Daring to be different? Or am I just retarded :P

Well, let's see what the week might look like... hmm...

Tues night, going to do all I can to FINALLY make it to a hip hop class! There are several things I entered 2007 with the hopes of developing, and the continuance in the search for co-ordination was one I'd decided on early, early on; I WILL be an ok dancer! I will!! If any are interested in joining me in convulsive epileptical fits, it's $17for60mins@DanceFactory@Richmond@7pm...

the being different part would be the going to see miss potter @ 9:40pm @ glenny... most are going to see happyness @ 9:10pm, but me, me, I'm seeing peter rabbit... :S Am just not a big fan of seeing movies with lotsa, lotsa people... that said, knowing that lotsa, lotsa people don't read this blog, any of u r more than welcome... but not if u bring lotsa, lotsa people...

Wed night - sk8er punking the streets of g'wavery...

Thurs night - midsummer's night dream production in the botanical gardens; have gotten tickets, it's gonna be 28degrees&fine, gonna prepare a picnic, am going with the hottest girl in the world, and she happens to be mine... it's going to be the best Thurs EVA...

Fri night - appears to be rock clambering at this point in time, with details still being fleshed out...

Lettuce know (get it, "lettuce"? "lettuce" = "let us"??? :D) if ur in the areas on any of these nights (EXCEPT THURS!! NO one call me THURS night!!); u know the drill, u know the number ;)

Oz day :)

Going to skip the temptation to just blog about everything that happened over the w'end, but to instead just note down some of the stuff that made my weekend pretty unforgettable :D

... a beach day, a summer day, but all the more brilliant in the way it capped off by watching Talladega Nights with Mikey, a few assorted others & a 'particular' girl... beer in a bottle... just brilliant...

... a night in the botanical gardens, fending off waves & waves of cute possum attacks, using nothing but bottles of mt franklin & a picnic rug... priceless...

... a random church visit, the bumpage of a dear, dear 'nome and a night talking, snuggling, & barely watching the tennis :)

... the memories of the w/end blessed... yeah... that's an amazing amount of inspiration that will get me through this week :D

snapshots of the week in passing...

When the going gets rough...

In light of all the recent postings on blogs that I frequent, I've decided to dedicate this post to all those going through a really, rough time, whether it'd be about work, finances, unrequited love, people not understanding you, or broken cameras...

Little Miss Sunshine was recently nominated for 4 Academy Awards; yet, when it first came out, I only knew of it because of christop, and likewise no one else in my other friendship circles were aware of it either

And in the age of movies with production budgets of $200-$300 million, this one was completed for $8 million

I don't know much, and in full awareness of it, I won't claim any sort of authority about what I think, but here are some thoughts, and I hope they might perhaps help u to see even a sliver of light @ the end of the tunnel

LMS had heaps of witty quotes, but one particulary apt, for the rough times that I had personally been through

Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap- high school and everything- just skip it.

Frank: You know Marcel Proust?

Dwayne: He's the guy you teach.

Frank: Yeah. French writer.

Total loser.

Never had a real job.

Unrequited love affairs.

Gay.

Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he's also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare.

Anyway, he uh- he gets down to the end of his life...and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered-Those were the best years of his life, 'cause they made him who he was.

All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn't learn a thing.

So, if you sleep until you're 18... Ah, think of the suffering you're gonna miss. I mean high school? High school- Those are your prime suffering years. You don't get better suffering than that.

---

To throw a little christianese (this is for you karen, sue; mikey should prob cover his ears...) into the fray, David doesn't become David without a Goliath :)

I've been through a lot the last couple of years, have seen a lot, and they've ALL conspired to make me who I am today

And even in light of the failures and anguish I've endured, I wouldn't have it any other way :)

Trivia: In case you were wondering, Proust really did exist, and really is a significant literary figure...

sk8er bois

... and I should get that half-a-night tonight, hopefully! The evening part will be spent grinding on ferraris and lambos in the Glen carpark with mikey-destroyer-of-the-world; if any1 else is up 4 being a sk8er punk, or going to be in the area, give us a shout out... just don't run us over, yeah... even if it's ur ferrari we're jumping off... :P

Geez... slow down Nate :P

Hahahahahaha... after a year or so of learning to be intentional and to, in the midst of a bustling world, slow down, I still found myself trying to figure out if I should go to hip hop class, clean my room, see a movie... trying to figure out what's important to me, what to build into my life as a regular rhythm...

