Mathieu's Update

I'm Back!

2009-10-21T17:00:00.011+10:00

I'm back! And it's good news!

Due to CFS, Mathieu's Update hasn't been very up to date. I haven't regularly blogged in about 3 years.
For the next 3 months, I will run a trial and see what pace I can keep up with.
Please subscribe to my RSS or Atom feed so you can be notified whenever I update. It's easy to set up, but let me know if you want help doing it anyway, or if you want emails from my blog instead (although I don't recommend that option at all). I recommend using the Opera browser above all others. One reason among many, is that it can notify you of new posts itself without the need of any additional newsreading software or having to check any website. Still put me into your bookmarks though.

And then please comment as often as you can. This will help me a lot! Thanks.

At first, to get me into a blogging routine, I'll probably just start listing the things which happened in my day, but then I'll quickly branch out into actual blogging, and getting more and more interesting.

So what have I been up to?

Well, I'm still writing my book, preparing my Bible studies, memorizing Hebrew and Greek scripture, designing the perfect operating system and programming language, playing the flute, piano and sometimes the violin.

I'm still studying Physics and Maths at QUT. Hopefully I'll be there a few years yet. I'm part time now. This semester, I've finally been doing QUT's only subject on Discrete Mathematics. That's the kind of maths I wanted to do from the start, but I'm obviously at the wrong university.

I've decided that my degree might be usefull to me after all, and that teaching is the way to go for me. Whether that's primary, secondary, uni or something else entirely, I don't know yet. Hey, I've only been at uni seven years, and it took me six of those to work out teaching has something to do with it!

I live alone happily in the same place I've been living the last 8 years.

I spend most of my weekends with The Baby and The Boy Brother. We play lots of games and read lots of books. I'm also teaching them Bible stories, music, maths, spelling, etc. We love it! I'm writing some educational computer games to help.

A couple of weeks ago, my moustache was trimmed for the first time, along with my hair, for my cousin's wedding where I was a groomsman and wore a kilt. Pictures are coming. Don't worry, the beard is still safe.

Schoolies is coming up soon, and I'm hoping to blog about it every day that I'm on project like I did in 2005, but this time it might be on a new blog devoted to Schoolies. So during those days I may not blog here, but I'll link to the other blog or something. We'll see how it works later.

I get to help with the apologetics training this year! I don't know anything about what's happening yet, so I'm just trying to get all my apologetics together into one interactive program for answering questions. I have apologetics on the brain, so you'll hopefully get me posting a lot of apologetics throughout the next month.

There are also some surprise posts coming!

As you might have noticed, I've made some little changes to my blog. There are many more to come. I'm very excited about what I have planned!

I used to host my files on my old website at Geocities, but Geocities is closing down on October 26, 2009. This is a good thing. I never took Geocities seriously, as you may have guessed if you ever visited my site there and found it hardly ever changed in 7 years. My new website is with a marvalous free webhosting service called HelioHost. My motto is, "If it seems too good to be true, check it out!"

At the time I'm writing this, my new website has less on it than the old one. In fact, nothing. So far it's just hosting some of the old files for my blog like my Da Vinci Code artical so that the links will still work when Geocities dies, but I will add to my new site regularly, so it will soon have far more than the old one, and eventually be a proper site I can be proud of.

You may have noticed I've updated the the HTML version of my Hebrew Calendar. It's now a JavaScript which generates the HTML itself so I don't have to keep posting it. I haven't finished it yet. I have plans to make it interactive and have each day link to the appropriate post on my blog, and each Feast icon link to information about the Feast, etc.

Here's a hint you might like pointed out. In the past, when I've used a word without explaining it, I turned it into a link to a page explaining it. I'll still be doing that, but from now on I'll give it a title with a little more information for those people who don't have the time to read a whole other page. Just move your mouse over a link to find out a little more information. For example, if move your mouse over the word KGP, a message saying, "A booklet called Knowing God Personally." should pop up. If it doesn't work for you, please comment and tell me, because from now on, I won't be putting bracketed explanations beside acronyms either. If you click on the link, it will still go to the whole other page.

If you want to know more about what's been happening up until now, I'm sure you'll hear more about my past adventures as time goes on. That's if there aren't too many new ones.

8th Month 5769

2009-10-21T16:32:00.002+10:00

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7th Month 5769

2009-09-21T06:00:00.001+10:00

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6th Month 5769

2009-08-23T16:56:00.002+10:00

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Webmail Madness

2009-06-23T17:04:00.013+10:00

QUT has it's own webmail service for enrolled students. It's called Webmail.

The last time I checked my Webmail account was 324 emails ago, apparently in March or April.

One minor reason for this, is that my Webmail account is hard to check.

It's 2751.7% over quota!
I have 2924 emails!
Click the censored snapshot below to see:

Until I'm back under quota, I'm not allowed to use Webmail to save sent emails.
It also means that my received emails are not being automatically organised into the folders I've made for them. I hope this restriction isn't somehow intended to motivate me to delete emails, because this just makes it harder to sort out which ones to delete!

I used to use Webmail as my main personal email address, and I used Yahoo for everything else.

I used to check Webmail at least once every day!

So what went wrong?

Well the last straw was when I began to be showered with messages like the one in the picture (but usually offensive) every day: "Waht Are The Best Love Making Positionss?". And QUT's Webmail is so primitive, that it only lets me filter one message at a time. Does anyone else at QUT have this problem? I've never used my Webmail address for anything on the internet. I use my Yahoo and Gmail addresses to sign up for things, and I hardly ever get spam to those.
Then in 2006... well you already know / don't want to know what happened then... and in 2007 I wasn't at QUT, and at some point before that I discovered Gmail. Yay!

But now I've been back at QUT for a while, and I've already missed some important emails. So now I need to save all my emails and delete them from Webmail.

It's hard to save Webmail emails from a browser. You need to open each email one at a time and save it as a HTML file, and then you need to download each attachment individually. It takes ages!

How long would it take to save 2924 emails? Even when I used this address every day, 100 emails was far too tedious for me, so in 2003 or 2004, I actually wrote a program to do most of this work for me. It scrawled through all the HTML files, and their links, and neatly saved all my emails into folders based on the ones I'd set up in Webmail.
I was quite proud, because I wrote this program in QBasic, and... let's just say you're not supposed to be able to do things like that with QBasic, which is a very ancient semi-interpreted language. Besides the fact that it "can't" access the internet, it also "can't" read or write files with file names longer than the old 8 characters plus 3 characters for the suffix and it can't recognise case.
Nevertheless, I managed to make it access and save each email as a file using the subject (sometimes greater than 30 characters long) as the file name. The QBasic program would actually write another QBasic program and write and run a batch file which would change all the file names, do other things, and execute the other program, which would in turn do the same thing until there were 5 programs. I won't share the rest of my secrets because... it would probably bore you.

This was working quite well until QUT changed the format of Webmail a little bit, and I couldn't be bothered tweaking the program, especially when they've now got an alternative "Advanced" system which I'm afraid they'll phase out the old one for at any time.

Another problem with my program is that it didn't yet save attachments. I still had to painstakingly download those one at a time, and there are about as many of those as emails. It also got a little huffy when I received an email while it was doing it's stuff. Well, no, actually, that was me.

These days I'm probably too old to play such insane games with programming. I would probably just write it in Java. No wait! I would do what I just did today. I went to the IT Helpdesk and asked them if there was a quick fix. There is (there didn't used to be, because I did ask them before. I'm not that proud). It's called Outlook Express.

Even though I'd rather rewrite my program in QBasic than use a Microsoft program I hate even more than most other Microsoft programs, if I keep reminding myself that QBasic itself is a Microsoft product, and that desperate times call for sensible measures, I might be able to do this quickly enough to forget it ever happened... Or I could use it as an excuse to play with Opera Mail...

My Mad Meal 1

2009-05-11T17:00:00.005+10:00

15-2-5769

Today, after her first music lesson (well, she raced through the first 8 lessons which I had been up until 3AM in the morning designing), and after playing lots of other new games, including an obstacle course, The Baby (now 6 years old) and I decided to make me some breakfast (The Baby had already eaten).

So the first thing we put in my bowl was an egg (without the shell). We knew that eggs come from chickens which lay them, but today we remembered that chickens hatch from eggs as well, and don't just come from the farm. We soon realised that there is a vicious cycle of chickens hatching and laying! But which came first? The chicken or the egg? We discovered that God made chickens first on the fifth day of creation, along with everything else that flies, and all the sea creatures.

We then put a jam biscuit and a big cookie in with the egg. After that, we put in four big marshmallows! I couldn't help but alternate the two pink ones and two white ones symmetrically into the four corners of my bowl.

Then we found some sort of fruit bar that was apparently meant to go into lunchboxes. Not today! Today it got torn into four pieces which were then inserted in between the four marshmallows.

The Baby then pealed me a mandarin, and we balanced four pieces of that on top of the pieces of fruit bar. The Baby suggested we put another one in the middle, and maybe she was right, but I felt it was time to put a piece of Weet-Bix Fruity cereal there instead. But then, what the hay! Let's just pour a whole lot more of that cereal in, but not before pouring in a heap of Coco Pops! Then we added one of my favourite cereals - popcorn!

It was starting to look a little dry, so we went to the fridge and found some orange fruit-juice, which we half-drowned the rest of the food in.

I thought we weren't going to be able to fit anything more in, but I was wrong! The Baby crammed in three Arnott's biscuits (a Nice, Milk Coffee, and Milk Arrowroot).

I put an upside-down plate on top of the bowel and put the lot in the microwave. We set it for three minutes. Once the countdown started, we ran out of the kitchen so no limbs would be lost in the explosion when the egg blew up. Because that would just ruin breakfast!

Once we were sure it was safe to take my breakfast out of the microwave and placed it on the table, we felt it was missing something... Oh yes! Tomato sauce, BBQ sauce, maple syrup, jam, a dash of lemon juice, caramel topping, lots of mayonnaise, and lots of baby marshmallows!

Contrary to The Baby's predictions, it was... delicious! I must admit that the mandarin turned just a little sour in the microwave, but there were only four little pieces and it's better than my unfounded fear that they would be too hot and burn my tongue. I don't think I'll use a mandarin next time. Other than that, we should be on one of those cooking shows on TV!

Oh yeah, and I discovered the egg wasn't cooked properly at the bottom, which explains why it didn't explode. I didn't want to eat raw egg white, because it contains active avidin, which inhibits your absorption of biotin by binding to it. Biotin is also called vitamin B₇ and vitamin H. Willy Wonka claims that he doesn't use vitamin H in his Supervitamin Chocolate because it makes you grow horns, but a biotin deficiency causes your hair to fall out, and I don't want to start going bald!

So I put my breakfast back in the microwave for another two minutes, and when it was done, the biscuits turned into cake! I'm not making this up! The whole thing was like eating trifle. Mmmm! I love trifle!

I know what I forgot! The herbs and spices! I knew there was something!

1st Month 5769

2009-03-28T07:00:00.002+10:00

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Happy New Year 5769!

2009-03-28T06:00:00.001+10:00

Happy New Year!

Today (being from Friday the 27th of March at sunset until Saturday the 28th of March at sunset, 2009) is the first day of the Biblical new year according to the Karaite Jews.

I have decided not to shave my hair this year. I sometimes shave my hair at the start of the year to keep track of how fast it grows. One of my resolutions for the new year is to blog almost every week from now on.

5769AM is supposed to be the year anno mundi (Latin for "Year of the World"), but I think it's probably out by a few hundred years. It's not important to know which year you are in to celebrate the feasts, though. The Bible didn't keep count of the years that way either. What's important is what time of the year it is.

The Bible says that the first month of the year is the month of Abib (Exodus 12:2, 13:4). That is, the month when the barley is harvested. That's this month.

The month itself is simply from one new moon to the next. Today is the new moon.

A day, as originally and consistantly defined in the Bible, is from sunset to sunset (Genesis 1:5, Leviticus 23:32).

Happy new year!

3rd Month 5768

2008-06-05T15:45:00.003+10:00

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2nd Month 5768

2008-05-07T09:37:00.003+10:00

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1st Month 5768

2008-04-08T16:29:00.004+10:00

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13th Month 5767

2008-03-09T16:59:00.000+10:00

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What we do at Schoolies (2007)

2007-11-28T15:12:00.000+10:00

The first Schoolies project I went on was the best two weeks of my life (2004). Each year since, all year long, I look forward to doing it again and again. As I write this, I am on my fourth Schoolies Project, which goes from the 16th of November until the 2nd of December.

Every year, about 30,000 grade 12 graduates from QLD get together with their mates and book rooms in hotels at Surfer's Paradise for about a week. The following week, it's grade 12 graduates from NSW. Each night they have a huge party on the beach. They are the Schoolies. These people are at a turning point in their lives, and they have a clearer opportunity to ask such questions as "What is my pupose in life?", "Is there a God?" and "Where am I going?".

Meanwhile, Student Life is an interdenominational Christian group on campus (UQ, QUT, Griffith, etc.), who's motto is "Turning lost students into Christ centered laborors." Student Life mainly trains Christian students who want to spread the Gospel on campus. I joined Student Life in my first year as a Physics and Maths student at QUT (2003).

One of the projects Student Life runs every year, is the Schoolies Project, where we become Street Chaplains. Street Chaplaincy (SC) is around 30 (this year 20) Student Life students in yellow shirts showing Christ's love to the Schoolies from about 10PM to 2AM each night for about two weeks by doing what we believe Jesus would do: Looking after the Schoolies, making sure they are safe, and meeting whatever needs we can- helping people who are passed out, etc. During the day we sleep, get trained and have other activities.

We also have our KGPs (Knowing God Personally Booklets) with us, in case Schoolies want to know how to know God personally for themselves, instead of blindly trusting what some religion says.

The Schoolies ask us if we get paid. We don't. We raise support to pay for our necessities. Thank you, all our supporters! Usually the guys live in the upper floor of a nearby church (but this year it was the girls) and the rest of us stay somewhere else (this year in a YWAM garage).

The Schoolies also ask us if we have red frogs. This is because of a different group of Christian Schoolies volunteers called Hotel Chaplaicy (HC). Hotel Chaplains are known for handing out red frog-shaped lollies. They stay in the hotels of Schoolies and try to make life easier for them. They help clean the Schoolies' rooms and make them pancakes for breakfast, etc.

There are other voluteer groups too. Last I heard, 90% of Schoolies volunteers are Christians.

Each day I will type up a short diary of what goes on, so that you can share in the experience with me a little. I plan to post this to this blog when I get back. I daresay some of these posts are going to be pretty wild, especially if Schoolies is anything like it was in previous years. You'll just have to wait and see! I'll let you know if any other Street Chaplains blog about it this year too.

See you then!

7th Month 5767

2007-09-14T13:00:00.000+10:00

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6th Month 5767

2007-08-15T09:21:00.000+10:00

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5th Month 5767

2007-07-16T06:00:00.000+10:00

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4th Month 5767

2007-06-15T15:54:00.000+10:00

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Keep Me Away From Sharp Objects

2007-06-13T17:44:00.000+10:00

A few minutes ago (actually, I think now it was the day before yesterday when I was writing this draft) I was feeding an extension lead through a small hole in the glass of my window - a paitience testing procedure which I failed. The hole was not big enough to fit my hand through and yet I made a little try, with my fingures through the glass, to swing the outside cord about two meters to the left.
A remnant part of my brain, which obviously survived the short-circuiting process of the past two years, screamed out, "No no! What are you doing?!" But the majority doesn't like critisism and has to see for themselves before thinking it through. The individual should have spoken up long ago, but I suppose it was afraid of attracting attention to itself, and that the rest of the brain would not talk to him again so it let them wear it out before it stood up. Yes, I'm still talking about incident with the glass. It cut my finger! Bad glass! Naughty glass!

I seems I had only just stopped the bleeding of my left hand which had been stabbed to the bone (by yours truly) with a small sharp knife a day or two before. While prying the flesh from a coconut, I had let my mind wonder... wonder about what my father had meant when he taught me to always cut away from myself. There were two ways he could have meant it, so to be on the safe side, I tried them both at the same time. I guess I just knew all along that I was powerless to stop what was coming. It was right after Nathan had left the house after we were talking about juggling sharp knives.

I'm proud of my coordination. I never get bruised... Well, not until this week when I dropped my flute case (not empty) on my bare left toe in the most impossible way. I couldn't have repeated it if I wanted to... actually, considering the events of late, and how often I've been falling over for no reason, anything's possible. I think I'll log off now and go to bed before the keyboard electrocutes me.

***

After typing half this post, I then visited Pete and used a cigerette lighter that he had "tweaked" into a flame thrower to warm up my fingers. Don't worry, I was sitting on a bed so the keyboard couldn't get me.

Me Did Surveys

2007-05-31T18:51:00.000+10:00

On Monday I did some surveys! Not just one, but six! It was the first time I had done any surveys since O'week. Good thing (and sad) it was week 13 and just in time! I was so excited I wanted to blog right away. Today, three days later, I blogged! I was so excited I wanted to blog about it... O yeah...

Leaving Home

2007-05-31T18:35:00.000+10:00

The following is a comment I deemed to long to leave on Dot's post:

I know what it's like living away from home. In all the confusion, when I first moved out, I forgot all about God. I didn't think this would happen to me. For me, I was in a whole new world I knew nothing about and it was me against the world. I felt like a spy sent on a mission without any drills or briefing on the enemy. I was trying to learn how to function in the world and keep a low profile as to my true identity. I was in culture shock. I was constantly on my toes in a very steep learning curve. I was under so much pressure to hide my identity that I somehow forgot it. Not a good time to forget about God. I learned to trust God all over again, but rather than learning from the Bible, prayer and meditation, and "knowing all the answers" as I did in my old world, I had to learn by experience (the hard way), only to remember that I knew most of the lessons already, and that I already had the big picture of the world. Upon first moving in to interact with it on such a small scale, though, it was so unrecognisable from the big picture I knew, it took too long a while to realise I have an unused head start somewhere. But it was all still fuzzy. I had some sort of memory block and real issues communicating with God. I realised that while I was in this world I needed to be vigilent to constantly set aside time every day to get to know God all over again and to keep filling my head with truth while I'm being forcefed with sugarcoated lies and corruption from all sides. I have a long way to go. I may get sidetracked and even get addicted to/"dependant on" the sickening sugar, but my intention is to complete the mission and get home. When I first "woke up" I tried to cut corners and jumpstart myself but I just burned out. I headbutted the world and it hurt! I have to be patient and rely on God for the kind of grace and strength that will get me there.

Goodnight

2007-05-18T22:41:00.000+10:00

I haven't yet decided whether or not to explain why I haven't been able to blog or do a lot of other things for a long time. But you may be wondering why I have suddenly written a heap of pages all at once and written a Java program. I'm not absolutely certain yet, but I'm cautiously blaming the coconuts. If it's true, then I'll be able to keep you posted while I privately monitor them as you couldn't have guessed I was inclined to do from my last post. :P
I'd love to post every week as I had planned to two months ago, but seeing as I have written only one post between then and today, and only a few emails, I have to be careful to not say too soon that things are getting better (as I've been doing for the last two years while they got worse). I'll have to expect that this is just a good day but hope that it's not.
One day I'll introduce myself, but until that's who you'll be meeting, you'll just have to introduce yourself. Please do. Until the day I blog again, goodnight.

Unleavened Jesus

2007-05-18T21:52:00.000+10:00

In a comment to my post about Passover 5767, someone asked, "what's your view on some of the baptist churches that use leavened bread for communion?" I was about to submit the following, but then decided it was too long to be a comment.

Hey! There's a comment on my blog and I never noticed it there before! I even noticed the comment about the duck right away, but I still didn't notice the one from last month about the bread until today.

About the bread question about leavened bread in communion:

1. Leaven usually represents sin and the unleavened bread at communion represents Jesus' sinless body which was broken in place of ours for our sin. By eating that bread we remember this and publicly announce that we accept that free gift.

2. No one will go to Hell because there was leaven in the communion bread. It's a ritual kept by Christians because they're saved, not to get saved. Each time I visit a church and they serve plain leavened white bread at communion, I try to ignore my annoyance, say a prayer, bless the bread, and eat it. If having leaven in the bread made communion all that meaningless then you could as well go as far as to say that we should be eating Jesus' real body. They would do better though, to serve unleavened bread.

3. If there are people partaking in the meeting who are offended when they are offered plain leavened bread at communion, then it is the responsibility of the church to serve unleavened bread at communion for the sake of those who may be confused or offended (especially if there is a a division or some other problem caused by it). Those having an issue with the leavened bread should not be made to feel they are in the wrong and should not be pushed against their conscience to eat plain leavened bread at communion for the convenience of the church. This is because Scripture is on the side of eating unleavened bread at communion. I can't imagine anyone being offended that there is no leaven in the communion bread, and if they are, then I'd like to hear why. I don't believe they have a leg to stand on Scripturally. If their reason is merely that they don't care what the Bible says and yet they think everyone should conform to them so they are not offended, then communion is simply not for them and they should not keep it. Not until they understand what they're doing and why.

4. Personally, I do wish more churches would use unleavened bread though, because I feel they should be making an effort to not make the symbolism confusing if they're going to keep a ritual that in part was designed to remind us of what Jesus did for us.

I think this is related to the meat problem. Paul did not tell Christians that they should all eat meat to keep from offending carnivores, but that if a vegetarian eats with you, don't offend him with your meat.

The church my membership is at does not offer meat at its lunches because so many of the its members are vegetarians. Most of the other members know not to bring meat to lunch, but when a visitor brings meat to share, nobody takes him aside to tell him we don't do this. Instead, those members who eat meat help the problem to go away (which if they're hungry, they are very happy to do). This also means that those who have been vegetarian for so long that they don't know how to tell the difference (this used to be me) don't tire themselves and everyone else by constantly asking "does this contain meat?" for every item they sample from the table.

Besides what Paul said about not tripping up vegetarians with your meat, in my opinion there is no Biblical reason why vegetarianism should be considered preferable. Kosher, on the other hand, definitely would be, but the easiest way to accommodate them both is to serve vegetarian.

I am aware that before the flood, man wasn't given meat to eat. But before sin he also wasn't given herbs (vegetables: this doesn't include fruits like tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, etc.) and also before sin he wasn't given clothes. So if you are going to use this to idealistically claim it's a better diet, would you also like to argue that we should all run around in the nu... no, actually, please don't think about that, that's the last thing we need.

And a vegetarian diet is not going to make you live as long as Methuselah either... trust me... I know. Also, I don't believe becoming a vegetarian is the answer to the ill-treatment of animals. There are far more effective ways which actually have a chance of working.

I'll bet you didn't expect this to become the topic, so now you may be wondering.
Yes, I used to be a vegetarian - a vegan in fact.
No, I have not been a vegetarian for at least 4 years. I can't remember how much longer than that. Many people who have known me for less time than that are for some reason surprised that I eat meat. It may be because:
Yes, I eat Kosher.

If you are going to be a vegetarian, please be careful. It takes hard work ensuring you have all the nutrients in your diet, and even then I don't recommend it. Please do not simply abstain from meat or replace all meat with fake meat (image of the beast) because you will probably get cancer. I am in no way qualified to tell you that, so ask your doctor. It's not a vegetarian diet though. It's a meat based diet, minus the meat, and with a whole lot of less nutritious unnatural stuff added. Don't eat blood or meat you know has been offered to idols. And think about this acronym carefully:

WWJD? WDJE?

Does this brief opinion answer your question about unleavened bread?

Why About Half of Months Overlap

2007-05-18T21:17:00.000+10:00

If you have taken the time to follow my Hebrew calendars while I've been "unable" to post the next one on time, you may be wondering why the next anticipated month sometimes begins on the same day as the last one ended on as being day ל (Lamedh - Hebrew letter with a value of 30). For example, Month 1 ends on Thursaday, April 19 as the 30th day, but Month 2 begins on the same day as day 1. In the same way, Month 2 ends on Friday, May 18 as the 30th day, but Month 3 begins on the same day as day 1. The reason for this, is that lunar months are about 29.53 days long. Sometimes they're 29 days long, and sometimes they are 30 days long. The Karaite Jews usually decide when the next month has started by observing the moon on that first day, and so they don't know how long the month is until the next one has started. For this reason, I have made my calendars display all 30 days every time just to be on the safe side. I suppose I could have made them all 29 instead, but then people would start wondering why I sometimes skipped a day in between some months. Which do you think is better?
The funny thing about all this is, that I didn't get around to making the calendar for Month 2 until Month 3 had already started and I made and posted them both today. This means that I knew that Month 2 was only 29 days long when I made the calendar, but I still gave it 30 days. Why? To be consistanly blind. You could say I was trying to deny the fact that I was too lazy to get around to posting the month until it was already gone, but then I wouldn't have written this post. But then maybe I wrote this post to deny that. And maybe I wrote that last sentence to somehow deny that by suggesting it. And maybe... I'll stop now.
I made up for it by updating the Java program I wrote to make the calendars. I've also updated the clock in Mathieu's Interests but it won't run on most browsers until I rewrite it in JavaScript, which I may do the month after next.
Enjoy the confusion.

2nd Month 5767

2007-05-18T13:08:00.000+10:00

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Passover 5767

2007-04-02T16:28:00.000+10:00

If you ever happen to look at the little Hebrew calendars I post on my blog each month, you may notice that some of them have little pictures beside the phases of the moon. This month, those pictures correspond to the passover and the days of unleavened bread. I will explain it briefly below, but just keep in mind that the days go from right to left or you will be horribly confused.

The first symbol is on the 14th of the month and it represents the passover (Exodus 12:6, Leviticus 23:5, Numbers 9:3, 28:16). I have used a picture of a cross because Jesus is our passover (1 Corinthians 5:6-8).

The seven days following it are the days of unleavened bread (Exodus 12:15,19) from the 15th to the 21st (Exodus 12:18, Leviticus 23:6, Numbers 28:17). I have used a picture of a goblet (of wine) with unleavened bread to represent this.

The first of the seven days of unleavened bread is a sabbath (day of rest) and so is the seventh (Exodus 12:16, Leviticus 23:7-8, Numbers 28:18,25). These two sabbaths are annual sabbaths or high sabbaths which can fall on any day of the week, unlike weekly sabbaths which are every Saturday. This year, they just happen to fall on Wednesday and Tuesday. If you notice, you can see that I have labelled them "שַׁבָּת" (Shabbath) as I have also done to each weekly sabbath on all my calendars.

As a side note, I believe that in the year which Jesus died, the first high sabbath was a Thursday, and He died on the Wednesday passover preparation of that day (John 19:14,31). This might sound strange if you are used to the Good Friday-Easter Sunday tradition, but you try to fit three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40) between Friday afternoon/night and Saturday night (which is before sunrise Sunday: Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1). It can't be done! Even if you improperly apply inclusive reckoning at its heaviest, you can only stretch the Easter tradition from one day and two nights to three days and two nights. I'm happy to show you a lot more evidence for why this is a more sensible Biblical view if you are interested.

I'm always disappointed whenever I don't get a chance to share the passover with anyone, and it's not just because I have no one's feet to wash but my own. They would be impressed with how saturated it is with symbolism pointing to Jesus which has been repeated for thousands of years for apparently no reason all the way down to the stripes on the unleavened bread. Why, for example, do we break the Afikomen (desert) from the middle of three pieces of unleavened bread, wrap it in a cloth and hide it to be recovered later?

When it comes to the horseradish, I like to use the Japanese kind (wasabi) and mix it with things like hot English mustard. When I feel like I can't endure it any longer and think I'm going to faint or something silly, I remember how willingly Jesus already endured much worse pain for me than just taste, all the way to the most excruciating death while I was still a sinner, before I even accepted His free gift. I have no right to think He can't forgive me for the things I've done to Him if I give Him my own life.

