Baggas’ Blog

Paul Kelly: A bizarre blast from the past | The Australian

It’s bound to happen in every TV show and perhaps every political career. And it looks like Kevin Rudd’s dream run has finally come to an end - he’s hopped on his water-skis and jumped that shark. A Labor leader taking his party to the center, standing up to the unions and moving into the 21st century in Blair-like fashion sounded too good to be true … and indeed it was. The commentators are having a field day following the weekend Labor conference, and Paul Kelly’s article above is right on the money…

At this point Labor loses the goodwill of big business, the hope of winning small business and the dream that it stands for entrepreneurship. Rudd’s election strategy is to pitch to working families with the claim that an arrogant Howard has abandoned them.

The stage is set for a bitter election over the industrial model that Australia needs for its open economy, an issue unresolved for a generation that now approaches showdown time.

In his speech, Rudd said Howard had launched “an assault on Australian family life” and that Labor would “restore the balance”.

This is neither a credible nor accurate statement about the totality of Labor’s policy. This policy goes far beyond any family friendly test. It is better described as union friendly. The details and the scale of Labor’s package transcend any effort merely to restore fairness to the workplace.

So the battle lines are drawn - the scene is set for the next election. Either Rudd has shown his true colours or has shown his weakness in this capitulation to the union movement - either way he’s jumped the shark as far as I’m concerned (and to think I was starting to like the guy!) The big question remains though - will the Australian public be fooled by this “family values” line and maintain Rudd’s high ratings, or are Kevin Rudd’s Happy Days drawing to an end? Stay tuned…

You often hear people describe themselves as being an outdoors person, an less often as an indoors person. Now personally I like the outdoors and getting out into nature but I wouldn’t identify myself as a hardcore compulsive outdoorsman. May I suggest a third category - the Indoor-outdoors person. This is where you are happy being indoors but simply love seeing and especially hearing the sound of the weather outside - it’s much better than being cooped up in a completely closed building Very often I will open the window in my office or at home just so I can hear the rain or the wind in the trees. Today is a very windy, rainy autumn day in Perth and I’ve got my window wide open - a perfect indoor-outdoors day

A few weeks back I was complaining about how difficult it is to use frequent flyer points. At the time I was completely unable to find a way to get to Johannesburg and back using my Qantas points. Not long after that I downloaded a little program that’s been siting on my desktop ever since - Frequent Flyer Friend. This nifty program automatically searches daily to see if tickets become available on the flights you want. When it finds flights it flashes up a message and sends you an email.

Since I installed it the results have been consistently negative - no flights… until today. A big smiley face flashed up on my desktop saying a flight back to Australia from Johannesburg was available. Sadly the flight I originally wanted to take to Jo’burg (which was available 3 weeks ago) is no longer there - but I found one 3 days later.

So I now have succesfully booked flights using my award points to get to Africa and back in October for the Watoto medical team mission in Uganda. The flights aren’t perfect for a couple of reasons, but at least they are better than having to pay the full cost (the money I’ve saved could more than pay for a VG stratocaster, for example…) First imperfection is that I get there 2 days later than I want to and I leave to come back 2 days earlier than I want - but it still gives me a solid 10 days in Kampala. Secondly the return flight is not to Perth, but to Sydney! So I’ll have to fly over Perth, to the other side of Australia and then catch a flight back from Sydney to Perth that day. And it cost me an 20,000 points more than if I had been able to fly directly back to Perth.

I’ll keep the Frequent flyer friend running and if better flights come up I can always ring Qantas and change my booking. But at least for the time being I have locked in some flights to get me there and back.

Over the years I’ve had a number of interesting free stats plugins on my website but most of them have either been inconsistent or stopped working entirely after a while. So I was very interested when my mate Dean showed me Google’s stats offering that he uses on his website. For him this tool is invaluable, enabling him to keep a detailed eye on the progress of his e-commerce and track the website’s effectiveness at transalting visits into sales. For me the interest is more just on how many people are coming and where they are from, but I’m still very impressed with Google Analytics. Plus being from Google, it’s most unlikely to stop working or disappear. I’ve only just started to scratch the surface but thus far Google analytics seems to be a very powerful tool. My digital life is becoming increasingly googlefied - first the ubiquitous search engine, then multiple gmail accounts for home, office, mobile (with fairly effective spam control), my customisable Google homepage, Google RSS reader, Google documents and spreadsheets, and now Google stats - all of these are tools I use on an almost daily basis. No wonder they were recently rated the most powerful brand in the world.

