Last night at Maccas, after EYF, Enoch did a "word test" on some of us. He asked what our favourite animal was and to say 3 describing words of why we like it. Then he asked us to do the same but with our favourite colour. So, here was what I said...

Favourite animal ~ thoroughbred horse ~ graceful :: handsome :: swift (though now I'd change it to magestic)

Favourite colour ~ lilac/mauve (a purple-y/pink-y shade) ~ interesting :: soothing :: cheerful (though now I'd change it to girly or cool)

So apparently the words we used to describe why we like our animal is what we look for in our partner (yes, someone handsome for me please! I'm not sure about the other 2 words though haha). And the words we used to describe why we like our colour is actually describing ourselves (hmm... not so sure about soothing).

Feel free to contribute your words, people! But do it as if I haven't told you what it's actually apparently describing!

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Today was a tough shift at work. We were so understaffed, especially coz one of the girls didn't turn up. And it was so busy and packed out, it was practically running around on the floor non-stop! Highlights of the day included serving Aunty Anna and Uncle Oliver in the morning... then Big Joey in the arvo, who ordered a hazelnut latte (which is probably one of the more interesting hot drinks we serve... but still not crazy enough considering all the stuff he orders from EasyWay!)

After work was miserable. Just one of those days where almost every single little thing irritates you because of all the build-up from the day (including difficult customers who were being annoying and picky). Things you'd normally ignore but with this mood, you just wanna pick at every petty and trivial thing and growl and scream. I think I'm okay now that I've had a hot shower and have had time to rest my feet. Hmm... reminds me of PPB's sermon last Sunday, which was about thankfulness. His story about the guy with Cerebral Palsy almost moved me to tears. There's just so much to admire about those people who can think so positively and praise God for everything. And while I have so much to be thankful to God for, especially since my body is normal and healthy, it really makes me think twice about whinging. I just can't comprehend how people get by like that -- it's incredible!

Nearly everywhere I go there are usually business-looking people who stand around and try to shake your hand, thus leading you further in to wasting your time by trying to do a survey on you or selling their service.

My tactic is to fold my arms, avoid eye contact, pretend I can't hear or see them, sticking my headphones in my ears if they are at hand and within reach, walk the opposite direction, or try to walk around them hurriedly if that is the only path available for me to take. Sometimes they will follow you anyway, despite the fact you look like you're in a rush. They stick out their hand to shake yours, even if your hands are tucked away, and when you say "I'm in a rush to be somewhere" they say "Can't you shake my hand anyway?" That is one of the many encounters I had in a single day once when I was in Parramatta.

The stupid thing is that these sort of people hang around Bankstown station all day and almost everyday. For one thing, even though there are constantly people going in and out, how do they expect to catch bait if stations are the place where people rush to and from. So far I've managed to avoid talking to any of them.

However last week, as a friend and I were going into the station after uni, one of them stopped us in our tracks and said "Hi, how're you going?" as he stuck out his hand to shake my friend's hand. Being the impatient person that I am, who finds it pointless stopping for everyone who sticks out their hand at you, I kinda shoved her to keep her walking and muttered "Keep walking, don't stop" as I kept my head down. His hand did not get shaken and we kept moving.

"What did you do that for? I feel bad and rude for not shaking his hand," my friend said. Here's the thing that annoys me: we would never get to our destination if every time we stopped for every person who tries to shake our hands and talk to us about things which do not concern us. We have a choice to not shake his hand to engage ourselves in a long-winded conversation. How can people be made to feel bad just coz they don't shake back a person's hand to put themselves through a long conversation to lead up to a survey we're not even old enough to do? Personally, I just can't find myself feeling guilty about these things.

Another time in the city, as my friends and I were about to cross a road, a woman from some unknown charity stood in front of me with a tin asking me to donate. I said "No, sorry," and she goes "Please? It doesn't have to be much" but I still shook my head. She stood in front of my friends and they threw in some of their change. As we crossed the road, my friends go to me "Why didn't you donate? She made us feel bad so we donated." Why, you ask? I don't need to be made to feel guilty and bad to donate. I donate generously when I want. And I would rather do that than to pull out some loose change and unwillingly donate it to something I don't even know what the cause is for. And not to make myself sound like a selfish tight-arse but we can't always go around throwing away our change for every person that stands in front of us to make us feel bad about not donating.

Is this the norm or am I seriously being different to everyone else? Perhaps people do find it worthy in stopping for randoms on the street that make us all apparently feel bad and guilty? Or perhaps I'm just heartless and feel no shame when I don't shake people's hand and give away money?