When I keep passover, I remember that I was in bondage to sin and what Jesus paid so that now I am completely free. This passover (April 3rd, 2007), I realised that I had forgotten my freedom. I had become afraid of how disobedient I was last year. I had been swallowed up by the consequences and filled with despair that I would again be imprisoned. But during the passover I remembered what Christ had suffered so that I don't have to suffer. Since this year's passover, I have felt constant peace. I also remembered that I used to be in another bondage. I remembered who I am and what I've been through and how God miraculously brought about my escape from Hell and I was reminded of who Jesus is and how He has already gone through the worst of the worst so that I don't have to.

This happens every year. The passover brings me back to reality when the devil tries to make me forget and feel like I have to keep fighting him on my own. How many times does God remind us where we came from, that He saved us and command us to remember and warn us not to forget? Here are just a few places:

Exodus 13:3; Exodus 13:14; Exodus 20:2; Deuteronomy 5:6; Deuteronomy 5:15; Deuteronomy 6:12; Deuteronomy 7:8; Deuteronomy 7:18; Deuteronomy 8:2; Deuteronomy 8:11-20; Deuteronomy 13:5; Deuteronomy 13:10; Deuteronomy 15:15; Deuteronomy 16:3; Deuteronomy 16:12; Deuteronomy 24:18; Deuteronomy 24:22; Joshua 24:17; Judges 6:8; Judges 8:34; 1 Chronicles 16:12; Psalms 77:11; Isaiah 46:9; Jeremiah 34:13; Micah 6:4; Ephesians 2:11-13; Hebrews 10:32

At the beginning of the ten commandments, God identifies Himself: "I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." - Exodus 20:2, Deuteronomy 5:6.

I just saw my two favourite movies recently too. The Shawshank Redemption and Edward Scissorhands. Why are they my favourite? All my favourite movies are about escaping some sort of prison. My next favorite is The Man in the Iron Mask. Another one is Chicken Run. See? The way I see it, The Shawshank Redemption is about the bondage and escape. Edward Scissorhands is about the catastrophe of the freedom which follows.

Anyway, I saw Edward Scissorhands again recently, and identified with Edward all over again. He had just found freedom and had to deal with the world. He took everything literally. He was covered in scars. He was constantly feared, mistrusted and misunderstood. He was "cursed" with a deadly razor sharp creative power and tried to protect his loved ones from it by withdrawing from them.

But in the end, he gave up! I no longer identify! I've often said, "I don't know how to give up, and I don't want to learn." But Eddie went back home! I was so close to doing that lately, and I was in a pretty dark place. It's a beautiful movie, but it has a sick ending. It made me very depressed this time, but I think it showed me the finality of it. This is how it ended for Eddie. This is what everyone will remember. Everyone who hates this movie, hates it for this reason. Someone (I won't say who) said, "Mathieu, how can you love that movie? Johnny Depp "died" without getting laid! It was appalling!" Usually I just love this movie because I can identify so well. I first saw it in black and white before I even escaped and I loved it then. This time, though, it kind of reminded me of the morbid crossroads I was at in knowing I could wind up back in the world of the forgotten and non-existent.

Then I saw The Shawshank Redemption again, and I began to remember who I am. I began to remember where I've come from and that before I escaped I've been through 500-times worse than what I went through last year. I remembered how heroic I used to see myself, and how much hope I had. That I was swimming out of slime and none of it could touch me. I remembered why I escaped. That I had a mission and only saw my prison castle of despair as a minor hiccup which was fun to scorn and sabotage until it was time to go.

I remembered my purpose on this planet. Why I held out so long to come back. It's hard not to be intense when you remember why you're free, but I was already aiming "impossibly" high before my bondage, I just have more catching up to do now, as well as having proof that I can endure it.

Well that's enough praising myself with my new-found/remembered sense of self-worth. Perhaps you've experienced something similar and would like to comment.

In the meantime, I usually watch The Passion of The Christ after the passover supper but would you believe this time I fell asleep half way through. I always hear of those are shocked at how violent it is (which it is, don't show the kids) and how they think that it was exagerated, but they obviously don't know their history. Mel Gibson watered it down... a lot!! I won't go into detail here.
I feel, though, that Mel left out the guts of the story, and missed the point of why Jesus died in the first place. I suppose that's what happens if you take the passion out of context with the rest of the story. Still, I think he could have picked some more relevant flashbacks. If you want a better balanced movie, make sure you get your hands on this one! Both movies have a lot to offer. I want to make my own version some day. I'm currently writing the script. I think I'll work on it every Abiyb.

Anyway, to get you reading: The feasts are listed concisely in Leviticus 23. The original story of the passover can be found in Exodus chapters 11 and 12. The other 9 plagues are in chapters 7-10. The instructions for keeping the passover, besides being in Exodus and Leviticus, are also given in Numbers 9, Numbers 28 and Deuteronomy 16 but remember that there are no more sacrifices because they "can never take away sins, but he [Jesus], when he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;" (Hebrews 10:11-12). Non-Christian Jews do not sacrifice in the common era either, because there is no longer a temple in Jerusalem. Therefore, just about no one eats lamb on passover.

Jesus is our Passover (1 Corinthians 5:6-8). You can read the story of that passover and His fulfilment of at least 30 ancient prophecies on that day alone (He fullfilled all of them, by the way) in the last three chapters of any of the four Gospels (except for John it's the last nine chapters). I recommend, though, that you read through an entire Gospel or it will be like reading The Passion and wondering what's going on all over again. There is more evidence to the historical accuracy of each of all four of these bibliographies than for any other ancient document in history outside of the Bible. Here are some more verses to help with your escape plan:

Exodus 13:3 Moses said to the people, "Remember this day, in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand Yahweh brought you out from this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten.

Exodus 13:14 It shall be, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, 'What is this?' that you shall tell him, 'By strength of hand Yahweh brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage;

Deuteronomy 6:12 then beware lest you forget Yahweh, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

Jonah 2:7 "When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Yahweh. My prayer came in to you, into your holy temple.

John 8:31-36
31 Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples.
32 You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
33 They answered him, "We are Abraham's seed, and have never yet been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, 'You will be made free?'"
34 Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin.
35 A bondservant doesn't live in the house forever. A son remains forever.
36 If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

Romans 6:5-6
5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection;
6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8
6 Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump?
7 Purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place.
8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Galatians 4:3 So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the elements of the world.

Galatians 4:8 However at that time, not knowing God, you were in bondage to those who by nature are no gods.

Galatians 5:1 Stand firm therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and don't be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.

Hebrews 2:14-15
14 Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
15 and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

James 1:23-24
23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a mirror;
24 for he sees himself, and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

1st Month 5767

2007-03-21T06:00:00.001+10:00

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Happy New Year!

2007-03-21T06:00:00.000+10:00

Happy New Year!

Wendesday, 21st of March 2007 is the first day of this Biblical new year according to my interpretation and that of the Karaite Jews.

The Biblical Calendar is lunisolar. The months are lunar and the years are solar. It starts each month on the new moon (even our word "month" originally comes from "moon") and the month of Abib to begin the years (Exodus 12:2). In case you still don't realise this, the months and years don't start on the same days as they do in the Gregorian Calendar (the one that you'll be used to).

According to the Hebrew Calendar, this year is 5767 AM. The AM stands for anno mundi (Latin for "Year of the World"). Supposedly, the world was created near the end of 1 AM. According to a modern date for the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE), however, 5767 is missing about 165 years. It's probably out for other reasons too, but anyway, it doesn't matter. The years were never numbered from AM in the Bible but local periods, such as the reigns of individual kings. To celebrate a feast in the Bible, you don't need to know which year it is (except for Jubilees, etc.), only the date within the year.

I have not shaved my hair for the occasion as I did last year. Sorry to disappoint you. Maybe next year.

This year is my year of recovery. I was struck down badly last year and have some issues to deal with. I hope to simplifly this year as much as I can so that I can carry out my recovery plan until... recovery.

Nevertheless, besides those to do with my recovery, I have some vague goals this year to keep me out of trouble. Here are some which may interest you a bit just now:

Write the first of my series of novels (sound familiar? I'll do it though, you'll see).
Establish weekly Bible studies in my home.
Blog about once a week.
Stop cracking my neck and knuckles.
Learn to drive.

I have a program to measure my progress. I hope to share some of it with you later.

I know I haven't blogged about anything personal for about half a year. Don't expect this to change too quickly, but I hope to at least blog more regularly (personal or not).

Also, seeing as I will soon have broadband, I'll be able to do some serious updating to Mathieu's Interests but it will probably be at a different address. In the meantime you can see I have updated the clock (if your broser supports vbscript, but I'll soon fix that) and this month's calendar. I hope you enjoy my slow return to blogdom and enjoy the new year.

12th Month 5766

2007-02-20T13:50:00.000+10:00

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11th Month 5766

2007-01-21T20:21:00.000+10:00

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Jack Sparrow

2006-11-01T00:56:00.000+10:00

Two pirate parties in the same night? This deserves a bit of effort!

This picture was actually taken after the first party was over and I was giving my head a breather, but you can see the earings I was wearing.
“Don't disturb me! I'm doing my makeup.” (The coins on the end of the beads are actually 20 cent pieces glued together)
“Wait! We have to take a picture of you before we go.” “But I haven't put the beads in my beard yet!”
“No, wait! A full body picture.” “I'll bet you can't see my boots though.”
“Thanks for platting my beard for me. You're doing a great job!” “Oh no! I think I dropped the beads.”
“I'm sure they'll turn up somewhere.”
“Check out the Beard! Now let's get a clean picture before we start killing each other.”
“Hit th' road, Jack... hard!”
“Aha! Th' sparrow dasn't fall! His reflexes be faster than a point-blank bullet!”
“Hold still! Let me change camera angles.”
“Ahoy! That`s nay reason t' nick off wi' me booty, ya lily livered bilge rat!”
“I'll get ye, me pretty! An' yer wee... er... bird, too!”
“Oh nay! Dasn't look, me scurvey bird! I dasn't want ye t' be seein' th' distraught look on me face that ye`re about t' sink t'Davy Jones' locker!”
“I sure wish someone would take a picture o' me gettin' loaded t' th' gunwhales wi' me ginger grog keg. I jus' know I would make a good impression. Oh well... Arrrg!”
“Nay, me harties! Ye've got me all wrong! I be one o' them friendly swashbucklers. I be havin' shipmates, be seein'? Ye can trust me t' yer grave!”
“What say ye? Thar's a what behind me? I be nay fallin' fer that one, ya horn swollgin' scallywag!”

Disclaimer: This may not be an accurate protrayal of how pirates speak, or of the people in the photos. In fact, I may have made up what they said entirely and changed the order of the pictures to correspond.

Tweaking 2

2006-10-31T01:46:00.000+10:00

Here's some fine... er rough tuning I've done to Matish. I warn you, these are big changes, and I welcome any resistance to them.

"er"/"air" - "r"/"er"

"er" is now just "r" as the "e" represented a schwa. This means that "air" can now be represented by "er" which is how it sounds anyway. Like "bering" for "bearing"

This means that "Whair'z dhair rair bairz' lair?" and "Her berd herts erth wermz?" from the previous version of Matish are now radically changed to "Wher'z dher rer berz' ler?" and
"Hr brd hrts rth wrmz?" This change is not very compatible with the Old Spelling but it makes better sense in the context of Matish. It may seem that a lot of words are now spelled without vowels, but those vowels are schwas. If you want them represented, then they would have to be represented elsewhere and it would detract from the economical advantage of Matish. Still, I've been toying with the idea of using "x", but that would be violently incompatible with the Old Spelling and with names which would not change for a long time, like "Xavier".

"or"/"au" - "aur"/"au"

"or" in "morning" is now just represented by "aur", and "au" remains the same.
On the downside, this makes some words longer.
But it also makes it easier to convert phonetics to Matish. Also, it is now compatible with "au" which is how children with accents like mine will mistakingly spell it because they both sound exactly the same, except that the "r" becomes sounded before a vowel as in "aura" (which is spelled the same in Matish and Old Spelling).
Also, it will mean that words like the "borrow" and "born" will not both be spelled with "or" and distinguished only by an apostrophe. So instead of "bo'ro" and "born", it's now "boro" and "baurn"

"ar"/"aa" - "aar"/"aa"

"ar" in "barn" is now just represented by "aar", and "aa" remains the same. This is done for mostly the same reasons as above.
On the downside, this makes some words longer.
But it also makes it easier to convert phonetics to Matish. Also, it is now compatible with "aa" which is how children with accents like mine will mistakingly spell it because they both sound exactly the same, except that the "r" becomes sounded before a vowel as in "staare" ("starry" in Old Spelling).
Also, it will mean that words like the "tarry" and "tar" will not both be spelled with "ar" and distinguished only by an apostrophe. So instead of "ta're" and "tar", it's now "tare" and "taar"
"aar" is not very compatible with Old Spelling (except words like "bazaar", "Haarlem", "Saarbrucken", etc.), but neither is "aa" (except words like "baa", "Afrikaans", "kraal", "laager", "salaam", "Maastricht", etc.) and it's confusing to leave one foot in the grave when you've just taken the other foot out.

"owl" - "oel"

I finally worked this out. It was a glitch in the Australian accent that made it seem odd. "bowl" and "bowling" become "boel" and "boeling" in Matish. This makes sense in most other accents. If you are Australian like me, just think "oe" sounds different before an "l". I won't bother explaining this unless someone asks.

"wh"/"w" - "w"/"w"

I will no longer use "wh" as the Matish default for words like "when". Although some accents do pronounce the "wh" differently from the "w" in "wet", it is too difficult for someone who does not pronounce it differently to memorise which words are spelled which way, and it is not important for those who pronounce it differently to spell it differently, although they can if they like, and still call it Matish, but in the name of simpler spelling, it is better to spell both sounds the same. The only thing is that both "which" and "witch" will now be spelled the same ("wic") instead of "which" being "whic", but in most accents, these two words are homophones. And when are they going to be confused, as one is a noun, and the other is not?

These new rules change the two main Matish tables, so here they are again:

Consonants

pot

tap

church

keep

(Foreign)

thin

ch/sh

ship

loch

(Foreign)

fat

sat

hat

bed

dam

jet

get

(Foreign)

this

jh/zh

vision

(Foreign)

van

zip

w/wh

when

mat

net

singer

wet

lot

rat

yet

Vowels

sister

bag

beg

hair

big

Pete

eer

beer

bog

taught

aur

dinosaur

bug

father

aar

smart

book

moon

oor

poor

mate

aer

player

pipe

ier

fire

pope

oel

stole

oer

lower

use

uer

pure

pound

our

sour

point

oir

employer

Notice how "r" is on its own in both tables as though it were both a consonant and a vowel? Don't think of it like that because it's not really. In the second table there is a schwa just before the "r", and the "r" is a silent or pronounced consonant, depending on the accent.
"oel" is not needed in the table for most accents, but for some like mine, it is not so obvious.

"b'"/"d'"/"e'"/"re'" - "bi"/"di"/"i"/"ri"

You may be wondering why I've been spelling words like "d'livr", "b'kauz" "e'vent" and "re'trn" ("deliver", "because", "event" and "return") with an apostrophe on MSN. Why haven't I spelled them, "delivr", "bekauz", "event" and "retrn"? For the same reason I haven't spelled them "dlivr", "bkauz", "uvent" and "rtrn" or "diliver", "bikauz", "ivent" and "ritrn" or even "deelivr", "beekauz", "eevent" and "reetrn". I simply hadn't worked that part of Matish out yet.
So I was using apostrophes to make letter-words in the meantime. This way "d" could be pronounced "d" or "dee" and "b" and "e" work the same way. Pity about "re" though which just goes "ree" as it's at the end of a word before an apostrophe. This was very shoddy, and doesn't even follow the letter-word rules properly, and I wanted to decide which spelling to go with as soon as I could.

According to the phonetics of Roger Mitton's machine-readable version of the 1974 edition of the Advanced Learners Dictionary (which I'm using to create my Matish dictionary, incorporating Mitton's 1990 additions to the word list), the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, Dictionary.com and several others, words such as these should be spelled with an "i" in Matish. That is, "diliver", "bikauz", "ivent" and "ritrn". So I've decided on that too now.

Here is Psalm 6 in the previous version of Matish (NKJV):

0 tu dha ceef muezishn. with stringd instrumnts. on an 8-stringd harp. a saam ov Daevid.
1 o Yhwh, du not re'buek me in yor aengger, nor caesn me in yor hot displejher.
2 hav merse on me, o Yhwh, for i am week; o Yhwh, heel me, for mi boenz r trubld.
3 mi sowl aulso iz graetle trubld; but u, o Yhwh-hou long?
4 re'tern, o Yhwh, d'liver me! o, saev me for yor merseez' saek!
5 for in deth dhair iz no re'membrns ov u; in dha graev whu wil giv u thangks?
6 i am weere with mi groening; aul niet i maek mi bed swim; I drenc mi kouc with mi teerz.
7 mi i waests awae b'kauz ov greef; it groez old b'kauz ov aul mi enemeez.
8 d'part from me, aul u werkerz ov inikwite; for Yhwh haz herd dha vois ov mi weeping.
9 Yhwh haz herd mi suplikaeshn; Yhwh wil re'seev mi prair.
10 let aul mi enemeez b ushaemd & graetle trubld; let dhem tern bak & b ushaemd sudnle.

Here it is again in the latest version of Matish:

0 tu dha ceef muezishn. with stringd instrumnts. on an 8-stringd haarp. a saam ov Daevid.
1 o Yhwh, du not ribuek me in yaur aenggr, naur caesn me in yaur hot displejhr.
2 hav mrse on me, o Yhwh, faur i am week; o Yhwh, heel me, faur mi boenz r trubld.
3 mi soel aulso iz graetle trubld; but u, o Yhwh-hou long?
4 ritrn, o Yhwh, dilivr me! o, saev me faur yaur mrseez' saek!
5 faur in deth dher iz no rimembrns ov u; in dha graev whu wil giv u thangks?
6 i am weere with mi groening; aul niet i maek mi bed swim; I drenc mi kouc with mi teerz.
7 mi i waests awae bikauz ov greef; it groez old bikauz ov aul mi enemeez.
8 dipaart from me, aul u wrkrz ov inikwite; for Yhwh haz hrd dha vois ov mi weeping.
9 Yhwh haz hrd mi suplikaeshn; Yhwh wil riseev mi prer.
10 let aul mi enemeez b ushaemd & graetle trubld; let dhem trn bak & b ushaemd sudnle.

y Matish?

2006-10-19T20:53:00.000+10:00

The problem

I'm sure I don't have to point out that the current system of spelling makes no sense. There are rules, but they are for many different systems used randomly by different words, and therefore there are no working rules for the one system.

The "air" sound in the following words sounds the same but has 5 different spellings:
"Where's their rare bear's lair?"
The same goes for:
"Her bird hurts earth worms?"

The "ough" in the following words has the same spelling but has 6 different sounds:
Through the rough cough though, he fought the drought.

In Matish:
"Whair'z dhair rair bairs' lair?"
"Her berd herts erth werms?"
Thru dha ruf kof dho, he faut dha drout.

The English language is made up of just 40 sounds, but these can be spelt in more than 1000 different ways.

I hear you say, "But I have no trouble with spelling being so inconsistent. It's easy to read."

Obviously you can read, because you're reading this. 46% to 51% of U.S. adults cannot read and write well enough to hold an above-poverty-level-wage job. 1 in 5 English speaking adults cannot read or write at all. 75% of U.S. prisoners cannot read or write (81% of UK prisoners cannot write), and those released from prison are more likely to go back to a life crime if they still cannot read or write. If you still think it's not a big deal, test yourself for awareness. I dare you! And then see how you're not alone.

Perhaps you've never noticed just how difficult it would be to learn these words from scratch. Perhaps you don't remember the first time you ever learned each of these words. Perhaps you were one of those schoolchildren whose left occipito-temporal area of brain developed early, or you just learned these words out of sheer memorization and it never occured to you how little sense they made.

Perhaps you think that:
It's normal to spend 12 years learning to read and write and still have 1 in 5 students not able to.
It's normal to spend so much of your time and effort at school learning to read and write and to have spelling bees.
It's normal for people with dyslexia and similar disabilities to have so many problems with reading and writing.
It's normal for English to be difficult to learn.

Well it's not normal!
Children in most other countries (98% of languages other than English) learn to read and write in less than 3 months.
Children in most other countries then (in first grade) begin studying most subjects of which English speaking children now start in fourth grade or later.
Dyslexia is not a significant barrier in learning to spell in other countries even though it is in english ones. In other countries diagnosis is usually not even important, and many who are diagnosed with dyslexia are not affected. In English countries though, Dyslexics are more likely to end up in prison and children with dyslexia (note on link) are also more likely to drop out of school, withdraw from friends and family or attempt suicide.
English as a language is a far simpler to learn when compared to other important ones such as French, German, Russian, or Spanish. Foreigners complaining about the difficulty of learning to read English more than other languages are really complaining about the spelling, or they learn to read and write in English, but are not sure how to speak it.

Is spelling reform the answer?

English countries are an embarrassment and the government is pouring money into solving illiteracy with little effect compared to countries with phonemic spelling.

Languages such as German, Dutch, Spanish, Russian and Czech, have reformed their spelling systems in the last century, which resulted in much higher literacy rates. The Netherlands, Portugal, Israel and Turkey have also reformed their spelling with positive results.

A lot of research and testing has been poured into English spelling reform and the results have been better than hoped for, but literate people who think they are the vast majority don't want to let go of a system that was so hard to learn in the first place.

Many who think about it for the first time also have the following objections:
1. Books would have to be republished to be accessable to future generations.
2. Etymology and history would be lost.
3. Homophones would become homographs.

Consider these things:

1. Books are being republished all the time. Also, most classics are in the public domain and therefore in electronic form. Project Gutenberg has over 19,000 free electronic books. Software for converting these to Matish is easier than a spell-check (I'm currently writing such software). Also, more publishing companies are using the new POD technology where books are published as people buy them and are stored electronically and don't go out of print when they go out of popularity. Actually, for certain reasons, many books that are republished in Matish will not need to be republished as often as they are in Old Spelling.

2. Etymology is not represented in Old Spelling as well as some may think. And the history of a word is usually baffling even in Old Spelling. Such information is not important to education, and anyone with this particular interest can look up the word in the appropriate dictionary which can be done just as well in Matish. Matish actually restores the consistency to the more important etymological elements, and helps elliminate a lot of the pseudo-etymology.

3. It is not a bad thing for homophones to become homographs. If you are relying on such spellings to make your text unambiguous, then it cannot be said the same way out loud. May I also point out that Matish actually distinguishes a lot of homographs that are not homophones. For example:
bow (boe, bou)
mow (moe, mou)
row (roe, rou)
sow (soe, sou)
close (cloes, cloez)
excuse (ekskues, ekskuez)
house (hous, houz)
use (ues, uez)
aged (aejd aejed)
blessed (blesd, blesed)
beloved (b'luvd, bluved)
learned (lernd, lerned)
lead (leed, led)
read (reed, red)
live (liv, liev)
tear (tair, teer)
wind (wind, wiend)
wound (wuund, wound)
primer (primer, priemer)

Quoting from Reports of experiments conducted in sixteen schools, using a spelling system very similar to Matish, it was found that:

1. "children learn to read fluently matter in a simple phonetic spelling, and to write correctly according to the system, in the course of a few months" (just like in countries such as Spain, as opposed to more than 12 years with the Old Spelling)
2. "as a consistent spelling presents no bar to free expression, the original compositions of children who use a phonetic spelling are markedly superior in matter and manner to the compositions of children of the same age who use the traditional spelling"
3. "in reading aloud, the children who use a phonetic spelling acquire a clearer enunciation than children taught to read throughout in the current orthography;
4. "contrary to expectation, the transition from the Phonetic to the ordinary spelling is attended by no difficulty, and indeed, that children who pass from the former to the latter, acquire something like proficiency in the ordinary spelling sooner than children do who are familiar with no other" (this is my favourite result)
5. "the better mental discipline introduced into the reading and writing lesson leads to improved work in other subjects of the School course." (yes, studies have shown that following the patterns and habits of stupid people can lower the IQ).

Imagine teaching your child to read by simply teaching them the basic rules of Matish and handing them a book.
Do you remember asking you teacher how to spell a word and they said, "look it up in the dictionary." and you said, "How can I look it up if I don't know how to spell it?" Imagine children having the ability to spell any words they can say and use a dictionary just for their meaning or to prove it's a word (or to find the Old Spelling).
Imagine if books taught children and foreigners to speak properly and clearly and maximise their vocabulary. And adults in their field - there are literally hundreds of words I don't know how to pronounce, but I know how to spell them, what they mean and how to use them everyday in emails and assignments. I'll bet this has happened to you too (although I will know how to say a lot more of them by the time I've finished the research for my 70,000-word Matish dictionary).
Imagine if everyone had the chance to learn to read the Bible.

If you think there will be room for the Old Spelling, there will for a while. But even experts in Shakespear don't bother with the original spelling. Imagine if books went through a phase where they were published with the two spellings on opposite pages. Parents who still think it's posh for their children to learn the thousands of archaic Old Spelling words could even use such books for teaching the Old Spelling such as for pronunciation and still be far more effective than if they just taught them Old Spelling from scratch (see result 4 which I quoted in bold). Everybody wins!

So why Matish? Why not use the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)? There are several reasons:
1. Different English accents would need different spellings. Matish is compatible with Recieved English, American, Aussie, Kiwi, and I'm sure many I haven't looked at yet, I'm aiming for the biggest collection possible for compatibility.
2. The IPA uses many symbols that are not accessable to most keyboards.
3. The IPA uses symbols that are too similar to each other, and some are just a small cap of the other. This is especially bad in handwriting and higher levels of punctuation (you could't use capitals for much else).
4. The IPA is simply not simpler. It is more complicated. Most people do not achieve anywhere near that level of phonetic awarenes, and there is no need to represent so much detail of how an individual person speaks. For example, in English we usually pronounce something as simple as the "p" sound as [p^h].

There are many systems that have been suggested for reform, and I believe mine is the best.

Some use different alphabets. This is fine for new systems of phonetics, writing or shorthand, but not for spelling reform, because the change has to be swift and universal to be standard and usefull and therefore not requiring any special technological extras such as fonts which won't work on all devices.

Some systems (such as Cut Spelling) simply make words shorter and easier to write if you already know the spelling. This does not solve the problem of illiteracy and I believe just complicates things further.

Some systems are only designed for one English accent, such as Truespel which only works for Americans. Truespel also uses "th" for "dh" and "thh" for "th" and tries to show the stress by doubling the first letter. Thus you are confused with trying to recognise the difference between "th", "tth", "thh" and "tthh" very quickly in reading. It appears that Truespel also tries to represent schwas with an "i".

New Spelling is the closest to mine, but has the disadvantage of a lot of short words becoming longer, "mee" for "me" etc. and the next step suggested in New Spelling is to make exceptions to the rules for a growing list of words, called "word-signs". This is just starting the same problem all over again as with the Old Spelling. Matish uses the End-Of-Words Rule to make sure that it is still simpler than the Old Spelling in such small words, but there are still no exceptions to the rules either.

Matish also tries to restore and preserve etymology without making words sound different.

Matish standardises words by expanding shwas to the longest vowel they will make in the word so they will not change spelling when used in different situations and will not lose their pronunciation. Eg. "obey" sometimes begins with a schwa, but not in the song, "Trust and Obey" which starts "Trust and o-bey...". Therefore in Matish, "obey" is spelled "oebey" and not something like "ubey". This way, the one word never changes spelling when used elsewhere.

I know you're afraid of change, but if you're worried about something, research it. You will see that the facts are on my side and every reasonable objection to spelling reform has been completely disproven. Do it! If you won't do it for yourself, do it for the children. Do it for the disabled. Do it for the poor. Do it for the criminals. Do it for the world.

