Author: Eikon Theou

Washed up, grateful for tender mercies from above

Calm and Storm


I managed 14+ km today… alas it was on the stationary bike, not treadmill. Mr G was still affecting the big toe so this morning I hopped on the bike instead. Plus I continue to feel flat and just listless. There’s a sinking feeling that somehow I have to pull myself up and deal with all of this, by myself.

Such is being a Christian. On the one hand you know God’s there and He’ll help you and whatever happens, will only happen with His sign off. So you try and pull together and go through whatever. On the other hand, I cant help but wish, quite often, than somehow there’d be some special dispensation of sorts and He’ll give me that special lift, out of nowhere.

I am reminded of past experiences where I appear to be going through a little storm, only to have Jesus sleeping in a corner on the boat. He appears to be sending a message of sorts – that I should trust him to get up and calm the storm and prevent any real harm or danger to befall me or anyone in that boat, instead of complaining that he doesn’t appear to take any action even as we face the storms.

To be fair, it isn’t quite a “stormy weather” situation for me. I just need a fillip and my take is I need to get out of my present role to have any chance of that happening and yet I need the security of my present situation, somehow. I don’t know. Maybe I am just making something out of nothing.

Related articles

Gout Treat


I woke up at 4 this morning with a sore toe. Instinctively and probably still sleeping, I trudged to the kitchen to look for the Arcoxia tablets. There were none in the pantry but again instinctively I got out into the car and got a strip of that lifesaver tablets and took one.

When the alarm went off at 5.30 the pain was still there so I decided to give the gym a miss. There goes my planned 8km. I slept in, and when Tress got up and got ready for work, I decided to take the day off sick. The soreness hasnt gone away.

So here I am, waiting for the doctor’s clinic to open so I could go and get a scrip for Arcoxia top-up’s. I need that pain to be totally managed before this weekend, when Tress and I go up to Canberra again. I dont want anything to mess that up.

I have also made up my mind to leave my present role. Preferably however, I want to find a legal or quasi legal role first, before I do. Staying in this role has so tainted my views of ministry and people in it, that I need to get out before my relationship with these people become badly affected.

I was just checking my emails and saw an invoice coming in. He is a retired professional and helping the office manage an IT database upgrade project. If I was in his shoes, I would have done it voluntarily, no questions asked, no second thoughts. Another retiree was to do some “deputation” or representative work in the country. Again at costs to the organisation. It isnt paid work but expenses fully reimbursed. I can only wonder what a week or two driving in the country can chalk up in terms of costs.

Maybe I need to revisit my concept of serving. After all mine is also a paid role, not voluntary. Although I minimise costs by foregoing a lot of entitlements a full time paid staff would have, and have hardly lodged any claims, always thinking this organisation need to minimise its costs. My boss does that too but a lot of other people dont. Almost nothing is done on a volunteer basis without pay or reimbursement.

I dont know, maybe I just need to have a good think about what I am doing, where I am now, what I want to spend my time on, etc. I know I am just not fulfilled. At all. Having told myself to go easy on food and having unsubscribed from stuff like Foxtel, I come home each day just looking forward to taking the little black jedi to the park and let him frolic with other pooches. When the park is used for cricket or footy training like it has been, I get a bit lost and the walking around the blocks thing becomes a disappointment. I’d come home after say 45 minutes and plonk myself in front of the tele for a bit, simplt deplete of anything enjoyable or fulfillng. I’d feel the day had gone by with God knows what achievement or accomplishment. There isnt even the simple satisfaction of having done some work I’d consider fulfilling.

Maybe that’s why I’m sort of happy to just stay at home today, away from the office. Sore tore notwithstanding.

Related articles

More “running” from Malaysia, and my (closer to “proper”) run…


It rained all day on Saturday. I was a bit restless as a result, itching to go out into the gardens to organise the pruning which has accumulated in a couple of corners in the backyard. The council’s “hard rubbish” week was to start today and I had wanted to clear my backyard off those pruning.

After our usual coffee at the Coffee Club at the Chase, we rang a new migrant couple and invited them to dinner. They were probably too polite or maybe they didn’t want to miss out on an evening of time with the kids (they have 3 young ones) so they suggested afternoon tea instead. It was a novel idea – albeit an very English and therefore old one – but as the idea was to get to know them and see if we can be their friends, we agreed and set it for 3.30. We then checked with Jason and Mel to make sure our suspicion that they would give this a miss was ok. We had asked them the previous night when they were at our home for the first cell meeting of the year, but we thought it was going to be dinner. Our dear friends spend Saturday afternoons swimming and/or playing badminton so dinner was going to suit better. The previous Sat had been taken up with another do at our mate’s home so two Saturdays in a row was always going to be tricky. So it was just Tress and I and the new family.

