William Chong

From the Herald this morning:

 

Twangs of the ukulele will be heard in Auckland next weekend, as hundreds of schoolchildren take part in the BNZ Ukulele Festival.

Around 900 children got together in the shape of their favourite instrument at Mt Smart Stadium to help promote the festival on Saturday.

Up to 5000 people are expected to turn out to this year’s event – now in its third year – where various local and international ukulele artists will perform. [...]

Event manager Richard Thorne said the festival was born out of an initiative where primary school children learn how to play the ukulele rather than the recorder.

When I was in primary school there were recorder orchestras and everyone had a recorder of every colour. In hindsight I probably would have gotten a headstart on my guitar playing if they let us learn the ukulele at primary school age.

Though you have to feel sorry for the recorder teachers as they slowly get squeezed out…

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“Unless the LORD builds the house, whose who build it labour in vain.” King Solomon (Psalm 127:1)

Today, Cheryl and I signed our very first rental agreement.

With our wedding less than 3 months away, we decided it would probably be easier to make living arrangements at a different time to the madness of wedding preparations. And since Kim’s going back to Malaysia for a holiday in December, it presents a good opportunity to start moving things into our new home.

Here’s a brief Q&A session (yes, this is a new writing style called self-interviewing), for those who are curious:

Q: Ooo a house! Where?
A: We went for a 2-bedroom unit that’s pretty close to amenities, bus stop, and slightly easier access to the motorway. It’s nice and homely, gets pretty good sun, and has a single garage below us. It’s close to Howick and to family and friends we love and care about. Rent was at a good price for a location in Howick.

Q: Did you look long and hard for a place?
A: God’s been a great provider. We started seriously looking about 2 weeks before, but have been checking the market out in the Eastern suburbs for about a year now. We were able to find one we both liked in a matter of days (chalk that up to a blessed provision). After praying and asking around for advice (e.g. concerns and issues), we were told by the landlord: “It’s yours if you want it.”

Q: Aren’t you getting married in February? Or are you moving in together first?
A: I’d plan to move in first on my own, and Cheryl would move in once we’re married.

Q: I wanna rent too. What’s the market like out in these here parts?
A: Rental prices seem to have actually fallen slightly over the past year, but may pick up now with the economy straggling upwards again. We called and enquired about 10 different properties, Streetviewed about 15, and visited a couple that looked like potentials on paper. Not all were as beautiful as their Trademe photos…

Q: Why rent? Isn’t it a great opportunity to buy?
A: Yup, if you have a big deposit in your bank account ready to go (we don’t), and you know you’re putting your roots down in a particular place for 20 years (we don’t know). For now we’re content to rent and see where it goes from there.

Q: Why not just stay with your parents and save up your rent money?
A: As much as we love our parents and where we live, I think God knew what he was talking about when He said: “A man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife” (Gen 2:24). Some people we talked to shared their experience of starting out fresh and gaining a new understanding and insight (e.g. how to make your groceries go further when you’ve run out of money that week). Others told stories of conflicts arising from living with your parents as a married couple and running into difficulties asserting leadership of one’s home – who is the head of the house when you have a young husband and his father or father-in-law there? These are hard questions to resolve, particularly in my case when I’m a Christian and my dad is not.

Q: Can I stay at your place? Like in case I get locked out of my house and stuff?
A: Sure! I’ll look for a sofabed on Trademe right now!

If you’re curious feel free to ask more questions. Then again you may not really care! Whatever your disposition, it’s an exciting time for us. Your thoughts and prayers are appreciated!

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Written hundreds of years ago by the Puritans in frontier America. Ever-so-relevant in 2009.

