Update

I always have many things to write. As I am driving home, getting stuck at the ticketing validation place, and talking to complete strangers, I always think of things in which I can write about on this blog. Melbourne is a very active place and even in the dead of the night something is happening. The city is always exciting and buzzing. I love the news-stands and the subway.
Yet when I get home and sit down at the computer table, I completely forget :) LOL, I'm sure you must relate.

My laptop is a menace nowadays and it's less than two years old. :(

But that besides the point. The point is that I have manage to sit myself down infront of this dying computer, get out my portable keyboard and start typing so now I'll have to treat you to a flurry of the post on my Australian life.

I caught myself saying "H" the Australian way. I don't how it happened. It just seeped in unexpectedly. I was explaining spelling something to someone. It's so hard not to speak Australian when you're living here.

I feel as if my life is still in New Zealand though. Oh my NZ soul. So who do I support come commonwealth time? oh woe! :(

So what's new? *shrug*
I spent lots of time in the park beside my house. It is splendid. There's this huge field in which I have to myself most of the time. It's a good place to release. You can play the guitar for as long as you want.

I suppose this has no relevance to anybody, but most of the cambodian community that my youth has been exposed to have all resettled here. I have random people coming up to me and asking me whether I remembered them, and my mind boggles. LOL :) It's all very exciting though. My parents have met lots of people of which were in the refugee camp with them. Most of them have come from France, since many refugees fled to France during the Khmer Rouge.

One of her good friends was telling me stories of my mum when she was young which was very interesting. Now I know where I get my love of narrative from. :)

My nephew is coming into the world soon. He's due on the 11th of March. It's my aunty's fifth child. Her second died of a cochlea operation gone wrong.

ALSO! my birthday is in 3 days. How exciting! Oh all my loved ones, except my family, are so far away from me. They are all scattered around the world, mooching some where far away in a different time zone. It's so difficult to communicate but we manage it somehow.

I'm just going to post this and update more interesting details later.

Long-distance relationships!

If I could be anywhere right now, I would like to be swimming in the yarra ...

or be with this guy ...

if you find him, post him to Melbourne, Australia. Postcode=3173

Please handle with care :)

LOL! do doo doo ...

Pictures tell a million stories. What do these pictures tell you?


Aww! She's so adorable.

But she also bites.





What are you looking forwards to in March? I am giving up my teenage hood, and I'm also looking forwards to the Commonwealth Games, especially with the giant fish floating along in the Yarra during the opening ceremony.

SOMETHING FUNNY: I was speaking to this guy who was asking me whether I like Auckland or Melbourne more and I answered that I like Melbourne, and he goes: "I can understand that, too many sheep ah?" and I laughed inside. Out of all the reasons that could be a reason for liking a place over another, he thinks of that one. I mean, what do sheep have to do with anything?

He's leaving on a jet plane ... don't know when he'll be back again :(

Yummy! Yummy! Cambodian food in our tummies. Here's Jordan as an honorary Cambodian. Hehe ... Ma, nou na?

Train Escapades

The train has always been an interesting place for me ever since I arrived in Melbourne.


It's fast and reliable and you can met awesome people and have engaging conversations.

It is also quite eventful. Today as I was coming back from the Richmond, this drunk man pulled this knife on this other guy. They were having an argument about something a rather.

On Christmas Eve, as I was catching the train back home to Keysborough, I picked up a spare newspaper off the seat. Little did I know, as I was lifting it up to read, I had accidentally caused the newspaper, that a man was reading, to prick in his eyes. Of course I didn't know this until I was about it get off.

He was trying to tell us something for ages and was rubbing his eyes, and mumbling something around the newspaper. Oh how I felt so bad that day. :(

And this morning as I was getting off the train during rush hour human traffic nightmare, I stopped suddenly to check for my train ticket. I had completely forgotten that people were flowing out of the train and through the subway, that any stop would caused those people disruptions. I learnt that you should proceed out of the subway before stopping the hard way. I had a dozen of voices screaming at me not stop and keep moving, and all sorts of angry taunts. One women nearly tripped over. Hehe sorry! it's just people are so focused on getting to work that they have this systematic view that everything will go smoothly, including the path in which they are walking.

R u 486? NO WAY!

Oh no! they overturned the bill which puts a ban on the RU486"Devil" drug that I was talking about earlier. Parliament voted against Health Minister Tony Abbott, and stripped him of his control over the drug ... he had been protesting against it, saying that it went against his moral conscience ... So now it's in the hands of Therapeutic Goods Administration, and in every companies goal, then hope to gain capital, so it's only a matter of time before they make it readily available.

The arguments involved have also been quite bizarre and controversial, and you must admit, quite far-fetch and hilarious.

Kerry Nettle, a Greens MP member wore a shirt with this message on it during the saga:"Mr Abbott get your rosaries off my ovaries." It was also ironic that the t-shirt was sponsored by the Young Women's Christian association.

An anti-abortionist made the highly controversial comment that in 50 years, Australia will probably turn into a muslim country. Of course, she was trying to illustrate a point but she flew pass it with her bizarre example.

