Fun with my new phone!

I got a new phone for Christmas. I'm pretty excited about it. Most people who know me would know that I'm not generally one for gadgets although computer programming is my line of work. (A paradox that some cannot fathom.) Well, I realized that being home in Scotland was a good opportunity to get a new phone because the technology here is a bit more advanced than that which is available in Canada. (No offence to my Canadian chums. Europe's just been doing it for longer.)

After a look around the shops in Glasgow and some subsequent research on the 'net, I picked out the Motorola V620 for myself. The main features I wanted were:

* Quad Band (Good for both European frequences and both North American frequences)
* Unlocked (Can use a SIM from any company, such as O2 in the UK and Rogers in Canada)

It turns out my phone has all kinds of useful features such as camera, Bluetooth and MP3 ringtones. This means I can easily transfer files to/from the phone such as photos I've taken with the in-built camera or if I want to use an MP3 sound file from my computer as my ring tone, I can do that too!

I'm really glad I was able to get this. I'd been hoping to get a new phone at some point and it's good to have one that'll work in Scotland and Canada!

Here's a pic I took of myself on the train with the camera on my phone. The colour's a bit weird but I blame the train for that.

Happy birthday, Jesus!

In case anyone wondered, I hadn't forgotten in my previous post that this is in fact Christmas Day, I was saving it for a separate entry.

Here we are again. Another year, another Christmas. "The word became flesh" God's gift to us is still providing for us, still helping and blessing us through every Christmas past, present and future. There's really nothing we can give to pay him back, yet how many times do we try to earn his approval?

How can a child earn sonship? Is it with his first step? His first word? His first million? There is no earning sonship, only receiving it. We can choose to work at making God accept us or we can say "Thanks for being my daddy" and trust that we are, in fact, his kids.

What can we give back for the gift of Jesus? Nothing. We can't ever come close to repaying God and I don't think he wants us to either. A gift is not a loan. A gift can tell you a lot about the person that gave it and it demands attention. We should recognise the nature of God from his gift of Jesus and that should inspire us to live like we're special. Certainly, his kindness will result in action on our part but the difference is it's motivated by his love, knowing we're already accepted and we're allowed to screw up. It's good to know you're safe.

Jet-lag cured?

Well, I tried an experiment over the past couple of days. I did indeed stay up all night from the 23rd to the 24th. Then I was nodding off a bit in the church service I went to on Christmas Eve. I had planned to stay up and go to the late one over midnight as well but I threw in the towel and went to bed at 11 o'clock.

Being something of a one for numbers, I added it all up. I had been awake for 35 hours by the time I finally went to bed last night. Not surprisingly, it didn't take me long to get to sleep.

The thing that remains to be seen is whether it did in fact deal with the jet-lag or if I'll be wide awake tonight. I got up at around noon today so I suppose I overslept but the good part was that I went to bed at a reasonable time.

Still not slept since last post

OK, so would you believe it, I've actually tried the crazy idea I posted last night. I have not slept a single wink of sleep since I last posted in the blog. Just a recap, the last time I wrote in here was 4:15am this morning and now it's 2:50pm and I've still not been to bed. It remains to be seen if I will pass out at some point this afternoon/evening. I'm hoping to make it till midnight and then after church I'll come back and sleep like it's going out of fashion.

A haggis supper in Glasgae

Heh, how's it gaun? Guid? Aye, crackin, so it is!

Did you understand that?

How about:

Gonnae geeza bottla ginger?

Now that I'm back in Scotland, I'm adjusting back to the accent (and language!) of the west of Scotland. It's amusing how strong everyone's accent seems to me. I was talking to an assistant in Carphone Warehouse in Glasgow and I couldn't understand a few things he said. It's a bit frightening, really.

Today I managed to get back in touch with a common Scottish pursuit - the trip to the chippy. I walked down Glasgow's Buchanan Street eating a Haggis Supper with a can of Irn Bru in my pocket. I thought to myself, "I can't get much more Scottish than this." It was pure quality, soitwiz. Sorry, lapsed into the Glasgow vernacular there...

An amusing thing about travelling from Toronto to Glasgow is the effect it has on your sleeping pattern. Here I am, still up at 4:45am, not especially tired. I got up at around lunchtime today so that kind of fits. My body is still operating on Toronto time even though my location happens to have changed by 5 hours! Maybe I should stay up all night tonight and then when I go to bed at the end of Christmas Eve, I'll be really tired...

