Not that I know of

I meet a lot of new people. Often in the context of somes sort of Christian ministry. And they often ask me, "Are you married, do you have any kids?"

I almost always say, "No wife and no kids... at least, not that I know of." I always think it's funny, then I realise it's more awkward than funny for the other person and then I get awkward.

But then I forget and I say it again next time I meet someone.

Exile

Since I moved out of the flat in Artarmon a month ago to move in with Chez and Johnny, we haven't been able to find anywhere to live. We've applied for plenty and keep getting rejected.

I've been reading Numbers (the book of the Bible, I'm not much into maths) this month, all about the Israelites wandering around the desert, complaining, and slowing dying off. It's been feeling relevant. I feel like I'm living what I'm reading. While I'm not wandering anywhere and I haven't been dramatically rescued from slavery (my old housemates were quite nice really), I am hanging out for the promised land (house). I'm trying not to complain about my circumstances in case God says that I have to live with my parents till I die, and only my grown up kids will be allowed to move out. I have complained a little, mainly just about the stupid real estate agent's forms you have to fill out for every house. It's probably ok to complain about them though, because the Israelites didn't have to apply to move into the promised land. They just had to kill it's current inhabitants which, sometimes, seems like it could be a simpiler solution.

We do have a hopeful viewing on Thursday. So we could have somewhere to live after Thursday. Or it could just be one more bit of wandering.

I'm looking forward to food falling from the sky.

Equal Distribution

We had a bible study at work today on wealth and how we spend our money. I thought I might try and find out how much money there is in the world, divide it by 6 billion and then try and have that amount of money in my life. I thought perhaps that would be a good way to make sure I had only a fair share of the world's money.

But the internet won't tell me how much money there is in the world.

At least the first website I checked didn't tell me.

My plans have been foiled. Perfect logic failed by imperfect Google.

It's the story of my life.

Armed Robbery

I was up at Maccas after church tonight with the young adults. There were 12 of us. I was eating a salad because I was still full of sake and Japan food from Mother's Day (Happy Mother's Day Mum!). It was Seared Chicken Caesar in case you're wondering.

About two thirds of the way through my salad, there was some shouting at the back door of Maccas. I thought "Oh a fight, I hate fights, they make me nervous." Then I saw the manager and thought "Oh good the manager is going to break it up." I moved my head so I could see better and saw that there wasn't a fight instead two guys with balaclavas had come in the back door. One was holding a large kitchen knife and the other a small axe, a hatchet if you will, with a shiny red bit on it. It looked new. They were both wearing black and one of them was holding a small bag.

I thought "Oh good, it's not a fight. Must be a practical joke. Halloween isn't for a while. It's not a very funny joke. Whoever they're friends with on the Maccas staff is gonna be pissed."

They kept shouting. It occurred to me when they shoved the manager behind the counter and the people nearest the back door got up and ran out that it wasn't actually a joke but this was a real armed robbery.

We were seated at the other end of maccas, far from the counter and far from the doors. I had a view of all the doors and the counter. I was pretty pleased to be in such a good spot. The guy with the hatchet ran behind the counter to deal with the staff, who kinda stood there looking stunned, while the guy with the knife hung around to deal with the customers. He waved the knife and swore at all of us telling us to stay where we were. It wasn't that helpful. Every time he turned his back another group of customers would run out the nearest door.

The group of Christians behind us, closer to the action looked scared and one started praying loudly to Jesus. It's to be expected if you rob a maccas on a Sunday night that someone is gonna start praying. I didn't pray. I'm guess I'm not even a Sunday Christian.

As one group of people ran out the door the guy with the knife chased them out shouting about how they should stay where they were. At that point the Christians hopped up and ran out too. They had a small girl with them. It was probably the best thing to do.

The poor robber, on the other hand, couldn't keep control of his charges. I knew how he'd be feeling, it's the same feeling I used to get every week teaching scripture. You think you're big and scary and then everyone just ignores your threats and runs away. He was hemorrhaging potential hostages like an amateur. Should have watched Heat. Had he promised us all chocolate to stay and watch his robbery I'm sure we would have been more obliging, they don't do that in Heat, but it's probably a good tactic.

Anyway, my group, we stayed. Probably within 30 seconds of the guys coming in we were the only customers left in Maccas. It felt a little special having the restaurant to ourselves. Kinda romantic perhaps, like the empty ice rink in Rocky. If it wasn't for the guys with weapons, I might have proposed to someone.

As we sat there we looked around at each other and the general consensus seemed to be that we should stay where were. We were too far from any doors to get out quickly. It never really occurred to me to leave. I saw other people leaving and I thought "That's brave. They might get stabbed." I figured sitting still and doing what you're told was probably the safest option. Plus if we left I wasn't going to get to see what happened and how often in your life do you get to witness an armed robbery?

