My Blue Heaven

Balance

My word of the week. Balance. I’ve been musing over this concept recently and how much of a juggling act life is. Balancing work, sleep, household chores, friends, partners, health, fitness, hobbies, other activities, and even just time-out alone to reflect. All these are good things and a necessary part of life, but when one activity grows out of proportion to the exclusion of other activities.. I think it can become a not-so-good thing. I guess this might seem pretty obvious. But maybe not to all. Say work – it is a necessary thing to earn income to survive. And some may even really enjoy their work. Though for most it is probably a mix of good and bad. But when it takes over your life.. working say 10 – 12 hours a day.. what’s the point? You may earn more money, but you have no time to enjoy that money, and other aspects of your life slowly disintergrate due to lack of attention – be it health, fitness, relationships, family. Same could probably be said of other things.. hobbies, commitments other than work, even partners. Spend all your time with a partner and no time with anyone else, and you end up with no friends. (Or the other way around.) Or spend all your hours surfing the net, to the detriment of your sleep and life, and you end up tired, late for work and neglect to do necessary things in real life, like household chores or paying bills! And so on.

I guess this is something that is important to me. I’ve always kinda rebelled against the idea of my life being so monopolised by one activity that I have no time for anything else. There is so much in life to enjoy and experience, to learn and grow. I guess I *expect* it of myself to be able to make time for and balance the things that are important to me. (I suppose you’d first have to figure out what actually is important to you.) Some things that I wish to balance in my life include: work, eat, sleep, music (learning/playing piano), music (listening/watching gigs), dancing, fitness & health, partner, friends, time-out/reflection, learning & growing (mentally, emotionally and spiritually), household stuff (cleaning, finances etc) and more recently travel (see/experience new things).

Hrmm. It’s gotten so cold in London so quickly.

Italy Trip 2006 : Part 1

Enjoy. 🙂 This is literally my first go at using Adobe Premiere Elements – so am still learning and getting the hang of it, but it definitely kicks Windows Movie Maker. For one, it doesn’t crash every 5 mins or so! And many apologies for the bad shaky camera work (it’s worse for me, trust me, I’ve made myself feel nauseous just watching/sorting through all the footage). Tis not easy walking and filming.. and it was all filmed using my Sony Ericsson w900.

Hello!

Wow. Hyori Lee is kinda really hot! Ok I have never, ever listened to korean pop before. I don’t even listen to any asian music, aside from Utada Hikaru (jpop singer/songwriter). But I’m kinda liking Hyori’s stuff. *hmm whats that sound I hear… oh, thats just my music cred running out the door* 😛 She’s kinda an americanised asian version of Britney Spears. Heheh. And I did like Britney (pre-motherhood that is). Aaanyways. Yeh, Hyori is hot. And I loooove her hair in this video (Get Ya).. lovin the white streaks. *Some* of her dancing isn’t too bad either, having watched a couple of live vids. Others make me cringe, like most asian pop singers attempts at dancing.

Current listening :: “10 Minutes” – Hyori Lee

Jumping on the Scrobbling bandwagon..

For those who don’t know what scrobbling is. It’s basically a music-technology social networking website & software. It tracks the music you listen to on your fave media player (eg itunes) using some simple software and plugins, and then displays the tracks on your profile page. It also displays charts of your listening trends – eg most played artist or track of the week, of all time etc – and can find music recommendations based on your history. You can also display your scrobblings on your website. Like the one above is my 10 most recent tracks listened to in iTunes. Visit the wiki page for more info. And the Last.Fm website.

Can’t think of a clever title

So I’m STILL sick and still trying to recover. I marvel at just how much snot my nose can produce. I mean.. is there an endless supply or what? Hehe sorry if thats too much info. 😛

Anyway I have some good news, but I won’t go into that just yet. All will be revealed by the end of next week. If you’re that curious then feel free to email me, but really, its not a big deal – just a little something I’m fairly happy about. 🙂

Still haven’t had a chance to trawl through the pics from Italy. But I found some miscellaneous pics taken around London over the past month or so. Enjoy.

So summer has drawn to a close here in London. And with the onset of autumn begins a “new year” in many areas. For one, bible study group will be starting up again in 2 weeks time. I’m quite looking forward to hanging out with our “rebel” group regularly again. Our group is actually moving away from St Helens – we’re joining the church plant at Clerkenwell. So looks like I’ll be going to a new church soon. I’ve already volunteered my piano playing skills for the service. So yay.. I’m gonna be able to play piano again soon.. after so long without. :))) Nicely coinciding with this is the start of the courses at Goldsmiths University of London – the PACE (Professional and Community Education) program, which is much like the Sydney Conservatorium of Music access program. I’m gonna audition for the Modern Jazz Workshop. *crosses fingers* Hopefully my skills are enough for the course and I haven’t forgotten absolutely everything I learnt at the Con. It’ll be good to just get playing again. Even if I don’t have a piano at home… some playing is at least better than none. And perhaps I can practice on the church piano…

Current listening :: “Pose” – Justin Timberlake