numbers
28,733 words the current size of my thesis (up from~19,000 at new years- thanks to lots of help from Paul, my supervisor)
12:00, 12:30, 12:30, 11:00, 2:00 my bed times this past week (Monday-Friday).
6: the number of days I have left in Dunedin
420- the amount its costing me to send stuff home.
4 banana boxes, 1 bed, and 6 A4 files to go home.
1.5 the number of rubbish bags that have been filled by contents of my room.
1 day off since last week-cleaned car, played risk with Jared, Justin, Phil and Bjorn (really, really nice house) , went to church, JB's for lunch (really nice house except in comparison to Bjorn and Phil's -which is more of a villa), saw the incredibles with Scott.
8/10- rating for incredibles.
7:20 the time I was woken by God this morning to go pray on top of signal hill. not necessarily happy about that.

I owe people emails, and they may come after Tuesday.

|

Question
Why is it that at the end of a hard race, the finishing line is at the top of a hill?

|

The orienteerer

Who starts out planning to fail?
Who starts out not trying to win?
Are there many who do not want to taste victory upon their lips?

There have been many times when I have not looked at the map.
Many times I should have stopped and asked for directions.
Sometimes I am fortunate and I fluke it.
Othertimes I am not and have to turn around and try again.

Who sees the finish line and slows down because the end is in sight?
Who dwadles because they want to saviourthe taste of nearly finished.
Who will fail at the final hurdle placed before him?

Not I.

|

10 minute break
I keep seeing this old post up there and it annoys me. So much so I'm taking 10 minutes to write (or writh as I mispelt- possibly Freudianly) that I'm still alive (just) and that I'm getting through it. First draft is nearly done, and there doesn't look like there'll be too many changes. I hope to submit in a couple of weeks, so dying now doesn't seem too bad. Well, except for the fact that Id never get to play the this game I came with on the weekend. Basically it combines the immune system and starcraft.

I got the idea from thinking about formation of lymphoid tissue and how it was like a lot of strategy games where you have "worker" units come in to build a base from resources around, then the resources enables the "worker" units to build better units with more specialised roles (like destroying stuff).

Now who said that the immune system wasn't cool?

(Who can then cough GEEK! in my general direction?)

(Now what about SAD GEEK!?)

Nearly there, although bed is very attractive a lot of the time.

|

Smile
Just a quick one to say that I'm alive and ploughing my way through my thesis. Well, like ploughing through rocks, but ploughing none the less. It's kind of weird being the "master of the house", that is all alone in the big gothic mansion. You do tend to jump at every sound that you don't make. It would be nice to have some company. It is very easy to find yourself alone for ages at the moment. That's actually a blessing in some ways.

In the shuttle from the airport, I didn't know anyone. I hadn't really talked to anyone on the plane either. The person next to me (on the plane) was asleep, and I was really getting into Ben Hur (which incidently is very cool). There was this um, fairly attractive chick sitting next to me. I felt like I should just say hi, but I didn't for ages. So we're both sitting there twiddling our thumbs, and I just bit the bullet and said it.

Well, I'd like to say that I now have a romantic interest etc, etc. But that would be so far off the truth. We did have a really cool chat- she knows a lot of med people for a law student, and it was real fun just talking to a complete stranger working out where they stood in my world and vice versa. We also talked about countries we'd like to visit... and I won't bore you with the details.

Anyway, I was saying grace tonight, and just asked God to speak cos I was feeling a little alone. Tea consisted of spag bol in front of "Joan of Arcadia". Tonight Joan had to connect with a homeless girl who needed a friend. Ok, there was a little more, but anyway, as I walked back to the office, I realised that I didn't have to be alone- I just connected with that chick on the shuttle, why not others?

hmm, such a priviledge, to have the right to be a child of God!

|

Flood

Rain, rain on my face
It hasn’t stopped raining for days
My world is a flood
Slowly I become one with the mud

Chorus:

But if I can’t swim after forty days
And my mind is crushed by the thrashing waves
Lift me up so high that I cannot fall
Lift me up
Lift me up - when I’m falling
Lift me up - I’m weak and I’m dying
Lift me up - I need you to hold me
Lift me up - keep me from drowning again

Downpour on my soul
Splashing in the ocean, I’m losing control
Dark sky all around
I can’t feel my feet touching the ground

For a change a song not with a spiritual sense, but a physical one. Yesterday it rained cats and dogs, LITERALLY! The Hutt river nearly got through its stop banks, roads were closed and it was generally nasty. I took the night off to visit my friends Sara, Matt, Christie, her boyfriend Gordon, and Julian. We watched Big Fish and Donnie Darko. Big Fish was really cool. Donnie Darko was whacked, but I would like to see the director's cut. I gave Matt a lift home bout midnight, and we saw a fire engine down the road. So, instead of being good citizens and minding our own business, we took a look. We got about 50m down the road before realising that the car was surrounded by water. Yay! Surface flooding. It came up about half a metre or so. Slowly drove through it. about 500m of road took us about 5 mins. Hit several more areas of flooding on the way home. It was kinda funny, because the protagonist in Big Fish gets his car stuck up a tree during a big storm.

Also picked up a hitchiker named Ben. His ferry was late, so he was hitching out to the end of Upper Hutt. In like the worse weather for ages. I gave him a lift to the place he was staying- he was stoked. I'm glad I could help. What an adventure that was.

Spent all day writing, and listening to road closures on the radio. Went to a teppanyaki restaurant for tea. They are so much fun, and taste really good. I spent a lot of time finishing off my 6 year cousin's food too, which was good indeed

Gon gon (grandfather's) 80th tomorrow. Should be fun. Only have to keep focussed and write in the down times before.

|

Procrastination

Arrggh! I’m finding it really hard to focus, and to keep disciplined while doing this writing. Today I probably did about half a days work over about 7 hours. MEH! I’m probably going to double the number of words I’ve written today just by writing this short blog.

I have figured out that I can actually choose to play to my habits or choose to pray through them instead. I’m being moderately successful at this. It’s a pity that there’s so many other things to distract me…

One thing that is convicting me to work harder though is the current tsunami crisis. I often joke that it seems to be every med student’s dream to go do the “missionary thing”. Help overseas, save the African children, be a volunteer, and save the world. I am seeing people doing that on TV 24/7 at the mo’; eating, sleeping and working, working, working. I know that the situation’s slightly different- I mean not finishing would be a real travesty, but necessarily be life or death material. It does make me wonder what it would take to make me realise that I need to do something here. I don’t really want to have to wait until down south before that hits. I know that I am capable of doing it, so what’s missing?

Caught up with my friend Cameron yesterday. I’ve known him since I was about 2, and he’s been of my best mates since I was 6. He’s currently living out in Northland and has been going out with this girl Monique since Parachute. We just hung. He’s currently importing transformers on the net to turn for a profit- which is kinda cool, because we were both really big on them back in the day. We also played some halo 2, and came back to UH for a BBQ. He gets on well with the family, and Mum’s always keen to catch up with him. It’s pretty crazy to think that we’ve both moved on so much, been through so much together (School, scouts, hockey, camps etc). We were always late to college together : ) It was really good to see him again.

In speaking of a completely different subject- the Halberg award nominations were posted today. These are the awards for the top sporting male, female, coach, team and overall award for a NZ athlete. My picks are:
Top Male: Bevan Docherty (triathlon, World champ, and Olympic silver)
Top Female: Sarah Ulmer (World Champ, Olympic champ, World record holder) Even though the others are also world champs, I don’t think they’ll come close.
Top team: the only tough one: either the Ever-Swindell twins (Olympic rowing champs) or the Black Sox (NZ men’s softball team- three peat winners of the world champs, which is unprecedented). I’m picking the Black Sox just because it really is huge in softball terms, rather than the Ever-Swindell twins, which captured the nation’s heart. Actually 7’s team could be a dark horse too, dominating the circuit for the past five years.
Coach of the Year: Don Tricker (Black Sox coach)- can’t really go past the three times (at least) coach.
Overall: I think Sarah Ulmer might just pip whoever wins the team award.
So looking back, this year hasn’t been too bad for NZ sport. Sure, we were walloped in the cricket, league, soccer (Vanuatu beat us 4-2, for the like the first time ever), rugby sometimes, swimming and equstrian, tennis and a raft of others, we still have quiet a few world champions that have definitely punched above their weight.