English is fast becoming a/the universal language. Let's not impose our unique useless massive stupidities, which cause so many problems, on the rest of the world which is ahead of us in that most have sensible spelling or have already reformed it.

The Apostrophe

2006-09-22T00:39:00.000+10:00

This will be the hardest post to read on Matish rules. But let me assure you that it's much shorter/simpler than if I had written about the Old Spelling's apostrophe rules. There would also have to be explanations for exceptions such as "its" and "shan't". You'll think these posts are complicated, but imagine if I tried to teach you Old Spelling this fast! And most of these rules I've provided are not even needed when learning from scratch (such as this coming first one). They are just there to undo the Old Spelling ones you're used to. It is the Old Spelling which is to blame (plus my laziness in explaining Matish thoroughly, but I do have exams you know, and a Matish deadline). Teaching Matish to a child will be much simpler/quicker than teaching it to an adult who will have all the old complications still floating around in his head. Besides unusual rules like transliteration, I'm hoping this is the last post on Matish rules. If you see any places I can make Matish simpler or better in any other way, please let me know.

1. The apostrophe is not used in place of the missing part of a word.

Matish	Old
doent	don't
woent	won't
kaant	can't
shaant	shan't/sha'n't
havnt	haven't
iznt	isn't
woodnt	wouldn't
shoodnt	shouldn't

2. The apostrophe is used to join parts of a word together without joining letters into one sound.

So that, for example, the "ng" doesn't blend in "engrave" to go "eng-rave", it is written "en'graev" in Matish.

Oops!	Matish	Old
engraev	en'graev	engrave
cildhood	cild'hood	childhood
foothold	foot'hold	foothold

3. The end-of-word rule applies before the apostrophe

So that "kwi'er" sounds like "choir" not "queer", but this words doesn't need the apostrophe. See if you can spot why these ones do:

Oops!	Matish	Old
kwieet	kwi'et	quiet
terier	tere'er	terrier
sosieete	sosi'ete	society
hapiest	hape'est	happiest

This is good, because it means that the spelling of many words which use the end-of-words rule, such as "hape" ("happy"), need not change when a suffix is added ("hape'est" for old "happiest"). You can use an apostrophe as much as you like for this purpose so that the spelling is not changed when a suffix is added. Although this usually makes words longer:

Matish	Unchanged	Old
ene	ene	any
enimor	ene'mor	anymore
eniwae	ene'wae	anyway
enithing	ene'thing	anything
evre	evre	every
evrithing	evre'thing	everything
mi	mi	my
mieself	mi'self	myself
go	go	go
goeing	go'ing	going

You can also use this rule to make words look more familiar to the Old Spelling and still call it Matish, but it's probably not a good idea.

Matish	Compromise	Old
doent	do'nt	don't
woent	wo'nt	won't
kaant	ka'nt	can't
shaant	sha'nt	shan't/sha'n't

4. The apostrophe is used to join words and letter-words.

Matish	Old
r'nt	aren't
b'ing	being
t'kup	teacup

This rule can be used to shorten words such as "p'pl" for "people" but don't overdo it, as it can cause confusion, and is not "proper" unless you are using authentic letter-words. Here they are updated:

All letter-words in the following table are pronounced as in the second column.

Matish Letter-Words:		Old Spelling
a	ae/a	a
b	be	be/bee
c	se	see/sea
f	ef	(don't use this, it's not nice)
g	je	(or this - Third Commandment)
i	i	I
k	kae	K/OK
o	o	oh/owe
p	pe	pee
q	kue	cue
r	ar	are
t	te	tea/tee
u	ue	you
x	eks~	ex.
y	whi	why
&	and	and
@	at	at
1	wun	one

If this doesn't confuse you, notice that they all sound like the name of the letter except for "a" (unless you happen to be one who says "a" like the name of the letter) which follows the end of word rule as do all the other letter-word vowels except for "u".

All letter-words in the following table are added to the end of a word with an apostrophe and are pronounced as in the first column.

Matish Concatenated Letter-Words:		Old Spelling
'd	wood/had	would/had
'l	wil	will
'm	am	am
'r	ar	are
's	iz/haz	is/has
'v	hav	have
'w	wer	were
'z	iz/haz	is/has

"r" is used in both tables because it is used in both ways.

The following table contains letter-words that are not yet authenticated (by yours truly).

Matish Unassigned Letter-Words:
e	e
h	haec
j	jae
n	en

Here are some examples of concatenated letter-words in action:

Matish	Old
i'd go	I'd go (I would go)
i'd gaun	I'd gone (I had gone)
i'l go	I'll go (I will go)
i'm goeing	I'm going (I am going)
it's goeing	it's going (it is going)
it's gaun	it's gone (it has gone)
she'z gaun	she's gone (she has gone)
u'r	you're (you are)
u'w	you're (you were)
dhae'r	they're (they are)
dhair'r	there're (there are)
heer'r	here're (here are)

You may wonder why "s" is used in "it's" and "z" is used in "she'z". I hope so. The reason is that although both the "s" and "z" stand for "iz" or both stand for "haz", we pronounce them differently on the end of different words. I will say for future reference that we add "z/s", where:

"z/s" refers to using a "z" except after the voiceless consonants "p", "t", "k", "th", "kh", "q" and "qh", where an "s" is used instead.

5. The apostrophe is not used to pluralise.

To pluralise, simply add a z/s (in accordance with the z/s rule), on the end of the word without an apostrophe. This, of course, does not apply for words like "child" (who's plural is "children") unless you want to reform the language rather than just the spelling.

Matish	Old
bagz	bags
bats	bats

z/s is also added in this way for the tense of verbs like "beg", for example, in "begz".

When adding "ed" onto a verb such as "nodded", in Matish you just add "d". So "nod" becomes "nodd" as the "e" in "ed" is a schwa. After "p" and "k", the "d" may become "t", but most people can still pronounce the "d" and should be encouraged to do so for better pronunciation by using "d" every time in spelling. So you should use "taukd" rather than "taukt" (for "talked").

In the same way the "en" suffix also becomes "n". So "fallen" in Matish is "fauln".

Sometimes the end-of-word rule was used in a word and the spelling of the word changes when the "z", "d" or "n" is added.

Matish		Old
koma	komuz	commas (plural of comma)
flo	floez	flowes (does flow)
flo	floed	flowed (did flow)

Do NOT use the apostophie to avoid this, as:

koma'z = koma iz/haz
flo'z = flo iz/haz
flo'd = flo wood/had

6. A z/s followed by an apostrophe is added for possession except for pronouns.

Jesusz'
Mathieuz'
Timz'
Pats'
Buzzz'
its' (see how this is better than "its" and also doesn't get confused with "it's"?)
komuz'

This rule does not apply to possessive pronouns:

Matish	Old
mi	my
yor	Your
our	our
hiz	his
her	her
dhaer	their (dhair = there)

Here is better pronoun table:

	1st Person		2nd Person		3rd Person
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural*	Singular		Plural
Subjective	i	we	u	uez	he	she	dhae
Possessive	mi	our	yor	uezz	hiz	her	dhaer
is/are/am	i'm	we'r	u'r	uez'r	he'z	she'z	dhae'r
has/have	i'v	we'v	u'v	uez'v	he'z	she'z	dhae'v
Objective	me	us	u	uez	him	her	dhem
Possessive	mien	ourz	yorz	uezz	hiz	herz	dhaerz

* Most English dialects don't use these words. If this is the case simply use the words from 2nd Person Singular for both columns.

So do you see that if many dogs own the bone, that by rules 5 and 6 you say "dha dogzz' boen"? Do you see that that is less ambiguous than "the dogs' bone" when reading aloud? I know I've crossed the line here, and that it's a slight change to the language itself... hopefully.

7. Apostrophes and single quotes are not used as quotation marks.

Proper quotation marks are always used. Here is an example, but using Old Spelling:

Tara said, "The Baby said, "And Jesus said, "I am Lord."""

Here is the same in Matish:

Tara sed "the Baebe sed "and Jesus sed "i am Lord.".".".

The same applies to bracket. Do not change to square brackets just because you're already using the other ones. For example, applying this rule to Old Spelling:

I want to go home (as in Heaven (if that's where my citizenship (Philippians 3:20) is)) but I have work to do here.

And in Matish:

i wont tu go hoem (az in Heven (if dhat's whair mi sitisnship (Filipiynz 3:20) iz)) but i hav werk tu du heer.

Possible exceptions to rule 4

Some may be tempted to not separate the letter-word "1" in the following words, seeing as it's a digit and not a letter:

Matish	Old
sum'1	someone
1 dae	one day
ene'1	anyone
evre'1	everyone
no 1	no one

If you do, you may still call it Matish, but keep in mind that it's already a dodgy letter-word in that it looks like "l" and "sum1", "1dae", "eni1", "evri1" and "no1" may look like "suml", "ldae", "enil", "evril" and "nol" respectively. On the other hand, we might get used to spotting the "1" in them as these words don't exist.

1st is an exception, and should not use the apostrophe because it's not using the letter-word "1" or it would be "wunst".

"o'k" may be preferred by some rather than as initials "OK" (from Oll Korrect) or "oekae" and still be called Matish as long as you don't use "ok" which is not the same, but a word with one syllable.
Likewise, "o'klok" may be preferred by some instead of the initial "Oklok" (from "Of the Clock") as long as you don't use "oklok" (with a lower case "o").

Any questions?

Capitals and Full Stops

2006-09-22T00:22:00.000+10:00

Capitals and Full Stops

Where do you use capitals and full stops in Matish?

I was being a little silly before when I said that capitals shouldn't be used except in shouting. Here are the proper rules. They go hand in hand with the ones for full stops.

B1. Full stops are only to be used to end sentences.

That is, they are not to be used for things like abbreviations etc.
A horizontal ellipsis (…) might appear to be an exception to this rule, but let's not consider an ellipsis to be defined as multiple full stops. If you drag your mouse over this one (…) you will see that it's just one symbol on it's own. Of course, in typing, you may use multiple full stops to represent an ellipsis if you like, and just not call them "full stops" but "dots" like the dots in a colon, etc.
In the same way, a decimal point might also be seen as an exception and should also not be seen as a full stop. At the moment computers usually use the same character for both, but we don't call it the same thing both times.

B2. Full stops should be used at the end of every sentence that has no question mark, exclamation mark, colon or semicolon.

If you are lazy, you may miss typing a full stop at the end of a paragraph and still call it Matish, but it is "improper", and an unhelpful habit mostly useful for being lazy in MSN etc.

A1. Don't use capitals just because it's the start of a sentence.

A2 Capitalise the first letter of every proper noun. Spell people's names the way they do unless you have their own permission to spell them in Matish.

Other names, such as the names of places, days of the week, etc. should usually be respelled.
The pronoun "I" is not a proper noun, and should not be capitalised just as "him" should not.
You may capitalise pronouns referring to God and still call it Matish, but you don't need to.

A3. Capitalise the first letter of titles and contracted titles.

Old	Matish
St	St
Street	Street
Dr	Dr
Doctor	Doctor
Mr	Mr
Mister	Mister
Ms	Ms
Mrs	Mrs
Aunt	Aant
Judge	Juj
Officer	Ofiser

A4. Capitalise all initials in an acronym.

This goes for all acronyms and initials whether they are proper names or not. So:

Matish	Old
SSS	Simplified Spelling Society
MP	Mathieu Padget, Member of Parliament, Military Police, etc.
BTW	by the way
GTG	got to go
BRB	be right back
LOL	laugh out loud (or "lots of laughs")
ATM	at the moment
AM	ante-meridiem (before the Sun has crossed the line)
PM	post-meridiem (after the Sun has crossed the line)
AM	amplitude modulation
FM	frequency modulation

This is to distinguish them from letter-words which are NOT written in capitals. Eg. "r" is not the initial of "are" which starts with "a". The letter "r" represents the word "are" as a letter-word, and it is written in lowercase.

With a little common sense you can see how this rule works together with the previous one.

Old	Matish
D.O.	DO
DDS	DDS
P.Eng.	PEng
Ph.D.	PhD

B3. Use the tilde in place of abbreviated endings.

Old	Matish
eg.	eg~
No. 1	nu~ 1
etc.	ets~

A full stop only comes after the tilde at the end of a sentence:

i went tu dha drau and kolekted aul dha spuunz, nievz, ets~.

B4. Titles, headings and subheadings are not sentences, and do not need full stops unless coming at the end of a sentence which contains them.

when he roet The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis did not intend for it to be part ov a larjer werk.

This rule needs developing. How do you neatly quote such a title in Matish without using italics, quotes or slashes? Ideas anyone?

B5. Sentences do not end in quotation marks. They are in them, around them or outside of them. They are not them.

You've heard it said of old that "The full stop goes inside quotation marks but outside brackets.". (see the extra full stop?) Forget it! Consider the following:

Did Mathieu say "I can't wait to finish this post!"?

Notice there is no comma before the quote? Notice the use of the exclamation mark for the quoted sentence and the question mark for the one quoting it?
This way, the quote fits in there as a nice little entity, and could be replaced with something else such as a word:

Did Mathieu say that?

Of course in Matish this would be:

did Mathieu sae "i ka'nt waet tu finish dhis poest!"?

did Mathieu sae dhat?

A5. Capitalise vowels to show emphasis in special situations.

This is only used when trying to make pronounciation clear.

dhis iz an egzAmpl ov a sEntens in mAtish with dhe Emfasis shoen.

Obviously "Emfasis" looks like a proper noun here, but it doesn't actually pose a problem as I may explain when discussing transliteration.

So far there are no different rules on the use of commas, and just use them in Matish the same way you usually did.

And that's about all I can think of for that tonight. If you have any ideas, disagreements, questions, or I've missed something etc, please don't hesitate to comment.

Tweaking 1

2006-09-15T02:48:00.000+10:00

I'm about to submit a couple of posts about various rules of punctuation in Matish, but I'd better explain some fine tuning I've done to the spelling first.

"ur"/"er"

"ur" is no longer used in Matish to represent the same sound as "er". I'm open to any objections, but so far no one has put forward a suggestion as to why New Spelling uses "ur" when they also use "er".
So now you just use "er" for the "er" in "stern".
Before a vowel though, "er" is treated as "e" + "r" as in:
"perent" for "parent", "vere" for "very", "fere" for "ferry".
If you want the "er" sound plus the "r" sound, you simply ad an "r" and it's now before a consonant, so:
"Berranda" for "Buranda", "ferre" for "fury"
This is logical, but the opposite of New Spelling, which doubles the "r" after a short vowel as the only time they use that Old Spelling rule. But this is not about them, so who cares?

"nk"/"ngk"

You may use "nk" for "ngk" if you so wish, and still call it Matish, but it's not the proper way. How would you distinguish it from when used in "enkaes" for "encase" for example?

"dh"/"dhe"&"dha"

Most people don't realise they say "the" as "dha" before a consonant, and "dhe" before a vowel. For this reason, you may use "dh" to represent "the" in all cases, and still call it Matish, but the proper way is to spell them in the two forms in the same way we write different spelling for "a" and "an" for the same reason.

End-of-word

Obviously, when "ae" and "ue" are used at the end of a word, the "e" doesn't follow the End-of-words rule. The same goes for the "i" in "oi".

"ow"

OK, don't use "ow" for the long version of "o". Just use "o". So "dog" and "God" are correct. But "bowling" is still correct. I'm not so sure about "bowl" now though. What do you think?

Schwa in Song

If you write words to musical score, you may worry about which vowel to use when stretching a word which when spoken would have a schwa. I was worried about this, but I've been looking through hymn books since, trying to find an example, and it doesn't seem to be a problem. Please let me know if you see any problems in this area.

Transliterating Vowels

I said before that Matish couldn't be used to phonetically transliterate the vowels from other languages. I'm currently looking at a way to do it within the system after all. If I don't succeed, you can always resort to using accents over the vowels which they usually do in transliteration systems anyway.

Would you like to challenge any of these decisions? I want to hear about it. Comment.

MSN

2006-09-13T18:39:00.000+10:00

If you're having trouble understanding me on MSN, don't tell me to speak English, because I probably am. Instead, ask me to translate and I will be happy to. Or you could learn the basic rules of Matish here.

c?

2006-09-11T20:27:00.000+10:00

i had mi piano egzam dhis morning
i do'nt c hou, but i stil beleev i got a c. we'l c.

she selz c shelz bi dha c shor

c?

saam 6

2006-09-07T11:39:00.000+10:00

saam 6 in matish (nkjv)

0 tu dh ceef muesishn. with stringd instruments. on an 8-stringd harp. a saam ov daevid.
1 o yhwh, du not rebuek me in u'r angger, nor caesen me in u'r hot displejhr.
2 hav merse on me, o yhwh, for i m week; o yhwh, heel me, for mi boens r trubld.
3 mi sowl aulso iz graetle trubld; but u, o yhwh-hou long?
4 return, o yhwh, deliver me! o, saev me for u'r merse'z saek!
5 for in deth dher iz no remembrns ov u; in dh graev whu wil giv u thangks?
6 i m weere with mi groening; aul niet i maek mi bed swim; I drenc mi kouc with mi teers.
7 mi ie waests awae bekauz ov greef; it groez old bekauz ov aul mi eneme'z.
8 depart from me, aul u wurkerz ov inikwite; for yhwh haz herd dh vois ov mi weeping.
9 yhwh haz herd mi suplikaeshn; yhwh wil reseev mi prair.
10 let aul mi enemeez be ashaemd & graetle trubld; let dhem turn bak & be ashaemd sudenle.

saam 6 in matich ('ch' for 'sh')

0 tu dh ceef muesichn. with stringd instruments. on an 8-stringd harp. a saam ov daevid.
1 o yhwh, du not rebuek me in u'r angger, nor caesen me in u'r hot displejhr.
2 hav merse on me, o yhwh, for i m week; o yhwh, heel me, for mi boens r trubld.
3 mi sowl aulso iz graetle trubld; but u, o yhwh-hou long?
4 return, o yhwh, deliver me! o, saev me for u'r merse'z saek!
5 for in deth dher iz no remembrns ov u; in dh graev whu wil giv u thangks?
6 i m weere with mi groening; aul niet i maek mi bed swim; I drenc mi kouc with mi teers.
7 mi ie waests awae bekauz ov greef; it groez old bekauz ov aul mi eneme'z.
8 depart from me, aul u wurkerz ov inikwite; for yhwh haz herd dh vois ov mi weeping.
9 yhwh haz herd mi suplikaechn; yhwh wil reseev mi prair.
10 let aul mi enemeez be achaemd & graetle trubld; let dhem turn bak & be achaemd sudenle.

do'nt wore, dhis iz just an egzampl, i curentle do'nt plan to aulwaez ues matish on mi blog eksept maebe for poe'etre & songs. aulwaez on m's'n dho, sore.
noetis i'v uezd "yhwh" for "lord"/"the lord" in capitals.
dh maen leterz tu woc out for when converting (auldho i c no need to convert ene'thing aulrede riten old speling), r 'th', 'y', 'c', capitls, & perhaps dh wurdz "to" and "do". if u c ene mistaeks, pleez let me noe. or if u hav kwescnz or sujescnz or u need mor egzamplz.

Matish

2006-09-07T05:10:00.000+10:00

I propose a new spelling system. I intend to use it on MSN from now on. It's simple, logical, close to the old spelling, uses no new characters and works for most (if not all) English accents. Gloria suggested I call it Matish, but it's very similar to the current version of New Spelling, so I don't feel I should own it as I'm not the only one with such ideas. But I'll call it Matish where mine is mainly different (improved, of course). Here are the rules (skip to the tables at the end if you're in a hurry to understand me on MSN and I have sent you to this page):

First of all, you don't use 'q' or 'x'.
Secondly, 'g' is only hard like in "get". Never soft like in "george". That sound is reserved for 'j'.
Thirdly, c is always like 'ch' in "church"
Fourthly, 'y' is not a vowel, and as a consonant it's pretty self-explanatory as are the consistent consonants 'b', 'd', 'f', 'h', 'k', 'l', 'm', 'n', 'p', 'r', 's', 't', 'v', 'w', and 'z' with the following exceptions:

Firstly, 'h' is also used after an initially plosive consonant to make it fricative. Therefore 'th' is as in "thin", 'dh' is as the 'th' in "then", 'kh' is as the 'ch' in "Loch Ness".
One day when the world is ready for the logical leap, 'ch' may be used instead of 'sh', and less noticeably, 'jh' instead of 'zh' as the 'si' in "Asia" (maybe this version should be called Matich, but then there's no distinction when you say the two names in their own systems) but for now we're probably stuck with 'sh' but because I can get away with it, I will use 'jh' for 'zh' because the sound is less common and it won't be too shocking.
Secondly, 'ng' is always as in "singer" ("finger" is "fingger"). When the 'n' and 'g' are separate sounds together, use an apostrophe as in "en'graev" for "engrave".
Thirdly, some English accents make a pronounced distinction between the 'wh' in "where" and the 'w' in "wear", so you may want to hold onto the 'h' in the new spelling.

In transliterating from other languages, 'q' (for the unvoiced plosive uvular consonant), 'qh', 'bh' (like 'v' but with the lips), 'gh' and 'ph' (like 'f' but with the lips) may be used, but the following vowel system can't properly be used for other languages because rather than being purely phonetic, it's intended to be spelt the same regardless of the accent of the English person writing it. For this reason the vowels are a little more difficult but here goes:

Zerothly, do not bother representing schwas, especially in the last unstressed syllable. Therefore, spell "handle" as "handl", "beautiful" as "buetifl", "station" as "staeshn", etc.
Firstly, the short vowels are as in "bag", "beg", "big", "bog" and "bug".
Secondly, with the letter 'e' after the vowel, the vowels sound like the way you say the letter itself. Sometimes this just means moving the 'e' in the original spelling. Thus, "mate", "Pete", "bite", "rope" and "ute" become "maet", "peet", "biet", "roep" and "uet".
Thirdly, 'ou' is as in "pound"
Fourthly, 'oi' is as in "point"
Fifthly, 'oo' is as in "book" and 'uu' as in the 'oo' in "moon"
Sixthly, 'au' is used as in "taught" except where the original spelling is 'or' as in "morning" then it's 'or' (some accents make a distinction).
Seventhly, 'aa' is as 'a' in "father" except where the original spelling is 'ar' as in "smart", then it's 'ar' (same reason as above).
Eighthly, 'ur' is as in 'fur' except where the original spelling is 'er' as in 'sister' (mostly this is because of etymology, but I'm unhappy with using 'ur' at all and someone should convince me why I don't use 'er' in all cases).

Now from here on, my system (I'll call it Matish) deviates from the current version of New Spelling.

Zerothly, I use the apostrophe to separate "hapi'est" from sounding like "hapie'st", and other confusions that will not really occur, whereas New Spelling uses a full stop as in "terri.er", "sosie.eti", "kwie.et". Perhaps a hyphen should be used in words like "child-hood" and "foot-hold" where they naturally break up, but I don't think anyone is going to pronounce it "footh" so it's only a personal preference.
Firstly, New Spelling has 'aer' for the 'air' in... "air", Whereas I use 'air'. Why, because although "payer" and "pear" might both sound like "paer" (which is how they might both be spelt in New Spelling) in some accents, other accents (including mine) make a distinction. Also, "air" is already used consistently in our current spelling, whereas "aer" is not so familiar.
Secondly, 'ow' is as the 'ow' in "bowl" and the 'o' in "dog" and "holy" as opposed to the short 'o' in "bog" and "holly" (In case you were wondering, in English there is no need to distinguish between the long 'a' in "ran" and the short one in "sat").
Thirdly, there are short common words in English which are less simpified with New Spelling. It has been suggested that "word" signs are introduced which break the rules of New Spelling, examples are: I, U, me, he, she, we, be, dhe, so, no, to, do, (shortened from Ie, Ue, mee, shee wee bee dhee, soe, noe, tuu, duu, etc.) But I propose we introduce my End-Of-Words rule which simplifies spelling even further, and is more consistent with the old spelling and makes the new spelling more consistent with itself as no exceptions are found. Everybody wins!

End-Of-Words Rule:
That is, we exploit the fact that the sounds usually made by 'a', 'e', 'o', 'oo' in the new system are never used at the end of English words. Also, no distinction is needed between short 'i' and long 'ee' at the end of words, so with my new rule, 'e' is used for 'ee' and 'i' (as the old system spelling does in "me"), 'i' is then free to be used for 'ie' (New Spelling used to use 'y' - what a nightmare!) 'o' is used for 'oe' (as the old spelling does in "no" and "tomato", etc.) and 'a' is used for 'u' (as the old does in "banana", "umbrella", and most importantly, "a") which leaves 'u' disposed to be used for 'uu' (simplifying words like "tu" for "to"). All other vowel combinations are the same as in the middle of a word, except 'oo' which also is used for 'uu' as I will explain.
This removes the bulky 'ee', 'ie', 'oe' and 'uu' from the ends of words.
These endings can be added back on without ambiguity to give variation spellings for homophones with the End-Of-Words rule used for the most common form, and the Dog's-Vomit-Rule (as I like to call it) for the less common. In my opinion though, this is getting dangerously close to complicating things especially if 'oo' is not avoided, and if people think it's important to make a distinction in spelling homophones, they should look at changing the pronunciation too. If there's no ambiguity saying it, why should it be spelled differently? Nevertheless, here's Dog's-Vomit at work:

Examples:
to->tu
too->too ("too" meaning" "also")
too->tuu (as in "too much")
two->2 (explain later)
toe->to
do->du
dough->do
doe->doe
no->no
know->noe
so->so
sew->soe
sow->soe
by->bi (maybe "by", but would be inconsistent)
bye->bi
buy-bie

The End-Of-Words Rule also applies before a plural 's' or 'z' and sometimes before an apostrophe.

Another rule I'd like to introduce is one that people already use on MSN, and will likely end up in the dictionaries before simplified spelling anyway. That is the practice of using letters and digits by themselves to represent common words that sound the same.
This will also help distinguish homophones:

be->b
bee->be
see->c
sea->se
I->i
eye->ie
pee->p
pea->pe
one->1
won->wun
four->4
for->for
eight->8
ate->aet

But again, having alternate spelling doesn't really matter, and people are going to use 'o' for both "oh" and "owe" in "I O U" anyway, and '4' for "for", so you can't win and you don't have to.

Digits should be used for numbers wherever possible. Not only does this distinguish between homophones, but this also helps distinguish between an English trillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) and an American trillion (1,000,000,000,000 (which kills the Latin and falls to pieces mathematically)).

Letter-words can be joined together using an apostrophe if needed. "p'pl" (for people) may not need it, but without it "ur" sounds like "err" rather than "u'r"

By the way, I think capitals are useless and should be avoided for words like "i" and "u" which people do on MSN anyway.
Don't use capitals except when you are shouting. It's just personal preference for beginning of sentences, names and titles. Also, I propose that "God" is spelt "gowd" and "god" is spelt "god" for reasons that are not obvious in all English accents.

Feel free to comment on my proposals. Find any mistakes? Have any suggestions? Pick the whole thing to pieces before I submit it to the SSS.

Here're the whole tables for simple reference:

Consonants

pot

tap

church

keep

(Foreign)

thin

ch/sh

ship

loch

(Foreign)

fat

sat

hat

bed

dam

jet

get

(Foreign)

this

jh/zh

vision

(Foreign)

van

zip

when

mat

net

singer

wet

lot

rat

yet

Vowels

bag

beg

air

hair

burn

sister

big

Pete

eer

beer

bog

bowl

taught

morning

bug

father

smart

book

moon

oor

poor

mate

aer

player

pipe

ier

fire

pope

oer

lower

ute

uer

pure

pound

our

sour

point

oir

employer

Matish End-Of-Words Rule: All vowels the same except:
a	Santa
e	me
i	tie
o	so
u	kung fu
oo	poo

Matish Letter-Words:
a	a
b	be
c	see
d	the?
e	he?
f	(don't use this, it's not nice)
g	(or this - Third Commandment)
h	?
i	I
j	?
k	ok
l	will
m	am
n	an?/in?
o	oh/owe
p	pee
q	cue
r	are
s	is
t	tea
u	you
v	have
w	we?
x	ex-
y	why
z	is?
&	and
@	at

"a" is an exception to the Letter-Words rule depending on how you say it, and the letter-word "u" is a subtle exception to the End-of-Words Rule. If "e" were "he" it would break both rules, but letter-word rules can't be strict. That's the point of them.

whedher dh wedher be cold,
or whedher dh wedher be hot
we'l wedher dh wedher,
whotever dh wedher,
whedher we liek it or not.

