TreeByTheStream

Sleepless in Singapore

2012-01-13T13:42:00.000+08:00

In all fairness I must say I am sauntering through menopause with far more ease than a number of women I know. So my daughters, you might not have it too bad either.

I've managed to keep the weight gain somewhat at bay, the mood swings haven't been drastic and the weepy phase coincided with a tough time so I didn't quite know for sure whether I was menopausal-depressive or just sad :) Thankfully, there have been no drenching hot flashes either and all that happens is that the tips of my ears turn red and feel so warm I am sometimes concerned they might glow. The days when I made silly mistakes and felt disoriented used to disturb me, until I read 'Hot Flashes From Heaven', the comforting book J bought me. Since then I have learnt to just tell people around me that "I'm having a Brain Fog Day" and then just live with the wool in the brain for that day :)

The one effect that has finally gotten me is the insomnia. I don't have a problem falling asleep, but I can't stay asleep. I wake up in the wee hours of the morning and then can't fall back asleep.

I began the battle by stopping coffee and tea after lunch. And yes, I do exercise. Then I tried a number of pillows and now I have 1 water pillow, 3 neck support pillows and still will the clock hands to move at night. I have done the warm-bath-before-bed thing, the milk-before-bed-thing and the deep-breathing-while-thinking-pleasant-thoughts thing.

Apparently there are some saintly women who take this sleeplessness in their stride and are glad for the hours of sleeplessness and use these extra hours to read and pray. I am not one of them.

Finally it was time to see a doctor and he gave me a magic blue pill which was the best invention of man ever! I had great sleep and my family (and friends I travelled with) had great fun because I would fall asleep suddenly in the middle of various tasks (reading a book, sms-ing), sitting down, and had to be put to bed by the kind souls around me. But the supply ran out and M said that the wonderful blue pill would cause memory loss - so that ended 10 nights of blissful sleep.

For the past week, I have been sleepless, bordering on depression, grouchy and rudely yawning through meetings, workshops and dinners with friends.

But things are looking more promising. I have had a number of people offer me remedies - two friends pray for me (especially Jeremiah 31:25!) one friend brought me herbal tea, one colleague skyped his mother in Canada to ask for remedies to my sleeplessness (valarian root!), my ex-boss brought me his wife's natural sleep pills (hahahahaha) and my niece made her doc friend prescribe me medication :)

So I feel hopeful. I have new options to try! Maybe, I shall sleep again!

My Sketchpad

2012-01-12T13:06:00.000+08:00

You know how we talk about choosing to view the glass as half empty or half full? My natural tendency is towards the former. But I have over the years learnt to recognise this in myself and after the initial hand-wringing and doomsday prognosis to make myself explore what a more positive outlook could be. This is a habit of mind that I struggle with a great deal. I tend towards whinging, complaining and "I-told-you-so"s. I know my daughters will happily concur :)

So this year appears to me, so far, to be one of those not-so-good years. R's friend, P, has a theory that years that end in prime numbers are better years - I have been thinking over my past years ever since she made that pronouncement :)

The main reason that makes me feel this way is my empty planner. I have events and meetings lined up for Jan and Feb, and then zilch. Those empty months trouble me. It is as if this year will come and go and I will have nothing to say for 2012. I will not have a significant event that will help me recall, "That was the year when I ..." Then I remember 2010 was like this and I think to myself maybe P is on to something :)

But now the wiser Vara is in attendance. And I remember that if 2010 was empty at the beginning of the year, there was a reason for it and the emptiness gave me space to deal with the curve ball that was thrown at me. And I remember that I learnt the value of unplanned time and spontaneity during my trip to Melbourne in Sept 2011.

So, I choose to say - 2012 looks to be a year of promise. It is a sketchpad with the picture already drawn in invisible ink. And my Father will colour it in, one page at a time. Maybe it will be a page-turner of a year. Maybe it will have some blank pages. Maybe sometimes I will colour outside the lines instead of waiting for God. Maybe there will be ink blots.

We will just have to wait and see, won't we? :)

My Watched-over Life

2012-01-11T12:47:00.000+08:00

2012 has begun and we are already 10 days into the new year. I have not done my usual reflection of the past year and resolutions for the new year. It is a ritual that soothes me and gives me a semblance of control - sometimes I connect dots, sometimes perspectives shift, and almost always I am able to give thanks.

