Rasita My Family, My Animals, My Food

I was recently challenged and encouraged by the testimony of a friend who having grown up in Australia, has recently taken part in some relief-based short term mission opportunities. Sometimes I hear well meaning Christians say that instead of sending people on short term missions the money could be better spent going directly to the people in the needy situation. I am a believer in the value of short term missions for many reasons (write and ask me if you like). But here are a few quotes from my friend's testimony which I think may serve as a challenge to many.

My friend recently visited Cambodia with Samaritan's Purse and some refugee camps in Thailand. She learned of hundreds of thousands of people who "have only one meal a day and very few possessions, and many of them have never seen freedom, and never will."

She writes: "All my life I have heard about situations like these, but to see them first hand, was very significant for me. I did not have an understanding of the severity and the widespread poverty that others suffer daily. Seeing these needs changed my heart. I will never be able to fully understand the challenges faced by the people I met, but I returned home challenged to make a difference."

"I often reflect about our comfortable, affluent life in Australia compared with the vast majority of the people in the world. We have all that we need . . . and more. I recently heard someone say, 'the West have domesticated God. We ask, "What can God do for me to make my life more comfortable?"'"

I too have been troubled with the immense affluence in which we live. Many people use the word 'need' so flippantly. I need new shoes. We need a new TV. I need a new mobile phone. etc. etc. First hand mission experience can be costly in finances and it can be challenging and daunting in a variety of ways - often depending upon one's personality. My friend's experiences in Asia prompted her to write: "Sometimes it is when we face challenges that we draw closer to God and during these times we have the opportunity to mature in our understanding, our relationship and our love of God."

Her challenge: "My prayer for you all and me is that we will continue to be stretched and grow in our understanding of God and that we will always have an eternal perspective in our everyday lives and circumstances."

(Quotes anonymous - used with permission)

Last night was the last night my parents were here on their current holiday staying with us. It coincided with family night, and we kicked off after dinner with a game of UNO with everybody involved. Mercedes is funny. She likes to get the cards and when she has to put cards down thinks that is bad. When she has to pick she loves it!

Jude usually wins UNO and did again last night by a big margin.

After we put the little two to bed, Miranda Jadeen, Jude and I and Grandad and Grandma played a game of Carcasonne. Mum has played it before but Dad hadn’t. It was a very close game with the end result being a win to me, and then Miranda second with Jadeen and Dad separated by a point with grandma next and Jude coming last.

The results aren’t really important. What is is the time spent bonding as a family, learning group communication and playing skills (for the girls) and the time spent together.

I am really enjoying this years tennis at Wimbledon. Roger Federer is playing usual metronomic game and hasn't dropped a set as he has progressed now to a semi final with Safin. His game against Ancic tonight was just precision tennis, his usual style. He is on a 69 game or so winning streak. I thought Lleyton Hewitt had been playing well but his 3rd round match against Federer was a foregone conclusion. Marat beat Lopez in a very tough game. Lopez lost it mentally at the end when the linesman made  call on a point that Lopez thought he had won and the umpire replayed the point. From there he threw it away and actually lost the match on a double fault. I think Marat will prove no problem to Federer. Safin is ranked 75, and not playing his best tennis while Federer is just working in his lounge room where he has won the last 6 tournaments in a row.

The other side of the draw is much more interesting. In fact this article is taking me a long time to write as I watch the awesome match between Rafael Nadal and Andrew Murray. I am predicting a Federer Nadal grand final. Nadal has really improved his grass court tennis since last year. Of course he is unstoppable on clay but his game play here is phenomenal. He is relentless in hunting down the cross court shots that Murray is throwing at him. He has currently broken Murray again to go 2 sets up with 6-3, 6-2. I don’t think Murray has anything left. Nadal is too fit, too strong and can pull unbelievable shots out of nowhere to return what look like unbeatable winners. Murray is undoubtedly playing the best tennis of his life but its not enough.

The 3rd set was an absolute stonker with Rafael Nadal taking it out eventually 6-4. Murray played very well but Nadal just was relentless and continually pulled off amazing shots. If anything Murray just tried too hard.

Cant wait til the final.

I am finding my work schedule is working pretty well right now. I usually get up around 8-9am and start work within 10-15 minutes from getting up. I work through til around 4-6PM with lunch eaten at my desk thanks to my kind secretary / best friend / wife, From there I spend time with the kids and family, or go out to football training Tuesday night and basketball coaching Thursday night. The exception is Monday night where I break at 3:30 for running and hen start back into work at 5PM. Wednesday nights I do not go back to work until after everybody is in bed – around 11PM. The nights are then mine. I am finding that I can get in 4-6 hours each night before heading to bed around 2-3AM. Thursday nights I usually work right through til 4 or 5AM.

I have been taking some breaks to watch the tennis because this fits into the same waking time anyway (Wimbledon runs from 11:30PM to 3 or 4AM here).

This work schedule works best for the family and me. I don’t need more than 6 hours sleep anyway, and sometimes less. I have a very good sleep pattern and I can tell from my Xobni Stats that I am nearly always asleep between the hours of 4 and 8am.. The family gets my time from between 5 or 6pm and bedtime and also in weekends, particularly Sunday and plenty of regular sports and exercise means I am keeping fit. Clients in America are able to access me from around 10PM through 2AM my time when I am always awake and nearly always on the computer.

This could have massive repercussions with domain name registrations. I am still trying to get my head around it.

The guardian writes this:

Icann, the organisation that regulates the internet domain name system, has passed a landmark vote to relax rules limiting web addresses to "top-level" suffixes, such as .com and .uk, a move that could see people and companies register almost anything they want.

The unanimous vote, held in Paris today, also approved a second proposal to allow domain names written in languages other than English, such as Arabic.

Today's Icann vote effectively means that Coca Cola could, for example, register .cocacola; or that a person could have a web address ending with their surname.

Individuals will be able to register a domain based on their own name, as long as they can show a "business plan and technical capacity".

Read the rest of the article on the guardian website.

Read more commentary on these sites:

• Read Write Web discuss implications
• Tech Side Up make some interesing points
• lol catz haz sumfink to say at Marketing Pilgrim
• Tech dirt has some good commentary
• Delicious tags for ICANN and TLD
• Technorati posts in relation to ICANN opening up TLD

Warning - rant follows.

AMEX or American Express is possibly the worst banking institution I have ever had to deal with. I have had a few stupid things happen at various times with various banks and they usually go out of their way to help you out. Not AMEX.

I have had the situation where for the last 2 months my account has been over its limit (largely due to the monthly fees) and I have not had the cash to correct that.

In both instances I made a full explanation to their customer service people (made sure the notes were attached to my account) and advised them I would bring the account bank into working order in the first week of July. In both cases they advised me the minimum amount I would need to pay to make this OK. We are not talking large numbers here. I had to make a minimum payment of 800 or so and they advised me to make a payment of $200 each time. Both times I paid slightly more than they told me to do so. So I naively assumed that everything would be fine when on the 1st of July I made a payment of $2000. (more than $1100 more than the required amount.)

Imagine my surprise when I logged into my account today to check my available credit to see that my credit limit has been dropped $1200 lower without informing me because (and I quote) I had not made the minimum payments for 2 months in 12. Fortunately the $2K was enough to make account good. so the good old customer service people who had previously advised me on what to do never told me this was going to happen, though it should have been clear to them when I told them my plans.

So now they say I have to make a payment of 50% of my outstanding balance so they can reinstate my previous credit limit. I can withdraw the funds immediately if I want. Stupid stupid people. At least I have now got the cash to do it. But its very annoying and has not endeared me to them at all.

Lesson – do not expect AMEX to treat you like a normal person, expect them to have stupid rules that make zero sense. I mean why does paying money into my account and then taking it straight back out again make any difference?

Lesson – do not expect the AMEX customer service people to tell you anything useful without you having to extract it like pulling teeth.

Idiots.

Rant over.

Normal programming will now resume.

