Longboard + Bike = Fun

On Sunday I went to the shops with my friend Stephen. It wouldn't have been too unusual, but he happened to have his bike and a tow-rope. I had my longboard. What happened next? Take a look and see...

Bike & Longboard Intro


Going to the Shops


Napoleon Dynamite Tribute


Sweet Revenge

My photo is in the Schmap of Glasgow!

This is completely random. I got an e-mail recently from someone telling me they were constructing a "schmap" of Glasgow. They had seen one of my photos of Queens Park on Flickr and asked for my permission to include it in their guide to Glasgow. Sweet.

So, now if you go to the Schmap page for Queens Park, you'll see the photo I took of the park. How nice.

New job - new future

Well, today has been a very interesting day indeed. I had an interview with ACS Clothing, who desperately need some help in their IT department to upgrade existing software to use web applications and fun stuff like that. After a 3.5 hour interview they sent me on my way with the assurance they would be in touch very soon. (The fact that I had mentioned interviews scheduled for Thursday and Friday might have something to do with it!)

When I got home, I got a phone call from the agency who had arranged the interview to tell me that I had been offered the job! I was so pleased to hear it. She said it was amazing because they offered me the top of the range they had quoted to her which she said was unheard of. In fact, she said she's never seen that happen at all. So thanks to God for that. I'm truly blessed and highly favoured.

It's a strange feeling to be about to start another job. I think I'll actually enjoy being around people again. It's like coming out of hibernation or something like that.

I'm now finding myself wondering what to buy now that I actually have an income. I think a car might be a worthwhile investment. Stay tuned for more details to follow!

This doesn't look good...

Ok, so even the least "computer-savvy" individual can tell this image does not show a good situation. A few weeks ago I was playing Swat 4 (a thinking man's shooting game) and all of a sudden it froze and rebooted my machine. That had happened once or twice before, however this was the first time I saw what you can see in the photo - a rather ominous line of plain white text in the top-left corner of a very black screen announcing "Operating System not found". I thought to myself, "Hmm, that can't be good" as I turned off my computer.

Thankfully when I turned my computer on again, it had an Operating System after all. Phew, thank goodness for that! I can just imagine the call to a client now, "Umm, no, the software's not finished. Yeh, my computer broke when I was... playing a game."

According to Microsoft's website, it could be a problem with the hard disk, so I suppose I should check that out...

Alan Johnston is free!

I was so excited yesterday to hear the news of the release of Alan Johnston. I had been following the news and praying for his release. It's so brilliant to see that prayer answered. It's great to have some good news in the media.

I don't have malaria

Good news everyone - I definitely don't have malaria. You might wonder why on earth this is relevant information, so I will explain. Many years ago (1999-2000) I lived in Pakistan for a year. Although I was living in the mountains where there is no malaria, I often went to Islamabad which was at a much lower altitude. It is considered an area where malaria could be present.

Well, when I came home I wanted to give blood as I have done in the past. However, I was told that there was a risk I could be carrying malaria so I was to wait six months and then come back. I dutifully waited the six months and returned to the blood donor centre only to learn that they didn't actually have any test for malaria so I couldn't give blood until they did.

Fast-forward to a few months ago when I saw an advert on the TV saying they were desperately short of blood. I thought I would check if they were now able to test for malaria. It turns out they do now have a test. I got the test done and the results came back today. I do NOT have malaria so I can give blood again. Let the good times flow!

Action Man vs. G.I. Joe vs ... Action Ken?

I just signed up for Facebook a couple of days ago there, as I already mentioned. I was uploading photos of myself and organising them a bit. I made an album called Action Ken which contains a variety of pictures of me engaged in a number of activities such as rock climbing, longboarding and so on. A Canadian friend (one Mr. Robert Augi) asked the question, "Do they make Action Ken dolls?" It got me thinking a bit.

First of all, I realised that Rob probably didn't realise the genius of what he was suggesting. I say that not to be unkind to my friend, but because being from North America he probably had no experience of Action Man while growing up. He more likely had exposure to G.I. Joe. (If you're interested in the history, you can follow the two links to compare them. They were made by the same company and G.I. Joe came 2 years earlier.)