Woke up early today after some hours of sleep, which I managed to get after Frankie's late-night party last night. Bleary-eyed and tired, I arrived at Darling Harbour for the Equip Women's conference, along with some other church girlies. I've never seen so many females (probably a few thousand?) all packed into one place! It usually shouldn't be a surprise to me since I went to an all-girls school and my campus is largely chick-dominated... but yeh, LOADS of women!

As with most Christian events, the day started off with singing and worship. Except there was hardly anything to sing (only one or two) songs for each of the entire sessions (of which there were two). And all the songs were the serious, melow, wordy and lengthy songs, which are saturated with theology, so I found it hard to focus my attention on God coz I was too busy trying to read the slides. (Oh man, Al and Irene rock!!!) And where was all the enthusiasm and liveliness in the worshipping?? In the WHOLE auditorium of thousands of people, every single one of them were all standing there like poles and with straight faces! If I hear drums, I wanna bop along with the beat and get fully into it! And Esther and I just got so bored that when it came to the chorus in "Now By Faith", we started clapping. Then we heard a few others around follow. Still determined, we did it again the following chorus and more people joined in until the worship leader joined in too and made everyone else clap. Hahaha, look what we started!

Speaking of beat and drums, it was a chick drummer! And although she was seemingly impressive, she had no control over her drumming whatsoever. She kept doing rapid frilly fills everywhere, rather than building the song up slowly, so that the tempo of the songs kept getting faster until I felt breathless by the end.

Anyway, the talks were based on James 2. I love the book of James (it's my personal favourite) coz there is always something new to learn and be challenged by, no matter how many times you've read it. So... one thing I was encouraged by: the reminder of God's love, grace and mercy -- that alone is just so awesome! One thing I was challenged by: God chose the lowly and wretched things of this world, and if he has chosen me then I have no right to judge others coz I'm no better than the next person -- very humbling indeed.

My elected workshop (Passion for the Lost) was rather disappointing. Apart from the fact that it reminded me of uni, in that I found it hard to stay awake, the message wasn't anything new or anything I hadn't heard before. Oh well, a good reminder nonetheless to be prayerful for others and being a good witness to our friends.

Today was the second time in the week that I accidentally slept in, therfore missing the train which gets me to uni on time!

The first time was on Monday and I didn't even bother making it all the way to uni. I always set my alarm to give myself 15 minutes before I actually roll out of bed. So my alarm goes off on Monday morning and as usual, after taking a while to realise the annoying ringing is coming from my alarm, I hit the snooze button. Somehow, I always manage to fall back to sleep again... until the alarm rings again 5 minutes later. This process normally happens about two or three times before I well and truly switch the alarm off and force myself out of my warm and comfy bed. I struggle to sit up and take away the three layers of blanket, as the morning winter air chills my body. But on this Monday morning, I must’ve hit the snooze button one too many times because the alarm just stopped ringing after a certain time. I woke half an hour later, getting up in a mad rush. And even though I managed to get myself ready in half the time it usually takes me, I arrived at the station 5 minutes too late. At least it was only another 10-15 minute wait for the next train. But when I got to Strathfield, my connecting train had already gone and it was a 40 minute wait (stoopid westy trains) for the next one. I thought, “screw this, I’m not going to wait for that and why bother if I’m going to be an hour late to a 2 hour lecture?”. So I went home instead.

And today when my alarm went off, I pressed the off button instead of the snooze button. I fell asleep again for another half hour until my brother knocked on my door telling me to wake up, before he walked out to go catch his bus to school. I found myself waking up and getting myself ready in another frantic rush. And yet again, I arrived at the station 5 minutes too late. Fortunately, the time was earlier today than on Monday so it was a 20 minute wait for the connecting train when I got to Strathfield. I arrived 20 minutes late to my tutorial but at least I didn’t miss out on much. Actually, there’s not much to miss out on in tutes anyway – I only go coz it’s 80% compulsory attendance.

Then in the following lecture, I kept nodding off into microsleeps. And it dawned on me just how much I’ve been falling asleep everywhere a lot lately. I used to always give my full attention in lectures and classes and manage to write up a couple of pages of notes within the hour. Now, my margins are filled with squiggles and patterns and I’ve only got several lines of notes taken. I even fell asleep during a video in my psych tute and I never do that in pscyh! I also realized that at the start of the year, I spent my travelling time doing my readings. Now I either can’t be bothered reading and end up falling asleep on the trains and buses… or I attempt to read but end up falling asleep anyway.

So I thought, the lectures and classes aren’t getting any more boring or different to what they were at the start of the year. So it must be me. But why am I always so tired? Why is it so hard to get out of bed these days? To the point that I miss my trains? Why aren’t I paying attention anymore? I must be either getting EXTREMELY slack and unmotivated… or I’m just plain old tired.

