Swiss Train Video

Here is a video of our train ride. We are in a tunnel, and are getting out.


I hope this works.

Paris

Hey, guess what, BJ and I met up with...

oh wait, I'll give you some time to guess first.

Okay.

BJ and I met up with Kev Chan in Paris the other day. It was a lot of fun. I tell you what, Kev lives on the edge when it comes to travel. Anyway, we saw lots of things: Notre Dame, Montparnasse Tower, St. Germain Des-Pres, The Sacred Heart, and just a lot of walking around.

Montparnasse Tower is the only skyscraper built within the Paris city-walls. It's quite low rise across all Paris, and the only 2 tall things are the Montparnasse Tower (its really a big building) and the Eiffel Tower.

The tour guide said it was better than the Eiffel Tower because:
a) You can see as much as you would if you were on the Eiffel Tower
b) You can see the Eiffel Tower
c) You can't see the Montparnasse Tower
d) It's cheaper to go up than the Eiffel Tower
e) The queue is shorter than the Eiffel Tower
f) There are less people at the base of the Montparnasse Tower trying to sell you keyrings.

Anyway, here is a picture that BJ took of Kev and I at the top of Montparnasse Tower:


Ahh... it's getting late. I might just publish this now. Just in case I fall asle...

Montreux - chocolate hangover

I was very close to leaving BJ behind in Montreux. She liked the placed so much, I was afraid that she didn't want to leave.

Funny story, there is a casino in Montreux. Montreux sounds like a nice place, right? You'd think the casino would be a flash, trendy place right? Well, not in Montreux. After dressing up nicely, we arrived at what could be described as "Hornsby RSL but not as nice". I think the Irish Pub at Asquith Leagues might even be a toe ahead.

The casino was signposted with a CASINO sign, in red neon lights. We were a little let down. The food, however, redeemed the institution. We didn't even take a picture of the place. Sorry. What, hang on, BJ DID take a photo of it. Ooops. Here it is in the day light:



But do you know what was cool? The train ride there was something else. We took a "panoramic" train ride from Lucerne to Montreux. We were at the front of the train. "The front?" you ask. Yes:



Cool huh?

We also took the liberty of paying a visit to the Nestle/Cailler factory. Free samples. BJ enjoyed it, and I managed to exhaust a vial of lactase pills in one hit.



We also stopped by an old castle in a place called Gruyere. They have a cheese factory, but they also have a castle. Check out the view from the castle:


After Montreux, we went to Paris. I'll blog that later. We're in Amsterdam right now.
We met up with Kevin Chan in Paris. His blog is http://inkev.blogspot.com/ hopefully he'll updated it before us, so you can have a look see about Paris.

Montreux

BJ broke the "world's most photos taken in one day" record.
We'll need to wade through the photos to find some pithy-ergo-blog-worthy shots to post here.

In the meantime, it's 2:30am here in Paris, and I should really be going to bed.

Bye for now.

Lucerne (or Luzern)

The picture is the view from our hostel room in the late arvo. Not bad huh? Lucerne is a smallish town in Swizterland, where the people mainly speak German first, then French, then English. The town has a river running right through the middle (the Reuss River), flowing from Lake Lucerne, through goodness knows where to eventually end up in the Rhine River. The river flows really quickly, and I'd say that if you fell into it, you'd have buckley's chances of saving yourself. (you'd probably get hypothermia first).

The weather is cool and fresh, a welcome change from the hot and humid weather of Rome and Venice. Lucerne is a small town, and there wasn't much to see except for landscapes. Plenty to see in terms of mountains etc. There are several bridges crossing the river, and one of them is a big old wooden one, and the picture below was taken from it. As you can see, its got lots of flowers lining it. They really like flowers here.



It was cool having a river racing past outside your hostel window. Just the novelty I suppose. The place seems really laid back too. Not over-populated by neither citizens, tourists or traffic.

Oh yeah, if you DO fall in the river, your best bet is to be save by someone wielding this hook.


