dua-puluh-satu

Ok, so I have this reeeally embarrasing photo, ok, a few, of my good friend Steffanie. But I know that if I upload them here she will throttle me.

Today it is Steff's 21st birthday. I just wanted to acknowledge that on my blog, because she is by far one of my closest friends.

It all started in late february 2005, a warm sunny day where I got a blood nose. The first day of the rest of my life. The first day of university. I was standing in a group of people, on the second floor of the education building. In this group contained a few 'popular people', people who seemed to know each other, I had come to Bendigo knowing one person in the whole city. There was a guy there who was seemingly outgoing, and introduced himself as Bluey. There were two other quieter girls, their names being Steff and Tegan. From around the corner was the first time I saw Nita, she rushed past us, we acknowledged that we were her new Indonesian class, and she rushed off again. Everyone smiled at the little Indonesian lady, and everyone noted that she was so cute. I remember this day like it was yesterday. We all entered EDU22.5 and there was our first Indonesian class.

There was something about Steff I couldn't shake off. She seemed like a really nice girl, very quiet, very clever, a quiet achiever, but there was just something about her that made me want to know her more. (this is starting to sound like a love story!)

One of my classes was called "Intro to teaching" with Wilf Savage. On my first tute I realised that there was someone I knew in there, that girl, agh, can't remember her name. But she does Indonesian with me! So I sit next to her, this loud outgoing indigenous lady who goes by the name of Kerri, and another girl called Annette. We decide to work together on our tute presentation for the subject, a free choice, which ends up being about safety.

I remember our first meeting for the subject so clearly. Kerri and Annette got talking about something else, and I was just sitting there with my new friend "Steph". She was eating a sandwhich, and I had brought something from the canteen. She casually asks me, "So.. are you involved with Christian Union?"

Lights went on. I knew it, this girl is a christian! That feeling I couldn't knock, this is it! I said that I was, and that (at the time) I was going to Victory. "oh, they always send new christians in town to Victory!" she told me.

One day Indonesian became unbarable. I was terribly homesick and the grammar became too much and I couldn't hide it. It was back when we had classes at 7:30pm. I rushed to the toilet to try and get myself together, and who would follow me but Steff. I confessed to her that I was so homesick, stressed, and just not understanding the grammar. I remember the concerned look in her eyes.

The second semester of my first year came up quickly. Steff was in my inclusive ed tute with Cherry Rattue. Here started my hanging out in the SU, meeting new people, and forming "the latest phase" friendship group.

Time went on and it was time for me to move back to Pinnaroo for summer. I didn't want to but mum needed my help. It was the craziest 3 months of my life. I kept in contact with Steff, thanks to the beautiful creation called MSN. It's funny the conversations that you can get into on MSN, its like you can get to know someone on a different level.

I was so happy to move back to Bendigo. Steff invited me to her youth group. The first time we went we went to Eaglehawk. She came and got me from the terraces. I stood in the carpark waiting for her, and I knew exactly when it was her, because the volvo was coming up the road at about 20kmph.

I kept a few of my MSN conversations with Steff. I have numerous "Steffs PE advice" (wanna borrow it?) and "Steffs advice about this" and "Steff's advice about that" files throughout my computer. One of them I read with utter frustration the other day about how Steff was so willing to help me, but I held back and became such a neusience!

Over my first prac for second year, I discovered Dragostea Din Tei. Oh dear. Oh yes. THAT song. It was repeated over and over and OVER again, and we know each word to the romanian song. With that came many phases, the blitz phase was one of them. Retro another.

One day I remember waking up at 6am in an utter panic, coming to my 8am class in tears. I told Steff my deepest darkest secrets, and she didn't judge me. She was extremely supportive, and has been ever since. We stayed up until 3am on MSN once with me telling another one of my most secretive secrets. Steff probably knows me the best closest to God. She helped me get back on track, and challenged me in my walk with God. She has been such a strong influence in my life, and I look up to her.

We were once driving along in the Volvo, when she said to me, "hey, you know, it's funny I turned out like this when I lived in Kangaroo Flat." I said, "yeah, you didn't stab anyone or anything, but for all I know, you could have taken someone out into the bush and killed them." Her voice changed and she said to me "where do you think we're going now?"

Yes, I am a dag, but I'm Steff's dag. I may be a dag, but Steff is a fiss. Maybe it's just a South Australian thing ;) Maybe it's because I've been diagnosed with a fatal condition, and I am dying. My remaining lifespan could be a mere 70-80 years. The condition longevitis infectus fericirea et-al (LIFE) But it's ok, all of the worlds most successful people have also been diagnosed with this condition.

