Saturday, November 28, 2009

Chuckles

Here are a few things that made me laugh recently...

I'd totally buy this for my office too Ocho...



Stumbled across this on a friend's facebook wall =)
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE GROUND!!

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Monday, November 23, 2009

Patients Always Lie?

If you watch House, you know that you always have to take the history details with a grain of salt because patients often don't provide you with the full truth...

66 yo man presented to hospital with a piece of wire protruding from his anus claiming that some friends stuck a bottle up his ass and that he was trying to fish it out with a coat hanger.

Turns out he wasn't lying about the bottle part but he was about the friends. An abdominal X-ray revealed that this was a solo effort. There's no way he could have looped the coat hanger around the bottle after insertion.

Apparently 3 months post-laparoscopic surgery, he did the same again with 8x33cm butternut pumpkin and unsuccessfully tried to remove it with a fork. He was rewarded with a colostomy. Should have given the bottle back to him...

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Saturday, November 21, 2009

350,000

The economy changes all the time and, depending on where you are, the cost of things are a bit different. I remember when gas/petrol prices were $0.40 a litre. I grabbed a slurpee the other day from 7-Eleven cuz it was stinkin hot and it set me back $3.40. The same slurpee would have cost me $1.20 in Canada (and no, it's not because it's -400ยบ and nobody buys them). That was my first and last slurpee of the year - not paying that much for iced-sugar again.

So what does $350,000 get you these days? Apparently, it's just enough to get yourself a left-hand, sequined white glove that Michael Jackson wore during a 25th anniversary TV special moonwalk. It also happens to be enough to:

- provide clean water to 194,444 people in Ethiopia
- provide 4069 orphaned children in Malawi with day care for a year
- provide 116,666 children in Bangladesh with reading and writing lessons
- provide 10,000 people living with HIV/AIDS lifesaving antiretroviral treatment for one month (or a year's worth of treatment for 833 people)
- provide roughly 951 people in a developing country, who suffer from non-resistant tuberculosis, with 12 months of curative, drug therapy (4000 people die from tuberculosis each day and, with exception to multi-drug resistant strains that are especially high in places like the Ivory Coast, Abkhazia, Thailand and Uzbekistan, we have the cure for it)

I'm just spitting out ballpark figures and not writing some research paper - feel free to look up the exact costs yourself and please resist your hedonistic temptations and invest your $350,000 in something more than a white glove.

And why does it have to be $350,000? What about how we spend $1000? Or $10? Not trying to get legalistic here but it's something we don't stop and consider often enough. At the very least, it's something I need to think about more.


PS - maybe the Hard Rock Cafe plans to use the money to buy 20,000 bibles to be distributed all over the world. If that's the case, then good on them and forget what I said about the glove.

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Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Ready

Regretful rebellion revealed,
Remorseful, repentant, reprieved

Rescued, reconciled, redeemed
Refreshing renewal received

Rejoicing, recommitting, recruiting
Re: resurrection remedy

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Monday, November 16, 2009

Signs

Flatmate showed me this today. I liked it. It was a bit slow at first but, as with most good things, you gotta wait for it...

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Saturday, November 14, 2009

Road Trip?

3,874 km from my home in Calgary to the Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia where the Passion 2010 conference is being held in January. Google maps estimates it to be a 38 hour drive.

David Crowder, Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Louis Giglio, John Piper, Charlie Hall, Hillsong United, Andy Stanley, Francis Chan and many others will be there this year.


I know a road trip from Calgary to Juarez, Mexico is possible. That was about a 3,081 km drive in a 15 seat passenger van with 11 other people and 3 drivers rotating around. I do remember us staying overnight somewhere in New Mexico though so we didn't drive the entire way in one go (but came pretty close).


Hmm...road trip anyone?

PS - I have DCB's newest album Church Music in my car CD player and I think I've gone through the album about 10 times. I really enjoy listening to it. Not sure how many songs would be suited for congregational use but I know my favorite is definitely "How He Loves".

How He Loves
- David Crowder Band


PPS - Okay, I just realized that it is originally written by John Mark McMillan and is covered by DCB. I seem to like a lot of DCB covers...