I also felt kinda like leaving was the wrong thing to do. Like if we ran away we were abandoning the Maccas staff to their fate alone. Of course I'm sure they didn't feel like they needed us there for support, but we were all in this together. I think perhaps the same reason that I often stay behind at events and help pack up is the same reason that I felt like I should stay behind in Maccas. Bailing early isn't right.

That said, I've never considered the ethics of being a bystander (or bysitter in our case) in an armed robbery. And probably escaping is just as valid option as staying.

Anyway, once it was clear to knife dude that he'd lost control of everyone except us, he headed over to the counter to help hatchet dude. They shouted a lot about giving them money and nothing else seemed to be happening.

I found the whole thing fascinating. I didn't really freak out or even get nervous. I was hoping no one got stabbed but only because I felt like that would complicate things more than I wanted them too. I also spent time wondering what was going on behind the counter, but a lot of my thoughts were just something like "Oh yes, so this is what an armed robbery feels like." I worried a little for my fellow church friends. Some of them were freaking out a small bit. I hoped no one did anything stupid. I also spent a while trying to figure out if the robbers would get angry if I kept eating my salad. I'm not sure what I decided. I think I might have snuck in a few bits while their backs were turned.

After a bit more kerfuffle behind the counter the two guys ran out the back door they had come through. The whole thing would have taken less than two minutes. There was a momentary lull in action as everyone tried figure out if it was over. Then a bunch of us jumped up and went to the counter to see what happened, people pulled out phones to write a Facebook status update and a bunch of the patrons who escaped came back in the door, presumably to pick up the food they'd left behind, no one wants to lose those last two nuggets. I pulled out my phone and thought about doing a Facebook status update but couldn't think of anything witty to write so I put it back in my pocket and went back to eating my salad.

I think there was a little bit of discussion about calling the cops, I'm not sure if anyone did. We were all too busy on Facebook.

Suddenly there was a whole bunch of debriefing going on. We found out that no one was hurt and the guys had only gotten $200 because the safe was on a time lock.

The next 15 minutes was spent debriefing, talking about what we saw, how we felt, making jokes. The adrenaline meant that everyone laughed louder. It was prime time to tell jokes cause it made you feel like you're really funny. It was just the chemicals in the brain laughing, but who cares, you gotta take what you can get.

Eventually the cops turned up, none of them had their sirens on which was disappointing. They took our details, told us to wait for the detectives, and then when they found out all we saw were two guys in masks, told us we could go.

I stayed a little bit longer, finished my salad, thanked everyone for sharing the bonding experience with me, then went home.

The salad was pretty good, in case you're wondering.

Be All You Can Be

I just saw this ad on Facebook:



Defence Force ads annoy me. Because they're like "Come join the Defence Force, have fun, make a difference, save some lives, help in disasters..." But they neglect to mention killing people.

This ad does the same thing:



It seems dumb to me that the main job of the Defence Force, as far as I can tell, is to be better killing people than the people who might want to kill us (whether they're in our country, we're in theirs or we're both in a third country). I know that's a really simplistic view, but they don't carry guns and buy bombs for nothing. The ads just don't say what it's all about.

It'd be like being asked to work at Maccas and they say "Wear a uniform, clean some tables, operate a drive-thru" but no one mentions that the main reason why you're there is to sell burgers.

Still I guess death isn't a really attractive selling point. Or if they did use death as a selling point the kind of people it attracted might not be the kind of people the Defence Force wants.

This ad was a little more honest, back in the day. We used to sing a song in school to tune from the ad it went:

"Join the Army get your head blown off,
Doesn't matter if it's hard or soft."

They should have hired us to do their recruiting.

Advice

The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice. - Proverbs 12:15

Too many cooks spoil the broth. - Not from Proverbs


I have been getting a lot of advice lately, from all sorts of people. It's hard to listen to everyone and do everything. Especially when one piece of advice disagrees with another piece.

It's easier being a fool sometimes.

Late Summer

“Late Summer” by C.S. Lewis

I, dusty and bedraggled as I am,
Pestered with wasps and weed and making jam,
Blowzy and stale, my welcome long outstayed,
Proved false in every promise that I made,
At my beginning I believed, like you,
Something would come of all my green and blue.
Mortals remember, looking on the thing
I am, that I, even I, was once a spring.


I found it here.

Resolutions

I made a list of things I wanted to achieve by the end of the year today. If all goes according to plan, I'll have $1000 in a savings account and a tidy room.

Reach for the stars.

Forgettable Moments

Remembered history says that David ran up to me on my first day of primary school and said "Will you be my friend?" and we've been friends ever since.