The other aspect of Rob's genius was of course the Ken doll, from the Barbie world. Unbeknownst to Rob, my friends and I used to speculate about the difference between Action Man and Ken. If you put them side by side and had a look, Ken was pretty pathetic and a bit of a pansy really. We came to the conclusion that if they went to school together, Action Man probably beat up Ken most playtimes.

So, now we come to the crux of it all - Action Ken! With all the sad history and the over-feminine Ken role-model for boys who play with Barbie (hmm, dubious target audience, mind you) it's time for a more masculine, adventure-loving Ken. The kind of Ken who could give Action Man a run for his money and the occasional shiner in a lunchtime brawl. I think we could be on to something here.

Peeling Spuds

Do you ever find your brain working overtime when there's really no need to? I had this experience today. Mum's been away this week and it's fallen to me to be the official spud peeler for the troops. I can't speak for anyone else, but I imagine most people might daydream or imagine they were in a happier place while peeling the potatoes. Personally, I was trying to work out the best, most efficient, most accurate route to peel in order to achieve a suitably rounded spud. Here are some of my findings.

1) One approach I like is to take one long strip round the "middle" of the spud. After that you have two hemispheres which can be tackled one at a time. I try to go for a spiral from the edge of the area towards the middle and award bonus points for achieving it without the peel breaking.

2) A variation on this approach is to go all the way round the middle and then continue to tackle the first hemisphere on the same move. That way you could theoretically do the whole spud in two pieces. I suppose, now that I am actually writing this down, it could be possible to start at the top of one hemisphere and spiral out and then back in the other side to achieve the utopia of potato peeling prowess - the "oner".

3) The angle of cut with the knife affects two things - width of strip and amount of potato removed with the skin. Think of the extremes - a slight shaving will barely remove the tiniest bit of skin, whereas a 90 degree attack will cut the unpeeled potato in two. I don't know which part should be discarded in the latter case. I suppose it is generally agreed that the shallower the cut, the better. This maximises the amount of potato you are left with and that is, after all, what we're all about in the potato peeling business - delivering the peeled potato to you, the consumer.

Finally, I would just like to announce that this week is in fact the first time I have "made" (that should really be "prepared") potatoes from start to finish.

Just a Pump

I've been feeling really bored lately. I mean REALLY bored. So bored in fact it could border depression. Ever since I came home from France I've not been doing a great deal of anything. I've been looking for some programming work and following up some leads, but on the whole I've been sitting at home waiting for something to happen.

When I was thinking about how to describe the state of my heart just now I thought of the phrase, "just a pump". I don't feel a great deal of anything good or bad. I just wake up and then wonder if I should bother getting up - if it'll make any difference to anything.

Yup, pretty miserable post but that might explain why I've not written for almost two months until today.

Friends - Quality or Quantity?

I finally gave in today. I signed up for Facebook. It is quite a nice system with lots of cool features. I especially like the "Where I've Been" map which lets you show all the countries of the world you've lived, visited or wanted to visit. USA and Canada are split into States/Provinces respectively but the rest of the world seems to be just the countries.

I have been looking through all the contacts of all my friends and it's been pretty tiring work. It's made me think of whether it's all worth it. I mean, I could easily end up with a hundred contacts through the different groups of people I've met over the years. You only need to live in the Marmac warehouse for a year to meet about 100 new people.

I realised that there's no way I can keep up with everyone. It's already a bit hard updating my blog, flickr and youtube accounts before now adding Facebook into the equation.

I want to know how people are doing, but I also want to actually share life with people. It's easy to have a full Facebook but an empty life.

Wanting or Wishing

Today I was thinking about the different between wanting and wishing. I was thinking about how so many of us make statements like "I want to be successful in business" or "I want to be more healthy". Often these statements reveal good intention, but do not result in action.

I think that often we are really wishing more than anything else. Most of the time I feel that when we say we want something, we really mean we just wish things were that way. We are not actively involved in changing our circumstances, but if someone offered to come along and suddenly fix everything then we wouldn't stop them. Thinking about this made me wonder just what we mean when we say "want".