SOVEREIGN GOD,
Thy cause, not my own, engages my heart,
and I appeal to thee with greatest freedom
to set up thy kingdom in every place where Satan reigns;
Glorify thyself and I shall rejoice,
for to bring honour to thy name is my sole desire.
I adore thee that thou art God,
and long that others should know it, feel it,
and rejoice in it.
O that all men might love and praise thee,
that thou mightest have all glory from the intelligent world!
Let sinners be brought to thee for thy dear name!
To the eye of reason everything respecting the conversion of others
is a dark as midnight,
But thou canst accomplish great things;
the cause is thine,
and is to thy glory that men should be saved.
Lord, use me as thou wilt,
do with me what thou wilt;
but, O, promote thy cause,
let thy kingdom come,
let thy blessed interest be advanced in this world!
O do thou bring in great numbers to Jesus!
let me see that glorious day,
and give me to grasp for multitudes of souls;
let me be willing to die to that end;
and while I live let me labour for thee
to the utmost of my strength,
spending time profitaby in this work,
both in health and in weakness.
It is thy cause and kingdom I long for, not my own.

O, answer thou my request!

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Beautiful. (Probably unbearably loud in real life, too, but still.)

Genesis 1:20 – “… And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”

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Come on everyone and celebrate! You know you’ve missed the regular musings of a genuine artist (since the start of fulltime work and life, sadly my musings don’t carry as much cultural weight). Dennis has resurfaced on a new website, and as with the continual reinventing we frequently do in life, there’s no trace of past reincarnations on D’s new online hangout. A quote:

I’m usually not one of those people who likes to keep re-cleaning their slate – I like my history, all the good and the bad, and I like seeing my own progression. But I think there’s a difference between coming to terms with your own history, and broadcasting that history to the world. That period of broadcasting is over.

I can agree with Dennis in that social media has given an unprecedented paper trail of my life. The start of my journey as a Christian coincided with the beginning of my blogging experience, and when I read back on old posts and thoughts it’s a rare glimpse and proof of ongoing sanctification and the work of Christ in my life. But like Dennis, these older blogs are now archived away in a memory (and perhaps a USB flash drive) – sorry for you rampant Googlers!

Check him out here: http://www.helpsendbobo.com/

Google have released a new “Dashboard” feature that lets you see what information they store about you:

https://www.google.com/dashboard/

You’ll either be unnerved by the Big Brother-ness of it all, or just shrug your shoulders and life goes on.

All you conspiracy theorists fire away… e.g. Google will be the new Antichrist…

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This is for all you Lord of the Rings fanatics out there, some brilliant work from xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/657/large/

The diagram’s scarily accurate (also includes other stories like Star Wars and Jurrasic Park) and must have taken a lot of work to draw!

Incidentally J.R.R. Tolkien was good friends with C.S. Lewis, and was an influence in his conversion to Christianity. Also, the Lord of the Rings is steeped with mythology and allegory: one could compare the struggles of the Christian life to Frodo’s journey as a ringbearer, or draw parallels to Aragorn and Jesus as returning Kings. Obviously the Christian themes and messages are much more overt in C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (here’s a satire that points this out).

From an interview with Colin Duriez, author of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship:

What Tolkien did was help Lewis see how the two sides, reason and imagination, could be integrated. During the two men’s night conversation on the Addison Walk in the grounds of Magdalen College, Tolkien showed Lewis how the two sides could be reconciled in the Gospel narratives. The Gospels had all the qualities of great human storytelling. But they portrayed a true event—God the storyteller entered his own story, in the flesh, and brought a joyous conclusion from a tragic situation. Suddenly Lewis could see that the nourishment he had always received from great myths and fantasy stories was a taste of that greatest, truest story—of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

So Tolkien brought the imagination right into the center of Lewis’s life. And then, through a gradual process, with the example of Tolkien’s Silmarillion tales and Lord of the Rings before him, Lewis learned how to communicate Christian faith in imaginative writing.

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I recently got the Settlers of Catan game for my iPod, for those rare moments when I’ve got a couple of minutes spare. For those who don’t know, Settlers is a well-designed and fun board game where you try and build settlements and cities, collect resources and try to beat other players in achieving various objectives (e.g. longest road, biggest army, lots of cities etc.) It’s generally a well-balanced game: there’s a great trading element in the game that allows for lots of interaction between players, and you can get some really close and intense games going at times.

While it’s not as good as playing the board game version with friends, Catan on the iPod is still a well-designed and entertaining game. And at $6 from the App Store it’s much cheaper than buying the original board game, which can sell in shops at $90(!) for a basic set. The graphics and gameplay features pretty much replicate what you can do in the actual board game, and it’s very easy to pick up and play. It offers both single-player (with computer opponents) and multi-player over networks and so on.

