« September 2006 | Main | November 2006 »
October 28, 2006
The Freedom that is Mountain Biking
I haven't been cycling for ages and today was the first day that I got out and about on my mountain bike. I went off to Abinger Hammer near Dorking to go off road cycling with Jon Wilson and Paul Smout and we had such a good time.
I'd forgotten how freeing it was to get out on my bike and hammer down some mental rugged paths at 30mph. Man it was good. We cycled up some very large hills too which was well worth it for the views at the top, and for the rapid decent back down again.
We've been doing a series at church called Passionate Living and Jason has been talking about appreciating the small things and the big things in life. I haven't really thought about it before but my cycling is my time and space to think about things (along with making sue I'm not going to kill myself hitting a rock) but I love it!
I'd really encourage everyone to find their place where they can experience God.... and that can be anywhere, doing anything.
Posted by daveszt at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 21, 2006
Sienna Ruth Greenwood
Congratulations to our friends Simon and Margo Greenwood who today at 16.04 had a little baby girl weighing in at 7lb 4oz. Sienna Ruth Greenwood! It’s all very exciting. Simon and Margo are great and will be amazing parents. I might put a bet on that she'll be a musician as well as it would be hard not to with Si and Margo as her parents!
We can’t wait to come down to visit you all!!
Posted by daveszt at 04:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 20, 2006
Laraine's 25th Birthday Party
Today was Laraine's 25th birthday party and we had a great night.
People came from as far as Watford to celebrate with Laraine and I know it meant an awful lot to her that you all could come. We hired out the church office and just had a chilled out evening.
Sarah Hammond and Ellie White were stars and decorated the hall whilst I set up lots of images of Laraine to project onto the wall and sorted out the music. I hope it was ok! The photos seemed to go down well as they were all taken over the time that we've been together (nearly 8 years now) so there were a lot of classics from when we were very young - well, about 17!
Happy Birthday Rain! I hope you had a great evening!
Posted by daveszt at 10:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 19, 2006
One Day In History
My friend Steve has been very excited about this... It's basically an idea (and I think a good one) by The National Trust who have come up with the idea of creating the biggest one day blog in history to report on 'A Day in the Life of...' The basic idea is to write down what you've done on the 17th October so that in x hundred years, someone can have a read and find out what people did in 2006. The papers have written a lot about it. The Times have an article here.
If you want to see what others have written, go here
I've done a post which is below and if you want to put one up, just go here.
"Hello World!
Well, today was a usual day in the life of Dave really and I’m now going to tell you all about it! :)
I woke up late at 06.20am and managed to run for the train which leaves at 06.38. I watched an Episode of CSI on my hard drive player on the train on the way to work and arrived at work at 7.30 for an enthralling day.
Work is pretty dull and I spend most of the time at work thinking what I’m going to do with the various projects that are going on in my life. Today's thoughts were focused around the Action groups that me, my wife Laraine and friend Ellie at church are going to set up. We had a meeting with Jon Franklin yesterday at the church office to discuss it and it's looking like a very good idea. The basic plan is to get paints, gardening equipment and all that sort of thing donated from various organisations and go and help people who have no money sort their homes out. It's going to be great, but we're still in the early stages. The project that I’m currently involved with at work is the Blackberry Upgrade project which involves giving out 250 new Blackberries. It’s pretty darn boring if I’m honest but I guess someone has to do it! Lucky me!
I finish work at 15.30 and on the way home tried to watch another episode of CSI but knew I was going to fall asleep on the train so just decided that sleeping was the way forward.
When I got home, I fixed some errors that Mike Smith had found on the website I made for him (http://www.aliassmithandsingh.co.uk) and then it was time for a bit of fun.
I have just bought a new computer game called Company of Heroes (this bit is very geeky but that's me really so no apologies there)! I sat and played that for 3 hours! Man it's a good game. But I do need a more powerful computer!
In the evening Laraine and I went out to see our friends Julie, Mark and Duncan. We went to the Toby Carvery in Ewell. Man I love Carvery. It’s basically all you can eat! Julie and Mark are getting married next September so we chatted about that and had a really nice evening.
