| July 2004 - MYC and Melbourne! WOOHOO!!! |
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| Date - 1/7/2004 Time - 8:03p.m. Description - Okay so since my holidays started on Friday I've done A LOT of stuff. Maicy's church turned out good. There weren't many people there so it wasnt too scary to get up and talk in front of them. It was funny seeing Maicy react to the message that she sent me the other day at 4:10 in the morning! After that Katie and I went to Manly to meet up with Char and Bernee, two of Katies friends. Once we got to Manly, we discovered that we had to basically head straight back lol. It was all good though, the ferry trips were nice. The next day I had an awesome skate with Gabbo down at Ramsgate. We got some mega footage and I have done a whole overhaul of the animations section of the site. Then straight after I headed to the city to hang out with Tongy and do some mega shopping! I ended up spending close to $500 buying such necessities as a bag to take down to MYC, a case for my camera and DVD player, some clothes, a new skateboard, and Shrek 3D. We also had a nice finish to the outing by playing some Time Crisis 3 down on George street. Next came the big day at the zoo!!! Hannie, Jamesy, Katie and Nayphie (Thats me lol). The zoo was pretty alright. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more if my legs werent so tired from the previous days worth of skating and shopping. My favourite part was looking at the lions! Last time I went they were just lying there doing nothing. But this time they were a bit more active. Afterwards we had some lunch at Pancakes on the Rocks, and that was yummy in my tummy. When I got home I spent all night working on the website, mainly converting my skating Quicktime movies into GIF's. The next morning I hung out with Jerry at his place. He basically gave me a mini concert with his guitar. He has gotten REALLY good! Then we got some seafood and hung out down at the beach. I headed home and pretty soon afterwards I was on my way to Student Lifes annual no excuses party. This is where things turned bad. My journey to the party was one of the worst experiences of my life. I got the train to Sutherland, and I was under the impression that it took about 20 minutes to skate from there to the location of the party at Alfords Point. Two and a half hours later, after getting lost several times, I just gave up all hope and sat down. It was cold, I had no idea where I was, and I was sick of being lost. Fortunately, God gives good gifts, and what better gift to receive at the time than for James and Hmac (Who were also lost) to just happen to drive by and pick me up. Woohoo! I dont know how I would have gotten there without them. I was half way through messaging Mike to ask to be picked up, although I wasnt sure how I would have described to him where I was. Anywayz, the party was pretty alright. Madani has a huge house! I managed to find this mad skating spot at the carpark near the local soccer field. There was an awesome ledge there, just the right height for me at my current skill level. Eventually it was time to head home. The trip home was much better than the trip there. James drove me home and he and DC came in to check out the pad. Then I went to bed and had a well earned sleep in. And here I am ... I leave for MYC in two days, after which I will be gone for two weeks. Thus, I must say farewell to all you fans for a little while. But not to worry, I will be back soon with many stories to tell of my wanderings. |
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| Date - 21/07/04 Time - 7:07p.m. Description - Man what a hectic past few weeks! It all began with MYC 2004, which once again lived up to all expectations. A lot of stuff went on down there, but as usual, the time went by way too quickly. Before I knew it, I was in the car heading down to Melbourne! I think I learned a lot at this MYC. The talks on eternity, coupled with my quiet times on Ecclesiastes really taught me a lot of stuff about looking at things from a big perspective, and how seeing ourselves as eternal beings should affect how we treat each other. I also learned a lot about decision making. I have always worked on the philosophy that before you make any big decision, you should seek God and work out what he wants before you do anything. I think I have learned that this method is over cautious and if you follow it, nothing will ever get done. Doing things in faith requires a combination of using Godly discernment and stepping out and making a decision regardless of whether or not you can vision the outcome. Then, you try to look for what God is telling you as a result of your decision. You need to take things step by step, and ask God to walk by you and giude you up each step, as opposed to just doing nothing until God gives you all the answers served on a platter. I had a chance to put this in to practice down in Melbourne and I think it has proved successful 8). |
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| Melbourne was an interesting time. I had planned to do a lot of skating and just sussing out the area on my own, but it was raining nearly every day, so that didnt really happen. A lot of the time was spent watching DVD's. I bought some new skating DVD's while I was down there so it was kool to watch them with everyone and give them a glimpse into what I spend so much of my time doing. There was a nice little park near where we were staying, and I spent a little bit of time there skating. Also there was Subway at the end of the park, so I also found time to do a little lone Subway Club adventure. On Sunday we all went to church together at Clayton, and it was kool seeing some of the guys from Summer Project, like Pastor Moses, Larry and Carroll. The one time that we went out as a group, we headed into the city and had dinner at this restaurant on Lygon Street. That was mildly classy ... |
