Friends in strange places.

Something I've noticed - which I think is a general thing - is that when you are used to seeing someone in a particular context, if they're taken out of that context, you often don't see them.

There's a number of times that I've seen friends at work, or in the shops, or somewhere else. And I'll smile and wave (or something like that), but they won't notice me there. Most of the time, at least; every now and then you get someone who does notice, which is nice.
Thought about doing a mini skit based around that idea at some point.

So, I don't know. Maybe that means that we need to be more observant. Perhaps look for things in places that we don't necessarily expect them. Though then, I suppose, it would be less of a surprise when they came around, if you were expecting it.
Oh well. You can't win, can you.

The sunglasses mentality.

This is a post I've had in mind for a while, thought I'd finally get around to writing it.
NB: I know a few good people who are of the sunglasses mentality, or a better variation thereof. Not attempting to dismiss them as wrong, or anything like that. They can make it work and do what I try and do, I can only manage the one. And I guess they don't really take it quite as seriously as what I'm talking about. Which is good.


I'm not a fan of sunglasses. Or even glasses, myself, but particularly sunglasses. Why? Because, if you have your sunglasses on, I can't see your eyes. I have no idea where your eyes are looking, I have no idea what your eyes are saying, and I don't know what your eyes are looking like at the moment. And I like to be able to know those three things. Eyes are extremely important for communication. They're also one of the more attractive features of the face, and the face has some pretty good looking features. As such, I pretty much never wear sunglasses myself. Only sometimes when I'm driving and the sun is right in my eyes, and I can't really see.

But as well as that, the sunglasses are another layer in between me and you. A separating layer, it distances us from each other. And if someone is putting on sunglasses all the time, it does make you wonder whether they're trying to somewhat remove themselves from the world. (Another NB: I do actually know people who need to wear sunglasses because their eyes aren't fantastic. Not a problem.)

And, of course, then there's the "cool" factor. Sunglasses make you "cool". What is "cool", really? What does it actually mean? Well, most of the time, if I'm saying that I'm cool, it's putting myself above you, apart from you. Now, there are times when A will say that B is cool, and B will then say that A is pretty cool too. But, generally speaking, apart from the elite of bros and such, there's a fairly clear division between "cool" and "not cool".

And with me, I don't like being divided or apart from people, particularly. It's kinda something I did a fair bit when I was younger - and I still sometimes do it now, but I really don't want to, and I certainly don't like to. I like being with people, together with people, sharing with people, laughing with people, smiling, playing, having fun. That's me, anyway.

Election Day.

(Pre-note: I'm not sure how much of this I'm actually allowed to put up, particularly with the counting stuff. However, given you can find this stuff in other places, I'm going to assume that it's fine for now.)

Worked as an Election Official yesterday at the Local Council elections. Place I was working at was actually just down the road, which was handy. 7:15am start, 10:30 finish. A pretty long day. There were four of us at that location, all up. Just four. Apparently, we had close to 1800 people go through there.

It's something I did at the last elections as well - can't remember if it was State or Federal - and I quite enjoyed it. You get to deal with people - and lots of people - and there's so many interesting names! (And yes, there was close to a page of Smiths. And they fit a lot of names on one page.) And as well as that, the way all the organisation and such works actually works pretty well with how my brain functions, so I find it fairly simple. While some weren't sure what the difference was between SATLs and RATLs, I had all the BTLs categorised. (SATL is Single Above The Line, one mark above the line; RATL is Random Above The Line, any more than one above the line; BTL is Below The Line, at least two marks below the line. It is actually a somewhat complex system, but it does make sense. BTLs actually had to be categorised according to individual candidates, while SATLs and RATLs only according to party. There are about 20 candidates or so, but only six parties.)

Though, of course, there's also the informal votes (or 'donkey' votes). And that ranges from blank, to people putting a line across the lot, to putting multiple unnumbered marks in boxes above the line, to derogatory comments/displays of artistic license. We had one guy who wrote, "Sorry, I didn't vote!" which was somewhat amusing. Note: SATLs, RATLs and BTLs get sorted and counted. Informals get dumped into a massive pile under the table and then just counted.

