To Ease Our Burden Of Carefulness.

It was
One of those things you can only keep
To yourself.
Never sharing with another
Phone calls in the middle of the night
If only to reassure
The other that they were not
Alone.
How fragile and
Self-conscious she seemed
With too-much make
Up on her face.
How vulnerable she looked while asleep
As if she needed protection from the world.
She was good to me. Perhaps even good for me.
I can only hope that I too, was good for her.



Umm okay so that was one of the randomer things I came up with recently. Actually it's just a string of thoughts that I had for unknown reasons and I wasn't gonna put it up but then I thought whatever, what's a blog for if not to record down random thoughts and the like? I'm a big fan of recording and keeping random shit for posterity. That's why I own a whole shelful of weird'n'useless stuff to remember my travels by. And magnets. Heck yeah magnets.

You know how I thought I was being all stronk and manly by doing sports almost everyday? Well today I got my just desserts i.e. I crashed and burned horribly. I slept at about 1am last night and only fully awoke at around 5.30pm today. I did conveniently wake up for lunch at 12 but I promptly fell back asleep after, for you know, just a casual 5 hours more. It's disgusting. It's bad and I feel bad. And strangely good at the same time! Sleeping in doesn't have to make sense for it to feel good. Wooo!

So on saturday I decided I absolutely couldn't afford to waste the beautiful opportunity that the surprisingly sunny sun presented so on the spur of the moment I went off to play tennis. I'd already decided to play badminton later that afternoon so I thought, cool, I can be SportyMcDorky! 2 hours of tennis and 2 hours of badminton later, I was butthurt. No kidding. Could feel the aches in my ass with every step I took, sort of like a Police song gone wrong.

My strong masochistic streak is evident in the fact that I'd decided that on Sunday I'd have a kickabout to de-rust my football (sry the word soccer is banned here) AND play badminton again. Yeh buddy, plan was nice but body was bad. Hence the collapsed-in-a-sweaty-smelly-heap that I eventually became. Just kidding, obviously I took a bath and smelt of roses by the time of my faux-death.

Before that I went for church though, for the first time ever since being here. And the first time I've been in a Methodist church in, idk, something like 10 years? I've always thought Methodists were really solemn and sombre and depressing people, and I was glad to find that I've been mistaken all this while. Certainly their methods of worship are to say the least not quite as energetic as what I've become used to, but the people themselves were (at the risk of seeming like I only have one set of phrases in my vocabulary) to say the least, extremely warm. Possibly it's the fact that it's a rather small community church, something like 150-odd strong. But such nice people!

By the time me and my friend were seated, before the service had even started, we'd been approached by more than 3 people and invited to lunch! Not to mention after the service, where we had our photos taken and I had free tea over which I had a small delightful chat with an old lady. In literal form the whole depiction might seem rather creepy but in fact it was anything but. While I was slightly overwhelmed by the warmth and hospitality, it was a shock in the most pleasant sense possible.

I must say that I was quite taken (usage of the word absolutely nothing to do with Liam Neeson) with this warm homely Methodist church, and I would not be loathe to attend it again. I think that God's message to you can appear any number of ways, through any medium, it just takes some seeing instead of mere looking. Cause it's only too easy to look but not see. So yeah, I'm quite comfortable with attending a Methodist church despite not being Methodist myself.

Don't quite understand the need for all this labeling and denominations, though. One of the questions I've been most frequently asked after saying that I'm a Christian is: What kind of Christian are you? Which is rather awkward, really, cause I never have any idea what to answer. So I'll say, I'm not sure.. And they rattle off - Presbyterian, Protestant, Methodist etc etc?? And I'd be just as clueless. I think I'm charismatic, I'd say, referring not at all to my own inflated opinion of myself. But the question always stumps me. How do you say, I'm the kind of Christian who believes in God and trusts God, what else do you want? That sounds kinda aggressive though. Huh. Well whatever, I don't see it as anything of importance anw. The question, that is, not the fact that I might sound aggressive.

Huh. Don't you worry that with my newfound (well not exactly, more like newlyfound again) spirituality I'm gonna get all zealous and... how shall I put it... aggressively and blatantly Christian. Which I can't say is wrong, definitely not, but when I say I have a quiet faith in God I do mean quiet. So yeah. I'm all for multiculturalism and stuff and I'm aware the discussion of religion does make people uncomfortable sometimes.

So on to secular topics, which are equally and possibly even more fascinating, chiefly cause it involves my cooking. Not to mention the subsequent, quite amazing impressive fact that I survived said cooking. The wonders of life. Oh and girl issues, apparently. Hahahaha. How to phrase that without sounding like a sec2 kid struggling with the twin issues of girls and girls. While trying his darnedest to not squeak every other sentence. Curse you puberty!

My voice thankfully has been broken for a long time now, in case anyone has any lingering doubts. Girls however..... So I decided to cook tonight. Supposed to cook for 4 ended up cooking enough for 7. Honestly proportions are not my strong suit. Maybe I should learn to use a damn measuring cup instead of agar-ing everytime I prepare rice. But I would hate to wash the additional measuring cup, which certainly reeks of laziness, but I insist that sometime in the next 10 years I will master the art of rice agaration, if not quite agar-making. Speaking of which, I have made agar-agar a couple of times though that's quite a while back now, which bears no relevance whatsoever to my current story of course, but is pleasant to reminisce about nonetheless, not to mention the construction of quite possibly the longest sentence I've ever had the pleasure (or the misfortune) to construct.

First broccoli I've ever cooked, cause I've always been too lazy to go to all the effort of whipping out a pot and boiling them (same with potatoes and carrots) and of course the dreaded washing of pot. Unfortunately our spinach had run out, which certainly begs the question: Is there a sailor of certain fame who devours spinach so??? I'm referring to me, duh, not some Popeye guy of dubious celebrity. Okay I've just had to google a synonym for fame cause I couldn't cough one up myself. So. Bad. Sigh. Need to work my brain muskels more apparently. I'm all brawn and no brain! I'm a.... himbo omg.

Okay I know I'm leaving everyone hanging but to be honest the story isn't very exciting at all, I ended up producing a mince-beef + onion + mushroom + broccoli + sambal fried rice. The end! Or almost the end, cause it turned out to be very nice indeed, although possibly only to my palate cause only I could taste the blood sweat and tears that I put into it. Not that I'd ever bleed into my food, that's disgusting.

Oh yeah I think I've also taken ill over the past few days, although only very slightly, despite the best efforts of all this malicious rain. Almost negligible however, except for bouts of sneezing every now and then. It's a good excuse to stay in and read all day. Speaking of which, I've become quite addicted to this webcomic called Questionable Content. Which I only found out cause I'm a total loser i.e. full-time youtube comment reader, and I read about it in the comments of a Wilco song. Dorkyness overload.

Tried and tested formula of a yes-no-maybeso relationship between 1 x boy and 1 x girl, a la Bones and HIMYM and Mentalist and pretty much any other successful TV series out there, cause there's nothing quite like the tease is there! But yeah, I've done gone and read 424 strips of Questionable Content in the past 2 days, neglecting even my Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan. I is adikt.

And someone might wanna try listening to Husky, this band which hails from Melbourne Australia, I'm really enjoying their album Forever So so far.

Well that's it, end of little update on status of life.