Also, there are lots of ducks and swannings paddling about in the River. How they get from one side to the other without being swept away beats me. Anyway, you already know what a swan looks like. But do you know what a swan looks like when its getting food from the river bed?

Venice

Welcome to Venice. It was really warm here, and of course, humid. We got off the train station, and were met with the big canal. Quite a novelty really, being met with a canal minutes from leave the train. People get around in mini-ferries, or water-buses, or "vaporetto". There are not "streets" in Venice, just pathways, some quite narrow. Pull up any map of Venice, and you'll see that it is built like a maze. Alot of paths don't meet at the end. So when your directions say "take the first right", don't think you can get away with taking the second right and find your way around. Some of the pathways are really narrow, like the second picture above.

Besides the pathways, there are lots of mini canals feeding off the main big one. The mini canals can only fit small private boats and gondoliers. There are LOTS of gondoliers. Some of the mini-canals are a bit smelly, as the water doesn't ebb and flow as well as the main canal. The first picture above is an example of the mini canals.

There are LOTS of vaporettos going back and forth. They are also very regular. The vaporetto is operated by 2 people. One drives, and the other throws the rope on the big metal thing at the stops. The third picture is of a vaporetto rope-throwing operator. We took a picture of him (well, BJ took it at my insistence) because I thought that he looked like a chubbier version of Vin Diesel (that one's for you Glenos). BJ doesn't know who Vin Diesel is. That's to her credit I suppose.

Another thing, what I've seen of Italy, can be summed up thusly:
The top 5 most prominent things Italy has:
1) Big old churches
2) Smaller, but just as old statues and monuments
3) Scaffolding on said churches
4) Scaffolding on said statues and monuments
5) Italians

After Venice, BJ and I caught the train to Lucerne (Switzerland).

Okay, here's some scaffolding...


There's a church under there somewhere...

Pompeii and Naples

 

Hi all. We made a day trip to Naples (Napoli) and Pompeii the other day. It was REALLY hot, and I was willing to pay exorbitant prices for some lemon sorbet, or lemon granita or SOMETHING cold. Anyway, here is a picture from Pompeii. See if you can have a guess of what it is.

I'll give you some time to guess.

Ready?

Okay now?

It's a kitchen! The hole on the right is a oven (a pizza oven if you will - your original wood-fired oven!), and the 2 round things on the left are grain milling machines. So you put the wheat grain in there, shove a big cylindrical stone in the middle, and rotate the stone (with human power or animal power?) and out comes flour. (pronouced = flower - that's for you Glenji).

Of all the things I could have shown, why show a kitchen? Well, you should know me enough by now not to even ask that question.

The other thing is that the whole complex is still unfinished. That is, most of the city is still underground, and archaeologists are still digging it up now. The area available to tourists is only about 20-30% of the total Pompeii city area.

And another funny thing. I have experienced the definition of a Tourist Trap. When we booked the tour, it was pretty straightforward. The bus picks us up outside our hostel at 7:00am, and we drive to Naples, have a look around, then drive to Pompee and have another look around, and catch the bus back home. Somewhere in there, we have lunch.

The first part went to plan. We had a tour guide on the bus, who talked about Rome etc, and when we arrived in Naples, she got off, and swapped with a dude who got on - the local guide. The local guide was easier to understand, and we actually got off the bus and walked around Naples for a bit. The coastline is REALLY nice, and the rest of the town can be characterised with:
a) historical buildings
b) historical statues
c) rubbish on the streets
d) graffiti on said buildings and statues

Bit of a shame really.

ANYWAY, afer baking in the sun, we hoped back onto the bus and headed for Pompeii - YAY!

When we arrived in Pompeii, its not just ruins. There's a hotel right next to the entry, and lots of places selling gelato. (by the way, I'm sick of gelato now, the novelty has well and truly worn off). We got literally FUNNELLED into some random shop, that makes some kind of jewellery out of sea shells. It was very nice. But the issue is that this was never on the itinerary, and thus we had no opportunity to object. Before we knew it, BJ and I and a hundred of other tourists plebs were being assaulted by salespeople.

