My Blue Heaven

Where Is The Love?

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

The hillsong experience

Went to a Hillsong Night Rally last night. Similar to last year, it was big, big and big. Hehe. I think around 20,000 people attended, filling the Sydney Superdome as well as the overflow in the State Sports Centre. I managed to squeeze in enough seats for a few friends, one row from the very top at the Superdome. Man it was packed. Took some piccies whilst up there too (larger pics on my moblog):

So anyways, the singing and music were very cool, as always. But, like last year, the actual teaching was.. not so good, I’m sorry to say. We heard Joyce Meyer that night, and whilst her talk would’ve been a very good motivational speech, it didn’t really have much to do with the bible at all, other than the initial reading of the verse from Isaiah, and the occasional random quote of a verse from other parts. I learnt more about different species of birds than I did about anything else. It’s a bit sad…. was there nobody else in the 20000 odd people that actually thought about what she was saying? Or did everyone just blindly accept what she said, whilst parrotting the “Amens” (using her illustration, which was a good and rather amusing illustration in and of itself).

Anyway, I don’t wanna come across all harsh and critical, because it’s not my intention to put others down, or be a discouragement. But I would encourage anyone who attended to actually read the passage in its context, the chapters surrounding that verse, and find out what Isaiah is actually about – then think about whether what she said actually had anything to do with the passage itself.

I found the talk a bit waffley in general. She’s a very good speaker and a great comedian, but yeh, she tended to go on a bit, and draw all sorts of connections and allusions that aren’t actually in the passage at all.

Weekend time

Anyways, enough on that. I’m so glad its a Friday. Got a pretty packed weekend coming up. Tonight I’m actually going to a dance class at SDC!! Ramon’s friday night int/adv jazz class. W00t! Should be fun… haven’t been dancing in aaages!

Then tomorrow is RICE! How exciting! The music team has rehearsal and setup from 2pm, nice and early. We’re actually getting a full professional sound setup – with foldback and inputs for every instrument! How cool is that!! Then tomorrow night is the big night… we’re expecting nearly 1000 high school kids to turn up to hear a great message by Ian Powell on “Where Is The Love?”. Then I think Sunday will be set aside for some much needed chillout time with Paul. 🙂

Current listening :: “I’ve Just Begun (Having My Fun)” – Britney Spears (from the extra cd on the In The Zone dvd!)

Not Happy Jan!!

I had a pretty crappy start to the day today. Well.. actually it *started* quite well – I got up early, managed to actually have brekky at home, and actually caught the bus I was supposed to catch – all of which occur quite rarely.

Anyway, I was sitting at West Ryde station waiting for the train in my usual spot up the front, when I felt something light fall on my head. Thinking it was a leaf or twig, I reached up to brush it off, when I felt something wet.. and assumed it was water from somewhere… then I looked at my hand… and saw this white and brown goo. Yep, I’d just been crapped on by a bird!!! And it was in my hair! Ewwwwwwww!! It smelt too. I managed to clean most of it off with some tissues… and have since rinsed that section of my hair in the bathroom at work. But I’m definitely hitting the gym early today so I can have a shower and wash my hair. Thank goodness I brought my gym and shower stuff in today!

Now, thats not all. I was relaxing on the train (trying not to think about what was in my hair). Then we stopped at burwood.. then croydon.. then ashfield……. WHAT THE?? My train does NOT stop all stations between Stratty and Redfern. What the crap was going on?? No announcement was made, no warning given to change trains at strathfield for a faster service. I was peeved.. very much so… and upon finally reaching Wynyard, I was fully prepared to give the driver a piece of my mind. Except the door was closed and I couldn’t see inside. So, stumped, I stalked off, vowing to call up and make a complaint to cityrail. Not Happy Jan!!!

/rant

[Update: 12:07pm] Ahhh… feeling much better now! Made the call, the guy was quite helpful and polite. And yeh, just feeling better. Now I’m off to the gym for a much needed workout and shower! Yay! 🙂

Current listening :: “Toxic” – Britney Spears

Quickie

(No it’s not what you were thinking). Just a quick update before I dash from work. Gonna watch Mean Girls tonite with Paul.. yay! 🙂 Work today was pretty… standard. Not too busy, a little boring, so I managed to amuse myself on the net as per usual. 🙂

On the cold sore front – it seems to be getting better. You can barely even see it now (as my webcam pic shows), and its definitely healing. My ulcers are also healing, and don’t really hurt that much anymore… yay! 🙂 Ok gotta run… bye!

Current listening :: “Naughty Girl” – Beyonce

Go Britney

Hehehe.. I bought the latest Britney DVD today “In The Zone”! I must’ve spent around 40 mins watching it, my eyes glued to the DVD preview station at Virgin Music in Metcentre.. and then I bought it. Hee. Its coool! Its got lotsa live performances of stuff from her latest album, as well as one or two old hits. Anyways, as usual, the dancing and chore is really cool. Thats why I buy it.. to watch Britney and her dancers dance, and get inspired by their moves (esp in light of a certain upcoming event involving the use of dance). 🙂

Current listening :: “Me against the music” – Britney Spears (Rishi Rich’s Desi Kulcha Remix)

RICE Fest

Rice Rice Baby. RICE Fest on Saturday went really really well. We had about 850ish high schoolers turn up to Concord Primary School, plus 200 of us leaders, makes it over 1000 people that day! Phew! 🙂 Anyways, we had beautiful weather, and great fun was to be had all day. I was on the Centre Stage team – organising the Dance Off and RICE Idol, which went spectacularly well, after much running around (I had to make a mad dash back home in the middle of the Fete, to get all my CDs to use as backing tracks for the RICE Idol).