..... anyway, that's a bit of politics for you. It's shocking though that the bill was passed because sooner or later, it will be available under prescription. Which is horrible! because one pill will equate to one death and according to Ten News, the drug companies are beginning to manufacture them in its pack, which I assume would include at least 10 if not more. :(

pictures of my street and melbourne

Ode to Healing

Today, I went to the manifest service in a place in Collingwood. Speaking of which, before going to the service, we went down to a park which was built alongside side the mysterious Yarra River. My brother took this picture of me with my mum's pix phone, and when I went to open it, it looked as if the background was painted. I sent it straight to email, and it's completely devoid of any photo rendering whatsoever. Oh what an effect! But seriously ... I could swear that the trees were real, but I don't swear, so you'll have to take my word.

The service was quite awesome. They did this rock/australian bongo rendition of "All who are thirsty" of which I personally thought was quite nice to listen to. But the great part of the service was the healing that was done after this woman, of which I should've paid attention to remembering her name, spoke. She was talking about the authority of the word and that ... just as Jordan was explaining in the reply on his blog only the day before... (paraphrasing in very loose terms)"if you believe in the authority of the word, which says that you have the authority to heal, then it'll happen ... " And so I went with Stephen, and he walked to the front before I did and I stood there praying, and taking in the message then followed afterwards. We were just standing around for awhile, and then this man came along and asked if he wanted to be prayed for and Stephen explained that he wanted healing for the scars on his hand and his neck problem.

The man starting praying for us, and for awhile Stephen was smiling and not quite connected and once he almost laughed, but all of sudden, as we laid hands on him, believing that God will work through us and heal him, he went silent and his face was completely immerse in prayer. And for those who know Stephen, he is rarely still and serious ... but for ages, his stance was still and this face deep and reflecting and his eyes closed in prayer and I knew that he felt something was changing in him. Afterwards, he told me how he felt something happening where his neck problem was, and also how it feels much better. But the amazing thing is, the scars on his hand of which had been ailing him since he was young disappeared. Now that was quite a miracle.

I just stood there flabberglasted.

But wow! the power of the God.

It takes a lot of faith. The woman said that you can go to all the church meetings and participate in all the events, but with no faith, it means nothing and adheres to nothing. For faith moves mountains :)

I was watching the news and every so often (well more like every day) they'd have several clips in relations to politics. Today they were discussing a parliamentary vote for the control over a drug called RU486.

This ...
as they later explained is an abortion pill of which you can read more about on this horrid site, that has women smiling at the thought of killing their babies. It just seems so wrong. http://www.fwhc.org/abortion/medical-ab.htm

I, had no idea that an abortion pill was even invented, let alone thriving in the medical market.

according to the website, the pill causes contractions which will inevitably result in a miscarriage within 2 weeks. SHOCKING! Surgical abortion was bad enough and now this. Apparently, they are trying to make it available on the trading market. But the thing is, if it exists, then people will find a way to get it ... which is shocking, because at this very moment, they are probably selling it on the black markets to poor vulnerable girls. :(

This is my adorable niece Shirlene.

She's such a bubbly girl, who laughs constantly ...

I cut my hair! SHOCKING ah? Actually it's probably only shocking for me because I was so intent on leaving it long, and growing it long but when I re-evaluated my reasons for doing so, it was quite unreasonable ... so it cut it, and now it's short, layered and more convenient to maintain.

What great Godly mean have said against contraception

YEP! OPPOSE CONTRACEPTION...SUPPORT LIFE :)

MARTIN LUTHER
(SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FOUNDER OF LUTHERANISM)
"[T]he exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her—that is, he lies with her and copulates—and, when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime. . . . Consequently, he deserved to be killed by God. He committed an evil deed. Therefore, God punished him" (Commentary on Genesis).
JOHN CALVIN
(SIXTEENTH-CENTURY FOUNDER OF CALVINISM)
"The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring" (Commentary on Genesis).
LUKAS OSIANDER
(SIXTEENTH-CENTURY LUTHERAN)
"[Onan’s contraceptive act] was an abhorrent thing and worse than adultery. Such an evil deed strives against nature, and those who do it will not possess the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 6:9–10). The holier marriage is, the less will those remain unpunished who live in it in a wicked and unfitting way so that, in addition to it, they practice their private acts of villainy" (Commentary on Genesis).
JAMES USSHER
(SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ANGLICAN BISHOP)
"How doth a man exercise uncleanness in [the sexual] act? Either by himself or with others. How by himself? By the horrible sin of Onan (Gen. 38:9), lustful dreams and nocturnal pollutions . . . arising from excessive eating and unclean cogitations or other sinful means" (On the Seventh Commandment).
SYNOD OF DORT
(SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CALVINIST COUNCIL)
"[Onan’s contraceptive act] was even as much as if he had, in a manner, pulled forth the fruit out of the mother’s womb and destroyed it" (Dutch Annotations on the Whole Bible, authorized by Dort).
COTTON MATHER
(SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PURITAN)
"It is time for me to tell you that the crime against which I warn you is that self-pollution, which, from the name of the only person that stands forever stigmatized for it in our Holy Bible, bears the name of ‘onanism’" (The Pure Nazirite).
JOHN WESLEY
(EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FOUNDER OF METHODISM)
"Onan, though he consented to marry the widow, yet to the great abuse of his own body, of the wife he had married, and the memory of the brother that was gone, refused to raise of seed to his brother. Those sins that dishonor the body and defile it are very displeasing to God and evidences of vile affections. Observe, the thing which he did displeased the Lord—and it is to be feared; thousands, especially of single persons, by this very thing, still displease the Lord and destroy their own souls" (Commentary on Genesis).

Hope

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--
without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

- Emily Dickinson