I’ve only had analytics running since Friday but the stats so far are interesting. At present the most popular posts are my review of Hillsong United’s newest album, and my post on the Fender VG Strat. The most referrals to my site have come from Google of course. Interestingly I’ve I search in Google for Fender VG my post is the second result after the Fender site itself, and if I google Fender VG stratocaster, I’m third, after Fender and the Harmony Central review. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the great people at Fender took note of all this traffic I’m generating and sent me my very own VG Strat to review?? Ahh it’s fun to dream…

It is with some sadness this week that I finally bid farewell to some dear friends. After 2 years of roaming the world together, circumnavigating the globe multiple times, and sharing in innumerable adventures, I have finally reached the end of the 20 novels in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. It’s time to say goodbye to Captain Jack Aubrey of the HMS Surprise and his companion, physician/surgeon, and intelligence agent Stephen Maturin. This has to be one of the grandest series of books ever written, up there with the greats of English literature. The strength and depth of all the characters, the elegant prose, the incredibly detailed research and descriptions on a wealth of topics such as the 19th century Royal Navy, medicine, biology, and music; and above all else the gripping twists and turns of adventure and intigue in the plot make these books difficult to put down. Aubrey and Maturin would have to be two of the most well fleshed out and intricate characters ever written about.

I probably would never have even picked up a book like this if it weren’t for Jenni giving one to me as a gift, and for that I am exceedingly greatful. Historical fiction about the British Royal Navy in the time of the Napoleonic Wars would never have been my first choice as a genre, but now I’m well and truly hooked.

Adding to the sadness of finally coming to the end of this series of books is a sense of “what might have been” had the series continued. Patrick O’Brian died whilst writing the 21st book in the series and we are left with a few brief chapters collated together as “The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey” In this we are given a few glimpses of the key characters in their element, at the culmination of their dreams, both professional and personal, surrounded by their loved ones… yet still with hints of intrigue and adventures to come… sadly adventures in which we will not be able to share. I almost had tears in my eyes as I read through the last few handwritten pages of O’Brian’s manuscript.

I look forward to picking up these books again in the future, maybe in another couple of years time when it will all seem brand new again. But in the meantime if you have never entered the world of Captain Jack Aubrey may I urge you to do what Jenni did for me - go and get yourself a copy of the first book, Master and Commander (or even see the excellent movie of The Far Side of the World with Russell Crowe first) and begin this long and interesting voyage. You may find the prose a little heavy work at first, since it is written in authentic 19th century style, however persevere and soon it will read naturally and you will race through page after page, book after book, like I did. And if you stick through right to the end, I guarantee you’ll feel the same way I do right now - a mixture of achievement and bitter-sweet emotion, like saying goodbye to old friends after a long voyage together.

11:55pm last night and I was in theatre at the hospital for a Caesarean section, and the soon-to-be father was saying “wait five more minutes and it can be an ANZAC baby.” Such is the importance of ANZAC day in Australia - the most important national holiday in which many of us stop to reflect on how lucky we are living here, and more importantly to remember the sacrificies made to make our country what it is today.

Rather than post at length about this special day, let me direct you to a couple of people who have covered it better than I ever could.

Firstly Craig at These Infinite Spaces has changed from his usual single line linkage style of posting to a full and detailed post on ANZAC, and I’m glad he did - read it here.

Read the rest of this entry »

How’s this for an amazing picture :

It’s a reconstructed CT scan picture of a guy in Melbourne who had a chair thrown at him, with the leg piercing his eye socket and making it’s way right down into his throat (which you can see in the right hand picture, the leg comes out from behind the mandible and ends around the level of the 3rd cervical vertebrae). This guy, Shafique el-Fahkri, is lucky to survive, and what’s more, he has forgiven his attacker. You can read the story in The Age.

Reminds me of a case I saw when I was working in neurosurgery. An unstable young man had got a large butter knife and plunged it into his eye socket. Rather than going downwards as in the case above, the knife went immediately backwards into his brain. On the scan it was found to stop only millimeters from his vital internal carotid artery. Those were some of the most impressive Xrays I have ever seen! And he was lucky too - his eye, optic nerve, brain and cerebral blood vessels suffered no permanent damage! Don’t know how he fared in the long term though.

Kinda adds a new layer of meaning to Matthew 7:1-5 “first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will clearly see to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye” (NRSV)

Ben Witherington: CHRISTIANS AND GUN CONTROL: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?

I’ve refrained from commenting on the terrible massacre in the US last week thus far - what more is there to say really? I spent half of Thursday evening when I was sick stuck in front of Fox News watching the home videos of Cho being played endlessly - despite their mostly solemn faces the journos seemed to be lapping it up.

Here in Australia very few people have guns and gun ownership is not a big political issue - and when it was an issue back in the 90s after the Port Arthur killings our government moved swiftly to tighten up gun laws and hundreds of thousands of weapons were turned in. So all this makes it hard for us to appreciate just what a hot potato this issue is over in the US. I don’t necessarily see gun control as being a religious issue - it just sounds like plain common sense to me - however in the above article theologian Ben Witherington makes a strong scripturally based case in favour of stricter gun control. Thought provoking and well worth reading.