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

6 weeks

Surgical ward rounds with the colorectal team have not been exciting or fruitful. Unlike my brief stint with the breast/endocrine team where the fellow would ask me questions as we walked from bed to bed, all I do is stand there and look good (more standing and less looking good on days when I haven't gotten much sleep). Breasts: 1, Ass: 0

Today we saw a man with advanced stage liver cancer with multiple organ metastases. The palliative care team had told him he had maybe 6 weeks left to live (I always get a bit sad when I see the palliative care stickers in charts). He had developed a bit of bowel obstruction and we were consulted with the possibility of resecting a portion of his large intestine, removing the obstruction, and giving him a stoma to collect his feces. I was surprised at how little he understood about his condition. Nobody had fully explained to him why he should have this bowel surgery when he thought the cancer was in his liver. Shouldn't we be operating on his liver to take out the cancer?

Although I was tired of standing and looking good all morning, I was really glad that my registrar paused the round, sat down, listened to the patient, and answered all of his questions. "We can't operate on your liver cancer because it's spread too much. The bowel surgery won't cure you but will hopefully make it so that you can eat solid food again. There are significant risks of this bowel surgery and, in your current weakened state, all of them are increased dramatically." In the end the decision will be up to him.


If I was told I had only 6 weeks left to live right now, what would I do? Would I finish off my last two weeks of surgery, studying hard to pass the last set of exams for the year or would I just quit immediately? Would I fly around the world doing things that I've always wanted to do before my time expires? Like...go meet Brooke Fraser (and get her to autograph my never-to-be-washed-again arm? hey, it'd only be for 6 weeks); see Lincoln Brewster and John Mayer live in concert (get them to sign my guitar); skydiving; bungee-jumping; spend a weekend riding roller-coasters in Cedar Point, Ohio; go snowboarding in the alps from a helicopter? Probably not. In and of themselves, they would all be pretty pointless I think (and supremely selfish) - utterly meaningless and a chasing of the wind once I breathe my last breath and my heart beats it's last beat. But perhaps it wouldn't be meaningless to those around me? What if I spent as much time as I could with my family or met up with as many friends as I could or called up all the friends that I've neglected to keep in touch with over the years?

Who knows, maybe I actually only have one day left. Maybe I need to just live such that nothing much in my life would change because I'm already maximizing every single moment I have investing in things that last forever...something that moth and rust can't destroy and that thieves can't steal.

"I tell you the truth,
unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies,
it remains only a single seed.
But if it dies,
it produces many seeds.

The man who loves his life will lose it,
while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Whoever serves me must follow me;
and where I am, my servant also will be.
My Father will honor the one who serves me."
- Jesus Christ

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Musical Trends

There has been a growing clutter of papers lying all over my bedroom floor. It's finally reach the point of ridiculousness and I decided to clean some of it up.

I had a lot of guitar tab/chord sheets lying around and so I decided to organize all of them alphabetically so that I can find the correct song and not waste paper by printing off new chord sheets. It's interesting to see some of the musical trends over the past 1.5 years (at least for song's I've had to learn). I used to like to keep track of what songs were sung in church each week to be aware of what the congregation is familiar with and what has been sung to death and shouldn't be repeated for a while. Based on my fleeting memory, I've organized them into what has been sung in church, what has been sung in YF (uni/young adult fellowship) and some randoms (personal favorites or from Hope Church). It's also interesting to see what kind of song writers/artists are popular as well.

Church Songs:

1 Corinthians 13 - Rob Smith
Worthy of All Praise - Rob Smith (we sing this one a lot...)
Because He Lives - William J. Gaither
Before the Throne of God Above - Charitie L. Bancroft; music by Vikki Cook (I really like the Shane + Shane cover ...they're vocally so talented)
Blessed Be Your Name - Matt Redman
Christ Alone - Bryson Smith and Philip Percival (not to be confused with 'In Christ Alone' as I found the hard way at 8:30am on a Sunday morning)
Forever - Jesse Reeves, Chris Tomlin (sung LOTS)
Grace Like Rain - Todd Agnew
Highest Place - Mark Peterson (it's lyrically very sound but it's one of the most awkward congregational songs to sing that I've ever come across)
How Deep the Father's Love For Us - Stuart Townend
How Great Is Our God - Chris Tomlin, Jesse Reeves, Ed Cash
Indescribable - Laura Story, Jesse Reeves (Chris Tomlin did NOT write this song...FYI)
Let Your Kingdom Come - Bob Kauflin (sung heaps but a great song - my favorite Sovereign Grace song)
Lord Reign in Me - Brenton Brown (sung to death...)
My Chains Are Gone (Amazing Grace) - Chris Tomlin
Psalm 103 - Mark Peterson (lyrics are of course sound since it's taken pretty much right from scripture but again, Peterson has awkward-ish melodies. Nothing against him 'cuz I know how hard it is to write a good song)
Refiner's Fire - Brian Doerksen
Teach Me Your Ways - Chris Griffiths
This is My Desire - Reuben Morgan
This Is Your House - Graham Kendrick
Voice of the Lord - Michael Morrow (Emu have a few I like)
We Are His People - Philip Percival (this one gets sung a LOT)
We Belong to the Day - Michael Morrow (sung a LOT)
Your Grace Is Enough - Matt Maher and Chris Tomlin (we sang this for an entire month and never sang it again...)