But I think that it was meant to be that Steff and I would stumble across each other at this time in our lives. Because the 6km distance from Steff's house to the Bendigo CBD does indeed correlate with the 6km distance from my home town to the SA/VIC border. It is simply the cosmos' way of informing us that we should be sisters, and in fact, were it not so, the very universe as we know it would spiral off into chaos.

Steff and I have a secret language too. Obeng. Sembarang.

The other day, I was innocently sitting next to Steff in a lecture theatre, holding my broken lunch box. Steff turns to me, and says, "I have the sudden urge to piff that across the room". I hand it to her, expecting her not to do it, and she throws it down the front of the lecture theatre.

So here comes the third year. And I'm happy Steffs still around.

I just wanted you to know Steff that you are indeed a very special person in my life (is-tem-e-wa!), and what a better day to let you know than your 21st! May you always know how great a part of my life you are, and that I wouldn't trade anything in the world to be your friend.

May God bless you and keep you today and always!

*hands book* Steffanie Cutmore, this is your life! *and the crowd goes wild*

This is my tribute for you:

istemewa

Here comes a serious post. Watch out.

I don't know if it's just my mind playing tricks on me. But have you ever felt looked down upon? Have you ever felt like people judge you for what you are, or are not. That perhaps you don't have it "all together" right now. That you should get back on track so that you can do great things for God...

What a lie! I'm sick of living under this impression. I'm sick of the gossip. I'm sick of the fact that I seem to be 16 and not 20. I'm sick of the fact that people get the impression that I've only been a christian since I walked through the doors of a church. 6 years. My understandings of doctorines and teachings are broader than people think. I was brought up as a pentie in an evangelical setting. I'm not as stupid and vulnerable as people think.

I have walked many paths, and are yet to walk many more. These words were spoken over my life in year 12.

Someone wise once said to me to change with God. I want to change. I want to be better with him in accordance to HIS will, not MINE.

It's a stupid misconception that we need to get over. We need to stop living this lie that we'll never live up to peoples standards. I'll never live up to God's standards, it's by the grace of Jesus death that I can.

I was praying over something I was involved with the other day, and I felt like God was really putting this word on my heart:

Jeremiah 1
5 “ Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
Before you were born I sanctified you;
I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”

6 Then said I:


“ Ah, Lord GOD!
Behold, I cannot speak, for I am a youth.”

7 But the LORD said to me:


“ Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’
For you shall go to all to whom I send you,
And whatever I command you, you shall speak.
8 Do not be afraid of their faces,
For I am with you to deliver you,” says the LORD.

9 Then the LORD put forth His hand and touched my mouth, and the LORD said to me:


“ Behold, I have put My words in your mouth.
10 See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms,
To root out and to pull down,
To destroy and to throw down,
To build and to plant.”

***

It;s not by our might. It's not by our strength, but by God's. He is the one who can put the words in our mouths. He is the one who can empower us through his spirit. Jeremiah says, that he is a youth, God says that doesn't matter. I say, but God, they say.. God says it doesn't matter. You say, But God... God says it doesn't matter...

Before you were born he knew you and set you apart to change this world.

God takes us where we're at, I'm convinced that God can do anything, even use a little crazy south australian havent got it all together girl like me.

I just wish people could see me as God could see me..

dokter

"You should blog about it" - Spatch

My doctor is extremely funny. He's the type of doctor where you have a five minute appointment, and you can be talking about it for half an hour!

The first time I ever saw him, he asked me "now, Samantha, what do you study here at this marvellous institution?"
He prescrived me some pills that I never took because he freaked me out by saying, "and if you take them, don't drink alcohol, because it will blow your guts out!"

The second time I went I was an emotional wreck. I was bawling my eyes out and I even brought someone with me for support. He came and sat next to me, took me by the hand, and said, "aww Samantha, what's wrong? Am I not pretty enough for you?" Here I am, hysterically crying, yet hysterically laughing at the same time. Then he started patting me like a dog, saying "aww, what;s wrong?" hehe. Then he began to talk very high pitched and told me he had had a sex change, but it went terribly wrong. Then he tried to teach me a technique of taking pills with a big mac. I guess you'd just have to be there. The friend I brought with me was laughing so hard she was crying.

The next day I was in the student services area, and he walked past. I heard him talking to people in the office in the same 'sex change' voice.

But yesterday I went and saw him again. He's a funny dude. He said, "oh you've come to tell me these are **** and I can stick them up my bum!" hehe. He was happy to see me smiling this time "it feels like I've achieved something. One small step for man or whatever." And then as he let me out of his office, he wished me good health, good love, good studies, good whatever.

Hehe I think laughter is the best medicine

berasal dari tempat ini

This article was sent to me in an envelope titled with the return address as "love mum, Pinnaroo 5304". Enjoy.

Heart and soul of the Mallee

By PETER GOERS

April 29, 2007 12:15pm

THE Mallee is not rooted. It's tough country like its people – generous, real, good, strong.

