I just noticed something awful about my blogger page. The top ad. How do I get rid of this, and why do I have a JW ad on my page? Can't they put up something else? Why do I get the JW's? That really sucks.. is it because of my content? Maybe I should talk more about sports to get rid of the ad.. or talk about the weather. This really sucks!

The author of dearraed.blogspot.com hasn't posted anything since monday. I hope he is alright!

Today I got to work at 7:15 am. I woke up at 6am. 6 AM!!! Amazingly I wasn't really tired, until around 11am today, I started feeling pretty tired. I slept at 11pm last night.. The great thing about this schedule is that I'm going home at 3:15pm. That's pretty wicked.. When I got here this morning, there was no one here. I even beat that muslim guy, who usually comes in the earliest. All the lights were off on my floor when I came up..!

I can take a bottle cap (for glass bottles such as the Fairlee 284 ml juices, or five alives, or Tropicana bottles) and crush it with my bare hands. I used to have to use two hands, but now I can do it with one hand. I am a beast!

Today I learned from experience why people don't just come in at 7 and go home at 3. I managed to force myself and even then I was only able to get to work at 7:40. Still, it forced me to work over 4 hours non-stop until lunch. That is way too long a time. I cannot concentrate for 4-5 hours straight! Normally, it would be 3 hours, from 9-12, no problem. But if I were to try 7-12, that would be impossible. I barely got through the morning today. Around 11:30ish, I got extremely distracted, started surfing the web, looking for flash games to play. Tomorrow, I will try again, 7:00 is my goal. One guy here comes in every day at 7am, but that is only because he is muslim and prays before the sun comes up. He does this every day, so he's used to it. For me to change from waking up at 7:30 to 6am, that's really hard. But I will try it, because I want to maximize my daylight time!

There's another pretty decent british pop-rock group called Travis. Today at work, I finally got a new computer. It is quite a huge jump. I went from a PII 400 MHz, 196 mb ram, 6 gb hd, 15" monitor, no sound card. And now, I got a P4 2.53 GHz, 1 gb ram, 60 gb hd, 19" monitor and a sound card! The great thing about the sound card is I can finally listen to the radio. Today I listened to a british radio station, where they played a song by Travis, which I already had on mp3, but to hear it on the airwaves is usually the defining moment when a song has made it big. Although, I'm sure british stations have the same "requirements" that canadian stations have. That is, we have to hear 40% canadian content. Still, it's a decent song, called Side by Travis.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to try the 7am-3pm schedule that is apparently allowed at work! 'nite

Here's a couple by american solders in the war.

http://www.lt-smash.us
and
http://www.rooba.net/will/

Hey, on the Metro this morning, they stated that a guy in Baghdad is posting on blogspot about the war. Apparently it crashed blogspot's server because he was getting so many hits! Anyway, the site was at http://dear-raed.blogspot.com but it's down now. Dang.

[edit] the Metro reported site incorrectly. The site is http://dearraed.blogspot.com [/edit]

Christian baptismal is decision for all christians to make when they decide that they feel ready to publicly proclaim that they believe that Christ died for their sins. It seems that a lot of people feel that it's a life-changing experience, and are fearful of this, which I call a misconception. The way I see it is that if you are a believer already, you should have changed your life anyway, and then baptism is just a formality at that point. My parents believe that you need to get baptised in order to get to heaven.. I think they believe more in the act of baptism than the decision to do so. I got into an argument with my parents a few months ago because they were trying to tell my brother to get baptised. I thought it should be his decision, and they thought it should be their decision. I was really confused by this reaction from my parents. I've never really spoken with my brother about christianity. It's tough to when you're growing up in a christian background, to discuss that stuff. It's all you know, so there's not much to debate.

Well praise God, 2 weeks ago my brother decided he wanted to get baptised. It's baptismal sunday this weekend! w00t!

Is blogger broken? I just checked my website, and my march 21 post was missing but it's below in the edit posts page!

