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After much delay, I finally get a chance to post another entry in this blog. And trying to post for the first time from my trusty E63.

How did I manage to take some time off to take care of this business? After all, post-teens-camp in June 2009, I started sparing my Saturdays for the teenagers, while during weekdays the project in the office is starting to take off. So I have absolutely no time to sit in front of the computer to blog.

Well,… I’m sick today, my uric acid condition spiked up during the past week and it culminated into a swollen right foot and drug-induced sleepyness. That’s why druing this time off I would like to take care of the business that I have left afloat for 6 months.

By now, my Wordpress installation is over 1 year old. After this posting, it is time to update the installation. Adios!

Posted by Wordmobi

We are counting days towards the teens’ regional camp (Surabaya – Bali – Makassar). Despite some of our shortcomings, we have managed to keep the preparations underway, and I witnessed the energy level going up high tonight when the MC’s, singers, and musicians practiced.

Here I am to worship,
Here I am to bow down,
Here I am to say that You’re my God
You’re altogether lovely
Altogether worthy,
Altogether wonderful to me

I can’t say that the preparation has been straightforward. There were big moments of emotion, serious illnesses and ailments, cases of overlook, of personal confrontations, of lack of leadership projection (yeah, my mistake, I know… I still have a lot to learn as a leader), and the ever-broadening scope of the event. But thanks to God’s grace, we are now only 3 days away from the camp, and counting down.

I must say that during the music practice sessions I feel like I went backwards in time. It was a time when I just started serving the Lord, first through the beats I created, and later with guitar (I can’t believe it has been 11 years! No, 12!)

Despite all that scenery, laughter, and great great music, we are committed to one goal, and that is to empower the teenagers who are coming… so that they become the light of the world. But what we did not realize, is that we too, are becoming that light in the process. This preparation for camp has forced us to:

• Learn the contents of the Bible not so often ventured on during our Sunday masses.
• Establish contacts with new local businesses.
• Realize that the most resilient type of music is one that does not depend on electricity.
• Push ourselves to the limit in general.
• Last but probably the most important, it brought us together as one, and with our Lord J.C. a lot more often than usual.

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The busy schedule did not stop us from visiting our sick brothers and sisters. We, too, as brothers and sisters in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, must not forget that we will not be who we are without our friends and family. Even though they may be sick, but they are with us in their prayers.

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Thank you Lord, for my 28th birthday. Thank you for the opportunity to treat my friends to a pizza dinner, so they can be happy before going to the “war” that’s only 3 days away. Thank you for allowing me to witness Your grace while preparing for this camp. Thank you for the great teammates who can be depended upon. Thank you for the infusion of the Perkantas team. There are so many more thank-you’s to be prayed for…

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You may not believe how many fronts I am active in. Last Friday I came home exhausted from work – I had agreed to become a speaker for a community designated for agile methodology and experience exchanges, for topics related to game development (although I am honestly relatively inexperienced in the world of software development, lest game development!).

I tried to prepare for the presentation days before, but I had been occupied with the preparation of the teens’ camp. I tried to start the slides on Thursday, but my brain refused to cooperate. I was exhausted.

There was also a bazaar at the church on Sunday, and we had to prepare for it on Saturday. But I was so tired from the Friday ordeal I just had to find myself a place to crash, and there I was, napping on the floor of the church, for about half an hour or so.

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I am covertly preparing for the next happy hour performance. I am looking for a book of printable lyrics. No, not websites. Printable books. It is surprising there is a wealth of information out in the Internet, but nobody has seriously bothered to create printable materials, perhaps like PDF. I think it is most likely an issue of copyright, traffic and stuff like that, or it can also be the fact that printable books cost human resources. (But come to think of it, if there was any human who gets this job, his/her job would be to just copy and paste from the website to a blank Word document… every day, for 8 hours a day. What a boring job!)

Why am I looking for books of lyrics? Well, so that people can sing along with the correct words, you know, just like karaoke! The worst thing to overcome from live performance is that we can not remember words… (that’s why karaoke is everywhere, I guess).

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And of course, work is as challenging as ever be. (Well, work HAS to be challenging, otherwise it’s probably not worth working for it)

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I know, I’m doing too many things. That’s one of the reasons I dropped photography for the time being. I just don’t have the time to walk around and take pictures any more, let alone arranging a photo session!

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… and so it all started on Friday, 8pm. I had been looking for an issue in the code that I worked on. Turned out it was some kind of eisenbug, or perhaps a group of bugs collectively from my code and the libraries I was using. But I made it. A fully working web service, with database support, servlet, and GWT-based client. All in just three days of work. OK maybe more than three, strictly speaking, with 1 day being 8 hours of work. I know it may not be a big deal for the more senior developers, but I:

• never programmed a web service before, even though I know its architecture in theory
• never used GlassFish in my entire life before
• never programmed an Access database service before, even though I’ve done Oracle and MySQL
• never programmed JSP in my entire life
• so many more “never done it before”’s.

So yeah in the past three days I learnt quite a few things. Not bad, a few more things under my little black hat, perhaps soon there won’t be any part of this hat (read: hair) left

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… and then that performance with the all-acoustic band on Saturday afternoon. We came up with a weird name “YobamaH” – members’ names put together. We practiced once… they scheduled more practice, but I could not attend because of clash with other scheduled regular events. But after the performance on Saturday, I feel that I should spend more time with this band. We probably won’t go further than the walls of Mitrais, but who cares. This isn’t about fame. It’s about being able to enjoy music for what it is. It’s a chance to grow and nurture this one particular talent God has given me… well, even though I kinda dislike the fact that the other three members of the band smoke regularly.

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Then the discussion in the youth group of GII regarding post-modernism. Granted it was a far-and-wide topic, but the session made me curious and confused. So many elements in my life are somewhat already influenced by this “post-mo” movement; cleaning up is probably hard, if not impossible…… (but one has to stay optimistic, for he is led by God!)

I had to lead the pack for the teens’ camp, but I was already exhausted from the gruelling day (and I had no time to stop and rest). I crashed in my bed at 11pm, and did not wake up until 7:20am on Sunday.

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I had promised to go to the church on Sunday to help out preparing for the teens’ fundraising program. At exactly 7:30am, after a very quick shower, I took off on the Vario to the church. The ride was 15 minutes long, and I carried my Yamaha keyboard with me, as it was my turn to play at the teens’ worship service.

The worship finished at 11, but immediately I was invited into the church council meeting, to present the latest in the preparation for the three-state teens’ camp (Surabaya-Bali-Makassar; yeah it is quite a massive undertaking, never done before in our Bali church with limited human resources…). So the whole ordeal ended at around 2:30pm. I slept through the rest of Sunday, after two-and-a-half days of non-stop activities.

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… and some of you were still asking why I don’t blog much, or spend more than an hour on Facebook?