The Truman Show (spoilers)

Watched The Truman Show today. I've seen it before, and I know it was the coolest most thought provoking film like evA about 5 years ago, but I'm 5 years behind, and in light of several conversations I've had over the past few days, it got me really thinking.

The Truman Show, for those who haven't seen it and haven't clicked on the link, is about a guy (Truman) who's the unknowing star of the ultimate Big Brother show. He was born on live television, and has lived in a world created solely for watching him live out his life since then. It is all directed by Christof, down to the consoling lines spoken by Truman's 'best friend' when Truman is suspecting that there's more to life than he's been led to believe. Truman starts to fight this pretend world, wanting to explore outside it's walls and see more of the world.

Truman's struggle reminds me so much of the fight I see some people facing when they start to wonder if there's a God. When they believe, there are just as many obstructions as Truman faces when he wants to do something that isn't acceptable to the others living in and 'controlling' his life.

Truman starts to really wonder about the truth of his life in Seahaven when little things strike him as a little strange - a light falling from the sky explained as a plane shedding equipment midair, an encounter with a man who looks like his dead father, who gets whisked away. Explanations for every strange event are found in the newspaper the next day. All these, plus an episode from his school years, start to make him wonder and question what's going on. But the more he questions, the more obstructions he meets as Christof tries to prevent him living his own chosen life. Within one day he discovers there are no flights to Fiji available, the bus to Chicago breaks down, and when he takes dramatic action to drive out, he is stopped by a convenient nucular leak that has forced roadblocks and an evacuation zone to be set up, preventing him escape via the road. And yet he keeps trying.

We see the people barracking for Truman at the Truman Bar, in the bath, the carpark, hugging pillows with Truman's face on them, in Japan, learning English from the show. We see Laura, the girl who 'they' didn't want talking to him, and got taken off the show for doing so, leaving an indelible memory with Truman. And these are the people who rejoice when Truman steps out of the set, after refusing to bow to Christof's pressure and give in to the fear of leaving the safety of Seahaven.

Truman faces death to find the truth, as Christof uses increasingly extreme methods to try and force Truman to turn around back to the 'normal' life. But he keeps going, and this is the message I want all you people who are looking at life, wondering what it's all about, whether there's a God, whether he's worth following to take from this post.

God can't force us to do anything, that's one of the beauties of him, he gives us free choice to do what we like. Of course there's a way he'd like us to do things, and he makes sure there's always opportunities to do it his way, but you can take a different road if you wish, although where you'll end up is not the best destination for the rest of eternity. As in The Truman Show, there are always obstructions, some major, some minor, but you'll get through if you believe in the end goal.

The Truman Show reminds me a little of the book of Job (about the guy who's faith is rigorously tested by the devil) and also the Lost Son (guy gets early inheritance from dad, goes spends it all on sex drugs and rock n roll, then returns home crawling and dad welcomes him and throws a massive party). Those of us who believe in God, Jesus, Father, whatever you want to call him, are members of that party. We are barracking for you, like the audience of the Truman Show, and when you choose to push away the 'normal' life - the life of a non-christian, we throw a massive party, as does God (Jesus made wine - of course God likes a party!).

I just want to encourage anyone who reads this to keep searching, keep testing the boundaries of what you believe. You don't have to believe in Him, but He believes in you.

I'll be praying for you.

May you let God guide your steps, and may you see the work he does in your life.

God bless,
Imo

Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to seperate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:39

Stinking hot...

Today it's rather warm... By our standards especially, where mid-20s aare considered warm enough! So far it's gotten to 35°C, but there is no respite, because our houses often warm up to the same temperature as outside, and a lot of us don't have airconditioning. But we just sit it out, and enjoy frozen blueberries... Well that's our house at least!

But the weather has been hot for the last couple of days, with a cooler front expected tomorrow. On Friday we had spectacular storms, with thunder and lightening that lasted for several hours. It was such typical Tasmanian weather - one minute the skies were bright blue, and the sun roasting everything alive, and the next it was raining and thundering and flashing. I lay in the hammock under the house for a while, watching the lightening and the rain, marvelling at the wonders of the weather. And it was spectacular from under there, until the wind started to blow the rain straight onto me... It was still spectacular, but better to watch from inside...! It was completely dark by about 8pm, when the sun was meant to set at 8:20, which gave an odd sense of almost jetlag.

Well I've been kinda flat out with work, doing Eisteddfod stuff, and some other stuff that got passed on to me to do by my mum. It's all money, but O-Week starts tomorrow, so only a week till uni. Hoping this week will be really nice and relaxing, planning to catch up with a few people and stuff, so shoudl be good!

