part of the retreat. We stated with praise and worship, which is basically singing, and since I didn't bring my guitar, we did it acapella style, which made me realise how bad my singing was (I need lessons or something). After singing, Billy talked a bit about our vision for SonRise and what we should aim to do with our ministry. Afterwards we went into planning for the next term, which was basically what we were going to teach the kids for the term (we're looking at the book of John in the Bible, one of the accounts/biographies of Jesus). We took a break after this and then moved onto more singing, then the next part of planning to do, which was for our Evangelistic, Olympic event on the 10th of August, which is close enough to the 8th of August for us. This took up a lot of time and was very productive in my opinion, since I'm in charge of the planning for the event and I'm bad at organising so I'm glad to have a team of great leaders to help.
Once we got planning done it was time for lunch, but we needed supplies, such as beetroot, hamburger buns and V, for those who needed a boost! I had to drive to the shops as my car was the most convenient to take out, and we headed to Erina Fair, which was quite huge. We bought supplies, discovered how bad the reception was in Coles, then drove back to tackle the driveway once again, conquering it a second time. We had hamburgers for lunch, courtesy of Lisa, which were tasty and filling and I must mention HP sauce is odd but works when you least expect it.
Awesome hamburger, with added chips
Now we pretty much had free time for the rest of the day, and since we were all full from lunch, we just wanted to sit and laze around, so we did and decided to share our testimonies (how we became Christians) at the same time, which I thought did very well in helping our team to bond, as I didn't know how most people came to accept Jesus as their Ruler and Rescuer, but now, I do! So it was very encouraging and interesting to hear other people's testimonies.
With the late night and long day, people got very tired, so some of the girls went to nap while others just bummed around. I took out my cards and mucked around with them and soon found myself playing Thirteen with those who stayed awake. This continued on for a while and soon enough it was nearly time for dinner, and Julienne was the chef tonight, making Wonton noodles, with hamburger meat, just in case we still had a taste for hamburgers. I showered before dinner and used Sylvia's shampoo, which after I used it turned out to be the shampoo for your body and not your head, so that was interesting to say the least. Dinner was great, though the noodles were quite mooshy, which made for an interesting combination but I'm never one to complain about food, and there wasn't anything to complain about to begin with anyway.
Awesome Wonton, with added hamburger
After dinner we watched Lois & Clark: The Adventures of Superman season 2 which Julienne brought along, and to me it was quite the blast from the past, and knowing what I know about comics and superheroes I could tell who was who when watching it again, we watched a Christmas episode which featured the villian Toymaker and then the next episode had Metallo, so that was cool. We then left it running in the background when we did our next planned thing, which was group bonding/activity, basically playing board games. We played Faces, a board game where you get an impression, and pick a face out of a lineup of faces that you think match the impression, if people guess the same as you then you advance on the board. It was an fun game to play, and I must admit we got very loud, causing an uproar when no one picked the same face as you or just laughing out loud at the faces people pick. In the end, I didn't win, but it's not all about the competition, it was about group bonding! So we moved onto our next game, Taboo! Which we played the night before but getting the chance to play it again was always welcoming, this time with everyone playing. Once again, I didn't win, meaning our team didn't win, but in the end we all won because we had a blast, and some of us didn't want the night to end and wanted to keep playing other stuff, so we took out the Cranium box and decided to go through the acting cards, like charades and stuff, which was funny watching people act out a streaker or sing Elvis Presley or try and hum a tune about something but have it sound like the Jetsons. But it got late, and people were tired, and while I would've liked to keep on going, Billy wanted to sleep, and since we sleep in the living room, no one can really hang around in our bedroom, so we retired to bed. Still not too used to the sofa bed, I kept waking up in the middle of the night so my sleep wasn't that great.
Billy came first in red, Kathy second in orange, I came third in white and Julz came way last in yellow.
Morning came and everyone was awake, I still wanted to sleep, so stayed in bed while everyone had breakfast, but when you hear people talk about you you know its time to wake up and get ready. One thing I have never been able to conquer is my bad bed hair, I always have bits of hair sticking up like I was a super saiyan, without the super, so I took a shower to make my hair look half decent, which is how it normally looks. I then had breakfast in the form of 2 minute noodles and then we packed our gear into our respective vehicles once again.
Before we left the place however, we did what was natural, and that was take photos, and we took a lot of them, of our team, each other doing silly poses and just enjoying the coloured wall we had.
Give me 5 more minutes...
All good things must come to an end, the saying goes, and it goes without saying that we had to leave the place, we drove out of the dreadful driveway and headed to the beach for a bit, as it was close by to take a few snapshots. After the beach we headed home, but the girls decided to take a pit stop at Erina Fair, to do some shopping. What ensued was 3 hours of shopping, with girls visiting each clothes/shoe store, while the boys, mainly me, checked out each games store, buying nothing, except for lunch. Some very tired legs later, we hopped back into our vehicles and drove home, I was sleep deprived and my eyes were tired, but I knew I would make it home just fine. Billy tried to help by talking to me to keep me awake, but he soon got tired and took a nap, then his snoring helped to keep me awake. We reached church, said hello to the people still at church, then I returned home, tired and ready to sleep...after dinner.
For three days and two nights, we spent some quality time planning, bonding, being in our pajamas and just having a good time. When you go through something like that you know that you have a good, strong team that's willing to serve God and relationships that will last a lifetime. I look forward to seeing where SonRise goes in the future, and await the next opportunity for a retreat.
The team, mucking up the view
