My Blue Heaven

Where Is The Love?

6:01 pm Mon, 12th July 2004

RICE 2004 finished with a bang on Saturday night, with 61 kids praying the prayer that night. How awesome is that. It was so amazing working with 200 other leaders from different chinese churches all over Sydney. For me, I had so much fun playing in the RICE band, with a bunch of musos and singers I barely knew just a month ago.



Some highlights of the night for me – jamming with the musos as kids streamed into the civic centre (I think we played “I will not be shaken” something like 3 times!), hanging out backstage when we weren’t playing (in the stage doorway, practically on stage.. I’m sure some of the kids would’ve seen us goofing around and taking pictures of each other pretending to be asleep), watching Ian Powell get “homie-fied”, just the vibe of the night.. as we played.. how everyone responded to the music, singing loudly and clapping with the music. Here are some piccies taken by one of the photographers of the night (taken from here). Also see my moblog for pics from my perspective during the night.

The two backstage photos were taken by James, one of the songleaders and singers. Anyways, I really enjoyed playing with these guys. The setup was awesome.. we had a full professional sound setup (to rival the SaltLight album launch), with a professional sound guy working it all. It was hard though, because the dynamics of the hall was so sensitive, even though we had foldback, we could barely hear ourselves onstage, coz he had us turned down really low to maintain full control over the sound. But apparently we sounded really good out in the house.. so I was told. But yeh, I guess thats something a muso needs to get used to.. playing onstage and not hearing yourself very clearly, but still having to be able to play to the best of your ability… in time and with the same energy and dynamics.

So yeh, I was totally exhausted by the end of the night. Actually, I was exhausted by the end of practice, BEFORE Rice started.. I think I put too much energy into that final afternoon rehearsal.

Other than RICE, my weekend was pretty good. On Saturday morning I got my hair trimmed – my fringe was getting waay too long and was really annoying me. So I went back to Blue Star Hair in Eastwood to get another very honky-ah haircut. I was kinda hating it for the first day or 2 (too layered and feathered!!), but now its settling down and I’m getting happier with it with each passing day. 😛 Then on Sunday, I hung out with Paul and also actually spent some time at home – my cousin is here from England! She and my bro were in Brisbane for the past week having a holiday, and they came back for a day before heading off to the Central Coast for another week. They’ll be back next weekend again, so it’ll be good to see her again.

Strains and pains

I went to see my chiropractor this afternoon, coz my upper back has been hurting since Saturday (I think I hurt/pulled something while I was lifting my amp during setup before RICE). So yeh, thought I’d better get it checked out. She was really good.. basically she massaged around the area that hurt (between my left shoulder blade and my spine) to loosen the muscles, then BANG, she basically shoved into my back and with a great loud crack along my back, she fixed everything up. She said the problem was something to do with a rib and a vertabrae being pulled/bunched too close together or something like that. Anyway, hopefully it’ll get all better soon. Still a little sore, but she said it’ll probably be a bit tender for a few days. I guess it doesn’t help that I’m hunched over my computer all day at work.

Anyway, I really need to get myself a better way of transporting my instruments. That keyboard is just ridiculously heavy.. I have no chance of lifting it by myself. I’m barely managing carrying my amp around as it is. I need to get myself a trolley of some sort. Either that, or I should just bulk up those arm muscles at the gym. Hee. Hrm.. now that I think about it, I used to be able to lift my amp fairly easily… perhaps I haven’t been working my arms enough lately.. gotta pick up on those weights and push-ups! I also got her to look at my hamstring, which I kinda strained about half a year ago (yeh I waited too long.. I know). Not much she can do now.. but she did use this electric pulse thing to send electricity deep into the muscle to try and realign the muscle tissue.

Been feeling kinda.. down.. lately. Just sad.. depressed.. thinking too much about things I should just let go and move on from. Need to somehow control those memories that seem to be consistently haunting me. I know ppl assume that I’m all ok about this, and have moved on, but I suppose I’m not fully, and haven’t, and won’t have, for.. I dunno how long. How long do these things take? Meh.

We awoke from our dream
Things are not always what they seem
Memories linger on
It’s like a sweet sad old song

Current listening :: “Can we still be friends” – Mandy Moore

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