As I prayed on the eve of this new year, however, I was drawn to Psalm 121:

"I lift my eyes up to the hills -

Where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord,

the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip -

he who watches over you will not slumber;

indeed, he who watches over Israel

will neither slumber or sleep.

The Lord watches over you -

the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

the sun will not harm you by day

nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all harm -

he will watch over your life;

the Lord will watch over your coming and going

both now and forevermore."

And I am comforted by the phrase "the Lord watches over you".

I have read this psalm many times, especially when I travel, for I am comforted by the promise that God watches over my "coming and going". But somehow the declaration that God watches over my life struck me with a new excitement this new year's eve. That the God who is the creator of earth and heaven watches over my life assures me - that the dots will be connected; that there is a plan despite the haphazardness of my life; that despite my wilfulness, pettiness, fears and mistakes, my life, in the end, will not be a sorry tale. It will be a blessed 2012; as it was a blessed 2011.

Everything That Happened Between 4 Nov & 27 Nov

2011-11-28T21:49:00.001+08:00

In one long post, or to be more Shakespearean, in "one fell swoop", I am going to update all that has been happening in my life. Because, yes I really DO think you are interested :)

The most important event was that I celebrated my 54th birthday! I think Facebook is the greatest invention of the 21st century because thanks to FB, I had a record number of more than 80 people wish me a happy birthday this year :) Coming on top of the fact that this year my birthday fell on a public holiday, it made me feel like the world had stopped to celebrate my birthday ;)

J made sure I had a very happy birthday and I loved how my dear kawan swooped silently to our brunch venue and left me flowers and a lovely gift package...

Pink themed flowers & 'wellness' present from my kawan

Brunch with mimosas at Graze, Rochester Park


Tea with my dear JI Mamis

Sangria & tapas at Villa Enrique, Dempsey Hill

The flowers from my kawan and the JI Mamis

Dinner at Chili's with my spiritual children Johnson, Yvonne & Freya

And thus ended my birthday...

Since then I have been busy visiting schools. As part of a work project that I'm involved in, I visited 2 secondary school and 3 primary schools before the schools closed for the year. It was a lot more fun than I had thought. I especially enjoyed interviewing the students :) And I felt the pull of school again. As the year draws to a close, I look back and I still wonder what is the plan God has for me. Talking to the students came so easy and no matter whether they were the high ability pupils or the low ability pupils, pitching the conversation was almost instinctive. I realise afresh how much I miss teaching. Running workshops for teachers just doesn't give me the same buzz.

I have settled at work and am not chafing as much as I did at the beginning of the year, but there is still a yearning in me to get back into a classroom. I have learnt so much during the last 8 years that I have been away from school and I'm itching to try things out in my very own classroom. Yet as each year passes I seem to move further and further away.

Insane Life

2011-11-03T06:43:00.000+08:00

I miss writing in my blog. I can't believe I didn't even write on my blog's birthday this year. It's November and I haven't written in the whole of October. I am unbelievably busy at work, my every weekday evening is filled with one commitment or another, the weekends come and go. I am sleeping badly. Unread books sit in a precarious pile by my bed. I had a close call with an unpaid credit card bill last month. My life has been revolving around work so much this year that I find little inclination to get online at the end of the day. I find it hard to call anyone or email - I still haven't sent Rachel a gift for her baby who is no longer 'newborn'. I just veg out in front of the tv. If I had not engaged a personal trainer this year, I'm sure I would be a round ball of chocolate. And I can write this now because I'm stealing time from my quiet time with God. There are 2 Varas - one goes to work, does what needs to be done and fills the day; one sits waiting for a saner life.

Melbourne Days 2 & 3

2011-09-26T20:33:00.001+08:00

I used to wonder why the weather was a common conversation topic, but having experienced the vagaries of the weather here in Melbourne, I can understand how it can provide much fodder for discussion even among strangers. In the book I am reading now ('Making the Most of Midlife') there is a quote from Jung on midlife - "We cannot live the afternoon of life according to life's morning; for what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie." I can't help thinking this describes Melbourne's weather perfectly :)

Yesterday and today were far better than my first day here - largely because the sun came out! Today I actually didn't put on my jacket the whole day until around 4pm when I began to feel a chill. Unfortunately the weather forecasts warn me that this is going to last only one more day so I shall enjoy it while it lasts.

