Shattered i am. arrived home after an intense day of interviewing/assessing up in balmy Palmy. seems like it was more than a day, but no only that. Slept in a bed which at one stage must have slept an All Black as we stayed in the Institute for Rugby. Lots of good food and free icecream to be had. I dont think Fonterra will want me but at least i have another hat. nice meeting lots of new people. bit like a one day camp. back to normal life, more study. the poorest study i have ever done for exams. ah welll soon be over. future up in air. to work to Phd is still the question. but i think i know the answer. one more week tooing anf frooing left. then make final decision. beautiful sunset seen over southland. too tired to study. sleep sleep sleep....

Low impact decisions I am good at. When cruising the streets and stores I am often confronted with bargains. One chain of stores continues to supply me with cheap, and I mean cheap, thrills; being of course the one and many two dollar shop stores. I scan the shelves for potentially "helpful" and "useful" items. Usually I am struck with a couple of bright ideas pertaining to uses for the plethora of items before my eyes. These are easy choices: buy. But the high impact choice of my life's direction for the next couple of years has been more of a struggle. However, I think I am almost there having heeded the sage advice of following ones heart.

Lynton's Life Election

What shall I do:
a) PhD
b) Job

Where shall I do it:
a) Dunedin
b) Wellington
c) Palmerston North
d) Auckland

Vote now and have your say!

Ahh my blog. Lonely, rejected, kicked and left in the corner. Some days I can really associate with this blog. Days have past, little has been written....in blogdom anyway. But in the real world a 36 page summary of my year has been typed up and put together over the past three weeks. I under estimated the time it would consume from my life. It drained the life out of me. Towards the end I swung from headaches for to much coffee to headaches for to little coffee. I believe now I have reached equillibrium. I shall hopefully over time quench my consumption of coffee to a recommended safe dose, or I will lose interest and consume this vice when I like. Friday past I was pretty much ill all morning due to the nerves and stress tearing me apart. I was relieved to finally hand the sod in. And now I must study, once I gain enough enthusiasm to do so. Good news has come and gone in the past three weeks. First I was informed that I am onto round three with Fonterra. This involves being flown up to Palmy for the night and being interviewed and assessed for a day. Sounds like a bit of fun, especially when I am not really so interested in working for Fonterra as of yet. A holiday I shall view it as. Second piece of goodies was the letter from Vic saying that I have been accepted for a PhD scholarship. So two promising options but still not sure what to do. Pretty sure where to go though.

Lennard to the four

The front rooms didn't remain empty for long before Lennard decided he was going to fill this gap. He had had enough off his previous flat and flatmates. In the dead of mid-morning he made his move, filling his car with all his earthly possessions (over two rounds) he travelled many metres to arrive in the Valley of the North-East. There he was to stay for a couple of months before he would migrate north for the summer. Little did his flatmates know of his plans. It wasnt until they kicked in his door, finding it empty but for dust and mould, that they discovered the plot. Two covert missions latter he has retrieved almost all his belongings that were MIA. One mission remains, his most risky yet, code-named mission VAC-CUUM. If he is to be caught, it will be during this most daring mission. TO BE CONTINUED.

The Grind

It is amazing that when you know you are coming to the end of something, the enthusiasm to finish it off on a high diminishes with the every closing day. All I have left to do is: a) a solid report and b) four exams of varying length. That's it. But I am struggling to rouse the final amount of strength and interest to really pound these tasks into the ground and rise triumphant. Everytime I sit a my computer, I cant wait to stretch my legs five minutes latter. I check the mail nigh on 6 times day. I wander around the flat finding new places to sit. I look for all the spots I can sun in. I sit listening to peoples conversations on the phone. I pace up and down the hallway popping into every flatmates rooms so see what they are still doing. Frustrating I am. I am at uni and its no better. I have struggling with these stupid 3d representations of my new compounds. they just dont want to draw. hmmm. this has been a good distraction.

Dear Mr Dentist (in training)

Thank you for scaling my teeth, removing all that calculus and exposing more teeth than I know I had. The pain was worth it. I look forward to our next appointment, a three hour date full of drilling and filling as you seal my fishes (looks much better than fissures) so that my great, deep molars might stand firm against the tide of bacteria and plaque for another decade or so.

Kind Regards,
Lynton

The past couple of days I have had to really rethink my ideas/opinions on war/violence. The brutal slaughter of hundreds of civilians, women and children cries for it. Early in the siege, before it turned to shit, I held some sympathy for the hostage takers especially the women known as the black widows. They are the by-products of today’s western forces keeping 'control' of the peace. They were forged by the murder of their husbands, sons, uncles, and brothers by these western forces. This is not the only place where these women are made; this very production of death is exactly what Israel is doing in Palestine. These women have lost much and, feeling that or being told that they have no more worth for living, decide to inflict the same suffering they have suffered upon their enemy by taking out their enemy’s children and family. However the deeds they did with their fellow hostage takers were despicable. Men killing men I can possibly comprehend, but women and men killing children is too much. What really broke me was the reported presence of arab and african hostage takers. This was not their fight, nor their battleground. They were only there for murder, the murder of children.
The past year or I have been attracted to the idea of christian pacifism. This seems to best fit with Jesus' (Matthew 5) and Paul's (Romans) teachings. However, this is a vague issue as the NT nowhere really deals with issues of war. I do not believe that I can hold this belief, not because I see it as non-biblical, but because I just cannot live with it. Every fibre of my being wanted to get over there and obliterate those monsters. I wished do dish them exactly what they dished so many innocent women and children. These two ideas are in complete conflict, what I think I should believe and live by and what I actually do believe and think. Maybe this conflict in me might be resolved one day. All that I know now is that if I have to resist for the sake of life, especially of those around me, I shall and I will go down fighting.

Few people write and record emotional music like Elliott Smith did.