HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY, ELLA!

Having just completed 3 night rotations, I 'napped' for a few hours before heading off for a birthday party - Ella Tang was celebrating her first birthday! The theme of the party was jungle, so it was great seeing some of the kids dressed up as different animals! Joyce and Pete did a great job decorating their home and serving theme food. I also met some people who are avid snowboarders and hikers. We went to church afterwards where the worship team was really groovin' tonight! Every song has a West coast flavour! There's also a nice layer of snow that covers most of the sidewalks now. Winter is here...

Night rotations haven't been as bad as I thought they would be. It seems that my body is fairly adaptable, being able to sleep well even in the daytime. I'm still only getting 5 hours of sleep but it seems to be enough as I'm able to make it through the night fine. There's enough to do to keep my mind stimulated. The first night was a little stressful because I barely got one of the reports done on time prior to the morning meeting, which relies on data found in the report. The second night was a little better. I still get frustrated at times because I still don't know where everything is located or what the best approach to certain procedures is. It's slowly coming and I am getting some positive feedback from my peers. Thoughts of getting fired haven't been as frequent!

CHURCH AT THE EPIC
I went to The Epic church tonight, for their Sunday evening service that they have affectionately called Con.verge. They clothed a beautiful, downtown united church (a combination of beech and oak hardwood planks forms a cross on the floor) with sound equipment obviously meant for a larger venue. A projection screen has an eclectic mix of nature shots fading in and out. The worship starts as the song leader taps his laptop located on the second tier of a keyboard stand that also holds an Alesis mixer and, get this, a turntable! A drum track starts and he kicks into the first song with his Takemine guitar. A bass guitar comes in, as well as another keyboardist, a couple of back up singers and a hand drummer. The hand drummer, whose hair was a couple hues brighter than the orange coloured shirt that he was wearing, abandons his hand drums to start dancing. I seem to recall that he was doing some breakdancing: a little bit of moonwalking, a little bit of waving. Someone off to the side starts waving a white banner, while 2 younger dudes decide to complete their worship lying on the floor, singing right up to the rafters. I recognize most of the songs and we repeat the songs MANY TIMES. This is good because a reflective mood is created. The drum track wasn't too distracting as the team was pretty tight to it. I was wondering how the song leader was going to incorporate the turntable (given that he was singing, tapping his laptop and playing guitar at the same time). Turns out, he only used the turntable when we prayed, providing some trance background beats. There was no sermon tonight, just one of the elders sharing about his recent trip to Nepal. The service also started about 1/2 hour later than what was posted on their website. I didn't hang around afterwards to find out if they went on their weekly sandwich run, which was also posted on their website. I'll go again next week to see how things are.

ENTITLEMENT IN ITUNES
I've recently purchased some music through iTunes (they have quite a collection of Christian music). I don't own an iPod and am restricted to listening to these songs through the Apple music program iTunes. However, I enjoy listening to music on the go, especially when I'm running. Therefore, I need to convert the music file from its Apple proprietary format to something recognizable by my portable player. Apple doesn't make this easy which means I usually burn the files to an audio CD, and then re-import them back using Windows Media Player (but I have to re-type the file information, like song title and artist). An initiative called HYMN (Hear Your Music aNywhere) started up specifically to make this process easier by decrypting the Apple algorithm to allow for easy conversion. Well, Apple recently updated to iTunes version 6 (inherently, it forces users to upgrade to this version) which circumvents Hymn's crack. Reading through the Hymn forum reveals a lot of anger towards Apple for doing this. Some of the more vocal writers are demanding that Hymn update their "crack" in order to counter-circumvent Apple. It seems that a lot of people are upset that the 99 cents that they paid for a "legitimate" copy of a song should entitle them to unlimited free use of it. People are threatening to go back to pirating songs. While I am slightly annoyed by this inconvenience (I currently don't have access to a burner so I'm only able to listen to these songs on my laptop), I am even more annoyed by the general feeling of entitlement towards the use of these song files. "Culture of entitlement" seems to be a popular catch-phrase right now, particularly in describing the current federal government (or its predecessor). As people are slamming the Liberals for their corruption, this feeling of entitlement is not limited to those in politics, as proven by the current reaction by some towards Apple iTunes v.6 iTunes wasn't created to make my life better. Sure, it is an alternative to music piracy, but this option to appease guilt and "do-what-is-right" is merely a marketing ploy, a good one at that. iTunes was created for the purpose of selling iPods (iTunes currently offers downloadable videos and TV shows, just in time to be downloaded into the new Apple video iPods), not rescue the music industry from illegal downloads. Too easily, people confuse intelligent marketing with right infringement. Like when Blogger, a free weblog servce, erases a post (purpose of Blogger? increase internet traffic to specific destinations so that Google can make more money selling ads). Like when people complain that Weebo doesn't offer emoticons or voice chat capability (Weebo is a free IM program we use at work because it is web-based, bypassing our corporate IT's policies of not having local IM clients, like ICQ or MSN, installed on the servers).