I Am Blessed

Wow I can’t believe a week has gone past since I last updated. It was a hectic week and an even more hectic weekend that actually makes coming to the office feel like a rest-stop ;) Phew! Many things happened.

I ran a workshop on pedagogy on Friday that took some time to prepare for. The workshop went well I thought, and I was really happy when Pat, one of my Heads, told me this morning that she felt I had a calming effect on people and that I had a knack for bringing things into perspective. I feel really affirmed and I’m glad she bothered to tell me that.

On Wednesday I met Neena for dinner at The Vila’ge at Heeren. It was a nice quiet evening of catching up. A complete contrast to the raucous evening I had had at Esmirada :) But then that is the really nice thing about my friends – that they are all so different and when we meet we talk about really different things. But when I want to have deep, soul-searching conversations then it has to be with Wai Yin and Neena because they listen so well and give me space to be myself and I never feel judged no matter how much I mess up. So Neena and I talked about family, our own needs, and what’s nice is that we meet each other only about once a year and we just pick up where we left off.

Well, right up to Thursday I only had ‘pick up Maya’ pencilled in my diary for Saturday. but suddenly there was an exponential increase of activities for Saturday. On Thursday, Siong messages me and says can we meet for lunch / tea / dinner before Neena leaves and then I ask Neena and miraculously Sunil says ok when she asks and there it was – a dinner date on Saturday between Siong, Neena and me. Then wonder of wonders on Friday, I was going down the escalator at Great World after lunch when I saw She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named going up the escalator on the other side! So of course I had to scream at her (for which I got scolded) and that ended with our Saturday dinner becoming a foursome because how could she not meet up with us? We hung out at NUS together for goodness sake!

So Saturday was a day of great excitement as Maya finally arrived - after months of praying and deliberating and planning! And then I met my buddies from my NUS days for dinner at the Hotel Phoenix Coffee House in the evening. I took photos but She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named threatened to decapitate me if I put the photo on the blog and I am not allowed to mention her name under pain of similar death threats so details shall remain murky. Suffice it to say we had a good time, even though She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had to rush off as she had another appointment. We have made vague promises about keeping in touch & I really hope we do, because I have many fond memories of our days in NUS. We were a gang – Neena, Siong, She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named , Kenneth & me. And I’m glad our paths have crossed again.

But scheduling was a big madness on Saturday as I also wanted to visit a friend at church whose mother had passed away and then my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law was hospitalised and I wanted to look in on her as well. So there I was on Saturday – up in the morning, cook lunch, take cab to wake, come back from wake & get a ride to the airport from Vijay to pick up Maya, then shower and go to SGH to visit the mother-in-law, then off to dinner with the NUS gang. Sunday was a blur of cooking in the morning, church, then lunch + washing up, then collapse for a much needed nap, then of course the usual Sunday afternoon ritual of tea for Durai. I’m just glad we decided to eat out for dinner. We also borrowed a DVD and watched ‘Music & Lyrics” after dinner. It was actually funnier than I had thought it would be – in fact I couldn’t get “POP! Goes my heart” out of my head :)

So here I am at the beginning of another work week. And as I was thinking over all that had happened these past few weeks, I just feel really blessed that I have met so many of my friends this year. I think this year, more than in previous years, somehow, I have managed to see a number of people who have mattered in my life.

But most of all, I am really happy today because an old friend and I set right a friendship that had gotten strained for all the wrong reasons. I have had this friend on my heart the whole weekend and today we agreed to 'take a mulligan'. The incident never happened; all is forgiven; we start over on a new page. God is good.