We got out of there. Then we HAD to have lunch at the hotel's dining area. (The jewellery shop is in the same building as the hotel). The dining area was HUGE. I'm not kidding, this place was designed to serve food to about 20 coaches of tourists simultaneously. Whilst waiting 20 minutes for our food, BJ and I talked to 2 couples from the UK on holidays. I think they were retirees/empty nester types. They seemed really laid back. Anyway, we finally got served semi warm food by very sweaty waiters. Running around in a double breasted suit never helps the temperature.

The very fact we were FUNNELLED into a jewellery shop and a cafeteria posing as a hotel restaurant tells me I must have experienced a tourist trap. I wonder, between the bus company, the jewellery shop, the hotel, and the Pompeii site, who was paying who commissions. Ultimately, it was US!

Back online

Hi all,

I'm in Paris now, with some spare time, and a net connection, so hopefully I'll fill you in from between Rome to now.

Timmeh

Apologies in order

I think apologies are in order. You may notice that the name of this blog is Something Besides Tax, and even the URL is nottax.blogspot.com. And YET, I accidentally sneaked in a reference to tax in my last blog entry.

I shall further my previous transgression by perhaps shedding some light on the reference to the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936. In case you didn't know, there are currently TWO main laws with govern income tax in Australia. The Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 (ITAA1936), and the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (ITAA1997). Until the mid 90's, we only had the ITAA1936, and it was very unwieldy, voluminous, and written in not-very-easy-to-understand legalese.

To make it clearer, and easier for lay people to understand, the then Keating Government initiated the Tax Law Improvement Project (or 'TLIP'). Its task was to re-write, in several stages, the old ITAA1936, into a new, better structured ITAA 1997. After a couple of phases, some parts of the ITAA1936 were removed, and replaced by the new ITAA 1997. However, until the TLIP was completely finished, we would have to use BOTH acts CONCURRENTLY.

When the Howard Government came to power in 1996, the priorities had changed. GST was the new big priority, and we published whatever we had redrafted into the ITAA 1997. (it was introduced in Parliament in 1995, and enacted in 1997). The project has been put on hold indefinitely.

So that's what I meant when I mentioned the ITAA 1936 with reference to cleaning the Colosseum. It took 4 years to clean about half of the outside. Funny, it only took 8 years to build the thing in the first place, and that was 2000 years ago.

Rome

Hey, I'm in Rome. The place is littered with really big, old buildings. Most of them are churches. The other big old buildings are, The Colosseum, statues of various people, monuments, tombs, fountains, columns appearing in the middle of the city etc.

The photo above is from the Colosseum, and hopefully you can make me out in one of the pictures. I was on one side, and BJ was on the other when she took the picture. BJ is very good at taking pictures. Everytime I try to take a shot, it's blurry.

Anyway, the Colosseum is pretty big. The tour guide said that they have lost about 60% of the Colosseum due to earthquakes and stupidity. Completed in AD 80, its a pretty old building. Apparently, the building was held together (by the Romans) with a couple of tonnes worth of iron clamps. Some bright spark decided to remove the clamps and the place started falling apart. Also, it was used as a quarry. That is, bits and pieces of it were removed to provide materials for other building projects around Rome.

I overheard an American tourist (by American, I mean from the USA) say: "Gee, I thought it would be bigger than this". Now I'm hard to please, but, lady, they built the thing in 8 years over two thousand years ago. Give them a break. Maybe it was the massive queue to get it that raised her expectations.

And another thing, most of the outside of the Colosseum is REALLY dirty, from all the car exhaust. They undertook a cleaning project to give it back its like off-white look. However, like the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936, they stopped halfway for no good reason. So now, you can see the line where its dirty on one side, and clean on the other. I'll show you the photo later.