We also had quite a few hiccups. First up, having only four there, we didn't have anyone to replace us for a break. We had to wait until there wasn't really anyone coming in to have our break. Secondly, what a lot of people didn't realise is that there isn't really out of area voting for Local elections. There is for State and Federal, but not Local. Imagine trying to keep copies of forms for every area at every area. There's just too many areas. And the paperwork with this sort of thing is already monumental. (One of the many reasons I think this should become an automated electronic system. Save the trees! :P) So yes, we had a lot of people who didn't realise that, and tried to vote for the Sydney area or whatever. Then, we actually did three different areas within the one; we're in the Camden Area, but within that, there are three Wards - South, North, and Central. We were mainly South, but we also took North and Central. The two Election Officials took the South, the one Declaration Vote Issuing Officer took North and Central. A lot of people had no clue what the Wards were, thought Camden was just the one area. Tis slightly confusing.

Oh, and we had a fair few candidates/friends of them outside handing out fliers, with big posters, all that sort of thing. You know, the mandatory stuff.

So yeah, I found it pretty good. Guess I quite like that sort of work. Certainly prefer it somewhat to my work as a Kitchen Hand. Got no idea what exactly would be closest to that sort of work on a more regular basis, though.

I'm not leaving without you, Sam!

It seemed like an emotional-Frodo line. Pretty sure that isn't one of the lines from Lord of the Rings, but you know.
Moving on!

Was in Bible study the other day, and were watching a video by this pastor, talking about this friend of his. And he mentioned that one time he had said to him, "I'm not going to heaven without you." And this really hit his friend quite solidly, it was a comment that affected him quite a bit. As an aside, this wasn't a random comment said with no previous spiritual/theological conversation - they'd been friends for many years, and he'd gradually warmed to him over that time.

But I suppose it's a phrase that resonated with me, as well. Because I certainly know some good friends of mine that I'd hate going to heaven without. You know, I'd love to see them as Christians - I know some amazing people, and it blows my mind to think how amazing they could be if they were serving the Lord; how much of a blessing they would be to his Kingdom.

But, you know. With the way this world goes. Chances are, a lot of them won't become Christians. And that won't make me any less their friend, heck no. I'm not like that, not in a million years. It's not me.

And, you know, I've never been great at evangelising. In any sense, really - whether it's a theological discussion, doing walk-up at campus with the uni group, manning the CBM stall, or just talking to my friends about Jesus - I'm not exactly the best. In discussions, most of my opinions are copy-and-paste from other people; in walk-up, I tend to be fairly withdrawn, and similarly at stalls; and I've essentially never talked to a friend about Jesus. Well, I've never broached the topic myself. There's a couple of times people have asked me about it in passing, but I've tended to not really touch on it much.

And, you know, not all those types of evangelising are necessarily the best option. It should just be about being a friend to someone - being real with them. And part of that is being real about who you are, as a Christian. It's not about answering a million questions, or presenting what Christianity is in four dot points. It's about living. Relationships. Stories.

And I suppose, I'm not so great at that, either. I want to be. But, as I tend to rant on frequently, I'm not so good at communication, my social skills aren't great, etc etc. I don't really know many people's stories. At all. Even people I would call very good friends - I don't necessarily know a heck of a lot about them, or what their life's been like. And that saddens me somewhat, I think. Because I'd like to know. I love a good story. Ripe with all the details. You know, from things like what their favourite colour is, to things like why they aren't interested in God. Or whatever.

But yeah. Looks like I've strayed a bit from my original idea. Oh well.

Faith is a verb.

There's an expression you may have heard before, that say that love is a verb. The idea being fairly simple; that love is not really love unless it's actually doing something.

There's a very similar idea in the Bible, if you look at James 2, and other similar passages. "Faith without works is dead."
As such, I'd say that faith is a verb too. Easier way to think about it than to try and piece out the relationship between all these different things and whatnot.

In fact, I'd guess that most good things that are really worth it are verbs, if you have a decent look at them. There was a guy in an old Adrian Plass book (if you're familiar with him; if not, bit of a comedic Christian writer) who said that he used church as a verb as well as a noun. I think it's an interesting concept to think on, at least.
Food for thought :)

The Only Exception.

You might be somewhat familiar with this song, whether you have heard the original somewhere, or heard it performed on the X Factor a couple of nights ago (good on you Jayden! :D ) - but if you aren't, the essential idea is that generally, the singer of the song isn't that into love, but the person she's singing about is the only exception.

I think these days, you can sometimes see a bit of a reversal of that. When you talk about loving everybody, being nice to people, they're like - yeah, of course, that's fantastic, etc.
But then there's that one person. Their only exception to the rule. And they just hate them. They hate them to a ridiculous amount. Sometimes, it's pretty much loathing. And I've got some good friends who would be in this basket.