In the end, I stayed @ home and continued cleaning... and it felt good to be @ home, continuing to get the very basic foundations (my room!!) right :) To settle 1 thing @ a time, esp in light of what's shaping up to be a busy long weekend, rather than have a billion things up in the air at the same time :P

As for my room, it's almost there!! Another half a night, and I think it should be just right...

noooooooo... it's mooooooonnnnnddaaaayyyy...

... thank goodness I'm already half way through the day; sooooo buggered from the w/end - like LC, am similarly looking forward to a night of lazing around @ home (& cleaning my room :D); feel like I've chronicled the week & w/end in passing in adequate detail, minus the all important juicy details, but hey, I need to keep some secrets, don't I :P

Time to get back to work, & get back to helping world vision help others help make this world a better place...

... continued...

Fri night or Sat morn:
Either ikea shopping or bibi-birthday-present shopping (if one happens on fri, then the other will happen on sat morn) - this could probably evolve into a kick-on to the city (as ikea is in richmond), movie or at the very least, vietnamese food!! Let's see how this one mutates as we get closer to the night :P

This one turned out quite weirdly; a lot of people started re-responding with negative rsvps, and so by COB Fri, I had no idea who was coming :S Me and biki headed down to ikea in the dad-rav4-mobile, found a donald there and proceed to buy cool shelving :D

Due to a mix up in comms with LC, she didn't make it to tea with us (*sob, sob*) @ Thy Thy (so good!! Cheap and dirty viet, I luv it :D), and we ended up meeting Al & Karen @ Airstream afterwards :)

Sat arvo:
Bibi's birthday party :D

This was a mega day; went back to ikea in the morning (with about 5hrs of sleep) to pick up some more stuff, dropped by the Glen for bibi's present, raced home to change and unload, picked biki up an 1.5hrs later than I said would initially, and eventually found ourselves in croydon for bibi's, which was really, really nice

thoughts from bibi's... hmm... maybe call biki ahead of time to ensure we're NOT both wearing entirely matching outfits... if I give myself the time to prepare for peoples presses, maybe they'll turn out as creatively as bibi's, which I luved

the night ended up @ the parents, assembling shelving and in ikea fashion, giving names to my furniture (andy, ben and bob)... saturday was a pretty brilliant day :D

Sunday morning:
Visiting the NGV with Aloysius - both the Tezuka ($8) and sneaker exhibitions (free) are what we're after :D

Somehow this actually organised, and somehow I managed to find myself there :S Was good value, where Tezuka I'd already been to, but we were also able to catch a hip hop act there that was promo-ing for the sneaker convention, which was likewise really funky!

Notes from the weekend: Still haven't seen Dgirls OR Happyness... Had forgotten about how cool wandering around Ikea could be; might be an idea to spend a half a day there another time, just for fun and to inspire ideas; as it was, we barely made it through half way before we had to "finalise our purchases"...

so much to blog... no more time tonight :)

UPDATED

After spending the entire night blogging, resizing and uploading photos, I'm still yet to cover so much!! But in the intermission (which some call sleep), here's the week that will be:

Tuesday night:
Beginner hip hop class @ dance factory in richmond!! I can't wait, it's been ages since I attended class...