A few comments and observations about Europe and Rome so far:
1) I can't see why people catch the 'travel bug' so easily. Travel is a pain. And I gotta say, a lot of the time, it just feels like I'm in Sydney, but not in English, and away from my family and friends and church. What's the big attraction exactly?
2) Why would anyone want to spend so much money building stuff so ridiculously big? I mean, I can see why you'd want to spend money NOW on OLD stuff for HISTORICAL reasons. But why oh why, back in the year WHATEVER, (say, St Peter's Basilica, commenced in 1506) would someone think "let's spend LOTS of money and time building a ridiculously large church". I know it was a different era, but it would have been nice to see the results of someone in power saying "gee, we have a lot of materials, labour and money at our disposal. Let's help the community by building schools, or affordable housing or SOMETHING useful". I know they look nice, but the REALLY HIGH ROOF OF A CHURCH SERVES NO PURPOSE. It might be good to keep the place a big cooler. But if you have the money and expertise to make a dome like the one at St Peter's, I'm sure some shutters would do fine. Okay, I've calmed down now.
3) The tap water here is fine.
4) Gelati is really easy to get. It is really warm here. BJ has renewed her love for Lemon (or Limone) Sorbet. And forget Frozen Coke or Slurpees, the way to go is Lemon Granita (which is basically the same as a Froken Coke, but with WAY LESS AIR pumped into it).
5) The place I'm staying at is a little Zizkov-like, but not that bad. It is interesting to note that, in the immediate area, about 40% of folks are of African descent, another 40% of Indian, and probably 20% are of Italian descent. So much so, there an Eritrean Restaurant around the corner. I don't know of any Eritrean restaurants in Sydney.
6) There are HEAPS of shops selling el-cheapo souvenirs. You know the ones I'm talking about. They smell like moth-balls inside, the signs are misspelled, the stuff is a little on the lame-looking side, and the shop next door is selling the exact same stuff. And not only that, they are all RUN BY CHINESE PEOPLE! WHAT THE!?!?

BJ and I are going to Venice (Venezia) tomorrow. Off to bed now. Ciao.

Cesky Krumlov

The photos above are from a smallish Czech town called Cesky Krumlov, about 3 hours train ride south west of Prague. As a rule of thumb, you can measure how big a town is, geographically and economically by its train station. One thing about most European rail stations I've seen so far, the platforms are usually really low, and you need to climb some stairs to get on board. So having no platform, like Cesky Krumlov is not a big deal, but the place looked really isolated.

We walked for a couple of kilometres through a suburb that could have been any suburb in Sydney. Someone told me that it was a beautiful little town. Not quite sure what they meant yet, until we crossed a bridge and encountered the entry to the "quaint little town" that is Cesky Krumlov. The picture up top is the entry to the town. It looks like a prop from Robin Hood - Men in Tights. And that's the flavour of the whole little town. It's as if, in order to attract tourists, the council had decided that Cesky Krumlov should have a certain Mel Brooks-esque feel about it. The streets were narrow, and made of cobble stone. Tourists were EVERYWHERE, there was a nice river running throught the town, and a nice bridge.

Most of the shops were selling jewellery, mostly amber type stuff. We didn't buy anything. There is a castle too, but I'll show you a picture of that later. It started raining while we were looking around. I left the umbrella back in the hostel room (which was a REALLY NICE hostel room by the way). The rain was really heavy, and many tourist caught out like us took refuge in shops or their doorways. We didn't want to make a run for it, it was REALLY slippery. The rain eased eventually, and we safely made the 200 metre trip back to the hostel.

Apparently there is a nice old building built into a cliff wall. The second picture is of it at night time while we were having dinner. We only stayed for one night, and the place was so small, I think that's all that we needed. The place is nice, and I wouldn't go back there myself, but I would certainly recommend that anyone who can be bothered to make it to Prague should be also bothered to visit this nice quaint little town.

