Such is life

Haven’t posted in a while. Stuff has happened. Heh. STUFF. Hate that word at the moment. Spotlight by Mute Math on the other hand is an awesome song. Check it out. Anyway, did our talk about Phili yesterday. I was gonna do a song but we ran outa time. It would have been good, but I’m sorta glad it stopped there. Heh, yesterday was actually really good. I’ll step you through it. Guaranteed to make you Lol at least once. Me, Phil, Sarah (omgOSH), Zara, Aimee, and Margret were doing a panel like thing. Zara was describing manila “Its just like a big concrete… Big concrete.” I whisper “Donut” “Thanks Izak, Yea, a big concrete donut.” I got a kick out of it, even if no one else did, im just rolling around on my seat as the interview continues.

Flip forwards a bit, I’m talking to the new gappers after church. Wow, their good kids. ha ha. Unlike the ‘08 crew. We were bad asses. Sneaking out. Causing havoc. Getting together. And then getting untogether later. =(

But anyway, their going to the cascades and they say I gotta go.  I was like “Dude, Robby come on man we gotta go.. Please.” he got work off that afternoon to  hang out. So we jump in his car. On his restricted, and me on my non licence. “Ok Izak, If we get pulled up by cops you have to pretend to be drunk so I can say I’m just doing the right thing and driving you home.” “Hmm, You have done this before I see.”

So we don’t really know the way to the cascades. His dad told him to go towards his nans place, but not. Sounds like surfer logic to me.  Were driving along and he goes “Oh crap, were on the wrong side of the tracks were meant to be over there!” Then turns to look down the road again “WOA A COP ACT NATURAL.” I snap into my guilty blank face and Robby bounces up and down on his seat grinning like a maniac with his eyes closed.
I’m surprised he couldn’t hear us screaming to be honest.

Anyway, we get up into the waitakeres and then take the wrong turn, going to the opposite entrance to the dam. We pull up to this hiker who’s getting ready to do his thing. “Hi, excuse me, do you know where the falls are?” “Yea mate,” Pointing across the

road “There’s a sign, start there.” “Oh ok, cheers.” then we go hooning off, I see the sign he was gesturing at ‘Fairy falls’ “Those are the wrong falls the lier! Oh wait, I just realized, he probably thinks were eggs for driving right past the entrance. Hope he doesn’t jump in his car, chase us for a while “No we don’t want to go to those falls!” “Yes let me help you!” Then goes smashing into the side of us to disable our car so he can help us whether we like it or not. “You have to go this way! Your going the wrong way! Let me help you!” “Unhand me!” ” Phew. That was all just a messed up fantasy. But hilarious at the time. We eventually made it to the gappers. We walked to the falls and I was egging Robby to dive in. I eventually said I would do it if he did. I jumped in with my dickies on. Come to think of it, that’s probably why I was having trouble staying on the surface. I took my hat into its second waterfall. Gotta love that old thing. It got personality. Ever since it got acid rain from phili on it and started to bleach it. That waterfall was so friggin cold my limbs were all seizing up. But it was good. Its the first time I have swum there.

Later on the gappers booted a wasps nest and the golf course got filled with wasps, demanding to know what happened to their crib. This freaked Robby out far to much. I told him not to struggle, but he insisted on flailing his arms around hitting every point wasp he could.

The moral of this post is as follows. Mute Math still rule, even if they do a song for tWHYlight.
Robby is freakin hilarious to hang out with.
And dickies dry surprisingly fast for jeans.

Doesn't he look like a jerk?

The end and the start

A song for the first and the last

The end of many things change a lot of things
bring me back the delorian
February first, may it stick in my mind,
This day Sarah will leave us behind
The begining of the fourth headspace,
I still yearn for the third, what a disgrace,
Both I will memorize the memorys that I chase,
But In the end I guess I'll just have to face,
The bitterness of time that leaves a taint.
(Whats up with Mark and "mate")
The end of many things change a lot of things
bring me back the delorian
looking at constellations upside down
walking the streets and stalking the town
why do I get nostaligic about the last two years
before the last two years have passed?
The end of many things change a lot of things
bring me back the delorian



On a side note, I have been staring at this mint piece on K road by thisisrabbit for about a week.

Philippines over

Check all previous entries on the Philippines to see groovy pictures, courtesy of Sarah.

Let me recall the last few days spent in Philippines... Ok, you can't blame me for trying, so today at work- Lol, just kidding. I'll try harder than that.