So it’s the start of yet another week. We had a pretty good weekend. My illness that I had on Thursday and Friday resolved fairly quickly and by Saturday I was fine - I put it down to the fact that I dosed myself on just about every drug I could find on Thursday! Spent a lot of time outdoors on the weekend, had some meals in our patio while the weather is still good, went for bike rides and visit to parks, swam in the pool. And then on Sunday afternoon we got some decent rain as well so had some nice inside time with the rain pelting down on the roof.

Spoke to the insurance company today and was told that repairs have been authorised for our car. Still haven’t heard from the repairer though and I imagine it will be quite a while before we get the car back. And when that happens I’m planning to probably trade it in and get a new model, since I’m not sure I want to hang onto a car that has that much damage to it, no matter how good a job they do on the repairs.

This week is a split week since Wednesday is ANZAC day - for anyone overseas who doesn’t know, ANZAC day is the holiday in Australia and New Zealand where we honour our soldiers who have fought and died in the various wars over the last century or so. It specifically commemorates the landing of our forces on April 25, 1915 in Gallipoli, Turkey in 1915. I’ve always found it somewhat fitting that our national memorial day for the armed forces commemorates what was ultimately a great defeat at Gallipoli. It’s a good thing that Australia honours our soldiers no matter whether they won or lost… One of the traditions for ANZAC day is eating ANZAC biscuits, which are these yummy oatmeal biscuits. Jen and the boys made up a batch on the weekend and they didn’t last long at all.

I don’t know a whole lot about cartography but I like looking at maps and atlases. Because mapping a round world onto a flat map necessarily involves some distortion of actual size it can be difficult to visually compare the sizes of different countries/continents. For example on many maps Africa often appears to be not as large as it actually is. This map helps give a better idea of just how vast Africa really is. I discovered this map at a brilliant blog called Strange Maps. They have a panopoly of unusual and quirky maps. They are so brilliant it is tempting to post a few of them up here but I’ll refrain and let you explore the site yourself.

Also interesting to read is the blog post that accompanies the Africa map, and some of the heated discussion that ensues. Who would have thought that the topic of Alaska could be such a sensitive one? It’s interesting how even the subject of cartography can be prone to accusations of politico-cultural bias. I don’t know if this was an intentional thing, but it is true that many of the maps we have are distorted in such a way that the wealthier northern countries appear larger than poorer and southern nations. An interesting map to view is the Peter’s Projection, which attempts to give a more actual visual representation of the relative size of parts of the world than the familiar Mercator projection.
Once again I don’t know if this reflects an intentional cultural bias, but I was quite taken aback the other day whilst watching an episode of The Gilmore Girls with Jenni. On the wall in a scholl classroom was a world map, but instead of the usual map which is approximately centered on Europe and the Prime Meridian this map was actually centered on the Americas, thus necessitating a bit cut through the Eurasian continent on each edge of the map. I know we often jokingly say Americans see themselves as being at the center of the world, but I thought that was taking it to extremes. It’s almost the same as if us Australians (and South Africans and Argentinians) were to adopt a map like the one below (which is actually an inverted Peters)…

Feeling terrible today - in fact I feel like I have a hangover even though I haven’t been drinking anything. Bad headache and nausea - spent half of yesterday evening vomiting. This virus has beeen circling round my family and now it’s my turn unfortunately. I’m hoping the anti-nausea injection I just gave myself will kick in soon otherwise I don’t know how I’m going to get through a full day of work. I thought about staying home but no work=no pay and besides the boys are at home today so it wouldn’t be all that peaceful there anyway.

In other news I’m still waiting to hear what’s going to happen with our car. It’s been a week and a half and the insurance people still haven’t decided what to do. Hopefully we might hear something today.

USB thumb drives are getting cheaper and cheaper now. I bought my 1 Gig drive a couple of years ago for over $100 which was pretty good price at the time. Now you can get a 4 Gig drive cheaper than that. And with these kind of capacities available at a low price, there a few limits to what can be done with them.

Today I discovered a great site PortableApps.com which provides a great collection of stand-alone applications that can be run directly from a USB stick or portable hard drive, without any sort of installation on the host PC. All freeware and open-source stuff, they give you the ability to take your own personal suite of software, setup just the way you like it, to be used on any computer. This will be great for people who travel a lot, any maybe even students who access different PCs at university or school. Applications included include portable versions of Firefox browser, Thunderbird email, Open Office suite, instant messaging software, media players, rippers and recorders (like Portable Audacity) and FTP software. But these are just the start - you can find a portable app to achieve just about any task you might want be internet, office, media-related or whatever. Take a look at the Wikipeda List of Portable Apps for a large selelection. The beauty of the Portable Apps website is that they include an elegant launcher which displays the applications on your drive in a Start Menu like format.