On Sunday I went with R to the Arkhouse which is the home church where she worships. I liked the homely feel of the church and the sermon was thoughtful. I liked how the group was small enough for people to ask questions to clarify their understanding of the sermon. R played the keyboard and the worship songs were familiar. I was uncomfortable, though, with the way communion was administered and I missed the comforting voice of Joshua / Rennis pronouncing the absolution and benediction. R and I decided our spirituality was tied to our personality - I just like structure :)

After church my dear friends G and P picked us up and we went to a Greek tavern for lunch. I've known their children since they were babies and it seemed unreal to see them as strapping 19 and 17 year olds. Yet they are still the same sweet kids, willing to hug and tolerate being hugged. I hope to spend more time with them the next weekend. As usual G ordered far too much food and R & I ended up packing our leftovers.

The restaurant was hosting two big parties and I think there was a lot of food ordered because the waiter gave us free food - free vegetables, a free Greek salad and free baklava for dessert! Both parties were of old people. The party just behind our table seemed to be celebrating the birthday of a lady and at the end she stood up to make a speech. She held up a hand-drawn diagram of a concentric circle and spoke of how that represented our life's journey. She said we began our life on the outer most ring and along the winding ring were all life's experiences - school, friends, marriage, childbirth, illnesses - and as we age we travel more and more inward towards our self. In the end, she said we move towards being just our Self, moving past all life experiences, and we will have only our Self at the end. The reaction to this at her table was mixed - one old gentleman shouted "You are a pessimist!" :) My table was busy making fun of me for being intrigued by her circle and predicting how I was going to plagirise the digram and make a speech at my 80th and pretend it was an original idea.

Today, I met up with N. I love our friendship. I don't think we have talked in a year, yet we could talk easily, the years fell away and it was as if we were back in uni. Our life experiences are so very different, but there is comfort in talking to N. The best bit about her is she gives me permission to be me. And I as I type this, I realise that is an endearing part of G as well - he lets me be me, much as he disagrees with my choices, beliefs, even values. These are good friends and I am glad I made this visit.

This holiday is supposed to be about me finding my voice. About me making a decision and more importantly knowing why I made the decision. I have tried consciously not to do what I usually do like make lists, plan what I was going to do each day. I am trying to take each day as it comes. I am focusing on having honest conversations; on doing things I like doing, even if it is doing nothing. What I keep hearing is Benny's words - "please yourself."

Melbourne Day 1

2011-09-24T18:27:00.000+08:00

So here I am - in Melbourne! Lesson #1 - never take packing advice from Ganesh Chandran again! I am frozen. This happens without fail - I just don't get this packing for cooler climates. I have a suitcase full of t-shirts because everyone said to "layer" but what I need right now is a thicker jacket than I brought! I think that might be the first purchase I make tomorrow!

Anyway, my departure was a very eventful one. I left home at 4.30pm for my 7.25pm flight, thinking I had plenty of time. But I just couldn't get a cab! After failing to flag one, I tried calling for one but no cab responded to my call and then one finally accepted the call at 5.00pm. But he couldn't find our apartment block and by the time he arrived, it 5.20pm. No sooner had we left Dover Road, we ran into a huge jam. Then I made the wrong call - although he suggested an alternative route, I thought the jam was just at the point when we were turning into the expressway. I was wrong :( I realised soon enough that because of the F1 races, traffic had been diverted away from the city centre and traffic was backed up on all the major expressways! By the time I reached the airport it was 6.25pm and the meter read $32.00.

More anxiety followed at the airport, because would you believe it, the ONLY flight that didn't have a check-in row number was the one I was desperately trying to board. I walked the entire length of Terminal 2 to find the MAS counter was the absolutely last one. I didn't have time to thank God I made it to the airport before the staff said there was some problem with my e-ticket and went off to consult her superior. More anxiety, more desperate prayers. That was sorted out and I was given the boarding pass with the comment, "You must walk very quickly. It is the last gate. Go to the boarding gate now." All my brisk walking skills were tested in the next half hour.

I had to make a stop though, for a bite to eat. Picked up a nice tomato & mozarella baguette and water for the princely sum of $6.00, and never had a chance to taste it because I left it in the trolley :( I had gone through security and into the boarding area before I discovered this and I actually went back through security again to retrieve my food; but the ever efficient cleaning team of Changi Airport had already disposed of it :(

So it was a very hungry, hassled and mopey Vara who boarded the connecting flight to KL. Fortunately, the rest of the journey was smooth. It must have been all the power of all the prayers that were activated :) I even had an aisle seat on the KL-Melbourne sector, which was a huge bonus - considering how late I had checked in! I also sat beside a nice Australian who helped me with my luggage.