The bands were pretty rockin too – well at least Revive were. Heh. They’re not bad. I like their covers of pop songs (I remember last year they did a rocky cover of Britney Spears “Baby One More Time” – so this year I guess keeping up with the tradition, they did a punk rock cover of Christina’s “Beautiful”. Haha classic.) So yeh, t’was cool. And it was pretty effective the whole shutting all the stalls down during the talks.. there were heaps of kids who came over to centre stage to listen.. in fact most of them, I think, did that. Here are some pics from Ajamedor’s site (I didn’t have my trusty digital camera with me coz my bro’s taken it to Brisbane with him):

Anyways, afterwards a lot of the leaders went for dinner, and I was gonna join them, but I ended up just staying home for dinner instead. My cold sores and ulcers were getting too painful, and I was pretty tired (as was Paul). So I decided not to push it (I probably wouldn’t have really eaten much anyway coz of aforementioned mouth issues), but just relaxed and took it easy at home. (Also Bankstown was a bit far.. and I wanted to save money too.)

So I’m now looking forward to next Saturday’s main event “Where Is The Love”. I’m playing keyboard in the band again, which has been fun. We’ve had 3 rehearsals so far, our final one will be on Sat afternoon. Hope things go well, and we can hold it together! The Willoughby Civic Centre (where it’ll be held) is pretty huge – with a really nice, large stage – where we’ll be playing! How cool is that! I haven’t played on a stage since the SaltLight launch. 🙂 Hopefully all the kids who came to RICE Fest will come again this Sat (though, dunno how they’re gonna fit em all in!)

Other weekend miscellaney

Apart from RICE Fest, my weekend was pretty relaxing. Me and Paul watched Spiderman 2 on Sat night, which was cool. 🙂 I liked it, t’was a bit different from the first one.. with more drama and personal story about Peter Parkin. (Poor guy has it tough.) But t’was good, and I liked this ending more than the first one. Hee. Anyways, I wanna see Mean Girls! 🙂 Apparently it’s supposed to be pretty good.. like compared with other teen girly movies. Looks interesting!

Oh yeh, and I forgot to mention, the weekend before, we went and saw Prince and Me. I really liked it! It was sooo romantic…. and sweet…. *sigh* I’d definitely recommend it for any romance/girly flick fans out there! Though its not in the “I’d pay to see it again” category, I still very much enjoyed it.

On Sunday I slept in till 1:30pm (nice!), and then went over to Paul’s place. We went to Burwood Westfield (our regular Sunday hangout nowadays) for lunch and then went to Evening Service.

Moozik

Lately I’ve been rediscovering my passion for music and playing music. I wanna… play more, expand my skills, challenge myself, and yeh.. just do more music stuff. I wish I had more time to jam with people, play in different bands, and even do gigs. I have an opportunity to play with some ppl from my Con class, but I just never find the time, and he lives so far away, on the other side of Sydney in Malabar. Also I need a more portable keyboard. My current Yamaha S80 is soooo damn heavy.. I always need someone to help me carry it. I need a smaller one! Yeh, and I need more time to be able to put it into good use! I suppose I should start by playing at home more often… experimenting, learning and expanding my own skills and styles. I wanna learn to play funk.. like maybe Jamiroquai stuff.. he’s soo coool. 🙂 Anyways… I just wanna be able to jam with people more often. Get something good going. Like a band or something. *sigh*



Current listening :: “Love Foolsophy” – Jamiroquai

Run down

Been feeling pretty tired and sick lately. I think I’m just run down and fatigued.. from too much stress and lack of sleep. I really need to slow down and relax, and just chill. (Sleeping earlier will probably help too eh.)

And to my utter chagrin and annoyance, I’ve discovered I have a cold sore! I’m soo pissed off. I’ve never gotten these before, and I dunno where I got it from (actually, I have an inkling – my dad had one just last week. :\) My upper lip last night was all swollen up – it looked like I’d been punched, or had a bad accident with some collegen. Anyways, I stocked up on Lysine tablets, Zovirax, Blistex lip ointment, and have read up on every homemade treatment known to man. Can you believe some people swear by EARWAX?? Ewww. I haven’t been desperate enough to try that – for the moment, I’ve done teabags, ice, and have doused myself with Lysine tablets, lip ointments, and water. Hopefully that’ll do the trick. It seems to be drying up, and its only day 3.

Anyways. Just gotta relax… and think positive thoughts. How’s this for a cheer up picture (sent to me by Paul) – certainly brings a smile to my face. Hee. :D.