Cancelled!! Had gone home after work to change, all keen and everything, to have my lil sis call to say that the class had been cancelled due to the power outages :( Ended up @ Airstream with a bunch of people talking about how me and Al want to organise the next "networking" meeting :D

Wed night:
Skating in carparks with Mikey! Also can't wait; it's life-giving to catch up with ur best friend, and just punk to skate ;)

This one actually happened, and I have a 50c-sized bruise to show for it on my knee :P But if I ain't falling, it means I ain't jumping, and I want to jump :D Sitting out in an empty glenny carpark with ur best bud, sore ankles and all, just watching the traffic go by and the speed cameras flashing... life is pretty grand sometimes :)

Thurs night:
Rock climbing with Don!! Go, go spider nate!! For those interested, give me or Don a call, it's @ 7pm in Nunawading...

Well it didn't turn out to be just me and Don like I thought - there were quite a few people, Korea + a bunch of people I'd never met before, but that's half the fun, ain't it, meeting new people :D Well, to me at least :P It was a great night, my fingers were completely buggered and I felt pretty good to be able to get up quite a few walls on my first attempt in like 10 years (or forever?!)

Afterwards korea, don and I met up with aloysius for coffee which was a nice way to end the night... even if it DID leave me quite sleep deficient the next day :( But thanks Korea for the coffees!! You are way too sneaky... :P

To be continued...

please pray

for a close friend & his family, for his dad that's just had a heart attack - things are ok now, so pray for a full recovery, whatever that might look like in God's will :)

a faith restored :)

for most things, I think I can somewhat temper even my most optimistic projections with a good grounding of reality, except for two times of the year - when it comes to the occasions of Christmas and New Year

for what ever reason, call it child-like innocence, call it stupidity, there's simply no way I can stop myself from expecting a resonatingly magical christmas and new year

and it's because of those unstoppable expectations, every year for the last few years has been heartbreakingly disappointing; instances of waiting by myself on the street for a friend to come down from a drug high, being at home by myself in the pit of family fragmentation, to vacuous social occasions...

but who knew? Who would have guessed that '06/'07 would be the year that was different? I sure didn't... and for that reason, I was actually incredibly scared heading into it all... anticipating the extreme heartache that's accompanied each xmas/new year

it wasn't anything big that did it; xmas eve was a cold, soggy, soggy walk along the boulevarde (ivanhoe) for chrissy lights, but the company was beyond compare and to go back to their family home, sit in front of the tree and just be until it was chrissy morn was simply life warming

and to spend the large entirety of chrissy day with my family, opening presents with each other, laughing, grinning, smiling, and then extended family for dinner; there was no better way I could have scripted, for me, my magical chrissy

no, i didn't get the shiniest, most expensive present in the world (altho mum far exceeded the $30 limit for me :D), but i got my family for a day, and in the leung family world of incredible transience, that was the only present that was needed

new years eve was a vespa ride for two to a night picnic beside a lake, with a symphony of somewhat frantically mooing of cows in nearby pastures (in response to unseen-by-us fireworks) :P

and new years day was a drive-and-a-half, and a walk-and-a-half, to an isolated beach with some of my closest friends

none of these things were ritzy and glamourous... none of these things extravagently expensive... but each resonating incredibly and so soundly with the core of me, leading me to the only conclusion I could possibly come to; I'm a pretty lucky sod :P

And just like that, it's next year...

Here's to Sue who's, uh, "firm" "encouragement" has finally gotten me off my blogging butt :P

I've been lucky to have lotsa good things, & lotsa sad things, happen to me over the past month or so, and have been wanting to journal it for the longest time... guess I've just needed the right boot in the posterior...

where to start... well... guess the easy stuff first... and in short...

i finished up @ u/seed, with a credo christmas that restored my faith in christmas :) (pilfered the photo below from christop :D)



After being surrounded by the chaos of consumerism that engulfs the city over the period, to be at a bbq that celebrated intentional simplicity and relevance was perfect

That was the Thursday, 21/12/06... the very next day, straight after the h/coreness of Thurs, three days from christmas, and on a Fri, I started @ world vision as a business analyst :S which I'll prob devote a whole post to in a bit...

BOOM! He's back in the room ;)

After a hiatus of almost a month, I've finally gotten around to updating my flickr (i.e. photos) :D Click the link above or on the right for more snapshots of the past months... will try to soon get some up of my dad's 60th batch too...