So I went to Woolies at today and saw that Arnott’s Shapes were on special. This sounded like a good opportunity to restock my recently exhausted snack supply so I bought a few boxes. One of these was a box of sweet chilli and sour cream “crispy puffs”. Having not tried a “crispy puffs” version of Shapes before, I wasn’t expecting much in terms of quality. Hence, I guess I wasn’t exactly disappointed when I popped a few in my mouth and the first thought that went into my brain was “hmmm… air…” and this thought was closely followed with another thought of “hmmm… lots of air…”
Good thing these were on special. Otherwise I would have forked out $1.60 on something that was comprised of 90% air.
For those of you who like to snack on air with a subtle hint of sweet chilli and sour cream flavour, I highly recommend these “crispy puffs”. For those of you who like to snack on something a little bit more substantial, I’d give these a wide miss.
Overall verdict: 2/10
In my post last week, I wrote about how Christians can get a bad rap from the media due to its often inaccurate portrayal of Christianity from people who claim to be Christians, but whose actions belie their faith and beliefs. In this post, I’ll examine how hypocrisy amongst Christians affect the public’s view on themselves, and Christianity in general.
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To all you readers out there who are either sitting the HSC, or stressed about upcoming uni exams, or busy finishing off a thesis, here’s a quote for you:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:25–34 (NIV)
Take heart in knowing that no matter how stressed you are, God’s still looking after you and will provide for you. He knows what you need better than you do.
Yesterday, a bunch of us from work flew down to Melbourne to farewell Andrew. It was quite an emotional event for pretty much everybody there. By the end of the day, my handkerchief was fairly soaked from all the boohoohoo-ing but I was glad to have been there to see him off. It was also nice to have spent some time talking to some of his family.
I guess it’s now time to move on.
On a lighter note, here are some things that I noted about Melbourne:
- People like driving slow on freeways. When the speed limit says 100, the average speed seems to be about 80-90.
- There is a distinct lack of tall buildings in the suburbs. When we drove around SE Melbourne, I failed to see a single building that was over 2-3 stories tall. It’s very easy to see a lot of the horizon.
- Their freeway system seems to actually work. We travelled from Tullamarine airport (in the NW of Melbourne) to Dandenong (in the SE of Melbourne), a distance of about 60km on freeways only. This allowed us to bypass the CBD completely (ah well, didn’t get to see trams this time). Oh, and the trip only took about 45 minutes as well.
Here are some things that I noted (not specifically about Melbourne):
- GPS navigation systems can be pretty funny sometimes. Put four engineers in a car with a GPS and I guarantee that hilarity will ensue. Having a street directory in our possession, we compared our route with what the GPS thinks is the best route to our destination. We decided that the GPS wasn’t a very good navigator and so we overrulled it on a number of times. On one of these occasions, the voice said “in one hundred meters, if possible, do a U-turn”. Too bad the reason why we overruled it was to jump onto a freeway. Good luck trying to do a U-turn on a freeway…
- Virgin Blue boarding passes are cheap pieces of fax paper with your details printed on it. At least with Jetstar, you get a more solid-feeling piece of cardboard.
- Virgin Blue flight attendants have a funny sense of humour. Maybe this is a requirement for the job…
Can’t really think of much more right now. May post some more later.
A quick and short post to let you all know that I’ve snuck in a few albums in our photo gallery.
Enjoy.
Oh, and if you want to drop me a few comments on what you liked or disliked about the photos, that would be tops too.
Yesterday, Alwin, Shu and myself went walkabouts around the south side of the harbour near The Rocks, swinging around Circular Quay to the Sydney Opera House. During most of that time, Alwin and I had our tele’s slapped on and we walked around with our non-subtle lenses. As mentioned in a previous post, my tele lens is big enough to instill fear into the average compact point-and-shoot camera owners and it generally makes you stick out like a sore thumb when you start aiming the beast around.
One thing I noticed was that people have this tendency to think that people with big cameras must be pros and this was illustrated yesterday when Alwin recounted an incident where a sculptor saw his camera and thought he was a professional artist and gave him a business card and chatted about art, etc. People also come up to you and ask you to take photos for them.
By now, you might be wondering what this has anything to do with the title of this post. Well, the spiel above reminded me of an interesting conversation I had last Sunday when I was doing a bit of soloing with my newly acquired behemoth around Milsons Point.
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There’s an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know how to use my telephone.Bjarne Stroustrup
I attended a training course over at North Sydney over the past week and hence re-experienced catching peak-hour trains packed with commuters going to work/uni/whatever. Now, it’s been a while since the last time I caught a train bright and early in the morning, having my personal space compromised by passengers who evidently have too much blood in their caffeine-stream and thus still in a semi-zombie state. In fact, it must be back in my early uni years (since by the time one reaches late uni years, one doesn’t bother getting to uni before lunch). In these past 5-6 years, I’ve noticed something that’s significantly different – the evolution of gadgets.
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