how Hamlet are you?

I've just been checking out the Jasper Fforde website (I've lately been really getting into his series on Thursday Next -- The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten), and discovered that you too can find out how much like Hamlet you are, by clicking Here. :)

party party party

Do you know, for some reason I have an irrational fear of the 21st birthday party. Not other people's, as a rule, but my own. I can't figure it out. It feels like it felt when I knew that someday, eventually, I would have to get my full driving license... which I got, with very little pain, in the end. I think it's just the idea that it's something you apparently have to do, that everyone else does, when turning 21, to me, seems so irrelevant. Obviously it's the big traditional coming-of-age thing in my culture, but it seems that by 21, you're allowed to do everything already and so there's nothing particularly liberating about becoming a 'proper adult'. It seems to me that 20 is more of a landmark because you're out of the teens. And you have to invite heaps of people, that's like one of The Unwritten Rules, so you get stuck with all these people you have to entertain that you don't necessarily know that well. It seems much cosier, to me, just to invite your really good friends and family for dinner or something--but then, because The Unwritten Rules say so, if you only do that, it seems slightly offensive for anyone whose name you know to be left out.
And then there's the whole speeches/etc thing. It just makes me feel uncomfortable to imagine that. As if I've put on a party to be all about me. The silly thing is I never feel other people put on parties to be all about them. But yeah...
Once I got my full license, I thought I would never worry about anything or have any spectres in my future until I got to my seventies and had to resit my driving license. How very wrong I was. :)

colds are GROSS

I hate colds. They are so disgusting. I think this is the worst one I've ever had cos I'm just so blocked up I can't even hear out of one of my ears. I feel miserable and cold (it's raining) and I want to lie on the couch at my old house drinking one of Mum's hot lemon and honey drinks and listening to classical music. Isn't it weird how one always knows exactly what one wants when one can't have it!

Here are some more photos from up north. The top I just took out of the airplane window. I tried taking quite a lot of photos from the planes but unfortunately on both flights most of the land was obscured by cloud--although I did get some cool cloudy ones too! This was taken as we flew over the hills near Kaikoura. The other two are from Piha, again, with my feet, again. :)

Recently, the father of a girl I knew at school died suddenly of a massive heart attack. He was in his early forties and very fit and healthy, so it was a complete shock. My friends and I were talking about it and one of them happened to say that they thought that was the worst way for someone to die, in terms of the effect on the family. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to the conclusion that it is evident she has never had to watch someone she loves die slowly. It makes me quite angry when people make these flip generalisations when they can't even fathom what it's like to be in either situation. Because there was some relief involved when my Mum actually died, they assume it's much easier to lose her than if it had been a complete shock. I'm not the sort of person who describes in graphic detail to my friends what it's like to see my mother slowly deteriorate so some of them just don't understand. I guess I don't really expect them to. But I do expect people not to assume they can understand just like that, and not to make things so simple, so black and white.

hello again

I'm back from my weekend in Auckland--had such a good time! I went up on Thursday afternoon and came back yesterday (Sunday). Went shopping, had fantastic food, went out to this amazing beach called Piha which is one of the big NZ surfing beaches (and the photos above are of that), and obviously saw my sister Felicity and her husband Mike. I managed to develop a bad cold which meant that the descent back into Christchurch on the plane was hellish--apparently a blocked nose means all this pressure builds up in your head. It was so painful and my ears blocked and wouldn't unblock at all for about two hours, and even then they weren't perfect. Yuck, I hate not being able to hear properly.

I really like Auckland. It's just that much bigger than my hometown to seem like a real city, yet it's not so huge it's inconvenient... although traffic is terrible and I don't think I could live there, it takes ages to get anywhere. But there are fantastic restaurants/food stalls/etc everywhere, and I tried Moroccan food for the first time ever, and it is so unbelievably good! I think it's a new favourite of mine. I also had some masala dosa, a southern Indian dish, from a stall in the Aotea markets. We had it in Malaysia and loved it so much, and Mum had it all the time when she was teaching at Hebron School in the Nilgiri Hills in India, but it doesn't seem to get sold much in Indian restaurants in NZ. So that was quite exciting!

I've got heaps of pictures, mainly of Piha and some out of the window of the plane, but I've just put three up for today. Piha (as demonstrated in the bottom photo) is a black sands beach; I think iron used to be mined from it. So quite striking really.

I've just been reading my friend Vicki's blog, which is on my links to blogs as 'Gapping in Kenya'. She and I have been penpals for ages. At the moment she is spending a gap year (or maybe less than a year, I'm not sure) in Mombasa in Kenya, but her home is in Guernsey, and she spent her childhood in East Africa with missionary parents, and she went to boarding school in England... :) Her blog is amazing, I can't believe some of the stuff that's happening to her. It makes all the stuff I write about seem quite irrelevant... :S

november

Well, there has been an announcement--U2 will probably be resuming their tour in November. Seven or eight whole months to wait! I'm relieved, though, that it seems they'll actually be coming at all. I've got that song, I think it's by Wyclef Jean, running through my head... the one that goes, I'll be gone till November, I'll be gone till November... I see you crying but girl I can't stay cos I'll be gone till November... Give a kiss to my mother

So I'm going to go up to Auckland this weekend anyway, just for a holiday, and to see Felicity and Mike. Hopefully that'll be nice and I won't spend much money. :S At least I am no longer in overdraft and in no danger of being so. I have even opened a savings account, with 4% interest, and I actually have a substantial (for me) amount of money in there! It's a miracle.

Jane and I realised that Sunday Bloody Sunday is actually a very apt song for the tragedy of the postponed tour. Example: I can't believe the news today / I can't close my eyes and make it go away / How long, how long till they sing this song? / How long, how lo-o-o-o-o-ng? :) All right, so we changed the words very slightly, but other than that, it works rather well.

If I was in a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, my father would tell me that the postponement is going to build my character. I suppose it will, actually, because I am such an impatient person normally! There you go; every cloud has a silver lining.

I have watched both film versions of Pride and Prejudice in the last few weeks. I have to make myself ignore the book when I watch the newest one but it's growing on me in its own right. And I have to admit that Matthew Macfadyen isn't bad-looking anymore, but actually quite scrummy :) However, still he doesn't have quite the same feel of the character as Colin Firth did.

tedium

[a nephew of mine. I took this when I went down to Dunedin just before Christmas.]

To tell the truth, I don't know what to write in my blog today. That being the case, I should probably just ignore blogging until I have something to say, but actually I just feel like writing in my blog.