So what, you're thinking, you can't be angry at anybody? You can't get annoyed, peeved, agitated? Of course you can. I do. Not angry that often, but I get annoyed not infrequently. But don't hate people. And don't let anger consume you, either. Both of these things can be a poison to you, fill you up. Being filled with hate, filled with anger - it's not pretty. Because the thing is, the more attention you give something, the more it grows. And emotions tend to love themselves. You have a little bit of hate, give it a little bit of attention - if you don't watch out, that can grow into a lot of hate if it's not checked. Same with anger.

And you might think you've got it under control. It's just a little thing. You never even really think about it.
Well, perhaps not. But you darn well know it's there. You know exactly where it is, and you get it out to have another look just when you want it.

Don't let emotions like hate or anger consume or control your life. Let them go. If a person is really that bad that they deserve it - and often, if we really think about it, that's not the case - then forget about them. Ignore them. But don't hate them.

If you can manage to get through life without hating anyone, I think you're doing pretty well. Or you're just a bit of a wallflower, so you don't really get into it enough to hate anyone. Knowing me, I'm probably a bit of Column A, a bit of Column B at the moment. But, you know, in my mind, I've never had any reason to hate anyone. Or ignore or forget them, for that matter. Not saying I'm perfect. I've just been fortunate so far.

Just a little one.

Heading off to work shortly, but wanted to get a post done. I'm attempting to get one done each day, so this is making up for the lack of one yesterday. As such, this is just a quick one.

One of the things I find somewhat amusing at my work - apart from the people, of course, because they're always good for that sort of thing - but it's the microwave. And I know. You're wondering what on earth could be interesting about a microwave.

Well, the thing is. This microwave is either extremely confused. Or attempting to target the younger generation.
Some microwaves, as you know, plonk up a little message when they're done. Maybe, "Enjoy your meal!" or "Done" if they're feeling boring. This has one of those as well. But it says, "Cool". Cool. Hate to break it to you, microwave, but you're not a fridge. You warm things up, you don't cool them down. Things are actually quite hot when you've finished warming them up. They may start to cool down, but they are in no way "cool". In fact, we've had several burns from people removing some pretty hot stuff from the microwave.
Alternatively, it means the other sort of cool. And it's attempting to say something along the lines of, "I'm done! Isn't that cool?" or "You've just used a microwave! Isn't that cool?" or something like that. Which would, admittedly, make more sense than saying that it is cool temperature-wise. But would still be very strange.

Anyway, that's my little nugget for today. Gold nugget, or chicken, though? Hmmm.....

What's in a name?

A friend of mine from church recently came back from a year-long trip to England, where she was doing some training and such. Tonight, she was talking about her experiences over there, and some of the things that really made an impact on her. One of the things that came up was the importance of your name, which I thought I'd pick up on.

In Bible times, names were all quite carefully thought out. They all had meanings to them, and you knew the meaning. They were quite specific to you. When you introduced yourself, you were pretty much introducing a description of you. For example, imagine introducing yourself as 'beautiful,' if your name was Belinda. (That's the meaning of that name.) It seems a bit weird, these days, but that's how it was.

And, of course, then you can get into last names, and how they came about. And you get things like Smith, and -son, and -vic or -vich, etc etc. But I think I've already done a post on that, so I'll leave that to the side for now.

If you look at names these days, though, a whole different meaning is there. You don't just have your first name. You have nicknames as well. Maybe a cool version of your name, or a gangster version, a Star Wars version, an upper class version, a short version, a long version. Maybe you've changed your name, because you didn't like the one you were given. I've known people who haven't particularly been fond of their names, for various reasons. Sometimes because of the people who gave them the name, sometimes because it's been butchered a million times over, sometimes because they're tired of having to spell it for people every single time. (I don't bother telling people it's spelled with an 'a', these days. Still got people who spell it with an 'o'.) And that can complicate things.

I, for example, have a number of different nicknames (I believe I posted them earlier for a different post, I'll just go and retrieve them);  Bren, B, B-Ray, B-Dog, Brenno, Brendobags, Brendo, Dexter, Dex, Gold-digger, Shadow, Stingray, Piano Man, Balloon Boy, Bleeker, and Fogel. Some of those have various backstories/connotations when I hear them (if you're wondering where on earth some of them came from, this is the original post: http://modnarama.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/surveyifising.html), which may be positive or negative. Or neither, maybe. A few don't really have much of a slant. And there's probably a few that I've missed.

