On nick-names

Ever wonder how people get their nick-names?
Or, for that matter, their online (IM, chat etc) monikers?

With the exception of my IM moniker (which was the result of a LAN party, Ramen, and being up till four in the morning) I normally go by Fudi (Pronounced Food-EE) in point of fact if being called out from across a room I will normally respond to Fudi sooner than I will my own name.

Now some people get nick-names based on their initials (JP) or a shortening of their name (Matt, Kel, Lou, or Tam for example), other's for physical traits, (Opi, who was instrumental in coining my own nick-name, more on this later), and still others for personality or other quirks, (Sneezy, happy, grumpy, well you get the idea).

That being said my moniker of Fudi was actually coined by a good friend of mine who was also a Matt, who bore a some-what scary resemblance to Opi (Hence his nick-name).

My point? I'm not sure, I lost it somewhere between 5:30 and now.

(Ironically, there's at least one other fudi out there, and here I thought it would be a unique reference).

Right, well I've got to get ready to get myself into work.

Matthew "fudi" Furukawa signing off.

Current Stats:
Listening to: The House of Stone and Light by the Brown Derbies (Originally by Martin Page)
Reading: (See Previous Post)
Watching: The Clock!

I'm back!

Well technically I haven't been gone, but comcast has finally seemed to fix the problems with my internet connection. (For how long remains to be seen). I would have posted this last night but with practice and all, (not to mention the drum rack that was, sitting in front of the computer, and now off to the side) I didn't get a chance.

Current Stats:
Listening to: Collide by Howie Day
Reading: I swear I will finish the Any and the Elephant this weekend!
Watching: Nothing this early

East of Eden, (or Fruits and Faith)

Okay, so here's the deal I have pounds to shed. By shed I mean loose, and by loose I mean purge never to be seen again. (Especially after Thanksgiving, anyone else running into that?) It's not like it takes a phd in rocket science to figure out how to loose weight, consume less calories, increase body's burning of said calories. One of the more culturally accepted manner is to eat more vegetables and less fast food, whilst adapting to, or developing an exercise regime.

Let me tackle the last part first, exercise, as a drummer I consider myself moderately active, but I'm starting to wake up an hour earlier in the morning so I have time to actually "Work Out" as it were. So that's not much a problem a small matter of personal discipline is all.

Where said personal discipline (for me anyway) often flies out the window is on the subject of food. Food is a major issue for my whole family, (And not just the normal spread either, our family loves food culture in general). Now I'm not a grazer (who eats constantly) nor do I eat past the point I'm full, I do however have a particular unhealthy affection for food stuffs that have been fried deep in fat (more commonly known as deep fat fried).

While I do like a nice salad here and there and love my fresh fruits... I'm sorry but the flavor just doesn't compare to a nice juicy cheeseburger! (Which is not deep fat fried, but I digress, regardless it's still unhealthy).

Thus I come to my next point, has anyone else ever wondered what life was like in the Garden of Eden? I mean scripture says "trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food" so did they have fruits (Or vegetables) that tasted like, say pepperoni pizza?

Before you write this off as the crazed ramblings of a (soon to be) fast food deprived mind, consider this, Adam and Eve sinned against God by eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now from my world view as a Christ follower I accept the following, God created the Heavens and the earth, and everything on the earth in six days, he made a tree, a TREE that eating it's fruit gave the person who ate it knowledge of good and evil.

I accept all of that, (And honestly I still find it much more believable than evolution but that's another debate for a much longer post), having accepted all that, does a fruit that tastes like pizza sound so difficult to accept?

Lunch break is over so I must return to work, how fun.

Current Stats:
Listening to: You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban
Reading: The Ant and the Elephant (You'd think I'd have finished this by now)
Watching: Nothing at the moment

Find out what it means to me...

If you're wondering about the title of the post, it's the line that follows R.E.S.P.E.C.T. from Aretha Franklin's song of the same name (Respect).

Why?

