J'étais en France pour Pâques

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Well I've been contemplating putting in my ramblings in this blog and I guess there it was with the last post! :) I won't apologise for it even though it wasn't intended to be an entire posting initially - I guess I just got carried away with it! ;o)

I am back from France for Easter. Hope you all had a good Easter whereever you were! I managed to leave early on the Thursday evening to catch the 17:10 from Heathrow that was going via Amsterdam to Bordeaux. Yeah, there is a direct flight from Heathrow to Bordeaux but it was at a really bad time and more expensive so I had to go with KLM to Amsterdam first. A lot of airlines are doing internet check-in now which I didn't understand at first. I mean, check-in is to make sure you're there at the airport so if you offer internet check-in doesn't that defeat the purpose? Then I figured that well, it doesn't matter where you check-in, if you're not at the gate when they're boarding you're not going to be on that flight and they'll give your seat to someone on stand-by. And internet check-in saved me some time as I only had a back-pack but even if I had more it would have saved me time as the bag drop-off points are well signed.

I got to Bordeaux right on time at 22:15 and walked right out to where my uncle and cousin were waiting to pick me up. Well done KLM!

This trip would only be for 3 days and maybe that was a good thing because not being able to talk and express myself for a long time kinda stifles me! (I must be a closet extrovert ;-p) It was good though in that I have been doing French lessons (intermittently) through audio and a book and every time I go to France it motivates me to learn some more French.

The weather was a lot warmer there than in the UK; mid-20's and with daylight savings there was light at 21:00. It was Cambodian new year (though I did not know it), Easter and my aunty's birthday so there was a celebration of sorts on the Friday night. There was a celebration put on by the Khmer Association as well that we went to 'just to show our faces' though I didn't mind it. They'd brought some Khmer musicians, dancers and singers from Cambodia and it was quite good to hear and surprisingly pleasant. I could understand most of what was being said even though it's a 'formal' type of Khmer that I don't speak normally. However, with the singing I was lucky to catch 1 word out of 10!

The rest of the time was spent sightseeing the coast and ocean, driving through the region (extremely picturesque) playing with the kids and learning French. France still has to be the best country for seeing ancient ruins of walls, churches, castles etc that I've been to. I think they're so authentic because they really are falling down and no one is doing anything to restore it! :) Unfortunately this does not mean that house prices are cheap at all! Probably the fault of the Brits buying second houses there...

The return to London was a bit taxing as I had booked the Monday 06:20 from Bordeaux to Amsterdam. Sometimes I think it's just not worth the monetary saving having to get up at 04:30 to make the flight! I had taken this into consideration though and knew that I'd get back to the apartment by 11:30 and it would give me the rest of the day to recover before returning to work.

I am on my last week of work on my current contract so I've been looking on the web and firing off applications. In some ways, because I am trying to move into Business Analysis roles, it is a bit harder because I am moving into an area that others might be better qualified for. So I am sending off a lot of applications through the web that I don't hear back about. Ideally it would be a PeopleSoft Business Analyst role where I'd be a much stronger candidate but there aren't many positions going in that domain. I've been talking to a few agencies anyway so I should have coverage of the market and be aware of what's out there. At any rate, if you are the praying sort and remember to do so I would be thankful for your efforts.

I still don't know whether I'm coming back to Oz for good yet. The next contract will be a deciding factor I guess. It is not the money per se, but it's a factor because there are many things drawing me back to Oz such as family, friends, church, nephews and niece. This is being balanced somewhat by the travel and lifestyle possibilities here. Therefore if the job/money that I make here in the UK is the same as what I would make in Oz then the pull between travel and family will tip towards family I think.

God bless.

Romans 1:16

Heya peoples,

Read this from Martin Luther's preface to the book of Romans that I thought was a powerful idea and also a comfort!

In [Romans] chapter 6, St. Paul teaches us that faith doesn't so free us from sin that we can be idle, lazy and self-assured, as though there were no more sin in us. Sin is there, but, because of faith that struggles against it, God does not reckon sin as deserving damnation.

Where are all the great preachers of this generation? Oh for God to raise up another DL Moody, Spurgeon, George Whitefield, Calvin, Bunyan or Robert Murray McCheyne in this generation! To preach the gospel with clarity, conviction, integrity and power of the Holy Spirit!! In short to preach 'Jesus Christ and him crucified'.