Just got the latest album from Hillsong United this week and have been listening to it over the past few days. Every year Hillsong usually release two albums - one is their main big church live album which is recorded in front of a humungous Sydney crowd, and the other is a live album by their youth worship team, United. Now almost without fail I find that I prefer the United CD, and many of the best songs on the main Hillsong album are ones that were first done by United, and generally the United versions are better.

But this year, with All of the Above, United have done something a little different - they’ve done away with the crowd and recorded this in the studio. At first this seems a little odd, but the more I listen the more I feel that the album doesn’t suffer at all. In fact, being a studio album rather than a live one gives the songs a lot more space and musical texture. There are a few higher energy songs showing that United still know how to rock out, but overall the album is a lot slower and more reflective. Brooke Fraser features heavily in several of the best tracks, demonstrating again what a talented artist she is (her most recent solo album, Albertine, is excellent also.)

Lyrically too there is a bit more diversity in this album, although I haven’t sat down and had a good look at the lyrics. In addition to the the usual praise and worship songs and lyrics about a close personal connection with God, there seems to be a new emphasis on issues of justice and caring for others and the world. This seems to be a growing theme for Hillsong as a whole. Over the years they have copped a lot of flak (not entirely unwarranted) from the mainstream media and some Christians as being very materialistic and excessively focussed on money and prosperity preaching (for a humorous example which gives you the gist of how the media view Hillsong see the Chaser Team’s Hill$ong video on Youtube) Even if there has been some foundation to it, the vast majority of this criticism has been narrow and biased and ignores the great deal of good that Hillsong has done in terms of bringing people to faith, and impacting the church worldwide especially with their music. Some of the criticism can be down-right virulent and nasty, particularly that coming from cheesed off Christians who have built up a well of bitterness and hatred towards Hillsong - there are entire websites and discussion boards full of this kind of vitriol.

Anyway, whether intentionally or not, Hillsong seem to have moved away to a certain extent from this prosperity teaching and now have a huge emphasis on social justice and caring for others outside their church. As well as projects in their own city, they have extensive involvement with work in Africa and elsewhere and strongly encourage people in their church and others to get involved. Jennifer spent a few days last month at their Women’s conference in Sydney and social justice/caring for impoverished children/orphans was perhaps the biggest theme. But you won’t see all this positive stuff being reported in the media I’m sure! Overall it’s pleasing to see megachurches like Hillsong (and Perth’s Riverview) moving more in this direction. It’s something I certainly care about. I believe it has a very strong biblical mandate and should be a growing mission of the church worldwide. I can’t remember who, but someone once said that the only group big enough and motivated enough to actually make a difference in world poverty is the Church. And it’s good to see the big churches leading the way in this. Our church at Warnbro has been doing this stuff for years so it’s nice that others are catching up - lol.

But I digress - back to the album. All of the Above is an excellent, although different, album from Hillsong United. Although it doesn’t instantly hit you hard like their previous brilliant album United We Stand and my other all time favourite More than Life, I think this will prove to be the United album that I listen to most. It’s sonic textures, meaningful lyrics, and gentler tone really draw you in and immerse you in the heart of the music. Definitely a high water mark for United, and Hillsong music as a whole.

On a related topic, I noticed on my news feed this morning that the United team are touring North America at the moment, starting with a headline concert on Sunday night at the Gospel Music Association (GMA) Week in Nashville. Great to see them spreading their music to a wider audience than just Australia.

Phil Baker has been trying to get his foxtel pay TV disconnected… without much success. Difficult and frustrating for Phil, but it makes for a funny read. The step I empathise with the most was Step 4 where he phoned at 3:35 and was told the desk is only open from 9 to 5 .. eastern time. I have had this kind of thing happen many times and always find it incredibly annoying. For a supposedly national company to not have their phones open during business hours for the whole nation is not good enough.

If nothing else it gives me another excuse to maintain my foxtel - it’s well nigh impossible to disconnect it.

Just to follow on from yesterday’s post about the Rwandan genocide, and the need to raise our awareness and hopefully see consequent action to address and prevent these sort of problems.

ob1 makes a valid point about the lack of international attention being due to lack of economic resources, specifically oil, in these countries (but although oil gets attention, is that always a good thing? just look at Iraq…) And perhaps this is a reason why our governments don’t seem to give crises like Rwanda and Darfur top billing, however it doesn’t negate our responsibility as individuals to make ourselves aware and take what action we can (no matter how little it may seem) to help, or to put pressure on our governments. And this is what Bob at Crosswords does in in his post - taking President Bush to task for ignoring Darfur (which means a lot coming from a conservative right wing American blog like his and calling on us to do what we can to ease this situation and raise it’s profile. He links to the Save Darfur Coalition where there is more information about the crisis and what can be done about it.