Here is what I concluded: apart from the fact that the semester has really been dragging on (and I’m not used to having no proper breaks, like in high school)… I think I’ve also been underestimating my own lack of energy. I’ve just been disregarding my tiredness and getting by with my busy life, pretending that everything is fine with me. After all, everyone else does too. So where did all the energy go?? Into work with my new job (not to mention the amount of energy that gets taken out of me from EYF-leading). Running around on the café floor really does take out more than I think it does. So I’m doing my usual uni stuff with added work on top and still sleeping my usual amount but feel drained and tired the following day(s). I don’t know if this is something I just have to get used to (that is, feeling burnt out all the time) and if it’s all part of the process of “growing up” but I don’t think I’m handling it that great and it frustrates me. I need energy.

What a hectic week! I've been absolutely buggered!

On top of the four assignments that were due this week (2 essays, 1 creative writing piece, 1 group presentation) and preparing for EYF, I also started work this week! At...

Koorong's Pages Cafe!

My very first job! And it's so awesome working in such a friendly and comfortable environment! The staff, I mean. Customers still complain and treat you like crap when they aint happy and I have to constantly apologise even if its not my fault. Oops, that's an overstatement - most customers are actually quite nice but you do get the odd unhappy customer... but who doesn't? I promise to never be a grumpy customer!

And I'm such a nooblet with no experience with anything (I'm surprised they wanted to offer me the job) that I've been the cause of some spillages (but luckily no breakages...yet!) because I'm such an unco weakling! Tough work and really exhausting but I'm just so glad I finally got a job at a time when I was just about to give up. Praise God!

So yeh, if you happen to be in Koorong on Wednesday or Saturday, come pop in to the cafe to say hi (when I'm not busy haha)! Which reminds me, I saw Pastor Lawrence and an uncle on Wednesday. Funny stuff, they looked surprised to see me serve them coffee!

Oh, and no I cannot get you discounted books.

1. What happens when you pray for opportunities?

The short answer is God answers you by giving you opportunities, and sometimes when you least expect it.

There’s a girl whom I’ve been friends with since kindy. We’ve been through High School together and now we’re in uni together. She’s a Buddhist, not devout and still trying to find out the meaning of what she believes and worships. She knows that I’m a Christian and we’ve mentioned things here and there in the past… but I’ve never actually sat down with her properly and shared with her what my faith is all about. And I guess since the start of the year, I’ve subconsciously kept thinking that this year will be a good opportunity to share with her since she’s going to the same uni as me. However, it turned out I hardly ever got to see her since she has different classes and subjects to me. In the past couple of weeks, though, we’ve been bumping into each other at the train station or at the bus stop and have just done some catching up and I didn’t think twice about it. At least not until last weekend when I was going through the next Tim Hawkins study for EYF, which is about praying for our friends. It was then that I remembered and thought of her and shot a quick rocket prayer to God.

On Tuesday, I missed my bus going into the city by a couple of minutes so I had to wait almost half an hour for the next one. Meanwhile, a musty and dusty smelling old lady, with bulgy eyes and crooked yellow teeth sat next to me at the bus stop. During this time, she’d blow her nose into a hanky (so unhygienic) which she had pulled out from her chest area and she’d tug at a tear in the underlayer of her skirt and ask if I had any scissors on me (yeh right! as if I carry scissors around in my handbag when I’m going to the city. I don’t even carry with me to uni.)

I must say though, that despite the discomfort of sitting next to this old lady, it was great that I had missed the first bus because this friend of mine got on my bus at Top Ryde. And from what started out by me asking her about her long weekend, it turned out to be a conversation about our beliefs for the rest of the journey (haha I finally no longer shudder at that word). She had gone on this camp in which, like our church or youth camps I suppose, she had learnt more about her beliefs and ‘religion’. We asked each other a lot of questions about what we believe, practice, and learn. It was good not having me do all the talking and ‘Bible-bashing’ and that I was still learning about her. One thing I found odd, though, was that in her belief system she uses parts of the Bible and its characters as a supplement of learning about ‘good people’. She also believed each religion will eventually lead you to the ‘divine’ as she called it. I challenged her (as well as myself) how we can all possibly reach that place if each religion claims it is the ‘right one’? There can only be one route, so how do we know we’re on the right one? A non-Christian will find it hard to be able to understand what we see as ‘faith’ in the ‘truth’. Besides, they have their own ‘truth’. Answers anyone? She has proposed that we should keep talking about this whenever we see each other.

Praise God that he gave me such an opportunity, even though it was unexpected and in a very open and public place. Thank God, that his Holy Spirit was working in me because I don’t think it would have been possible for me to say what I said by my own knowledge or abilities. I pray that I can be persistent in prayer for her, that more opportunities will open up and that God will be working in her heart.