Little Red Hiding Hood

2006-08-07T11:35:00.000+10:00

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was The Big Bad Wolf and he walked around in the forest saying "ROAR." And there was Little Red Hiding Hood. And there was Grandpa. And Grandpa caught the wolf and put him on a tree on the roof with a rope on his neck. But the wolf took the rope off and threw the rope in the forest. And that's the end of the story. And then he ran into the forest and ran around in the forest saying "ROAR."

"Meshoo, we're going to a party. Are you coming too?"
"Yes! I'm coming too!"
"It's Dizzy's birthday party. Isn't it exciting!"
...
"She heard me tell you on the phone and asked, 'Is that my Meshoo?'"
"♪We're going to a party, we're going to a party!♪"
"♪We're going to a party, we're going to a party!♪"
"♪We're going to a party, we're going to a party!♪"
"Elizabeth, you're gonna get a shmackin'!"
"♪No, We're going to a party, we're going to a party!♪"
"Will there be mudcake?"
"♪No, We're going to a party, we're going to a party!♪"

"Would you like a drink, Elizabeth?"
"No."
"Are you sure? They're in tiny little bottles!"
"No."
"Would you like a drink Meshu?"
"Yes please."
"I'm thirsty!"
"Would you like a drink, Elizabeth?"
"Yes please."
...
"Mathieu, stop drinking so many bottles of red soft drink. It's making her hyperactive."

"No playing on the stairs, Elizabeth. Yes, that's right Mathieu, I'm talking to you."
...
"Meshoo, give me a piggy back ride."
"OK, up on my shoulders."
"Now let's go up the stairs."
"No, it's too dangerous. I'll have to let you down first. You know you shouldn't to go up the stairs without holding on to the railing."
"But you will hold on to the railing."
"I have to hold onto you."
"No, I'll hold onto your ears."

"No, I want to play puppy dog. I'll throw the soccer ball, and you fetch it with your mouth. But first I have to tie you up. Help me put this around your neck."
"Elizabeth, remember, we don't really leashes around people's necks.
"No, Elizabeth's a good girl - she's put it around my waist."
...
"Yay! I've escaped! I don't know what to do with the freedom!"
"Oh there you are Meshoo! Come along now."

"I will throw the ball up really high over the sky!"
"Really!"
"No, I will throw the ball up really high into the sky. And then it will come right back down."
"Do you think that if I throw the ball up really high it will come right back down too?"
"Yes."
...
"Grandma, come and play soccer with us."
"No Elizabeth, I can't chase you with the ball, I want to kick the ball."
"Grandma doesn't want to play."
"Yes, Grandma wants to play, but she wants you to kick the ball."
"Alright, I'll kick the ball."
"Um, Grandma, I'm sorry you just sat down..."
"Oh! You're going to kick the ball! I'll be right there!"
...
"OK, now, ready, catch the ball. You have to keep your eye on the ball... Good catch! Now throw it to Meshu."
"Meshoo didn't have his eye on the ball."
"No he didn't, did he? Now don't throw too high."
"Why not?"
"Because you'll hit the moon. Then the moon will fall on us."
"No. No it won't."
...
"You can't catch it if you keep falling over."
"But Grandma hurt me. It hurt."
"Oh, it did not!"
"Yes, it did! It touched my cheek."
"Oh! Oh wow!"
"W... What?"
"There's a big hole in your face isn't there Grandma! Oh wait. It's just your mouth."

"Here Meshoo, I'm lying down. Now you bounce the ball on my back."
"No, it will hurt you."
"No it won't."
"Look, I'll show you. I'll lie down and you bounce it on my back."
"OK."
(the screams were too bloodcurdling to express) "My arm! Where's my arm!"
...
"Arg! I tried to trick her. I knew the arm-in-the-sleeve wouldn't work, but I'm wearing two labcoats, and I only took my arm out of the outside sleeve so she still wouldn't find my arm inside the inside one. But straight away she just pulled them both apart and found it behind my back!"

Don't expect that you're going to blow the candles out, Dizzy."

"Meshoo!"
"Yes, Elizabeth?"
"There's going to be a party!"
"That's right! This is the party!"
"Oh. :( ... :) And there will be cake!"
"Yes! Cake!"
"Grandma didn't get the cake! It was Dizzy! Dizzy got the cake. Grandma didn't get out of the car, Dizzy got out of the car. And Grandma was in the car, and I was in the car. And Grandma was in the car, and Dizzy got the cake, and Grandma was in the car, and... and... and I was in the car."
...
"Is there anyone who doesn't want any cake."
"Yes, me!"
"Wouldn't you like any cake, Elizabeth?"
"No. I don't want any cake." said Elizabeth, taking a piece of buttered bread.

"She's very particular about what belongs to whom."
...
"It's like I always say." said Grandma. "What's hers is hers, and what's mine is hers too. Isn't that so, Elizabeth?"
"Yes."

"Everytime she sees a rainbow she says, 'It's God's promise that it won't flood.' And whenever she's sick in bed, she says, 'Oh Tara, why do I have to suffer. Oh Tara, pray over me, Tara. I know that if you pray over me, that God will take away my sickness. And she's always asking questions about God. And she's always thinking. The other day she came up to me and said, 'But Tara, where does God keep all the babies before he puts them in Mummy's tummy?'"
"Wow! How old is she again?"
"Still three."
"I was just checking."
"Yes, she preaches too. Just the other day she set up a soap box and started preaching to the animals. She said, 'And Jesus said... And Jesus said... And Jesus said, '"I am Lord."'"
"I just dread the day when she starts baptizing the cats." said Grandma. "You never know what they're going to start baptizing next."

Wakeup Call

2006-08-04T13:58:00.000+10:00

For the last week and a half, God has been giving me wakeup calls. I would be in the middle of a dream, and suddenly a voice would call my name, and I would feel like I was being shaken. Then I would look at the clock and see that it was either exactly 6 or exactly 7. At least that's how it happened the first few nights. Since then I've just been waking up around those times. I didn't ask God to do this, but I asked for help in keeping to my new resolutions which started at the beginning of this Hebrew month (which is when the wakeup calls started).
The only problem is that so many times I have simply gone straight back to sleep, or got up, gone the the toilet and then gone straight back to bed. Every problem I've had this semester I can trace back to not getting up in time.
This morning I prayed and thanked God that he had been helping me so dramatically lately, especially with waking me up in the morning. I also apologised and asked for forgiveness for not getting up when he woke me up. Then it dawned on me.... I was still in bed.

If you're going to steal my ideas, do a decent job!

2006-08-03T14:11:00.000+10:00

Disclaimer: The above title is not refering to Noof. If her ideas weren't better than mine, I wouldn't have given up writing the posts that I did.

I had a dream when I was little, that there was a alternate form of transport to school under the ground. It was accessed by a secret entrance at the train station.

This is one of the many fantasies I had which I added to my own private world. A perfect world. A world where... Well, you'll have to read my book.

But did you notice a feeling of familiarity about that little fantasy I shared? Let me tell you a few more minor details from my book, and see if you can guess what I'm talking about.

The hero is a small boy, and the book is the first of a series of books, each one covering a year of the hero's life.

The hero's parents die trying to save him, and he has no brothers or sisters.

The hero goes to live in a school in a secret community with powers far greater than ordinary people.

Despite their power, this community remains secret to protect them from ordinary people, and they seem to be living in the dark ages, and they use feathers to write, etc.

These people use birds to send messages to each other instead of postmen.

They wear robes.

Transport to the school is accessed by a secret station parallel to an ordinary train station (as I've mentioned).

There are mythical creatures in a forest beside the school.

One of the centaurs from the forest later joins the school staff to teach them the secrets of the stars. The other centaurs persecute him for this.

The hero is famous and controversial at the school, and even the teachers are afraid of him at times.

The hero is better at flying than most.

In one book, the hero is rescued from the normal world, and taken to the school in a flying car.

I swear to God, I didn't know anything about Harry Potter before I came up with any of this (in case you haven't read the books, every single detail I just listed about my book could be used to decribe Harry Potter).

When I did read the first Harry Potter book about five years ago, you can imagine my reaction: "Oh !@#$%! I've written a Christian version of Harry Potter, and everyone's going to see it that way. Nothing will convince them that I was not influenced by it." (although I didn't really say a naughty word).

But then I was influenced by it after that, because I tried to make it different. I changed nothing that I've mentioned above, but I changed a lot of other parallels that I found.

I even changed the name of my hero's father, who happened to have the same name as Harry Potter's father - James.

I was so upset, and wished that I'd never read Harry Potter. I've now read the first six, and each book has more similarities to mine. For a long time, I gave up on writing altogether.

But I got over it.

Do you know what? My book was already far better than Harry Potter! I didn't even think Rowling was a very good writer. I'm not the only one. This is what made it so hard for me. Everyone would think I was copying someone who I didn't even think was that good.
Do you know what? The world needed my book before Harry showed up and stole my ideas. But Harry did not accomplish what made my book so needed. The things that make my book similar are not the important things about it. They are just minor details which I now refuse to change. Actually, the story is extremely different. If Rowling had written her book after mine, I would have just seen it as one of Satan's usual attempts to counterfeit the real thing and leave people empty, but as it's happened this way, I am one of the few people not to call J. K. Rowling "Satan". Now I'm just confused. But not confused enough to give up on my book.

The non-Christians will claim that I tried to write a Christian version of Harry Potter, but I got off track and wrote about something... else.

Most Christians will say that there is nothing Christian about it. They will prefer Harry Potter because it is "innocent."

Harry Potter fans will say that my book is too different from Harry Potter to be a substitution for it.

I myself will, after writing this, continue to insist that MY BOOK HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HARRY POTTER and those looking for deep and meaningful connexions will be disappointed, and using Harry Potter as a context in which to understand it will drive you mental.

Even without the existence of Harry Potter, my book is the most controversial thing you'll ever read besides the Bible. It's an anomaly in itself.

Everyone will hate it. No one will buy it at first. But everyone will spend a lot of time reading it.

The experts will say they don't know. The uneducated will say they do. I will be lonely until someone actually does a decent honest job at trying to find the explanation (I'm not talking about the parallels to Harry Potter anymore, by the way, I'm talking about an explanation to the problems my book will cause, but you'll have to read it to know what I'm talking about). I will be even more lonely until I write the book in the first place.

I know I'm not modest about my book. I won't be. But I won't tell you about it. I'll write it.
Although it seems as though I've just told you a lot about my book, I insist that I've told you nothing significant.

Perhaps I will never write such a book. Perhaps things will play out before they are written down. We'll see.

Dear Harry Potter,

You have confused people. You have disturbed the peace and made yourself a right nuisance. Perhaps you have just saved me from a similar fate.

I forgive you, let's be friends.

On second thought, this world aint big enough for the two of us! You're goin' down!

Now then... DRAW!

The word is mightier than the wand!

I Know You Don't Believe Me!

2006-07-31T19:06:00.000+10:00

The following was originally a comment following this one. But it got too long to be a comment, and here we are:

I'm sorry.

Please don't ever stop blogging, Noof.

Let me explain my outburst (Sometimes, I do silly things. That was one of them. :P).

Most times I try to blog on something, I find that by some divinely impossible coincidence, you have just blogged about it first, or something similar. And then I can't blog about it, because if I blogged about everything right after you did, everyone would think I was copying you and tell me to choose my own topics.

I just clicked on June 2006 to find examples, and almost every post was a classic example!

RIGHT! was exactly the title of the post I was just about to write that day.

One Week I was just about to write a post that began with the first line of a lyric that day.

Joseph's Song really messed me up big time! I had been just about to write a dialogue between Abraham and God after he had just been asked to sacrifice Isaac a second time (he wasn't really asked to a second time, but that's how I felt at the time about me). The following verse you wrote (especially the last line) was the major theme of the whole nearly-one-sided conversation of which I could no longer post:

God don't let me down
Please come through for me
Because I love You
And want to trust You again

When I saw yours I almost yelled out loud!

2003 popped up after I was just about to suggest on my blog that I start introducing Hebrew translations to it. I wasn't surprised though, after the Joseph one, but even way before that it was a problem. After AGMF I tried to get Pete to rush me home so that I could beat you to blogging about AGMF before you said everything I wanted to, but I changed what I blogged about instead, because we stayed at Gloria's house to watch a movie, which explains her comment.

I'm supposed to be blogging every day! I'd be lying, though, if I said these coincidences were the reason I'm not, but they do account for a lot of unpublished posts.

Although this last post of yours was not a good example, it was the last straw.

I had been just about to post a suggestion that I introduce a new contributing character to my blog. A dark-side-of-Mathieu character. And we could argue with each other about things in the comments. I would argue that life was worth living, and the dark-side-of-Mathieu character would argue that it wasn't. And others would probably argue with both of us in the comments and be disgusted that even the dark side of me could come up with such filth. He would have his own blog and it would have a black background (actually, it already exists (since May 2006), but I won't tell you where).

I know, I know, I'm complaining about nothing, and I should just get over my pride and write what I want to anyway. Who cares if everyone thinks I'm copying everything you do, right? And if I beat you to it, I'm sure you wouldn't make such a fuss, would you?

Well, that's sort of what Trevor said at AGMF, anyway. At AGMF, you kept saying things I wanted to say. For example, I was just about to say, "I'm going to wash my feet!" when you said, "I'm going to wash my feet." and I complained to Trevor about how I had to wait for you to wash your feet and come back before I could go and wash my feet so that I didn't look like I was copying you. He said I should just go with you and wash my feet anyway.

I suppose he's right. Which is worse? Doing almost everything the same as you (because you're reading my mind, I know it!) and have everyone falsely assume that I was being influenced by you, or doing things differently, and actually being influenced by you after all?

This is exactly the dilemma that Harry Potter put me in, but that's a different story (my next post).

Please blog more often. I'll get over this! You'll see!

Diaeresis in Word Verification

2006-07-30T16:35:00.000+10:00

Wow! When commenting here I had to use a diaeresis on the 'y'!

qÿmkdfh

To She-who-must-not-be-named

2006-07-30T16:19:00.000+10:00

To Big Boss,

We are sorry we could not carry out your criminalistic plan. My sidekick was unwilling. Also our original candidates were already missing. We would have informed headquarters, but my sidekick rushed me and I forgot to write down... er... memorise the number before it self-destructed so we couldn't send a message out. We are truly sorry for the chaos we have caused, and The Mastermind's time we have wasted. We hope that The Mastermind was able to make good use of the meantime by filling out the report.

Also, not to make excuses or anything, but our cover was almost blown when someone tapped our coded conversation and edited it in such a way as to incriminate us. We have reason to believe it was an inside job. We cannot recreate the original conversation because, once again (see, I told you he does this) my sidekick rushed me and it was not saved from self-destruction. We request that a copy be sent from headquarters. We understand that this is a difficult request, and expect it not to be granted. It is not critical, but I personally demonstrate it's importance by asking it anyway, and take full responsibility.

We may have to lay low for a while. In the meantime, we are awaiting further word from headquarters before moving on to Plan E. I advise though (and I suspect that my sidekick would be willing, but I won't let him take off the Cone of Silence) that we have another bash at Plan C. With a few moderations. I suggest we inform my sidekick that he doesn't know even what he has not been told. Or just give him orders not to guess. He is asking too many questions. He is thinking too much and causing complications. He is too smart and may have to be... er... taken out of the loop. At least until the Cone of Silence has been destroyed. As Plan C is the only one that may bring that about, I suggest we move quickly, even while we lay low. I have already begun to make enquiries about the supplies.

One of our connexions is not connected and we are hoping to make contact with him before he shows up and I put my foot in his mouth.

Yours evilly,
Agent #?

Disclaimer: None of these people exist. Neither do their plans. Just ignore this. (Yeah, that should do it).

I Got to Hold Him!

2006-07-26T16:08:00.000+10:00

I saw them outside the cafeteria.
I pretended that I wasn't pretending that I didn't see them long enough to get a drink from the fountain, but it didn't work (what's with all the QUT bubblers not working lately?).
I started walking towards them, and immediately it was confirmed that she had read my complaint on Luke's post for she reached straight into the pram and started unstrapping him.

Saying Clever Things

2006-07-26T13:31:00.000+10:00

I was talking to Kris and Noof at Nightlife last night, and they were saying something, but I wasn't really listening. My mind was busy thinking about how to stuff up certain people's plans, but that's a different story. I thought I heard them say something about a green car, and Kris asked me what I thought. I had just noticed that her shirt was green and her eyes were green, and that she was talking to Noof, whose shirt was blue and eyes were blue. I said, "Your shirt's green."

On the way home, I found out that Pete didn't understand the double meaning in the pickup line: "If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?"
Poor Pete. He was so innocent before living with me.

Tim M. and I saw a movie the other day. On the way, Tim asked me like the 1000000th question about my beard that day. I said, "Why don't you ask the beard?"
He was just about to, and then realised what he was doing. He explained though, that the sincerely serious thought that had stopped him, was "Hang on, does the beard speak English... or Hebrew?"

I promised I'd blog about it.

Behold Myself

2006-07-26T13:09:00.000+10:00

Who is this handsome guy? Why it's me of course! This picture is probably from around 2002-2003 before anyone else realized what was going to become of my beard. It used to hang on the back wall (the picture, not my beard) of my church in EMP with my name under it so everyone would know who I was (because the guy with the beard is so hard to remember (or recognize?)).
Anyway, it's one of my favourite pictures of me. Firstly, because I'm smiling (the right side of the picture has captured my evil side, but sometimes they're interchangeable) and secondly, I'm wearing a green buttoned shirt. This is the sort of shirt I would wear every day, or black, except that I can't stand to leave the house without a Jesus-message T-shirt on. Student Life (those who make the shirts) doesn't use green, unfortunately, so until I start making my own shirts, I'm in the middle of an identity crisis. The following is an attempt to counsel my way through it. It might also serve to help my relatives to pick out clothes for me this Christmas, but that's only a secondary motive... honest.

The first thing I must mention (this is purely for the rellies, although they already know this) is that I only wear pure 100% cotton clothes. Anything else is hazardous to my health, and if I suffer from any ailment, be it tripping over or be it death, I will blame the mixed fibres from my grave.

"You shall not wear a garment of different sorts, such as wool and linen mixed together."
Deuteronomy 22:11

The second important thing is that my clothes must have no writing or logos on them. The only brands I like are those that don't advertise who they are, hence I don't know which brands I like. I see words on clothing as scars or imperfections. They stick out so much that I feel as though I'm yelling out to the entire world, "Hear ye, hear ye! I am here to indoctrinate you on the importance of **insert brand name here**. I believe ** is the centre of my life, and should be the centre of yours too. It is so important, I believe, that I'm willing to upset the symmetry of my clothing (thereby upsetting the balance of the universe and causing the space-time continuum to collapse in on itself) to ensure the whole world hears about it (you see, I don't like to take myself too seriously)."

But then there're student Life shirts. I had a dream once in 2003 that inspired me to only wear shirts with a message about Jesus on them, because I really do feel that telling the world about Jesus is worth losing the universe over. Even if I don't like the style of shirt that it's written on, the message really does supersede all.

Besides these shirts having all kinds of messy colours, they are also T-shirts. I've grown to appreciate the simplicity of T-shirts, but my usual style is long sleeve buttoned shirts. I prefer long sleeves. I WILL NOT WEAR SHORTS! Only long jeans or trousers. The exception to this is going swimming, which I do rarely for that reason.

My favourite colour is green. My second is purple, but it must be used sparingly, especially in clothes, and I wouldn't wear it except in a personal super-hero costume. Or maybe a little with black.

Before the SL T-shirts, I would mostly wear black. Black is quite timeless, and I never have to change it or think about what I'm wearing.

I really like suits.

If my shirt has to have colour, let it be green, but I really don't mind which colour, as long as it is uniform, and not with stripes or checkers. If it must change colour let it be only where the fabric actually changes, for example, pockets, sleaves, buttons, etc.

My preferred colours for pants are black and brown (I showed my sister the perfect brown the other day).

But here is an important rule I would follow (blown to bits by the fact that I never buy my own clothes except SL shirts, but that's another story): Never let the colour of my pants be brighter or more colourful than my shirt.

So if my shirt is black, my pants must be black. If my pants are white (if such a tragedy must happen) then my shirt must be white. If my shirt is brown, my pants must be black or brown. Green pants and brown shirt is bad, but the other way around is ideal. I like trees, they have great colour sense.

As for shoes, I hate them and I would rather not wear any. I used to walk to uni without shoes when I had no pracs, but now I ride my bike, and it's too uncomfortable for bare feet. If I must wear shoes, then let them be black. Brown is acceptable, but only if darker than my pants. As for the style of the shoe, I really don't care, as long as the colour is uniform. The reason I wear boots is for the convenience of not having to lace them up. Also, shoes usually try to follow the shape of the bottom of your foot, which tends to give me knee problems.

My socks are always black.

My labcoats are always white.

I don't like red all that much, but I like wearing my red dressing gown, because I like wearing a dressing gown that has a uniform colour. I would rather it was a black one, but none of the black ones I've found are made of 100% cotton, and the ones that are cotton are chequered, yuck! I like the idea of wearing a cape or a robe, but I don't like the idea of living in a padded cell. I like PJs because if they are usually uniformly coloured, buttoned, cotton, comfortable, what more could you want?

I'll bet you're not wondering what I like other people wearing. Well I usually only notice what girls wear, and I usually don't like it because so few people are old fashioned anymore. I like full length dresses that go to the floor. Long sleeves, the more covered, the better. Actually, that's about it, except for the whole uniform colours, etc, but I don't really care.

If you're wondering what happened to the picture of me that used to be on my blog, here it is:

It is the one on my Student ID. For a long time it was the only digital photo I had of myself, and I only planned to change it when I had tracked down the one from church, which I've only just done.

It seems the perfect time to make the switch seeing as this is the first day of the 5th true month, and I've made some resolutions. They are mostly the same resolutions I make every month. The secret difference being that this time I haven't stuffed them up yet, as it's only the first day.

By the way. If you're wondering what that little picture of the Wailing Wall is doing on the 9th day of the 5th month of my Calendar, there is a bit of an explanation here under "II Judgment and Destruction". See also Zechariah 7:3,5; 8:19. I will probably blog more of it when the date comes, and perhaps later make the picture a link to an explanation. I'll let you know. In the meantime, when you click on the picture (in the HTML version of my calendar), it will enlarge so that you can see them wailing at the wall.

5th Month 5766

2006-07-26T13:05:00.000+10:00

See HTML version.
See Karaite Korner Newsletter.

Visiting Synagogue.

2006-07-21T13:09:00.000+10:00

The day before yesterday, God impressed me to do a word search on "synagogue", and find out what I thought of going. I didn't get around to it, but I did a lot of thinking about it.
I wondered whether I should put less effort into Hebrew and focus more on the Greek of the Septuagint and New Testament.
I thought about my Hebrew teacher and about how she had tried to teach me Modern Hebrew which got on my nerves because it threw away so many of the principles that made Ancient Hebrew the absolute perfect language.
I also found myself thinking about a certain Jewish academic I know, who wants to start a Hebrew course at UQ. I thought about all the questions I wanted to ask him. I like that he doesn't call Modern Hebrew "Hebrew", but "Israeli" because he feels it's diverted so far from the Ancient Hebrew of the Scriptures. He is not religious though.
I met him just once in a restaurant for lunch. While waiting for him, I saw a lot of people who could have been him. Then I saw this guy talking to someone who was asking for directions. He looked cool, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if that was him!" It was!
While we talked, he offered me some of his bacon. I explained that my denomination doesn't eat any of the unclean food listed in Leviticus 11.
He found it ironic that he was a Jew eating bacon with a Christian who wouldn't touch it!

Yesterday, after my father had dropped my mother off at the synagogue, he was on his way to my house for a different reason when I received an email from my mother inviting me to come along to the prayer service for the peace of Israel.

I completely forgot about my 'sudden interest' in synagogue. I successfully talked myself out of going, very convincingly to my flatmate's father, but when my father came we arranged for me to go, and my flatmate's father to pick me up.

I'll never forget the last time either my mother or I visited synagogue, which was the first time I ever went.

It was in first semester 2004. My mother and I were both getting Hebrew lessons (although I should call it Israeli lessons from now on) and our teacher had invited us to attend synagogue one Friday night.
My mother was driven there by my father, but I had to catch the train. I was dressed nicely, and for once didn't have a Jesus shirt on. Not that Jesus, himself a Jew, had ever done anything against Jews, and I had no intention of hiding who I was, but I didn't want to offend unnecessarily. I also didn't wear my labcoat. Besides, they wouldn't have let me in.
On the train, some drunk guy spilt his bear all over me as he stumbled past. So my new fragrance was the first thing that was to ruin my first impression.

In the meantime, my mother had turned up, but our Hebrew teacher had not. This threatened her entry into the synagogue. Two guards were determined not to let her in until her teacher arrived even though she knew her teacher's name. My father saw someone hiding and taking pictures of the synagogue and alerted the guards but the stranger ran away. There were a few other things they had to be careful of that could make you a little nervous if you knew about it.
My mother finally convinced the guard to let her in. Then she said, "Oh! By the way! My son's coming too, but he's a bit late as well. His name is Mathieu."
"OK, I'll look out for him. What does he look like?"
"Osama Bin-Laden!"

So when I arrived, I had to empty my pockets and show inside my watch. The guard had a funny sense of humour and let me in.
I went inside, and they were singing a hymn, but I couldn't see my mother or my teacher anywhere. I saw that some people were on a sort of balcony so tiptoed upstairs to look for her. The little kids pointed at me and giggled.
I saw my mother. Relieved, I stood beside her and read out of her hymnbook, while asking where our teacher was. She looked very nervous.
"She's late, but you have to go downstairs! This is the women's section!"
I looked around, and sure enough there were nothing but women's faces glaring at me.
I tiptoed back down the wooden, hollow, loud stairs.

Not soon enough after sitting down, someone was kind enough to approach me with a kippah (the little hat that Jews wear) and say "Please wear this out of respect."
I later found out that I was supposed to pick one up on the way in, and put it back in a box on the way out.

The same kind man handed me a hymn book (I still don't know where they come from) but he kept losing my place to show me where the English words were.
"Grrr!" I thought, "If he would let me, I can follow the Hebrew better than the English."

Now, last night, two and a half years later, for some reason it was time to go again. Yes, there was a little trouble getting in (I was specifically told where to sit this time, but otherwise they didn't seem to remember me), but I had my own kippah with me this time. I still don't know where to pick up the hymn book though.

And guess who was there! My academic friend! Again, I couldn't remember any of the questions I had for him, but this was not the time or the place anyhow.
I also saw my Hebrew teacher for the first time in about two years. All she said was:
"Hi, hi, you've forgotten all the Hebrew!"
"Probably."
"I know it, I know it."

Yes, I've probably forgotten all the Modern Israeli. This semester though, one of my extracurricular lifelines is to learn enough Ancient Hebrew to write the major part of my book in it.

The Deterioration has Reversed.

2006-07-21T11:32:00.000+10:00

Dear God,

Thankyou for forgiving me. Thankyou for healing my mind. Thankyou for living in my heart. Please let us never fight again. I only ever want to be on your side one hundred percent. Please protect me from throwing any future tempertantrums.

