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.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
My Sense of Misdirection
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?
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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.
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.
-----------------------------------------------------------
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.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
My Dark Knight
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
My Friend Jeffritty's Wedding
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)
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)
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
My SonRise Retreat
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..room
After 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
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..room
After 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
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