New fast shoes

This is a piccy of some groovy shoes i just bought of ebay - oh i just couldn't help myself. They are like normal, regular, run-of-the-mill sneakers, until you kick a button on the heel and out pops some wheels to transform the shoes into roller skates. Roller blades would have been better, but there weren't any available in this groovy surprise design, so i had to make do. I pick them up from the post office today. I've got the day off work today ;-) Yippee

Gifts

On Sunday I was sitting in church and Dave was talking about gifts that we've been given from God. He said that everyone has a number of gifts, for example, some people are born with a mercy gift and these people are more suited to jobs like working for the salvos or working in hospitals with sick people - i guess jobs that require a special sort of care and compassion. He was saying how he is repulsed by the sight of blood and even saying the word "catheter" can make him feel ill, so that's an obvious sign that those sort of jobs aren't for him. Me neither! I know that if i was a doctor like my older siblings, i would throw up when someone walked in and showed me their pus-covered of blood-filled injury .... imagine having a doctor like that that went "oh gross, that's so disgusting, don't come near me, stand on that side of the room" ;-) hah,.

He said that other people have the gift of evangelism and these people would excel in jobs that involve sales. That's not me.

That got me thinking about my life and what my gifts are. As i was thinking, it suddenly hit me that i am the most suited to jobs that involve organising lots of things and working with multiple high priority tasks. I like fast jobs, jobs where you have to perform and deliver outcomes quickly. I don't like being in policy-related jobs where getting anything done takes forever, because your work is reliant on consultation with affected stakeholders and then after all that consultation, you have to wait for the relevant Minister to make a decision, an action that can takes months, even years....and is not assisted by the constant swapping of Ministerial portfolios!

I am very interested to hear more about Dave's thoughts on gifts. He wrote a book years ago, but it has never been published. Fortunately for us, he feels God has brought him to a time of sharing the wisdom he's gained. Afterwards, he'll be looking to publish his work. Awesome!

Work

This is my boss and a lady I supervise. I dunno why but i sort of feel sneaky putting this piccy on my blog. It's not like they read my blog or anything like that.

This could have been my home

This morning I found a really lovely little place for sale. It’s located behind a heritage-listed church building, actually forming part of the same block and designed to match the architecture of the church. It is nestled in a posh suburb and is such a gorgeous place – basically a small townhouse, one of only four, with the sleeping area located upstairs and the main living area downstairs. There are built-in cupboards throughout the place, hidden along the walls – very clever design and just great, as you can see below…. ….. but to my great dismay, even before I could put in an offer, someone beat me to it and decided to pay for the entire amount in cash!!! I couldn’t believe it. Who the heck makes offers for the full amount and in cash? I am so disappointed. It would have been perfect. I could have had a nice housewarming party and gotten married next door in the church and been just five blocks from my family home. Soooo frustrating :-( I guess the property market is hot right now and it wasn’t just me that saw the beauty in that place.

Lord God Almighty, if you’re reading this, I just want you to know that this is the kind of place I’m interested in buying :-) I guess you did make the world and everyone in it, so you can help me find a good deal somewhere.

Eight chicks out for a boogie

Last night we went to a little Italian restaurant in Claremont, before heading out for a bit of a boogie to the sound of Aaron and Simon's band. We had a great time!

Godly people

These are some of the gorgeous people I go to church with...

This is Cate, Katie and Dave (above), then Simon, Dave and Clayton (below).

Then, this is Clayton again, with Danau and Kirsty (our newest person).

Then finally, we have Ali with our youngest person at church, little Kristian. What a cutie!

What is a Hapa?

I probably should have defined this term at the start of my blog, when I chose to put my customised picky on it. The following extract is taken from the Wikipedia encyclopedia.

In the Hawaiian language, hapa is strictly defined as: portion, fragment, part, fraction, installment; to be partial, less. It is a loan from the English word half. However, it has an extended meaning of "half-caste" or "of mixed descent". This is the only meaning of the term in Hawaiian Pidgin, the creole spoken by many Hawai'i residents.

Used without qualification, hapa is often taken to mean "part white", and is short hand for hapa haole. The term can be used in conjunction with other Hawaiian racial and ethnic descriptors to specify a particular racial or ethnic mixture. Examples of this include:

· hapa haole (part Caucasian/white)
· hapa kanaka (part Hawaiian)
· hapa popolo (part African/black)
· hapa kepani (part Japanese); the term hapanese is also encountered
· hapa pilipino (part Filipino)
· hapa pake (part Chinese)
· hapa kolea (part Korean)
· hapa kamoa (part Samoan)
· hapa sepania (part Spanish)
· hapa pukiki (part Portuguese)

While the terms haole and popolo are no more inherently derogatory than white or black, they are sometimes used as racial or ethnic slurs. One should be careful using these terms.

Hapa-haole can also be used to describe anything hybrid. Hapa Hula is the name of a type of Hawaiian music in which the tune and styling are typically Hawaiian, but the lyrics are in English or mostly in English.

The word "hapa" is often used to describe a person of partial Asian or Pacific Islander racial/ethnic heritage.

It’s funny how whenever I meet someone of mixed descent (at least part Asian), I always feel like they are related to me. I think years of having experiences that are common to Hapas, has made us bond with eachother. For example, people are commonly mistaken for thinking I am other nationalities or they treat me a certain way because they think I have ingrained habits that are stereotypically associated with these racial groups.

During ‘meet and greet’ time at Riverview, while other people engage in general conversation topics, I almost always get race-related questions like ‘where are you from?”, “are you Chinese”, “have you been here for a long time?”, etc... when it’s the country you are born in and have been in all your life, it some times gets a little annoying!

I guess on the up side, I tend to mix well with both caucasian and asian people … though probably best with other Hapas.

These are a couple of web sites I found particularly interesting….
Eurasuan Nation and Photos of Hapas

What personality type are you?

At home group recently, we’ve been talking a lot about personalities. All this discussion came about because Clayton came across a book called ‘Personality Plus' by Florence Littauer and he lent all of us his copy to read and then we all disseminated the information further – to our families, work colleagues and friends. I even bought my boss a copy.

The test (available here) produced a Sanguine outcome for me. I am almost certain that my boss has a Melancholic personality, which is why he frustrates me. I really adore him, but there are just little things about his management style, which sometimes push me too far.

For example, one morning I spent about three hours designing queries in a program called Microsoft Access in order to extract some data out of a huge database, then I exported the data into a Microsoft Word report and formatted it. This was about 80 pages worth of pure statistics. I checked all the numbers and formatted it carefully. Then I handed it to my boss. A little while later he comes into my office with a big frown on his face saying ‘No Michelle, all these place names need to be in UPPERCASE font” (I had done them in Title Case font) and he had even noticed that I had used the space bar (instead of the Tab key) on the keyboard to indent some text. He wanted it all to be done with the Tab key, despite the end result being exactly the same!!! I couldn’t believe it. I then spent the next three hours re-doing the report. Totally insane!!! People look at the report for the content, not the formatting, but even still, the formatting looked really good before I gave it to him!

It seems every time I hand him reports, brochures or presentation slides, they are never to his satisfaction. I remember another day spending about half the morning putting together a lovely brochure to communicate the changes in legislation that had occurred over the years. Everyone I showed it to thought it was great, so I then gave it to my boss. He wanted the right hand column in one table brought in 2cm, the numbers centred in the table columns instead of aligned to the right and a couple of the headings underlined, instead of bolded. What a nutter!!!

The book provides some absolutely hilarious examples of other disagreements between the Sanguine author and her Melancholic husband.

If I recall right, these are the home group folk’s personality types:
* Clayton – phlegmatic /melancholic
* Ewen – phlegmatic/melancholic
* Ali - phlegmatic/melancholic
* Christie – sanguine/choleric
* Katie - sanguine/choleric
* Relle – sanguine/melancholic


Have to confirm that.

Dr Damo

This is one of my best friends, Damien, and his little Hapa baby, Claudia. He's been my friend through the ups and downs of my rollercoaster life since I was 16. That's a huge lot of time. Damo also doubles up as a country GP, providing invaluable medical advice to all who seek him out.

Three wise men?

These are the three Commissioners that my position at work was established to support....hence, i have to attend numerous meetings with these men. These fellas hold three of the most senior positions in the State, dress imaculately, speak extremely articulately and make me feel somewhat awkward in their presence! Oh, why can't i have a normal job!?!?! It is hell stressful working with high profile people all the time. Next week i have to attend a big media launch in which these guys will be featured.....