So landed in Melbourne this morning - when the temperature was a bone-chilling 7 degrees C, was met by my good friend Pushpa, with whom I had a nice long leisurely breakfast and drank the first of the many coffees I plan to drink in Melbourne. I've spent the best part of today on the couch in R's living room - because it is closest to the heater. I hope I venture beyond this couch tomorrow :)

Flash Mob

2011-09-19T14:58:00.001+08:00

I want to be part of a flash mob!!!!! This is soooo much fun!!!!!

I Deserve It

2011-09-16T13:40:00.000+08:00

J and I went away last weekend to Penang. I needed that break after all the days and nights of preparing for the Launch. Coming back to work on Tue I realised I was the only one who had taken a day off and had a break. The rest of the people in the office had turned up for work on Monday!

I felt a little guilty actually to see so many tired faces around me on Tues, but that feeling didn't last long. I am glad I planned ahead and took leave. I am glad I made arrangements to physically leave Singapore. Even though all J and I did was sleep, lie in bed, eat and watch tv desultorily, it still felt like I was a world away from work and that helped!

There is something about hotels I absolutely love. Yes I know I have said it before, but hey! this is my blog so I can repeat myself! :) We stayed at a lovely hotel called Lone Pine. It is an old colonial building that has been turned into a hotel and the staff were among the friendliest I have ever met in hotels. Our first night was a bit of a disaster though because the hotel was the venue for a Chinese wedding and we had to endure the kaoaoke cacophany till 11pm because being an old colonial building the windows had louvre shutters instead of thick glass doors. Mercifully, our second night was quiet.

One of the perks of growing older, I think, is that I have learnt to enjoy the pleasures of life. Once I would have postponed taking leave till others took theirs. Once I would have thought long and hard about the wisdom of spending money and flying to Penang and staying in a hotel. But now, I know, I answer to noone but God and me.

Excellent Advice

2011-09-16T13:15:00.003+08:00

Here is a gem shared by J:
"To all the girls who are in a hurry to have a boyfriend or get married, a piece of Biblical advice - Ruth patiently waited for her mate Boaz. While you are waiting on YOUR Boaz, don't settle for any of his relatives: Broke-az, Po-az, Lyin-az, Cheatin-az, Dumb-az, Cheap-az, Lockedup-az, Goodfornothin-az, LAzy-az, and especially his third cousin Beatinyo-az. Wait on your Boaz and make sure he respects Yoaz."

Hahahahahahahaha. Excellent advice :)

Over

2011-09-07T23:14:00.001+08:00

Two big events dominated my public life this year and as of today, they are both over. The commemorative book for my church's 40th anniversary (P40) has been published and the official launch of my organisation that has consumed us is over.

I had hoped to have done more writing and editing for the P40 commemorative book, but the work for the launch swamped me. I ended up writing only 1 chapter of the book. Nevertheless it was the chapter that was closest to my heart - the chapter that described the children's and youth ministry of my church. It is entitled 'God's Hand Raises the Next Generation' and chronicling how our ministry to the young has grown gave me a great deal of joy.

As part of the P40 celebrations, my church had invited many of the past vicars. One of the past vicars, Rev Roger Campbell who was the church's second vicar from 1978 to 1985, talked of how the church he pastors in England now has a congregation that comprises solely of people above 60. He lamented that the faith had not been passed down through the generations in that village where he now lives. At the P40 service last weekend, looking around me at the hundreds of children, teenagers and young adults in the congregation I had to give thanks over how God had raised the next generations in SJSM.

Two days later, it was the Launch of my organisation. I am especially proud of the launch because our guest of honour was our former Prime Minister, Mr LKY. He is retired now and it was a privilege to have him officiate at the event. It was an even greater privilege for me to have written his speech. It was surely by God's favour alone that the speech was accepted largely intact by my bosses and by the GOH. I am a huge fan of LKY and can't think of any other man who has a left a nation as his lifetime's legacy. He has aged a great deal, his stride doesn't have the same confident swagger, his voice trembles a little, but he still inspires awe and yes, a rush of love, in me.

Just minutes before I had stood at the wide bay windows of the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre and looked at the sweeping vista of the Singapore skyline. And then there, before us, was the architect of my country, reading words I had written. I have now tasted the thrill of Toby Ziegler and Sam Seaborn.