Mathieu

Catching Up with the Calendar

2006-07-20T11:56:00.000+10:00

Anyone who doesn't use Internet Explorer will not appreciate just what has been fixed at Mathieu's Interests. That's because it's using a vbscript to calculate the Biblical time, and most browsers don't use vbscript, and I haven't got around to writing it in javascript yet, otherwise I would make the time tick away so you didn't have to keep refreshing the page. Also the links to "hour", "day" and "month" don't exist yet, and will simply be Biblical definitions. As an example of how it should look, here is how it shows the current date of my writing this:

Also, I've finally got around to updating the current month in my last post. It's a bit late, of course, and it'll be less than a week before the fifth month starts and I'll have to post the next one.
That is why I've added a link to the Karaite's newsletter, so you can see for yourself when the last new moon was sighted from Israel (the hebrew word for "month", חֹדֶשׁ (Ħôdesh) is the same word as for "new moon" because the month starts on the new moon. Our own word "month" came from "moon" from before we made them the useless artificial "thirty days hath September..." Yuck!).
Also, this time you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it. And the HTML version is a seperate link.
Remember, Hebrew is read from right to left, but I only know smart people, so you can figure it out for yourself if you care.

In the meantime, despite what I said before, my QUT Webmail is now 399.84% of 19.53 MB and I have 738 emails in my Inbox. I'll catch up, you'll see.

4th Month 5766

2006-07-20T11:27:00.000+10:00

See HTML version.
See Karaite Korner Newsletter.

My Flatmate's Trying to Kill Me!

2006-07-16T22:29:00.000+10:00

My flatmate's trying to kill me!

Strike one:

Flatmate starts cleaning the wall. Who cleans walls I ask you? It makes the rest of the house look so dirty. I was suspicious from the start.
Flatmate kicks over the bucket of water and makes me get off the couch and grab my violin and flute from under it to save them from getting wet. Clearly it was an attack of my life.
"Pete! You're trying to kill me!"

Strike two:

This time he didn't work alone.
Flatmate tells me to hurry up if I want a lift and turns off the light. His bike then 'fell' on top of me and then against the door, slamming it shut. For a minute or two I was wrestling with Pete's bike in the dark. Finally I got it off me but balancing it on my bike. As I started through the door it 'fell' against the door again. This time the door hit me in the head before trapping me again in the dark. I finally got downstairs where Pete claimed innocence to having heard my screams.

Strike three:

This time, I specifically told my flatmate not to kill me.
We were helping Wentworth and NiColes down the stairs. I went down first pushing Nicoles. I was close to the bottom when my flatmate started to go down with Wentworth. If Wentworth slipped, I wouldn't have been able to get away, because NiColes was in the way.
"Don't kill me Pete. I'm feeling very vulnerable here. My life is in your hands."
The next thing I know, Wentworth is rolling head over heels lengthways, bouncing down the stairs. Fortunately, my excellent Karate skills came in handy as my brain worked faster than Indiana Jones, running away from... Well whatever it was, it wasn't as bad as Wentworth. Sorry Wentworth, I hope you're ok.
My flatmate was laughing hysterically. He tried act as though he was laughing out of shock, but he just kept laughing until our neighbour came out and laughed with him.

Strike four:

Flatemate picks up knife, supposedly to eat food with. A blatant message.

Strike five:

Flatmate looks at me in that, "You know I'm going to kill you one day" kind of glance.

Strike six:

Flatmate looks at me again.

Strike seven:

Flatmate climbs old wooden ladder, supposedly to fix the light in my room, and tries to fall on me even though I was holding the ladder steady. It's sad to contemplate the determination he has that he would risk his own life to take mine.

Strike nine:

Flatmate drives tired while I'm in the passenger seat.

Strike ten:

Flatmate responds to my public apology for accusing him of trying to kill me, with:

"That's ok. I forgive you too.

DIE!!!!"

This was done while I was looking over his shoulder, but then he deleted the last part so that no one would know.

Save me!

Brain Wreck

2006-07-07T12:35:00.000+10:00

I'll bet you're wondering how my exams went. I'll bet you read my blog when you weren't allowed to. Well here's your punishment. I'm not going to bring you up to date. Well not yet, anyway.

Actually, I'd like to thank everyone so much for their self control in not commenting. You have not idea how much you helped me!

I needed to get certain people off my back for exams. People who are trying to "help me."

So I sent them all an email telling them that my blog was devoted to them and no one else for a month. If you didn't get this email, then you weren't supposed to read my blog.

Getting everyone off my back made a world off difference, but it was to late. the damage was done. So I pushed myself to my hardest, I did my best, I'm proud of my effort, but I failed. Now I've wrecked myself.

Since then I've been recovering. I couldn't do much of anything during this time. I had to keep changing interests, trying to relax. All the while holding out for MYC. Hopefully MYC will help me to relax and get over it. If you're reading this before MYC, and will be there, please don't come asking me how I went or what I'm going to do. I still haven't recovered, and I don't want to think about it. The simple answers are I went badly and I don't know what to do. But I definitely know what to do to prevent this from ever happening again if I'm allowed to continue at QUT. Right now, though, I don't want to talk about it. Please talk to me though, about anything else (the more stimulating, the better).

When the exams were over, I caught another (or the same) cold right after I just got over my three week one. This time, though, there was blood in my snot, my right arm kept locking up (now it's my left arm, but not as badly), my fingers kept going limp, I would hear buzzing noises, my chest felt like my rib-cage had fused shut, I couldn't feel any emotion about anything until just last night, except that twice I've laughed at the most unfunny things really heartily. One day these really dark rings appeared around my eyes (darker than they ever were when I was 5), and the next day they were gone. My eyesight is the worst it's ever been, and I can't read signs very well, and I can't read my clock (which is a good thing).

I've been getting better so fast, too fast. I keep putting the horse before the cart. I need a longer break. My attention span is extremely short right now, and if I focus on anything for too long (a very short time) I start burning up. So I've been dabbling in the most extreme subjects and ideas for extremely short periods of time, and I'm starting to relax more and more.

I've been eating well. Sleeping well. I've been sleeping consistently and long, albeit I've been consistently going to bed at 1am, but it's good. Trust me for once. I've learned to watch TV without thinking about other things at the same time, and bring myself down to a nice calm level. I plan to gently introduce some structure into my release of energy, but that's in the few days after MYC which should be good for that itself.

MYC will be fun! I hope I get a chance to blog about it when I come back.

By the way, if you visit Mathieu's Interests in the next few days, the calendar is currently wrong. The new moon of 4th Biblical month was sighted from Israel on Monday June 26, 2006. I will hopefully get around to fixing it sometime after MYC, and post up a new calendar. It's an easy adjustment I have to make each month, but if I had the patience to do it now, then I would save and delete my emails first. Here is a picture of an answer to what you've always wanted to know: How long and far can you go over you're QUT Webmail quota?

There are 692 emails in my inbox alone. I think I'll get around to doing something about it when it reaches 700. There are more important things to worry about at this time.

In other news, my brother has gone to Europe for a holliday. I will talk more about that when I hear more from him.

Now let me tell you a little story about Herbert. Herbert is a bug. He's about the size of small green ant. I don't know what kind of bug Herbert is, because he was not in a recognisable state when I finally got io him. You see Herbert had a little mishap.
Herbert was innocently flying above the left side of the road, minding his own buisness when a giant eyeball came hutling toward him. He tried to get out of the way, but the boy on the bicycle, who was on the wrong side of the road, had the same idea at the same time.
Splat! Herbert went straight into the eyeball, and got caught under the eyelid. Herbert was still alive, and had a chance of survival. He wriggled around, fighting for life with all his might, and he squirted a chemical designed to make the boy want to fish Herbert out, but unfortunately for Herbert the boy was now unable to see, and didn't realise that there was a car headed straight for them. For a split second the boy saw the car right in front of him, and swerved onto the footpath just in the nick of time. Poor Herbert was even more traumatized!
The boy then selfishly kept peddling up the very steep hill without even getting off his bike, which would would be a very sensible thing to do at this hill in any circumstances, and kept on riding until he got home and was able to tend to herbert with the aid of a mirror. But alas, it was too late. Herbert was dead.
I'm sorry Herbert! Many tears have been shed for you. I know you drowned in them. I blame myself! I could have done more. I should have stopped. I could have run and gotten help. Someone else must have had a mirror! I'm sure there must have been a neighbourhood watch house somewhere. I should have stopped to ask for directions. I was too proud and it killed you. Now you are just a ball of grit and tears discarded and flicked into my garden. I'm sorry.

Some Relief

2006-06-11T14:41:00.000+10:00

The two pictures on the left are quick links to more interesting reading as my blogging for this month is not allowed to be read by most people.

I deseve 0!

2006-06-11T13:26:00.000+10:00

Let it be known that when things have gone "wrong" for me, it's not because I didn't work hard enough, but because I made things difficult for myself by not trusting God.

Let it be known that if things go "right" for me, it's not because I did a great job, but because God wanted it to happen that way.

I worked hard at my plans, but most of my efforts counted for absolutely nothing.
I am where I am because God wants me to be here and did things for me.

I can work as hard as I like but if God isn't first I'll fail.

Whenever I succeed, it's because God wanted me to.

If things go right, don't pat me on the back and say, "So you finally got your act together." unless you mean that I started trusting God rather than myself, but even then you may be wrong. Most times God just overides what I deserve with what His plan is.

I just have to learn to make things easier for myself by doing what God says, and saving myself from wasting my time with my plans that fail.

I can do nothing on my own, and deserve nothing.

You already know not to insult me by saying, "Oh yeah, but you've got to do your best too." I'm not stupid, you know.

God wants me here so there!

2006-06-11T13:24:00.000+10:00

You probably shouldn't be reading this. Click here to find out why.

I'm finally over my 2-week cold cold, which should only have lasted about 2 days, but I didn't drink enough water. I don't have a headache, and every step I take no longer feels like my teeth are going to fall out of my mouth. I thought I was getting over it a week ago and it came back worse but this time it's been gone a couple of days this time.

Anyway, what I was saying the other day before I so rudely interrupted myself, was about how I suddenly threw everything out the window and made uni the most important thing, and got off track completely. I was going to talk about how God is most important, but then somehow I got onto the subject extracurricular activities and it sounded like I was saying they were more important, which is not what I meant at all, obviously. I was meaning to blog about why uni is not the most important thing (God is) and the fact that I keep forgetting this, makes me stressed, treat people badly and fail anyway. I keep learning this all over again only not soon enough to make any difference from the semester before. Here's what happened the first time I learned it:

In 2004, I was not reading my Bible every day at all. I was not communicating with God much except to ask him to help me with what had become most important to me - uni subjects.

Exams were coming up, and the first one was MAB220. For MAB220, here were 5 three percent assignments and an 85% exam. I had studied for the subject the year before (as I often try to do by downloading everything from the OLT sites of my future subjects right after exams) I found it to be fantastically easy. I got 100% on the assignments and every past exam paper I practiced on I got 100% and finnished on time (after adding the extra time I get on exams for my dyslexia). There were five questions on each of the past exams, and I was hoping there would be four on the real one. I was so excited because I had never had a 7 before, and this time I was going to get 100% on the entire subject (which my previous flatmate used to say was a waste of 15% but I didn't care)!

On the other hand, the other three subjects didn't look so good. There had been pracs, and the group never has the patience to wait for me to write the data down before going on to the next part of the experiment. I used to just memorise the data as we found it, but although there are days when I can memorise tables of numbers that fast, I can't always.

These subjects didn't have so much weight on the last exam (which I was relying on by that time)and one of them I could only pass if I got 100% on the exam.

But this first exam (mab220) I was really excited about. I got into the exam room, and sure enough there were only four questions. I had it made!

But then something awfull happened. Usually I can read fine, but can't write very fast, which is why I get extra time. Sometimes though, for brief periods of time I can't write at all. Sometimes (but very rarely) I can't even read! When I started to do the exam, I found that I couldn't write at all! So I sat there patiently waiting for it to pass. I could see all the answers jumping out at me at once, but couldn't do anything about it. The part of my brain that overcompensates so that I can convert what's in my head to a language that can be written down had had enough and shut down.

It was only near the end when the lady said I had only my extra time left that I was suddenly able to write again. As fast as I could (not very) I wrote down as many answers as I could. Most of them wanted me to show my working and make tables, etc. At the end of the exam I was crying. Based on how much of the exam I had completed, and the assumption that I got 100% on that (which is always correct) I knew I'd got a 4, and I'd rather have failed altogether and got a 7 the next time.

I had been so sure I would get 100%. That subject was made for me. The next three exams I hadn't had as much hope for, and now I had none. I knew the subjects 100% but I didn't know what was going to happen in the exams.

That night I had the word "failure" on the tip of my brain. I thought, "The only way to get rid of that word is to get the word 'success' into my brain." And, "The best way for me to get obsessed about a word is to do a word study on it." I found out that the only time the word "success" is used in the KJV of the Bible, is in Joshua 1:8

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success."

"Well!" I said, "Stuff study then! I'm just going to study the Bible."

The next couple of days, that's exactly what I did. Instead of practising exams, or revising the 100% that I knew, I just read the Bible all day every day. I had a lot of catching up to do.

One day, I read something that made me think of a part of something in a book I once read. It was a book I own about other dimensions. I took the book off the shelf and read the bit I had thought of, and it mentioned a problem in special relativity which was the subject of my next exam. At first I thought, "Hey! I know what God's doing here!" But then instead of giving the answer to the problem, this is word for word what the book said:

"The reasoning behind these two claims is not obvious, and I won't try to give it here."

And that was all it had to say about special relativity. So I went back to studying the Bible. Then the ver night befor ethe exam, I was curious to see the past exam papers.

There were about two or three questions that I could answer off the top of my head, (because the book had made me think about them) but about 70% of the questions were the sort that I would need to cram for. If I crammed in one night I wouldn't be able to answer the ones I could already answer, because of the nature of them. You kind of had to dream about them.
I thought, "Nah, I'll just finish the Bible study I was on and go to bed."

The next day I went into the exam whistling, and had to stop myself. I was completely at peace. Then when I got the questions, I found that about 70% were about the ones I could already do off the top of my head, and only one or two the kind that I would have crammed for. If I had crammed that night I would have failed. What's more, I didn't even have time to answer enough questions to get anywhere near those one or two anyway.

If I had studied those two days, then I might have still had the subject 100% in my mind. I might have answered the same amount as I did, and got the same mark. If so, I would have been frustrated, as usual, that I knew 100% and couldn't show it. Than again, I might have been so exhausted that the same thing would happen as the other exam, or worse. All I know, is that my relationship with God was restored, and that passing the exam was just a nice bonus.

I'm not saying that I would do it that way again. I'm certainly not saying we should all stop doing anything and leave it all up to God. I hate it when people miss the point entirely. Obviously I'm going to make sure my relationship with God is already healthy before that extreme has to happen, and before I stuff thing up badly enough that I'm forced to give up doing it on my own before giving it all over to God.

The next two exams after that were of the same. God gave me dreams about what to study, and I studied.

A similar thing has been happening lately.

But first of all, a bit of background. I have had the most disgusting attitude you've ever come across. Even while I had this attitude I was so disgusted with myself I wanted to be sick (which I already was). For example:

The 24-hour lab at uni has to chage over to an after-hours access at night. This usually happens at 9:30pm and you have to leave building and come back in. I have a rule I have to follow, where I don't come back in. I go home. The reason is that it's the only thing to interrupt me from studying all night and going home at 5am the next morning. If I come back in, there are no further interruptions.

But on Sundays, it changes over at 5:30pm instead, and seems too early to stick to my program. But now I have a computer of my own, and can just continue anyway, so last Sunday, I went out at 5:30 with the idea of going home, and asked God what to do.

"Go to church."
"Righto! I'll just go straight back home and get something warm to wear."
I opened my Bible, and it was some verse about God's wrath on disobedience.
I knew full well that if I went home first, I would never get to church by 6:30 when it starts. In fact, it would probably be over. So I hopped on the train at Central, asking Go questions but realising what He was saying so late that I knew it was because I was in a habit of ignoring Him.

On the train I met Bulu who was on the way to a different church. I told him that I couldn't remember anything about the way to mine, except that it was a long way to walk from the station. He said I should ring someone, and God impressed me that he could be right, but I said, "Nah!"

I couldn't remember which side of the station it was, but God led me on one side. I knew He wanted me to go up the street, but I consiously said,

"Lord, I know you want me to go that way, but I'm going to go this way just to prove that it's the wrong way." The whole time, I was thinking, "I don't have time for this. The sooner I swallow my pride and turn back, the better it will be. But no, I'm going to walk to the first street and see if I recognise it. I can't wait to reach it so I can start walking in the right direction."
It wasn't even a proper street, and I didn't feel satisfied at all. I finally turned around.

OK, you might think this was just about streets, but this was the smallest thing I was talking to God about. I was winging and winging and winging and winging... About how in my life He wanted me to do one thing and I knew He was right but would stuff it up and how I wanted to winge that things were all bad, but He denied me that by always making my life beautiful.

I knew God had some special treat waiting for me at the church, but I wanted to stuff it up and blame it on Him.

The stuff I was saying was just rotten!

On the way back, this Cat got a fright from me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I don't usually frighten animals. I can't just leave you thinking I'm like that. Come here."
So the cat ran over for a pat. He was as cold as I was, and tried to swim in my labcoat. He went into an extacy of rubbing. I tried to go, but he tried to follow me.
"Oh, no. You can't just treat total strangers like this. Just because your owners leave you out in the cold. I'm so sorry you met me. You're being kind to the wrong person here. What you want is someone fat... and warm. I'll pat you until you are warmer, but then I have to go."

I tried to think of an excuse to go, and it was when the cat started playing rough that decided to make it look as though it was his fault I was leaving. As I walked away, he temporarily jumped onto my leg.

He then followed me until his house was way out of sight.
"I'm not going to encourage you cat. I'm not going to say goodbye, because then I would have to speak, and I'm not talking to you... Do'h!"

Every so often the cat would stop as if to say. "I went this far, now won't you stop for me?"
And then when he saw I kept on walking, he would bound after me and catch up. Then suddenly it was as though he hit an invisible line (there was actally a line on the footpath). He sat down and watched me go. I kept looking back until I couldn't see him anymore. He was still sitting there.

Back to my argument with God. It was fierce. I was wrong and He was right, and I just kept wining about that. I winged that I would find the church and it would be empty because it was so late. I didn't have watch on, but I knew I'd been walking for hours and I was freezing.

I walked and winged and winged and walked. Then God told me not to cross the road. By the time I understood what He said I was halfway across. But instead of wining about it, I considered the character of God only long enough to realise that He knew where I was at and that everything He said took ages to get through because I was being a... you-know-what. So He probably meant the next street. This made sense, because I was coming to the end of a T intersection and the only way to turn right would be to cross the road, and the way to not cross would be to turn left. So I was certain God didn't want me to turn right.

But then when I got to the corner, I looked up the street to the right to see why God might say that (I always have to find out "why" before I obey, don't I). I saw the billboard of a church, and decided, "Aha! God's changed His mind and doesn't want me going to church because I dilidallied and stuffed up." Well I'm going!

I crossed the road.

I crossed the next road and almost got run over.

It was not the church I was looking for... figures.

"Right, fine then! I know what You brought me here to teach me, and I know it wasn't a waste of time, so I'll go the way you wanted me to even though I know I'll end up back at the station and I'll go home." I went back down the street I was supposed to go down and found the church. People were still there and it was a quarter to nine. We went to Macca's and I got a hot chocolate. I was freezing!

This whole thing was not about streets. It was about something else between God and me. It was about something bigger than uni, but some days later I did start thinking about uni.

That's when I started thinking about how God has brought me to uni and has a plan. He sometimes gives me the gist of the plan, but not much. But others who God has given 0% of the plan to have no right to tell me I'm not supposed to be here. Or rather... I have no right to keep acknowledging what they say and obeying them as an excuse not to obey God. Why am I so %#$^ disobedient?

All the way to church I had been arguing, "I don't know what I want, you have to tell me what I want. What do I want so I can join you in giving it to me." When I should have just been saying, "I want to join you." but what I did say was only a result of trying to do it on my own first and failing. This was not about uni or career stuff, but I had had that attitude about it and it had flowed into everything else. Why do get like this at exam times? It's like, "I know uni's not the most important thing, but I have to put that reality on hold now, because it's exam time."

So then I wrote my post on Tuesday night, which was amazing because I was absolutely stuffed from my cold. I tried to go to the Pancake Manor afterwards and found that I could't count and couldn't recognise the significance of familiar faces, etc. Have you ever had a cold like that? It's my second time, although the other time it was a stomach bug 7 years ago that made all my other friends who had it hallucinate (they thought the trees were chasing them, etc.). I don't think I'm the halucinating kind. It affected me differently (the same way as this one).

So I had to go out of the Manor and go for a walk. I had been sitting at the computer too long and needed some air. By the time I could speak to people they were all leaving.

So since learning my lesson, I found that even now I had Bible study to catch up on. I had a dream telling me to look up a subject that only I'm interested in, so I did. Add that to a bit of circumstance and a million "coincidences", and I ended up studying half the material for one of my subjects without trying to.

Yesterday I was still being disobedient, but it was as though God gave me a crash course in everything I've been through and what I need to do. So here I am. Doing it. I think.

My assignments are all over and now it's just exams. I've studied for half the first one "by accident" and today I could study the other half and start on the others, or do the others backwards. But you know what I'm going to do? Whatever God tells me to. So there!

By the way, there was a complication in my rent, and I wasn't going to fix it until after exams but God took me through it step by step, and the timing that I went to the office was perfect so that I don't have to worry about my rent ever again.

I also had to pay for my future piano exam by Wednesday. I thought it was impossible because I had no way of getting there, and my father couldn't be reached. I got there in the most unlikely way at the last minute after giving up on it for the first half of the day, and paid my overdue phone bill at the same time. Thanks again Yosh!

My father finally caught me on Thursday night and gave me a lecture about how I shouldn't let people talk me into doing things their way. He gave some examples of what happened when he did what people talked him into doing throughout his life. He had no idea about my blog, and just started preaching to the recently converted. He always seems to say the relevant thing at the right time before I get a chance to speak.

Oh yeah, and don't read this!

2006-06-06T20:53:00.000+10:00

I forgot to put my discalaimer at the top of my last post:

You probably shouldn't be reading this. Click here to find out why.

The disclaimer is particularly important this time. It you do begin reading my previous post, then you must agree to read to the end, and it's hard to read and goes for 7 pages. You've been warned!

My brain is full of snot!

2006-06-06T19:58:00.000+10:00

I told a nice person yesterday that "my brain is full of snot."

That's certainly how I feel. I've had this cold two weeks tomorrow, and it's really making it hard to study. Especially with this new "I-sleep-every-night-now" program, which I'm still sticking to by the way. My eyes feel like they're bruised apples, but ready to explode out of their sockets. My headache has localised itself to my forehead in a kind of line searing like Harry Potter's scar.

The TV was on last night, and I really needed to relax, and I was really interested in what was on. I thought, "Finally an opportunity to do the wrong thing and blame myself for everything that goes wrong from here on in." But I ruined it and went to bed instead.

A few other resolutions I've burdened myself with the last two weeks:

- No junk food. No buying a $1 can of drink from the fridge in the chaplaincy everyday "in the spirit of charitability."
- No MSN.
- No sending emails. Anything I have to say, I can say to the whole class on my blog. I broke this rule last week and simply proved that I can't be trusted to say nice things to people when I'm stressed because uni has apparently become the most important thing in my life. You know who you are, and I'm sorry (although you shouldn't be reading this).

Since when did uni become the most important thing in my life? I don't know why I keep falling for this. Everyone thinks they have to keep reminding me that it is the most important thing right now, because they are all convinced that I mustn't care enough, or I must be lazy, or that I spend all my time getting distracted.

If I were to get distracted I would do something I like. For example, I would read a book. I used to read at least five books a day (except on Sabbath) before starting uni in 2003. Since starting uni, besides textbooks (which, when I have the money to buy them, are usually useless for the subjects anyway), and the Bible (which I hardly get to read), I've only read three books. Apparition by John Milor, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Da Vinci Code . All three I read on my computer, and none of them really reflect what I like to read. I also read parts of Worlds in Collision, The dating secrets of the Ten commandments and some chapters about Equal Temperament in a book about the history of music. All three of those I recommend whole-heartedlty, and liked them so much, I didn't feel I was allowed to finish them. Why is this?

Or I would write a computer program. I used to write programs every day about everything I learned and found that by programming the computer, I was programming myself. Since starting uni, besides two programming assignments for ITB111, I haven't even written two programs. In first year I wrote a program that generated practice exam papers for MAB180. The other one's not even finished yet. It's for downloading all my emails from the QUT's web-based email service, because it takes too long to do it manually, and I'm so sentimental I like to keep everything, I can use it, but I couldn't give it to someone else until it's userfriendly.

But the first thing I would do straight away, is write my book which I'm most passionate about. I've been adding to this book in my head since I was homeschooling. I've finished it and started writing more for a series, but only in my head. I was supposed to publish it over the summer. But somewhere I got lost and decided that it would be "more responsible" to do all my study and assignments for second semester this year instead, since it's usually second semester I crash and burn in. At the end of the summer I lost my memory stick with all my work just before I backed it up for the first time.

The only ones who begin to understand how my brain works and how much trouble I go through trying to avoid people telling me their non-dyslexic advice and accusations, tell me I shouldn't be at uni at all, and that I'm wasting my life and confidence on something I'm not cut out for. No one agrees with anything I do!

Not that it seems to help me much, but I usually make sure that I know my subjects 100% before I start them. The exceptions to this are, all the subjects in my very first semester, and some of my subjects from last/this year.

"I've got to succeed" "I can't fail" "I can't be late" "I can't be stopped" "I can't talk to you" "I don't have time to be distracted" "I don't have time for you" "Leave me alone already"

This is destroying my character, and I get sucked into it every time.

Let me tell you what I've been told vs. what I've learned by experience:

When I was 10, I was told, "What?! You like ████?! You can't afford to be thinking about girls or you'll be kept down in this grade next year." From then on, moves were made to "ensure" I didn't think about this girl anymore. The whole thing was totally ridiculous, and it's not the only reason I don't tell people who I like.

When I was 11 my teacher would lock me in a little side room to keep me from being distracted while trying to do my work. My only distraction had been daydreaming about things "more worthy to think about". Locked up in the room, I was free from the distraction of the other children and went straight into my dream-world.

The same teacher used to make sure I didn't sit next to my my friends in class. The teacher from the year before, Mr Low, was a genius! He knew that I really wanted to do well, and put me next to my best friend, knowing that I used to race against him and beat everyone.

Just about everyone says, "Go to your lectures." I'm not going to go into why this is the single most ridiculously stupid thing I can do, but I do it every time just to get people off my back with some new "I'll figure out a way for it not to be bad this time." idea.
Why? Why do I do this? I used to do it in first year because I had a particularly interesting lecturer to listen to who didn't talk about the subject so much, and when he did I would say, "I wouldn't have taught it that way, but I think everyone got it" or "No! No! Let me teach it! No one understands what you're saying. You've lost them. You skipped a vital point and now they're way behind."
But other lecturers are impossible to listen to. I pretend to myself that I'm going to the lecture to pick at their teaching skills, or to try to beat them at the examples on the board, but they move along soooo slooowwwwly that I waste so much concentration trying to stick with them, that by the end of the lecture I'm completely drained, I give up on assignments because my brain has been fried with boredom, and I just want to go to bed. Lectures are a trap for me, I think I can walk in and just walk out again, but I can't. I think it's politeness.
Furthermore if the lecturer happens to cover something I don't know (I can't think if it's ever even happened), I don't learn anything that way. And I have trouble understanding what people are saying and miss things they say while trying to guess what they've just said and I spend a lot of energy decoding English, unless sometimes if they're telling me a story (which doesn't grate on the stupidities of speech so much - I'm not going to explain this).
I even had to stop listening to that lecturer in first year when I needed to get my assignments done, and practice exams. There was one lecturer last year that clearly didn't understand anything he tried to teach outside the boring parts, and I went to his lectures for this reason alone, until I had to stop for this reason because he was driving me insane.
I haven't been to an actual church service for months, because the last thing I want to do on Sabbath is what I do throughout the rest of the week. Sit and try to concentrate on listening to someone for long periods of time who I can't interrupt. I usually end up "accidentally" playing the piano in the hall for too long and missing the service. Or "forgetting" to call and say I'm made it to my aunt's house, so I can spend Sabbath playing with The Baby instead.
The Romanian church is an exception here, because it's all in another language. The funny thing is, that my brain still does the same amount of compensation trying to work out what's going on. Until, of course, there's a translator sitting beside me, in which case I interrupt him or just use different tactics from what I'm tired of using in class, to listen to him.

