Well it was that time of year again where 200 odd of the primary school kids (and 100 odd other bods who are leaders for the week) descend upon the Allawah Scout campsite for Day Camp. It is also the time of year when many of the young people from churches between Ipswich and Indooroopilly all converge on a single location and continue with a conversation that they were having 12 months ago. It never ceases to surprise me how people seem to come out of the woodwork every year for this as there are many people who just keep coming back. Equally impressive is how quickly everyone seems to scatter after the event. Perhaps it is all a bit much and they need 10 months to recover.
That said, being the ecumenical idealist that I am, I really think that it is great when the people from the local churches all get together to run a local event. I really think that this whole deal of doing work within your own community in which you live seems to have been forgotten of late. It is also a great opportunity for the Youth of the area to network with others within their community (specifically those outside of their individual church) and be part of the wider church as opposed to operating in their own little world within their congregation. Furthermore this is an excellent example of a large scale even that is organised and run by the lay people within the churches, not just the paid staff.
What was equally impressive was the rain that we got on Tuesday, which lead to the main assembly tent breaking and needing to be replaced. In amongst the cars sliding sideways in the car park (thankfully no-one was hurt) and the kids getting a bit feral after being kept within a relatively confined space for 5 hours, the day worked out really well. The bonus from this rain is that we got to swap the usual dust clouds for mud, much more fun and less irritating (even if it can be a touch dangerous and slippery)
I also got a chance to give my shiny new car its first real use and also get rid of a bit of that shiny new-ness about it. Overall though it fared very well and still looks new.
Overall through, it was an excellent week and I very much look forward to next year.
It is quite funny. About 3 years ago I go this idea in my head that I wanted to save up for a car. The problem was that I was still working at Pizza Hut and earning next to nothing. More recently I have working for the EPA which allowed me to save some money over the last 18 months.
What else is funny is that prior to the start of June, I was not actually looking to buy a car, instead looking to wait until about December to do this. It was pointed out to me however that if I were to make said purchase before the end of the financial year, considerable savings could be realised compared to if the purchase was made at the end of the year.
I had decided some time ago that I would very much prefer to get myself a diesel car, due to the increased efficiency and the fact that they are cleaner to run. I was looking at getting myself an VW Golf but the biggest problem with them seemed to be that they were in extremely high demand. Because of this, dealers were very resistant to any form of bargaining, because they obviously knew that they would simply sell it to someone else. So I ended up looking at the Astra diesels.
Anyway, the result can be seen here.
And parked in a dodgy shelter (made up of 2x $29 shelters 
)
Overall I am quite happy with the car so far and it is working very well. Apart from the wanky sounds that are associated with having a turbo, it doesn’t sound that different to a normal petrol engine once you start moving.
I will just have to make sure that I don’t accidentally fill it up with petrol.
Well I have finally come to the end of my period of work for the Environmental Protection Agency. I have to say that getting ~18 months of work out of what was originally a 10 month QUT industry co-operative placement is not bad at all. Furthermore, due to my working full time for this period, I can now be deemed financially independent through Centrelink. (which can be handy)
Overall though I think that I have learned a lot during my time with the EPA, the sorts of things that you can’t really learn in lectures, but that all students should really know before they graduate and move into full time work. One concern that I do have is going back into full time study. The biggest advantage that I saw with full time work was that you didn’t really need to take your work home with you, very much unlike uni, and you were then free to do things in your space time. This was extremely useful for the voluntary youth work that I am involved in as I could easily commit to things well in advance and not have to worry about an assignment or exam popping up.
Despite this, I still really need to get around to finishing my course. I found that attempting to do full time study + army reserve + Youth Work + EPA part time didn’t really work very well. Hopefully this semester will be a bit less crazy. Either way I am still on track to start a ministry traineeship next year out here, which should be interesting. I just need to get as much of my degree out of the way as quickly as possible. (4/5 years through it would be a bit foolish to simply not finish it)
Oh yea and the other advantage of working full time for 12 months while still living at home is that it makes larger purchases, like a car, much more feasible.
With all this rain that Brisbane has been getting over the last few days, our shiny(ish) new rain tank + system has gotten its first real use since about February this year. The biggest shame was that it only took about 1 day for the tank to full itself completely but it then took about 10 days to run itself dry. It will be interesting to see how much of an impact this has on the overall water usage for the quarter when that bill comes, given that our usage was effectively zero during the 10 days where the tank was full.
The tank + Rainbank system has so far worked really well, automatically switching itself on and off as there is water available in the tank. The UV steriliser + other filters should also keep the water all nice and clean.
Would be interesting to see how many of these systems the government could deploy into homes for the same price as it costs to build one dam….
Blog | Iteration 29/06/2007 | 
Comments (0)