So we had “tea” on Saturday arvo. The family was lovely. They’re both IT professionals – very highly successful ones with large MNCs, but remained very pleasant and courteous. Their kids were a joy to be with. Extremely courteous, curious and obviously intelligent, they were very warm too, to boot. They would be such wonderful additions to the local community. They have been here only a few weeks, but they are one of probably half a dozen or so families we have met in the last 6 months or so, who have chosen to leave Malaysia. The trend is a continuing one and appears to be escalating. All Australia’s gain and Malaysia’s loss for sure, but I dont think those idiots who pretend to run the country care very much at all. Someone told me Idris Jala, a Malaysian government minister, recently went back on his views that Malaysia faced bankruptcy unless fuel subsidies were removed. No one in Malaysia thought this reversal had anything to do with any notion of an improving economy, and more to do with another minister who either did not know what he was talking about or one who lacked courage to defy his band of thieving and lying manipulators.

Anyway, this family appears to have settled in well and quickly and will no doubt contribute to Australia more positively and will be appreciated here more than they were in Malaysia. At least their kids can attend university courses of their choice and which they qualify for strictly on merit, instead of seeing buffoons take up places they dont deserve, in hopelessly narcissistic universities anyway.

———————————-

Yesterday in church someone asked me if I can recommend his grandson a job. He just finished his law course in a local uni and is probably having a testing time looking for work or deciding on the next step. I mentioned to his parents before, about roles in the State Revenue office but I’m not sure if he’s into that sort of stuff. Like I always suspected, if you finish law school without ever securing a summer clerkship at anytime or locking up an article clerkship, you’re in for a rough and yet very ordinary careeer. That is not a bad thing as lawyers who work their entire lifetime in suburban practice can do well and be happy but it does tamper with a young man’s often rose tinted view of a law career.

Having said that, I’m still struggling with what to do myself. Increasingly, spending time in my present role is just that – spending time. It is still underwhelming, uninspiring and I often go home with a flat feeling not from exhaustion but from being flat all day with little push or excitement. How one needs to be happy with one’s work.

So I’m hoping to make up for all that flatness by running a little bit more. I have previously resorted to food to do that for me – to provide something to look forward to each day – which has been a bit of a problem. Last week I clocked a 32km total, which is something I had not done for months and months. To run 8km a day again, for 4 days a week, feels a little better. It was laboured and it took a lot longer than it used to, but at least the run was clocked up.

This morning I did a 9.6km, albeit still at a slow time of just over an hour. I wonder if those 11km-12km an hour days are well and truly over. At least it made me feel a little better.

Related articles

Friday … Will Sunday Come?


I once heard Tony Campolo preach a sermon titled “Friday’s here but Sunday’s Coming”. It’s supposed to be an uplifting thing, so that those affected by the sufferings of Christ and the eventual crucifixion on Friday, may look forward to the hope of Easter on Sunday.

Well I’ve had my “Fridays” for a while now. Not in the sense that there has been suffering or anything like that. Just an overall sense of being really underwhelmed and deflated. I need Sunday to arrive, and soon.

Rubbish Man … and Simplicity again


I was griping to Tress last night, about the behaviour of some of the tenants in my building. They’re all mission organisations so I expected a higher standard of behaviour but in some aspects, it is worse than a secular set up.

Part of my routine is pushing out the bins of the building, on rubbish collection days. On alternate weeks these include the recycling bins. The way tenants deal with rubbish and the way it is disposed, leave much to be desired. It just makes an unpleasant job even harder and more of a pain than it should be.

Bins - MIne, all mine!

Such is the humbling nature of my work now. I wheel out up to five bins on Tuesday evenings before I leave the office and wheel them in again the next morning. Every time I do this I wonder what the Lord is doing to me through this exercise. I’m sure it can only be for the better, but it is just that I then get tagged as the guy who does the bins (amongst a myriad of other little stuff) and when someone has shredded paper or such other stuff to throw they would ask me if the bins are full, if they are in or out etc. I mean, why cant they just think and have a look for themselves? It is one thing to be the guy who wheels out the bins (relatively harmless thing) but it is quite another to be the guy people think of when they have rubbish to dispose!

I guess when I stressed simplicity, I get whacked with the extreme experience of being a simple person!

Speaking of simplicity, my boss is in the process of replacing his laptop computer. His is a HP – an almost 5 year old one. We’ve been looking at laptops in recent weeks and it is amazing how cheap they are these days. For under $1,000 you can get a pretty whiz bang machine, what with iCore 7 processors, 16GB chips blah blah blah. His wife uses a Mac (a personal one) so I thought he may want a Mac but he would have none of it. I guess he was just mindful that we’re a missions organisation with responsibility over other people’s hard earned money so we better be careful with how we spend it. Why blow more moolahs when you can go pretty far with relatively less?