Nothing interesting has happened since Saturday and now it's Monday morning, I came earlier to uni than I need to so I could get a car park, and I'm bored. It's completely my own fault. I don't have a class till 1 o'clock (it is now 10:15am). I'm meeting someone at 11, which makes everything a bit better, but for all I know she'll need to run away very quickly. I have creative writing from 5-7pm this evening. Not so fantastic a day to look forward to really. Oh, but Katie and I are going to go and have Indian for dinner straight after Creative Writing, and Desperate Housewives is on TV tonight! :) Hooray for that.

Argh I'm so boring. :( I need a life. It's so depressing that my whole exciting weekend in Auckland is now postponed. There is a Navs camp on, but since I'm not in Auckland I'd really like to go to my friend Sarah's farewell on Saturday night--she's going to Samoa very soon for a longish period of time with YWAM. I'm going to miss her so much!

My friend Jane, another dejected U2 concert-goer, has suggested we randomly go somewhere like Hanmer or Dunedin this weekend... but I don't think it will work out. So maybe a few of us can get together on Friday night, play U2 music loudly, jump up and down and scream, and pretend that we're at the concert... Or, it could just be super-depressing :)

Oh flamingo. Just realised we're going to miss out on the St Patrick's Day concert now. That would have been so cool.

I need to get off here and stop complaining. See youuuu....

[Quote for today: Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. --Oscar Wilde]

gypsy fair

I went to put some flowers on my Mum's grave this morning and on the way back stopped at this 'gypsy fair' at one of the parks. The people who run the fair all live in these fantastic vans/trucks that have been converted into a kind of house truck. They're all beautifully painted and very very cool.

I must say it was a bit different from the usual 'fair' as such, though. Despite the hot dogs and Shetland ponies doing tricks and fire poi dancers and handcrafts on sale, I couldn't help noticing that they were also selling portraits of pagan religious stuff, those glass pipes you smoke P in, tarot card readings and so on... A little different perhaps! But mostly it was pretty cool. I felt a bit rude taking photos of everything, although I tried to swallow this, so I didn't get as many photos as I would have liked. But still, here are a couple.

beach

I went to the beach last night with my church's youth group; it was really nice but because it's getting darker earlier now I didn't manage to get many good photos. I hate how my camera won't take photos after it gets to a certain level of light. It still seemed quite light, and the moon was out and shining really brightly over the pier--but no, the spirit of my camera was uncooperative. However, I quite like some of these. The middle one is just looking back from the beach towards the setting sun, and the two others are just from walking along the pier and taking photos with the flash off.

originals

These are some photos Patty wanted to see--when she gets back from her vacation I suppose! I posted them in cartoon format a few days ago, so here are the originals.

Just heard on the news that it's rumoured The Edge's seven-year-old daughter has leukaemia. Gosh, how horrible. I feel kinda bad because when you think about it my response to the original news of the postponement was completely juvenile and lacking in perspective.

I have been watching a lot of Season 4 of Alias today (my one uni-free weekday); my friend has the DVD box set and she lent it to me. It's so good! Fantastic soundtrack (it even has a U2 song, Bad, at one point), just the same creepiness, and the characters are really cool, as usual. It's so bad, I'll watch one episode and go "ooh I have to watch one more!" because of some big cliffhanger at the end, and suddenly I've watched four in a row without realising it. :(

Later: just realised this is the 100th post on my blog! Yay!

the joy of having siblings

This is an email my sister Felicity, who is going to the U2 concert with me, forwarded me. It is a series of emails she and her husband Mike exchanged on hearing about the postponement.


-----Original Message-----
From: Felicity
Sent: Thursday, 9 March 2006 3:08 p.m.
To: Michael
Subject:

U2 postpones NZ concerts ......

***

From: Michael
Sent: Thursday, 9 March 2006 15:40
To: Felicity
Subject: RE:

Oh stink!

***

From: Felicity
Sent: Thursday, 9 March 2006 4:10 p.m.
To: Michael
Subject: RE:

Indeed. Am amazed we haven’t heard from allie yet.

***

From: Michael
Sent: Thursday, 9 March 2006 16:19
To: Felicity
Subject: RE:

Give it time. That it will come is one of the few certainties in this life.

---END OF EMAIL---

Har har.

flamingo!

Am so so so so SO upset. U2 have gone and postponed the rest of their tour. It was in ONE week, the concert I was going to, and I have been pretty delirious with excitement up till : NOW.
It's because of an illness in the immediate family of one of the band members. I'm trying to sympathise but it's really very hard right now. Do they realise the cost this is going to involve for hundreds of thousands of people? I'm probably going to lose my plane ticket and have to pay for another! Grrr. Flamingo. (Flamingo is my substitute swear word.)

It actually makes me quite angry. I mean, in 2001 they went ahead with the tour, on schedule, even though Bono's father DIED, for goodness' sake. I really hope they'll give us some more details or it'll be really hard to take. And I also really hope they give us the new dates very soon or it'll be impossible to change flight dates/times.

Me and a couple of friends are going to meet up tonight to have a crying party.

It just seems like EVERYTHING has gone wrong in buying these tickets. First, I bought them and had to sort out major issues because I used my brother's credit card and to pick the tickets up, I needed to be the credit card holder, and he lives in Malaysia. That took ages because they didn't reply to my emails. Then, I tried to arrange postage of the tickets and although I asked them to do this three times, it wasn't until the fourth time I rang that the ticket company actually posted them. Finally I thought nothing more could go wrong, and now THIS. Argh.

LATER:

Okay, I am feeling a lot better about this all. My friend Jane and I met up for a coffee and discussed this rationally and decided it's very unlikely that they'll cancel TEN concerts entirely. And I realised the reason I'm taking this so badly is that it was just so close. If they had postponed it back in January it wouldn't have been such a big deal. So I just need to be patient.

And, the nice news is, Air New Zealand have promised to transfer U2 concert-goers plane tickets for free.

But not-so-nice is the news that apparently one of their daughters is seriously ill. Which helps quite a lot to understand why they had to postpone. It's fair enough.

find your inner squirrel

(Above: yes, I am a little over-excited about the U2 concert. This is my standard practise whenever I make pikelets, although in this case they were banana pikelets.)

You too can find your inner squirrel, at Squirrel Name Generator! For Allie, I am Colonel Drunkenpaws, which I didn't think was quite dignified enough, so I tried again with my full name (Alison G___ S____) and got Princess Von Bushy.