Social Life, With Friends (kinetic typography)

2011-09-03T23:38:00.000+08:00

I wonder... maybe this is true... At any one point in life, I do seem to have only two... Hmmm.

Collision of Cultures

2011-09-03T21:12:00.000+08:00

So I finished working out in the gym. Went to the hotel locker room, got my stuff out of the locker and headed to the shower. Caucasian lady walks out of a cubicle on my left, completely naked. Door on my right opens and Chinese lady walks in from the pool with a 6 year old boy in tow. All four freeze. Boy's eyes are as big as saucers. Caucasian woman gives a little wave and cheerily says "Oh sorry my dear" and walks into shower cubicle. Chinese woman shakes her head, drags boy into toilet cubicle, berating him in Chinese - not sure for what - for staring, may be? And I think, "wow, what just happened here?" :)

Passing On

2011-08-24T20:25:00.000+08:00

I attended the funeral of an old teacher today. I was 17 when she taught me History. I would hesitate to say she was an inspirational teacher, but I do remember her as a very kind one.

I had expected to see some old classmates, but there were none. In a way I'm relieved because it would have made the day a more poignant one - to see others who had sat in class with me, trying to scribble notes, now standing beside me as I paid my respects. Having teachers pass on is a little like having parents pass on I think. It reminds us we are no longer who we were once - students, teenagers, a whole lifetime of living ahead of us.

The funeral also made me realise something I never thought about as a teenager - that my teachers too had other selves. They were mothers and fathers, they became grandparents; they cooked, shopped, baked, exercised, played games, did a million other things that we students did not see and did not ask about. I did not know my teachers as individuals. When I shook her son's hand all I could say was "Your mother was my teacher." I hope he understood.

I would like to think my students know me differently. I hope they know there are many things I care about. I hope they know I loved teaching them. I hope they will have stories about me to tell my children and my grandchildren.

Incensed

2011-08-12T20:01:00.001+08:00

I was planning to blog about what's been happening this month but I am so incensed by a recent news report that I cannot write about anything else.

Three days ago there was a report on the increasing intolerance among neighbours living cheek by jowl in the HDB apartments here in Singapore, and how a number of them are too quick to seek mediation from the Community Mediation Centre instead of talking through issues.

What incensed me, and a number of netizens, is the case highlighted in the report of how newly-arrived citizens from China demanded that their Indian neighbours stop cooking curry and stop eating curry because they couldn't stand the smell of the dish. The Mediation Centre negotiated an agreement that the Indian family would only cook their curry dishes when the Chinese family was not at home. In return, the Indian family asked that the Chinese neighbours at least give their curry dish a try.

I don't know what incenses me more - that the Chinese neighbours had the temerity to ask of people of another culture not to eat food that is traditionally theirs; that the mediator actually thought this was a successfully mediated case worthy of quoting in the national newspaper; that this case was even considered worthy of mediation instead of the Chinese neighbours being told to learn how to live in multi-cultural Singapore; or that the Indian family actually offered the solution of offering to adjust their cooking schedule to suit the intolerance of their neighbours.

I am reminded of something my brother-in-law said when J interviewed him: "Generally, we Indians are a contented lot". Contented, non-confrontational, pushovers.

Snails and Ketchup

2011-07-24T19:05:00.000+08:00

On Friday I watched a physical theatre performance entitled 'Snails and Ketchup' by a hearing-impaired artiste Ramesh. It was a last minute plan hatched by Becky and me and I feel privileged to have watched it. I last watched Ramesh perform more than 10 years ago. But now, as then, I was struck most of all, by his humility, affability and sweet-naturedness that somehow transcended the physical space between the stage and reached the audience. He played 4 characters in a dysfunctional family and the way in which he portrayed the different characters was remarkable. Oh, I forget - he played 5 characters ... the snails too!

One moment in particular was poignant for me. Married to an uncaring, harsh man, the mother copes by silencing her hurt and the hurts of her children. Ramesh conveyed this through miming her sewing up her lips. That's the moment that stayed with me.

I Know You Love Me

2011-07-15T13:24:00.001+08:00

"Even when I fail You, I know You love me." Who else Lord, but You?

Encouraged

2011-07-15T06:31:00.000+08:00

I have a meeting with a poet this morning. I googled him to prepare for our meeting, so I won't be an ignoramus, and learnt this is his favourite quote: "Nada te turbe, solo Dios basta" (St Teresa of Avila).