Literally, the word "want" only communicates a desire or wish for something. If I were to say "I want a drink of water," it simply reveals my desire to drink some water. In reality, though, this would imply I will now go and get some water or I expect someone to give me some. It would be odd for someone to say "I want a drink of water" and for no action to result.

I suppose "want" and "wish" are similar, yet in everyday usage "wish" is more likely to be used in situations where there is no hope of it happening. "I wish I was at the beach" might be muttered under one's breath during a board meeting, for instance.

The reason I was thinking about this so much was the realisation that my life is full of "wants" that don't result in any significant action. I want to be more like Jesus. I want to have more clients with my business. I want to understand God's plan for me better. I want to speak French better for my girlfriend. I feel as if I'm kidding myself when I think of all these things. Desires that don't result in action are nothing more than well-intentioned imaginings.

I've decide that I need to change that. I must consciously choose to be active and not passive. That's something I'm choosing to do from this moment on. I'm going to challenge myself whenever I think or say something that starts with "I want...". It's time to act on the things that I think are important and not just wait for them to happen. Life doesn't happen by accident.

Collin vs. Fruit

I was visiting my good friend Collin the other day there and he was getting a bit frustrated with his final year project/dissertation. After a flash of inspiration, Collin moved to the garden to try a "stress relief" exercise involving a variety of fruit and his father's antique golf club.

Hope

 
It's taken me several weeks to actually write about this, but there's a very special person in my life now. Her name's Hana (or حنان [Hanen] in Arabic) and she's the most amazing person I've ever met. We're getting to know each other and learning all kinds of great things along the way. She lives in Marseille and I've been apart from her for a week now. It's been a lonely time without her, but I'm going back to see her in a few weeks so that makes it a bit easier.

It seems a bit surreal. You wait your whole life for something and then when it happens you don't feel ready.

Back in Scotland

So it's been a while since I've written in here. Sometimes I just get fed up with documenting my life online so I had a wee break.

Last night I flew home from Marseille and am currently adjusting to my parents' place, which I tend to return to from time to time.

My flights home were a bit of a nuisance as both of them were running late. In addition to that, it seemed to be the first really hot day in Marseille this year. I say "really hot" from a West of Scotland mindset here. I was in jeans and wishing I was in shorts. The airport was a bit warm as well, right enough, which was a bit uncomfortable.

My first flight was delayed by an hour and a half. At first I wasn't too concerned because it would cut down my wait at London Gatwick from 3.5 hours to "just" 2 hours. However, when I arrived at Gatwick my second flight was also delayed. It would be half an hour late in leaving. By this time, the shops were all closing as well so there wasn't much I could do to pass the time.

I started wandering towards my gate, not in any great hurry. At one point I took a wrong turn and ended up heading towards a dead end. There was a flight leaving to Dubai, but no other signs of life. As I walked on the moving walkway there was a guy in front of me on a micro-scooter, scooting along. He was black, dressed in a light brown tracksuit and listening to an iPod. (or using the white headphones at least)

As I walked to the end I realised my gate was no longer one of the options so I started walking back the way. This is a lot longer when the walkways are moving in the wrong direction. As I walked, one of the ladies from the Emirates gate for the Dubai flight was walking in the same direction. She asked if I was lost and we started to chat as we walked. Then the guy on the scooter passed again, this time towards me on the carpet. I thought he looked familiar and she said, "That's Chris Eubank, trying to draw attention to himself." It was then that I realised where I had seen the face. It really was the English boxer, Chris Eubank. Fancy that, I thought. She the proceeded to tell me about how he's always trying to draw attention to himself. It was funny to hear her rant. Personally, I would have really liked to have a micro scooter at that time. I think it's quite a good idea for these long corridors.

I Ate Frogs' Legs

Tonight for dinner at Jesus Revolution they had Frogs' Legs of all things. I wasn't especially excited about them but felt somewhat obliged to try them at least. My mum's words of wisdom came to mind, "You won't know if you like it unless you try it." That said, she was probably thinking more of mince and tatties or steak pie and almost certainly not frogs' legs.

I have to say I wasn't too impressed. They were fried and there was garlic and other things in the mix but the overall consistency and the notion that I was eating the legs of a frog made me feel quite bokey really. Have a look at the second video for my facial expressions if you think I'm exaggerating.

Everything's Fine

You might not know this, but my sister-in-law, Yvonne, happens to be a pretty fine musician and she's just finished her first music video. It's on YouTube but to save you the trouble of going to her profile and rummaging around for it, you can just watch it below.

Photos of Chateau d'If

As I mentioned before, I took some photos of Chateau d'If last week and I said I'd post them here.


If in the distance


The front of Chateau d'If


North-West Tower


Marseille from If


You can see the rest of the set on my Flickr page.

Even Shorter Hair

I don't know if everyone would classify this as "blog worthy" but it's quite a big deal for me. For about the last year I had been consistently growing my hair and wondering how long I could do so. At around Christmas time I cut it a bit but it was still fairly long.

Well, last week I finally decided to get it chopped. I was just getting tired of it getting in my way all the time. Now my ears and neck are a bit chilly and I do miss that feeling of the wind in your hair on really blustery days.

Change is good. It keeps life interesting.

Some videos of recent activities

I've had some videos sitting around for a while and I've been meaning to upload them. Well, today is that day and I've uploaded them to YouTube. Here are some links:

Parkour Cat


Flea Market Armour


Halal Chicken (Warning - chicken being killed!)


Flower of Scotland on French TV


Finally, I have some videos from my visit to Chateau d'If a few days ago. I'll possibly say more about it and add some photos in another post soon, but for now here are some videos:

Praying for healing in public

I had a kind of fun experience today. It was a bit intimidating, but somewhat fun and enjoyable overall. We have been trying a few different things for outreach to people here in Marseille and today we thought we'd go on the subway and just strike up conversations with whoever we were sitting across from. I was really nervous about doing this because I felt there was no way that someone would want to talk to some random stranger on the train. I know I wouldn't!

I had been having all kinds of doubts about my faith, what I really believe, whether God really is good or producing the goods in my life... really a big spiritual attack really but I just thought I was a rubbish Christian.

The guys prayed for me this morning and I had a kind of do-or-die attitude that went something like this, "This is going to be rubbish and useless, but I'll go and do it anyway because I'm meant to do it."

We were going in pairs which was a good idea. I got on the subway with Angie and we sat opposite a lady who had a girl sitting beside her, resting her head in her lap. She was stroking the girl's hair in a comforting way. As we sat down we said "bonjour" and she smiled and said "bonjour" back to us.

I started a conversation in French, asking if the girl was tired. The mum replied that she had a headache. I then thought this was the most obvious moment to offer to pray for her, but I sat there and kind of kept quiet. Angie complimented the girl on her bag. After a few moments Angie asked if I thought we should offer to pray. I said I agreed but was also a bit intimidated. As I waited, the lady smiled at me again and I thought it just seemed too easy an opportunity to miss. Nobody could have been more welcoming.

I said that I was a Christian and asked if I could pray for the girl's head. She responded by saying "if you want to". We laid hands on her and prayed (in English, sadly) for God to heal her. They were grateful and we talked a little more until the end of the line.

It was just a great feeling to actually do what I've always thought we should be doing. The rest of the afternoon wasn't as eventful, but I was excited that I had been obedient in something at least once. I felt God had given me a HUGE "window of opportunity" to get up the courage to do it and I was grateful for that.

Plodding along

We're doing ok here in Marseille. We all survived the fast and my eating is now back to normal with no harmful side-effects. We've been going out a bit to talk to people and we visited someone at her home in Aix-en-Provence as well, which turned out to be pretty cool. It's a nice place. Maybe I'll put some photos on here later.

Marseille is an interesting place and there are all kinds of amusing things going on from time to time. I actually forgot to mention before, but I almost got my phone stolen by a couple of pickpockets. I was waiting outside the Jesus Revolution place for someone to come with the key to let me in and two young guys come along asking me the time and starting up a conversation. When they noticed my accent, they asked where I was from and we got talking a bit. They ended up talking to me about Zidane, the French footballer famous for headbutting an opponent in the chest during the world cup.