My brother is okay now (thanks, God), i'm not sure where that blood came from, but he is fine now, he just has the sniffles and a sore throat. That blood thing gave me a really queasy feeling, when I heard about it at work I prayed for him on intervals of about 10 minutes, repeatedly til I got home, then more while I took care of him. Bless him! =)

Yesterday I went to the fox & fiddle at john street and adelaide, downtown, for jer's birthday. I got him a bottle of shiraz, from australia. Of course as you may be guessing, I haven't got a clue when it comes to wines. I had to ask his girlfriend what he likes, and also had the help of a kind woman on the internet to give me some advice. Her name was debra, she is a wine broker and has a website, www.debraswine.com. I thought it was very kind of her to give me advice on what to buy. Everyone was at the party, it was a surprise party as well, the look of shock on his face was worth a million bucks. He was very surprised, as he thought he was going to meet some guy for an estimation for an 'enhancement' for his car. I had very little food that night, some chicken wings and calimari, and 1 chicken fajita. I had one glass of ginger ale, and about 3/4 of a pint of beer. The only reason I had any beer was because I was so thirsty and I couldn't find the darn waiter!! But anyway, the beer was quite good.

These guys are my school friends, and it's nice to be with them once in awhile. It's pretty amazing that our class/gang still gets together pretty regularly. I'm very grateful for these friendships. I guess it has something to do with us suffering through the years of school that has enhanced our relationships and built strong bonds.

Last Sunday my sunday school teacher said that on average, a christian loses all of his non-christian friends within the first 3 years of conversion. I was really surprised by that, considering the rest of the class seemed to agree. I was like -- wha..? That is so sad..! I've always believed that while I do need christian friends, I need to balance.. well that's the wrong word, but I've always felt that I needed to always stay friends with my friends. I try not to lose contact with people. If someone I haven't talked to in awhile pops into my mind, or I see them on ICQ or MSN, I always message them. I guess maintain relationships is pretty important to me.. But that christian thing seemed very surprising, I have tons of non-christian friends. Maybe it's because I have reached that closeness with my church friends yet, or maybe God has placed me in places where there aren't many Christians for a reason. I dunno..

Anyway, I also wanted to thank serendipitious ahead of time for giving me a ride later today to church!

...and so it begins, massive strike on iraq.

my brother has been pretty ill lately. please pray for him. he coughed up some blood on thursday, and my mom took him to the doctor and he recommended x-rays. we're still waiting for the results. i hope he gets better. my mom and grandparents left for nevada last night so it's just me taking care of him now.

well, the canker sore is still there, it got a lot bigger over the weekend because i had very little sleep. the last couple of days i've been trying the new Crest Whitestrips. my brother got them from the dentist, and i get to have half of them, so i tried it the last couple of days. after two tries, i have already noticed a slight change in the tint of my teeth, which is pretty cool. but, the side affect has been that my teeth have been ultra sensitive since the second application. last night, my teeth hurt all night long, so i didn't sleep much!

friday night, i slept normally but was woken up the next morning by my mom, who wanted me to help paint the kitchen ceiling. so essentially i missed out on my weekly saturday sleep-in.

i went to Lick's today after church.. i had a back homeburger, fries and a peach pizzazz milkshake. i was so full afterwards that even after hours later, when i burped some pieces of the burger would come back up to my mouth! (eww). my brother and i spent most of the afternoon making sushi rolls, which we ate for dinner. we made sooooo much though, so i'll have enough for at least 2 lunches to bring to work.. sweet!!

I got a new canker sore in my mouth, on the same side as the one before. This time, it's right at the crease of my jaw, perfect placing so that whenever i open my jaw and close it, it hurts. Talk about perfect placement, thanks God, you're the best!

yesterday in our "weekly" (we've done it twice, so i can't exactly call it weekly just yet, though i hope it becomes a tradition) lunch at work, we went for and indian food. it was buffet, i believe it was called tandoori cuisine. one of the guys, habib took us there because we'd originally wanted to go for chinese, but none of knew where any chinese restaurants were, in our area.

the food was really good. i had a lot of curry lamb, and curry goat. i also liked the rice, which though looked weird because it was so colorful, still tasted the same as everyday rice. i also had this bread they have, it's more like a pita.. but it was sweet-ish. the whole meal only cost $8, so that was also a bonus. i felt some discomfort in my stomach throughout the meal, but for the rest of the day i felt fine. habib said the food wasn't really indian food, but thought that's fine, because i probably wouldn't be able to eat the real SPICY stuff.