We drove back to Manila, because we wanted exhaust pipes to keep us warm, because the weather in the provinces was getting rather cold. But hey, I'm not gonna complain, it was an answer to prayer. Literally, I think all of us on the roof were praying it wouldn't be warm, this reminds me of the scripture "if two or more come together on a roof of an orphanage their prayers will be heard." I thought it was rather obscure at the time I read it but it makes sense now. =P

The mural we did turned out awesome. I'm stoked with it. I gotta find a higher res version of it. The sketch I'm holding is the original, before I sketched it onto the wall for Phil to fill. Aw, that was lame. I didn't even do it on purpose.

Anyway, back to Manila. From what I can remember we hung out for the last few days doing nothing much but fraternizing with Australians (Who were all really cool by the way, they make up a million for that random ass guy from the Museum. They were all second generation chinese and it was the first time in ages I could talk about gaming and stuff and actually be fully understood. It was kinda refreshing. One of em is a programmer working on an online soccer game. Crap. I don't remember its name. Ah well, it hasn't been released for beta yet or anything anyway.

We went to the mall of asia. One of the largest malls around. If you check out the link and the thumbnail, we were having dinner on that veranda you can see, when a fireworks shoe went on (Behind the photographer) out on the bay. It happens every friday and saturday. The place felt so classy, It was a good last dinner in Phili, it really made our night.

We seemed to visit quite a few malls, much to Gordons discust. The last one we visited (A few hours before we were due to leave for good) me and Phil went to see the curious case of benjamin button. It was a mean movie. But if someone could please tell me what happens when she finishes her story and the storm comes would be much appreciated, we had to ditch cause the movie went for far to long and we had to leave for the airport.

We rushed to the airport. Waited for ages. Got on a plane which took us to brunei for the night, same crummy airport, which we didn't have to stay in long cause we had a hotel. The auzzies on our team had to pay a visa toll or something. Which kinda screws any australians coming in, since money exchange is straight after immigration etc. Thus impossible to get to. We heard some australians later on in the airport "How come the New Zealanders don't have to pay? Do they hate us here??"
Yes.. Yes they do. Heh, I jest. How come australians keep popping up in my stories? Ah well.

The hotel was swish. Although it took a while to figure out how to make the shower work. I had to ask Chris. Took him a while to. His moe is probably gone now. Sniff. It shall be missed.

We then got on another plane, I watched three more crap movies, read some more of Bourne Identity then landed in auckland airport at 4am, much to our welcome parties discust. Went home. Went to bed for a few hours, and then got up again so I would adjust to the time zones.

As I lay in bed pondering everything that had happened, the entire journey felt like it took only one day. I got up in the morning flew to phillipines, did a million awesome things, and this was how it was ending, getting back into bed after a hard day. I closed my eyes, and swum in the darkness of rest.

P.s. That would be a good end to it. But the next 2 sleeps I had were really bad cause my brain was furiously trying to process everything. So the imagery gets a little less romantic when I'm thrashing around like a tumble dryer trying to think less and sleep more.

The lack

I like to bless you guys with a little eye candy, but since everyones been a real slacker lately with their cameras and it just seems to much hassle to get it off them Im having to resort to flickr.com

Gem will give youa good idea of the sorta stuff we see everyday here in Manila. I know its sorta lame plugging someone elses pictures but feel free to ignore this post.