Hmm. I suppose you could never really expect to have a really dignified squirrel name. I have a feeling Princess Von Bushy is as good as it gets.

Random information: on the radio this morning they had a competition where you text in your fantasy in order to win a prize. I expect they were meaning fantasy as in sordid details but I thought about it and realised my fantasy has always been for New Zealand to have a national day of mourning when I die. :) I think everyone fantasises a little bit about their death, and how everyone will realise what a genius they were, and canonise them, but it will be TOO LATE.

photo shop is fun

I've been having some fun tonight playing with the digital photo software that came with the camera I use. It's not amazingly great software and doesn't really have that many features but all the same it's fun just experimenting with photos and seeing how they look in sepia or black and white or as cartoons... These are some random ones that I thought turned out okay. My nephews, at Quail Island again, as a cartoon; some flowers in town as a cartoon; my little baby nephew who is just so cute, in sepia.

liberals and conservatives

Thanks for your comments on those posts, Patty! My sister and I had a big conversation about the whole 'conservative' label actually. She is doing a PhD in sociology/education sort of stuff and said something about how there's quite a lot of study done on how people use words like 'conservative' or 'moralising' to invalidate other people's positions--ie as shock words so their position/opinion remains unthreatened. It was pretty interesting that it's actually very unacademic to say such things now, according to these studies. I mean, usually it seems that it's all the 'academics' who shoot you down for saying anything vaguely conservative.

I'm a bit of a mongrel because there's some things I'm very conservative in and others that I'm a little bit liberal. By US standards I'm probably a liberal but by NZ standards a borderline conservative. I think liberals generally annoy me more than conservatives though!! And I just don't see how some things, such as abortion, can be so widely accepted by liberals as completely okay. They don't even want to admit there's anything morally niggly about abortion at all. The main reason I would see myself as liberal is because I believe it is more important to help the poorer people of the nation than to give huge tax bonuses to the filthy rich. It also makes me a little angry to see that the reason a lot of people in the Church vote from a right-wing stance is because of issues like civil unions and prostitution reform. I just think it's wrong that so often we Christians focus on all the 'don't do this' stuff, and ignore the more leftist ideals of helping the poor (in politics, anyway; I don't want to minimise all the amazing charity work done by Christian organisations). I have a moral problem with civil unions, yes, but I have more of a moral problem with the leader of the right-wingers saying that people on welfare are lazy, and that more money should go to the already wealthy.

U2 fever

I woke up this morning and it was the most beautiful feeling. Want to know why? :) I remembered that this time in two weeks I will be going up to Auckland. Then I remembered that in two weeks and one day I will be going to the U2 concert.

It suddenly feels very close. Like how it feels when it's two weeks before your tenth birthday and you now have a reasonable right to start counting down. I think I just find it so hard to believe I'll see them in the flesh, in 3-D. The only time I've ever seen anyone else who is actually famous in a worldwide way is when Bill Clinton drove past my school in 1999 (I'm convinced he smiled at me. Me alone. I was waving a sign saying 'ton'--the last piece of a sign my friends and I made that said Hel lo Mr Clin ton, on five bits of A4 paper). That was so thrilling and I don't even like him that much. I can actually see myself getting sick with excitement over this. :S Which I very much hope doesn't happen!

A friend diagnosed me with U2 fever before. She's got the same symptoms, apparently.

just a note

Plug time! Halfway Down The Stairs, the writing e-zine I am senior fiction editor for (haha, how grandiose that sounds), has just released its second issue, 'Wanderlust'. Do check it out. This time round we have a variety of poetry, short fiction and non-fiction. I have a short story in it called "Soundtrack Of My Life." I think it's got some fantastic stuff in it this time round that heaps of very different people would like. And if you're an aspiring writer too, we accept submissions--our next publication is in August, and the theme is Kaleidoscope, or Colour. (Kaleidoscope was easier because we all spell 'colour/color' different ways!) And if you submit a short story, I'll be the one who writes the acceptance/rejection email, and I promise I'll be nice, so don't be scared!

I return, wounded

This is a photo of my nephews, dancing to what must surely be the most annoying song ever recorded (Crazy Frog). It wasn't supposed to turn out blurry but I quite like it like that! I also like how it looks like they're jumping out of the cabinet, rather like Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy out of the Wardrobe.

Well, I have submitted myself to the bruising critique of my Creative Writing classmates. It wasn't as bad as I thought it could be, at all! What a pleasant surprise. I already had some good vibes going from being one of the first to volunteer, and got a lot of leeway because we couldn't have a perfect view of how we were supposed to write it. So, in fact, that was a bonus. But I did get it wrong in that we were meant to enlarge it more from just straight dialogue into how you would normally write a short story.

The nice thing was that most people liked the dialogue a lot. My teacher wrote "What was at first a rather incoherent exchange becomes a lucid and intelligent conversation between a father and his daughter, a moment of bonding between them and of the father influencing the daughter with his beliefs. One has a sense of the connection between them, that they are friendly, that the daughter admires the father." And most people commented that it was very natural and unlaboured, that they liked how the characters came across so strongly despite it being only dialogue (especially the father), and that they liked the ending.

The main problem was obviously the lack of strong plot. I knew that would be what came up because I found it so hard to move from a conversation that was primarily about politics to an actual plot. Also I was unsure how far we were supposed to go in terms of changing the conversation. The most critical reading I got told me I was 'moralising'--which I suppose I was. But he also told me that the characters were a 'reactionary father and conservative daughter', which I dislike immensely, as I don't believe it's at all conservative to disagree with people insulting each other. I hate people who say that if you don't agree with something they want to do, you're old-fashioned or reactionary. I couldn't read much of his writing, he used silly terms like 'chronological inversion' (puh-lease, who knows what that means?), and he critiqued the original transcript, which I did not write, and this seems to me to go beyond the usual bounds of stupidity. Besides, he had silly hair. (I really hope he never reads this blog!) So I'm not going to take his more negative critique too seriously. :)

All in all, it was very helpful, although it's not like I'm going to use the dialogue for anything more serious that homework. It was a good exercise.

