Knock out the passageways with bunches of weeds

It is a growing tradition in Australia to decorate your house with Christmas lights, and to travel around the town some time before Christmas day looking at everyone else's decorations. We weren't about to miss out on this, so last night my family followed two English double-decker buses around on the annual Christmas light tour. We cheated a bit - not going on the bus - but it was much cheaper for us all to go in the car than to buy tickets.

I didn't see much, because I was doing the driving, but I do have some photos for you. Most of them turned out blurred, which was a bit of a disappointment, but there's always next year. They look pretty cool anyway.



This is a house... believe it or not.


I can make out a Santa...


Cars with lazerbeam headlights?


One of the few that didn't blur.

Goodbye dear tonsils...

Well, it's all organised - I'm finally going for a tonsillectomy in February, after several months of tonsillitis and an undefined number of bouts before that. So readers beware, my blog will go seriously unupdated for about 3 weeks, while I lie in bed and... rest!

I'd post some gory pictures for you, but they're probably all copyrighted, so I'll give you the links instead:

Gory picture 1 (my mouth does NOT look like this)
Gory picture 2
Gory picture 3
Gory video

Erm... enjoy those, and please, no more horror stories of people you know who've had it done as an adult and nearly died from the pain... I'd rather go into this in blissful ignorance.

Introducing... Sammy!

It's hard to get a look in because Mum's so protective.


What a cutie!


Taking a drink

Gentle cat and fierce lion

I'm presently reading the Chronicles of Narnia, prompted by all the talk about the movie that has come out recently. I read the books as a child and thoroughly enjoyed them, now I am reading them in an attempt to decipher what C.S. Lewis intended the stories to represent.

I'm up to 'The Horse and His Boy' (these days the books take much less time to get through), a story of a boy called Shasta who escapes from his father's house (who is not really his father at all) on a talking horse called Bree. It tells of their journey to the land Narnia and how Shasta comes to know the truth of his past; that is, that he is really the son of a king and heir to the throne. One bit stood out to me which kind of helped me through some stuff that's been happening in my life at the moment. One night, Shasta is all alone on the edge of a desert, preparing to sleep among some tombs. A cat comes up to him (and nearly scares the life out of him at first - he'd heard stories about ghouls that haunted the tombs), and sleeps at his back for the night. However, Shasta wakes during the night to the sound of jackals in the distance, and realises that the cat is gone. He becomes afraid and wishes he wasn't so alone. If only he knew that a jackal would tear him apart had it had the chance to get near him. Suddenly Shasta hears a deafening roar, followed by the sound of jackals retreating into the night. Later, Shasta wakes again to see the cat once more at his feet.

It is not until later in the story that Shasta meets Aslan, the great lion who represents Jesus in the story. Aslan tells Shasta that the cat back at the tomb was in fact Himself. He was also the lion who scared off the jackals, and the same lion who chased Shasta and his friend Aravis to make them travel faster in order to make it to Archenland more quickly to warn the king of a coming attack.

I was comforted by this picture of God. Sometimes God is like the quiet cat lying at our back, quietly present to give us comfort in fearful times. Sometimes, however, it feels like (and I've felt this way), that He is not even with us at all; that everything that is happening to us is completely forgotten by him. But just when we think he has left us, he is like the lion, defending us from our enemies without us even knowing it. What an awesome God.

Back to the hole...

I drove to Ballarat today to do some preparing for a beach mission I am part of. We filmed some stuff for the drama in the park near Lake Wendouree, which got some interesting looks from the people around us. Well the kids were interested, at least, which is a sign the kids in Warrnambool might like it also.

So after saying several things over and over and over and over again, and walking up and down, up and down, until we got it right, I was understandably tired... and nearly fell asleep on the way home. I took a powernap half way through (because, as the road sign says, 'a microsleep can kill in seconds' (?!)) in order to ensure my survival for the rest of the journey.

That was my day... I don't really know what to write anymore so I'll just stop now before I write something stupid :)

? weeks to go...