Related articles

Laurie Oakes – The Sage – tips…


Gillard has apparently called for a ballot on Monday. The old sage Laurie Oakes from Channel 9 was commenting on the Today Show this morning, and he said Rudd and his supporters need not respond to that. They could tell Gillard there will be a challenge but it would not to the PM’s timing. The reasons are simple – firstly, there would be no time for campaigning. Secondly, parliament is still sitting and should the ballot result in a change of PM, negotiations with independent MPs would be required and parliament could not simply be suspended for that to happen.

All very sound arguments to a lay person like me.

What was interesting however, was the sense that Laurie Oakes sounded like he was advising the Rudd camp on the appropriate response. Oakes is a known Rudd fan and he doesnt mince his words in showing his disdain for Gillard. Rudd supporters would be all ears when Oakes speaks, Oakes probably knows that.

Whatever the outcome, at least Australian politics is a little bit more interesting. Interesting stuff that the country can do without however… just bring on the elections.

Related articles

Soh Chee Wen – A Joke


I was wondering why there was a sharp spike in hits to this obscure blog of mine. If you’re reading this to follow up on Raja Petra’s piece on John Soh’s PKR related activities and his take on Elizabeth Wong’s nude pictures, sorry to disappoint. You should head elsewhere pronto.
Have a great day anyway.

Rudd and Ponting


K Rudd and R Ponting. They once held the highest and second highest offices of the country respectively. Each of those offices are now held by someone else. In the case of Rudd, it is now held by someone immensely unpopular, disliked and not trusted. Ponting’s successor has now won over the populace. Michael Clarke has through the course of this summer which saw a comprehensive victory over the Indians – an Indian Summer for Aussie cricket indeed – earned the affection of Aussies. Gillard however, remains a turn off for many. Poor judgment and liberty with the truth are a deadly combination as far as public trust and affection is concerned.

Both Rudd and Ponting however, are not happy little vegemites when it comes to exiting the scene graciously.

There comes a time for everyone, when the spotlight is trained on someone else. No matter the level of success, one soon becomes a has been. I bet the late  Whitney Houston will very soon – if not already – disappear from public forum, great singer that she was.  If only Rudd (in particular) learns how to be contented with what he is doing and not look at what lies at the next corner. That can be a really hard thing to do. To win confidence and affection however, that is what one needs to do.

Related articles

Run, (Forest ?)


العربية: تمرين الضغط
Image via Wikipedia

I had to pick myself up and try to run again.  So I jumped on the treadmill yesterday and did a laborious 50 mins or so, doing just under 8km. Ditto this morning. I also started doing side bends with some weights; so pathetic is my core strength now. Doing sit ups on an inclined bench was also much tougher than I had expected. Big payback for all the indulgence of this past year or so.

Someone asked me recently why I had piled on the pounds. My take? There just isn’t any other source of fulfillment now, other than food. I feel demotivated in a lot of things, principally at work. I got to get off this trench, hopefully by running again and taking care of what I shove down the pie hole. I need to find some motivation from somewhere, which would replace food as that something I look forward to.

I guess doing 8km is better than not doing anything at all but I would love to do that in under 40 minutes again, not under an hour. And I want to be totally focused on work again.

 

Related articles

Back to square one


Tress and I got home to Melbourne on Sat arvo, just after 5pm. We were supposed to be back yesterday but Port Albert – our last stopover – was way too quiet and given it was only less than 3 hours from home, we decided to come straight home. We walked the entire length and breadth of Port Albert inside 25 minutes and were seriously wondering what we were going to do if we stayed the night as originally planned. That town of 1 pub, 1 cafe and a handful of wharfs didnt seem like a place to linger on, so we took off soon after 2pm.

On arrival at home I was filled with a sudden gush of sadness. I found myself not being able to speak very much, as I unpacked and went into Kiddo’s room to sort some stuff out. Tress busied herself with loads of chores, as did I. Later that night we went to Indochine in Box Hill and my sense of sadness continued.

In a way I felt like we were starting all over again – the feeling was like when we first arrived in Melbourne in 2004. The sense of having to do it all again, that sense of having lost the familiar, was a tad too much for me.

The next morning was the same thing and after waking I made coffee but continued busying myself with sorting out the study together with her room. After church we lunched with Gerry and Jesslyn and when I got home, I continued busying myself – this time with the garden. It was hot but I ploughed on.  Anything was better than staying indoor in a house that has lost some of the familiar love and buzz. It was easier to stay out in the garden and in the heat of the summer afternoon sun and work up a sweat. I worked from 2 to 6pm, then got in to freshen up to get over to Jason and Mel’s for dinner, together with Gerry and Jesslyn. Invariably

The inevitable came however and we got home, again to a house that felt strange. Our minds turned immediately to Canberra. Tress and I waited for a chance to ring her on Skype but we ended up only speaking to her briefly on the phone at close to midnight.

I really want to get back to legal work; other than the money which would come in handy for the extras that would now be required, I need to be busy again.