They squint their eyes looking west for rain and they know how to have a good time. They are the memory of rain.

I played the Pinnaroo Institute Hall Saturday night last week. I get around because a moving target is hard to hit.

Pinnaroo is 2 1/2 hours from Adelaide, dangerously close to Victoria. There'd be two reasons why tourists came to Pinnaroo – they'd be lost or tired.

This is wrong because, like every town, it's worth a look. I loved it because I love real people and some of them are even Crows fans. But it's a long way from Burnside.

Pinnaroo has a population of 800 and unusually the average age is 36, so there's no shortage of footballers. There are two unemployed.

Thanks to bore water they grow potatoes, carrots, onions, pistachios, olives and grain, and raise sheep, cattle and pigs.

It has a history of cockies, settlers, fettlers, battlers, one-teacher schools on corner roads, and hard scrabbled drought and more drought. If in doubt – drought.

I'm there to speak at a dinner to raise money for the Community Spud Fest. It's a grand night in the old Pinnaroo Institute.

A great community spirit, Ann Venning, is organising the dinner and the whole town. Every town has an Ann Venning and every town needs one.

I meet new best friends. Characters. "Taffy" the farmer is the barrel-chested B-grade football coach. Big bloke. Big laugh. Big heart. Loves John Howard.

"Budgie" the truckie and farmer staggers past the Institute at 10pm having spent a little too long at the 19th hole after winning his golf match at Lameroo. I invite him in. A fine fellow.

"Pav" is 18 and an apprentice agronomist. He has cut-glass looks and is celebrating his two goals, which won the B-grade footy that afternoon. He's surrounded by adoring netballers.

He's funny and he shines with the promise of a big sky. He's rotten on city pollie Dr Bob Such who recently suggested the Mallee artesian water be piped to the Murray.

Pav says: "That will bloody finish us, mate."

Glen is the new butcher – a Hackham boy who has found home. He's too new in town to have a nickname.

The night before he opened his shop in the newly community-owned and restored Victoria Building in the main street – his sausage machine broke and Ann Venning found a bolt and came in and helped him.

That's life in the co-operative country among the Pinnaroovians.

IT'S a warm Saturday arvo in Pinnaroo – the railway station, the bowling club, the disused croquet club, the swimming pool, the IGA supermarket (once Eudunda Farmers) with an Anzac display yellowing in the window.

The Lest We Forget clock has stopped. The War Memorial has War I and War II above the gold names with space for War III and War IV. God forbid.

The brass band rotunda; the football match at the oval, Pinnaroo v Border Downs-Tintinara, Pinnaroo victorious.

The Show Society Shed with a new roof glinting in the autumn sun, a monster Mallee root burning in a brazier, the netball mums selling pies and pasties from the servery in the clubhouse, the netball girls selling lollies.

A pastie, a Redskin and a winning local team is a prelude of heaven. Visitors are honoured.

The Institute Hall stands for culture. It replaced an old iron and timber hall that was moved and got stuck, and was finally shifted by elephants from Wirth's Circus.

There are murals ("muriels"), lurid and lovely, and a thrift shop in the old Commonwealth Bank. The walk-in safe contains the tax records of a local realtor and Christmas decorations. They're probably hoping it's robbed.

I stay in Room 7 at the ramshackle Pinnaroo Hotel.

"There's a lot of history here," I tell Rick, the former copper publican. "Yes," he says, "and some of it was made last night."

The room is a museum of hotels almost past: spotlessly clean – except for the dusty window; a bare bulb; a sink in the corner; a washstand with an ancient colour TV atop with a mysterious wire protruding from it; a double bed with moth-eaten Onkaparinga blankets; a rickety table with a lace cloth; and an oak veneer single wardrobe and dressing table combined.

The wardrobe door flies open when you walk past it on the creaky floorboards.

I call it the David Hicks Suite.

I'm oddly comfortable here. The room is across the road from the Institute and the Pinnaroovians tell me I won't hear the rock 'n' roll band 4Zs A Crowd.

They could have heard it in Peebinga or Lameroo, and I hope they did.

I fall asleep among the ghosts of this room; travelling salesmen, lovers, the sad, the lonely, those waiting for a knock on the door, the lost and the found.

The Gideon Bible is bookmarked with betting tickets.

The dinner was superb – cooked by volunteers with lovely local schoolkids as willing waiters.

I leave Pinnaroo at dawn in a fog like Brigadoon to be discovered by those who love the real South Australia.

I stop to plunk a few notes on a derelict piano on the return veranda of a derelict house.

It played for the Mallee. A song lost and found in eternal hope.

And the C-grade netball team is undefeated. Just like the Mallee.