Been busily planning my trip to England for my brother's wedding (have I ever mentioned that my brother's getting married? Well he is! To Emma, who we met last year at easter when she come to visit! She's English, is a teacher, and seems really nice!) I'm planning to fly to London via Vienna, and return the same way, then I can have a few days stopover in Vienna and see all my Austrian friends. I'm SOOOOO looking forward to it all! Emma's planning to show us all around the area where they live, and I'll visit the sister of a friend who's working for a year at a school, about 50 minutes drive from Emma and Alex! Yayayayayay!!

Talk about timing too! When I'm in Austria, a friend from there (who's studying in Egypt) will also be home! We're planning to organise everyone to be in the one place at the same time so we can have a big catch up!

Finally, Heth got home today, after 2 and a half months of adventures in New Zealand and Costa Rica! It was great to go out to the airport to welcome her home! WELCOME HETH!!! Hooray! She's back safe and sound!!

I love the rain!!!!

Isn't rain jsut the coolest thing in the whole wide world? I mean, weather in general is amazing, and i think it is in the weather that God's work is the clearest!! But weather like today's, is just mind-blowing.... This morning i was lying in bed, peering out a tiny gap of curtain, wondering why i could see blue skies when it's supposed to be really rainy today. But i got up, got dressed, sat in the sun for a while and read my book. Suddenly the sun went behind a cloud, and I looked up at the Mountain. There was this enormous grey cloud taking over the mountain, sweeping down. The temperature suddenly dropped, and I felt like I was in some kind of a horror movie when everything suddenly becomes colder as the menacing yeti steps into the picture. Went and changed into trousers, and watched as the skies turned grey, and the Bureau of Meteorology showed that the temperature that it feels like had dropped by 10°C in about 30 minutes. Then came the rain. It was pouring down - sounded and looked like hail, but it was just MASSIVE drops. Well, our house had a memory lapse, and forgot that rain's supposed to be on the outside and not the inside. Mum and i raced for towels and water waterfalled down the windows (on one it was on the outside, very pretty, on the other however it was on the inside)..... Silly blocked gutters...! Then the chimmney started peeing, but we didn't realised until there was a puddle on the floor... Crazy Crazy!!! Hobart got 30mm of rain in about an hour and a half....

Well we don't usually have a lake in our garden...!

I love the sound of the rain drumming on a tin roof, like the ones we have, and also on the alsanite roof of the house next door. Beautiful sound. Everytime it slowed, I would get tense, and think 'no, please, keep going and move up into the midlands!!!' But everything must come to an end, even beautiful things like soaking rain, and it did. We looked outside and under the house were a few lakes.... Mum got excited, grabbed the hoe and started to make channels...

Mum contemplates the puddle under the washing line.... (The photo doesn't want to go the proper way, so you'll just have to tilt the head!!)

I can't remember ever having lakes under our house before, Mum says she can remember it happening maybe twice before.....

But I just love the rain so much!!!!!! And it's still going, but easier now, and it's really really misty...... YAY!!!!!! RAIN!

Sorry, I'm just a bit excitable about it!

I got Ugg Boots a couple of days ago, which is fantastic - never had them before, so i keep on walking around the house in them thinking how lovely they are - two tone purple!!!

And I got bluetooth working between my computer and my phone which is very useful, and also got iSync working for my phone (iSync is a thing on macs that means you can have the same address book and calendar on your phone and computer). It's not supposed to support the Nokia 6233, but I found a useful thing on the apple discussion site on how to add an unsupported model in. I love people who work out that stuff and then tell people like me who can follow instructions but not work them out!!!

Back to Reality

Camps have been and gone and now I'm back to the norms of life in a world not overrun by 30-odd kids in a confined space...

The first camp I was on was Mayfield, where I was part of a leadership team, looking after 19 kids. It was terribly dry up there, with countless dead sheep seen, no bathing hole (so no bath for a week) and the threat of a total fire ban hanging over our heads. We knew the river would have plenty of water - being tidal and salt water from the sea, but there were some worries about drinking water.

We were, however, so blessed on this camp, with God answering all our prayers about the weather, right down to the rain that meant we could have our bondfire on the last night (otherwise it was too dry to have a fire, and the rain posed no problem at all - we kept a positive 'Hooray! Rain! The farmers need it' attitude and the kids picked that up too). The theme of the camp was 007 (being 2007) so we had lots of bonding jokes, and the bondfire and James Bond visited every day to show his adventures as a secret agent in Heaven. The campers were fantastic, the leadership team was amazing (a lot of us had been campers on Huon togehter, so it was just like being back there, but with responsibility!) and all in all it was my favourite Mayfield so far.

