Jordandchan

There are times when I think that cleaning is futile task.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not against keeping things tidy and clean. I just get astounded at how short a time things remain in that state once it has been done.

There are times when I will be sweeping or vacuuming and i will turn around to survey what I have done. There is no doubt the results are better than when I started, but to a certain extent it seems some of the dirt and dust has just been shifted around, rather than removed altogether. As I see it there are 2 explanations:

1). I am no good at cleaning. Let’s discount this due to my awesomeness. Which leaves us with…

2). There is an optimum level of cleanliness (say 90%) and any cleanliness beyond that level is ridiculously hard to maintain. This means that cleaning past that point is essentially a waste of time as before you are finished, cleanliness will be back to 90%.

This revolutionary new concept could change the way we clean. Expect to see 90% Off BAM and the Dyson 90% in stores soon.

This weekend the 6 year saga of LOST will come to an end.

LOST has been a somewhat divisive TV series, but i find myself strongly in the camp of those who think it has been fantastic television. The thought of it all coming to an end fills me with a sadness of sorts, but mostly I am intrigued to see how they will wrap everything up.

Keep reading…

I stumbled across this quote from Milton Glaser today…

… the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

One of the books I read while we were away on holiday a little way back was The Vertical Self by Mark Sayers.

Sayers is an author and senior leader of The Red Church in Melbourne and is a man who has his finger on the pulse of modern culture and what Christianity means in the midst of it. I have been reading his site for a while, and when i got the opportunity from his publisher to have a copy of the book for review I jumped at the chance.

Keep reading…

There is a recruiting ad for the Australian Navy that has been on air for quite a while now; Painting Navy life as non-stop excitement and fun

I stumbled across an interesting article by a Christian writer from Melbourne talking about how the way the Armed Forces are being marketed and perceived is an interesting indicator of the way marketers are starting to use this idea of Self Actualization and Improvement as a motivating factor.

Check out the article - From Duty to Self Actualization. It seems to me to just another way in which our world is becoming more self centred in the way we make decisions. There is no longer any overwhelming sense of duty or service in a lot of young people. It has been replaced with the responsibility to “Be All You Can Be” as the slightly older recruitment ads for the Australian Army used to say.

What do you think about this trend?

you can learn something new everyday…

i took a call at work from a very elderly gentlemen the other day. He wanted to get a phone number - i very rarely think about how to pronounce numbers - except for 0. some people cant hear or think you are saying um so i tend to pronounce it zero.
so i was reciting the number back to the gentleman with the last 4 digits being 0600.
i started to say zero six and was interrupted by him stating “no no love - we shot all of them down in the war”
i was a little confused but went on with the number - now saying it as oh-six-oh-oh.
once i’d hung up i googled zero and war.
turns out zero’s were the name given to japanese aeroplanes used in the war.
so i’d managed to offend a war veteran simply by giving him a phone number.

i will never get tired of listening to the older members of the population filling us in on things that they have seen and experienced - and i wont ever use the word zero when giving phone numbers to people anymore.

Are you a person who likes lots of choices? Or does it make life more difficult.

Frank Chimero has an interesting post over on his site talking about choices. In it he cites a study by Dan Gilbert that found people who made a decision about receiving something, with the knowledge they couldn’t change their mind or swap, were happier with their decision than those who knew they would have the option to swap.

Keep reading…

have you ever tried so hard to do something the right/best way only to have it blow up in your face???

i have one of those personalities that should could with a warning, something like the following perhaps:

WARNING: Severe emotionally unstable individual who may AT ANY TIME bacome aware of people not living up to her expectations of how life should go at which point you MUST evacuate the area so as to not witness the mushroom cloud like explosion of pent up frustration and DO NOT return until subject has again become stable or another fallout could occur.

sometimes i wish i could have warned jordan of this before we were married - he should have been able to go into it with his eyes open but instead ends up with a wife who moonlights as ‘a big ball of crazy’ every now and again. Sadly its only with age that i’ve actually noticed myself doing this and i would love to be able to say that its something i have under control - but i dont.

i can even point out at which point during one of said episodes that i KNOW that what im doing/saying is abnormal but cant seem to stop.…. well until i’ve done or said something that needs to be apologised for and taken back.

UNTIL TODAY  - when i was being completely rational and trying to think through the situation and how a normal person would react and i still came up with the same answer - so now im just thinking maybe everyone is a little bit crazy and maybe i pick up on it too easily.

Generally i spend the few hours or days afterward on the verge of tears and trying to rationalise myself.

I think maybe i should just stay away from people altogether.

I was nervously standing up the back of a church wondering how to make it to the other end without crying.

it was the federal election day 2001. the day of my sisters wedding. a warm november day. the beginning of a lifetime together.

i hardly imagined when kel bought this kind of odd guy home to attend my year 12 formal that this would be the man she would stand up in front of God and all our family and friends and promise to be with for the rest of her life.

i think partly i didnt want her to because in some way that would be having to say goodbye to my sister. In reality what it meant was that i f inally got the brother that i wanted. And in more than a few ways, dave has been a better sibling than i could have asked for… well at least most of the time :)

i wouldnt have imagined that 8 years later we would be living right across the road and watching them raise a gorgeous baby boy, one that i have come to love more as time goes by.

so here’s to 8 years of a marriage filled with all the love imaginable…

I have been contemplating recently how I associate myself with different places. For me there are areas that I will always feel at home. Penshurst (where I grew up), anywhere in the Sydney CBD, Katoomba, the South Coast between Austinmer and Wollongong, Christchurch and its surrounds.

All these places are familiar and I would say I have an affinity with them, and identify myself with them. I’m not sure yet whether I can say the same for Padstow, where we are living now. I certainly now have a familiarity with the area, and would call it home, but it doesn’t have the same permanence as the other examples.

Interestingly there was once a time when I would have considered the wider Hurstville area as on of “my places”. That’s not really the case any more - for the most part we rarely have a reason to do anything over there.

I wonder what part of our brain it is that processes these things, and whether there are actually firm factors that we feel about certain places. It bears thinking about anyway.

What places do you consider yourself associated with?