Well some back history here I got a call on Saturday from Jeremy letting me know that we were changing our worship set to an acoustic setup. No big deal, if anything it makes setup and tear-down MUCH easier. so I'm playing hand drums as Elizabeth (our normal percussionist) is out on vacation this week, normally that would be bongos and congas but as I said she was on vacation it meant congas (I sent the bongos with her) and a Djembe which was borrowed from another team member (And probably spelled wrong) . On a side note it's a beautiful hand carved solid wood Djembe, (again with the spelling), it was a joy to play and hear. And after playing one I can now say with no doubt that I have to get one. Perhaps not a hand carved one but they have a distinct sound that I much enjoy.

Now let me clarify one other point before I get any farther, I respect the abilities of all my musicians and feel very blessed to work with the group of talented and inspired individuals who make up our praise team. Every single one of them, you have no idea how awesome they are. We (and by which I mean me or sometimes Jeremy, and once in a while our lead Pastor Daniel) have switched songs on them last minute and they never fail to sound amazing.

That being said my respect for that girl has gone way up. (And as I mentioned earlier it was fairly high to being with.) My reasoning? She plays those (blasted and yet wonderful) hand drums almost every week, during both services with little gripping or complaining. Me? My hands still hurt like the blazes and are swollen enough that typing this blog is taking twice as long as normal.

Now the service itself was great, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback about our foray into acoustical set-ups, and will probably make them a more regular occurance. However the next time we do one, I'm going to let our wonderfully talented (and now much more appreciated) percussionist play the hand drums while I play something safer and less painful (like... say a washboard).

Current Stats:
Listening to: Untitled by Simple Plan
Reading: The Ant and the Elephant
Watching: Nothing at the moment

It is indeed Black Friday

I do hope that everyone had a good Thanksgiving.
For those of you who are brave (or insane) enough to fight (in some cases literally) the crowd my hat's off to you (I still think you're nuts though). Before you protest about how good the deals are (And some of them are indeed that good) I'd much rather take a day to catch up on reading and projects then save an extra $300.00 on a new labtop, (really the only thing that was truly tempting. Not to mention (And I hate to tell you this if you just spent 5 hours in line since midnight) but a lot (though not all) of deals can be grabbed online.

Jumping back to the beginning of the paragraph I'd like to take a moment to thank any and every service men and women currently active and otherwise who are out there to busy fighting for their country to fight the lines at the mall. Thank you, know the regardless of the headlines on CNN or the political speeches, your country respects, cares about and thanks you.

Ok moving on from another subject other then shopping, I finally have a linux box running Ubuntu 7.10, but that will soon change to Ubuntu studio vers. 7.04 probably this weekend when I have enough time to tool around with it. Why the downgrade? because last I checked studio was still at 7.04 and it has lots of preinstalled goodies (Audio/video/graphics)

Speaking of weekend project my little cousin came home for the weekend, during which time she did a bit more work on the "Wall Mural" at the entrance, I'll post a picture when I dig the camera out of storage.

Current Stats:
Listening to: Lifesong by Casting Crowns
Reading: The Ant and the Elephant
Watching: Nothing at the moment

Testing, testing (tap, tap, tap)

Right, well I've been encouraged to start blogging by several people.
I think the conversation went something like, "Hey man you're emails are so verbose you should start a blog." I think they were trying to tell me I write too much.

I'm still not sure if they were serious or not, regardless I decided it was time to join the gazillion other bloggers out there, it's part of my patriotic and civic duty to partake in the great Blogging tradition. Right...

No really!

Ok, the first part is true, and the reason why I'm now blogging is because I'm avoiding writing this week's musicnote's email which is currently 2 days late. Something else I have to do while I'm on my lunch break, (Which is why I'm now typing) as internet is down at home. They're coming Friday to fix the line, what I don't get is that when we called, the [insert insulting term of your choice here]s knew there was a problem with the outside line, arg!

Anyway back on topic, Expect this blog to read something similar to my musicnotes emails, hopefully with less typos and most likely longer and far more random posting topics. Much more random posting topics.

~Matta Ne
Matthew Furukawa

Current Stats:
Listening to: Kiss that Frog by Peter Gabriel
Reading: The Ant and the Elephant
Watching: Nothing at the moment.