All we have to boast of in our time are false prophets who preach for profit, prosperity 'gospel', so called evangelicals who defer to Rome, church growth movement, a fixation on external 'signs' and a shallow 'God is my girlfriend' Christianity that thinks God is some cosmic self-help guru to make our lives better! The reason we need Jesus is not to make our lives better but to make payment for our sins. Yes, that word that liberals substitute with 'wrongdoing' or some other for fear that this modern generation does not know the meaning of the word. Claim that word back I say!! If they don't know the meaning explain it to them. Let the world realise anew what that word means if it has forgotten! Preach that word as the apostles did, as Luther did, as Calvin did and as Spurgeon did!

God says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." (Hosea 4:6) Not granted ecumenical peace, nor merely made ineffectual, nor only deemed irrelevant by the populace but destroyed for lack of knowledge! And where does knowlege come from? From the Word of God no less. There has never been a true revival in all history without a turning to the Bible and prayer. We can sing about revival as much as we like but it will never happen until we pick up our Bibles and pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Brighton

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Decided to go down to Brighton on a non-travelling weekend. Went with Audrey who I hadn't seen for a while and who happened to have a free day as well. It wasn't too promising at the start 'cause the week so far had been wet but it turned out to be a fine sunny day albeit somewhat cold for the beach - 14C!!

We met at Victoria station to catch the train down and I bought the wrong tickets!! Got the one way ticket instead of the return so I was quite perplexed about why the machine swallowed our tickets and we had nothing to use to get back to London! Regular readers of this blog with a good memory will know that I've already complained about the practice of rail companies who charge 95% of the fare for a single and add on the 5% for a return! Totally absurd pricing and because of that, I thought I was buying the right return ticket because it was about the price that I had researched on the internet! Luckily I had chosen to get receipts with my ticket and we were able to go to the ticket office to buy an 'excess' portion ie. pay the extra 20p to get a return back to London instead of another £17!! It was also fortunate that this ticket office could issue 'excess' tickets as I found out on a subsequent trip that not all of them can do this...

We had a pleasant day overall but as you can see from the photos, it's not exactly what we would term a 'beach'. There's no sand, pebbles everywhere and the water is extremely murky (not to mention cold no doubt, but I didn't test this out). At least with pebbles you don't get sand everywhere I guess but its not as comfortable to lie on. I liked the pier they had though because it had all amusement rides and was free to enter. Great place to bring kids if you have them. Some people say it's a bit tacky but its something different from what I've seen before. I also liked going because it was mentioned in 'Pride and Prejudice' hehehe

We had lunch with Nathan and Fairlie from Moonee Ponds. They're living in Brighton now and working for the NHS around the area. They took us to a great restaurant with fresh food and huge portions! It was great catching up with them and sharing respectives stories about the experience in the UK thus far.

Audrey and I caught the train back to London at about dinner time. I don't think there was much more that we could have seen that would have extended our time there. Day trip territory unless you've got something specific that will take up a good chunk of time.

Laters.

The show must go on

Heya All,

Went to see Les Miserables and Chicago in the last couple of weeks. There are some pretty good ticket deals on the internet at the moment and I managed to get tickets to these shows for £20 and £23 respectively. Got decent seats as well. I haven't seen many plays in my time and it was something I intended to do while in London but it was hard to arrange it with other people. Either they'd seen it, weren't interested or were out of town on those dates. So I decided that I would just go and see them by myself and as Jess pointed out, you can't talk during the shows anyway.

Les Miserables was one great show!!! If all the plays and musicals were like this then I'm going to see every one of them! The singing, movement, acting and props were just fantastic! The story was very engrossing and the quality of singing so accomplished! If you haven't seen Les Miserables and have an opportunity to go then do it, even if you don't like the arts!

Chicago was a bit different as it's Jazz based and has a lot more dancing in it. Quite impressed with how they're able to dance like that with high heels on. The costumes were very racy but story-line not that great. Not much either in the way of stage props and decorations but the band played a central part in it and were up on the stage throughout which is a little different to other musicals.

I'm looking now for other discounted tickets to shows that I want to see but Phantom of the Opera and Lion King aren't offering any weeknight specials. There is the half-price ticket box at Leicester Square but you have to be unemployed or a tourist to stand in line for those tickets. (I don't mean that literally, I just mean you need to have the time to queue up.) The Leicester Square ticket box sells all theatre tickets for that day, and only that day, at half price. Essentially the left over tickets that haven't been sold through other means but you can't book or call them up. And since I'm working I can't go lining up there. It's good for trying your luck for a cheap ticket on a Saturday as it's highly unlikely that you'd find discounted tickets online for a Saturday because that's their busiest day.

I await my next theatre experience...

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