Above, you have the pictorial representation of my day.
Actually, that is not entirely true. The Lion’s share of the day was taken up with driving to and from Gosford, reading stuff for an essay & walking up & down valleys to get to waterfalls & other such stuff. So when not doing the above, I managed to do a fair bit of…. the even further above.
It is always good when you get to go take pictures with another photographer. You see the angles they look at & it challenges you to find some new angle. You have an idea & then they build on it. It is a symbiotic thing. It is great. It is particularly good with people like Tom, cause this dude takes a pretty dang good photo!
So, it was a great day, but I am underwhelmed with the pics as a whole. I don’t know if I am getting worse at photography, or just fussier. What a worry!
Anywho, 12:13 in the am, LOTS more work to do tomorrow & a bed that is only 3 feet away… Is this post going to get any longer? You do the math!

So, I was thinking this evening that maybe my brother would have made an attractive woman. After all, Charlotte does look a fair bit like him, and she is a total cutie! Maybe he missed his calling? Well, he’s a good guy anyway, and Kristin seems to like him, so maybe he has done OK as-is.
Yeah, I have been in a writing kind of mood, but I think I should use my artistic feelings to fuel good essays, so this bad boy is going to get cut short.
Tomorrow day is going to be spent, in part, shooting pictures with Tom Carlos up in Gosford. Finally a chance to catch up with him. Should be cool. Then it is back for an exciting night of essay writing on the “Colossian Heresy”. Also fun in its own way.
Photo shooting tomorrow means I should also be able to have my third day in a row of posting on the site! Lucky you!
Lucky who?
Like my mate Chris, I can’t help but wonder who actually reads my site.
Go on, be adventurous, leave a comment. Make my day!
Cheeky little monkeys!

But for the faint wailing of a siren several suburbs off, I might be forgiven for thinking that I am the only soul an the streets of Sydney. As I slipped out the side gate of the college, it was otherwise silent. Families are already out on public holiday picnics, or else they are sitting in their lounge rooms wondering whether or not this warm weather has been here long enough to heat up the back yard pool.
People with a more nervous disposition might find an afternoon like this a little disconcerting, too quiet, a little eerie. Bolder souls like myself revel in the silence that is screaming out the name of a loving creator.
On days like this everything becomes exaggerated. It starts with my awareness of the swish-swish as I walk down the street toward subway (the streets, quiet enough that I can walk down the centre of the road & avoid the sidewalk). when I kick a discarded scrap of metal, the little clang rings out like it has been fed through an amplifier. I can even hear the beat of wings from the minor bird that passes overhead.
I don’t ever want to get sick of days like these. I don’t want to be impressed only by super spectacles, or awesome architecture. I want to make sure that I revel in this kind of stuff for a lifetime. A quiet afternoon, sunny weather bringing a warm breeze, even to the shadows. Squinting in the harsh sunlight and breathing in the sweet air, fragranced by the sweet scent of jasmine, hidden in one of the house’s backyards.
Elijah, I feel what you feel!
“The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
1 Kings 19:11-13

OK, I am looking a little worse for wear here, but I had been on camp for a week, doing 5:30am starts, and just stressing myself out.
Camp was good. Camp was fun, but I am glad to be home. The talks went pretty well & the team was awesome. It was great to see God working in and through these people, many of whom were quite young, but showed remarkable maturity!
I’ll definately fill everyone in about camp & stuff soon, but I am straight into the slog now that I am home, so it might have to wait till tonight or tomorrow.