Prague

I'm lazy - yes Kristen, we are going to Paris in a couple of weeks. I can't be bothered posting a comment...
The picture above was from my bathroom window in Prague. Man, getting there was a funny story. I won't give much away, but let's just say that it's the first time I've ever been in an elevator without an inner door. That's right, the lift had a floor, and ceiling, and 3 walls. The only doors were the ones on each floor, and you could watch them go by in all their glory everytime you took the lift. I don't have a picture because it was too crammed to fit me and a camera.

We stayed in a suburb of Prague called Zizkov. I thought the place was a little shabby, I mean the whole suburb, not just our place. I told our tour guide "Simmon" that we were staying in Zizkov, and he apologised for it. It's hard to describe the place, but I'll try to use Sydney parallels that are doomed to fail. Zizkov is part of Prague. Try to imagine the whole area like the Sydney CBD, and Zizkov is like Redfern. I'm not ragging on either Zizkov or Redfern, but all I'll say is that it's not really a "tourist accommodation" area.

And the other thing, Prague has the most amazing public transport system I have yet seen. Their "Metro" = our CityRail, but a million times better. Train stations are mostly underground and are aplenty. Trains come every 2.5 to 5 minutes. No joke. The trains are nice too. Then above ground, there's the tram system. Plenty of stops everywhere, and trams come at the same frequency. I asked the tour guide about it. He told me that the Communist government during the Russian times built the public transport system because no one owned cars. How cool is that.

Another cool thing, the WHOLE place is cobble stone streets, made from rounded trapezoidal brinks of granite. This means that cars driving over it is REALLY noisy, and when its wet, its perilious for both cars and pedestrians because its so slippery.

Interestingly enough, our street was one of the few that had asphalt down the middle. Really weird, it was cobble stone for about a metre from the curb into the road, and it looks like someone just poured tar or asphalt down the middle. I asked Simmon whether it was to provide better traction for cars. He said: "No, when the communists dug up the cobble stones to lay or fix some pipes, they were too lazy to replace the granite, instead they just poured on the asphalt."

In my ignorance, I asked him why there were so many cobble stone streets. He replied "before asphalt was around, what else would you make a street from?". Good point. It makes me wonder, somewhere out there, there is a really big hole, where a lot of granite used to be.

Things about Vienna

1. There are lots of really old and big buildings, mainly churches. The one above is Karlskirche.
2. The rest of the buildings in Vienna are mainly 4 storey low rise blocks, mainly white or off-white.
3. Trains come every 4-5 minutes. They go so fast, that you are not sure if they are stopping at your station until the last minute.
4. Not only is the train itself fast, but the speed at which the doors close means a virtual amputation for would-be commuters attempting to enter the train when the doors are closing.
5. Pretty much everyone speaks German and English. I know I should make an effort with speaking some German, but I would rather be an annoying English-speaking tourist instead of an embarrassing trying-to-speak-German tourist.
6. I saw the plaque at the top of this post. This one's for you, Dave Symonds.

Luke 3

Hi all,

Here are some questions for you to ponder about Luke 3.

Q6 If Jesus didn’t need to repent, why do you think he received John’s baptism?

Q7 Why does Luke include the genealogy at this point in his gospel? What point is he trying to emphasise?

I'll post my comments on these questions after a few other people have posted!

See you at Winter Training! (see dates and topics on www.standys.org.au)

Net Present Value & the Gospel

Do you know what Net Present Value (NPV) is? It's the value of something when taking into account interest rates and the time that you have or don't have it.

For example, you have $100, and you put it away on deposit at a bank for 1 year. If the interest rate for the entire year is 7% p.a. and it is simple interest (let's keep this simple), your investment will be worth $107 by the end of the year.

So, if someone wanted to borrow $100 off you, you would ask them to pay you back $107 at the end of the year, cos that is what you could have gotten had you the opportunity to put it on deposit. The NPV of a $100 deposit in a year term would be $107.

To NOT put it on deposit, is to actually lose money, because it could have returned $7 if on deposit.

