Men On Mission

I prepared long, hard, and thoroughly for this trip. The only glitch was that my shoes has gone somewhat closer to death unexpectedly. But it's patched, and I expect them to survive another 48 hours at least. And that's all I need from them. At the end of today, Andrew was pretty much knocked out cold. I've been going out and about more and longer than he had, and ate less and more erratically. My only advantage over him was that I had longer and better preparation. But apart from that, any other day it could've been me. As my shoes creep closer to their demise, I understand full well that I was not very far from going down the drain myself and killing this trip I have so looked forward to.

I can easily put myself down as a man on a mission. I came to grab as much as I can throughout the week. So much that it surprised me how stiff I've become when some random people said hy to me today. I was easier to talk to when I was in the office compared to today. As the day descended, so was people down to the arena. The group got scattered all over the place. I was on my own, and I ended up sitting along with a bunch of kids from Planetshakers. Well, they're not really kids, but anybody who's still surprised to find out I'm 26 these days is still a kid in my book. First, a girl talked to me. Asked her where she's from, then she asked me who I came with. I said there were eight of us but we got separated, thus explaining my repeated scanning of the seats and rows around me. Why didn't I call them? I was running out of credit. Upon this answer, she produced her cellphone and proceeded to offer it to me. I said no thanks, I'll just see them in the hotel, I got keys anyway. About ten minutes later, another one from their group came around, sat beside me, and started talking to me. Asked her same question, she asked me same question, answered her the same answer, and she proceeded to do the same as her compatriot from before. I'll not let it pass unnoticed that I was utterly and completely defeated. I thought I was a kind enough sort of guy all these years, but in the face of these strangers I was a complete fool of a cold evil man. The man on the mission has been defeated by some girls just having fun.

I wondered for a while what's so great about Joel Osteen. For all I knew, he was the guy with the kindest smile in all those Christian books, so much was the nice guy image that I wasn't particularly interested. My dad said something about him some time ago, I don't quite remember. Truthfully, tonight he didn't say anything most people don't already know. But his stories and his take on these things, and personally to me, the simplicity of these stories, they hit me hard. So now I know what's so special about Joel Osteen, and that is how simple this guy and his message is, and yet how powerful simple things are in the hands of the right people.

Speaking of stories, a huge part of what I get out of this week is how the stories have impacted me. They're just stories. But great storytellers telling great stories, they hit me hard. Everybody got stories. Not everybody can tell them, but that doesn't change the fact that that means everybody got something in them that can make impact on other people. It's just about telling them. I used to be a good storyteller, not so much anymore now. I stopped telling stories when I got no more stories to tell. But maybe, just maybe, maybe it's not all that hard to make a difference in people's lives, if you only have enough patience to listen to their stories. That heart and that patience are some things I've lost. Thus, my original point when I met those Planetshakers kid. I had become somewhat closed and self-preserving, to the point of untrusting.

So I guess it's high time I turn that around little by little, and start listening to stories again.

Another Morning

So my ego got shot down first thing in the morning. Twice. I've been through quite a lot, I think, but it wasn't until this morning that I found out that it's possible to punch someone in the face with words alone, and that it takes the most vulnerable of people to do such a thing. Very few things are more powerful than vulnerable people with scars from their pasts opening themselves up to reveal those scars. More powerful still is when those people tell you how they made the decision not to follow suit with what the handicap carrying. When they say no I'm not going down with this, you know you're facing people with higher powers. So much like you, yet so far different.

And it's an entirely different story when you are forced to admit that you've had some stuffs in the wrong priority. I had to swallow my ego and admitted that yes my drumming has been all about me. When it comes down to it, with all the pretty words and logical language are stripped away, my drumming life revolves around me. I do it because I enjoy it, I do it hoping that I'm gonna look cool while doing it. Little did I realize that it can't go on like that. Still I am human. To the day I die I will always revel in those things. I will still enjoy playing drums either way, and I may or may not look cool at it. But point is, that can't be what it's all about. Life is too vast, the world too important, and time too short to live my life with me both as its means and its end. People are too important to be hearing only my drumming played for the sake of me alone. I had no idea what I was dealing with. I still don't. I only know now that I didn't know before.

But the good news is that I can still do it. I can't help people myself, but I can still do what I can. My drumming ain't gonna impress nobody, but I sure as heck can practice.

Yesterday's opening struck me for its inclusiveness. It seemed to me to opened its arms wide, as if it's calling everything and everybody to come together as one. The young and the old; the modern and the traditional; the cultural and the steel; the didgeridoo and the drums; the insiders and the outcasts; the good and the bad; the Gundams and the Zakus, everybody. Any other day I'd say, you gotta be crazy. But today it began to make sense. It's true, it's a crazy endeavour. It's true, it's beyond my reach. But that's great, because if it's within my reach then I'll spoil it again by making it to be about me all over again.