To turn the spotlight on Darfur in a more literal sense, Google have teamed up with the US Holocaust museum to create high resolution images of the troubled areas in Darfur and Chad. Flames in Google Earth mark villages that have been affected by this conflict. If you look from a high view, it seems like the whole of western Sudan is in flames. Zooming in closer you can see up close these scorched villages and the camps to which millions of people have fled. If you have Google Earth just zoom in to the area and you can see what I mean. Also see the US Holocaust Museum site for more information.

Finally, going back to Rwanda, I ended up finishing that book Left to Tell in one sitting last night. As I said, it’s simply written, just telling one woman’s story without going into much depth about the history and politics of the situation. Yet it was one of the most powerful books I have read in some time. I don’t know if I can remember another example of a book that brought tears to my eyes, but this one surely did. Definitely one that I would recommend to everyone.

It’s a gloriously wet Sunday evening here in Perth. In fact it’s rained quite heavily all day - the first big wet day of the year. Usually I like to have music playing permanently no matter what I am doing, but on days like this I turn the stereo off and let the rain be my music - there’s few things more relaxing than listening to the rain falling outside. It’s not particularly cold so I’ve actually opened the window next to the couch here so I can hear it all the more - heavy rain, occaisional thunder, and a strong wind blowing in off the ocean.

This kind of environment seems perfect for the book I started reading tonight. I started it an hour ago and am already about half way through. Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza, subtitled ‘Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust.’ This book is a simply written yet powerful story of a young woman’s survival in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, sustained by her strong Catholic faith. Whilst thousands are brutally murdered by their former neighbours and friends, Immaculee and some other Tutsi women are sheltered inside a tiny hidden room by a kindly Hutu pastor. If you’ve seen Hotel Rwanda then you’ll have an idea of what this is about. So far I’ve found this book utterly compelling (aside from the pseudo-Christian new-agey spiritualistic babble by Wayne W. Dyer in his foreword to the book). She doesn’t go in depth into the politics of it all but to me it’s a reminder that at least part of the reason why this occurred is that the world turned a blind eye to this disaster. The only way to prevent catastrophes like this, and the similar troubles in Darfur, Chad and north Uganda, is for western countries and western individuals to actively engage with the people of Africa (and other similarly impoverished nations), to take an interest in their problems and show them that they really matter. Unfortunately it’s all too easy for the problems of the third world to slip off the radar, being buried by the latest political scandals, celebrity gossip and sports results. It takes work to keep pushing these issues towards the spotlight, not just in the media but also in our own awareness. Reading books like this one is just one way we can work at that awareness. And hopefully in some sort of way, big or small, that awareness will ultimately translate into action…

Like many members of the medical profession, I have an almost physiological dependence on coffee. For some it starts during med school, poor students drinking gallons of cheap coffee to enable them to churn through the enourmous textbooks they needed to study. For others it develops during internship and residency - consuming large doses of coffee to keep awake and alert through the horrendous 80+ hour weeks of hospital work. In our hospital the cafeteria had the cheapest most horrible coffee imaginable (something akin to International Roast) served through this dispensing machine. You twist a knob to give a shot of coffee powder to which you then add hot water and milk. I graduated from one shot of this “coffee” into my styrofoam cup when I first started there in the third year of med school to having four or more shots at a time by the time I was a second year resident. I don’t know how my addiction would have finished up had I continued my specialist training in surgery. A neurosurgical registrar working 100 hour weeks, much of which in theatre, would have an inordinate caffeine requirement. I think I escaped just in time from ending up like the guy in this cartoon…

But I still need my coffee and although I’ve progressed to quality espresso ground from the best Five Senses beans at home, the coffee we have at work is still sadly lacking. The company that bought out our surgery have not seen fit to provide us with an espresso machine (or even a filter) and so we are stuck with instant coffee and a kettle that keeps breaking down. So it’s with great delight that I greet the coffee van that stops outside our surgery a couple of times a week. It’s not as good as what I have at home and at church, but it’s a far sight better than Nescafe. This is one of the best franchise ideas I’ve seen in a long time - a little van with a big espresso machine in the back, bringing reasonable coffee to the workers. Although I’ve learnt the lesson not to ask for cappuccino which is not great - strictly flat white, double shot and you won’t go too far wrong.

Anyway now that I’ve had my caffeine hit I’d better go see if there’s any more patients waiting. Can you tell things are a bit slow for me today?

It’s scary that a massive, computerised organisation like QANTAS can get two people completely mixed up, purely because they have the same name - check out Mark’s amusing story of his recent dealings with QANTAS.