YF Songs:

Above All - Penny LeBlanc & Paul Baloche (we sung this once, I don't think anyone knew it)
Amazing Grace (Grace Flows Down) - David Bell, Louie Giglio and Rod Pageant
Before the Throne of God Above - Charitie L. Bancroft; music by Vikki Cook (I really like the Shane & Shane cover...they're vocally so talented)
Blessed Be Your Name - Matt Redman
Create In Me a Clean Heart - John Carter
Enough - Chris Tomlin (I don't think we've sang this on Sunday but I could be wrong)
Everyday - Joel Houston (I'm pretty sure we've only sang it once or twice max
Forever - Jesse Reeves, Chris Tomlin (sung very often)
From the Inside Out - Joel Houston (YF camp)
Grace Like Rain - Todd Agnew
Hosanna - Brooke Fraser (I don't actually think we've sang this...maybe once?)
How Can I Keep From Singing - Matt Redman, Chris Tomlin, Ed Cash (sang it twice. As with most Tomlin songs you have to transpose it 3-4 semitones lower)
How Great Thou Art - Carl Gustav Boberg; translated by Stuart K. Hine (we sang this once, I picked it because I liked a Paul Baloche cover)
I Could Sing of Your Love Forever - Martin Smith
I Offer My Life - Claire Cloninger, Don Moen
Indescribable - Laura Story, Jesse Reeves (Chris Tomlin did NOT write this song...FYI)
It Is Well With My Soul - Horatio Spafford (probably my most favoritest hymn...the story behind the song just absolutely blows me away)
Let Your Kingdom Come - Bob Kauflin (this was sung a LOT)
Lord Over All - Sonicflood
Lord Reign in Me - Brenton Brown (we sung this to DEATH)
Majesty (Here I Am) - Martin Smith (very little Delirious? in the mix)
One Way - Hillsong United (sung to death...)
Refiner's Fire - Brian Doerksen
This Is My Desire - Reuben Morgan
Unashamed - Jon Neufeld, Tim Neufeld, Doug McKelvey (go Starfield!)
Voice of the Lord - Michael Morrow (Emu music has a few that I like)
We Fall Down - Chris Tomlin
Who Am I - Casting Crowns (I don't think we've sung this much in YF. Used for RICE Rally and CiA teens fellowship once)
Worthy of All Praise - Rob Smith
You Are My All In All - Dennis Jernigan (another great story behind the writing of this song)
You Loved Me - Trevor Hodge

Random:

Friend of God - Michael Gungor (RICE Big Day Out)
Hear Our Praises - Reuben Morgan (one of my all time favorites)
He Is Exalted - Twila Paris (I really like this Shane & Shane version. I remember Sunny introduced to me to this awesome cover. Check it!)



King - Tree63 (dodgy theology? Was going to be a RICE song)
Leaving 99 - Audio Adrenaline (RICE Big Day Out song)
None But Jesus - Brooke Fraser (I'm a huge Brooke fan)
Nothing But the Blood - Peter King (used part of it for RICE Rally; there's actually a Matt Redman cover of the hymn that I like better...)
The Time Has Come - Joel Houston (I don't foresee this one being sung anytime soon)
Today Is The Day - Lincoln Brewster, Paul Baloche (RICE Big Day Out)
Wonderful God - Ned Davies (I don't recognize this one but it's Hillsong so probably pre-CCCB)
You Are Good - Israel Houghton

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