Hi Fraser Don, thanks for visiting my blog! Yes, I usually write way too much for essays etc, as you can probably tell from this blog--I just can't stop. How did you find second year Ling? What courses did you do? I'm quite disappointed I'm not having Kon for any classes this year. His anecdotes kept me sane. :)

wading through email archives

.... and I found: This. An email someone sent me, asking for my hand in marriage, after I put an ad up for a penpal on a Christian Pen Pals site a few years ago. I feel a little mean laughing at it but really... it's so funny :)

Hello My name is S*****, is my pleasure to write you, hope your having aGoodtime in the lord because by his grace we are saved. I just came acrossYourad and decided to writte you. Am a Nigerian, a born-again Christian.ILivein L****, Nigeria. Am 5.9 feet height,Faircomplexion.Actually I want an intimate relationship that will bring about aMeaning and purpose. am looking for a Gog-fearing girl who would lovemeas much as i will do. recently, i was under illusion that someone i foundwas loving me the way i do to her but unfortunately, she didn\'t and ihad to quit.but this time now, i want to get that special someone for me who wouldhave that same ideasand visions with me to make it in life. i need a faithful, caring, lovingkind, responsibleand respectful girl that would come in and make my life meaningful andcomplete.it doesn\'t matter to me where you come from, as long as you are a bornagain chritian who haveexperienced Jesus and take him as your personal lord and saviour. it\'sno difference to me as tochoosing someone in your country.\'well\', it will be better off to say that love doesn\'t discriminate raciallyor tribally.so one need not question or doubt my sincerity as to how come am i wantto marry someonei have not seen.\'well\', i think this a long letter, but is from the bottom of my heart.so if you think you could find me interesting, reliable and sincere asto being yourwould-be life-partner in the lord, please write and let me know. bye!God and bless you.>From a penpalS*****.

a letter

This is a letter my three-year-old nephew Finlay wrote to my Mum last week; he dictated while his father, Greg, wrote it down. I thought it was very cute and that this must be shared with the world. :)

Dear Gran,

We're so sad that you have died. You're so lucky that you're up in heaven now. We wish you were just alive again.

Guess what? We have been to a place called the bach and I caught a shark.

Gran, is heaven up in space or not? Well I hope you're having a lovely time up in heaven.

Love from Finlay

[Yes, he does have a rather amazing vocabulary for a three-year-old, and for the non-New Zealanders who may or may not read this blog, a 'bach' is like a holiday house or crib that many New Zealand families have, generally not at all modern or luxurious, although some people who have too much money have begun calling their holiday mansions 'baches'. Finlay's other grandparents happen to own a fantastic, real bach in the Marlborough Sounds, which you can only get to by boat, and has a lovely little beach and jetty of its own. It's actually pretty sad, the prices of baches have just shot up and up; my uncle's cheap little kit home in Le Bons Bay is now worth double the amount of his real home in the city. So unless you have a bach in the family now, people can't really afford them unless they're the type of people who can afford mansions.]

Would you like your windscreen washed?

Because I am now an expert on windscreen washing. We had a church 'fun day' today, just on the street outside our church, giving away free sausages, drinks, ice creams etc. The youth group was on windscreen washing, which was fun, especially when we started having a little water fight. :) There was also a bouncy castle, which I unfortunately did not get a turn on, and a magician called El Gregoe who is a bit of a celebrity in Christchurch came and did his show, which I did not see. In the bottom photo you will see Pauline, the same girl whose photo I put up earlier, in which she lay on the floor looking somewhat stoned. A slightly better photo today methinks. I like the photo of the three elder ladies.

I have been shopping!!!

Ah, the joys of shopping. To explain: I am not good with money, but lately I have been trying really hard (iPod purchase was a minor glitch), and I promised myself that once I got to a certain point, I could buy myself some much-needed clothes. I have now reached that point! Yay! So today I went to the mall with a friend in tow to advise me, because I planned to buy some good sunglasses and I think it's wise to consult someone else when buying things like that.

I got my sunglasses, and this is me (above), trying them on for the camera so I can see what they look like! Now you know what I look like. Scary.

I also got a really cool t-shirt. How happy this makes me. There's really nothing like the successful pursuit of materialism, is there? Ugh. Now I'm going to start feeling guilty.

Patty, I'm glad you like my assignment! Let's hope everyone else does too. I will definitely let you know how it goes. I too haven't been watching or reading the news much lately. The debate over those cartoons that were offensive to Muslims really intrigued me so I did follow that a bit, I admit, but I used to watch the TV news every night, and religiously read the newspaper. But at some point you become tired of the "news". Which are never really new, anyway; it seems like it's just bad news repeating itself all the time now.

homework

I have just been doing my first homework assignment for my Creative Writing class at university. I have been kicking myself the last few days for volunteering to be one of the first four people to do this particular assignment and have it critiqued next week by half of the class, because it was scary and I didn't know how I was going to do it. She wanted us to record a conversation, any conversation, and transcribe it exactly how it was spoken, and then to "find the story" in the conversation, and turn it into dialogue, the way dialogue is written in a book to make it interesting, without all the "ums" and "I means" and "welllls". First I was worried about having to write down someone's conversation at breakneck speed, but then I remembered my digital camera has a video option and it will fit about three minutes of video on the memory card, so tonight I sat down with my dad and told him to think of something to discuss and pushed the "record" button on the digital camera. After we had a very odd conversation, and after I transcribed it all, exactly as spoken (it's quite depressing to see how bad one's grammar really is when one speaks), I panicked because I had no idea how to turn it into a story. But as I started making the effort, it actually took off, and I found it quite fun! Velly surprising. I feel a bit bad because I turned Dad into one of those old-timers who always talks about the good old days, but he doesn't mind. These are my efforts so far (I'll probably edit it a lot before I hand it in, but this is my first attempt):

Actual transcript

D: They just… everybody in the country is at loggerheads with each other. They got cheek, and they call the Prime Minister “Clark”—in the Press today.
A: What? What’s wrong with that?
D: Well, good grief, she’s the Prime Minister!
A: [laughs]
D: You don’t go call somebody—
A: Clark?
D: Just the surname, and it’s part of the demeaning of the human nature, you know—
A: But that’s how you refer to people in the paper, isn’t it? Like—
D: They do now.
A: Once you say their full name—
D: They do now but they didn’t once; they, they were—
A: Yeah.
D: —reasonably respectful; “the Prime Minister said” or something else—
A: Right.
D: Now they say, “Clark says.”
A: So like how in the States they say “Mr President”—
D: It’s a way of undermining the respect for anybody else. And there’s a better way. And these, these cartoons are just doing the same thing.
A: The, the Muslim cartoons?
D: Any of them. Yeah, well, these Muslim ones, these anti-religion ones—
A: Yeah.
D: They’re a bit smarty. But they say… you know, it’s just that people need to know, need to know a whole lot of rudeness.
A: Mmm.
D: I can’t see anything—
A: Yeah, exactly, it’s not really… fair to, um… say your rights, you know. I mean, like, if Christians and stuff started, started saying stuff against abortion or things like that—
D: Oh, they tear you to bits.
A: —they’d be up in arms, yep.
D: Yeah.
A: And I mean, fair enough, I mean, you don’t wanna criticise people, like that, but—
D: If you were disparaging of atheists, it’d be the same too—
A: Exactly, like… Yeah. It’s just people offending each other on purpose, it’s so…
D: Yeah.
A: Mmm.
D: It’s, it’s a, a new kind of intolerance, in what is supposed to be a tolerant society. People are just the same.
A: Mmm.
D: They can’t stand each other. And they hide it—one thing you can’t do now, so they pop up in a way they can do. [pause] Oh well. I don’t know if I can change the, the hate of human…
A: What d’you mean?
D: Oh… I don’t know what I can do about it.
A: [laughs] Yeah.
D: Protest or something.
A: Make nice cartoons that don’t offend anybody. [laughs]
D: If I—
A: It’s kind of impossible really!
D: You can write funny cartoons, they used to write funny cartoons, they were great ones!
A: Yeah.
D: Um, H. M. Bateman and those great cartoonists. Very clever. David Lowe, he was a clever political cartoonist.
A: Mmm.
D: And, um, he was, sort of, very deep, and of course, he, he made the revolting politicians look revolting, which is fair enough, like Hitler…
A: Yeah. Yeah, we, um, did a lot of historical cartoons in History at school, like, um, I mean, especially war ones. It was quite interesting, there was one where, um, oh, I think it was Neville Chamberlain, on this tightrope, above all these Japanese and German swords, or something, wobbling over this tightrope, trying to… and the tightrope, or bridge or whatever, it was about to break, it was held up by something—yeah, it was just the way they use all these little symbols, they weren’t so much, um, making fun of people, but, um, the cartoons were more kind of… more symbolistic?
D: Yeah.
A: If that’s a word? [laughs] But, yeah, it was quite cool. You know, there were pictures of um, there was one of Mussolini and um, Hitler, with these bags—
END OF TRANSCRIPT.

Fictional conversation

A: I had the mother of an argument today.
D: Really? Who with?
A: [sighs] Just this girl, we started talking about the whole Muslim cartoon thing—there’s something about it that just seems to divide everyone. Why is that, anyway?
D: [grunts] Yes well, everyone’s at loggerheads these days. There’s always something to argue about. This morning, in the paper, they called the Prime Minister “Clark”. Just “Clark”. Imagine that.
A: [laughs] Well, I don’t see anything especially wrong with that.
D: Good grief, she’s the Prime Minister! It’s cheeky! You don’t go and call somebody like that by their last name. It’s demeaning.
A: I don’t see why. That’s how you’re supposed to refer to people in the paper, isn’t it? Once you’ve said their full name, one time, you just go on referring to them by their surnames. I learnt it, in school.
D: Ha, school. They teach that now, but they didn’t once upon a time. Back then, they had some idea of the meaning of the word ‘respect’. Back then, it was “the Prime Minister said” and “the Prime Minister did this”. You’d have none of this “Clark” or “Savage” or “Lange”.
A: I’m still not sure I agree with you.
D: I’m telling you, it’s one of their ways. They have ways of undermining the natural authority and respect due to a prime minister. So what if our leaders are wrong or if they go to war willy-nilly or they sidle up to the big guns too much? They were still voted there by the people. I’m all for power to the people. Our leaders deserve some respect for that.
A: You’re starting to sound like a Communist, Dad.
D: Ha, well, some of them had their heads screwed on to a point. To a point, mind you.
A: Anyway, I don’t see what this has to do with my argument about the Muslim cartoons.
D: [glumly] Well, the world’s going downhill, that’s all. They say—
A: Who says?
D: They do. They say that it’s their right to speak freely, that people need to hear all this rubbish. Huh. As if insulting people is exercising their legitimate right to free speech. Just look at any political cartoon. [sighs] It’s all backward these days. We’re such a ‘tolerant’ society that we’ve become completely intolerant.
A: That’s what I told this girl.
D: What did she say?
A: She said people with stupid beliefs deserve to be insulted.
D: Ha. Obviously she’s completely rational herself. Knows everything, I daresay.
A: Yeah, I know, but once people say something like that it’s no use trying to debate with them. They’re already convinced they’re always right, even if they don’t say it in so many words.
D: [sighs] Back then, there were real cartoons. They didn’t need to comment on a politician’s body weight or physical imperfections to be successful. You know who I mean, you’ve read my cartoon books—H. M. Bateman, “The Man Who”… David Lowe, he was a good’un. Very, very clever. Without needless insults. There are still some of them around nowadays, too. Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side… but if you even touch politics these days, you seem to need to be like one of those repulsive tabloid photographers.
A: I see what you mean. We did some fantastic old cartoons in History at school. They were from back in wartime, or just before. They were more like political commentary, like an opinion column, rather than a stupid cartoon people laugh at because it’s cruel.
D: I suppose I’ll have to start my own political cartoon.
A: You couldn’t handle it. You’d be blisteringly insulting within days.
D: [laughs] It’s probable, I’ll admit. But I could try it.
A: I can’t wait. I can just see us lying on deckchairs in the Bahamas, sipping cocktails, and looking back on today as the beginning of a glittering career. I’ll be your personal assistant, okay? I’m never precisely sure what they actually do, but I’m sure I’d be a good one.
D: Don’t worry, you’re my first choice.

back to the grindstone

I have now been back at university for two days. I thought I would be looking forward to it after my loooong holiday... but no, I can't say I do, really. It's certainly quite interesting starting a new topic and everything, but definitely not so much as in first year because this year it'll be Harder. Groan. Now I am up to 200-level courses. The good thing is, essays are now 2500 words instead of 1500--I always found it so hard cutting a thousand odd words off my essays, it felt like I was killing my baby. But I suppose we'll have more content to cover for these ones so it's not really a bonus at all. This semester I am doing: ENGL220 Creative Writing--Short Fiction; HIST274 a Russian history one from the start to the end of the Soviet Union; and LING206 Syntactic Theory. Next semester I will be doing: HIST239 War and Society 1900-1945; ENGL215 Seventeenth Century King and Country; and LING207 Phonetics and Phonology.

There was a barbecue for the first night of Navs tonight, which was nice. I no longer feel like a newbie, which is also very nice.