And that's partly the reason why in Matthew 25:14-30, the master is extremely disappointed that the last servant didn't even put the money on deposit. Obviously this lazy and wicked servant didn't grasp the concept of net present value. But that isn't the main point of the parable.

The main point is that it doesn't matter how long you have been a Christian, you are still treated the same in the sense that we enter our master's joy, and "well done good and faithful servant". But also, those lazy and wicked servants are actually "other" servants, (Luke 19:11-27) in that although they do not reject the king's rule outright, they are there because of "faithless association" and will not make it into heaven.

Hazar for CVLI

That's right folks, it's finally possible to show excerpts from TV shows and movies, without having to get prior permission from the copyright owner (which can take weeks and cost [from experience] $110 upwards), without having to use "words of critism or review", without breaking the law.

Previously, the only realistic legit way of showing excerpts of a movie or TV show was for the purpose of criticism or review. In the context of a sermon, it is highly likely that showing video would be used as an ILLUSTRATION to explain a point to a sermon, rather than directly criticising the video itself. Therefore, the typical example of a "sermon illustration" video, would mean that the church would be infringing copyright (that's right folks, BREAKING THE LAW). Unless the church got permission beforehand, it would be illegal. Typically, it would take a fair bit of time and money to get permission, if you got it at all.

Now, however, the Church Video Licence, organised by Christian Video Licensing International (CVLI) (pretty much the same folks who do the CCLI licence for our church music) means that a church can buy a "blanket licence" which gives them permission to show thousands of films and videos. The licence is reasonably priced. Of course, it doesn't mean we should be showing video excerpts willy-nilly. Although tempting to do so, it would only be done if it added to the understanding of the bible passage rather than detracted from it.

So, hazar for not breaking copyright law so easily anymore!

Church Songs

I am wondering, what makes a good church song? Before I go ahead on this topic, I would like you to read the last page of the January 2007 edition of The Briefing. If you can't get it, I'll summarise it. Ian Carmichael, in saying that we should put a blanket ban on Hillsong music, gives 3 reasons:
1) When singing their songs, we publicly endorse them. And we don't want to be doing that do we?
2) When singing their songs, Hillsong financially benefits through royalties and other stuff. We don't want to be bankrolling harmful teaching. (the edition makes it clear that the teaching of Hillsong is not great, actually, pretty bad.)
3) When singing their songs, we compromise our theology, mainly because some of their songs are way off target, or even the good sounding ones mean different things to different people due to their ambiguity.

Next, read this article in the Southern Cross Magazine: The Big 3 Issues in Church Music

I wanted to point you to Trevor Hodge's recommendation that "Blessed Be Your Name" (by Matt Redman) is a good song. Also, I want to draw your attention to Trevor's recommendation of "Here I am to Worship" (by Tim Hughes) - he qualifies this recommendation with: "Needs to be balanced with teaching or songs that reminds us that worship is all of our life, not just our songs."

My question is this: does a good song need to be "balanced" by anything - or should they be able to stand on their own? No doubt there are many songs out there that praise God for his creation. Is it a bad song if it does not sing of his redemption of us in Jesus?

The other thing is the Blessed Be Your Name song (which I actually find really good musically). I would like you to read Andy Judd's case study of this song on the Garage Hymnal site:
Case Studies of Questionable Lyrics He ultimately gives the "pass mark" to this song because the major questionable line of "You give and take away" (taken from Job) "My heart will choose to say... Blessed be your name" makes sense in that the saints can praise God because by definition, that is what we do (because of God's grace and Holy Spirit). BUT since the song does not qualify the line of "My heart will choose to say" with words to the effect of "by your grace" or "by your Holy Spirit" does this make this a bad song?

In any case, would trying to fit such qualifying lyrics render the song so unsingable, that it becomes a bad song on grounds of musical lameness or unsingability. What are your thoughts? What makes a "good" church song? What are some examples that you think are good and not-so-good songs?