Just to wish Happy Christmas to everyone; sorry I’ve been soo lame at writing cards this year. I got this from a friend, which was rather amusing:

From us (‘the wishor’) to you (hereinafter called the Wishee) please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct,
low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the relevant winter holiday described by the Wishee as ________ (Wishee to complete: hereafter to be referred to as ‘the relevant holiday’), practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice / secular traditions at all (delete as applicable) and a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2006, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects and having regard to race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or dietary preference of
the wishee.

God bless!

After persistant nagging from several people, I finally gave in and signed up to facebook. My profile is here. If you feel so inclined, please add me as a friend 😉

Wow, it’s been a long time since I last updated my blog, but that’s because it’s been a long time since much happened which was worth blogging about. Pretty much every day, I’ve been getting up and studying most of the day. I’ve been translating a lot of Greek, doing the occasional bit of paid work, reading some commentaries on books of the Bible and doing quite a bit of other reading for my studies.

However, yesterday I got all boshed up and went to Basingstoke as my eldest cousin, Jonathan, was getting married. The service itself was quite good fun; the church was very charismatic so they prophecied over the new couple etc, but there was a good blend of the old and the new songs. We then went down to the basement, where we had mini mince-pies and drinks. We stood around chatting to various relatives that we don’t see too frequently, and then after a few hours came back up to have some food. Then there were the speeches etc and we finally left at about 9pm.

We took a family photo of us all dressed up, but because the background was quite boring I decided to put us in a Chinese sunset.

I’ve just got home. I’m getting really bad at keeping people updated on this blog. I’ve had quite a busy week doing lots of work; mostly dissertation work (translating the Psalms of Solomon from Greek into English). Also seen quite a few films and went out for Nat’s second party. I had a party of my own on Monday night, where we watched a French film called Taxi – very very funny.

Wow sorry for no update for ages; I have had quite a manic week. I’ve been writing some of my dissertation (now up to 6000 words or so), a sermon for the preaching class that I go to, and also been trying to see everyone before they go down for Christmas.

On Tuesday evening, there was the CICCU carol service. I went to the 10pm one by Jonathon Fletcher. It was quite good, although he is very Cambridge and quite academic so it was more logical arguments than passionate proclamation, which is the style that connects with me the best. Spent the rest of the evening chatting to friends until quite late.

Wednesday I got up late and so missed all of my lectures. I lead the Bible study at CU which seemed to go ok. Sarah, one of the reps, was having her joint birthday party afterwards, so I went there for a bit and saw Tabs and Zish. I then went round to Emmanuel to see Ed, Nat, Ruth, Dave etc and we saw Charlie and the Chocolate factory. It was quite a good film although very strange and creepy in places!

Thursday evening I went out to Pizza Express with about 30 people from Emma to celebrate Natalie’s 21st (even though it’s not until next weds). It was, as expected, really good food and nice to meet lots of other people from Emmanuel. Went back to her floor afterwards and had quite a good party going on until about 2am.

On Friday, Ben arrived from America to see some of us. He was the leader of our China team in the summer. We had a recruitment drive in the afternoon which was quite sparsly attended although the people who came seemed very keen. I then went off to have a supervision, which went quite well, and then in the evening, Mary, Lauren, Anna C, Widge, Ben and myself had a chinese at mine. Joel came round a bit later and we sat around until about 12:30 chatting about things. I then remembered that I had to write my sermon to give at preaching class in the morning, so I was up until about 2am on that. I then went to bed and got up at around 7 to finish it off and print it out etc. It seemed quite successful and I learnt a lot. Scarily enough, I have to do one at St Nix on the evening of Jan 8th about my experiences in China. Should be fun anyway.

After that, I came back and some of us went out to have a full English breakfast with Ben and Andrew (who’d just flown in from Vancover and is headed back to HK on Monday) at Tatties. We talked about the future of the China programme and then came back to mine. Everyone left about half one and I slept for a few hours and then did some more work on my dissertation.