Dad has been away for the past week. My niece Lydia got baptised on Sunday, in Dunedin, and he drove down, having a holiday on the way in places like Tekapo and Naseby, and did some pretty amazing drives, from the sounds of it. While he was away, my aunty Rita, his sister-in-law, died (I didn't know her very well), and he came back on Sunday night and flew off on Monday morning for the funeral in Palmerston North. He's getting back tomorrow. I don't like being alone like this for too long. For one thing, all the vegetables in the garden grow and I'm stuck with fifteen courgettes (zucchinis), three ice cream cartons of tomatoes, and masses of runner beans, unable to eat them because I've had such a busy week and have been out for all mealtimes! For another, it gets kind of lonely and I miss him.

This photo is one of the ones I took that time I went up the hill to take photos a few weeks ago. It is of Lyttleton Harbour; well, about half of it.

Ashvegas

Last night two friends and I drove down to Ashburton, which is about an hour south of Christchurch, to visit another friend who is on placement there. Didn't expect 'Ashvegas' to be really any much fun, especially as we were out ten minutes or so into the country from the town, but had a fantastic time! We had fish and chips at the Ashburton domain and then drove out to the farm Marielle is boarding at for her ten weeks of placement. The owners were away for a week, but the dog, Allie (!!!!!), a beautiful and friendly German Shepherd, was still there. It's very confusing having the same name as a dog.

I didn't realise how close Ashburton is to the sea, and it's even closer where the farm is. So Marielle and Katie ran down (about 3 or 4 kms) and Natalie and I biked. It was so lovely to bike again, on a big wide road with no traffic and hardly any wind, unlike Christchurch, with the sun setting. It was great to get to the sea as well, and sit on the beach and throw rocks for the dog and watch the sun set. We had a very late night and woke up really early because two of the others had to be back in Christchurch by 8am (grrroooaaan). The middle photo is of the other three: (l-r) Marielle, Nat and Katie. In the bottom one you might be able to see the guys who were fishing there, and their little fire, and the top one is from the top of the cliff overlooking the beach, and looking north, up the east coast. (Hopefully they're not too dark because on this old computer it's hard to see them properly, while they were fine on my laptop.)

Isaac

I got a letter from my sponsored child from Uganda today!--well, actually from his brother because he's too young to write yet, but it was still very exciting. Now I know they actually got my last letter as well, because I suspect the earlier ones went missing in the post. Besides the letter, last time I sent him some stickers, of cars and boats and so on, and the letter was sent back to me with a few of them stuck on it. He sounds very cute, he's almost five.

This is the letter:
'On behalf of Ogwal Isaac and the whole family, I would like to appreciate so much for you love for him in Ogwal Isaac is fine and in good health. He received your wonderful cards and stickers. He likes them so much. Ogwal likes music so much. He is always dancing music from the radio station. He was glad to hear that you also celebrating Christmas as a family. We do celebrate too. In Uganda here and Africa at large Christmas, Easter, New Year and Independence Day are always that people celebrate most. They sit as a family together with neighbours to eat, drink, and dance for over 20 days. Thanks a lot for helping Ogwal Isaac always.
Yours Ayita John his brother.'

My sister says that sponsored children are just a way charities attract donations, and it's not like your money is going only to your child--it's going into a big pool (not that she doesn't think it's great). I think it's such a fantastic idea because you get to see how you're helping people on a really personal level. It must be also really nice for the child and his/her family, to get letters and presents and sometimes visits from people overseas.

Aww.. I want another one!

(By the way, isn't this sunflower cool? We've got these fantastic 'black' ones in our garden and they are so striking.)

another cemetery

If I gave a list of my hobbies right now to someone who didn't know me, it could be quite a weird experience for them. Top of the list is taking photos of cemeteries and angel gravestones. I found a new, huge one today... or should I say an old one because it is one of the major old cemeteries of my city. When I say old, I mean New Zealand old, which is like: people who died at the end of the nineteenth century. It's right near the graveyard where Mum is buried, which is relatively modern and rather boring with row upon row of black oblong gravestone. But at this one, they're all the old style grave, with concrete 'beds' (for lack of a better word) and huge impressive headstones, some sculptured, all a little different from the next one, and some derelict, overgrown with wild flowers or grasses and broken. It surprised me that there was only one angel gravestone in the entire cemetery, as far as I saw.

Because it's an older cemetery, they have a few signs up showing where famous people in Christchurch's history are buried--like Robert McDougall (actually am not quite sure what he did but there's a beautiful art gallery building named after him!), Bishop Julius, Arthur Dudley Dobson (who was the first white man to discover Arthur's Pass, a way through the mountains from the east coast to west coast of the South Island, and a place where I have spent countless holidays)... So that was quite interesting. In the tiny little cemetery near my house, where the angel in the post below lives, there's the grave of John Cracroft Wilson, who was one of the very first settlers here, and settled in the area my old house was in. He was a rich merchant who had been in India, I think, and they say that he named the area (Cashmere) for Kashmir. There's something quite cool about seeing the graves of people I've heard of in history. It could be called morbid, but I think it would be amazing to visit the graves of people like Jane Austen or Lenin or Louis the somethingth (the only French king whose grave was left standing by the revolutionaries in 1775) or someone like that who you hear so much about, and to consider that they were actually real. Because it's really quite hard to believe in historical figures, and imagine they had hands and feet and flesh just like us. It's kind of like believing in God sometimes.

The photo above: this gravestone stood out for me because it looked slightly newer than any of the others there, and then I realised why. James McCormack died in 1925, aged 26--but his wife Marie died in 1994, aged 99. Never remarried, buried next to him almost seventy years later, still 'beloved wife of'. That's what I like about cemeteries; if you look closely enough, you notice the smaller details of people's lives that make them seem really personal and imaginable and poignant to you.

experimenting

This is my first attempt at a photo montage. I quite like it but I think it's a bit perfect looking; it doesn't really look like it's heaps of different photos clustered together. I think I need some more variation in colour and lighting etc and a more interesting background, maybe, for it to be really effective. My aunty, who is an amateur photographer, did this fantastic montage of her kitchen that she showed me the other day; she just stood in one place, snap snap snap, printed them off and stuck them together-- it looks great!

how abnormal am I?