Like a prize fighters right hook, summer weather caught be my surprise today & clocked me fair on the chin. Somehow, without my noticing, we’ve changed from cranking up the oil heater in my room, to thinking about dusting off my fan! Yesterday it expressed itself through my overheating at night, because I wore long pants instead of shorts (The basketball game certainly didn’t help, but even two weeks ago, that wouldn’t have been an issue). Today summer weather (despite it being spring) spoke to me on my drive down to the “Attunga” campsite, dropping off stuff for the camp I start tomorrow.
It only took five minutes on the Hume Highway before both front windows were down, the sunroof was open & Powderfinger was blaring through the speakers. Even the smell of the city changes as summer sneaks up. Gone is the heavy scent of aftershave and woolen jackets, exchanged for a heady mixture of sunscreen, sweat and salt-air. OK, being inner city, there may not be too much salt air, but I swear the scent lies there anyway.
Once of the freeway, I got to appreciate a little more of what this country has to offer. Faded-green trees whizzed by. Stands of whattle, flourescent-yellow, breaking up the scene. Once I got out into the back roads, they crowded round more intimately, till I cruised along the top of a ridge, I could look down the valleys on either side. Trees as far as the eye could see!
As I came to the dirt section of the road, the last 20km’s before the campsite, it just got prettier. 15k’s into the drive I was gazing wonderously at the deep red of the pebbles of dirt whizzing by the car… then all of a sudden, it was me doing the whizzing.
One slow-motion (at leas mentally) pirouette later there wasn’t a great deal of whizzing being done at all.
I wasn’t speeding or anything. I was paying attention to the road too. I just must have caught a thicker patch of the ball-bearing sized granite pebbles as I turned the wheel a little. All I could do was try and control how wildly the car spun. In the end I did a ilttle more than a 180 turn, ending up tipped half over a 1 1/2 meter verge, wedged up to my axle in soft rich red dirt.
The car, firmly wedged, I thought about walking the last 5km’s to the campsite for help. Two nice guys, stopped by & drove me there. When I got there all of the other leaders & Co. were off doing trainging somewhere, and I remembered that I had left my nice & expensive camera back in the car, so I walked back.
Maybe another half an hour or so before another passing motorist stopped by for a chat. She had passed the campsite & seen people there, so she drove me back again. God’s providence lay in one of the directorial types having a 4wd with a winch on it. He drove me back, we got the car out & it seemed to be OK.
Emphasis on the word “seemed”.
An hour or so later, I was heading back to Sydney when I decided to pull over & take a picture of one of those lovely verdant valleys. It was at this time that one of my tires decided to seizure… I should be thankful that it didn’t do this on the freeway! I can only guess that something had been pinched in the spin & it had taken till now for the tyre to decide what it was going to do.
20 minutes later, tyre changed. The spare is one of those dinky little things that are really only supposed to get you to the nearest service station…. or in my case 150kms back home. Stormclouds looming over my eyebrows, I was at full alert, which didn’t help when a wallaby decided to dash out next to me & jump straight into my car!!!
No damage…
Nor was there damage when I had to apply the brakes urgently (Please don’t spin again….) to stop before collecting a Kangaroo.
The rest of the drive was straight forward.
OK, so I am a little annoyed at all this bad stuff happening. I am also a little frustrated that I will miss church tomorrow morning, cause I have to wait for a 24 hour home delivery tyre dude to come replace my tyre for me, cause other tyre places are all closed on Sundays.
On the brighter side…
Had I been going any faster, or had I not been quick on the wheel, I would have gone totally over the verge & flipped the car. The 5k walk I had was a nice one, with summer weather, warm sun, leading to a slight tan. Also, I had a reason to cheer myself up with Indian for dinner (Oh yeah, this place in Croydon has goat on the menu!!!). Top that with a dash of euphoria from the Sydney Swans winning the AFL, and the day certainly could have ended worse!
Of course, I have to drive back tomorrow evening…..
See you all in a week (I hope)

There are still three days till my holidays start, but I feel like they have flashed by me already! Camp next week. Should be a a good growth experience, but dang, it has made me busy! Were I to have my time again, I think I might have said that I couldn’t do it.
If you squeeze coal hard enough, it becomes a diamond. If you squeeze a toad hard enough, you just make it’s innards turn into “outards”. Ask me in a week and a half if I’ve had a diamond or a toad experience!
As the following picture shows, I am not the only one feeling a little stressed! (Actually, I think Pete is pretty chilled. This was just the gift I got for asking a Primary School teacher to pose for a photo….)

All that Parsing will turn you cross-eyed…

The in-tray. Oh, that it were empty of work & full of social engagements!

Puzh and Steph show us why SMBC is heald in such high regard. We take our education seriously!