Current listening :: “The Girl In The Other Room” – Diana Krall

24 hour adventure

Ugh… can’t… move… too…. painful. My body is killing me today. And why? All coz of one day of skiing at Thredbo. Man.. I’m soo sore.. everywhere. Not just my legs, but my arms, back, neck, feet… argh. Hehe but it was worth it. Yep, I took a coach down and back – about 15 hours journey, for 1 day of skiing. Call me crazy, most people already have.

So the adventure began at 11pm, Central Station, where my luxury greyhound coach departed. The coach down was an overnighter, so I slept (on and off) for most of the time. It was also nearly emtpy, which was pretty cool. We stopped at a few places on the way down, including a half hour break at one of those petrol station/resturant highway stops – at like 2:30 in the morning. We arrived at Thredbo at 6:30am, it was still dark! And abso-friggen-lutely FREEZING! The only thing open was the bakery, where I stayed at for a cup of hot mocha and some brekkie. It was nice, watching the sun rise over the vast mountains. Slowly it got lighter, until you could see the pink light of the sun touch the peaks of these snowy mountains, and melt the morning mist away. Beautiful.

Anyways, by 7:30 I was ready to go get changed into my ski gear, then headed down to Thredbo Sports to hire my ski’s. By 8:30 I was heading up a chairlift for my first run of the day. 🙂 Unfortunately for me, it was a really blowy day… so half the lifts were on wind-hold. 🙁 But I still had fun – High Noon supertrail was in excellent form! Nice and firm, with a dry powdery surface. Made for some excellent fast skiing. I also tried a few blacks, which were fun. My only mistake was to follow a pair of snow boarders – who told me they knew of this really cool run that nobody went down. I kept up most of the way, but the snow was pretty bad, and eventually I fell (face-planted), and lost them. So I went down the rest of the way, but I think the lower half wasn’t actually supposed to be a run, and was in really bad condition – lots of deep untouched snow, but the surface was all crusted over, and lots of twigs about the place, and my ski’s just kept getting stuck in the snow. I ended up having to side step all the way down with people from the chairlift above kindly telling me it wasn’t a run, was I ok, was I stuck, and to be careful! Near the bottom, it just wasn’t skiable at all, so I had to take off my ski’s and walk down. Thats the last time I’m following a pair of unknown boarders. Grr.

I only stopped for a Powerade drink at around 12, before heading out again for some more action. I started getting fairly tired by about 2:30pm, when I finally decided to stop for lunch! After which, I only had time for one more run down High Noon, before traversing over to Crackenback to fast track it down to the village, return my ski’s, get changed and get on the bus, which left at 4:15pm.

I promptly fell asleep as we left the ski fields, I was so totally buggered. Though was woken up when they decided to play a movie between Jindy and Canberra. Grr. After a dinner stop at Canberra, they played another movie – a decent one this time – Miss Congeniality. Heheh. So I stayed awake to watch that. And then slept all the way back to Central, where my very kind Paul was waiting to pick me up at 11:30pm.

So that was my one day ski adventure. Fun, though very tiring. Dunno if I’ll do it again – but I’d never know if I never tried. 🙂 I took some photos with my phone – one of which is up on my moblog.

Anyways, better go and clean up my stuff – gotta wash my gear and clean my incredibly messy room.

Belated Jervis Photos

Ok.. I have finally (after about 4 months of procrastination) uploaded the photos from our Jervis Bay holiday trip. Sure brings back memories looking at these pics. Here are some highlights:

For larger pics, and more of em – clicky here.

Current listening :: “Yeah!” – Usher

Incompetence

.. really frustrates me at work. As in, dealing with people who are incompetent, or just plain careless. Particularly end-user, business/marketing types that are TOTALLY clueless when it comes to computers, web pages, or even just using their own web browser & email. Lucky I’m not in support or sys admin eh… I don’t think I could stand dealing with that sorta thing on a daily basis.

Its dealing with one particular person, who is rather incompetent, that has made me frequently clench my teeth in frustration. She constantly changes her mind about the content, or just makes really stupid, careless mistakes.. like wanting me to update some text on a web page, but sending me the old version of the document which doesn’t have the correct changes, and then complaining to me that she can’t see the updates I’ve done. Consquently, I have to go through and read out the text in the document she sent, until she realises, hey, she sent me the wrong file!

Anyways.. don’t mind me. I’m just having a.. b*tch. Or rant, to use a “nicer” word. 😛 I have to deal with her alot, because she keeps sending all this work she wants done… ugh. Someone save me please. *sigh* Heh. I guess its not too bad. It’s a job I suppose, and it brings in the dough.

/rant

In other news, I’ve been discovering Harry Connick Jr lately. Niiiice stuff. I don’t know why I never really listened to his stuff before. A jazz pianist/singer? What’s there not to like??? I love his piano playing… mmm.. very nice. 🙂 Thanks to the AllOfMp3 site, I’ve just downloaded all of “When Harry Met Sally” for less than 1 dollar. Plus others are on their way.. when I get around to downloading. Hee. Very cool stuff.

Current listening :: “Let’s call the whole thing off” – Harry Connick Jr