After driving home from that, via Scorchers in Orford for a caffine refill, I arrived at 6ish to an empty house (which meant I didn't have to worry about suffocating people with my smelliness), chucked my clothes in the washing machine, jumped in the shower for the best shower ever, and pysched myself up for the next camp, to which I was supposed to go that night. But the washing took a while to do, and by the time mum and dad arrived home, I'd made up my mind to just go down the next day...

The next day I headed off to Conningham for Waves. This is a far more relaxed camp than Mayfield - for starters we live in a building, not tents, and I was looking forward to a slightly easier camp. I had a few concerns over the inexperienced leadership team (and smaller team) but knew God would take care of it.

Well I was looking forward to a more relaxed camp, but there is no way I got it. The campers arrived, and for the first couple of hours I was thinking 'this is going to be the longest week of my life' - they all seemed to be off the show. Sent off a couple of 'AHHHHH PSYCHO CAMPERS! PRAY YOUR SOCKS OFF' messages, and from the next day things started to calm down, as they got used to it all. I was one of the first aid officers, and we had so many injuries - usually only little things - little cuts, mozzie bites etc, but I certainly got good at aiming the stingose and antiseptic sprays.... Waves was quite emotionally draining, with so many injuries, and a few rowdy campers who we had to constantly watch. It was still great, with most of the kids stating the middle day, when we went sailing, as their favourite thing. We all had a lot of fun, and although there was a terrible day for the leaders, when just everything seemed to go wrong, the campers didn't seem to notice, and they all had a great time.

One of my highlights was the fact that every single one of the 31 kids, aged 11-14ish really loved watching a 1985 classic movie, Back to the Future. It's one of myt favourite movies, and I was so happy when i didn't hear a single bad comment about it from the campers after we watched it on a rainy night. They were begging to watch the 2nd and 3rd even!!!

So that was camps.... I got home last night, slept for 11 hours, and now I'm awake and with it (unlike yesterday, when i was running on determination not to fall asleep).. I'm looking forward to next years camps already (sad, but they are possibly my year's highlight - I love them so much!) and hope to see the campers from this years grow with God heaps over the coming year. There are some potentially fantastic leaders out there, and I just pray they will stay strong, and keep asking questions and finding out about where they are headed.

God bless,
Imo

Smoky Hobart

Well we've had a week of bushfires all over the state, especially up on the East Coast, where a few town lost homes and buildings. I don't think any lives were lost though. But on Wednesday, the smoke over Hobart was crazy. Here's a pic of the city, taken from Huon Road at 7:30 pm (sorry it's badly joined up, but I don't have software on this computer for fixing things like that). Anyone who's seen Hobart from this road will know this is a crazy amount of smoke - normally those hills are as clear as day - can usually see all the houses and streets on them.

Here's the mountain from Huon Road. That's usually pretty clear, but not on Wednesday.

Here's a smoky sunset.

And the Mountain again.

Happy Birthday to Me...

I'm 20 today... Can't blame anything on being a teenager anymore (I wanted to be really naughty this week, and blame it on being a teenager, having never really taken advantage of this excuse before, but I forgot to...) On the up side, I'm only 1 year off being allowed to drink in America now.... Because that's so important to me!

Do I feel older? Well I feel one day older than yesterday, and yesterday I was only 19.... Just a number....

Herein be there dragones

Or perhaps dinosaurs? Went for a bushwalk (slash bushbash) up on Mount Wellington today with a group of friends. We went to the Lost World, a fantastic area full of caves and views of Hobart. The track is supposed to be a loop, but it kept on disappearing, so we were forced to bushbash for a large section of the return journey, Was a lot of fun, quite satisfying! But I don't feel tired yet, have had 2 hours of dancing since then, Heth was a bit dead, but it hasn't hit me yet....

Here's Hobart, at the bottom of the pic, with the Derwent River and the Eastern Shore. You can also see past that, although I actually don't know how far you can see...!










Here's a bit further across, with the Tasman Bridge, and the looming clouds over the city (we were blessed in that it didn't rain at all, and the only thing we had to contend with was a bit of wind).









Ahh, the wonders of modern technology!













The Crew at lunchtime.













Isn't that a pretty bit of sunshine on Heth? Down in one of the caves at what we hope was the Lost World (there weren't anysigns, but we think we were in the right place!)











Not a very friendly photo of Matt (really, he's not that mean) but this was the first cave we looked in!










