Expert Advice

A lot of people stop me in the street and ask me “Garry, how do you manage to be so consistently awesome?” I generally give people a reasonably humble response, about investing a lot of practice and watching a lot of television, but honestly, the secret is to always look like you know what you’re talking about.

I’ve also often been told it’s very difficult to tell the difference between when I’m being deliberately ridiculous and when I’m being dead serious. And as for the times when I’m being accidentally ridiculous; well who knows what that looks like?

But the problem with always looking like I know what I’m doing is that people tend to think that I always know what I’m doing. This can be a bit of a problem when people ask me questions about things that I don’t actually know anything about. The fact that I’m quite capable of giving an answer with a straight face doesn’t make it a good idea to ask me in the first place. There really is no way to know whether I’m full of it or not. But seriously, if in doubt, bet on ‘full of it’.

In the last two weeks, people have asked me to do a whole bunch of things of varying levels of ridiculousness, including: fixing a computer, being a scout leader, fixing the tenor section, managing the training department (what?), blocking a Nerf bullet with just a plastic light sabre (to be fair, I’m getting pretty good at this) interpreting Ephesians, landing a 747 that was on fire (okay, not really), running a social media marketing campaign (Okay, seriously. What?) and finding a fourth thing to blog about in February (Success!).

But by all means, go ahead and continue to trust me with your increasingly insane requests. Who knows what new and fantastic things I might be able to pretend to be good at next week?




Garry with 2 Rs

Life in the City

So at the start of the year I moved house from Malak in Darwin’s northern suburbs, to a unit right in Darwin city. I’ve moved in with two friends in a unit with a harbour view, five minutes’ walk from work, church, Happy Yess and the supermarket. It’s definitely been one of the smarter moves I’ve made. I can walk to all of them with no dramas at all, although my decision to walk to church bare foot yesterday was not my brightest ever.

City living has an entirely different feel to it. I realise it’s a bit misguided to talk about “city living” in a metropolis the scale of Darwin, particularly given how much time I’ve spent in Sydney recently. But it’s still a different vibe. It brings an increased sense of possibility and involvement and a new sense of being all grown up and mature.

In celebration of this new found sense of being an adult, my house mates and I have spent the weekend developing highly sophisticated ways of entertaining ourselves on stormy afternoons. I hereby present the first known documentation of the new game taking Harry Chan Avenue by storm.

Padawan Learner: A game for two or more players.

You will need:
A plastic light sabre
Adeptness with the Force (optional)
At least one Nerf gun
A blindfold (not recommended)

Points are scored (if you can be bothered) for every Nerf disc successfully deflected with the light sabre. For best results, a selection of different guns should be used. Experimental evidence suggests that Matt’s giant 40 disc shooter actually fires with slightly less velocity than my lighter ten shooter, although obviously I run out of ammunition a lot sooner.

Actually dressing up as a Jedi is recommended, by not essential.

May the Force be with you.



Garry with 2 Rs

Stuff I Do

I’ve been a little flat out of late. I’ve spent more time travelling in the last month than I have in my own home, though that's largely because I’ve also moved house in the middle of it. Last night, as I collapsed into bed after yet another flight home from Sydney – which this time was delayed by an hour and a half – I was struck by what a strange sensation it was: I was inordinately grateful to be sleeping in my own bed again, and also acutely aware that I’ve really not slept in it more than a dozen times so far anyway. I do like it, though.

Anyway, a side consequence of being so insanely busy over the Christmas/New-Year/Freak-Me-Sideways-It’s-February-Already period is that I really haven’t taken time to take stock of 2012. It’s not really appropriate to post New Years’ reflections half way through February, but if you think respect of literary convention is going to stop me, you’re obviously reading the wrong blog.

Well okay then. 2012 was, on the balance of things, pretty freaking awesome. Especially considering that it was the rebound from 2011, which sucked monumentally. 2012 was the year I escaped from the credit union and joined the public service. The year my sister got married. The year I finally got One Body off the ground. The year I joined the chorale. The year I took up comedy with Happy Yess. The year I came home to DMUC.

The year Kim and I finally got our act together.

So what does 2013 hold for Cum Tacent Clament?

I’ve decided the time has come to go commercial. To renovate my blog into a blend of hipster book reviews, vegetarian casserole recipes and advice/inspiration for other young mothers out there, and then sell it to Woolworths.

Not really.

2013 looks to be a year to build on the foundations of the last year. Last Thursday I had a meeting with some other guys about how we can take One Body and really make it into something that can energise and unite people across the city, instead of just being a worship jam session that we slap together at the last minute. This evening, I’m off to meeting to organise marketing for Happy Yess comedy, to try and make it something we can actually be proud of, and that can really build a local core of entertainers.

In short, 2013, looks be the year where “consistently half-arsed” gets removed from my résumé. And as much as I’ve enjoyed being the guy who repeatedly gets away with putting in almost no effort, I think I’m okay with that. I’m closing in on a milestone birthday which may or may not disqualify me from the twenty-something bloggers collective, and maybe it’s time for me to do something a little more concrete with myself.

It seems to be the thing to do to create a “Thirty before thirty” list to silently judge oneself against. As with most such conventions, I’ve chosen to simultaneously acknowledge it and deride it. You can find my list of stuff on the right over there.

Some goals are more realistic than others, as usual. Deal with it.




Garry with 2 Rs

NYALC

The Uniting Church is a strange place sometimes. Much like me, it’s one of those funny institutions that consistently confounds any attempt to put a label on it. You could call it ‘liberal,’ but there are plenty of fundamentalists doing just fine within the organisation. Like me for example. You could call it ‘modern,’ but you might not be able to do that with a straight face after spending a morning in my congregation. And our core scriptures are almost two thousand years old at least. You could probably call it “Australian,”, but these days there’s enough going on in other countries to call that into question as well.

Just like me, the only label you could really give the Uniting Church with any confidence would be “Christian”.

Although there is another one that probably applies more to the church than to me (hopefully): Freaking huge.

I was at the UC’s National Young Adult Leaders’ Conference last week in Sydney. It was great fun meeting with other young Christians from Uniting Churches all over the place. I enjoyed hearing about what people in other parts of the country are up to, and sharing some of the stuff we‘re doing here in Darwin.

But the biggest eye opener for me was our away mission to Uniting Care headquarters on Pitt Street. Uniting Care is the community service and welfare arm of the Uniting Church. I always knew it was involved in nursing homes and clinics and things, but I hadn’t fully grasped the extent of service that it provides for the country.

Uniting Care, it turns out, is the second biggest employer in Australia. Only the Government employs more people. There are service centres of various types across the whole country, and there’s an annual throughput budget of nearly two and a half billion dollars. It’s several times the size of the Salvos, Anglicare, St. Vinnies or any other community service organisation you might care to name.

All this isn’t meant to be boasted about, but the next time you hear someone whining about how they wish religious people would just mind their own business and leave them alone, spare a thought for the giant serviceless hole the community would fall into if we did leave it alone.

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point of the story was how cool it was to be among young Christians from a whole range of backgrounds, all getting along and talking about the big ideas we had for ways to serve our communities. It made a nice change from other conferences I’ve been to that have been all about whipping everyone up into a frenzied maniacal hype, or providing instructions on the only possible interpretation of whatever psalm happens to be the flavour of the month.

I’m still not prepared to accept any label other than “Christian,” “Australian” and (under certain circumstances) “Worship Musician,” but for the first time since I left Sydney I feel like I’m part of a church I can really get behind, rather than one I’ve got to walk alongside rolling my eyes. It’s a strange feeling. I don’t really know what to make of it.

I guess I’ll make of it what I will. You should too.




Garry with 2 Rs