Category Archives: Life

Votes Please

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For those of you on Facebook, it would make me endlessly happy if you joined this group, Paradise Boutique (you can un-join it after the 12th if you like) and then “liked” the photo of me. You can help me win $500 to one of my favourite stores! I’m currently in third place so I need all the votes I can get!

Vote soon and tell all your friends! There are two weeks of competition. Thanks!!

The competition was that for a $5 donation to the Youth Empowerment Society (YES), we got five minutes in the store to pull together an outfit and put it on. They then took our pictures and they are all posted on Facebook for voting. It is a locally owned store that began as a bathing suit shop. They still carry amazing swimsuits, though I don’t own one of them. They also carry lots of local and independent designer clothing lines and always have some fun stuff. I have gotten a few great things from there in the past.

Other People’s Sweat

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A few weeks ago, I mentioned I’d been doing hot yoga for awhile. I’ve been in and out of town over the last couple weeks, consequently today was my first time back at it in about 10 days. I went to a different class time than I usually go to and it was a little fuller than the 6am class usually is. Not to mention it seemed a little hotter than usual today.

Somehow, I managed to be sandwiched in between three men and the wall. Not that I minded or than their gender matters (other than the fact that men seem to sweat more in hot yoga), although the gentleman to my right was taking himself a little too seriously.

Everyone sweats in hot yoga. I, who do not sweat much on the court or field, even sweat in hot yoga. I don’t mind sweat; after all, it is cleaning out my body. On the other hand, I definitely mind other people’s sweat. So when said gentleman to my right enthusiastically swung his arms up on the FIRST POSE after the initial breathing exercise and showered me with a spray of his sweat, I knew it would not be a good class.

I spent a good portion of the rest of the class striving to stay out of the way of his spray.

At about halfway through the class, we transition from standing poses to mat poses. At this point I noticed that gentleman to the front of me is sweating profusely. How I missed this earlier, I do not know. All I know is at this point, his towel on top of his mat is drenched and it has begun to overflow to the floor. This would have been fine (although gross) if the overflow had not been snaking its way towards me. Fortunately, the class ended before I had to contemplate critical measures. I emerged, drenched with (mostly) my own sweat and will live to yoga another day.

Vancouver Photos

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Some pictures from last weeks time in Vancouver. I decided to play tourist in and around Granville Island, since it was lovely weather and I haven’t taken many photos around there before.

Oh, and I did some shopping. Hat, blazer, and dress are new… Yay for sales and for small, independent shops that we don’t have in Victoria!

RIP: Passport, Pt. 5

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I have had to renew my passport, my passport that I have travelled extensively on for the last five years… To pay homage to the places I have been, I photographed each page of the passport. I plan to go through them all and share one or two funny/strange/awkward stories relating to the stamps on that page.

The Solomon Islands. Papua New Guinea. There are so many things that could be said about both of these places. We got a rat in Honiera, Guadalcanal, Solomons. We saw lots of flying foxes in Madang, PNG. We built a canoe in PNG. We dove in the Solomons.

I thought of telling the story of Danny, the corrupt Aussie expat who has the town officials wrapped around his fingers in Gizo. Except that is a sad story and Danny is probably in jail now.

I enjoyed Gizo for another reason. I managed to connect with a group from one of the local churches when I was there. I was walking through town on my day off and stumbled across a church sports day. One of the youth teams invited me to join them and I spent the day playing volleyball and soccer with them. It was a lot of fun. I’m pretty sure I was the only white person there, but that wasn’t anything that I noticed or that seemed important at the time. The sports day was made even better by the quality music they were playing. Most of it was “worship” music from about five to ten years earlier. Some of it was “classic” Christian stuff from the 80’s. The best song was off of Petra’s 1987 album This Means War That was a summer roadtrip staple for many years when Jen and I were picking music; I believe I still have the cassette tape.

Weddings

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Three friends got married on Saturday. Obviously I cannot be in three places at once and did not even really want to try. So I took the ferry over to Vancouver to stay at Dad’s place and go out to Langley for my friend, Nicole’s wedding.

I remember seeing Nicole (left, in China) a few times in my first year at the University of Victoria (six years ago). She would come to the occasional IVCF large group meeting on Friday night, with her assistance dog, Vespa. They kind of stood out so it was hard not to notice her. I didn’t really get to know her at all until my second and last year at UVic.

A few weeks before the fall semester began, a whole group of us from UVic, plus others from universities all over the province, drove to Kelowna for SLC – Student Leadership Camp. There, we spent a good few days in Bible Study and games, preparing for the year ahead. We were the leadership team of the InterVarsity chapters at our respective schools. While there, the provincial directors of IVCF presented to us the idea of going to China the following summer as a part of a Global Partnership. Right then and there, I knew I would be going; there was never any question in my mind. I wasn’t really the “world traveller” at that point that I am now. Up until then, I had been to the Netherlands with my family and lived in Australia. That was the sum total of my off-continent travel. So it was not really about the travelling… I just knew that I was supposed to go on that trip. So I signed up, and then started encouraging others to go.

Nicole and I began to get to know each other as the semester progressed. I don’t even really remember how it began, I just remember her asking me about “this trip to China.” She thought it might be fun, I told her she should go. She talked to the director, and next thing we knew, she was coming!

We spent six weeks in pretty close contact while we were in China. She and I were hotel-room buddies whenever we stayed in hotels (about two weeks of that six), and did some other stuff together.

After China and my subsequent trip around Europe, I needed a place to live in Victoria while I was preparing to go Offshore. Nicole had a room in her condo, a beautiful place about ten minutes walking from the shipyard. It was perfect, in more ways than one.