In second semester 2004, I only went to the first lecture of one of my subjects, and every single lecture of the other subjects. I passed that one subject, and failed the other three.

Here is the stupidity of it. I keep doing the wrong thing to prove to people that it's the wrong thing, and all I ever get is, "Oh, but that was a very unfortunate coincidence that has taught you badly." What? Do you all think I'm that stupid?

Why do I keep doing this? Why don't I just do the right thing, to prove that it works? Wait a minute, I already decided I wasn't going to do this anymore on the 7th day of my post on AGMF so here is my opportunity to do the right thing.

Anyway, this is still a list of what people tell me vs. what I've learned by experience.

People say, "Stop tinkering with your other interests and do your work." I don't ever get to tinker with my other interests, and again people assume that when I fail it's because I didn't follow their advice. When I only did what they said to show that... I'm repeating it all again, aren't I.
OK, the experience: Let's look at the only semester I passed more than half my subjects, which was also the semester that I passed all my subjects, which was also the semester in which I got my only 6. Which was also the semester that I had 7 exams in the final exam period (yes, I was only doing four subjects), and my first (2nd grade) piano exam in the same period, for which I got an A. That's eight exams in the final exam period. It was also the only semester that I tried to not let my Hebrew go rusty and had Modern Hebrew lessons every week (although this is not quite the same as that perfect language (Ancient Hebrew), and should be called "Modern Israeli" instead). Every other semester I've not touched Hebrew, and I'm surprised when people think that I'm some kind of expert on it. It's also the only semester that I kept up playing all three instruments Flute, Violin and Piano. It's also the semester when I got into surveying, and prayed that I would do well at uni so that I could have more time to survey. It's the semester I got serious about Student Life and I went to my first MCY at the end (which completely gave me a proper reason to even be at uni). It's also the semester that I kept saying "this semester is the one I've abused the most." meaning I hadn't been to many lectures, (although I knew my stuff 100%, as I only confirmed each time I did go to lectures). It's also the semester that I wrote two complete programs (for ITB111). It's also the semester that I had my hardest maths subject (I intuitively didn't go to many lectures at all for it until right near the end to make sure I knew it all).

Now if you are a student, and you have disobeyed me and read this post, then I suppose I should write another disclaimer. This is also to answer the question that you may be asking, "Why does this guy fail subjects if he knows them 100%?" Did I mention that I don't write fast enough in exams due to dyslexia (but last year and this semester I haven't known it 100%, hence my moping)?

I am not saying that others should miss lectures or heap things onto their plate when the going gets tough. This works for me because my brain works differently.
I find that others seems to be able to relax by doing mindless things, whereas I can't and need to do something else superstimulating, otherwise my brain keeps going back to the previous problems and working on them because it's bored. For this reason, in the "I-passed-everything" semester, I set up a whole lot of life-ropes - alternate projects that I could always switch to when I was tired. I didn't listen to anyone, because at the time I had simply butted everyone out. Until MYC, I had decided to temporarily give up on people.

I am not saying I'm always right. I'm saying that I'm always right about me (well, usually always).
Be warned! I am the expert on me! I don't take advice well! This doesn't mean I don't follow it, this means that it messes me up.
I have a belief that it's always wrong to give advice. Please don't comment on this right now. I don't believe the advice itself is always wrong, it's just usually wrong in my case because my brain is wired like... backwards or something.
But my advice is not to give advice in general, but testimonies. Retell experiences that you think are relevant to the situation and how it turned out when they did xxxx so that a person can see why you think xxxx is good/bad advice.

When people give me advice, it's even harder, because I have to try to work out how normal people tick and whether it applies to me or not. Like if someone says, "write it down" I have to remember that they are not telling me to "forget about it" which is what writing it down would make me do. Whereas I usually hear people say that when they write things down it helps them remember it. And I have to take it all in that context.

What really makes me impatient is when people tell me how to learn. Generally, with a few exceptions I can't think of right now, the faster I memorize something, the longer I remember it. But I'm frustrated to find that others are the other way around. Please tell me after exams are over if I've got this wrong, as I'm not an expert in the subject of others, just me.

People seem to assume that I haven't thought things through or that I've missed something really obvious (like "Oh, that's good that you're praying, but you have to do your part too!")

I repeat! I am the expert on me!

This is all part of a long-term frustration from when I was taken to specialist after specialist at school to see why I was writing so slowly, etc. They all decided that I had their pet speciality wrong with me. You've no idea how many conflicting "expert" opinions I've heard about me. They would sit in the room and say to my parents, "I think maybe he thinks this and then his mind wonders onto that and has this pattern about this..." When the whole time that they're looking like an expert to the other adults, they're looking like arrogant idiots to me because I would expect that if they were smart to ask me what I was thinking I would embarrass all of them. I was sitting in the very same room. I was the expert! I didn't have to say, "Well what I think I think about is..." Because I am the expert! I could simply say, "In class, I just realise I have better things to think about than to spend so much effort (writing) to show everyone that I can do such simple maths problems but write them down slower than everyone else." I didn't have to prove myself to the teachers. They were all stupid (I had decided)! Well that was my attitude in grade 2, anyway. In grade 2 I worked out that the hypotenuse of a square is the square root of 2 times the side. I had no reason to tell anyone because no one was worth it (In grade 2 I still thought I was the center of the universe as well). Only the children were smart enough to be interested in my ideas, but only the ones that involved blowing up the school. I didn't expect that they were interested in flying machines. And I didn't expect the teachers were interested in geometry when they were still obsessed with multiplying pieces of plastic by two.

This is why accountability is so hard, because I want to be accountable. I want to say I will do this, and then be forced to do it. Not to have everyone tell me that what I'm doing is wrong, or that I should take precautions that have helpful intentions but just mess me up.

I try to explain myself to people. I try to help them to help me. They don't need to help me, but if they want to, I say, "Ok, but you have to understand some things." And then I'm just told that I'm making excuses and have a bad attitude. If I didn't want to achieve what they were trying to help me to achieve I would have just said so.

I think myself to be very patient listening to everyone saying the same old misconceptions over and over until I'm just brainwashed into doing them. But I suppose that I'm just hurting myself if the person doesn't realise just how different I am or why I'm telling them, "Hey, look at how my brain was working. Look at that dream I had last night."
People aren't really interested in how my brain works while it's awake and asleep, but they have to be more interested in it than even that if they want to give me advice on how to use it. I just forget that they're not interested when they start trying to give me that advice, and so I start saying things like, "Last night I did my assignment with the computer monitor upside-down, because I found that I could read better for over half an hour." (That actually happened last night). And the person thinks , "Why is he telling me stuff like this? I don't care?"

But for accountability, I waste all this false patience and no one ever gets to hear of all my great ideas I've thought up to overcome the world that isn't cut out for me. Not that anyone wants to hear about me finding myself heroic, but that's the part of accountability that should keep you going. The reward. You say at the start, "I want you to keep me accountable to do this." You need the reward of being able to say, "This is how hard it is, and I did it!" Otherwise, stuff the accountability, as I've usually done, because no one will ever know...

I used to say instead, "I'm procrastinating." because I wanted pretend I didn't care so I could get people off my back. I wasn't procrastinating, but I didn't want people to know what I was doing because they would muck it up, and I wasn't accountable to them, so I didn't care that they thought little of me for saying I'm procrastinating. Actually, I do care, but I've thought it's better I kill my pride because it's a killer.

Before that, I used to jump at things people claimed I couldn't do, because I could impress them. It's no good being accountable to someone who doesn't find it amazing that I wrote five pages for an exam in four hours but is impressed that I wrote an article on the computer in easily less than half an hour.

I knew when I set out reading the Da Vinci Code book that everyone was going to say. "Er... Didn't that article take a lot of time out of your study?" Rubbish! Hopefully, I don't have to tell the reader of this post that "that article", being the only extra curricular thing I did this semester (besides installing Linux on my machine) was the only thing that got me back into my studies at all when I had burned out of study because I had no extracurricular life-ropes this year. There was something else that particularly stuffed me up, but I'm not going to talk about that. It's too deep for the likes of my blog. Next year, I'll be sure to do all the things that I keep telling myself I'll do but get off track when people get wind of it and tell me to do it their way. I'll send me a video of myself reprimanding myself.

Reading the Da Vinci Code took three nights. Doing the research - less than a week. I kept telling everyone that the first draft was coming along, but I hadn't written a word. Just before Nightlife I said I would bring what I had worked on. I had worked on it a lot but written nothing. If I write things down I forget them, remember? I thought I would just type it out and bring it. But I wasn't happy that I was 100% right about the facts and needed to do more research, which I did throughout Nightlife. The next few days I toyed with how I was going to address something that others probably didn't find so touchy. I ended up writing the first draft that Friday (in minutes) and sending it off by email. After that I had a lot of trouble editing what I had already written down. I think we did 4 drafts. The most I've ever done is 2, because I've never had to represent more than one person before.

Admitting all that was really shameful. I feel this way sometimes, because I've spent a lot of energy trying to prove I wasn't dyslexic to get out of homeschooling, and this meant covering it up.

Yeah, so no extracurricular saftey-ropes makes Mathieu fall down and burn. It doesn't matter that I've just said all this. No one is ever going to learn, because they are going to look for another explanation than to try to understand what is too hard for them, and the only way to not feel guilty when being accountable will be to honestly say that I "left all those interests alone" and then I'll crash and burn and...

Yeah, so I'm blogging instead.

So these last two years I've taken everything else out of my life. Except the piano. Haha. Because although everyone's been telling me to drop it because it's a distraction, my piano teacher has told me the opposite just as much. Sometimes the only way to do what I need is to get 2nd opinions from people who agree with me.

There is no one though who agrees with my uni effort. Everyone who isn't confused as to what it is that I'm actually trying to do, is telling me to quit uni altogether.

After all that I've said, I procrastinated. I had an assignment due today, and I blogged instead. I decided I wasn't going to do it.

Like I said before, my brain is full of snot, and the only way to do this assignment would have been to "blow my brains out" which would mean that I wouldn't have any left for exams. What I mean by this is, I would have to do it when I was awake (at night) and undo everything I'm working for. Hopefully, by the time exams come I'll have learnt to think during the day instead.

Good news though, there was only one assignment to do today, and the other one turned out to be Teacher Evaluation, which I missed, but I feel I did it on my blog for my primary-school teachers instead. Don't you?

If I could just stop being bitter against everyone, then perhaps I could stop doing what they tell me and succeed in something.

Do'h!

2006-06-06T13:27:00.000+10:00

I just remembered I had a dream the other night that for some reason I was trying to convert my words to text-message speak (eg. "you" into "u") but I had forgotten to convert "I" into a one letter word, and I was really angry with myself about it.

What I must achieve to succeed.

2006-06-01T17:39:00.000+10:00

You probably shouldn't be reading this. Click here to find out why.

Well, I went for my walk and ended up at Core Group just in time which is what I was hoping would happen. I was going to cancel it. I was going to walk, eat, talk, stress about still being asleep, sit in the sun and think about Core Group and how I was missing it and how I wasn't thinking about maths. But I turned up at Core Group instead, and we all sat in the sun talking and eating lunch. Also we prayed about our exams, so there's some infinite help right there.

Then I played the grand piano, which always sounds better when I'm asleep, but always sounds terrible when I'm stressed, so they cancelled each other out.

Now I'm here studying and blogging, but still asleep.

I've just gone over my current situation to see what exactly I have to achieve to stay enrolled at QUT.

I'm not ever allowed to fail another subject because my course will take longer than it's allowed.

My GPA is 2.75. Being below 3, this puts me on probationary enrolment. So does having failed a unit twice, which I've also managed to achieve. To get out of this, my GPA for this sememster has to exceed 5.25. For that to happen, the simplest minimum I can get for my subjects is [6, 5, 5, 5].

Here is what percentage of this semester's subjects I've passed and failed so far, and how much more I have to go:

MAB311
Failed:	7.5%
Passed:	3.75%
Assignment:	3.75
Exam:	85

MAB132
Failed:	20%
Passed:	0%
Assignment:	8%
Group assignment (on my own):	12%
Exam:	60%

LSB118
Failed:	29%
Passed:	11%
Exam:	60%

PCB362
Failed:	27%
Passed:	20.5%
Assignment:	6.25%
Assignment:	6.25%
Exam:	40%

This means that if I get 100% for everything I do from now on, I will get [7, 6, 5, 5]. That's 2 points more than I need. It doesn't look as bad as I thought. Of course, I've never had a 7, I've only ever had one 6, only once have I ever passed more than half the subjects in a semester, so I don't believe in myself here, but in God. Obviousely, I'm am aiming for 100%. So here's my timetable for June:

2	MAB312 Assignment
5	MAB311 Assignment
6	PCB362 Assignment
6	PCB362 Assignment
9	MAB312 Group Assignment
16	LSB118 Exam (2+1)hrs
20	PCB362 Exam (3+1.5)hrs
21	MAB311 Exam (3+1.5)hrs
23	MAB312 Exam (3+1.5)hrs

After tomorrow, I'll have three weeks to finish everything.

I'm a morning person now.

2006-06-01T11:39:00.000+10:00

You probably shouldn't be reading this. Click here to find out why.

Haha! Me? A morning person? How did it happen? Well I still think I'm a night person, and the fact that I find this transition to be so useless is the proof.

This morning I saw the sunrise. Or at least I would have seen it if the building nextdoor wasn't in the way, or if I had watched from the back varanda, but I didn't want to go there in case a certain person discovered me and kept me from my studies. Maybe tomorrow I'll stand on the building nextdoor after finding a flaw in their security. Maybe I have better things to do. But I stood outside anyway, trying to get the light into my eyes. I don't think the light was that great that my bioclock was getting the message though. I think I was telling it something more like, "It's freezing! There's a reason the nights are so long in winter, and they should be even longer."

Yes, I have seen the sunrise before (very often actually), but it's only ever been because I hadn't gone to bed yet, or not at all. It was really odd seeing it at the start of a new day.

I went to bed just before midnight, and realised for the unteemth time that I wasn't going to get to sleep until 6am on the dot. So I programmed myself to wake up at 4am and I had little trouble getting to sleep at 12. Then I just slipped in and out between 4 and 6. I hope I never have to do it this way again, because now I've had bad sleep and can't concentrate mathematically (so I'm writing this instead). I've never been able to do much of anything in the daylight, but hopefully this will change really fast, because I'm thinking I've done a really foolish thing by changing myself around just before exams.

Setting alarm clocks with the plan to get out of bed on command is an idealistic thing to do before you go to sleep, but I always find myself in a much more realistic mood when I wake up, and decide that no puny electronic device is going to boss me around.
The sound itself doesn't wake me up. It's the fact that that detestible idealistic version of me from the night before has set it to be so loud that if I don't immediately jump up to turn it off, the neighbours will shoot it through the window.
So this morning I systematically turned it off, and turned over to go back to sleep, grabbed an apple and...
Wait a minute! That's not right! That @#$^ me from the night before programmed myself to do that and left a bag of apples beside my bed. The next thing I was supposed to take a bite (I've read that apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning), but I held it in my hand and tried to think of an excuse not to. I would have thought, "My mother would choke if she knew I was eating in bed." but I had taken care of that excuse by eating a nice hot meal in bed just before going to sleep.

It's amazing how easy it is to start drifting off to sleep when you're chewing something (apple or not) but not when taking another bite. By the time I had finished the apple I had forced myself to sit up. I finally got out of bed at 6:15 and went downstairs to proove to myself that it was unnessessary, because I had got up earlier than the sun. I was wrong, apparently. I have to see it to believe it, but the building was in the way.

What I need is a rooster. I said this to Pete this morning, and he said something about needing an oven as well. He's got a point there. The smell would probably wake me up with more motivation, than would carrying out my threats to eat it raw after it woke me up with it's smartallecky "cook-a-doodle-too!"

We had chickens at Cedar Grove, but I think God had set those ones to "chime-on-the-hour" mode. The chickens themselves thought they were in "alarm-mode" and loudly kept me up every hour (on the hour) of the night.

Yesterday I crammed a 16th of my entire study material, which was a good effort considering that it was a last minute resort after wasting the entire day trying to install a program in Linux which ended up crashing my computer twice and didn't turn out to be as usefull as everyone was raving. It might have a componant or two in it that I can reverse engineer into another usefull program, but right now it's useless in terms of helping me with my Maple assignments.

Theoretically, I should be able to cram about half my material today, so now I'm going to take a little walk in the sun, talk, and see if that wakes me up. 6 hours sleep is a lot for me, but it was bad sleep.

Procrastinator's Warning!

2006-06-01T08:32:00.000+10:00

Dear readers of my fantastical blog,

Go away!

I'm really trying to be nice here, and to warn you that this month is not going to be worth reading for entertainment or procrastination purposes. Especially if you are studying, you will not find relief through this blog this month.

I've decided to temporarily devote my blog to those who are trying to help me stay accountable to sleep and study this semester.
Please give me no advice and no evaluation of anything I confess in the next month, good or bad, because you will mess me up bigtime! I am only daring to continue blogging based on my trust in your self-control.

I may still blog in the usual way to get things off my mind. Lately, for example, I've been wondering why we say "it's raining" instead of "the clouds are raining, and the sun is shining" I wonder how many other languages do the same. Don't tell me. I'll save it for something to check out when my study's over.

I will also use my blog as a mental punching bag. I need to get excited about what I'm studying, so I need to rant and rave about it. Nobody else really want's to hear what's so special about the Cayley-Hamilton Theorem (which asserts that every square matrix satisfies its characteristic polynomial), but my blog is willing to listen to anything I can dish out, and I need to teach someone what I want to retain. This is why you can't read my blog if you are studying!!!!!

If I have given you the address for my blog and told you to read it, then go ahead and read anything written before this post. Unless I specified that it was for accountability purposes, I probably didn't intend for you to read anything after this post. You can also read about every day of Schoolies. And to your left you will find a nice collection of blogs by close friends listed in the order that I read them myself.

Enjoy!

3rd Month 5766

2006-05-29T20:28:00.000+10:00

I need prayer

2006-05-26T22:16:00.000+10:00

I've been trying not to blog lately, as it's close to exam time and I don't want to help people procrastinate. But if you find it therapeutic to read my blog, as I find it therapeutic to write it, then you may convince me. I myself need lots of prayer for upcoming exams and assignments. Basically, I need to get close to 100% on everything (4 exams (some need exactly 100%) and 5 assignments - one a group one I'm doing on my own) within the next 4 weeks or I get kicked out of uni altogether. Technically it's possible. Based on how I got into this mess in the first place, realistically it's not. Based on how I got into uni in the first place and other miracles in my life... with God all things are possible. Need prayer.

The Da Vinci Code

2006-05-19T15:56:00.000+10:00

I just saw the movie The Da Vinci Code.
I should have realised that they wouldn't stick to the same story as the book. Satan's plan isn't to give a credible alternative to The Truth, but simply to throw in enough alternatives to to muddy the waters and confuse people away from The Truth.

In response to the book, The Da Vinci Code, I have written this article for Student Life.

The movie, on the other hand, gave me a slightly different message from the book, but the same old postmodernist message of other movies: "No one will ever know the truth. What matters is what YOU believe. Be a free thinker (i.e. believe this movie) but don't get caught up on the truth/facts because otherwise you'll cause bloodshed. Let Christians believe in their flimsy blind faith, but don't let them give you reasons for it, because it'll lead to bloodshed."

In response to the movie, which falsely claimed that Jesus' divinity was the subject of bloodshed until Constantine intervened, I'd just like to say:

The truth is consistent no matter who believes what. It can be discovered.

Free thinking is not sticking to your opinion against all evidence.

Finding the truth requires effort on your part.

"Find the truth for yourself" doesn't mean "choose a belief that suits you."

Tolerance is not believing everyone's belief is true, but that everyone's value as a person is priceless, and they should be treated that way. This doesn't mean patronising them by saying that what they believe is true because it's true for them. What rubbish!

Read the Bible for yourself already! You can see for yourself that what The Da Vinci Code says is not true about the New Testament.

1. Isaac Newton was one of the greatest scientists the world has ever seen.
2. Isaac Newton was a Creationist Christian.

The media has always downplayed one of these two things. The Da Vinci Code movie claims that the discovery of gravity angered the church. Come on! Others who admit that Newton was a Christian try to claim that he was an unscientific lunatic. You can't have it both ways. And that's just one of the people they do this to. All Christians are targeted this way. Tolerance anyone?

The Baby and The Boy Brother

2006-05-08T16:52:00.001+10:00

Xavier

Xavier being held by his sister Elizabeth

Up to now, Elizabeth has been the center of the lives of us all. She's reacted very well to Boy Brother's existence. Elizabeth is still called "The Baby".
When my sister was describing Xavier to me, she said, "He's so cute! And he has the baby's nose!"
So to avoid confusion, I will refer to Elizabeth (who already has the same name as someone else she lives with, but spelt differently) as "The Baby", and to Xavier as "The Boy Brother" (which is what The Baby has called him every since she suspected his existence).
My name, by the way, is "Meshoo", and don't you dare call me anything else around The Baby, because nobody wants to pollute her with my real name, seeing as her version is so much cuter, and closer to the french pronounciation anyway. I like it. In the third person, The Baby calls me "My Meshoo."

I usually see The Baby every Saturday. I sneak over to her house on Friday night while she's asleep, and I'm woken up from the couch by her the next morning, because she wakes up too early for anyone to save me from being bopped on the head and told to "wake up Meshoo, wake up!" Yesterday I was informed that it's tradition, as apparently is my poor beard suffering verbal threats of one day being shaved.

I couldn't make it this Saturday, so I came on Sunday instead. That is, Pete dropped me off Saturday night so that I could have my Saturday morning wake up call on Sunday. Thanks Pete.

The Baby and I spent most of yesterday chasing each other around the pet shop. It was huge, but unfortunately, they only sold pet accessories. There were no pets except fish, and dogs visiting with their owners. But The Baby was less disappointed than I was, and entertained herself (and everyone else in the shop) without any effort at all. She's still the center of the universe. What were we worried about?

We found a lizzard in the shop though, although he was just visiting too. We then experienced the horror of believing that Grandma (my aunt) had forgotten about us and driven off.

While waiting for Grandma in the car, by request, I kept playing the same track on a CD of kid's songs. I don't know how, but before then I always knew that the day would come when I would have to learn all the words/word to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

I'm sure I will speak more of The Boy Brother when he becomes more interesting.

I will also introduce you to The Bear someday as well. Pete had a close encounter with her when he dropped me off. You OK now Pete?

Update (11-5-2009): I thought I'd use this old post to list links to all the posts about The Baby and The Boy Brother, because it's the only one which explains the names and has pictures (they're too cute to upload anymore):

Happy Birthday Xavier
Little Red Hiding Hood (my favourite)
My Mad Meal 1

Loving Me

2006-05-08T13:35:00.000+10:00

I've thought a bit more about my 'loving myself' post and left some comments. Please do the same. (please think a little more about loving me :P. No, read my new comments, and leave some comments. I was a little rash, and I've changed my views around)

I Hate Money

2006-05-06T02:30:00.000+10:00

The following was originally a comment to Noof's post about money, but it became too long, and I didn't want to hog her 'comment space'. Read her's first.

I was just thinking about that yesterday, and said, "OK God, I don't need any more money, now. If you give me more money, I'll give it away."
And then I realised that I said that because I wanted security.
So I said, "Well then take away all my money and take me back to how I was before if that's the only way I'm going to trust you, I'm sure your purpose for Christians isn't to be money managers to ensure that all the world's money is going to the poor."
And then there was something about not wanting to become Robin Hood.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. - 1 Timothy 6:10

Money is what's driving the world today.
Nobody seems to want to make a movie because they have a story they want to tell anymore, but because they want money. They take all the great stories from books, and turn them all into the one same story that they know is going to ensure the dollars. They're butchering stories, not telling them (maybe I'm being harsh because I just saw a particularly bad movie today).
Artist's questions don't seem to be "What's the best I can do with this project?", but rather "How can I make the most money out of it?"
Inventers don't seem to be asking, "How usefull is this?" but "How many people are going to think they need this?" and "Can I make it addictive somehow?"
So many great things could be done in this world, but nobody seems to be motivated to do anything that doesn't make profit.

I almost went busking last night for the first time. I was wondering through South Bank with nothing to do. I had my flute and my music stand in my bag, I was all set. But I didn't want to. I knew it wasn't because I was shy, because I had just been playing in the park across the road from my house, where people are going past all the time to get to UQ, and stopping to listen.
And then I realised that I didn't want to put a price on my music. I don't need the money, but it's tempting to try to get the most I can so I can say, "Look how much money I got for my first performance."
The whole reason I got my busking license in the first place was because I want a lisence to practice my flute in between lectures. I don't want money to then go and affect the way I play.

On the other hand, I feel this way about everything I do, and I don't want to do anything I don't enjoy. So where do I actually get the money from to live and enjoy working? Sooner or later, I'll be forced to do something I don't like, to survive, or have to despise smoething I do like because I do it for money.

I hate money! Every time I have more than I immediately need, I get stressed, because I have to decide how best to use it. The more mony I have, the more stressed I am because there's more to manage. I just wish I could pay someone to go shopping for me (but then they would have to find out what I like, etc.). Not that I don't like shopping.
Imagine if I won a million dollars! I'd have a nervous breakdown!

Most people are in the same boat. Trying to figure out ways to make money so that they don't have to worry about trying to figure out ways to make money anymore. It's called retirement. I suppose you only get to do what you want when you've learnt to grow up.

But now that I have enough money to live properly, it's the strangest thing. I'm suddenly worried about how I'm going to get more of it. It seems I'm afraid of going back. There were times when I had no money for food etc, and I never worried about it then.

I suppose I'm just going to have to get over my fear/hatred of money, and learn to trust God and do what I was born to do regardless of whether I have too much or too little money at any time.

The means justifies the reward.

Happy Birthday Xavier!

2006-05-04T06:11:00.000+10:00

My cousin had a baby boy today (3/5/2006). You'll hear more about him and his older sister in future posts.

AGMF

2006-04-25T12:07:00.000+10:00

I originally wrote a super long post about AGMF (Australian Gospel Music Festival), but I actually want you to read it all, so I've made a short version, so I'm sorry if I go too fast and loose you. I left out a lot of unbelievable stuff, and I left out a lot of explanations, and each time I have instead made the comment, "(ask me about it)" so that if you really want to know, you can leave a comment and ask me, and I'll blog a bit more about it. Noof, Gloria and SuperTiph have blogged about AGMF too, and they even have pictures!