I bet they were very disciplined and worked through distractions too. Ahem.

P.S. Yes this is the second blog posted tonight, the first one was from Sat, but didn’t get posted because I was too lazy to plug the net in. Sorry.

|

Upper Hutt- and home

Well, here I am, sitting in my bed in Upper Hutt on the first day of the new year. I’ve been home a week. Can you believe it???

I flew home on last Friday night, pretty uneventful apart from seeing Steve G at the airport, and feeling really happy on the plane to Chch. I couldn’t work it out, until I realized that this was the first blue sky and sun for a prolonged (30 min) patch that I’d had in about 3 weeks!!!

Christmas was pleasant- good food, lots of family and the majority of the time spent by me sleeping on the couch next to my Granfather doing likewise. I also remembered another charming feature about Wellington: I’m allergic to it!!! My hayfever played up really bad on Christmas morning, probably helping to knock me for six.

Boxing day, I skipped the 9 am church service, and slept in. Went shopping with the familyin Lower Hutt and Tawa- got a new pair of shoes, and a shirt. Sorry Abbey- I didn’t actually get round to calling the Shoe Warehouse. Oh well- but these ones are cool too.

Monday was uneventful- although did hang with Sam for the first time in ages, which you could call an event. Restarted doing some work on the thesis.

Tueday was spent working- I’m finding it really hard to work at home partly because of the distractions, and partly because I just didn’t really have very good study habits at home (Ever). Saw Ocean’s 12 with a host of others, including Sam, J, Reuben, Jared Lawerence, Matt & Louise, Becs, Kristy, Jacqui, her cousin Amanda and Sam’s friend Will. Also popped out to see my friend Cameron in Northland. It’s a part of Wellington I am not familiar with at all, and had to really use the map to work out where to go. Even then I still kinda fell onto the street. Stopping at every intersection to look at the map is not good driving practise.

Wednesday- More thesis. More procrastination and distraction. Hung out with Tuari (youth pastor at St Johns). Played with his kids. Yeah- it was good.

Thursday- Tried to put in a big effort, because of family from Oz coming over to stay. Achieved goals, but not exactly satisfactory- I felt I could have done more. This writing business is really hard. Yeah, pretty much worked.

Friday- Family from Oz arrived. Uncle Ian, Aunty Linda, Stacey (12) and Chris (6). They’re staying at our place, so it’s exploded from 3 people two months ago to 9. It’s fun having them here- although Aunty Linda does talk a lot! (I’m not joking- sometimes you don’t even get time to answer her questions. Also Greg’s birthday- ah, I can’t believe that he’s 16! Also went to the NYE celebrations at the Bentons- good times, even with the hayfever (AGAIN!- perhaps I’m allergic to end of year celebrations?). I also caught up with some upper hutt friends at a pub- “The Hutt”. I could have spent the hours of 2-3am in far better conditions, but that’s ok.

So apart from the realization that I now have a month to submit, that’s pretty much it. I’m relaxed, but finding it hard to focus when I need to. There was the suggestion that I ‘block’ time out to do work, but I seem to only be able to do a little here and there. God’s also a little harder to find with the breakdown of routine. I’m trying to work on a “holiday” which I don’t think was ever the smartest idea. I’ll get there.

Funny thing is, there are bigger things in the world to be worrying about ie cancellation of the Phillipines trip (and the reasons for it), Tsunami’s, people’s struggles etc. and those are big things which are helping to keep things in perspective. Oddly, I can see God working in them, probably more than in my own situations. This puzzles me some what, but probably requires more prayer.

|