Ruth, Sam and Em in a cave...














Don't look so unimpressed Em, you're in a big cave!!!











Dani, Matt, Heth and Mark doing some rock hopping....

Children of Men

Went to see Children of Men today. Go see it. I thought it was fantastic, made really well. It was directed by Alfonso Cuaron, the director of the most recent Harry Potter, and has a similar dark atmosphere. The use of humour to lighten and highlight the desperation is perfect. I can't say how it compares to P.D. James' novel, although I intend to find out soon!

Clive Owen plays Theo, a former activist, living in 2027 when all women are sterile. The world is going insane as a result, with the government handing out suicide packs and anti-depressants. Theo is put into the situation of feeling obliged to escort a miraculously pregnant woman (Claire-Hope Ashitey) to a safe haven.

The scenes of the refugee city are especially poignant when one considers the war-zones of today, and part of the power of the movie is that this 2027 world is so similar to our world today. Cuaron does not distract the audience with unfamiliar technology, the little that we see can be recognised as simply a more advanced version of today's technology.

I was a little confused at times about who was fighting whom, but I think it was the government fighting the rebels standing up for the refugees (anyone not a British citizen is forcefully removed from Britain).

Go see it. It is a violent at times, but not to be would contradict the position of the world at the time.

Here's a pic of the bridge I took at the Hobart Regatta this year. I need it online so I can use it on as my heading picture!

Well exams are finished

Holidays have begun! Hoorah, hooray! Had my last exam this morning, which was great, especially since I left quite early.... Saw Little Miss Sunshine today, which was hilariously funny! GO and see it, espcially if you need some relaxation! Don't take it seriously...

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Imagine - the Bush Remix

Here's a YouTube video worth watching. Imagine - The Bush Remix

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Why the change?

It's quite a long story really, and you may be a little disappointed that I haven't changed the appearance or anything, but come back in a week or so, and I'll have hopefully changed everything around, including blogger systems.

Blogger has created a new system for the blogs, and apparently everyone will have to change over soon, so I was looking into it today, and it all ended in me thinking I like this web name more.

Jabbering = well, I do talk a lot, Fool = what human is not a fool?

So, I'll leave you all for the moment, while I work out beta.blogger and backup all my old posts, just in cases...

God Bless,
Imo

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Susan's links!

Here are some funny things Suse's sent me recently, thanks!! Thought I'd share the laughs! And no, they're not all pc!!

Why men die before women

How you know you're living in 2004

Errors of Genetic Engineering

The importance of punctuation

Biff from Back to the Future answers some questions...

Top Ten Women Drivers of the Year

My personal DNA

Well there you go, I'm a Benevolent Inventor... Who knows if it's accurate, I disagree with some of it, but that's just my own perception of myself compared to others - who knows, perhaps it's right and I just do things differently to others.... Personal DNA

I'm sure there was something I was going to write about, need to start planning my blog on my hand again... It's gone though, hopefully I'll remember it again before too long...

Portable Film Festival

Click here for losta really weird but cool short free films. One of my favourites, out of the few that I've watched so far, is Soap Opera. Hands up, Your Betel Nut or Your Life is pretty good too.

These are all movies designed to be watched on phones, iPods etc etc.... Can download them into iTunes and stuff too.... Great idea I reckon!

You have to sign up to watch them, but it's gotta be one of the easiest sign ups I've ever seen!

So go and check them out, great for procrastinating!!!

P.S. Check Maestro out too.

The pretexts are always found in some spacious appearance of a real good.

We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history ... In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind ... History consists, for the greater part, of the miseries brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal, and all the train of disorderly appetites ... These vices are the causes of those storms. Religion, morals, laws, prerogative, privileges, liberties, rights of men, are the pretexts. The pretexts are always found in some spacious appearance of a real good. - E. Burke

Click on the link

101 Uses for a John Howard

Proud aunty procrastination

These were taken at easter, when everyone was down. Look at how much the boys have changed and grown since then!!!! (comparing with the pic from yesterdays' post that is!)






Mum and Rohan (who was smiling at Ashar)














Mum and Rohan












Yoda Rohan











Dad and the crew

















Dad and Ashar












And here's Arrigo, their cousin with Ashar (penguin top), Rose and Rohan. Arrigo is about the same age, but was born at the right time, not 10 weeks early like Ashar and Rohan.

The boys at 6 months

I'm procrastinating in a serious way, avoiding writing my history by doing other uni work (that takes real committment) so I thought I'd share a recent pic of the boys. Aren't they beautiful?

And for everyone who has troubles understanding the Bible (are we gold or clay?):

When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated. - James Madison

Well I'd best be off to keep on reading.... and writing. It's only 750 words, but it's just SO hard!

Kat's off today too... The day after major airport security shuffles. Timing!

I was actually a little bit angry before the start of the game. I thought our haka lacked a bit of intensity and spirit...

So says umpire of the New Zealand basektball team, on their loss last night to the Australian Boomers. I heard him say that on the news, and I hope he was not entirely serious - his tone of voice was ambiguous, but it's a rather funny thing to say...

Well uni's back, I'm looking forward to the next set of holidays already, although it is nice toe be spending time in the Ref sitting with people watching them play silly card game all the time again, while I do my odd German homework about a lady who has to shave her face..... (well you try and decipher the pictures!) I like that bit of uni - the bludging around in the Ref, practising group procrastination.....

Results, yeah, pretty good, I was happy, although I'm not sure they were really good enough for our Advanced Honours co-ordinator (AdHon is the weird thing I'm doing that means I got a good score at the end of school and they want to keep me in Arts as long as possible and make an arts degree look vaguely acceptable. What they don't know is that I'll probably end up doing ArtsLaw, so all their scheming is in vain - I can't do a combined degree and AdHon... Mwha mwha mwha). Apparently I must be 'pretty pleased' with my Law and German results, and my History and English results were 'pretty impressive' as well.... Personally I thought it was the other way around, but there you go.... The trick will be keeping that high praise coming after the next exams.....

Anyway. Life. Yeah. Good. It's there, I'm living, did my first aid course last week, so I'll know if I'm not.

But the main point of this was really just to say THERE ARE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE THAN WORRY THAT YOUR TEAM'S HAKA IS NOT INTENSE AND SPIRITED ENOUGH........ And I can understand that it's all symbolic and stuff of power etc, but really, the anxiety in this guy's eyes when he said it (and he's American or Canadian, so it isn't a native thing for him anyway).......

Well Done Socceroos!

You made them fight for every touch of the ball. Well done.

(Well I had to mention it didn't I?)

Phew, Kewell's in...

And Australia breathes a sigh of relief. I too was a little worried, although really he shouldn't have lost his temper like that - Germany isn't Australia, they take hooliganism far more seriously than here...

Hmmm.... Apparently there are such things as 'brown outs' and south hobart has been getting heaps lately... Hence the fried mother boards on our computer and printer, sick router and other things that have been going wrong lately - my powerpack that wouldn't charge properly, slightly flickery lights etc etc.... Argh! And now that we've got new houses being built on our street, and electricity coming from Victoria, I don't think it's going to get any better.... I suspect Aurora would say it's all our fault...

And something my Mum said a couple of days ago got me thinking. There has been talk about introducing new rules for wood fires - that the smoke can't be seen 5 metres away or something, obviously trying to get people to go onto electric/more efficient heating, but where's the power for that coming from? With BassLInk it's not as though all our power is clean green hydro power anymore. That really is passing the dirt on...

Cleared out my top cupboard today, that was a bit scary, although i now have a lot more room for clothes - i cleared out 5 shoeboxes of accumulated junk, plus other stuff!

Well I'd love to have something intellectual to say for the end of my post, but i don't, so I'll just stick with a message for my austrian friends

Es ist 'foi' super das ihr endlich aus der Schule seid! Nie mehr Schule! Keine Schule mehr! Hooray! Kongratulieren fuer euere ausgezeichnete Noten! Viel Glueck Bibi fuer August, du wirst es sicher schaffen! Schoene Ferien, habt viel Spass in Barcelona usw! Und ich habe 40/40 fuer meine Aufsatz bekommen!!! Danke Dina! Danke Maria!! Ich koennte dass sicher nicht allein bekommen! Aber ich habe nicht SO viele Fehlern gemacht... :-p Wollt ihr meine Deutsche Pruefungen schreiben?!?

Nutella Nibbles

Here's a good unhealthy study food aid:

Take one piece of mountain bread
Spread with Nutella
Fold bread lenghtways a few times, so it's about 5cm wide
Cut into fingers/pieces
Put in the fridge for a while
Eat!

Yummy!

Some procrastination for you who need that 10 minute break every hour.

They arrested my orangutan.

Throw the paper in the bin game

Silly Walks generator

A very cool bookself!

This is my kind of book shelf! CAVE

But this is so sad. Censorship in Colorado Springs

In other news, i'm officially on swatvac now, so trying to do lots of study....

Kannst du mein Monster halten? Kannst du?