getting knocked back for the same job twice should suck. especially when you know your potential employer really likes you. but actually i'm really fine about it and thankful i don't have to decide whether to take a really awesome job or not.

so, i've been talking to 2 churches about a position for next year. they are both good options, with strong pros and each has a few cons. we might be (theoretically) offered both, which would be a real problem for us; this is complicated by the fact that one church will finish their selection process much sooner than the other.

trying not to think it through overmuch, and hoping this decision isn't left entirely in our hands! but it is a good position to be in at this stage.

we went on a holiday, to victoria:

- melbourne has terrible street signage.
- victoria is much smaller than new south wales. this is a bonus when driving.
- the grampians and the great ocean road are plus-plus.
- there is plenty of good vegetarian food to be eaten in melbourne.

we also went to leeton in nsw, for earthminor's grandfather's funeral.

then we came home.

i'm still trying to find a job for next year.

we put in some application papers to join a christian organisation and move to mongolia and work. so, plans there are moving forward.

boss-man says there is no money in the kitty.
equals: no job next year.

the wife and I signed up for couchsurfing, and today we have our first guests staying. one forgets how hard it is to cross language barriers! we have a young couple from Brittany staying with us. today i also realised that i am not much of a tour guide. not extroverted enough, nor knowledgeable about things tourists might like to know or see.

not much else to report. except we tried some tea from brittany and it was very nice.

it's a warm spring saturday. the wife and I have been doing some of that spring cleaning bizzo, trying to clear out some of the junk accumulated over not so many years. pre-emptive to the divesting of materials that will need to take place before picking up our lives and transporting to mongolia.

thinking of getting into some swimming this summer. i need a bit more exercise in my life, and my joints do not appreciate too much running. i think my lungs would appreciate it too.

gaming-wise we have been playing much Warhammer Fantasy role-play. we are at that good point where our characters are starting to turn from hopeless hacks who fail at everything, to veterans who can handle some combat. i am playing a norscan berserker.

study progress is slow. trying to translate my way through Chrysostom's homilies on John, and just don't have a lot of time for it, and the going is hard. i've been going into college (a 2hr walk/train/walk expedition) once a week to just sit in the library and focus. newtown lunches are a bonus.

went down to canberra for a weekend a couple of weeks ago. was part of a weekend school for scottish gaelic. it was a good and productive time for me, not so much for the wife whose gaelic to that point was nil. anyway, picked up a few gaelic cds afterwards. julie fowlis is great.

work situation is up in the air. fairly pessimistic about having a job here next year, seems unlikely there will be enough funding. knocked back for another position, and have applied for a third, but haven't heard much back. there's a possibility this will bring forward our plans for mongolia, but we'll see.

i walked many miles around sydney today to get a copy of the new raised fist cd.

i was successful.

that is all.

oops my last entry was july 22nd. and now it's aug 26th.

hmm. what can I tell you?

I got my last exam results back and they were very good. My thesis proposal was also approved and so I am now working on that project. At the moment it involves a painful commute to college to work in the library for hours on end translating Chrysostom. I could skip the commute, but since I have no other office, I kind of require the psychological scene-change. Staying at home just leads to non-work. So far I have translated 1 homily.

my church is running out of money and probably i don't have a job next year. trying to find a position for a single year is not an optimal position to be in. so that's not a great situation to be in.

i finished a preaching series all the way through John, a chapter a week. now one of our trainees is doing some preaching so I'm enjoying a little break.

yup, that's about all the news.

maybe it's just the bits of the interwebs that I read, but pretty much everyday I read one or more articles about increasing invasions of privacy/abuses of anti-terrorism laws/stupidity of policing in the UK. the country sounds seriously messed up. why on earth would i visit such a place?

Edit: a collection of links...
First
Second

thanks to all you who commented on the previous post. i found your answers interesting, and have a lot of thoughts but am not sure what to do with any of them.

in other news... this week i am doing some greek intensives, at a winter languages school. the morning class is advanced classical greek, looking at Euripides' Helen. We are meant to cover almost 600 lines, but I'm not sure that we will. I certainly haven't prepared anywhere near what I should have. There is a huge gap between reading a lot of Koine (I happily pick up the NT and read pages in Greek without a thought for the dictionary), and reading classical drama (which is painfully slow because every second word looks alien). Nonetheless, sitting in the first class today I felt more than competent, which is always a great relief. Our tutor keeps talking about Sanskrit and Indo-European linguistic principles, which is a great deal of fun.

the afternoon class I am taking is an introduction to NT Papyrology, which is slower going (due to the personality of the teacher I think), and promises to be a different kind of fun. We did a lot of talking about the production of papyrus and scroll-writing and archaeology and letter formation and evolution today. one of the things that was really interesting was just how freaking huge the collection of papyri from Oxyrhynchus really is, and how little they've managed even to sort through let alone publish

These little independent summer and winter language schools attract a certain cross-section of people. Here is my observed demographic breakdown:

- older students who studied greek or latin in the 19th century, and either never gave it up, or more likely have retired and now pass their years reading the classics. some of these are a great deal of fun, others are know-it-alls who have been around everywhere, suffered every ailment, and have an opinion on both.
- the students: young students in high school or uni who are in the throes of learning the language, eager for punishment, and not entirely sure what job prospects they can look forward to. almost universally these are women. okay, maybe 5% male.
- the oddballs. there are truly some weird ones who turn up for these things, and they are always repeat offenders. they have strange clothes, funny moustaches, and sometimes need a decent shower. often they have some crackpot theories, and would love to share them with you. sometimes they also pretend to be more knowledgeable than the tutor, which is especially funny in intro classes.
- the christians: there's always a few because their historical heritage is embedded in greek in particular, but latin a little too, and so you can be guaranteed to turn up a few.

there was a good representation of all these groups today, and i ran into at least 6 people i knew from different yet related contexts. it's always good to run into people one knows if vaguely...

anyway, should be a good week. also managed to pick up some course-notes from the uni that were out of date. $2 each for a massive booklet of notes and now i don't need to feel like i should have enrolled and taken those classes!

I have put together this poll. I would like to hear from my lj-friends who are not Christians why that is. I am not necessarily inviting you to a debate on the topics, but we could do that too. Feel free to leave whatever comments and expansions you please.

Poll #1428599
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 12

Reasons I am not a Christian

i sat for my 3rd and last MTh exam on wednesday. that just leaves a 30K thesis to write on Chrysostom's homilies on John. then i will have 3 more letters to add after my name.

preaching all the way through john, a chapter at a time. up to chapter 17 this week. there is definitely something to be said for preaching all the way through a book.

been watching supernatural on dvd. i started watching it on tv mid season-3, so it's been good to go back to the beginning. nice to see amy acker in episode 3. this is our tv schedule these days: supernatural, ncis, mad men, flight of the conchords.

funding crisis might mean i lose my job, but i think we're past worrying about that.

changeling is still on pause until our storyteller reads the manual (!), but we've been playing some warhammer fantasy roleplay, which is always wild fun (though one of our players has some pretty deviant morality).

all systems normal.

and now i'm institutionalised.

i would quite like to be a full time student, followed by a full-time academic, and live close to campus, and just learn and study and drink coffee and teach and research and chat and discuss, etc..

then maybe i'd find some time to read more greek and latin texts. and stop feeling holed up in suburbia.

just a dream, just a dream.

meanwhile, the changeling game is on hiatus, because our GM/DM/ST needs to read the core manual (!). i keep prodding him, hopefully he'll get that together soon. instead we've played some random sessions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, always good fun (especially with a norsca beserker...)


also, warm is good.

that title may bear no relation to this entry.

i'm not a big fan of uncertainty. i like to plan, and i particularly like to plan myself: work out timetables, schedules, calendars, 5-year plans, all those things.

but right now i'm facing some uncertainty, and i could lose my job due to lack of funding.
i'm pretty optimistic about keeping it, and about picking up a job if i lose this one, but it's not a comfortable position to be in. plus, i tend to be fairly negative about my own job performance anyway, i don't think that helps.

major exam in about 2 weeks time; this will be my final exam for my masters, and i'll move into a thesis stage after this. i'm trying desperately to get my reading list finished this week, so i can spend next week revising about 300 pages of study notes (i know it's a lot, but that's just what the summaries came out at).

i'd like to rant about Colin Gunton a little, but all i have to say is that he's wrong, and particularly wrong on Augustine. wrong, wrong, wrong! he made me angry. i can tell how much i disagree when summarising because i start attributing more:
"This is X, Y, Z" becomes "Gunton says X,Y,Z".

the internet is also slowly killing me.

okay, that is all.

i think i might have graduated from u.sydney last week. that makes my 4th university so far, and 5th tertiary qualification. but i am more interested in the fact that it's about 3 weeks to my 3rd MTh exam on 4th century patristics....

like i'm a bad friend or something!

hmm, latest events:
1. gave a talk on torture for students in a christian gap-year program.
2. having almost finished reading T.F. Torrance's "The Trinitarian Faith" (for the 3rd time; it mostly makes sense now)
3. reading through Ayres, "Nicaea and its Legacy", which is revisionist 4th century history that basically shouts at you, "Everything you knew about Nicaea and Constantinople is Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!"

trying not to get distracted by the world full of distractions.

tripled blog-traffic at my other blog with a long series on language learning and ancient languages (it got picked up as part of a discussion amongst serious biblical scholar type people).

finding it hard to get out of bed on winter mornings.

chronically time-poor.

( Read more... )

Tags: changeling

just finished De Trinitate.
much goodness, but a really long slog.

totally unrelated.

i was hoping to get through all of De Trinitate this week, but I'm only up to Book X. It's been a good read though. I'm going to have to spread the rest of the work on top of my next reading in the coming week.