Highly recommended for those with iPhones/iPods – you can get it here on Apple’s App Store. If you want there are also online sites where you can give the game a go (e.g. http://games.asobrain.com/)

In the meantime, I’ll keep trading to victory!

If he wasn’t enough of a voracious blogger (he’s posted every day for the past six years), Tim Challies has just started another blog called “10 Million Words”.

It’s an intriguing premise though – basically he intends to read all the books that appear on the New York Times‘ bestseller list in 2010 and review them (which adds up to about 10 million words, he reckons). Aside from the fact that it’s like, three books a week (I struggle to read one chapter a week!), it’s also an exercise in absorbing the worldview shaping our culture today.

There are already some insightful reviews on there – it’s definitely a blog I’m adding to my reading list.

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Survived my first full marathon on Sunday at a time of 5:04:35. It was a pretty intense day, and with Kat’s 21st birthday party going on the night before I didn’t really get a lot of rest, wondering how things were going.

Cheryl and Kim tagged along for the 4 am start, and I managed to get across to Devonport with an hour to spare. Got some time to sit and watch the running shoes and yellow bags pass by in the ferry building.

I decided not to go with a pace group this year – partly because last year I chose the wrong one and went too fast, and also partly because I was fairly sure of my own running pace, at about 6.5 minutes/km.

The first half of the course was pretty familiar to me, having done it last year. I was much more aware of how hilly the route between Takapuna, Northcote and the Harbour Bridge would be, so I kept my pace steady even on uphill sections and was rewarded with a 21.1km split time of 2 hr 16 min – an improvement over last year’s time.

This year’s marathon brought out some excellent running weather. There was a light breeze and plenty of cloud cover which meant less dehydrating. Generally it was pretty easy weather to run in.

(Team Deathstar)

(Crossing the Auckland Harbour Bridge on a beautiful morning.)

(Passing under the Harbour Bridge while running along Westhaven Marina.)

The second half of the marathon for me was significantly harder. My furthest training run went up to 30 km so once I got past that (at about Mission Bay), it was almost as if my body didn’t recognise what I was meant to be doing. My right calf muscles began to cramp up and I found myself repeating in my head the words to Isaiah 40:31, and hoping it would hold true for me for the rest of the race!

What I found difficult was that a lot of the other folks running at my section were almost powerwalking, yet were still able to keep pace with me. This even though I was faithfully keeping my running cadence (I timed my steps to Mark and Stephen Altrogge’s “I Will Cast My Cares“). Perhaps there’s something to be said for having longer legs when doing long-distance running!

The last seven km’s were wretched. My running had come to the point where my legs were pumping, but it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere fast! Also the cramps that were creeping in at 32 km flared up a couple of times on the way back from St Heliers and Mission Bay to the city again. Going through my mind was: “How embarrassing would it be to get a crazy cramp at the finish and fall over on video!” Fortunately there were plenty of drinks stations along the way back and I was able to keep going, though at a noticeably slower pace than my first 21 km.

Up to the last five k’s I had hoped that I could do a sub-5 hour time, considering that I felt pretty good at the halfway point and was ahead of time. That hope dissolved away when I reached the ferry building (about 2 km from the end) 5 minutes shy of the 5 hour mark. I quickly put the disappointment behind me though, after reflecting on how amazing it was to even have the opportunity to run myself ragged like this. I definitely prayed for a lot of people during my 5 hours of running, and thought particularly of the families in Samoa that Habitat for Humanity will be able to help with the $500 we fundraised for them.

I ended up with a second-half split time of 2:48:34 – and as expected, a much slower pace of 8 mins/km (largely from the last seven k’s). Nevertheless, I crossed that finish line with thoughts of elation and joy, for completing something I’d set my mind to since last year. A nice touch at the end was having the announcer call out each runner’s name as they approached the finish line. They also handed out medals for people who completed the marathon – this would probably be my one and only sports-related medal!

Henry, Cheryl, Arron and Kim all came down to Vic Park to offer their congrats, and we went out for lunch afterwards.

All in all it was a great day – I’m glad I did it!

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