the "real" missionary thing

We got to do our "proper" missionary stuff. We got into a van and the doctor took his 4WD. We went about an hour north and then cut into bumpy tracks that looked like they had mostly been used for the ox and cart. We had to stop the van at the little temporary church outpost and hoof it on foot. The doctor smuggly shot past in his 4wd. We mentioned the vehicle later and he said he has to change the colour of it so the new peoples army wouldn't ambush him. They hide up there in the mountains somewhere. and his jeep looks quite a lot like an army vehicle, so he usually spreads the word that he's coming in, cause they don't mind humanitarian aid.
We were told it was a good 15 minute walk. Our guide, not long into the trip, told us it would be a good hour walk. It was more like the latter because our western bodies have been trained to walk at "Window shopper" speed, I swear.
When we got there to the Ita people they were all gathered around. The womans hair made them look like they had been electrocuted. And they were all a lot darker than most pinois. Thats something about the sun here, It doesn't burn you like the NZ sun does, it just slowly bakes you. I have been on the roof scrubbing and painting it. A few days I didn't have sun screen, but I only got a little burnt on the last day on my right arm. Everything else has just been changing the shade of my epidermis.
The pastor of the area got them organized into a sing song and then afterwards we got everyone into a line, checking temperature (Me, Alice, Tracey, And phil, our disinfectant wiper man.) Weight, Blood pressure and misc (Glenis, our awesome nurse.) and then everything else goes to doctor Rick. He's a british dude and is pretty awesome. He's been here for a year now, committed for two years, except him and his wife are now planning on staying a lot longer. Reaching other people that over the years have been forgotten or become unreachable since the mount pinatubo erruption. Note that paragraph five of the article I have linked. The americans scarpered, I don't really know about anyone else. The effects of the erruption is still all over the place. The ground is all ash. And the beaches have huge bits of volcanic looking pumis like stones.
We were living quite close to the mount (About 20k away) so it was freaky hearing all the stories. Our guest home was used as a refuge by the orphanage. It was the strongest, everything got covered in a couple feet of ash, and it was dark for a few days. Must have been the freakiest experience ever. The biggest natural catastrophy in the last hundred years, and yet we don't hear anything about it, it will still be years before people can fully recover from it.
Anyway it was really cool seeing the doctor work. He says the itas are doing a lot better since he first saw them. Childrens bellies used to be swollen with worms infestations, and everyones skin looked really unhealthy. Last week someones husband died of diaherria. He really wants to be in closer contact with them so he can stop unneccessary deaths like this. How do you die of that anyway?.... Eww.
We ran outa water so we got to try out their pump that Rick had helped fund. The water was better than the stuff at camp. Not so much iron in the water to make me feel like ejecting it out of my system. They used to have to go about a mile to go get water. And if the ox had drunk there and made it all muddy they would have to go even further. Man, we got it so easy, our water is served to us from a silver tap.
After we finished we walked back. Most of the team was walking to slow again so it was dark by the time we got back to the van.

The night before last I saw two shooting stars, they were awesome. and its always good to see the stars from a new angle, up here on the topside of the earth.

Phili's so far so far

Hey everyone. I realized I feel really disattached from everything back home right now. Sitting in my room, bored as anything, waiting for something to happen with my life as I tamper with cartoons and doodles on my computer. Thus the title of this entry is justified. The past couple of days we have been staying at Emmaus. Its been intense. We have been working by carrying around piles of gravel and sand for building projects. Not even rain could stop us. Although our enthusiasm was curbed by weariness and a lack of strength to go on. But go on we did. You can't waste three days of hard work. We won't see the building project of the new dorm/kitchen for the camp finished. But hopefully the next team that comes through will be able to pick up where we left off.
I had a game of chess with Koya Rudy. He is hugely smart at the game and he bet me in a few moves. We both only took two pieces each off each other in that game, which is what impressed me the most. The next game he was teaching me how to be smart at playing chess. And we wittled each other down slowly, till I only had 3 pieces and he two, not including the two kings. It was an intense game to watch Phil said. It was an intense game to play as well.

We're in an orphanage now. A lot of jobs have been lined up for us. Me and Phil are put in charge of doing a mural on a wall. Its gonna be intense. with my drawing sketching skills, and his mystical power over paint. We make a complimentary team I think. If the project fails I'll delete this part out of this entry. Ha ha. Oh yea, funny story, there was a huge mix up yesterday and we turned up at the orphanage a day early. We were all pretty oops about it when we found out (Especially Aimee) but its all good. Its given us time to check stuff out. Tomorrow were gonna do "proper" missionary stuff and go visit the hill tribey native sorts. Were going with a british guy who's a doctor here (Livingston), and Glenis is gonna act as backup (Theresa), while the rest of the team acts as sheepish heavies.
I'm gonna go give the kids more tom thumbs (with extremely short fuses) now, catch ya all later. Have fun and don't let the consumerism bite!

P.s. The dwendy hunt isn't going well. No crazy roman catholic witch doctors anywhere to ask on how to catch one. Chris is now settling for buying an old catholic relic, or at least some kinda religious merch. I suggested a bobble head mary, but he said thats not good enough.

an attempt

Hey its been a few days, but that few days has added up to almost a third of our trip. I'm not gonna write in detail since its late. And this keyboard STILL sucks, but here is a sum up of everything from the past few days. and plus a wee bit more here. I suggest you continue checking Sarahs blog (Shes on the team) every now and again as well, for a bit more of the logistics side of things. But if you don't want details come here. I'm more than happy to fill you with generalizations.

P.s. I managed to pat a snake today, that brings my score up to five now. Me and Chris are playing a version of HORSE. Except its SNAKE (or LADYBOY. Meaning if you see one you scream that out and earn a point.)
1 point for every snake you see
2 points if its eating something
5 if you pat it
10 if you get bitten by it
20 if you get bitten by it and its poisoness

Good thing theres a positive side to getting bitten by a poisoness snake.