A while ago, Pete warned me that AGMF was orientated around music I didn't appreciate, and that my camping there may be pointless. Although there was some truth behind Pete's concern (ask me about it), I didn't really see this as a major issue when I decided to go. I didn't go for the music, and so it didn't affect my attitude to AGMF or my expectations of it.
So if I didn't go for the music, what did I go for? It was a music festival after all.
Well, I was hoping AGMF would be a little bit like Big Camp. Big Camp is a camp my church runs every year in September for ten days. Thousands of people stay there in tents and caravans, and thousands more show up everyday, and especially on the weekends. There are several big tents with church services and workshops. It's all free, except for hiring a tent, buying food, and the kids going on excursions in busses to things like Wet'n'Wild (all three are optional).
I love Big Camp, because I have thousands of friends there, and I get to have a reunion with them every year. Ask anyone who's spent any time with me at Big Camp, and they'll tell you that I know almost everyone there (they'll exaggerate it to "everyone"). I spend my ten tiny days running around trying to catch up with as many people as possible.

I was hoping AGMF would be a bit like Big Camp, and also I felt God had work for me there. There were some other things that appealed to me too.

- I don't know everyone at AGMF, so I can make a lot more new friends there than I can at Big Camp.
- At Big Camp, I always get frowned upon for running from one big tent to the other, but I understand that at AGMF, that's what's expected.
- I didn't expect to be interested in what was going on in the big tents, so that would give me more time for people.
- The people wouldn't always be in the big tents, so they would have more time for me.
- People would be a younger age group than the adult dominated Big Camp.
- Big camp is not during the uni holidays, whereas AGMF is.

The main reason I went though, was because I had this picture of it in my mind and a feeling that God had work for me to do there (ask me about it).

So the day before AGMF started, when I found out it was on (I didn't even know the holidays were coming up), I told Noof I would go, and she made all the arrangements. Thanks Noof!

It was Passover when Pete and I left for AGMF. We picked up Gloria and went to Pete's house in Toowoomba to pick up some things including the tent we would be staying in. I was wearing my dressing gown, of course. My excuse being that it was one less item to pack.
I flapped my 'wings' and said what I always say when I'm excited, "I can fly!" Gloria said that my dressing gown sounded like the wings of a bat and was scary. We escaped any corny vampire/Batman puns and made it to the camp site.
I was shocked! I had promised myself I wouldn't compare AGMF to Big Camp, and I certainly wasn't expecting there to be even a quarter of the people as at Big Camp, but there were so few! I assumed that it was because we were early. I said, "I've changed my mind. I'm going home. I'm overwhelmed by the number of people. I'm not getting out of the car and you can't make me."
After we set up the tents an unforeseeable thing happened, leaving me emotionally drained (ask me about it).
I tried to get out of it by hanging around people hoping someone could pull be out of it, but "A man who has friends must himself be friendly" (Proverbs 18:24) and my pathetic attempt to reach out to anyone was draining me of the little emotional energy I had left, making things worse. I didn't learn my lesson though, and did this to myself several more times throughout AGMF. Sorry guys.
On one such occasion, Pete took us on a tour, and Gloria told me to have a flying race but I said, "It wouldn't be fair because I can actually fly." Of course I didn't feel like I could fly at all, and I was just being cryptic to get out of spoiling anyone's fun. What I was actually referring to, was the Penguin Story (ask me about it) which didn't relate to what was going on at all.

1st Day of Unleavened Bread

I was wondering how to motivate myself to get out and about, and I was introduced to Josh. I jokingly asked, "Are you here to cheer me up?" So he took me into the expo. Almost immediately I got straight into Big Camp mode. After checking out all the things at the expo, which was actually bigger than the one at Big camp, I started walking around making as many new friends as I could. Anyone who made eye contact with me got an introduction.
I wanted to make enough friends to justify paying so much to come, and to justify paying so much to come next year to see them again. But as I didn't know whether I would meet enough people to come next year, I didn't know if I was wasting my time meeting them. So I decided to just go full throttle anyway.
A friend of mine was with me when I did this, but got embarrassed by it, so I frequently abandoned my friends (sorry guys), knowing that I could find them again at any time.
Now there is this 'ability' I have at Big Camp to find the person I'm looking for in a crowd of ten thousand within minutes of my arrival. I thought I wouldn't need this 'ability' so much at AGMF, because there weren't that many people, but I was wrong. Besides this, since Big Camp, I have learnt to tell when God is talking to me so much more, that when I was reminded of this 'ability', I realised that it was no 'ability' of mine at all, and that God is simply telling me what I want to know. I'm shocked that I didn't see this before, as I always pray that I'll find the people I'm looking for. Less and less faith I have in our 'abilities', and more and more I believe that God wants to talk to us about even the little things if we ask Him. So before I started 'using this ability' at AGMF, I decided to trust God and rely only on Him.
Well! I found the people I was looking for all right! I even found people I wasn't sure were at AGMF when I asked God if they were! I ran away from people all the time with full confidence that I'd find them again. This didn't take as much faith, though, as some other things God had me doing at AGMF, which really required me to walk in faith in a bigger way than I'm used to.
This is also not the only reason I abandoned people. I wanted to make sure at every step of the way that I knew what God wanted me to do, so I would constantly slip away and ask Him.

2nd Day of Unleavened Bread

That night, my friends and I were sitting listening to some band playing. As I was only there for the company of my friends, I asked God if He had something more constructive for me to do. He asked me, "How much longer are you going to avoid the music issue?" I asked God a lot of questions about music that night. He gave me some answers that I still have to think about (don't ask me about it).
It was this next day or the day before that Channel 9 tried to interview me. By the time I told them, as politely as I could, that I didn't want to, they had almost finished setting up the tripod. They were very frustrated. But I have a habit of staying away from the media on issues that I don't consider myself an expert on (which includes just about everything), and I still didn't know what to think of AGMF, but I wanted to give it a chance to impress me, before giving any opinions of it away to anyone, let alone the media!
Also there was another incident just outside the entrance that day that tempted me to give a premature opinion of AGMF to some people who couldn't attend, and had a view of what went on inside, which I later gradually found to be quite distorted from the truth. At the time I identified with them because all the Gospel presentation I had seen on stage had been shallow and incomplete, with more of an effort to work up the crowds than to present the truth.
In the meantime, my friends told me they were going to see a movie and I thought I owed it to them to tag along, so I told them I would meet them while they were having lunch. When I met them, they told me which movie they were watching, and I really didn't want to pay to see it, but I did. I was taking too long to finish my lunch so I told them I'd meet them inside, and they said they'd save me a seat. I finished my lunch and ran to catch the movie, but the lady collecting the tickets stopped me.

"I'm sorry, I can't let you in until you put your shoes on."
"Oh. But I don't have my shoes here."
"Well I can't let you in then."
"What should I do?"
"Go find the manager, and she'll refund your money."

"Well!" I thought, "I don't have to waste my money on the movie after all, and who wants to waste AGMF time watching movies anyway?" But I felt guilty that my seat was being saved, so I sat down and asked God what to do. He pointed out that I had made the lady feel guilty, when I was in the wrong, and that I had a chance to apologise if I went back in. So I went downstairs and bought some thongs (in Australia you wear them on your feet). I didn't mind missing part of the movie, because I didn't care much for the story anyway (which is rare for me, but it's been happening more and more lately).

3rd Day of Unleavened Bread

That night, the mainstage was packed! We went to the mosh pit where I didn't want to be, so I asked God where I would find certain friends. He said I would if I were to walk up the hill to the very back of the crowd and walk dead down the middle and turn right. I didn't want to do this just yet, because I was too embarrassed. So I just sat on the top of the hill with my back to the crowd, talking to God about other things.
It was then that God mucked up all my plans by telling me to later do something very simple and very big (don't ask me about it).
He also said that I would be relying less and less on confirmations, and learn more and more to hear what God was saying in the Spirit and act on it, and that I would learn to be ready and listening when I wasn't asking questions.
I said, "Well! I need to go for a walk! Who should I find now?"
"Matthew"
"But I'm Mathieu"
Then I looked behind me and Matthew S. was walking along the outside of the crowd right behind me. So I joined him and met his brother.
Then I went back to the back of the crowd, and this guy came up on the screen. As soon as I saw him, I thought, "Well his makeup would make him look like a sicko to a lot of people I know, but this guy loves Jesus."
Then I did what I was supposed to do before. To the right from the middle of the crowd I found some friends. Then the ones I was looking for came out of the mosh pit to join us.
The guy I had seen was from the Newsboys. His message wasn't shallow at all, and I was really happy. At one stage, I even did the whole jumping up and down thingy. I think it was because he said something like "Jump if you love Jesus!"
Right after the concert, a lady came up to me and yelled, "Reach out to people!"
All the way to the next big tent, every child I passed, and a few adults, gracefully poked me in the back right after I'd walked by. I assumed one of the bands must have started some sort of "reach out to people and poke them in the back" campaign.
The next day, (still the 3rd day, as the evening comes before the morning - Genesis 1:5) I had breakfast with Lindsay. We had a really encouraging conversation, and we were in the restaurant half the day, until a wall divider of some sort fell on top of me. The poles fell exactly on either side of me so that I wasn't hurt.
Up to this time, I was still talking to as many strangers as I could.
Later that day, God impressed me to talk to a guy sitting under a tree. So later when I was near him, I went and introduced myself. He invited me to sit beside him and said, "I was just thinking about my flatmate, Matthew, when you came and told me your name. We read Bible verses and watched the sun set. As we talked, every person I knew from Student Life walked by.

4th Day of Unleavened Bread

I said goodbye to my new friend, 'found' some other friends and sat with them at evening church service, which most of the churches in Toowoomba joined for free (packed again). Then I ran and got my dressing gown, as it was freezing and the meanest looking storm seemed to be brewing. I grabbed some more friends and reunited them with the others.
We heard this guy give some absolutely brilliant alliterations on Jesus' first miracle and the sermon on the mount. I wish I had it on video!
We watched the all time best powerpoint presentation of the gospel I have ever seen (although I didn't necessarily agree with all the doctrines mentioned, it was still the best presentation of the truth of the Gospel I've seen on Powerpoint yet)!
My friends joined a bush dance, while I mostly sat and watched, after running around doing other things.
Then in the Metro tent, definitely my best memory from AGMF, Noof and Janelle did karaoke, singing "I believe I can fly". Brilliant!
Then we went and listened to Scat at the Fancy Pants Ball. Finally some talent, and something closer to music (I missed the Hymns of Praise in the Empire Theatre, so don't ask me what I thought of them). Scat invited people to get onto the stage and have dance competitions.
During the performance, they invited a couple up onto the stage, and God said to me, "Watch this! Something special will happen between these two."
I thought, "What could possibly happen? Will they dance really close to each other?"
Then someone (was it Craig?) said, "I'll bet these guys are really good. Let's just ask this guy to say something. I'll bet they can improvise on the spot."
"Oh wow!" I thought, "He's going to propose!"
And he did!

That night I decided to go to bed late so I could wake up early, because I didn't want to be asleep while people were packing. So after a conversation where Lindsay admitted to shaking the girls' tent during the night, I went off for a wander.
I bumped into a friend of a friend, and he told me a different version of a joke that I had already just heard for the first time that day.
Then some guy came and spewed right next to us.
Then I met some people who had played at AGMF, and one of them tried to clean up the spew.
I commented on the pirate flag that had been on one of the tents, that I would love to get the same one for my brother, but I noticed it wasn't there anymore.
I met some more people, and some of them promised to email me.
Then, while I was visiting our camp site, I heard the girls talking, and decided to do be very unoriginal. "They'll know it's me." I thought, "So I won't have to worry about scaring them too much." and shook the tent.
When I ran away, I noticed three teenage boys following me. They tried to... well... fight me, or something. It really wasn't much of an effort. They were convinced that I had stolen their pirate flag. There were more of them now, and they had changed their mind. They told their 'leader' to leave me alone, but he was too proud. So I made a joke of it all, and then introduced myself.
"What? You think I'm going to shake your hand? I'm not going to touch your hand!"
How rude!
The next morning I got packed and sat in the sun at 6am.
We took all the tents down (Gloria's while she was in it), and the wind began to blow over the whole tarpaulin just before we started to take it down. Talk about perfect timing! If we had had that wind earlier in AGMF, we'd have been in big trouble! The pole fell right beside a certain friend's brother in just the same way the wall divider had fallen around me the day before.
We left AGMF (yes, that's right. This is the part of the story where it's all over) and met at Macca's.

I took three helium balloons with me. I had a parody in my head, and I wanted to sing it, but I wasn't sure if it would be raining on Noof and Janelle's parade. I had a quick prayer, and opened my bible. It said,

My heart is overflowing with a good theme; I recite my composition concerning the King; My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. - Psalms 45:1 (NKJV)

That was enough for me, so I stood up and undid the balloons and sucked in the helium, "Sllluuurrp!"

I believe I can fly,
But I don't think you can touch the sky.
It only seems to exist by day,
And then by night it just flies away.

(Sllluuurrp!)

I believe I'll be sore,
If that's not an open door,
But I'll run through it as fast as I can,
'Cause God told me that that's the plan.

(Sllluuurrp!)

I believe I'm a fly.

I didn't really know the real lyrics, so I couldn't do a proper parody.

5th Day of Unleavened Bread

That night, Pete, Gloria and I watched a movie at Gloria's house.
After that, I went crazy! I tried to teach the art of sliding down the stairs on a sleeping bag (although I had to use my dressing gown instead). Then we went shopping, where I claimed my shopping trolley had decided that it wanted to play with the other shopping trolleys, and I ran around thinking up ways to get arrested but let off again (although not trying them out).
Then we went back to Gloria's house where Pete cooked dinner and we decided to take a misleading photo (Well I must have been cooking, because I'm sunburnt!).

After dinner, we went for a walk.
The next day, I tried to blog, but found that acting so impulsively had really changed my way of thinking during AGMF, because I couldn't remember anything that happened! I'm having trouble remembering even now, but other things I can remember easily. At the time though, I could hardly remember any of my life at all!

6th Day of Unleavened Bread

That night, I still felt really peaceful, like the world didn't need me for a while, and that none of the mistakes in my past had any bearing on who I was. I couldn't remember the past, and I had no idea what the future was about at all. It was blank in both directions. I was on the internet, and God said, "Wait for it... Now!" And then I did the very simple big thing. The instant it was finished, the internet stopped working. I couldn't connect for days afterwards (hence no blogging), and later found out that I was blocked, and shouldn't have been able to use the internet that night at all. The whole thing was a miracle! That night, before I went to bed, God said in an audible voice, "I love you." This has only happened 4 times before in my lifetime that I can recall! You might think it was a hypnagogic hallucination, but I have no doubt that it wasn't.

7th Day of Unleavened Bread

On the last day of Unleavened Bread, within half an hour, I did the first half of the wackiest thing that kept getting postponed. The wild animals are chasing me now.

Later the same day, God took me to a special place and got me to think about some of the changes He's been making in my life. God has been taking away from me a complex that didn't make any sense no matter how I tried to explain it.
If someone tried to give me advice, and I didn't agree with it, I would do it anyway just to prove that they were wrong, and then they would think I hadn't followed their advice, but had done it my way and that that's why it didn't work, and the only person I proved myself right to was myself, and I already knew that I was right to begin with, and the only person who got hurt was me, and no one benefited from my own advice.
Why did I used to do this? Because although I want people to know the truth, I have a problem with being a torchbearer for it, because I know that I'm fallible and I'm afraid of ruining Truth's image. So if I do the wrong thing and fail miserably, so that people would know the truth but not put me on a pedestal. I haven't been doing this conciously, but after some holy therapy, I realised that this was the subconcious reason behind my irrational rediculous behaviour.
But by doing this, I have not really been on God's side at all.
So in this special place, God showed me that He has begun to take that complex away and pointed out to me that I haven't been so spineless anymore, thanks to Him, and I have been standing up for the truth.
Here's the thing. God wants to use fallible human beings to spread His Gospel. God even uses the sins of non-Christians to glorify Himself. No matter who does what, God will still be glorified (Philippians 1:18, 1 Peter 4:14).

If you are on God's side, He will be glorified at His expense.
If you are not on God's side, He will be glorified at your expense.

I've now decided more completely to stay in the spotlight and stand up for the truth with no reservations, despite my own flaws. Which side will you choose?

Happy Passover!

2006-04-13T14:49:00.000+10:00

Today is Passover. Pete and I celebrated it last night. I was impressed, because Pete didn't protest to me throwing out all his leavened bread (about three slices). The other day I was walking home, and God said, "Buy bread." I forgot that Passover was coming up, so I said, "Well I don't feel like I need bread, but I'll buy two loaves." Then last night I realised I had to get rid of all the bread for Passover and said, "Stupid me! Now I have to throw out two loaves of bread!" Then I remembered that I had only bought them because God had said to. So I ran downstairs and gave them to my neighbour, and old lady, who happened to have just run out of bread and didn't know what to do for food over Easter. Praise God!
After Passover, Pete and I watched the Passion of the Christ.

I found out yesterday afternoon that I was going to AGMF so I probably won't be able to blog for the next three or four days, but I'll make up for it when I get back tell you all about my new experience. I've never been to AGMF before. I'm not really interested in the music, but I'm hoping it'll be like a certain camp I go to every year where I get to make a thousand new friends every day and then see them every year. I don't really know what I'm getting myself into.

I haven't explained much of what I'm talking about, because I'm supposed to be packed and out the door, but leave a comment and I'll fill you in.

Happy Passover, and enjoy the next seven days of Unleavened Bread!

Easter is Usefull

2006-04-12T00:08:00.000+10:00

According to my calendar, it will be Passover this Thursday. I'm hoping to invite some people to share the experience on Wednesday night.

Around Easter time, we who are in Student Life make the most of the opportunity by running around uni with short quizzes about Easter. We also hand out Easter eggs.
Each time I have done this in the last two weeks, the response has been absolutely fantastic!
Here are some of the true/false questions with their answers:

4. Jesus predicted his death and resurrection many times. true (Mark 8:31; 10:32-33).
5. Three days after his death, Jesus came back to life and subsequently he appeared to more than 500 eyewitnesses. true (1 Corinthians 15:6)
6. If I try to live a good life, God will let me into heaven. false
7. Jesus claimed that there is more than one way to know God and get to heaven. false (John 14:6)
8. Jesus was a great moral teacher and never claimed to be God. false (John 10:30-33; 14:9) (Exodus 3:14, John 8:58)
9. God loves each one of us, and created us to have a personal relationship with him. true (John 3:16)
10.A Christian is one who has asked for forgiveness for not following God 100%, and has given control of their life to Jesus. true (Romans 10:9)

The questions people usually get wrong are questions 6-8. Question 6 being the most notorious.

All religions teach that if you do your best in this life you will survive into the next. The Bible, however, does not teach this. The Bible teaches that God is perfect (Matthew 5:48) and that we must be that way to be with Him. But we all have sinned or rebelled in some way (Romans 3:23). It doesn't matter how good we try to be, it will never get us into heaven (Ephesians 2:8-9). This is why Jesus sacrificed His life for us, so that anyone who chooses can accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour. Every time God looks at a Christian He sees Jesus' perfection rather than our filth (Isaiah 64:6). In the meantime, Jesus constantly transforms us to be more like Him (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Question 7 was really not much better answered. Jesus claimed that He Himself is the only way to God. Not even His teachings, but He Himself. (John 14:6)

Question 8 was almost as badly answered as 6. Jesus did claim to be God several times. He didn't run around shouting, "I'm God, all hail me!" everywhere He went. He obviously didn't intend to be killed too early to be able to say anything else or perform any miracles. He did say that He was God several times though, and this was the reason He was eventually tortured and killed.
Now if Jesus wasn't God, then He could hardly be a great moral teacher. He would have to either be a fruitcake (who performed huge miracles and taught impacting truths) or a liar (who died for His claims). In order for Jesus to have been a great moral teacher, He would also have to be God.

Nightlife was grand tonight as well. We had an egg hunt. I met a lot of new people. I liked all the music, which is a rare thing for me. A guy called Ross spoke tonight about being less materialistic, less spiritual, and more practical and serving. Well maybe not less spiritual, but we shouldn't be neglecting a focus on serving physically. You know what I mean.
Obviously the Holy Spirit was speaking to me, because just before the speech, the thought popped into my head that I sometimes try to make life better for myself to make it seem more attractive to others, knowing full well that people are more concerned with how they are treated before worrying about how much they have to give up. People are attracted to people who sacrifice themselves to treat them better, and they are inspired by those same people. And here we are, worried that people are afraid that we'll make Christianity look less appealing if we're being walked all over.

I had an exam today which I studied for this morning, and I have another one tomorrow which I'll study for tonight... hopefully... maybe.

The Wacky Day Got Whacked!

2006-04-07T00:06:00.000+10:00

Today, Thursday, was scheduled to be my wacky day. Three wacky things are supposed to happen every Thursday. That I can cope with.
Today though one of those wacky things was really going to be wacky. I mean I wasn't sure if I was going to come out ok. In fact, it really didn't look good.
Friday was also scheduled to have three wacky things happen. This is not the norm, and I was getting worried. I don't know if I can cope with two days straight of intense wackiness.
But yesterday was already a wacky day! I knew I wasn't going to cope with this wacky week.
On Wednesday I had not slept, because I was preparing for Thursday. This was affecting me and my attitude, and I should have got consideration (a medical certificate saying I couldn't be stuffed, but I couldn't be stuffed) to cancel my prac from 3-6pm for a biology subject I managed to skip in first year. I was having a very tough time taking it seriously.

First of all, I had to take my labcoat off before I got near the building. Then when I got inside the lab, I had to put it back on again (knowing that before I left, I would have to take it back off, and could only put it on again after I was a long way away from the building). Physics and Maths students don't generally use labcoats for anything. I generally always wear mine for cosmetic reasons. But this is a biology subject, and it has other purposes for my labcoat which causes a conflict of interests for me. I should bring two labcoats to the prac, and then I would be completely in the right. I have at least five of them anyway.

We were told that we wouldn't get the details of the prac explained to us, because we already knew about it, having no doubt studied for the exam on it for next Tuesday. What exam? They're teasing right? They didn't mention this in the first two lectures of the semester. How was I supposed to hear about it?

Then we had to use a Bunsen burner to heat up a root tip. I got my partner to do that part because my beard was scared. Some guy got a flaming three foot high flame which he refused to turn down (or go anywhere near) when the supervisor told him to.

Then we had to look at the root tip under a microscope. My microscope, of course, didn't work. When your supervisor starts fiddling with the knobs and says, "Let's see what this one does..." You know it's time your lab partner used his microscope instead. So we did.

"Hey!" he said, "Mine works great! Take a look! I can see something!" So I did, but I was having trouble focusing. "Er, maybe you should take your safety glasses off first, mate." So I did.

"Ahhhh!" I yelled, "The microscope stabbed me in the eye!" People actually came to the rescue, so I didn't add, "I'm gonna sue!"

"It's ok, he's just being stupid!"

So I looked into the microscope again, and gasped, "Oh wow!" It was all purple! Then I realised that we had just soaked the root tip in purple dye before putting it on the slide.

After fooling around with the equipment, we had to write a lab report. Well, actually, most of the report had already been done for us in the booklet, and in the parts that hadn't, all we usually had to do was just fill in blanks or write something like, "See page 36 of lab manual." or doodle pictures of what we saw under the microscope. There was a little opportunity to write a conclusion, and all I could think of was, "The cells were purple, but otherwise boring." Then I realised that writing nothing would attract much less attention, and that the supervisor would not notice and give me full marks. It worked, of course. I got marks taken off though, for not putting the microscope away properly (that's another story). The vultures!

A girl in our group didn't know how to draw the cells, so I said, "Just draw what you see. Draw a circle and say 'That's what I see.'" The supervisor later told her to write in the report that the results didn't fit her hypothesis possibly because she had a character flaw or because her eyes were developing a new strand of cataracts.

After the prac, I had an hour before I had to be at Jess H's farewell party. So I printed out my 10 page physics assignment which I had written before we were told about it, and handed it in, even though it was due at 10am.

I was feeling pretty good, but then pretty miserable because Jess was leaving us. I only just found out about it when I was invited to the party the night before.

I was pretty depressed when I got home, but realised that I needed to knuckle down and get prepared for the wackiest thing that was happening the next day (today). I stayed up late getting prepared. And wait for it... I finished what I started! I felt really good again, because now I knew I could face the wackiness with full confidence, although the last of Thursday's wacky things was going to suffer for it. So I went to bed at 7:30am (after telling Pete, who had just woken up, that I shouldn't go to bed at all, and I was going to pay), got up at 10:30am, and ran to meet my first wacky thing after I realised I had left my bike at uni.

The first wacky thing got cancelled. The replacement events went smoothly. I was prepared anyway.

The super wacky thing that I've been preparing my guts out for every night the last two weeks also got cancelled.

Because the super wacky thing got cancelled, I got to prepare for the last wacky thing, and that went very well.

Today went very smoothly, and I'm very disappointed! Stay out of my way if you don't want to get whacked!

I had to be content just watching other people do wacky things today:

Repeatedly pressing the button for the light to turn green to give it the message that it is to blame for the existence of time, and making the person who pushed it last feel like whatever they do isn't good enough. And then running across the road while it's still red anyway. (This is why I don't push the button at all. I have my own methods of stress relief).

People trying to help other people to get their ID card to register when swiping it along the scanner by telling them to turn it around the other way, when the person has obviously already thought of that, and tried swiping it in all 16 possible ways plus 1 at least twice each, and even tried reading the instructions on the machine. And then other people joining in to help in case no one else has thought to tell the poor clueless guy to turn it around the other way. And then all fighting over who has the magic touch to make it work if they try it themselves the same way. And then trying their own card, and realising that it can't be the clueless guy's fault because then they look pretty stupid, so it's now time to teach the machine not to make a fool of them again and they (along with the rest of the crowd that's now gathered) bash it up until it's inspired to work, while one person goes to keep watch, another person goes to be the fiftieth guy to tell the people at the help desk that the machine's malfunctioning (possibly from being bashed up by someone who didn't think to turn their card around) and another person goes to ring security and another person goes to use a different machine.

Tomorrow there are still three wacky things waiting for me to straighten them out.

After having been filled with so much dread, things are really easy for me lately, thanks to the prayers people have prayed for me today, and I'm not really disappointed. I'm really thankful and fearful. Otherwise I wouldn't still be praying about tomorrow and next week when the wackiness is scheduled to catch up.

Café Night.

2006-04-05T00:51:00.000+10:00

We had a special Nightlife tonight. It was a café with free food, coffee and jazz. It was great night! Very professional! You should have come! The music was fantastic! The people were fantastic! The food was fantasitc! The drinks were fantastic (I had a raspberry spider)! The speaker was fantastic! Steve Drinkall from Rhubarb gave his testimony, which included some mild apologetics. There were lots of people, and they talked far into the night.
I accidently left my bag inside before the building was locked up, but the cleaning lady was there, and she let me back in to get it.
On the way home, I met some people who warned their friends to jump off the train because their mate had just been arrested.

The Other Day.

2006-04-05T00:49:00.000+10:00

The other day, Pete had to bury Billy.

The other day I Googled "Mathieu Padget" to see if Google had read my blog yet. Yay! It works! But I got more than I bargained for! Try this: Google "Padget Mathieu" with the quotation marks and see what happens!

I'm awake!

2006-04-05T00:17:00.000+10:00

"Stop shaking me! I'm not ready to wake up just yet."

"That has nothing to do with it."

"But I haven't had a proper recovery. I just need a tinsy winsy little bit more rest, and it'll make all the difference to my performance here. I'll be able to do so much more. I talk too much, don't I?"

"This is not about you and your performance, it's about the opportunity you have, and being there in time to make the most of it. You don't have as much time as you think you do."

"Can't I have just one more dream? I know, I know!"

Later

"Hey! Reality's pretty good hey! I'm glad I'm awake! I wouldn't want to miss this. I can always sleep when night comes, but there's no guarantee I can work tomorrow."

