The news is better elsewhere. The average trip to a watering hole is only 170 metres.^[2] That’s 13 pubs over a stretch of just over 2 km.

Of course, if you’re after coffee, or Thai food, the average walk is about 3 metres.

[2] Including said dry section, and not including walking off to visit pubs not on King St.↩

Given that the articles within all concern the monsoon system of East Asia, the picture on the back cover is of a crowded street in Varanasi, India.

Taken by my dad, of me, on a rickshaw.

Compare and contrast to the original.

Calvin reading… check.

Hebrew translation… check.

Greek translation… check (well almost, but will be by tomorrow).

Time for a holiday. See you all in a week.

Two conferences in two weeks: National Training Event (AFES), and an Engineering Education conference (AAEE).

The difference in tone was really remarkable. The theme of NTE was God’s word to God’s world, and was consistently and thoroughly marked by a dependence on hearing and receiving God’s words. One of the speakers, Peter Adam, had a consistent refrain in his talks: Hearing God is Receiving God’s words, written for his people, by his Spirit, about his Son. There was a real understanding that God has spoken clearly in the Scriptures in a way that is both accessible and applicable to those who hear now. In short, there was truth, and truth recognised and taken on board as determinative for life.

The Education conference, on the other hand, was a little like the blind leading the blind. I went down on behalf of the team I worked with at UNSW, to present a paper on the way we had structured and taught a particular Electrical Engineering subject this year. All the people at this conference were educators in some way, mostly lecturers/faculty at various universities, and many of them really passionate about teaching their students the profession they know and love. The content of the presentations, however, were almost universally along the lines of ‘this is what we tried, it seemed to work (or, alternatively, it really didn’t), you might like to try it yourself’. Even those with massive experience and expertise in education philosophy and techniques were reluctant to make broad sweeping statements.

For good reason.

There is no reason to expect any particular educational philosophy is canonically good and true. There is, however, every reason to expect that God’s word is truth for his people, to be accepted as such.

The tone of the conferences was actually a great encouragement. Christians are confident that God speaks to his world by his word. Other endeavours are trying to feel their way towards something that works perhaps a little better than other systems tried to date. In reading the Bible, this is a great comfort.

God’s words, written for his people, by his Spirit, about his Son.

Truth indeed.

These results are based on an informal walking tour of a reasonable section of Melbourne city on Tuesday night, as I was after a dinner and a beer. My requirements were relatively simple, yet a little restrictive (as I found out).

I wanted somewhere that had food that wasn’t terribly expensive, a beer that I liked, and had lighting sufficient for me to read a book. The last bit was the kicker – I was in Melbourne by myself, I was sick with a nasty cold, I was a little lonely and bored, so really wanted to read my book over dinner (Quicksilver, by Neal Stevenson, which is a good read). This ended up ruling out about half of the places I found, as they were kind of dark and dingy.

Unfortunately, half of not very many is not a lot. Sydney feels like it has a pub once every couple of blocks, and they’re relatively big – Melbourne seems to have far fewer, and far smaller places.

Eventually I found somewhere. It took some time though.

Bah.

This is Elsinore Castle, in the rotten state of Denmark (it’s not actually the one from Hamlet – it was built after the play was written, but it hasn’t stopped them cashing in on the tourist dollar). It was taken back in 2001.

Today, I met people for coffee not once but twice. Firstly I got together with my boss and fellow student minister, so we could hammer out what we are each doing for our upcoming series through Mark’s gospels. I’m doing two talks, the first on Mark 2-3, entitled “Bigger than Jesus?”. The other is Jesus’ strange-but-true coronation at the cross. Later in the afternoon I caught up with an old friend, whom I’ve known since primary school. He’s finishing up a PhD in the area of ubiquitous computing, and is about to go over to the states for an internship with Google. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Tonight I cooked up a beautiful (if I do say so myself) African lamb stew/casserole type thing, with tomatoes and chickpeas. Had it with a glass of red wine. Yum.

Tomorrow, it’s two of my favourite things: Hebrew, and snorkelling. Both with good friends.

And to cap it off, I leave on Saturday evening to go to Melbourne, where I’ll be playing with my Ultimate Frisbee team Fakulti in the Australian National Championships.

Did I mention I’m also on holidays?