Looks like it’s a week now since I’ve posted any kind of YouTube Video on this blog (and some of you are probably saying that’s a good thing), but I’ll make up for it now. It’s not a video of the kids or scenery this time but rather a demonstration of the latest product from Fender. Now for me, as both a guitarist and a techo-gadget-geek, this new VG Stratocaster seems to be the ultimate toy - a fully fledged American strat with the discrete addition of a small Roland pickup and two small control knobs which allow you to instantly change the tone and tuning of your guitar. No additional effects or special midi cables or anything required. Check out the demo :

I’ve already been wanting to get hold of a strat for quite a while now but this new product looks awesome! Time to start saving hard and praying that the exchange rate holds up and maybe, just maybe, I can check one of these babies when I hit Nashville in a couple of months. Sweet.

Take a look at Matt Van Stone’s in depth review, also this review and the Fender site for more information.

Also here’s another good demo video from the NAMM 2007 convention. The guy demonstrates how you can play all the parts to Stairway to Heaven just by flicking a switch on your guitar

Aussie dollar hits 17-year high. 13/04/2007. ABC News Online

Well this is not necessarily good news for everybody, but for those of us who like to shop online it’s not bad. Hope it stays like this (or higher) through into July and August as it will make our trip to the USA that much more affordable (plus it’s my birthday while we’re away and I’ve got my heart set on one of these…)

Last week we watched an incredible documentary about the refugee crisis in Northern Uganda. Invisible Children was a film made by 3 college age guys who planned to go and film the poverty in Southern Sudan, but wound up encountering the problems caused by the LRA in Gulu and surrounding districts in Uganda. Rebel fighting and abductions of the populace, especially children, have displaced millions from their homes, and have forced thousands of children to ‘commute’ into the towns every night and sleep there for their safety.

The film is slick, very youthful style filming and editing - almost like an episode of Survivor at times. It begins quite humorously as these 3 young guys ebmark on their big adventure, but it doesn’t take long before it gets very serious as we are confronted with some of the victims of this crisis. But then at the end (and in the abundance of DVD extras) it gets more positive as we are shown the work of the charity that these guys started on their return. Their Invisible Children charity is pitched squarely at high school and college aged American kids, giving them opportunities to help those less fortunate than them in Uganda. It’s a very upbeat, uplifting program. And they have an uber cool website too - Invisible Children

Ever since I first heard about the LRA and the problems in Gulu when I was in Uganda last year I’ve had a strong desire to visit there and help in some way. In fact we tried to get up there last year but there wasn’t enough time and it was deemed unsafe by our hosts. Watching this doco has inspired me more to want to help these people, victims of a tragedy that has been descibed by the UN as one of the worst, and most under-reported humanitarian crises in the world : “I cannot find any other part of the world that is having an emergency on the scale of Uganda, that is getting such little international attention.” (UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland) I don’t know if I will get the opportunity to get to northern Uganda when I visit there this year, but I really hope to do so at some point. In the meantime check out the Invisible Children website and watch their movie if you get the chance. Very moving.

I’m feeling a bit battered and bruised this morning after a nasty accident yesterday afternoon. I was driving our car, with the 2 boys in the back along a major road when another car tried to turn across in front of me. It all happened very quickly and I didn’t really have time to brake and collided with his car. The car spun around, the passenger side air bag went off (luckily no-one was sitting there) and there was smoke everywhere. Fortunately the boys were completely unharmed, although a little bit shaken by the ordeal. As for me I have some aches and pains in my legs and neck but nothing too severe. The other good thing was that behind us on the road was a police car, so they were at the scene immediately and saw the whole thing. It took a lot of stress out of the whole situation having them there directing traffic and talking to the other driver etc. God certainly was looking after us through it all. The car was towed to the local smash repair place (which we know all too well unfortunately) and I had to go there this morning to fill in an insurance report. While I was there I snapped a few pics with my phone. The damage is fairly bad, but I don’t think it’s going to be enough for them to write off the whole car (which would be cool) - I imagine it’s going to take quite a while to fix though… Anyway, see for yourself…

Now I wouldn’t call myself a frequent flyer - over the past few years I’ve gone on an average of one flight a year, which is not really enough to earn many points. However I have been a frequent spender, and since I have a cool credit card which pays 1.5 points per dollar spent I have managed to accumulate a healthy tally of QANTAS points (along with my unhealthy credit card debt…) Earning points then, is not so tricky - using them is a different kettle of fish…

Last year when we went to Africa we tried to use points to fly me and Jen across and then pay for the kids’ flights. What we found then was that we could get the flights we wanted to fly from Perth to Johannesburg, yet there were no return flights for at least six weeks after we wanted to come back. At the time I assumed that the lack of flights was simply because we were booking our tickets with only a couple of months before we planned to go and all the seats had been taken. This time it’s just me going on my own in October (the whole family is hopefully going in July - see here) so I thought using my points to get one return flight 7 months in advance should not be a problem. Guess again! I tried to book the flight on the weekend and struck the same problem - no problem getting the flight I wanted there, but simply no return flights from South Africa. Actually it was not quite as bad as last time - I managed to find a return flight 2 weeks after I wanted to come home, but an extra 2 weeks off work would cost me more than buying the ticket in the first place, since I don’t get paid leave (no work = no pay) and more importantly it’s leaving Jen alone with the boys for an extra 2 weeks, which would not go down well.