Sorry readers, but I won't be counting down til I go to Philippines any more, partly because I ran out of pictures to post, partly because I lost count of how many weeks it is to go, and partly because I'm not exactly sure of the date we are going. Oh well... I will, however, post some pictures when I come back. Can't wait!

Not so trivial...

Did you know that Adolf Hitler's favourite movie was King Kong? That's the kind of things I've been learning today as Mum and I played an all-day Trivial Pursuit match. I picked up the game for $AU 3.00 at a garage sale (or a yard sale for all the Americans out there), and I absolutely love it, despite being hopelessly hopeless at it. I'll never go on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, because I don't think I'm very good at all at these kinds of games. But they're still enjoyable for me, because you actually learn something, and you don't win by luck alone.

Arachno-Addiction

You know you're addicted when you spend your entire afternoon just trying to finish 'one more level'. That's right, I spent the entire afternoon and evening yesterday playing Spiderman 2 for PC. Normally I hate spiders, and normally I don't get addicted to computer games, but this one rocks. You are Spiderman (who else) on a mission to save Mary-Jane Watson from Doctor Octopus's evil plan to take over the world (or something). On the way you meet a variety of enemies, from the stupid to the sarcastic, until you finally meet the master himself - Doc Ock. I won't give away the ending, because it's a bit of a surprise. No 2D action here - you can do everything that Spidey can do in the movie - shoot webs, swing from building to building, crawl on roofs and so on, equipped with spider sense to warn you when something fishy's happening.

I'd recommend trying this game out - but set aside a day for it.

An 'absolutely' cool party

Luke is a guy I went to high school with, and today was his 21st birthday party. It was a great day actually, probably one of the better 21sts I've been to. I really did not know what to get him for his birthday (guys are always hard to buy for), so I decided to make him a cake, seeing as I had heard he wasn't planning to have one. As to deciding what sort of cake it would be, I had no problems: Luke absolutely loves aeroplanes (he's studying aerospace engineeering), and he loves the late Australian airline, Ansett. So I made him an Ansett plane cake.

It took a lot longer than I anticipated, but that's cool because I'm on holidays. I started off by cooking 2 cakes, a big thick one, and a smaller thin one. I then cut out a body, wings and a tail.



After that, I stuck it to the board with jam, and then iced it with glace icing. I realised soon after then that I had a problem: because the icing was white, the darker parts of the cake were showing through and it was going to take many layers of icing to cover that. So I decided instead to coat the icing with dessicated coconut.

A few marshmallows and some cool gel stuff later, and... ta da! A plane!



And from another angle...



A fair bit of work was involved, but Luke seemed to like it so it was worth it in the end. I wonder what I might attempt at the next party...?

15 weeks to go! That reminds me of... karaoke!

This is a karaoke machine. Karaoke is very popular in the Philippines. I remember many times lying awake in my hut in a 'resort' somewhere, listening to the muffled sounds of pop music and off-key singers in a karaoke bar somewhere far off. I also remember once flicking through channels in a hotel room to discover (much to my horror) that they have a karaoke channel. 24 hours a day, you can tune into classics such Greensleeves and 500 Miles, with a highly sophisticated MIDI accompaniment, fluorescent lyrics along the bottom of the screen and some poorly paid American model grinning in the background.

If you're thinking of trying karaoke over there, pleeaase do everyone a favour by learning the words first (this helps if you want to get a good score and not make a complete fool of yourself), by singing in tune, and by doing it in the daytime so you don't disturb the sleep of some poor fellow in a nearby hut.

Fingernails, food and fun!

On Tuesday all the girls from my connect group plus another group got together and had a dinner / pamper night. We were supposed to bring some international food to share; these are the leftovers.


I bought my favourite filipino dish: Chicken Adobo. It tastes great! We also had the potatoes that you see here, with some spicy sauce, salads, a quiche, some pizzas from Dominos, and some awesome fattening cheesecakes from the Cheesecake Shop. We all went home feeling pretty full and sleepy (not to mention guilty), but at least our fingernails looked good!