Blogging is Usefull

2006-04-03T21:09:00.000+10:00

I had an assignment due today, which is for a subject I did last year but had to defer. The only question that is the same as one in last year's one, is the only one I got wrong last year, so I thought I'd pull an all-nighter last night. I stayed up watching TV until 4am and then went to bed. The assignment was due at midday today, but I didn't make it, so then I thought I'd try to get it finished and into the pidgin hole before it's emptied at 5pm.
Now it's 9:30, and I thought I'd blog about it because I've run out of other ways to procrastinate. I hope my lecturer doesn't read this blog, because he'll find out why only a quarter of my assignment turns up on his desk tomorrow.

Let's Have A Picnic!

2006-04-02T14:49:00.000+10:00

An ice-cream truck patrolled our street today, very loudly playing the tune of the Teddy Bears' Picnic. I wanted to run out and buy an ice-cream right then and catch up on some of my deprived childhood. No, don't worry, I chased lots of ice-cream vans growing up, but I haven't seen one for so long! Maybe the world is becoming too safe to let its children run out on the street anymore, or maybe I'm just living in the wrong area now. What do you think?

I soon realised that I couldn't remember all the words to the Teddy Bears' Picnic. So I Googled it and came up with an adorable presentation:

http://12121.hostinguk.com/teddybears.htm

There were only a few words that I needed help remembering from when I used to listen to my record, There's A Hippo In My Tub by Anne Murray which I was brought up on from a good young age.

History lesson: A record is like a giant black CD, which is read by actually making contact with a needle (sounds crude, I know).

Now you know how I know all the good parts of the lyrics to You Are My Sunshine.

Love Yourself As Your Enemy

2006-04-01T02:54:00.000+10:00

I've realised that up until a little while ago, I've had a very warped view of love.

Somehow, without realising it, I have learned to love my enemies more than my friends. What I mean by this, is that the more I am mistreated, the more kindness I'll show in return, and if I am shown kindness I shy away, and if I am treated too kindly, I'll even bite back as if to say, "How dare you! I'll teach you!" and sometimes I've been really nasty. I don't think that's love at all.

The whole time I didn't really have a chance to analyse this. I would just stay away from people who loved me, and hang out with my enemies 24/7, so the whole time I thought I was full of love. I thought this was the way to go, because:

"Jesus answered and said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." - Luke 5:31 (Matthew 9:12, Mark 2:17)

But do I really love?

"For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."" - Galatians 5:14 (Leviticus 19:18, Leviticus 19:34, Matthew 19:19, Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:9, James 2:8)

If I were to love my neighbour the way I love myself, he would be starving and I wouldn't feed him. Instead, I would accuse him of being indulgent. He would be tired and I wouldn't let him sleep. Instead, I would accuse him of being lazy. Everytime he made a mistake I would tell him he was an idiot and curse and swear at him. I would constantly bring up everything he ever did wrong and never forgive him for it. Everytime he did a good job, I would accuse him of having a big head about it. Every basic need he had I would ignore and give something else higher priority.

No wonder I seemed to love my enemies more than I loved my friends! No such limit as love for self was was put on love for my enemies. Jesus said,

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'
"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you," Matthew 5:43-48 (Luke 6:27,35)

But is my behaviour what Jesus wants?

41 "Then He will also say to those on the left hand, 'Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 'for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink;
43 'I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.'
44 "Then they also will answer Him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?'
45 "Then He will answer them, saying, 'Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.'
46 "And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." - Matthew 25:41-46

So obviously, I have to learn to love myself. I was made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), and to mistreat myself the way I used to do is an abomination.

How can I claim to love anyone if don't love myself? How can I do to others as I would have them do to me (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31) if I don't know how to treat myself?

I suppose it's sort of the same principle as:

If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? - 1 John 4:20

Or, this is a stretch, I know, but you could also apply the next two principles to this wild idea of loving yourself to understand how to love others.

"Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also." - Matthew 23:26

"Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." - Matthew 7:5

I know that's not really what those last two verses are about.

What if you wanted to get married? How hypocritical to ask someone to love you if you don't do so yourself! How could you claim to love them?

"So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself." - Ephesians 5:28

Well, I hope this is not missunderstood and I have not caused someone who has no trouble looking out for number one to justify finding himself listed in 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

"For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy," - 2 Timothy 3:2

Weather Controlled Sick Days

2006-04-01T02:51:00.000+10:00

It was raining today. I've noticed that when it's raining it's very easy to find a free computer in the labs at uni. How is it that in the three years I've been at uni this same coincidence keeps presenting itself? The labs are always so busy every day until it rains, and then hardly anyone seems to be at uni. The lecturers must schedule their timetables around the weather so that students need not come when it's wet or something.

Happy New Year 5766!

2006-03-31T01:52:00.000+10:00

Happy New Year!

Today is the first day of the 5766th Biblical New Year according to the Karaite Jews.

I have shaved my hair for the occasion! This is so I can easily keep track of how long it takes to grow.
One of my resolutions is to blog almost every day from now on.

I have made my own version of a html based representation of this month.
Just remember the days read from right to left, otherwise you could get horribly confused, and don't worry about the Hebrew writing, I'm sure you're smart enough to piece together what it says.
The cross represents Passover, and the other seven icons represent the Days of Unleavend Bread.
I may use it to link the days to the posts for this month if I feel like it.
If you want to print it out, I recommend using Firefox or Mozilla and setting it to landscape and to print background colours.

The Biblical Calendar uses the phases of the moon for months as they were origionally intended for, and the Abib to begin the years. The months and years don't start on the same days as they do in the Gregorian Calendar that you'll be used to.

The year 5766AM is supposed to be anno mundi (Latin for "Year of the World"), but I think it's probably out by a few hundred years, but it's not important to know which year you are in to celebrate the feasts, and the Bible didn't keep count of the years like that.

Abib 5766

2006-03-31T01:35:00.000+10:00

2006-03-22T02:10:00.000+10:00

Dear fortunate readers of my fantastical blog,

I love you!

Thanks for reading my stuff!

Today, we shall talk about... everything!

There's so much catching up to do in so little time. I would have said that the other way around so I could say Willy Wonka's "Wait! Strike that! Reverse it!" But I fear nobody would know what I'm talking about now that the new movie has come out with Johnny Depp, who totally killed Willy Wonka, but I'll talk about that some other day, as there will be plenty of time for movie reviews in the future.

I now have a computer! This means I can blog 'till my heart's content. Beginning from 31st of March 2006 I will blog almost every day. This means that my posts will be shorter, and you will love me more. This is not one of those posts. This is catchup time!

Where do I start? Well, the present moment is a reasonably relevant spot, and then let's work backward from there shall we?

Like I said, I have a computer. My brilliant father heard about my frequent abuse of the library computers and got his friends to make me a computer out of parts that they literally found in the trash. I was given it today, and now I have a computer that is better than the ones at uni! Yay! (I'm jumping up and down for the 100000nth time as we speak) Ouch! Well, that's that piece of news. I won't comment further on it, because we'll never get through it all.

I've lost my memory stick. If you happen to see a memory stick lying around, even if it appears to belong to someone else, pleeease check and make sure it isn't mine. Here's a clue: It's grey. Oh, and it's missing a lid. It now has zero of them.
All summer, I worked on two things. The first one was to compile all my research so that I could start writing my book. The other thing was supposed to be actually writing my book, but it was replaced with doing all of the work for all eight uni subjects I'm taking this year. That's all the assignments, notes, cram notes, even prac writeups, yes, it's possible. All this work was done on my memory stick. And now, just as uni starts, I've lost everything. I found the last backup CD of my memory stick, and it has everything until just before I started my intense summer preparation. I have no backup (If I had a backup, I wouldn't have lost the memory stick would I?). And now I don't think I have the energy to do uni in even the usual way, because I didn't get my Summer holliday.
But wait! There's still more bad news! Do you want to hear it? Of course you do! But I won't tell. Let's just say that I could be kicked out of uni in the next two weeks, and if not then, then they have another chance at the end of this semster, and that's when they'll really put their foot down.
Man, I'm glad I didn't tell you the bad news, I don't think you could have handled it all!

So what am I doing at uni? Physics and Maths. And why am I doing that? I keep telling people I have no idea. If I have no idea, then why am I wasting all this time and energy? Most people who are in a position to counsel me, and all my friends who have known me from before uni have told me to give up. Actually they tell me all the time. I have dyslexia, which is severe in some ways and nonexistent in others (I can read (usually) but not write fast enough to get through exams). There have been a lot of people who have tried to keep me from getting into uni, and there was a prayer group who fervantly prayed that I would fail, and give up (but I don't know how to give up, and I don't want to learn, so I started my own prayer group). And all I can come up with is a lame, "I don't know what I'm going to do when I have this piece of paper... I just like the subjects." Well actually, I know exactly why I'm here, but it's so beyond what anyone expects, that I couldn't begin to explain it. So I don't, and I won't.
So what am I going to do when I finish uni? That's a stupid question, and I'm not answering that one either, even though I'm the one who just asked it, but you can't guilt trip me with that one. Instead, let's look at all the things I'm going to do before I finish uni (not in any particular order):

Write the first book out of 5-7 in a series of science fiction fantasy novels.
Co-write the first three books of a related series.
Get my letters in music.
Learn Hebrew and Greek.
Compose music better than Mozart, Bach or Beethoven (somebody has to).
Make two movies that no one will understand.
Build a flying saucer, and some other gadgets I won't mention here.
Completely replace Einstein's theory of the universe, life and everything.
Write a book on prophecy that will make everyone hate me.
Write a series of computer games that will teach children to learn things that no one else will teach them.
Go on Schoolies four more times.
Get a high enough GPA and reputation that I can do a PHD if I have to (I may need to stay at uni longer).
(There is a bigger, more important list, but it involves other people, etc. so I've censored it)

What I will likely not do before I finish uni:

Learn to drive.
Get a mobile phone.
Water the plants.
Get a job that has anything to do with anything.

Somewhere, I'll bet in the first list, I've lost your trust that I am for real. Well! All I can say, is, "You'll see."
Stick with me, and I'll keep you up to date on my blog.

Oops! Sorry! I said I was going to work backward from the present, wasn't I! Not forward!

I've just come home from Nightlife (Student Life's weekly meeting) and I'm excited! Connexions camp is coming up. If you didn't know about Connexions, then hurry up and sign up! Even it you're not in Australia, it's worth a try. It's on this Friday. If you need more info, ring Kris or Jon.
I was surprised to see Noof at Nightlife tonight, because she usually can't come this semester, but then I found out that she was giving the talk. I thought, "Ooh! This oughta be good!" And I was right. It was brilliant! It was like information overload without being overloaded. I wish I could do that! I'll bet you haven't even read this far, and there's more to come. Gloria gave a brilliant testimony too. She made me feel like going overseas. Tim M. was brilliant as MC, and if it was up to me, he'd be doing it every week (as long as he wanted to).

I've promised to write something entitled something like, "Did Jesus claim to be God?" for some friends of mine. I may post it on my blog.

God's really been shaking me up lately, and telling me to do some radical things. Things that could ruin things. Things that could cause me to lose everything, and everyone I care about. Things that are definitly going to change me. I'm waking up... finally. Hear that all ye people who know what I'm talking about? Mathieu's at uni, and he's waking up! This could kill me. I'll let you know how obedient I am, and whether or not I survive. I have period of probation, and it potentially ends on one of seven dates. Those seven dates are divided into 4 categories of 2 dates each. Four times two equals seven (trust me, I'm doing maths at uni) in this case, because two of the categories overlap on one of the dates, raising that date's chance of being the right one.

Let's call the categories G, B, E, and K.
G is not very likely. K I don't yet know the dates of. B and E overlap. Here are the dates that I know:

G- Friday Night, 29/4/2006
G- Friday Night, 6/5/2006

B- Eve of Monday, 24/4/2006
B&E- Eve of Sunday, 7/5/2006
E- Eve of Friday, 28/4/2006

Am I scaring you? This is not a cry for help. You will soon know what I'm talking about.

On the way back from church this week, I met a ginormous prayingmantis. I let it crawl from my arm onto the ribbon of the balloon that Tim M. had tied to my head. For some reason, it was only when it walked onto the balloon itself, that the balloon realised that it was too heavy to float above me anymore. At first I was afraid that the balloon would explode and give my new friend a nasty fright so that he would never speak to me again. But the balloon was quite happy turning around and around while the poor creature tried to claw his way to the top. We hopped on the train, and... I'll call him Billy. Billy hopped onto the glass where he climbed to the ceiling of the train as fast as he could while pretending that he wasn't moving. You know the way they go. It's all random movement with an agenda. I doubt anyone would buy that Billy was a leaf blowing in the breaze in the middle of the glass on the train though. Billy seemed to be having some trouble jumping back onto my shoulder when we came to our stop, so I gave him a hand. We walked all the way home, and the whole time I thought Billy was going to jump off my shoulder just as we walked through the door of my house. But being the optomist I am, I realised that that couldn't happen, because I expected it to. And as I put my key in the lock of my front door, looking to see if Billy would leave me, the balloon let go of the ribbon and set itself free. Probably because I neglected to give him/her a name. Billy now lives in Pete's room.

Did you like my random feature story? Ok, I should probably go to bed now, and stop playing with my super cool new computer whom I should probably name before he turns on me too. I only have one complaint about Dillan, and that is that the monitor keeps cutting out every so often. It's really annoying! Cut that out Dillan! I mean, stop cutting out! There! You just did it again!

I'll bring you the rest of the update some other time.

Remember, I love you,

Mathieu

Schoolies 2005

2006-03-22T01:41:00.000+10:00

Dear Schoolies Supporters,

Here is a list of the links to all that I've updated on Schoolies 2005:

What I will be doing.
Day 1. Schoolies Schoolies SCHOOLIES! - Friday, 18/11/2005
Day 2. Schoolies Attacked My Beard! - Saturday, 19/11/2005
Day 3. I'm Content. - Sunday, 20/11/2005
Day 4. We're the Coolies! - Monday, 21/11/2005
Day 5. It Just Keeps Getting Better! - Tuesday, 22/11/2005
Day 6. Ouch! - Wednesday, 23/11/2005
Day 7. Hairy Creepy Guy. - Thursday, 24/11/2005
Day 8. More Basketball! Friday, 25/11/2005
Day 9. The Cool Group. - Saturday, 26/11/2005
Day 10. An Exact Group. Sunday, 27/11/2005
Day 11. Thown in the Deep End. - Monday, 28/11/2005
Day 12. Poor Leadership. - Tuesday, 29/11/2005
Day 13. Date Night. - Wednesday, 30/11/2005
Day 14. An Explosion. - Thursday, 1/12/2005
Day 15. A Challenge. - Friday, 2/12/2005
Day 16. Out with a Bang! - Saturday, 3/12/2005
Day 17. Farewell. - Sunday, 4/12/2005

If you want a more concise version, Noof has written such a version:

Schoolies 05
Schoolies 05 part 2
schoolies 05 - the photos
photos! (so random)

Thank you for all your support.

Day 17. Farewell. - Sunday, 4/12/2005

2006-03-09T17:49:00.000+10:00

Today, I woke up bright and early (that's around 11am in Schoolies time). I was on a mission: To find out what happened to Rufus.
I sneaked downstairs and looked around. Right there in the kitchen, in plain sight (on display even), I found my very first clue:

Rufus!

And there, sitting beside him, there was another little clue:

His kidnapper - Bernadette.

Bernadette is yet another stuffed creature who I failed to mention in my list of suspects, she was that crafty that I forgot she existed. She is owned by Tim M.
And how do I know that Bernadette was the kidnapper? How did I crack the case? Rigorous detective work (by me) revealed a vital clue that the untrained eye may not immediately recognise as significant:

A signed confession note.
I discovered it right in front of Bernadette. It read:

I, bernadette, confess that I
kidnapped rufus.
But in the process I fell madly in
love with Roofy. Unfortuna-
tely he will not be returnd
as we are seeking a better life in Spain.

Bernadette

Later on in the day, Rufus was sitting by himself with a different note in front of him. It read:

Damien,
I'm coming home because I miss you
too much! Bernadette was just too
controlling. And Spain Stunk.
So here I am, please don't be angry!

Rufus
♥'s
damien

Well, Detective Me has solved yet another case, although there are a number of things that still don't add up. Such as the number of people. First we have the two Partners in Crime who kidnapped Rufus in the first place, then we have another separate two Hooligans who spontaneously decided to stage his death (boy that must have really busted the plans of the partners in crime to set up a decent treasure hunt!). But the cherry on the top, the one that really shocked everyone, were the mysterious kidnapper(/s) of whom I know not the number nor the name(/s), who kidnapped Rufus from the original Partners in Crime, and took him out of his box in the basket, in which he was gagged and waiting to be rescued. They really succeeded in getting the better of everyone. How did they know he was there? Surely they didn't realise there was a four letter mistake in the 'final' clue before I did, did they? Perhaps they saw the Partners in Crime Hiding Rufus in the basket, and sneaked him out straight after? No, this case is not closed. I guess we will never know the truth.
And so the great mind of me is not disposed to discover the identity of the Hooligan and other Culprit who did this to Tim M's bed, which we affectionately called his "cot":

It was hanging straight over my bed! A clear threat of doom and destruction to me. The order is wrong, but the message is so obvious, I need not interpret it: "████████████████████████████████████████████████████"

It was a very sad day. We all went to the park for lunch before signing each other's yellow shirts and going home one by one. I could drag out the details, but it's too painful. Until next year, Schoolies is over. Goodbye Rufus. Goodbye Schoolies. Goodbye Coolies.

I love you.

Farewell.

Day 16. Out with a Bang! - Saturday, 3/12/2005

2006-02-15T20:24:00.000+10:00

When we have had a meaningful conversation with someone on Schoolies and they give us their details for Student Life to contact them later, we fill out a follow-up card and put it in a box.
At the beginning of the Schoolies Project, Lisa introduced this adorable little stuffed dog called Rufus. Rufus was to be the hound dog to remind us to fill out our follow-up cards.

One day, Rufus went missing!

There was a note stuck on the box that went something like this:

dEar COoLiEs,
wE hAve kIdNaPped ruFuS.
Leave Lots Of
FolLoW-Up CaRDS
IN tHe BoX aNd If
WE ArE SatisfIeD wiTh
tHe amOuNt, We Might
returN hIm, If we
HaVeN't Defluffed hIm
Already.

Whoever were behind it were obviously professional masterminds. They had used two different coloured pens alternating on each letter. I suspect that there were at least two villains who had each taken turns at writing each letter of each word in a different style.

Then one morning, a few days later, after everyone had been madly filling the box with follow-up information, Jim came running into the boys' quarters screaming some babble about a tragedy that had befallen Rufus (well, maybe not screaming but it adds to the dramatic effect of the story).

So we went downstairs, and sure enough there was a horrific sight!

There were pieces of Rufus everywhere!

And there was another note!
It said:

Dear Yellow Shirts,
We have not receedved
enuf FOLLow Up cards
AND We regret to In-
form you RUFUS
is DED BeTteR lUCk
nExt year.
His ~~BlOOD~~FlUFF iS ON YoUR
HANDS!!

The authorities were already putting tape around the crime scene.

I was in denial. The fact that the pieces of... him looked a little darker than I remember him, didn't help me to come to grips with the loss. He always looked so bright and... *sob*

Damien, who owned Rufus, received a sick note in his encourageogram box. It had a picture of what they did to Rufus.

So that was the end of Rufus. The show was over except that we had to put up with the crime scene being in the middle of the church for a few days until the authorities had finnished their investigation (curios bunch aren't they?).

At least we thought it was all over, until today, when Lisa found an exciting happy-gram. It said:

Dear Coolies,

My kidnappers are insane, and I fear they will never be satisfied with the number of followup cards you give them for ransom. They are talking about staging my death so that no one will look for me and find their secret hideout. Don't believe them! I am still alive at least at the time I write this note, and I have left my signature at the bottom. Please come and rescue me. I have left you a clue as to our whereabouts, but it was very risky, because my kidnappers are watching me all the time. They even accompany me every time I have to lift my leg, and they keep this thing called a 'leash' around my neck. It's very humiliating. Please come get me soon! In the meantime, keep the followup cards coming. My kidnappers are very moody, and a halt to the ransom might trigger them to harm me. They keep talking about tearing off my ears. And whatever you do, don't pay for proof of life! Here's the clue:

A pangram is a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet. Pangrams are also called holographic sentences. There are a number of verses in the KJV of the Bible which are almost holographic verses except that one letter is missing. Ezra 7:21 is missing the letter 'j'. I can use this verse as a key to the following code, if you count each number along the verse to get the right letter.

4 1 29 114 5 108 103 2 3 12 119 7 36 53 11 12 10 9 8 41 8 12 21 15 19 106 13 26 32

Rufus

Right before worship, Lisa ran up on the stage and read out the note. She then announced that she had cleverly decoded the message. She explained that it read:

"I am behind the curtain on the stage."

Straight away people ran onto the stage, and the curtains were alive with people looing for Rufus.

But Rufus was not to be found. We were very disappointed as you can imagine.

Then Marika did something. It was this little thing that she has been doing all through the project. It goes sort of like this. First she waves at someone, let's say it was me, and then she says, "There's Mathieu! Hello Mathieu! What do we think of Mathieu?" And then everyone else says, "He's all right!" Well, that's how it's always gone until today, when right after we couldn't find Rufus, Marika said, "What do we think of Rufus?"

Nobody said anything. Then after a long silence, someone said, "He's stuffed!" Well, that was the end of that, until I decided to do something later.

Tonight was our Celebration night. We weren't allowed in the hall until some of the girls had finished preparing it. It was filled with balloons and highly decorated tables. We ate lots of food, had some games and a quick scavenger hunt thingy. Then Trevor G. and Darcy stood up and sang a little song about Hell. In the spirit of "I can do that too", I wrote some words on a napkin and somehow convinced Tim M. to beat box while I attempted to 'rap' about Hell.

Anyway, while we were eating, I decided to sneak away and take another look behind the curtain, as I didn't get a go last time. I didn't find Rufus, but I did find another note wedged in between some bricks. It said:

Dear Coolies,

My kidnappers are talking about moving to a new hideout where they will dispose of
my body. Please Hurry!!!! I've left a clue in the red word
of God in the pastor's restraining fence. It's the verse that says
how to find. That will be the last clue, I'm afraid, because they
are sure to kill me.

So then Tim M. got the idea that the pastor's restraining fence was somehow the pulpit, and looked up Matthew 7:7 in the red Bible he found in there. There was yet another note. It said:

Dear Coolies,

In the Bible (in the Hebrew OT version, anyway) there are ELS codes. If, for argument's sake, you counted each fiftieth letter and then the next from out of the first book of the Hebrew Torah, you would spell out the entire word "Torah". The Hebrew Bible has lots of examples of puzzles of this kind. A dumb atheist spoke about the code in his best seller. He believes it in believing that the code predicts future events, but he will not accept that the Bible itself shows any truth. He hasn't decided whether or not it's aliens who encoded the Hebrew Bible, or that the evolution of Mt. Sinai allowed it to become ~~some~~ sort of super computer which might also, by ways unknown to man, be able to predict the future. Even when it happens to mention God, he says the code is simply referring to an atomic bomb, but figuratively or only in a symbolic sense. Maybe Isaac Newton was not as stupid when he had another motivation for attempting to find such a hidden code in the Bible. Especially since he was saved. He couldn't find it though, because nobody had invented computers. I got a code out of this note. The sequence is 20.

Rufus

This note was obviously referring to Michael Drosnin's book, The Bible Code. Luke counted every twenieth letter and got:

DearCooliesIntheBibl
eintheHebrewOTversio
nanywaythereareELSco
desIfforargumentssak
eyoucountedeachfifti
ethletterandthenthen
extfromoutofthefirst
bookoftheHebrewTorah
youwouldspelloutthee
ntirewordTorahTheHeb
rewBiblehaslotsofexa
mplesofpuzzlesofthis
kindAdumbatheistspok
eaboutthecodeinhisbe
stsellerHebelievesit
inbelievingthattheco
depredictsfutureeven
tsbuthewillnotaccept
thattheBibleitselfsh
owsanytruthHehasntde
cidedwhetherornotits
alienswhoencodedtheH
ebrewBibleorthatthee
volutionofMtSinaiall
owedittobecomesomeso
rtofsupercomputerwhi
chmightalsobywaysunk
nowntomanbeabletopre
dictthefutureEvenwhe
nithappenstomentionG

That is:

"Look in the basket on the sheloikeeg..."

Something had obviously gone wrong, and Rufus had made a mistake. I asked for a try, and from guessing that the last word was supposed to be "shelf" and working backwards from the next "f", I found out that if you crossed out the word "some" in "...allowed it to become ~~some~~ sort of super computer..." it fixed things right up. So now the code went:

DearCooliesIntheBibl
eintheHebrewOTversio
nanywaythereareELSco
desIfforargumentssak
eyoucountedeachfifti
ethletterandthenthen
extfromoutofthefirst
bookoftheHebrewTorah
youwouldspelloutthee
ntirewordTorahTheHeb
rewBiblehaslotsofexa
mplesofpuzzlesofthis
kindAdumbatheistspok
eaboutthecodeinhisbe
stsellerHebelievesit
inbelievingthattheco
depredictsfutureeven
tsbuthewillnotaccept
thattheBibleitselfsh
owsanytruthHehasntde
cidedwhetherornotits
alienswhoencodedtheH
ebrewBibleorthatthee
volutionofMtSinaiall
owedittobecomesortof
supercomputerwhichmi
ghtalsobywaysunknown
tomanbeabletopredict
thefutureEvenwhenith
appenstomentionGodhe
saysthecodeissimplyr
eferringtoanatomicbo
mbbutfigurativelyoro
nlyinasymbolicsenseM
aybeIsaacNewtonwasno
tasstupidwhenhehadan
othermotivationforat
temptingtofindsuchah
iddencodeintheBibleE
speciallysincehewass
avedHecouldntfinditt
houghbecausenobodyha
dinventedcomputersIg
otacodeoutofthisnote
ThesequenceisRufus

That is:

"Look in the basket on the shelf in the room on the stage."

So we went into the room that was on the side of the stage, found the basket on the shelf, but..."

Still no Rufus!!!

No note, no nothing!

Just a box with a sock in it, which I assume they must have used to gag Rufus.

By this time, people were beginning to suspect that I had staged this whole thing, because I had so cleverly crossed out the word "some". But I pointed out that whether I wrote the note or worked out to cross out "some" without prior knowledge, I was a genius either way. This didn't get them off my case, and someone even 'confessed' to parts of the plot, claiming that I was their partner in crime. Arg!
Some were even doubting that Rufus was alive at all, and said we should let him RIP (Rest In Pieces).

Someone tipped me off to a body in the pantry, so in an attempt to vindicate myself, I decided to investigate. And what did I find?

A torn up stuffed... something. But it wasn't Rufus! But it's stuffing was the same dark colour as that found at the crime scene. I carried the body out and put it on display where everyone could see it with a big sign on it that said, "RUFUS IS NOT DEAD! THIS IS NOT RUFUS!"

It was then time to clean up. I was paranoid that someone was going to try to frame me by putting Rufus in my bed with me while I slept or something, so I was determined to find out who it was after we go back from the streets.

Emma and Cat were in my group tonight Tim M. was supposed to be as well, but he was replaced by Trevor G.
This was our last night out. Since I didn't seem to be getting any good conversations since our first night off, I was praying that my last night would involve a good conversation. That night, while looking after the toilets to make sure no one went in while they were being cleaned, we met some people.

After talking for a long time about what made someone a true Christian, and what made Christianity different from religion, this guy told me that he was a backslider Christian and that after talking he had decided to turn his life around. During the whole of Schoolies 2005 I had never given anyone a single KGP And to this guy I gave a different booklet called "The Spirit Filled Life" I didn't get his details, but I gave him mine, and he sounded very keen to contact me.

I am very thankful to God that my last night at Schoolies was one to remember and not just the last of a series of conversationless nights!

And tomorrow, I'm going to find out what happened to Rufus!