Letters from the Equator

6 Months Working

Friday marked the 6th month my wife has been at her job. That’s a good cause to celebrate, though I screwed up our dinner date coming home late from work Friday night. So we went out for a nice dinner at Tupelo Honey tonight, instead. Check out the restaurant from streetview.

I realized that her 6 months at her job meant that I had also done 6 months at my part-time job, which is really cool in a weird way… weird not because of the job, but because I haven’t said much about it, and that’s due to reasons I can’t explain right now. So you just have to believe me that it really is cool, and that the work is great and all that. Because it is.

All I can say is that, around the time I got the job, I was looking for part-time work, but I was being fussy because I told myself I wouldn’t do something that would just pay me minimum wage. I interviewed for a job at uni that assisted tutors teaching semi-tech-literate people Word and Powerpoint for £10 an hour, but that was bare minimum.

At the same time, I was rummaging through online job classifieds like loot.com and gumtree and other sites that were mostly crap. I wasn’t sure I was keen on taking up programming work again but I applied for this opening for a web developer, and I got a call almost immediately and met with the guy who ended up hiring me. After being through many shady deals in the past, I was wary of stuff on the interwebs, so I was really thankful for this opportunity. And I’m confident to say that now, 6 months into the job.

Community and Volunteering

Anyway, so work is really picking up steam from all fronts. I’ve got 5 papers due, with only about a month or so to work with, plus a major exam coming up. Then, I have this dissertation thing, which is still bogged down with paperwork due to ethics clearance and risk assessments. And that volunteer thing I signed up for at IXDA is now officially in phase 3, which involves a lot more work.

So I think I’m going to drop the volunteer thing, although I think the experience has been really great and the people I get to work with are really cool. It gave me a fresh perspective of what volunteering is like, and I’d definitely take it up in the future, just to contribute back to the community.

That being said, I did attend Barcamp London 6 recently, and it was quite an experience. I think it would’ve been a lot more valuable if I was part of the volunteer team, or at least familiar with the community or people who were involved in organizing the camp. I just felt a bit like an outsider, and although the sessions were good, it really felt like a big techie club.

I’m all in for UXCampLondon though, which is coming up… oh, I don’t know… soon. I’ve already built a bit of rapport with some folks in the UX community (thanks to UX book clubs, UPA, and Twitter), so at least it’ll be like hanging out with some people I already know.

Podcasts, Herbs and Knowing God

Apart from that, I’ve been listening to podcasts of sermons from my pastor, Rod Anderson, at Commonwealth Church. The podcasts are great because it’s just good to go over messages again and again, because it’s about practicing life from what I’ve learnt, and checking myself again and again to see how good (or bad) things have been going, and of course, to discover how God is working in my life.

What’s even better is how God is also working through the lives of others, and I get to hear about that through the sermons as well. And it’s about going back in time and reflecting on the journey we’ve gone through as a church.

Rod has been taking us through a series of messages on Spirit vs. Flesh, and the most profound, yet practical part of the whole message is that while the truth of sin having no power over my life because of Christ, convincing my body and soul of that truth is all about the mind being in agreement with the spirit. This is opposed to, say, the conditioning of the soul and body to influence the mind (which, if you think about it, seems to make more sense, in a way).

And Christian living doesn’t always “make sense”, like in book sense. It’s more like jungle trekking or cooking, where you just have to get your hands dirty and actually do it, to realize what it means. So, yeah – I’ve been reading the whole Romans 7 and 8 thing in so many ways over the years, but it only really starts to make sense when I take it seriously, look closely at what it means, and put it to practice in my life.

Like, for the life of me, I can never tell what’s the difference between thyme and rosemary and all the other herbs. I used to use “italian mixed herbs” and “oregano” so often because to me they were all the same. But I’m slowly starting to discern them herbs apart, and I actually bought like a fresh pack of rosemary the other day for cooking. It’s like becoming a favorite herb of mine, until I start to discern another herb. And that’s because I can’t avoid cooking without herbs – almost every dish I look at has some kind of herb or another.

So, I could’ve been like, “all herbs are the same”, but I decided I needed to start taking my herbs seriously. Thus, the whole Romans 7 and 8 thing in my life.