I can’t work out why this is a unidirectional problem - there are 5 flights a week to Johannesburg and 5 back. Why is it that there are no award flights available for the return journey but plenty getting there? Hard to explain. I’m not sure if they might release any more seats between now and October so I’ll keep checking the QANTAS website, but it looks like I’ll probably have to pay for the flights again, and in the process earn some more of these frustratingly unusable points.

My feelings are important for many things. They are essential and valuable. They keep me aware of much that is true and real. But they tell me next to nothing about God or my relation to God. My security comes from who God is, not from how I feel. Discipleship is a decision to live by what I know about God, not by what I feel about him or myself or my neighbours. “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about his people.” [Ps 125 (MSG)] The image that announces the dependable, unchanging, safe, secure existence of God’s people comes from geology, not psychology.

~ Eugene Peterson A Long Obedience in The Same Direction p87

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned on the blog before our plans to return to Africa this year, but things have changed a bit anyway, so I’ll give you the latest.

Watoto are planning another Medical Team mission in October this year and our plan was for me to go on this, Jen and the boys to come over and meet me there half way through, and then to have a holiday afterwards. After being the sole doctor last time I had asked a few Christian doctors I know if they were interested in coming, plus we had a few other miscellaneous people express an interest in possibly joining us. Well for various reasons it has turned out that virtually everyone who has expressed an interest in coming has decided not to, which doesn’t bother me since I am more than happy to be travelling on my own (it’s probably a bit easier that way anyway). It also looks like there will be at least one other doctor on the trip (from Sydney) so that will make the medical mission that much more effective and share the load a bit. Two or three doctors plus a few nurses would be the ideal team make-up. So I’ll be travelling on my own to Uganda in October for 2 weeks to be involved with the medical team - once again the bulk of our work will be medical outreach clinics delivering primary care medicine to impoverished villagers.

Jennifer is planning to once again spend some time working in the Sanyu Babies home in Kampala, and hopefully to also help provide them with some supplies and resources. But what we’ve decided to do, for various reasons, is to switch this over to a separate trip, leaving in early July. Now the cost of taking our family to Uganda and back is not much cheaper than purchasing round-the-world tickets, so around the world we will go! Leaving at the start of the school holidays (to minimise Owen’s time away from school) we’ll be travelling first to Uganda via Johannesburg, where we will spend time in the babies home. From there we will go to London and then Manchester to visit Jennifer’s relatives including her grandfather (who is quite old and not in good health, another reason for going earlier..) From Manchester it’s off to New York, Nashville, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Sydney and then home.

That’s the tentative plan. We’ll be seeing a travel agent in a week to look at booking all the flights, and I’m waiting to hear from the bank about a loan to pay for it all. Also I discovered when I saw my accountant last week that I have not one, but two massive tax bills due in the next 3 months, and I only have enough money to cover one of them. So we’ll probably have to borrow even more money to pay for that but I’m trusting that it will all work out. I’ll keep you posted on what’s happening with all the plans.

I spent some time early this morning thinking about dead bodies. I know, not the most delighful occupation for a Sunday morning, but there’s a point to it I promise. Now I’ve probably seen more than my fair share of dead bodies, a lot more than the average person. And when you’ve seen a few dead bodies you come to appreciate that there’s a certain quality about them - a certain deadness. Whether they’ve been dead a few minutes or hours or longer the combination of a lack of circulation around the body and a lack of neuromuscular activity makes the dead person qualitatively different from the live person they previously were. And when you see a body with this quality of deadness it is strikingly obvious that this is a permanent state from which there ain’t no return. I’ve also seen plenty of people who are just this side of deadness, whose hearts have arrested or some other serious health problem has brought them to the brink of death. Some of them have been brought back from that brink, most have proceeded on to deadness, but even in the nearly dead there is still that qualitative difference, albeit sometimes very minor. You can shock a nearly dead person and get them back, but once someone is truly dead no amount of electricity can help them, as Mark pointed out in his message this morning.