On Saturday I went to Melbourne see him get married to Andreana. It was, to be sure, a lovely wedding. If I'm honest I'll probably forget the vows, though I liked them more than most. I'll probably forget that I had to pretend to be a water pot, though I've never done that before, least of all in the middle of a wedding ceremony. I'll probably forget that there were people handing out food and drink before the ceremony or that the whole thing happened on soggy ground while the rain made empty threats to come. I'll forget the conversations I had before and after, I'm already forgetting them. I'll forget the jokes Howie and I made as MCs at the reception, and I'll forget Russell the manager of the bowling club who kept asking us questions about the wedding we didn't know, ("We're just the MCs!"). I'll forget that there were three different types of cake and that I forgot to bring a belt and a jacket. I'll forget that Anmol ate two cheeseburgers on our way home.

I'll forget most things about Saturday.

But then again, I've forgotten most of the things David and I have done together as friends. The few significant moments are eclipsed by the thousands of insignificant ones. But whatever the memories are, when David asked me to be his friend he changed our lives. Neither of us would be where we or who we are today, if it wasn't for that moment 23 years ago when David began something significant.

So while I will mostly forget the wedding, I probably won't forget that under a giant tree one February afternoon in 2011 in Melbourne, one of my oldest friends married one of his newest friends. They will profoundly change each other's lives. My prayer is that they help each other be the best David and Andreana they can be and they love each other in all the forgettable moments as well as the memorable ones.

For myself, I'm thankful that David is still beginning significant things and creating relationships that change lives.

$430 and poop

I went out to my car this morning and discovered I had a parking fine and a bird had pooped on my car, twice. Or perhaps two birds had pooped on my car once each. I'm not sure. Probably option two, I hear they work in pairs.

On the matter of the parking fine, it was for $430 because I was allegedly parking in a disabled parking zone. This is untrue. I was parked in a "No Parking" zone. It became no parking at 8:30 this morning, and I forgot that when I parked my car last night. So I was fined, but not fined for the thing I was doing. And the difference between a "No Parking" fine and a disabled parking fine is about $350.

So it looks like I'll be going to court, which is exciting.

As it turns out then, I'm more upset about the birds than the fine. Because the fine I can fight, the birds I can't.

Home

The past two weeks have been massive. I've done 10 different talks, been on a camp, hung out in a hospital, helped do some house moving, had a party, opened my HSC results and seen 12 people become Christians. Awesome, but huge.

I'll elaborate more tomorrow. But for now, just thought I'd check in.

Mo

I love Movember. I love seedy mos. One day I hope to participate and scare young children for 31 days of late spring.

But I can't help but think that Movember is more about men loving having the chance to look dirty for a month more than it is men making some great sacrifice for men's health. I rekcon you could have Movember raising money for bottle-nosed hampsters and men would still be up for it. I don't know how many man spend a lot of time worrying about men's depression and testicular cancer. I rekcon there are a lot of men who think often about getting a tash happening. There is something attractive about being able to look disgusting and get away with it. Much more attractive than rasing money for men's issues is.

But if you love the mo more than you love the cause does it really matter?

Organisation Nation

On the weekend I'm leading a group of 15 fifteen people on a trip to Tumbarumba (where I went this time last year). 9 of them are youth in my youth group.

This has meant I've been sending mountains of emails, making phone calls, planning time tables, organising who's doing what while we're away, talking to parents, writing a drama, planning a youth ministry seminar, and somewhere in there, sleeping.

At the same time I'm trying to get my HSC Opening Party organised, but that's going rather slowly.

And then add to that planning and writing talks, emailing chaplains, organising schedules, doing invoices and writing resources, which I do while at work, I feel like my whole life is administration at the moment.

What is good though is that, at least as far as the mission trip goes I'm feeling relatively on top of it. I feel like the years of being a youth minister is coming into play. I may also be getting mildly gifted in administration. I don't know. Not majorly gifted. I'm still organising a bunch of stuff at the last minute, but things are coming together.

I bagz having the gift of relaxing. How about right now! Yes. I'm going to bed.

In other news, I put my finger in someone else's pus today. Not good.

Stick Around

I saw a car with these stickers on it today. And usually when I see these stickers they annoy me. I think because I get this feeling the family is going "Oh look we're a family". And it reduces your family to a statement like "Hands off our hospitals", "Real Aussies drive Utes" and "I'd rather push my Holden than drive your Ford".

But I hadn't really explored that feeling, it was just this gut response that I didn't like it.

Today I thought about it a little more and decided I liked it. If you're a family with young kids, the young kids are going to feel pretty awesome having thier own sticker on the back of the car. And it's actually nice for a family to make a statement, "We're a family and proud to be a family."