2. Is Pancakes on the Rocks as hyped up as it’s made out to be?

The reason why I was going into the city on Tuesday was to meet up with my group of High School friends and eat at Pancakes. It was absolutely awesome to see them all and catch up with them after sooo long! I missed them so much, hanging out with them during lunch times and just having a good laugh. Uni friends just ain’t the same. Anyway, I think all of us just ended up ordering the sweet ones. I ordered the Blackforrest Cherry ($12.95), which was black cherries with chocolate pancakes (which tasted just like chocolate cake). The first mouthful was delicious, but gradually became more like a chore with each proceeding mouthful. It was so filling, I still had about a third of it left over, and I think I ate myself sick. Well, not literally. But we walked from The Rocks all the way back to Town Hall and I still felt like a big fat blob. And when I arrived home, I was still quite full but I was craving anything savoury! I couldn’t even eat the hot-cross bun the next morning because I still felt sick of the sweetness.

My conclusion? Is nice only in a small portion. Overeat (because you feel the need to eat up the rest of the $6.50 worth of pancake) just decreases your original enjoyment of the dish. Not as special as I had imagined it to be. But the company of my friends was.

3. Why is it that there are so many couples of Asian chicks with white guys but not the other way round?

This is exempting Gail and Enoch because they’re special. And exempting the Honkies. I’m talking more about the ‘westernised’ people like me. I’ve always wondered about this question though. (Actually, it was quite ironic that I saw a white guy and Asian girl couple at Pancakes... though I may be wrong in that assumption?) And also why it’s so hard to find the ‘right guy’ if it’s preferable that he’s Chinese. And why it seems they find it so hard to make the move to just even talk to the girl they’re interested in. We have a serious problem. These guys are gonna end up dateless if they never make the move coz the gal is just gonna run off with another guy. Is it so wrong for Chinese guys to talk to us chicks? I’ve now concluded that if the ‘right guy’ comes along and happens to be Aussie, then I may well even jump at the opportunity because you’ll never know how long you’ll have to wait around for the Chinese guy.

If you’re wondering like me also, then wonder no longer. The answers are just below if you click on the image… and make sure you pay attention to the ending...

A high school friend of mine emailed me this article today about the kind of characters you meet at uni. It's pretty lengthy to read and I didn't read it all myself but here is something that caught my eye:

CHRISTIANS
Jesus loves you and he's stationed these pamphlet-bearing folk outside the library to prove it. But to achieve His aims, the campus Christian often resorts to serpent-like guile - inviting you to "free barbecues" or "movie nights" which quickly turn into happy-clappy, Bible-bashing sessions where everyone babbles in tongues. Profess purity but are secretly sex-mad - that's why they're all married by 21.

I'm not even sure what to make of it. It's so sad that Christians have been generalised like this but I can't help but acknowledge some of its truth, especially the 'Bible-bashing' bit and the 'professing purity' bit. I suppose the latter has been placed in an irrelavent context but think about it this way: so often Christians appear to be preaching holiness, righteousness and godliness. But have we looked at ourselves really intently before we even start telling others how they should be or act? Have we slipped into a pattern of just preaching straight-bang to them about how sinful and impure they are? Are we forgetting the fact that we are ALL sinful - just as sinful as them - and continue to sin in our everyday lives? Have we lost the LOVE in just being their friends and SHOWING them first what it means to be a Christian?

In turn, it seems Christians are "scaring off" and "turning off" the non-Christians before they even get to hear the wonderful message of Christ. We must remember love and godliness before Bible-bashing, I say.

Agh!! I have just heard the Australian National Anthem on the TV outside my room for the 3rd or 4th time tonight within the space of 2 hours! I reckon just within the past week, I've heard it about 50 times already. It's driving me crazy and every time the tune plays, it makes me lose my concentration and I'm actually supposed to be typing up my lecture notes at the moment. It's only been just under a week and the Commonwealth Games aint even exciting anymore coz it's getting so predictable. *Screams*... at the moment I'm hearing again!!! That makes it 5 times in the space of 2 hours. Of course I'm still going for the Aussies but it's so dumb how the Games are set up just so the Aussies can win all the gold they like coz the Americans aint in it. This isnt real glory!

Oh and it's sooo bad watching any sport with my Dad in front of the TV as well. As if the professional commentators on TV aren't annoying enough already! My Dad is like the second commentator for our family. ARGH!!! I'm hearing it the 6th time now! It would be so nice if the Aussies just let some other countries win for once. Ok... it's finished... for now. So I'm gonna grab the opportunity to keep typing up my notes now.