Anyway the point of all these morbid thoughts is that deadness is permanent. We all know it - dead people don’t come back. It’s a basic fact of life that my scientific training and medical experience have illustrated for me vividly many times. Yet today is Easter Sunday, a day on which we celebrate a time in which deadness was cured, the irreversible was reversed - and not only that but a new and improved humanity was revealed. Now some have used the universal truth of nature that deadness is permanent to discredit the resurrection acounts - “we know that dead people don’t come back to life therefore the stories about Jesus cannot be true.” Some have even appealed to science, saying in effect that with all the scientific progress we have made over the past 200 years we have now moved beyond entertaining such absurd primitive mumbo-jumbo such as the resurrection. This argument (as Tom Wright points out many times) is patently stupid - it didn’t take modern science to prove that dead bodies don’t rise - people in the past knew this as fact just as well as we do - in fact maybe more so since they had a more regular and closer exposure to death than most of us do now. I actually came across someone using this line of argument on a webpage or blog a few days ago, along the lines of “we know that the resurrection and other miracles couldn’t have happened therefore the gospels are a complete fiction.” Some people believe such arguments but want to retain a respect for Jesus so end up with a watered-down version of Christianity which removes any hint of the miraculous and finishes up with being simply a bunch of platitudes. Some scholars approach the New Testament with this ’scientific’ view as their basic premise and then spend their lives trying to explain away what is written there. Why not try a different premise - the premise of faith? We all know that dead people don’t rise and miracles don’t happen, but if there is a creator God then by definition he can transcend the facts of usual reality. So the question is not whether or not you believe in miracles (of which the resurrection is the ultimate example) but whether or not you believe in God. If you believe in God then a belief in the resurrection should not be a problem at all. People who say they can’t believe in miracles and therefore cannot believe the gospels have got it all backwards. I cannot fathom a “faith” which claims some sort of belief in God but which denies the possibility of miracles. If you’re not going to believe the miracles why bother believing in God at all?

Anyway enough of my rambling thoughts. The other thought I had whilst pondering cadavers was not how the resurrection is contrary to ’science’ and human experience, but just how amazing it truly is. If you are going to believe in God, why not believe in one who has the power to do this sort of thing, and not only once in the past for Jesus, but also one day in the future for all of us who believe? This is a key hope of Christianity - more than just salvation from the past - the hope of future resurrection (and physical, not just as some sort of vague metaphor). That’s the kind of power my God has. To finish, here’s a verse that Mark mentioned this morning which illustrates that power and that hope perfectly…

“I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.”  (Eph 1:18-20)

It’s like we’ve only just discovered our neighbourhood, after living here for well over a year. Took another walk/bike ride today and couldn’t resist doing some more filming. Don’t know if anyone likes watching them but I’m sure finding making these YouTube clips quite addictive Once again we visited the high lookout dunes and I filmed another slower panorama. This time if you look you can see the big Kwinana grain terminal where I used to work in the north, as well as a good view of the suburbs and shoreline of Rockingham. I couldn’t quite zoom in on our house (mostly because the sun was in my eyes) but you can see the bush and golf course nearby. Overall, today has been a good one.

Really looking forward to having a nice long break this weekend, after being super busy the last few days. I think I’ve had 12 babies delivered in the last 5 days, the last being an hour ago. Today is my last day of work until Tuesday, and I have only one hour to go! Tomorrow it’s off to the accountant in the morning and then up to Perth for Owen’s opthalmology appointment in the afternoon, which is quite timely because his eye has been a lot worse over the last week. Then it’s Easter weekend, spending time with family and friends, eating chocolate, watching old Jesus movies and going to church. Sounds good

Monday mornings are supposed to be when I return to work after a refreshing weekend with the family. Well I can’t say that I feel particularly refreshed right about now. The weekend was my monthly on-call for obstetrics and it turned out to be one of the busiest I’ve had since starting work down here. I had 9 babies born over the weekend, all except one I think were born at night, meaning I averaged less than 4 hours sleep the last 3 nights. Still there are some plusses - none of the births were very stressful or complicated - only one required a vacuum extraction but it wasn’t super emergent. The other big plus is that the more babies that are born the more I get paid, which might help a little towards addressing my huge tax debt and paying for our trip later this year.

Since the babies were all born at night, it meant I had plenty of time to spend with the family during the days (no time for sleep though) Saturday was looking like a warmish one and after we got back from a kid’s birthday party the boys asked to go to the beach down the road from our house. Since I wasn’t busy and this might be one of the last summery days I thought why not. Unfortunately it ended up raining but not before the boys had a good dig and splash, as you can see in the clip below. This is also Owen’s debut on commentary duties, which mixed results (hard to understand him at times). Hopefully it’s a little more entertaining than it would be with just music alone… At the end of the video, I also pan around and label some of the places along Warnbro Sound…

Sunday afternoon we again went out for a walk, and Owen got to ride his new bike. This time we explored some of the paths through the sand dunes near our place - we’ve been there for over a year and have never made it to these paths before (pretty slack hey) but it was a really great place to walk. Aside from marvelling at some of the massive homes nestled amongst the dunes (who knew there were such fancy houses a 4 minute walk from our place?) we also discovered a great lookout on the top of one of the highest dunes, giving panoramic views of Warnbro Sound, Port Kennedy, and Rockingham. I took a quick video of it on the digital camera and added some of the photos from the weekend (mainly because I was enjoying the music clip I put with it so much and wanted to make it last a bit longer) Anyway enjoy.