It’s all in the eyes.
Yeah, I am a little tired.
Saturday started at about 7am. A lift to the train station, then I train to Epping saw me rock up to N8’s at about 9:30 (after stopping by coles to pick up a pair of black socks) for breakfast.
Breakfast in general is a cool thing, though I am rarely awake to appreciate it. Breakfast on this particular morning was very cool! The last breakfast of one single man. This single man just enjoyed lots of fresh fruit, a couple of croissants and a lot of fresh OJ.
We were ready ahead of time, so when the photographer popped in, we were all out the back playing a bit of cricket. OK, when the camera guy decides that cricket photos would be cool, that is OK. When said photographer decides that Tim should go for some diving catching cause it would be dramatic, that is also cool. When the aforementioned dives mean that Tim is itchy from the grass for the next hour or so, that ain’t so cool. Oh, how we suffer for the art… It was fun to watch a pro-photographer doing his thing. I look forward to seeng the results!
Food was a big thing on Saturday. Our preparation in the morning was framed by the breakfast in the morning, then awesome chicken sandwiches for lunch. Mr & Mrs Mcelveney’s stock is on the rise with meals like that! I’ll have to invent new reasons to visit them now that N8 will be living out of home with Amy.
What to say about the wedding service itself?
Nerves in general at time of impact? fairly negligiblel. Emotions induced by arrival of the bride at the door? Many. The sermon-Top Notch, Bridesmaids-Ravishing, The comfort level of my classy Wingtipped shoes- Absolutely none! The only downside to the service was not being able to sit down & not being able to feel me feet by about the second song. OK, so I now have a greater appreciation of what girls go through with shoes…
Next came afternoon tea in the park. A chance to mingle, receive compliments for my shoes (Dang, what can I say? I love em!) and eat more top notch food. It was a short stop though, cause we needed to hop in the Bentleys & drive to our photo spot for some weddinig pics. That too went well, with the only hiccup being Tim’s consistantly average leg, which slipped on a bit of rock, ending in a ripped sock & cut ankle. Thankfully, I can’t even feel that section of my ankle, so that made it much easier to deal with.
Are you still here? I applaud your patience in reading. Believe me, you are getting the distilled version of the day, but I appreciate that it is still pretty long. Hang tough dude, you’ll be at the end soon.
The reception. Again, food. Again, top quality. A glass of two of Red, Two, count them TWO great deserts (Again, thanks to Kirsty) and a maximum of three minutes enduring the dancefloor made the evening great!
So 11pm Rolls around. N8 & Amy make their exit & I am not far behind them. C8 & Dan give me a lift to a station & I catch a train to Burwood & then walk back to College. Lets just say that my feet were a little worse for wear by the time I got home. Only 6 hours to sleep! And Sunday was the day I was getting confirmed!
But that is another story…

Making them is so much easier than keeping them.
I am always making plans for what to do with my time, but that time always appears shorter than it looked. Like the playground from your youth that you go back to visit at twenty. That giant slide is in fact 2 meters long and the mountains of time I had to study, writer, take pictures and make plans, turned out to be hours that flittered away quickly into nothingness.
Well, the pressure is now on. Of course, I wont be feeling it tomorrow, cause I will be wearing a suit & smiling for photos at N8’s wedding! One day of smiles, joy, prayers & a drink to two too! Then, reality, like a sledgehammer will hit back.
Essays, Greek study, Talks for an upcoming camp, and my confirmation on Sunday night! These things take time. I know I’ll have to find that time. Somewhere…

Do you ever stop to think how music has swept its way into every corner of the modern life?
Wake to the Clock radio, turn your second radio on while you have breakfast. The iPod comes out for the train ride to work, unless you are lucky enough to drive to work, where you get to just crank out the car stereo instead! We find some online station to listen to at work (making the most of out broadband connection) then iPod it home, before sitting back & having a glass of wine as we listen to something to sooth us after a long day at work.
If you are my 1 year old niece, you also get baby tunes to help you go to sleep.
Has it always been this way? Surely not. Recorded music is not that old! What did people do before iPods, walkmans, or (heaven forbid) car stereos?
I was thinking. Is this the effect of movies on the modern mind? Are we so used to songs that are there to evoke emotion in the central themes of our favourite movies that we feel we need the same to act as markers in our own lives.
Music is no less important to Church goers. Singing is an important part of what believers do as they come together to celebrate life in Christ. That said, we all to often seem to separate our “music life” from our church music. What we sing on Sunday night is rarely what we listen to and hum along with on Monday-Friday.
This is why is was so awesome to have Revive to play at Church on both Friday night (youth group) and Sunday (church). It doesn’t hurt that I am mates with Dave & Ty (and totally dig Rich and Mike). They are also a totally rockin’ band & a bunch of awesome dudes. It is great to see heart-felt Christian lyrics mixed with hard-core guitar licks that can be enjoyed by Christians & non-Christians alike.
In the sound track of life, they are finally playing my song!

Rock Rock on!

Mike launches more than just drum solos! Don’t tell my ministers son about the trike abuse though…