They were standing beside me, trying to demonstrate a move he does and reaching across in front of me with their feet. I thought this was a bit odd, but put it down to the friendliness of people here and the fact they're a bit more physical than back home. Well, as they were doing this I felt one of them touch my hip pocket with happened to have my phone in it. I instincively recoiled and checked the other one, trying to remember where my wallet was. I remembered it was in my bag and relaxed, realising nothing was gone. After that, they realised they were rumbled, although one of them still tried to show me the Zidane move one last time. When I backed off, they got the hint and left. It was funny, because they were very friendly and polite the whole time. I couldn't help thinking that a similar situation in Scotland would result in a knife being pulled or a bit of a scuffle after the cat was out of the bag but here they just went on their way. I'm now a bit paranoid about my hip pockets, though, and I tend to be a bit suspicious of anyone behind me.

I discovered with great interest that there's a tourist attraction here worth visiting. It's called Château D’If and it features in the story The Count of Monte Cristo which has been made into a film a couple of times as well. I've seen the most recent one with James Caviezel and I liked it. The château is a fort on a an island (called If, as it happens) just off the coast of Marseille in the Mediterranean. It's a short boat trip from the Vieux Port harbour and not too expensive either.

A wee bit hungry

Well, I've been in Marseille for almost two weeks now and it seems like no time at all. I'm settling in quite nicely and the rest of the team all arrived a couple of days after me. I'm staying with a crazy bunch of French young people called Jesus Revolution. They're doing outreach in their own, unique way and they graciously allowed me to stay in their spare room while I'm here.

This week we've been doing a seven day fast to seek God's direction for the outreach. Primarily, we're trying to figure which area of the city to concentrate on. Three of us have been fasting from food and the others were fasting different things. I started off with the idea that I would still have breakfast every day but only drink water the rest of the time. I heard that this was a bad idea, though, as it's important for your body to get used to there being no food in it and frequently introducing some food every day could confuse matters.

With that in mind, after Monday I changed to only water. It was pretty hard going and on Wednesday in particular I was feeling really weak and faint. I've never fasted like this before so I didn't know what to expect. It kind of reminds me of when you give blood. You're just that bit slower and more easily tired. Some of the others were finding it pretty tough as well so we changed it slightly. I'm now drinking fruit juices as well as water. It's made a huge difference. I'm more alert and energetic, although I'd still love to get my teeth into a big steak right now!

Today we were prayer walking around the marché aux puces (or Flea Market to you and me) where they had TONS of food lying out on sale. Man, I wanted to eat EVERYTHING. Ok, so I wasn't too inspired by the squid, octopus and other generally manky-looking fishy stuff, but pretty much everything else was appealing to me. In fact, I even took a photo of a frightfully appetising looking selection of olives on sale. Check it out and let me know if you're salivating too:



The fast ends tomorrow at dinner time. I'm going to try really hard not to eat too much. My teeth are bored, though.

Landed in Marseille

I'm now in France. Yes, it's true. I really am. I had a couple of flights today and arrived in the evening. It's a pretty interesting place already and I'm excited about the next 3 and a half months. I still don't quite know where I'll be staying, but it's going to be fun, I'm sure of it. I discovered they even climb here! How can I not like it?

A spot of New Year climbing

I do like a spot of climbing, I have to say. Thankfully some of my friends do as well. I went yesterday with Stephen and Gillian to the Glasgow Climbing Centre for a spot of climbing.

The Suspects:

Steve


Gillian


Ken



The Videos:
Since I've been getting quite into the whole YouTube thing, I've got a playlist of some of the highlights here.

Corn

A trip to the cave in December

Just a few days before New Year, I went to the cave with Alan to get back to nature and all that fun stuff. There are five videos to choose from here that all contain some of my comments at different points in the trip.

Scare Cut

So it's been a while since I've had a proper haircut and the other day there I was feeling like a change so I decided to get a bit of a chop. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it but it's good to have a change at least.

Heathrow Snack

The last couple of times I've returned to the UK after some time across the Atlantic, this has been the snack of choice I've bought at Heathrow, before heading on to Glasgow.

1. A litre of water is always good to help re-hydrate, and the fact that it's nice and cold is a bonus.


2. A British Dairy Milk is a welcome change after being on Hershey's for a while.


3. Wheat Crunchies are just brilliant. I might be the only person that thinks so, but I really like them.