post-kebab blogging

mmm.mmmm, mmm. That was delicious! Chicken shish kebab with a lil bit of chilli sauce. The chargrilled flavour of the chicken, the spiciness of the sauce, perfectly complemented by the freshness of the lettuce and tomato, all encased in a warm pitta. mmm. perfect!

That has quite possibly been the most eventful thing of my past week, and i dont mean that lightly!

Nah, this weeks been cool actually, just been working loads, getting the overtime in like. also gone investigating effects pedals for guitars and that - thats been interesting. there are some really great sounds on those pedals so its just a case of playing on a few and seeing which one i like best really.

the weeks also been great cos theres been some pretty good stuff on the tv lately - every afternoon and evening. oh yes. its back. the snooker world championship live from sheffield. oh its so good. im constantly amazed by how these guys can move the cue ball (the white ball) around the table, and position it wherever they want after taking a pot on. like they'll swerve it/spin it, put on topside, or backspin, or left or right-hand side, theyll bounce it off of 2 cushions, or 3 or 4, all in order to get their position for the next ball. Fantastic. I only wish that watching it would make you as good as they are but i guess you just cant have everything. Ah well!

easter review

well, id like to do a review of the easter celebration. ahem, :all good, except one monolithic catastrophe somewhere in the middle. i could not believe how bad we sounded on sunday night, it was far and away our worst performance ever. it was so bad in fact, that we could tell from half way through the first half of the first verse! it was so bad i just wanted to stop playing and leave through the back door. Something seemed majorly out of tune and i wasnt quite sure what, but after checking my guitar after the nights performance, discovered that it was majorly out of tune. - sorry, thats 'majorly' twice in one sentence, shouldnt do that!- how had that happened? well, i put it largely down to the fact that someone - who shall remain nameless cos after all it dont matter and really it was just an accident - tripped over something near my guitar and sent it crashing to the floor and then little ol' me - me of the oh-so-accurate ear for tuning(!) picked it up after this, gave it a few strums and declared it 'wasnt too bad'. in defence of my ears i couldnt actually hear the guitar very well when i checked it, as there was a whole bunch of other noise going on, but i guess this just indicts my brain for thinking it would be alright and not checking it properly through a tuner. so really i should have checked things before playing. sorry all! Apart from that, im not quite sure how we would have sounded, quite possibly we would have been alright, but i dont know. the only other thing that wasnt sounding good frm my point of view was that we had a terrible mix upon the stage, too much of this and not enough of that etc. ah well, that was a performance to consign to the dustbin of history i think, the only thing i guess we can learn is that i really should double check my guitar before playing!

The rest of the night was pretty good though, dancers doing their usual good quality stuff, i must say, i think the dancers, particularly the older ones, are growing in confidence and stuff cos their dances really are of a better quality than a couple of years ago. not that they werent good thn, just that theyre better now.

also, the sermon was pretty good, and i guess it must have touched something in a few people cos it led to what was the best and most signifgicant thing of the night, which was that 4 people - correct me if it was more than that - put their hand up to ask jesus into their lives. And thats what it was all about. So praise God for that result.

back 'ere

hey all, got back yesterday mornin, nice and early. 2 degrees, 2! couldnt believe it. I was in shorts and t-shirt last week. ah well, there we go. you know i just discovered that theres a massive 6,500 strong church in adelaide, well, that is to say, i discovered it on friday when i was on the murray and chatting to the boat driver and he mentioned it. by then it was too late for me to actually go on sunday cos thats when we left. hmmn. next time.

once again i did quite well for sleep on the plane - slept for 5.5 hours and dozed for anopther 1.5. that has gone quite some way towards mitigating - now theres a word you dont see on a blog everyday - the effects of jet lag. which i still have - for instance, i am not quite sure that when i stand up i will remain on my feet or not. i will have to risk it in a bit.

you know its funny, but i was just thinking the other day how its not a conventional hoiliday, but how with part of my family being over there and all, its actually a part of my life.

hmmn. its a bit deep for this time of morning isnt it. theyve got new computers in the library now. theyre groovy flat screen jobs with new boxes etc, and for some reason, the time youre allowed on the net has jumped from 45 mins to 2 hours. fine with me. not that im gonna be spending 2 hours here but its handy if you need it i guess.

down under, part 2.5

g'day pommes! i got a hat! oh yeh, a genu-ine australian hat with no corks cos i didnt want to look like ralph harris. i saw this didgeridoo busker in the town the other day, it was really cool, he was just sitting there like all good buskers do, playing away. great sound on they things, i love it.

My nephew spewed on me for the first time today. so far ive managed to avoid it, like ive just given him back to my sister and then he spewed, for instance. but today the little tike got me! nah it wasnt too bad really, hes done much worse on other people. yeh im going to miss him really, not being around as he grows up. *bawls! sob sob!* ah well. guess ill just have to come back at some point in the future. not sure when though. anyone fancy coming? think ill go and see a few more places next time, probably get in a trip to sydney or something, perhaps even uluru.

planning on going to the murray river on friday, taking a boat and getting in a bit of a cruise down australias longest river. planning on starting from murraybridge if youre interested in looking it up on a map, and if youre not then you dont need to read that last sentence!

well this is tim from oz, signing off with the last blog before i get back. see you soon. over and out!