Mind Boggling Mawhinneys

Behind the Myths

At the Mythbusters show with Chris Thomson. 

The other night at dinner, I was asked what I wanted for father's day.  Predictably it would seem,  I responded by stating the negative.  That I did not want stuff. Stuff takes up space and clutters my life.   Immediatly felt oops wrong answer as a child was dispatched to the kitchen to get my present.  Sigh of releaf as present turned out to be two tickets to the Behind the Myths tour. 

The show comes complete with Adam and Jamie. 

unfortunately nothing exploded on stage.  A bit of interesting physics and plenty of tempting stuff to try at home - blowing up hot water heater seems like a good one. 

Adam did I nice little sermon along the lines that the sound of failure is the sound of learning a new skill.  The other fun thing they did was use a high speed camera to bring out detail that can not be seen in real time.

Church & Flashpoint 31-8-2014

Today was Flashpoint Sunday.  Flashpoint is a children's church service that Megan and I run on the last Sunday of each month.

We start in "Big Church" and then decamp after about 20 minutes for the hall where Flashoint is held.  The church congregation had Peter on guitar and Megan on Piano to start with and then just Peter because we seem to have a shortage of organists.  Anyone want to donate one?

Megan posed the question "What do you need to be a student?"
The kids contributed suggestions including needing a teacher, a computer and a brain.  (There were others).  Then she moved on to getting the kids to think about the criteria for a worker.


We linked this through to cooking that to cook you need the ingredients and then on to the science

experiment where we had an objective and the objective was to blow the lid off the Milo tin.  I had two lots of ingredients.  Flour, Baking soda, vinegar and water.  Now we all know that you need baking soda and vinegar for this to work but both flour and baking soda are white powder and water and vinegar are both clear liquid.  So we did an experiment which of course failed at first because it was flour and water.   One small child sensibly pointed out that we could try the flour with vinegar since at that stage we actually did not know which was which.  When we finally worked out the correct ingredients the lid popped off.

Jemma read the story.  The story is traditionally read by Paul who was away.  Jemma put her own spin on it.  Firstly she hid the book and there had to be a bit of seeking.  This required Alex to lift Finny up to reach it.  Then when Jemma was reading she added some dramatic sound effects.

Bestbrook

This weekend we went to Bestbrook.  Bestbrook is sort of a farm stay on the Warwick side of Cunningham's Gap.  I was initially apprehensive about the plan because I thought the place would be an over organised sort of cross between a farm stay and Sea World.  In my view it is effectively a glorified private camp ground with horse riding.  Not really a farm.

BGS Open Day

2014 BGS Open Day

Chris and Dan both had duties at open day.
10:30am ish we left Bestbrook and drove to Brisbane.  First port of call was home.  Showered and looked at the list of stuff that we had been texed.

Mattresses from the sofa bed.
fire wood.
socks & walking pants for Megan.
More coffee pods.
AA batteries
Dog.
Toaster
White cardboard.
Shoes for Jemma.
Flour, eggs -> makes pancakes.
Bacon & Eggs.

With the kids in uniform we proceeded to BGS.

First up was Dan.  Singing in the un-auditioned un-changed voices choir.  He is front row right hand side.

After Dan had finished singing, we bought hamburgers from the Rowing Support Group then on to the Centenary Hall.  There were a number of extra curricular activities  on display - Sailing & Rowing among them.  The rowers had 8 ergos set up and connected to a video projector.  Kids were doing 100m races.  Every now and then one of the rowing students would join in and whip the pants off them.

Then they set up a challenge between the grade 10, grade 11 and grade 12 students.  A 2k race run like a relay.  Each participant would row 250m.  To facilitate fast changeovers the kids did not use the shoes.  Rather they had two students who would grab the rowers feet and hold them onto the foot stretcher.  When a rower got to the end of their stage, they would roll off onto the floor and the next rower would jump on.  The foot holders would grab their feet, they would grab the handle and pull for all they were worth.

It was a worthy competition.  The grade 10 students were in front for quite a while.  The grade 12's were only 4 to 6 seconds behind.  The grade 11 students 16seconds behind.  Then in the final 500, the grade 10's faded.  The grade 12's powered ahead and won by a healthy margin and the grade 10 and 11 were pretty much a dead heat.

After rowing we went to the art show.  Very impressive.  Pieces were all $2500 plus.  The art was very impressive.

On the way out we walked past the infamous lab 13.  It now has a new number PH101.  I guess the evidence of a bloated over paid middle management department of change management for the sake of change.

Labyrinth

Megan laid out a "Labyrinth".  a set of ropes on the ground that marked out a path from the outside to the middle.  In the middle was a rock with a cross on it.  At the entrance, you picked a piece of paper with a meditation outlined on it.

Sometimes the path is narrow.
They are just lines on the ground.  I could just step over them. They are like many of the constraints on my life.  For one person a guide for another an impenetrable barrier.

Gods cross in the middle.  I can see it from the outside. As I walk the path I can turn and see the cross.  When I reach the cross I can look 360 and see the beautiful world around me.

A child dribbles a soccer ball across. Not recognizing the lines. Not respecting the rules they represent.

The lines make the trip seem long. If the rules wern't there I could get in and out much quicker.

Sometimes I seem to be going backwards. Sometimes when I stop and think,  when I start again I am not sure if I am on the way in or out.