Back in Scotland!

Yes, it's true! I arrived safely back in the UK this morning and I've just had dinner with Mum, Dad and my siblings for the first time in a year and a half. My body clock is still somewhat confused. It's 6:30pm here but my body is probably closer to 1:30pm. The problem with that is that I only slept for about an hour overnight on the plane so I have some catching up to do. I slept this afternoon and hopefully that should be enough. Tonight I'm going to hear Andy Hunter at Glasgow Elim. I've not been there since they had all the building work done to extend the building. It should be interesting...

First snowboarding trip of the season!

On Saturday I made my first trip up to Blue Mountain of the season. There were quite a lot of runs open, considering it's still only December. I had a fairly good night of riding, considering I've not done it for a while. It's reassuring to see I can still carve although I'm not quite as fast as I was at the end of last season. I'm sure that a few visits from now I'll be back on form, though. It's still fun, no matter what. I love getting out on the hill and having the freedom of zooming down on my board and not needing to worry about anything else other than picking my path down the mountain.

این یک کتاب است

I had my first proper Dari lesson last night. It was so exciting! I recently met someone from Afghanistan in Toronto who is willing to teach me Dari. We met up in Second Cup last night and spent three hours working on it. I LOVE this! It's so cool.

It turns out that my reading and writing is quite good. The only problem with that is that I don't understand any of the words yet! Still, I shouldn't trivialise the ability to understand the symbols of a compeltely foreign language!

The sentence I wrote above (این یک کتاب است) is the Dari for This is a book. It's the first thing I learned in Urdu as well. The Dari is pronounced Een yak kitab ast which literally translates into This one book is. If it was Urdu, it would be Yay kitab heh which would be This book is. Urdu doesn't need the "one" in front of it but otherwise the word order seems similar.

I learned a couple of variations such as your book, his book, her book. I also learned how to say on top of, underneath and in. Pretty soon I'll be able to construct some sentences of my own!

I love Keith Green's music!

I was just checking out some of Keith Green's music on iTunes over the past couple of days. I have a few of his CDs back home in Scotland which I will collect when I'm home over Christmas. It's funny when you listen to something that you know so well but haven't heard for a while. That guy had so much passion, his music was (and is) really powerful. I can hardly wait till I pick up my CDs!

Life after love

No, don't worry. I'm not about to sing a Cher song. I was thinking more of my life of late. It's always a sad business when a romance ends and you're left with all these unanswered questions such as "Did I really hear God in the first place?" and "How will I know when it is his voice?"

The thing I've concluded is that these aren't the most important questions, really. The most important thing is to recognise that God is good, he's still on the throne, he's not forgotten you and life goes on. The other big thing is not to become hard hearted or defensive in future friendships. It's easy to conclude that after a failed romance, you don't want to go through the same disappointments again and therefore, to avoid all risks of romance. However, that will only guarantee that you stay lonely and that's no good! Instead, it's better to have the attitude that you will never know who the right person is if you keep hiding from everyone and sooner or later, you'll have to get back out there and try again.

So, life's not so bad in that sense. I'm feeling optomistic for the future although it is always disappointing when things don't end up the way you expect they will. I'm glad God knows me better than I know myself. I leave you with these wise words from Veggietales:

"God is bigger than the Boogie Man and he's watching out for you and me."

Fun with guns

Scotsman with gun
Originally uploaded by theken.

I know, I know. Guns kill people. They really do. However, I discovered that they're lots of fun to shoot at a paper target as well. I was in Pennsylvania visiting my friend Pete Dorosh and his many siblings (shouldn't that be siblii?) in Pittsburgh. We had the fun opportunity of going to Anthony Arms and shooting guns for a fairly small sum of money. We tried out a few smaller handguns (Glock 9mm and Sig 9mm) to begin with and then Steve got the Smith & Wesson 500 which turns out to be the most powerful revolver in production today! You can check out the rest of my photos from the gun adventure here. Don't worry, I'm not turning into a nutter. I just thought it'd be fun to shoot a gun in the USA. One of these things I can look back on and say, "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I shot guns in America?"