| On the final night I went out skating in my PJ's as a sort of final hoorah! Everyone came to hang out, and we had a run in with the police on the way to the spot. The police dude said he should have given me a ticket just for the pants that I was wearing (Obviously he is not up to date with the latest fashion in Sydney). There was this mad 3 stair followed by a 4 stair that I had found when I was at Subway, and I was stoked to have been able to ollie them both in a run (It had been a while since I had ollied any decently sized stairs). I did have one stack which at the time didnt seem too bad, but ever since my shoulder has been in a lot of pain 8(. |
| Shout outs go to Gaz for taking this pic for me. It was his very first digital camera experience, which is pretty impressive when you consider the difficulty involved with skateboarding photography ... |
| On the way home my DVD player broke! I took it in to get repaired under the warranty, and they say I should get back to them in two weeks, so now I gotta go two weeks without being able to watch DVD's on the run. Oh well, life goes on. Dans 21st party was the day after getting back from Melbourne. That was pretty all right. Because it was all the way up in whoop whoop, James, Agi, Viva and I stayed at Hannies place for the night. Me and James got shoved on the lounge. Yesterday was the EFS bowling social. It ended up being a pretty fun day. It had been a while since I had been bowling so I wasnt in my best form, but I was staying fairly on target. I won the first game with an okay score, and then on the second game I tried to see how well I could go when I was alternating between rolling it backwards through my legs, and tripping over myself and chucking it down the lane. I think under those circumstances I did fairly well. I managed one strike and a few sevens. Amen. |
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| I told Tony I'd put his killer score in the second game up so the world can witness how much of a supoib bowler he is ... |
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| Date - 21/07/04 Time - 11:09p.m. Description - So yeah Ive had a pretty laid back day - hung out on the net, watched some DVD's and had a pretty good skate down at Cooks River. After watchin some tv and chillin in my room, I figured Id head in to the house and work on the website a bit (The net in my room isnt working at the moment). I figure that at 11:00 at night, everyone else would be in bed seeing as they either have work or school tomorrow. Well I was very wrong, my stupid little sister was still on the computer doing some "Big Assignment" (Which for some reason conveniently required her to be on the net and talking to other people on MSN). I figure Ill do the patient thing and just watch some DVD's while I wait for her to get off. But nooooo, this makes it too hard for her to concentrate. So basically the internet and MSN is not a distraction but a DVD turned nearly all the way down is. She chucks a spaz attack and the next thing I know my mum and dad are in there yelling their heads off at me, so I retreat back to my room. Poor lil Nayphie lol. I figured some chessin would calm my nerves, so I whipped out the chessmaster9000 and got into it. Sunny was a moderately easy opponent. I just dont get it! At Yahoo my rating has gone all the way down to the low 1300's and I still cant manage wins, yet Im finding it easy to beat people rated over 1400 on chessmaster9000. Its all very confusing (According to the prophesy). |
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| Click here for stats ... |
| Date - 23/07/04 Time - 11:08p.m. Description - Ive had an eventuful past few days. Yesterday was spent firstly at Cynthias house where James, Tongy, DC, Tony and I helped cook lunch for the EFS ladies who were having some leadership meeting thing (Arent we such great gentlemen). Afterwards we were joined by Gaz, Josh, Ian, Edmund, Mikey V and Grant who were present about the meeting for the Beyond Sydney Summer Project. Viva asked me to put the photos that were taken up on the website so she could have access to them, so here they are ... |
| Afterwards, a whole group of Student Lifers met up at the Ranch for dinner and Karaoke afterwards.I've never been to Karaoke in my life, and actually having a go was the last thing I expected to be doing, but sure enough, Gaz, Ivan, Tony and I got up and did a great rendition of Smells Like A Teen Spirit. I basically lost my voice after having screamed my head off doing that. Fun times were had by all ... |
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| Before the others got to the Ranch, Viva, DC, Tony and I were stoked to have scored three free games on this pinball machine. Tony noticed that someone had left a credit on it, so he had a game. Then he won a free game, so me and Viva had a go, and we were given another game, so Viva and DC finished off the lucky streak ... |
| Today I hung out with Jerry at his place. We played some chess and I showed him some of my skating DVD's and then we had lunch. Next we headed into the city to the Three Wise Monkeys on George Street where we downed a few beers and played some pool with a few friends. After the others headed to Carmens at Miranda, I headed to Galaxy World to play some Time Crisis. I had a good game on Time Crisis 2, finishing it with one continue, but I still need a lot of work on my Time Crisis 3 skills ... |
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| Jerry has become quite the pool shark |
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| Date - 26/07/04 Time - 12:09a.m. Description - I have hit a brick wall with the chessmaster9000. No matter how many times I play Sam, I just cant win. I think it is time to whip out the Josh Waitzkin annotated games to pick up some tips on playing with vision. Anywayz, it was Tonys 21st on Saturday! Go Tony! Its ya birfday! We gonna party like its ya birfday! It was nice and relaxing, just chillin and drinkin a few beers. Thats the way I like my partys. DC really got into the beers ... |
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| I bought Tony some sheep PJ's for his bday, and Viva bought me this kool skating game lol. Can ya feel the love. Such sharing and caring ... |
| (Spellcheck performed by Katie Howard - Speller extraordinaire) |
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