Adelaide Sunday Mail, April 29, 2007, page 30

What's funny is that it's all true. And i know all of the people in that article. Funny things is it has two things that Bendigo doesnt: agriculture and employment. Is Pinnaroo the promised land?

menjadi guru?

QUOTE FOR THE DAY

"I don't want kids, I hate them."
"And you're going to be a teacher?"
"You don't need to like kids to teach them, it's a myth!"

... right...

nakal

This week in health we have been looking at self image and sexuality. When our lecturer walked into our tute this morning to tell us we were going to be watching a dvd, I expected that it would be a cheesy 80s clip about sex ed. How wrong I was. It was something much much worse - a documentry that had been on sbs a few weeks ago about Bratz, Bras and Tweens.

I have never liked the idea of Bratz, I don't think they're merely the next generation barbie doll. Their influence on young girls concerns me a lot.
They target a very vulnerable group of younger children. I walked into k-mart one day to see a Bratz spin the bottle game - what the?

But the documentary I saw today clarified my view on Bratz. It clarified to me that it is robbing children of their innocence. Children of a young age shouldn't have to worry about their image. Promotion of such high values of fashion, weight, peer pressure and cruelty should not be around. It breaks my heart to see what such little children are getting into at such a young age. Can kids really be kids with all of this pressure?

Again, I think it makes me want to make a difference all the more, for kids to know that they are loved and accepted by God!

Thoughts?

gas

"ha! I'm going to blog about this!"

Tonight Claire and I decided to cook a lasagne from Aldi which has been in our fridge for about a month.

Tonight was a real milestone for us. We had not yet used our oven (we have used the stove, but havent been sure how to use the oven). Armed with the flicky-lighter-mathingimybob, Claire turns on the gas and flicks around the oven.

I then realise that there's a little flicky thing you hold onto while you light the stove. Now we can definately smell the gas, but nothing is happening. I message ex-housemate Rachel to try and work out what to do.

We turn off the gas for a bit, as the smell was getting a bit overwhelming. Claire then turns it on, as I pull the little trigger and she flicks the flicker once again.

Now I turn the gas off again because the smell was gross, and realise that the oven knob indeed
wasnt turned on, and Claire had the grill on.

So we turned the grill off. And finally lit our oven to cook the much needed lasagne.

But this isnt the end. It is only just the beginning.

20 minutes later, I hear some colourful language coming from the kitchen. Neither of us realised that the plastic was not supposed to stay around the lasagne (we didnt realise that under it there was aliminium). I think we both just assumed it was one of those plastics that doesnt melt, like those baking trays you can get. Wrong.

I think we've saved it, but it's still cooking. It's a bit of trial and error considering we can't read the dial on the oven to tell us the temperature.

So I wonder if this is the end yet?

keguruan

It's funny, God's ways are not our ways. It's funny that its when I'm not longing or expecting an experience of God, it happens. Perhaps that reflects my motives in what I expect or want out of my relationship with God.

It's like this funny thing that happened to me today.

I didn't have a good night last night. I foolishly stayed up until 12:20, meaning today has been a very rough day. I hit the snooze button three times, and ended up driving to uni (bad!). I very lethargically made it up to my 9am Indonesian class. Got into the elevator and complained to God that I wanted to go home, and I felt like God was reminding me of Colossians 3:23.

"Do what I've called you to do."

So in my expectance, an innocent conversation in Indonesian springs up about the life of the Balinese, which eventually goes into the concept of their religion: Hinduism. The unexpected was where it would lead.

We were talking about the concept of the trimurti, which is kind of like a trinity. There are three Gods: Siwa (destroyer), Wisnu (protector), and Brahmana (creator). Then we got on to the Christian concept of the trinity - father, son and holy spirit, comparing and contrasting.

Now this conversation took up a majority of the lesson, and I could feel this unexplainable feeling inside of me, like I never wanted this conversation to end. I didn't know this for sure, but now I do, after two and a half years: it turns out that my Indonesian lecturer (who is from Yogyakarta in Indonesia) is indeed a christian, and has been before she came to Australia. Immediately I grabbed my dictionary, looked up some vocab and asked her about persecution in Indonesia. Unfortunately, it is just as real as I'd heard. Riots between them and muslims, burning of churches. She said it was quite scary.

Some joked that perhaps she was trying to convert us. She spoke so openly and freely. She told us about how she thought that God is such a beautiful concept. She wrote in big letters "KASIH" which means love, saying that it is the most important thing, and that God is love. The whole time I just wanted to give her a hug. I wanted to tell her the real reason I was in, and have been in her Indonesian class for two and a half years now. I wanted to tell her what I was all about! I want to invite her out for a coffee and tell her everything!

After class I couldn't help myself. I wanted to make myself known. I asked her where she went to church. She made must have made a connection out of my interest in the topic and asked me the same.

But yeah, here's hoping I can talk to her again!