The only problem I see is that if the parents split you've got this embarrassing sticker representation of you family on your car. People should really think that through. Perhaps the stickers have kept families together. You know, couples sticking it out for the sake of stickers. That'd be nice.

As a single man, my sticker collection would be quite small. But I am thinking about perhaps getting something like this on my car:



I'm pretty sure that suits my image.

Poos, Oranges and Flowers

We have air freshener in our bathroom. We used to have Orange Power which eliminated any unwanted odours by totally over-powering them with the smell of orange. It smelt like an orange had exploded. It was like citrus flavoured chemical warfare. The problem was whenever you went in there it made you associate poo and oranges, and that's no good, because I like to eat oranges but I don't like to eat poo. So the orange bomb went.

Now we have just the usual flowery stuff you get. It's pretty useless. The bathroom just smells of poo and flowers. Like someone's eaten a bunch of magnolia and cherry blossom and then shot it out the back end. Poo and flowers don't really go together. If you got given a bouquet of flowers and poo you probably wouldn't be all that impressed, which is why I'm not all that impressed with the smell of our toilet. I think I want the orange bomb back.

Trivia

Last night I went to a trivia night. My team won. I think that's the first time I've ever been on a winning team at trivia.

I did, by the way, learn that Kiwi fruit is native to China. Those sneaky Kiwis stealing from the Chinese and calling it their own. Now I don't feel so bad about us stealing everything of theirs that's successful and calling it Australian. Pavlova anyone?

Speaking of Kiwis, I heard Mel Gibson originally came from New Zealand...

Minorgraine

I was sitting at work today, diligently looking at photos on istock of backpacks (it was pretty inspiring) when I realised I couldn't see things that I was looking at. I could see everything around what I was looking at, but in the centre of my vision I had a white spot like I'd been looking at a light, except I hadn't.

My immediate thought was "I'm going blind." Then I thought "If that's true I can probably take a day off work tomorrow." My third thought was "If I go blind, I'll be able to do an inspirational preaching tour." My fourth thought was "I hope, if I go blind, I don't start dressing like a blind person, unless it's Stevie Wonder."

Generally, if ever I find a problem with my health and the diagnosis is not immediately apparent to me, I jump first to worst case scenario and then to the inspirational preaching tour. "Maybe I've got cancer... Inspirational preaching tour", "Maybe I've got a rare degenerative disease... Inspirational preaching tour.", "Maybe I'm going bald... Inspirational preaching tour." Actually I'm planning the tour for my balding testimony now. I just need the hairline to recede a little more.

Anyway, the blind spot moved from being in the middle of my vision, to the left-side of my vision so I lost all my peripheral vision on the left. I realised than that I wasn't going blind I was just getting a migraine. I was a little disappointed that the preaching tour was off the cards, but I did still harbour a small hope that I could still take the day off work tomorrow and watch DVDs or something. I did at the very least start planning how I was going to get home with no peripheral vision. I thought driving would be a touch unsafe.

But, as it happens, the vision cleared up and the migraine never appeared. I got a tiny little headache and I felt sleepy during the news tonight, that's it. I've only ever gotten one migraine in my life, and I'm pretty sure I can't call what I had today a migraine. It was a poor excuse for a migraine. It was a failgraine. If I could capture it on a digital camera, I'd send it in to Fail Blog for everyone to laugh at.

But I'm not complaining. Even though I won't get to stay home and watch DVDs tomorrow, I am happy I'm not lying in a dark room with a throbbing head, feeling like I'm birthing a garden gnome out of my skull. And for all those of you who do get migraines, I wish this migraine on you from now on. You'll probably enjoy it compared to your usual torment. This one just kinda tickles.

Respect.

Yes! Optus!

Inspiration

Tomorrow morning I'm getting up at 6am to begin training for the City to Surf. I have two and a half weeks to get fit enough to run 14kms in under 60 minutes. That's the goal. If I actually try and achieve that goal these next two and a half weeks are going to be like a freakin' Rocky montage. Prepare to be inspired people.

Invasion

Levi, the soldier who comes to live with us sometimes, just buzzed our buzzer. He buzzed for about 10 seconds so I assumed it was one of my housemates being lazy. I picked up the phone, said "Would you like to be any clearer?", didn't find out who it was and buzzed him in. I then opened the door to our appartment, walked away and sat on the couch. And in walked Levi, no housemates to be seen. Had he been a serial killer, I'd be dead by now. Or perhaps drugged and tied to the table and a about to have medical experiments done to me.

Happily he's not a serial killer, he's a soldier. And when he turned up, I just let him in. I'm French, what else would you expect from me when a soldier turns up on my doorstep?