Nicole’s was a wedding I was looking forward to. I like to think I had a hand in it all: she met her now-husband in China.

So back to this past weekend, I made a long weekend of it and spent two days in Vancouver before the wedding, visiting some friends I hadn’t seen in too long. The wedding was utterly wonderful as well. The ceremony was outside in a gazebo and then we had dinner in a lovely glass conservatory. Apparently I took absolutely no pictures of the entire thing, except for the candle on the table… I’m hoping friends send some my way soon!

Perhaps the best part of the wedding, other than witnessing my friend marry the love of her life obviously, was the table I sat with at the reception. At the table were some of my nearest and dearest friends from university. At least one of them I had not seen since we graduated. But being there reminded me of how much I love and care for them and cherish the time we had together. These were people I struggled and questioned faith with (and still do, apparently, when we get back together), people I laughed with and cried with, goofed off with and studied with, and people I spent more time than I care to remember with. A great group of people and it did me good to see them and spend time with them. We closed down the dance floor.

Postponed Indefinitely

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Two words I’m not overly fond of at the moment. Postponed indefinitely. My trip to Myanmar has been postponed indefinitely by our friends in Myanmar. I understand and fully support the reason: it just is not safe. An election has finally been called for Myanmar. It is to take place in the fall, weeks before we were set to go. Myanmar doesn’t have a great track record with elections: the results are usually a foregone conclusion. The last one they held saw the military imprisoning the overwhelming winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Twenty-years later, she is still in house arrest and prohibited from running in this election.

Since then, Myanmar has had a few uprisings. The most recent one being the huge monks uprising in 2007. Accordingly, the government is pretty wary of letting people congregate at any time, especially not around the time of an election. Our friends are having a hard time getting the permit to hold the celebration we had intended to attend. They have decided that they do not think we would be as safe as we would like if we were to come in December and, even if we were safe, we would likely not be allowed to leave the city of Yangon. I don’t particularly want to fly halfway around the world to be confined to a big, busy city and miss out on the smaller places and other people who represent more of the real country.

Yes, the plan is still go go another time when the situation on the ground there is a little better. However as far as trips this fall go, it looks like I’m staying right here and will be continuing to pray for our friends and the rest of the people of Myanmar.

RIP: Passport, Pt. 4

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I have had to renew my passport, my passport that I have travelled extensively on for the last five years… To pay homage to the places I have been, I photographed each page of the passport. I plan to go through them all and share one or two funny/strange/awkward stories relating to the stamps on that page.

Vava’u Harbour in the Kingdom of Tonga was one of the biggest harbours on Offshore. It doesn’t compare to somewhere like Honolulu/Pearl Harbour or Shanghai, but as far as South Pacific yacht havens, it takes the cake. There were hundreds of boats docked and anchored there. Most were anchored in the huge, protected harbour of Nieafu.

Nieafu was an interesting place. I spent some time in the market there and wandered its shops. It definitely was a South Pacific town catering to the yachties crowd. I found some fun stuff there that I still use today.

There was a huge schooner anchored in the harbour. To the best of my memory, it was nearly as long as the Grace except it was a sleek, expensive looking, fibreglass hull with automatic push-button sails. It had a small crew that could raise and lower all sail from the cockpit and were kept busy polishing the ship each and every day. And our guys thought morning clean-up was bad! We later heard that it had been boarded by pirates somewhere else in the South Pacific.

Pirates operate in different ways in different parts of the worlds oceans. We hear a lot about the big operations off of the east coast of Africa where the pirates use speed boats with cannons to get oil tankers and the like. It is a little more subtle than that in the South Pacific. Usually what happens is an unsuspecting yachtie will come across a poor soul adrift in a life boat. Taking pity on them, they bring the fellow aboard to feed and water before dropping them in the next port. Or so they think. What happens, more often than not, is the poor shipwreck victim waits until the yachtie(s) are out of the way – asleep or in a different part of the boat – and uses the radio to call his buddies who are waiting just over the horizon or around in the next lagoon. They come up, guns ablazin’ (figuratively speaking) and take over the boat with the help of their guy on the inside.

Moral of that story? No more Mr Nice Guy. If you’re going to help shipwreck victims on the high seas when there seems to be no reason for them to be adrift on their own, use caution and never let the radio out of your sight. Another good tactic is to sail around in a wooden boat without any shiny parts with dozens of young people swarming all over it at all times. That scares a lot of people off.

At Once

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Ever noticed how everything always happens ALL AT ONCE? Just when you think you are doing well, something else happens to throw things for a loop and make you realize that perhaps you could fit just one more thing in.

Take right now, for example. I am working my usual 20+ hours per week and doing the school thing, the same schedule I have been on for nearly a year now. Except (as I am sure I have mentioned, because I like to mention it and make people feel sorry for me) right now I am doing double the school work. In other words, full time school times two. Yeah.

Add that to Victoria finally experiencing summer and I actually want to go outside and enjoy myself! What is that, you say, a life? No, I haven’t really got one, though I am trying. Plus, I started up hot yoga about five weeks ago and have been doing that 2-4 times per week. I don’t really know how I fit in hot yoga, as the classes are 90 minutes long, but apparently it has become important enough to me that I am willing to get up really early do take part. Like 5:30am early.

Then, if that wasn’t enough, something else came up out of the blue a couple of weeks ago. Right now, it does not require any time commitment, but it has been requiring a great deal of mental and emotional energy. I can’t really say any more than that right now, but rest assured if it comes to something, I will pass that along. Until then, I would appreciate your prayers for my discernment. Oh – and big hugs, free meals (I sometimes forget to eat), and sympathy for all the hard work I am doing…!