MyBrute is distracting. Go and play it once, just for me.

i played basketball (at juvie) for the first time in perhaps a decade. it's not my forte. at least i'm fit enough to play.

yesterday I lost my wallet. it was very distressing for me. not because i was particularly worried about losing money or cards or anything, but I really hate inconveniences, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend time calling banks, cancelling cards, getting a new license, etc.. And the space in which I lost it was very short - i paid for some stuff at the mechanic, came home, then went to get my wallet to go and pick the wife up from the train station, and it was missing. it threw my whole evening into disarray.

having exhausted the possible locations within my house, the best probability was that it was at the mechanic and had somehow leapt out of my pocket or bag. so i drove out there hopefully despairing this morning, and indeed it was there. oh what joy! i felt quite relieved, and could now get on with my day.

you probably thought the last paragraph was the found of the title. and you could be right. this morning i went and spoke to a university about PhD possibilities. They have a strong ancient history department with a strong suit in early christianity as well. they don't seem at all bothered that I intend to do most of my work from mongolia. and they seem to think my proposal has some legs. this is all very positive. they do want me to consider spending the second half of 2010 in virtually full-time research to get a kick-start, which raises some financial questions for us, but all in all it's very positive. so, looks like i've found a doctoral program.

it's wednesday, i've only read 2/15 books of Aug's De Trinitate, which I really need to finish by the end of the week. so i better stop drinking my lunch-time coffee and get to work.

today was unproductive and frustrating.

my mp3 player seems to have died. possibly from the cold.
i dropped my car in for a rego check
then i went to staff-meeting, which is good but is smack-dab in the middle of the morning and so destroys the working possibilities of monday mornings altogether.
i had hoped that the mechanic would call and my car would be ready (it also had a headlight that needed some fixing), but no.
i came home and spent some time working on John 12 (productive session 1)
i spent inordinate amounts of time trying to get sound working on ubuntu 9.04, with no luck. HDA-Intel + ALSA = fail.
the garage called and they had failed to get the part they need to fix the headlight. decided it was better to leave the car there until tomorrow instead of picking it up, dropping it off again tomorrow, and then picking it up a third time.
read 1/5th of hoped for portion of Augustine's De Trinitate (I have the week to read the whole thing).

they go by quickly, don't they.
still haven't found a solution for sound on Ubuntu 9.04. haven't searched too hard, but I'd have thought more people would have had this problem, and there might be some more solutions out there.

going to go and chat to some people about PhD studies this week. The head of department even sounds positive about me doing doctoral work from Mongolia. That has to be a plus.

going to read all of Augustine's De Trinitate too (in English), by Friday.

exercise is going well. need to be a little more regular about it.

thinking of reading all of the Aeneid in Latin.

those are my thoughts tonight

after a long hiatus in our fortnightly roleplaying group, last night we (I?) persuaded our GM to finally run Changeling: The Lost.

I have wanted to play Changeling for a *very* long time. I have some C:the Dreaming books also, that first got me interested, but the product line was well dead even before I discovered it. I like the new Changeling line better though, I think it's more playable. They're quite different games though.

Anyway, we spent most of the night with myself trying to explain game concepts to our GM and another player. It's been a while since I've read through the manuals. But we got some character gen going, so that is a positive. Hopefully next session we'll get into it.

I'll write up my character concept later, and try and keep some kind of gaming journal.

Tags: changeling
quod nunc sentio: excited

i never meant to make that happen, but it's just the reality. over there i post more 'seriously'. here i just write random stuff about my life. but i guess i'm okay with that.

been working flat-chat lately. read a truckload of Hilary of Poitiers last week, and still need to fit some more in the next few days. So, on top of that I have been trying to write a paper, which i need to present to a class tomorrow, on narrative christology in john's gospel. i only really got to it today and am writing it at the moment. then of course every week involves preparing a sermon. on top of this and everything normal in a week, i went to a conference on early christianity on the saturday. an enjoyable day, but a long day nonetheless.

someone smashed up our driver's side mirror on sunday night. that doesn't really bother me. getting it fixed bothers me. it involved a monday morning drive to the mechanic's, and now i'll have to take it in tomorrow morning to actually get fixed. morning hours are valuable study-real-estate for me.

had a rental inspection today, which likewise meant that most of monday and a couple of hours this morning were spent cleaning the house fairly thoroughly. which is good for the house, but there goes more hours. then they asked about a spot in the ceiling where there looks like there had been a fire alarm or something. but it's always been like that. i'm pretty sure our property report has it on there. they keep changing our property manager too. oh well, there are some nasty black marks on the lounge room wall from two chairs, and they never notice them, so i guess that evens out.

was anticipating a long drive in traffic home tonight, but the road was miraculously clear. i couldn't believe how clear it was! listened to a good sermon by Tom Schreiner on revelation 11. I think he got it right too.