Chinese New Year symbols

Hey me darlings - let me tell you about this fun thing we did at cell last night. Blogging about my Chinese New Year weekend reminded me. We met again for cell after a long break so we did a word game as an ice-breaker. Then we started talking about how the others had spent their CNY (no, I did not tell them how I had spent mine:)

But we started talking about the things associated with Chinese New Year and I realised that it could be just as hard for a Chinese Christian during CNY as it is for me during Deepavali (remember I blogged about that too?). So we started thinking of what could be Christian about the things associated with Chinese New Year and we came up with this:

• Red banner hung across door way = a proclamation that the Blood of Christ covers this household!
• new clothes = As a person takes off old, dirty clothes in exchange for something clean and new, so the believer can take off the old, filthy “self” and exchange it for the clean and pure “self” provided by Christ.
• Greet elders with oranges = pray a blessing that the Fruits of the Spirit would be with the person
• sweet snacks = because His name is like honey on our lips and He has promised "with honey from a rock I will satisfy you" (Psalm 81:6)
• firecrackers & other noise-makers = "Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise.." (Psalm 98:4)

I really think my cell members are inventive :)

I'm not blue anymore!

I feel great. I have had a good week. What made this week good? For one thing, it was a short working week! Ha ha! That explains it all! Oh that every week would consist of 3 days of work and 4 days of hang-loose-and-live-life! We had a glorious long weekend from Saturday to Tuesday for Chinese New Year and I really enjoyed myself.

On Saturday met my kakis from JI - Rita, Shamala & Mini for lunch. We went to the buffet lunch at Raffles Plaza and it was actually this extended lunch-cum-high tea thing so we started at 12.30pm and sat there till 3.30pm when I had to reluctantly leave as I was going to attend the Saturday Evening Service at 4 (Oh Joshua's sermon was worth rushing back for!). We had a great time. It is so comfortable when you talk to old friends and now that we are all split up (with only Sham left at MI) we had different stories to tell. But more than the stories is the ease with which we can talk about our struggles and the laughter that comes from the "remember that time when..." stories. Gosh, we have come a long way - from when I was having my babies to now when Mini has toddlers! It was good.

I decided not to go to the service on Sunday largely because I felt quite bad that I hadn't been cooking Sunday lunch for the past few weeks. I have committed to translating the Baptism class lessons into Tamil for a lady called Shanti who has just accepted Christ and that means that I have to be in church by 9.30am. The class finishes just in time for me to attend service at 11.00 so by the time I get back it's past 1 and we end up going out to eat. I know D prefers to eat at home so since there was no baptism class this Sunday I decided that I would just attend service on Sat and cook Sunday lunch. Not too bad - made nasi lemak and chicken sambal. It was a lazy day for us - of course we couldn't go anywhere but we had rented a whole bunch of VCDs and dear Ratna gave me 2 bottles of the best pineapple jam tarts I have ever eaten and it was bliss!And oh, Neen, if you are reading this - I watched 'Dor'. Thank you thank you for recording that movie for me. It was so so beautiful. I can't wait to see the other Hindi movies you gave me.

Highlight of Monday was meeting up with Saro in the afternoon for our secret rendezvous at the Pan Pacific - our massage!! Ooh I had a really good therapist this time. She really worked out the kinks in my back and I have booked her for my next session too. I am such a massage junkie. I wish I could afford to go every week! But it was bliss. And of course it gave us a chance to catch up with each other as well - her woes in school and my woes in office. Just a huge dump-all-the-angst-and-live-life session.

On Tues met Siva for lunch & since it was the last birthday he was celebrating as a bachelor, I decided to buy him lunch :) Went to The Vilage at Heeren and had a nice long lunch and lots of airtime about getting married and managing expectations and coping with worklife... At one point I just sat there and thought how blessed I was that I had all these kids who still wanted me to be part of their lives.That they had sat in my class and I had not messed up.That they were now adults - studying abroad, working, even teachers themselves, getting married - and we were moving on in our relationships. No longer my students for me to bully but people I really love and with whom I could talk about larger things that mattered in life beyond school.

Yah - well, that was my CNY weekend. Then went back to office for a day before we had 2 days of workplan seminar on Thu and Fri and here we are on a Saturday morning again. Just came back from a climb up Bukit Timah Hill followed by our customary breakfast with Carol, Dot, Chit and Saro and you know what? Life is good.

Praying for the Youth

Young people have been on my heart this week. And I’ve been praying that the decisions we make that affect them will really be for their betterment and not for ours. What set me off has been the articles I have been reading on Interactive & Digital Media. The buzz here at work has to do with how IDM is the next big thing – or as my more savvy colleagues would say, the big thing that is happening while other dinosaurs like me are sleeping…

So why does it worry me? Because if it is true that more than half our children are plugged into the world of gaming and that the way they learn is very different from the way the adults do, then I worry about its implications; not on economics, which is where all the attention seems to be, but on human relationships. I wonder what would be the effect on the youngster who is no longer watching violence on TV or the movies but actually participating in wreaking destruction as a player? I remember how Owen’s War Poems didn’t touch some of my students - because they had seen worse on TV or the movies. Words on a page did not move them for they had seen worse graphic images. But now, the young are no longer passive viewers, but perpetrators, the ones doing the virtual killing and maiming and being rewarded for it. What kind of emotional distancing would result from this?

And the thrill of young people being able to multi-task at what is called ‘twitch speed’ (personally speaking that sounds rather epileptic J). What of it? What impact would that have, if we cater to it in the classroom? Would the young then come to expect that the classroom must offer them multi-sensory experiences? That any experience that does not give them an answer or response immediately would be abandoned while they go in search of another? Then what of the value of ‘delayed gratification’ that Goleman was talking of? And what about the ones who are slow to talk? Would anyone have patience to listen? What about the value of reflection? The pleasure that comes out of teasing meaning out of the written word?

I feel I am on the cusp of the passing away of a way of life and the beginning of another. I wonder if all soon-to-be-50s feel this. Perhaps I am an alarmist. But I worry for the young who would be swept away by the speed, for the young who would not feel the pleasure of being immersed in a book, the solitude of being with one’s own thoughts, the ease of relationships built out of long hours of conversations. Yes, they will be having virtual conversations with young people all over the world but what will they learn that would make this person a friend? Yes, they will be quick-minded and analytical but will they know themselves better? Buying land on Second Life is fine; but we need to teach our young people to live this life well first.