Then Laraine and I went home, and went to bed.
And that's a day in the life of Dave Sztypuljak!"
Posted by daveszt at 01:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 14, 2006
Laraine's 25th Birthday Outing - Thorpe Park
Today we went to Thorpe Park for Laraine's birthday. A big thank you to J who managed to sort out free tickets for us all. One slight problem was that J double booked himself so wasn’t able to come along in the end! Ooops!
We all had a great time and thanks to modern camera timers were able to take the photo above. Ayla made everyone laugh by going on various 'big people' rides and pulling the same funny face throughout on all of them. I'll get an image up soon!
Paul and I were amazing by the new ride there called Stealth which propels you forward to 80mph in 2 seconds and then takes you flying up a vertical incline, over a hairpin and then flies you back again. Apparently it uses electromagnets so you get amazing traction and a huge burst of speed. I don’t really understand but it was very very cool!!
Thanks to everyone for a really nice day!
Posted by daveszt at 10:23 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 13, 2006
Silent Mobile Disco
Wednesday night was the first ‘Mobile Club Night’ at Liverpool Street Station. The very cool thing is that there was no music being played anywhere except through headphones from all the MP3 players that people had in their pockets.
I wish I’d known about this before because I think it would have been one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Seeing a few hundred people seemingly dancing to nothing has got to be worth a few laughs.
I think they’ll do it again after it was such a success.
Posted by daveszt at 12:28 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 11, 2006
GreenMyApple
They've basically made their site look like Apple's (hopefully they wont get sued) and have highlighted the fact that Apple are using components that, when resold back to developing countries are causing children to be exposed to dangerous chemicals contained within them.
Here's the opening statement on the Greenpeace site.
"We love Apple. Apple knows more about "clean" design than anybody, right? So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have agreed to abandon? A cutting edge company shouldn't be cutting lives short by exposing children in China and India to dangerous chemicals. That's why we Apple fans need to demand a new, cool product: a greener Apple."
You can check out more info here: http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/ and write letters to Steve Jobs and spread the word here: http://www.greenpeace.org/apple/mact.html
Now, it's not often that you can say that Apple have done something they shouldn't. So join me in getting them to change their ways!
Posted by daveszt at 01:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 10, 2006
Prison Break - Season 2
Well, I have been waiting ages but in my opinion, the best American drama is back in full swing.
I cant say too much about what has happened as I wouldn’t want to spoil it for people who haven’t seen the first season but I think it's one of the best programmes that i watch - and I probably watch too many of them!
The first season was basically about a chap called Michael Schofield trying to break his brother out of prison. The 2nd season is basically them on the run (which means you can work out what happens at the end of the 1st!) but that's all I’ll say.
If you haven’t seen it, watch it! It's great!
Posted by daveszt at 08:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 08, 2006
A Weekend in Wiltshire
This weekend, Laraine and I went off to a place called Calne where our friends Emma and Ben Trafford live.
It's a really nice village near Swindon which Laraine and I both find quite bizarre whilst living in London. Everything is slower, everyone seems to know each other and there is much more of a sense of community.
We travelled over to Devizes on the Saturday to watch Ben play football. It was a good game... for the first 30 seconds until Devizes scored, and then again after another minute or so. The score ended 7-2 to Devizes. Never mind Calne! But it was fun none the less :)
On the Sunday we travelled over to Wroughton (which is apparently the biggest village in England) to visit our friend from the camp we do in the summer (who I think has probably made more appearances on my blog than anyone else...) Lucy Cairns! We had a really nice time with her. My favourite part was when she took us to see Barbury Castle...... which is actually just a field as the castle was knocked down 1000 years ago or something like that. I was very disappointed to find there was nothing to look at. I think they should change the name to Barbury greenery or something along those lines!
Anyway, it was a great weekend where pretty much all we did was eat nice food and were completely stuffed by the time we got home.
Thanks for a great time Emma, Ben and Lucy!!
Posted by daveszt at 10:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack