A Whirlwind Experience And Something Else?

Lets start with something…substantial.

I haven’t been posting much lately since there has been alot of changes in my life. Firstly would be me moving back to Australia, Perth to assume my proper role as a university student of the University Of Western Australia. Yes finally I have finished my torturous year at Taylors College and now I’m finally a full student of the university. I think one of the best perks of being a university student is no longer having to be called a Taylors kid by all the other university students, especially when I stayed in Currie Hall. The sense that I am finally a full student in UWA is quite an overwhelming sensation and rightfully so, this goal that I have sacrificed so much of my brain cells and burned so many bridges to get to is finally here. On a side note, I enter University with only one person that I don’t like entering alongside with me. The rest has either been exiled to Curtin or Murdoch or sent to the East Coast. HAH SUCK IT ANH, you can go copy other people’s work over there instead.

*Ahem* I digress.

I used to arrogantly believe that I would be able to take University and not be overwhelmed by everything that is happening around me. Oh boy was I ever so wrong in my life. I’m feeling completely overwhelmed by the amount of reading that I have to do in the first week and I went through my first tutorial at the Faculty of Education and I feel really unprepared compared to the rest of the class. I hope its just jitters so far and not an indication of my performance throughout the semester. For the uninformed or the curious, I am taking 4 units this semester. Anthropology Global Change Local Response, History From Imperialism to Globalization, Political Science The Contemporary International System and finally Education Youth Culture. I managed to get a good timetable with little wasted time and nice starting times around 10-12pm and one free day on friday! Which is always good, a three day weekend! Most of the lecturers are nice and interesting people with the exception of the History lecturer. I’m not saying that she’s bad or lousy just abit strange with her lectures. Forcing me to relisten to her lectures on the internet. Thank God for that.

I’ll spare you all descriptions of my university and so on. Lets focus on something else more…hmm…substantial.

Recently a friend and I committed a religious faux pas against another friend of another religion. It involved a frying wok owned by that person and a set of sausages that was fried on that said wok. Now that person who owns the wok is muslim and the rest of us aren’t. She kinda freaked out when she saw us cooking sausages on it. Now we went to check and found that the sausages were beef so no damage there but it got me thinking about such things. I kinda have the feeling that I am going to offend some people with this but who gives? So the general rule of thumb is that muslims cannot touch or eat pork. That much I know but what I find it terribly unfair that we have to keep jumping around that rule. We can’t do this and we can’t do that because we offend some kind of rule from another religion. Consider the fact that we have to keep watch over so many things and juggle so many commitments, I find it funny that we will have to ensure that we are politically correct and religiously correct around select religions. I not blasting anything or anyone, but I am bothered by this…atmosphere of special treatment and mindset that some religions seem to have. While I am Christian, I don’t seek to have special rights conveyed on my religion and I think things would be alot better if all the religions were treated equally and so on *blah blah*. Maybe its all this negative press about religion, religious wars and persecution that I feel strongly for a complete separation of church and state. I think that is the reason why I was slightly bothered by what I saw today in church about the new Australia Prime Minister and the Greens. One issue raised up during the church announcement was that the Greens supported the idea of Gay Marriage and so on. Now I will go on record saying that I support the idea of Gay Marriage and Rights, despite the fact that I am a Christian. I believe that such things are inevitable and we are doing them no big favour in outcasting them and causing them so much annoyance and suffering…..Christians can counter me by accusing me of embracing their ideals and so on but I rather accept them that they are here and not going away instead of attempting to destroy their lives. They are humans.

But what do I know? I’m just an idealistic university student who through the course of his 4.5 years in University be embittered and cynical about the world.

I recently made the decision to start serving in church and I chose to go back to the basics where I started off back home in FGA. Projections. From what I observed, there are slight differences between both projection teams and formats in both churches but aside from that it is essentially the same program and job which makes adapting much easier. But I am not writing about that, something struck me today as I watched people set up church, run soundchecks and practice for the coming service. These are very very dedicated people. The first test would be the fact that the assembling time for everyone to set up is at 6am on a sunday morning. I felt like shit when I woke up at 5.30am to wash up to go church. I would draw a parallel between FGA and Zion Praise, both are manned by extremely dedicated youth teams who basically run the entire service from start to finish. I just think that these people need to be acknowledged more often for making such services possible and running so smoothly. Sometimes too much emphasis is placed on the worship team and rightfully so because they are indeed the main thing that people see when they enter the hall during service but sometimes its best to not forget about the little people who help bring them there, who help make sure they sound good and get their lyrics on time.

I’m tired.

I’ll write more another day.