today, after work the boss took us out for drinks. my boss is a greek guy, but born here so he has absolutely no culture.. kinda like me I guess, except that my parents are here, so i did pick up a little culture. five of us went, john and hovic (my project teammates), my boss peter, and this other guy. i forgot his name, but he's the closest to my age at 27. the other 3 are all in their mid 30s. it's amazing the culture and diversity we have. we have habib, who works up with us, but isn't on our team. he's muslim. then there's hovic who is christian, and john -- i don't know what he is. my boss is greek orthodox, and the younger guy is a sikh. though, it's all a little weird, because as far as i can tell, none of these are really truly practising their religions. for one thing, we went out drinking, and most of the guys technically aren't allowed to drink, but they do. we went to the Peel Pub, which i'd heard of many times but never been to. i ordered an iced tea, and they gave me a GIANT mug. i couldn't believe the size of it, i swear 2 other people could easily have shared it with me!

you can't play john mayer's songs.. there is just no way.
they're way too hard.. i've seen him chords online, and i've tried them all. they are too hard. there is no way i will ever reach that level of guitar playing.

whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my lunchbox
when came the day when it got
thrown away
don't you think I should have had some say in that decision
i've had the above lyrics from 83 in my head for days now..

i tried the warcraft expansion today. it's just in beta stage, so it's free to download. the new characters they've made, new sounds and what not, new magic skills and magical items. all very cool! i'm looking forward to buying it!

okay i've dragged this on way too long.. i'm gonna have to finish the book of joshua soon.. i haven't read in a week now. i hereby vow to finish this book by the end of this week.

something has to be said about this.. now i'm not saying that i could necessarily do a better job of it, but i think there should be a rule. when someone leads worship on Sunday morning, they should at least have some sort of musical background. they should at least be able to figure out the beat, or have some kind of musical talent. it can't just be some guy waving his hands madly and singing. i know, that all that person needs is the will and motivation and God's love to have him out there, doing his/her thing. but, that leader is distracting the rest of us if they appear to have no sense of rhythm -- like they don't know what they are doing out there. it's distracting, and for a lack of a better word, it's irritating.

anyway, today's sermon continued along the lines of what's been on my mind the last few weeks. it was about the story of Zaccheus (yes, that wee little man). he excelled in his work. pastor kinson talked about the importance of seizing the moment of working, that God put us there and we should make the most of it, in His name. well, that's what i got out of it anyway..

last week, my first almost-full week with my new co-workers was awesome. i got to know them so quickly. on Wednesday, i took.. (well, led them) them to a japanese restaurant on simcoe street called FUNE. This place is good.. anyway, there were 4 of us. one guy, from pakistan had never had sushi so he ordered the terriyaki chicken. but i gave him one of my rolls, and he took a large wad of what he called that green paste. keeping in mind that these people love spicy stuff, i told him this stuff is different, "it'll shoot right up your nose and then it'll be gone", is what i said to him. anyway, he took a fairly large chunk was wasabi, and put it in his mouth. the next part was just so funny, he's chewing away, and then he grabs his napkins and starts wiping away the tears! i was laughing so hard.. then when it was all over, he said it was one of most amazing feelings ever! the way it just shot up, he loved it! hahaha... anyway we got a chance to talk about life, about growing up, getting married, family life, etc. it was pretty cool. and i've even been able to discuss culture/religion with these guys. it's definitely been a great feeling. because before when i was downstairs, i had no one to talk to. i liked it, because i tend to enjoy solitude as well, but this is really nice too

on the way back from the driving test, i thought about whether i should book the next one at the same place or try yet another location. just for the sake of if anyone ever needed advice as to where to test, i could tell them because i had experienced so many different places. the oshawa location (where I went to today) was alright. It was a lot easier than north york or stoney creek. actually it was good, outside of the last 30 seconds of the test the guy said I would have passed. he said i drove quite well, so that's pretty encouraging. i've been driving now for about just over a year now, and i like the car now too, the big van. it's nice.. i feel like i can make it go where i want to go, and fit into tiny parking spaces. if only i'd looked ahead to see that little man crossing the sidewalk, i could've waited another 15 seconds to make my left turn, i would've passed.

thanks everyone for their prayers, i'll let you know when my next test is!

survivor
the men are going to come back with a vengence this week -- having shed their lazy guy daniel -- even though i thought it'd be joanna. well, it'll be joanna for sure this week. the guys will win them all, and the last visible minority will be booted.

i got my 3rd try at the road test tomorrow morning. i really hope i pass this time. i booked it in oshawa because it would've been another month's wait had i booked it in toronto. the snow thing is really messing me up though, on top of my already nervousness. if it gets postponed, that would really suck.. on the other hand, it might be harder to pass while driving in the snow. my Windstar is huge too.. not easy to navigate on snow..