You Are 8% Abnormal

You are at low risk for being a psychopath. It is unlikely that you have no soul. You are at low risk for having a borderline personality. It is unlikely that you are a chaotic mess. You are at low risk for having a narcissistic personality. It is unlikely that you are in love with your own reflection. You are at low risk for having a social phobia. It is unlikely that you feel most comfortable in your mom's basement. You are at low risk for obsessive compulsive disorder. It is unlikely that you are addicted to hand sanitizer.

How Abnormal Are You?

Well, that's a relief. :)

the orange lives on

At first I thought this was just a quite nice photo despite Sam hiding his face with his sunhat (this is back on Quail Island a few weeks ago) and then I realised it was actually pretty relevant-- because today I went back to uni to do my own enrolment stuff, and when I was walking through the area I'd worked in yesterday, all these people who worked there started smiling and saying "hi orange girl" or "would you like an orange?"

Kind of embarrassing, wouldn't have minded having a hat like Sam's to hide my face with, but it was kind of funny as well! :)

sigh, no photos

I missed three great photos today. Not necessarily all technically or aesthetically amazing, but good (or bad?) memory photos nonetheless.

Firstly, I worked seven hours for the bus information stall at the university Orientation week - yup, handing out oranges in the most unattractive orange overalls ever known to man. Actually that was only half an hour until my boss decided they were too hot to work in. (Hot in the temperature sense, just in case you were confused.) Mostly it involved going up to people with a beaming face that radiated no-I'm-not-at-all-embarrassed-isn't-this-fun?, saying in a goofy voice, "Hiiii!!!! Do you know the name of the orange bus that comes through uni???", telling them the name of the orange bus, and handing them an orange in reward--which 2/3 of the people we spoke to didn't really want. Even after the ugly overalls came off, it was still rather embarrassing because you'd ask people as they waited in their queue, "Hi! Would you like an orange?" --as one girl said after doing a double take, not a question one is asked everyday. Most just looked at you as if you were mad; some allowed you to explain that you were publicising an orange bus. To be fair, they were nice oranges. No pips, nice and sweet. But I really regret not getting a photo of me in my disgusting orange PVC thing. I have to see the funny side now.

Secondly, my friend (who was also working there) and I happened to see a couple of guys called Mitch and Matt who were in our Navs small group last year. They happen to be very funny, very outgoing and energetic, slightly shameless, and very good friends with each other. The sort of people who are popular anywhere they go. However, the funniest event of our entire year as a small group was something they did when they were being totally serious. Mitch got a date with a nice girl, so Matt decided he wanted to find a future wife. :D They thought about how to go about this, and decided they would go to uni the next day and talk to heaps of different girls, in hopes of finding a girl who was a) hot, b) Christian, c) a possible future wife for Matt, and d) willing to go on a double date with him and Mitch. They shyly and tentatively put this forward as a prayer request at our small group that evening and we, instead of being encouraging, prayerful and uplifting, collapsed into tears and screams of laughter while they sat there feeling slightly hurt. There was something irresistably amusing about imagining Matt and Mitch trying to chat up all these hot girls and somehow subtly bringing Christianity and marriage into the conversation before they'd even got their phone number. We suggested they make a booth labelled 'We are lonely and need friends'... basically you really had to be there, and know Mitch and Matt, but it was one of the funniest things I have ever experienced.

Well, today, when Katie and I came outside after finishing work, we saw Matt and Mitch standing behind a booth, wearing the same clothes, with Matt wearing a wig like Mitch's dreadlocks. The booth was labelled : "Lonely Hearts on Valentine's Day--Kissing Booth."

I am happy to say this was a joke this time. But it was just so so so so funny and I wish I had had my camera with me and had been able to take a picture of them behind it, if only to show the rest of our small group.

Thirdly, I was driving home from babysitting about twenty minutes ago (it is now about 11pm and I am stuffed after a very long day) and there was a full moon surrounded by all these mysterious misty clouds and it was beautiful. I don't think my camera would have been able to handle the darkness but I wish I had had it there just to try.

So my lesson has been learnt and I will now take my camera with me most places, I think. Even if I don't think there will be any good opportunities.

By the way, my five-year-old nephew told me I'm pretty yesterday. :) Awww. Big Brownie points for him.

Patty, thanks for your sympathy. I don't want it to seem like I'm fishing for sympathy on my blog but I don't want to not talk about what's going on in my life either, and I do really appreciate sympathy when it comes. :) So yeah, thanks.

and the year begins

We had our first girls' Sunday a'noon Bible study today; well, technically it wasn't really a Bible study this time but we just had lunch and talked and did that Hot Seat thing everyone does at church stuff and so on... it was cool! Above: some photos of a few of the girls... today there were only six of us but there should be a few more when they get back from athletics competitions and army boot camp and so on! (Pauline, the blonde one with white t-shirt, would kill me if she knew I was putting the bottom photo on the internet... heh heh...) Most of the other girls involved are still at school, from about 14 to 16 in age, but there's one girl who's a year older than me there too, and my friend who's at boot camp at the moment is the same age as me. I think it'll be really fun. We're also going to do just fun stuff like going to the beach or renting movies or whatever.

My dad has gone away on holiday and I am all alone at home. It's okay right now but yesterday I got all bored and restless and in need of human company, and so I went over to my friend Katie's house and we watched Finding Neverland (which I have never seen before and loved) and just chatted and it was really nice. I've been invited for meals by at least three people so far who feel all sorry for me, all alone at home, motherless and now fatherless, but the weird thing this week is I will be busy at mealtimes every night this week. Babysitting, Shakespeare music playing, going to Ashburton... etc.

I'm playing piano at another funeral tomorrow. My church has had quite a spate recently.

iPods are FUN

This is a photo of the green M&Ms I have been faithfully collecting over the past six months. I thought it wouldn't take that long to get a jarful but no, it took ages. The problem with M&Ms is you can never buy only the green ones, and then if you're eating them in a movie theatre or something, you can't see the colours and save the green ones. :) Don't ask why I collect green M&Ms... I just saw the M&M ad once about a screwed-up M&M who had a fetish for collecting green M&Ms and thought it was funny and that I was going to do that. Pretty sad, really.

I got my iPod in the mail! It is so cool. It's tiny. Smaller than my cellphone, and about as thin as a floppy disk. It's amazing. I've had so much fun putting music on there and making playlists. I borrowed my sister's collection of Flanders and Swann CDs and even put them on there (British comedians from about the 50s or 60s who are hilarious--I have grown up listening to records of them). How very exciting.

I'm feeling a lot better at the moment. For one thing I'm going to be quite busy this week, looking after my nephews, playing background music at an outdoor performance of a Shakespeare play every evening for a week and a half from Wednesday, working at the uni Orientation week for Metroinfo (wearing orange overalls, handing out oranges, to publicise the orange bus called the Metrostar... sighhh... but we get paid to look stupid so I'm going to swallow my pride!), going out to Ashburton with some friends to visit a friend who is there on placement for her Medical Imaging training... and so on.

For another thing, a whole lot of the pressure has been taken off because I've talked to Annette, one of the leading team of my university Christian group, Navs, and have decided not to be a leader of a small group this year after all. I've agreed to do a whole lot of stuff with my church (kid's club leader, youth group, girl's Sunday a/noon Bible study) this year, and without realising it, become way too busy and committed myself to too many things. Then there's music on Tuesday nights, helping with reading at Rowley Primary School, and two nights a week I have classes at university, which drastically cuts down any time I have available. I'd also quite like to join a choir. :S So yeah. Way too much pressure. Can't cope with it right now. Also can't summon up enough energy to try and make new friends etc so would be terrible as a Navs leader.

lethargy

Well. Have had a depressing few days and I don't really feel like writing about it at all. Just a couple of tiny little things that happened that got me majorly down. I don't know if it was because of the things themselves, or if I was just waiting for something to go wrong.

Happy Waitangi Day.

Just thought I'd post a few photos up. I took them when I simply suddenly had an urge to take photos of musical instruments the other day. Top: my wooden descant recorder. Middle: piano -- obviously. Bottom: a shakuhachi (which I made myself when my recorder group went to Australia for a music festival).

Counting my blessings, though: I bought an iPod today, on TradeMe (kind of a New Zealand form of eBay). Kinda excited about it but trying to ignore my bank account.

Warning: probable morbidity

Life sucks because it's so beautiful. It would be so easy to just detach oneself from the world if only one could simply stop clinging to all the good things. And why would you want to do that anyway? You'd become a nothing. That's why I don't get why people can talk about Buddhism as if it's such a great thing--how can we ignore the pain around us? Yay for them if it helps them relax and ignore their problems, but it's not exactly very helpful for anyone else, is it? When Buddha was so depressed by the state of the world and decided to run off and find enlightenment, it didn't change anything about the state of the world, it just meant he could ignore it. Which doesn't impress me at all.

One of my favourite quotes: "I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross... In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully in front of the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, wretched, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered out world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolises divine suffering. 'The cross of Christ... is God's only self-justification in such a world' as ours." (John Stott)

This has got to be the reason why I am a Christian. Sure, there's a list of things I believe and a list of things I don't believe, about God and the world and sin and heaven and so on. And I think these are important. But ultimately, it's about who Jesus is, and what he did. There are issues still, that I don't understand and I'm slightly worried about. But I've got to the point where I know Jesus, and I know what he's like, and I trust him. The things he said make sense to me. I don't think I'll ever give up on him.

Ha, this must sound so odd to non-Christians.

two funerals and a little bit of a wedding

A man at my church has just died, and we are going to his funeral tomorrow. It's going to be a weird experience, I think, when it's not long since my Mum's funeral. He had two sons, one of whom is only a couple years younger than me, and I can't even begin to imagine what things are like for him, despite both our parents dying of cancer, about a month apart. His father has battled brain cancer for about as long as I have known cancer existed. It became obvious about a year ago (or maybe more) that it was terminal, and so he has had to cope with seeing his dad extremely unwell for a whole year. Although my mother had the disease for five or so years, it was never as obviously bad as I had imagined it could be, until about a month before her death. Whereas Murray has had to deal with a lot more things than me. I wonder if he feels it's a relief, like I did.

My dad and I will be playing the piano and organ at the service. We have been busy today sorting out all the music details; what music to play before and after, who plays what, volume, etc. It's nice to be able to choose what music to play yourself, which doesn't happen at church very often. We've been given a couple of hymns for during the service, but beforehand, as people come in, we will be playing music like Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, by Bach, Duetto, by Mendelssohn, How Beautiful are the Feet, by Handel (from Messiah), a few obscure but beautiful hymns, Bist du bei Mar, by Bach, Hear My Prayer, by Mendelssohn, and Great Is Thy Faithfulness. After, we're playing He Shall Feed His Flock, another Messiah piece. I love classical/baroque/Romance period music. I think it often helps to have a bit of music training behind you in understanding music like that in a modern culture, but I still don't understand why many people get so bored by older music. Something like Finlandia, by Sibelius... phew, you just can't describe it, it's one of the most exciting pieces ever, or a Rachmaninov piano concerto. Wow. Or the amazingly simple but awe-inspiring vocals on choral pieces like Miserere Mei, Deus, or Agnus Dei. Or just the good old classics like the Hallelujah chorus. My sister walked up the aisle to the last two or three minutes of Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, by Grieg, and by gum that was a good choice. Too bad I can't do that if I get married--it's a pain having five older siblings who choose the best stuff first!

Patty and Vicki, thanks for your comments. Patty, I have real trouble believing you could cure me of my panic attacks, they're so ingrained. :) You might be able to calm me down temporarily, but 'temporarily' is the important word there. Soon, when you'd gone, I'd start worrying again and go completely berserk. (Okay, well, I'm not quite at the insanity stage, but sometimes I could be!)

panic attacks

Last night three of my friends came home from Australia after spending the summer there--yippee! It's so great to see them again. I went to the airport at midnight to welcome them home, along with their families and a few other friends. Was extremely tired because had gotten up very early that morning to look after my nephews for a full day, 8am to 6pm. Luckily I met up with a friend in the evening and had two large strong coffees and didn't come home till 10:30pm, so it wasn't too long and tired a wait before leaving for the airport.

Then when we left the airport, about 1am, the parking ticket machine decided it was going to decline my eftpos card three times in a row, and being tired and slightly stressed I panicked, burst into tears and assumed the Someone at the pool had stolen my eftpos card along with my shoes, taken all my money, and then returned it to my wallet. Now it seems quite a far-fetched theory but you must remember it was 1am. Thank goodness for a kindly passer-by, who gave me the 20 cents I needed to pay off my parking ticket. Stopped at an ATM on the way home and all my money was there still. Go figure. A valuable lesson in trusting God, I think.

The problem with my panic attacks is that once I start to panic, I keep on going, even when the initial catalyst is resolved. I couldn't get to sleep till 4am, and woke up worrying about my U2 tickets and if they'd been lost in the post because I still haven't got them. Now I'm feeling a bit more calm. Thank goodness.