A hilarious video of a IT web administrators typical day! – some coarse language but funny as – if you don’t work in IT you probably wont get it.

If you are one of my clients I would NEVER treat you like this!

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Went for an awesome run today. I have been running every Monday afternoon with a bunch of others for the last 3 or 4 months now. Today I had Drew and Lydia along with me. I am coaching both for their upcoming athletics convention. Today we ran down to the local school (about 1 KM) and planned to use the running track there. I didn’t realise that it was half normal size, being only 200 metres around. However all the lanes were marked and they did have a full 100 metre straight sprint set of lanes.

First of we ran a 1500 metres. Drew finished when Lydia and I were still at the 1000 metre mark. I pushed Lydia on and she ended up beating me by about 10 metres.

After a short break we ran a 100 metre sprint. I was able to hold Lydia off by about 2 metres but Drew beat me by around 5 metres.

Finally I got them to run a 200 metres race. Then we walked and jogged home – alternating short sprints with jogging.

Now I feel really refreshed and ready for the next 5 hours work! Monday is a work night for me and Amanda.

Was hanging for a nice steak. So dropped into the supermarket and picked up some porterhouse marked down for quick sale on the way home from a clients this morning. Then I overcooked them – bother it. Still my steak and cheese sandwiches were very yummy.

Sometimes it feels like so much has happened since the last time I wrote on here that I don’t have time to stop and get it down. And that makes it worse because then there is even more that has happened.

So this is not so much an attempt at a catch up as just a rambling post covering various things that have happened to me recently.

We played a night game Saturday night. We won in the last few minutes after a pretty tough contest. They got an early lead and then we had to peg them back. I played defence for 3 quarters with one entire quarter off the ground. I did give away a 50 metre penalty in the last quarter with a few minutes to go and we were leading by 5. Fortunately he missed his kick at goal and we rushed it through for a behind. We ended up winning by 4 points.

I took a lot of marks and I thought I played pretty well. I certainly outplayed my opposing forwards who I was marking. I was able to punch the ball clear from them when they tried to mark, and in most instances be in the right place to take the mark instead of them. I think my game is improving by playing defence.

We have been running and  exercising regularly but I haven’t managed to get any more weight off. I am hovering around the 111-112 KG mark. Will keep working on it.

I have been working on a number of new website's, and done a lot of software development lately. I have a lot of clients trying to spend end of financial year budgets here in Australia. As such we are overloaded with work, one of my full time staff is probably about to leave and I have had another staff member move to China and not be available this last week. Hopefully once he gets online in China he can continue working for me.

My Mum and Dad have been here from New Zealand for the last week. and staying until Thursday. Unfortunately they came at the busiest time of the year for me so I haven't seen them much. We have had a couple of good conversations and theological discussions as well as played some games like Pente. Dad came and watched my football match also.

We also celebrated Miranda's 12th Birthday last week. She is growing up into a young lady!

I have read a bunch of books lately but haven't had time to post up a list. Will do that later.

Today was my last Sunday with West Penno church for quite some time. My good mate Dave Peacock preached a cracker sermon from 2 Peter 3 about the day of the Lord. I'm about to head back to Ukraine. I compare so many things between life here and there. I think about the up coming months and the plans further into the future. I was greatly challenged to have a much greater focus upon the day of the Lord. Do I look forward with joy and anticipation toward the coming of Christ? Am I making every effort to live a holy and blameless life?

Whatever this week holds for you, I hope this short note refocuses your vision, and mine, upon things which are eternal. And if you have the time, listen to Dave's sermon.

Rasita posted a photo:

chef jacket minus buttons

Rasita posted a photo:

chef jacket minus buttons

Rasita posted a photo:

plaid jumper

Rasita posted a photo:

plaid jumper

Rasita posted a photo:

plaid jumper

Rasita posted a photo:

J9's newest pet - goldie the mouse

Rasita posted a photo:

J9's newest pet - goldie the mouse

Rasita posted a photo:

J9 and her newest pet - goldie the mouse

Rasita posted a photo:

J9's newest pet - goldie the mouse