Take a look, however, at my actual full name: Brendan James Raymond.
The Raymond is fairly self-explanatory. From my Dad's family and such. Goes back a fair way - apparently the Raymond name goes back to England, and if you trace it back even further, to France. Raimont or something by then, I'd guess.
James is a middle name that's been used a bit in my family before (can't remember which side, possibly both), and as such was also used for me.
Brendan is actually a name from an Irish saint, who made some sort of legendary sailing trip to the Isle of the Blessed, or St. Brendan's Island. (Supposedly somewhere in the Northern Atlantic; hasn't been found as of yet.) But my parents just liked the name.

Looking at the name meanings, we have; Brendan - either 'little raven' or 'prince', depending on where you look; James - apparently comes from Jacob, which as you may know from the Bible, means something like 'he who grasps the heel' (shortened to 'supplanter' on websites, it seems), though some theories apparently say it might be based off something else which would mean 'may God protect' (like that a bit more); Raymond - comes from two words that mean 'advice' and 'protector', which is sometimes put together to become a 'wise guardian'.
So, apparently, I could be a prince, blessed by the protection of God, who shall go forth and wisely protect others...
Or, a little raven, who pokes people on the heel, and squawks out some advice but nobody really listens (I'm thinking Blagden from Eldest, if you've ever read it).
Probably got bits of both in there ;) But, you know, being a romantic, of course I'm going to like the first. If I only had a set of armour....

But, of course, not just important is the words, but also how you say them. One person might call me Preacher and I quite like it, whereas someone else could call me that and I'd be somewhat annoyed. You can change the meaning of a word completely by the way that you say it. As such, perhaps said heartily - though that's probably more of a guy thing, I guess, and not even a me guy thing - OK then, sincerely. With a bit of warmth to it, if possible. And relaxed. I don't want you to sound like you're about to say that my dog's died, even if they have.

So yeah :) That's my thoughts on names. What's in your name?

The...er...Kung-Fu Kid.

Watched the latest version of The Karate Kid tonight, the one with Jackie Chan. Was pretty good.

Generally speaking, if you've seen the original - it's China instead of Japan (which applies through to everything), that's also where they moved to, and the main kid is African-American and only 12. Apart from that, most things are the same.

The well-known 'wax on, wax off!' has become 'jacket on, jacket off!', which is interesting.

If you have seen the original, it's interesting watching to see which bits are the same, which are translated across, which are referenced only briefly (notably, catching the fly with the chopsticks), and which are new.

It also explores ideas and themes that are more inherent in kung-fu than karate - for example, things like it being a way of life, rather than a fighting style.

All in all, a very interesting movie, and certainly worth a watch, whether you're familiar with the original or not. Though if you're not, do yourself a favour and watch it first, you'll get a lot more out of it.

Inflatable.

If you haven't heard of Adam Hills - good sir, you need to be educated. One of the best comedians in Australia, by far.

I've just watched - for the second time, because it was so good - his show from 2010, called Inflatable. It's called as such because it centres around this little joke:

There once was an inflatable boy and an inflatable girl. They went to an inflatable school, where all the teachers were inflatable, all the buildings were inflatable, and all the students were inflatable. One day, the inflatable boy made the mistake of bringing a pin to school. The principal took him into his office and said, "Son, you've let yourself down, you've let your classmates down, and you've let the whole school down."

But it went further than that. He turned it into something that had a real application for people; something that people could really get out of it.

There once was an inflatable boy and an inflatable girl. They went to an inflatable school, where all the teachers were inflatable, all the buildings were inflatable, and all the students were inflatable. One day, the inflatable boy wondered - well, what if the whole world's inflatable? And what if everyone's inflatable and deflatable? And you know when you inflate someone, because they go like this *happy face, rises up a bit* and you know when you deflate someone, because they go like this *sad face, droops down* And maybe, if you inflate lots of people - maybe then you know you've lived a good life. And maybe....maybe, if you can still inflate people after you're gone, then you've lived an even better one.

That's condensing it down a little, but that's the full idea there.
And I suppose - in some ways, that's really what I try to do. With my music/comedy, the way I live and act towards other people - I try to be an Inflater. And sometimes - sometimes, that's felt amazing. Particularly when you inflate someone when they've been deflated, that's...that's pretty special.
And I think that, even if you can't be certain about other things in life - even if you can't understand the head or tail of various philosophical, or scientific, or theological, or cosmological, or some other sort of arguments or theories - you can still be an Inflater. Leave the debating to the debaters. Live with people, and be Inflaters.

That's my nickel for today. ;)