That's about all I can say about today, Hillsongs Con 09 Day Two. Something else I can say about this city, though, is how it sticks to my mind. Maybe more than its skyscrapers and its pillars of steel and glass, glimpses of its suburbs got stuck in my mind. Small narrow houses, some fallen into disrepair, the abandoned brick buildings, the old shops and the empty streets, dark and wet under the winter rain. Maybe it sticks so stubbornly in my head because it's a part of a bigger picture. The eye of the storm is the calmest spot. It is where it breeds the destruction that it wrecks on its outside arms. The glamour of the central city, did it cause the suburbs to get so depressing? Or were the suburbs the sacrificial slaves for the empowerment of the city? I'll never know, but I know this: If I'll ever live in this town, I'm gonna fight tooth and nail to live in the central city.

Everything For Everyone

I deserved this. No break in transition between two jobs, including two weeks working both, and a lifechanging month after a lifechanging career change, my psyche was worse for the wear. This is my little adventure, a much smaller version than last year's. This is my story. Here are the pieces and fragments that came along my way up till this very moment, two days into it. Hillsongs Con 2009, Day 1. Here goes.

Large expectations give way to a myrriad of ways to get disappointed. Disappointed people give way to anger flares. Most of the time nothing that nobody has is black and white. Most of the time, everybody are wrong and right in the same proportion. Nobody is an exception. Neither are Christians in a Christian conference. We're all humans afterall. The sooner we accept that fact, the better.

Second time around in the big city, the wonder and awe has diminished a little. Just a little. And even then, that's because the surprise factor has been cut off. Not many new buildings and new shops here today compared to last year. The Virgin store looked much poorer now, representative of the economic crisis. The "Grand Opening!" sign on what was last year a Vietnamese place near the hotel turned out to be nothing more than a sign that the place is now under new management. The place is still Vietnamese. So much for change. But I stoond agape in awe again on Martins Place, just as well as last year. That little piece of oversized-alley still amazes me. The grandiose, the skyscrapers, the busy-ness, the sheer scale of it all, and most ironically, the very business-like way people all around me seem to take it. Of course, I stood there right in the middle of evening rush hour, so they were all office workers caring for nothing more than getting home as fast and hassle-free as possible, day in day out. My holiday, their daily grind. The irony can't get any more delicious than that.

Everything For Everyone. Sounds like a dream straight out of Starbucks' book of what-could-have-beens. I've stopped dreaming for a while now. On Sunday Andrew touched a nerve when he asked us to pray for something that we want to happen. It got me stuck cuz I got nothing I really want right now. I got a new job, and as far as I'm concerned right now my life is in the groove. Anything else that can and need to happen will surely happen in time. I have lost my dreams, grinding my way day in day out on the concrete road of life. That's cool and all, but I've lost my dreams. So faintly I thought, I want to dream again. And what crazier dream is it than one that defies logic? Everything For Everyone. Every single thing. For every single one. It's crazy, as far as logic and logistics are concerned. I don't have enough heart for everyone, was my immediate reaction. Fair enough, but the dream has to be dreamt. No idea what's gonna come next, but this is only the beginning.

This is my third time doing this trip but this is the first time it has rained really hard. Make of it what you will.

I made a point that my holidays have to include elements of culinary tour. For tonight's dinner, thanks to said semi-new Vietnamese just around the time I got there, I walked around to find a white trailer-thingy outside a food court near the hotel. Typically, it's pretty much a different version of The White Lady, only this one serves more-normal-looking hotdogs and pies. Now, I don't know where the guy got his pies, but I dare say it's something special. Medium-sized pie, topping, and sauce, four dollars thirty. I had two. My first was a beef pie, pea and gravy on top, and chilli sauce. When he said pea and gravy I thought yeah well that's normal on pies, right. Well no, *mashed* peas isn't normal with pie. The topping was of the same size as the pie itself. Now, I don't know much about pies so I can be wrong, but that was one mean looking pie. I don't mean schoolyard bully sort of mean, I mean seriously-dude-look-at-me-wrong-and-I'll-stab-your-face-punkass sort of mean. For the price, it's pretty awesome too. Had I not been a big eater, one would've been enough for me. My second one was chicken with mince and beans and again chilli. Chicken doesn't go well with mince, I can tell you that. But stupidities aside, it's still a mean one. There is still a late-night place I want to try just right outside the train station, so I'm not yet sure which one I'll do tomorrow. But for sure, tomorrow will be pretty interesting as well from this aspect.

And that, as they say, was the first day.