There’s a scene in Get Smart where Max fights with the KAOS agents while they’re on a plane. It turns out that both of the pilots on the plane were agents, and Max comes back to the passengers and asks “does anyone know how to land a four-engine jet?” And that was the premise for …
Category Archives: long
waiting – a lesson from elevators
Last weekend was the first sermon I’ve preached in a long while, on Acts 6:1-7. It’s a story from the early days of the church where a complaint had come up that some of the widows (of a particular people group) were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. We can learn some lessons …
end of another era
It’s the end of four years studying towards an MBA. It’s a degree with a strange configuration, really; split into two parts, the first stage is comprised of eight subjects to complete in trimesters. The MBA attracts people with different levels of ambition and so for some people, despite demanding full-time jobs, they manage …
last day of leave
I’m about to set up my home-office desk again after taking three weeks’ leave from work. Proper leave; I haven’t checked my work email for two weeks (except briefly and by accident), and I’ve only responded to questions that have come directly to me through personal social media channels (I don’t think I’ve had a …
Time passing
Two weeks ago Mum was still at home, breathing with difficulty, moving around only with significant help. One week ago we were getting ready for her funeral. Today.
fundraising lessons learned
It’s been a long time since I have participated in any formal event, or fundraiser, but we had the opportunity to go along to the Sydney “walk to d’feet MND”; my sister and I decided to frame our fundraising as a competition, rather than a collaborative effort, and that seemed to resonate with some of …
lessons in balance from law and ethics
I’m studying a subject on law and ethics at the moment, and we’re trying to work out answers to complicated questions. What does it take to keep people doing the right thing? What consequences can be built in to a system so that people are motivated to do the right thing? We build giant, unaccountable …
missing the obvious
I’ve been burning the candle at both ends a little at the moment even after listening through to the excellent audio book of Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. The lessons of “the sleep book” were that sleep is been more important than I thought it was, and is linked to better and worse health …
Ploughman’s Lunch
One of my favourite things to order from an eating establishment is a ploughman’s lunch. It sounds like an ancient meal, something from a simpler, agricultural time. I remember buying a book that collected a series of sermons from Charles Spurgeon from the 1800s – the John Plowman talks – there was a whole group of …
lessons and seahorses
I was surprised to see a facebook event invite from a uni friend to a memorial service for his wife. With his dark sense of humour, and their relative youth, I thought this was just an amusing way to get in touch. It was not. Life was, in this case, demonstrated as far more fragile …