and colin, working so hard on this, i wonder if his family doesn't mind.. i mean, with this war stuff, how much time does he have left to spend with his family? I guess it's safe to say that all the Bowels are rallying behind their Colon. LOL

i wonder if bush ever says "man, my dear Colin is so hot about this war thing, looks like he's gonna burst." haha.. imagine, your colon bursting.. lol

i wonder if colin powell was ever made fun of as a child.. cuz colin sounds just like colon. and, powell rhymes with bowel. i guess childred back then didn't really know the words colon or bowel. right now, kids could make fun of him. he's got this war movement he's working on, trying to rally everyone around the States to attack Iraq. (look, attack iraq -- also rhymes). So the Colon Bowel Movement is on the rise.. lol

people keep asking me about whether i think my contract will get extended. i hope so. my new supervisor told me that i was reporting to him but in terms of payroll i am still under the old payroll (the people i worked with/for during the last 3 months). the new project i'm on now has 4 phases and phase I doesn't end til July. my contract is supposed to end in May, so i can only assume that i've been extended. still, no one has said anything to me about this. today, one of the leads on the team was really impressed with my work, calling me a 'junior programmer analyst' disguised as a web programmer. cool! anyway, they also pre-scheduled meetings that will come every tuesday until the end of 2003. they included me in all those meetings. still, no one has said anything to me about an extension. when do you guys think would be a good time for me to bring this up to them??

it just occured to me that once i move into the new place, i'll be able to host jam sessions, just like back in the day at 2880 Carling! oh man, i'm so excited now!

missions? maybe not.
i think God's been speaking to me about this topic. it all started at the servanthood workshop at fellowship 2 weeks ago. there, while talking to some people i realized how little i'm serving God, and how blessed i've been throughout my life. it's amazing when you talk to others about their lives you learn so much about yourself at the same time. hearing about other peoples' problems and realizing how minute yours are. when i think about how fortunate i've been, it makes me feel guilty about the situations of the peers/friends around me.

then at missionfest, the speaker, a mr. stowell (sp?) talked to us about how Peter gave up his fishing business to follow Christ, to become a missionary. and Christ repeatedly asking Peter if he truly loved Him, and what it really means to love God. at the end, the speaker summed it up by saying "what are your fishes?". i mean, i knew he was going to lead up to it, but finally when he said it, it was like bam!

then on saturday, i met up with oscar for lunch, where i shared my feelings about this him. we talked about how inspiring a person can be, and he told me about a girl who gave up everything, and has been doing missions for 3 years now, living almost day-to-day making no more than $50/week. and at the same time, we also talked about how we need to be called, not guilted, into taking a step into that direction of missions. we ate at congee wong's, and, an old chinese man sat beside us and for some reason he kept wanting to talk to us. he told us how he was born in malaysia (in broken english/mandarin) and how we should all move to china and work there, to help "our" country. he told us about a man he knew, who got his m.d in Toronto, and then moved to China to serve as a doctor for 70 years. and he kept mentioning something about mao tse tung's right-hand-man. I think he was it, or well i dunno, it was hard to understand him with his thick accent.

i've always felt that the job i have now has already been an unbelievable gift from God. i mean after applying for over 100 jobs, and then getting this one, which i didn't even apply for. and thinking about my fellow mates who are still unemployed, most of whom are way more qualified than i am. should i give up all this (stuff that God gave me), to go serve Him?

then on sunday, in sunday school we talked about how difficult it would be for a rich man to go to heaven -- as difficult as trying to fit a camel through the eye of a needle! [note: i was actually picturing myself trying to squeeze camel "puree" through a small hole.. but that is sorta gross so i didn't bring it up in class].. and the teacher reiterated again about not being called by guilt but rather by circumstance, if God wanted me to be somewhere i wasn't, He would find a way to put me there.

He wouldn't have given me this job, if He wanted me in China, for instance. and when i think about about alf, who didn't find work and is now in kazahkstan, that really shows what they're talking about -- if He wants us somewhere, we'd be there.

anyway, those are my thoughts.

well, i'm still up, 1 am on a sunday morning and i'm still wide awake, contemplating my life's blessings and the message at missionfest. lots of things going through my head now, not quite sure how to process them.. john mayer cd playing in the background (yeah, i got it) and yet i don't really hear it.

so.. i can't sleep, which sucks because i know it's gonna be bad in the morning.. maybe i should just lie down and close my eyes..