It means - "Nothing shall disturb you; God is enough."

I like this man already.

Why

2011-07-12T07:24:00.001+08:00

Sometimes, I wonder - if I had lived in Biblical times, who would I have been most like? I wonder if I would have even followed Jesus, because I would have been suspicious. I would have questioned; I would have scorned.

I hope, though, that Jesus would have sought me out like he sought out the Samaritan woman at the well. And if He had, I know I would have been Martha, rushing around getting things done - not the Mary that I like to think I would have been. And I understand dear doubting Thomas - I can almost hear myself saying exactly what he did, "unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe". Such disdain, such foolish self-confidence, I know I am capable of.

On Sunday, I befriended a visitor to church and there was a moment, when she asked me, why did I become a Christian. And I missed the opportunity of that moment. I was tongue-tied. I couldn't explain. The Bible says, to always be ready to give a reason for my belief. Yet, at that moment, all I could say was "It's a long story". Because it is. It's a long story of a God who chased after me, a God who loved me even when I scorned Him, a God who intervened and turned me away from sin, a God who continued to hold me even when I doubted, when I faltered, when I failed Him.

I've been thinking of that moment these past two days and wish I had had an answer ready for her. But I can't rehearse. That seems too glib. The words don't come out pat. I need to tell her, I am a Samaritan woman who has sinned again and again because I was searching for Someone to trust, believe and hope in. I am Thomas who doubts and yet, has Him telling me again and again, "Do not disbelieve, but believe". I am Peter, who says "I do not know him" yet never have Him leave me. I am Gomer, faithless, yet wrapped up in Love. That's why.

A Favourite Poem

2011-07-08T14:33:00.002+08:00

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

- W. B. Yeats

Staycation

2011-07-05T23:07:00.000+08:00

J and I had a staycation on Sunday. For the uninitiated, that is a vacation in a local hotel, without actually leaving the country. This has been a family tradition for us long before the term was invented and it is something we still like doing, though now we have spilt over from a single room with a king-sized bed to a king-sized bed with an extra bed to 2 connecting rooms :) Strangely, for reasons I can't fathom, I usually feeling a little embarrassed telling anyone we are checking into a local hotel. But we have always had good times during our hotel getaways.

Even before the children came, D and I liked staying in hotels and the old ANA Hotel (now no longer there, up on Nassim Hill) was an old family favourite because we could get a room with buffet breakfast for $100 a night. When the children came, staycations were a good way to have a holiday, without the hassle of travel, leaving home yet with the comforts of home within easy reach.

And both J & R love staycations. There is something about the smooth luxury of hotel sheets, the thick towels, the bouncy beds, the fluffy pillows that entices. Then there is the decadence of housekeeping and the miracle of fresh sheets and towels every day. For the girls, four stars must be aligned before it can be a described as a great holiday - at least one meal delivered by room service, a bath in the bath-tub, a buffet breakfast and everyone piling into the bed and watching a movie! :)

I was quite nostalgic this weekend. Things have changed, yet not quite changed. The pleasures of the hotel stay were the same - thick towels, smooth sheets, wonderful service. Yet the anonymity of the room struck me vividly and I found myself thinking about others who had lain where I lay, looking out at the skyline. I missed you, R. You would have been appalled at how much of time we spent just sleeping...

Yes, we slept a great deal, ate the crepes we like at Out of the Pan, tried to watch a pay-per-view movie but that was foiled by a faulty movie and then by the time the hotel fixed it I was too sleepy to watch it (yes, despite all the sleeping done before that), read in bed and talked. It was a good, slow, together time. I'm glad mommy-daughter times still feel the same :)

The view from our room at Swissotel the Stamford

Our take-out dinner

My Father and Me (2)

2011-06-30T19:02:00.110+08:00

Maybe it was my last entry that got me thinking of my father so often this past week. Maybe it was the fact that June is always associated in my mind with my father because his birthday was on 10th June, Fathers' Day falls on the third Sunday in June and he passed away on 15th June.

My father was 90 years old when he passed away and 50 when I was born. My earliest memory of my dad is actually of him singing me to sleep. I remember lying face down on his chest, feeling his chest rise and fall with his breathing. I remember the feel of the soft worn white cotton singlet under my cheek and my father's hand on my back as he patted me to sleep, singing a lullaby he made up. This song was essentially a stringing together of the vowels and consonants of the Tamil language! On some evenings, instead of singing, he would recite the months of the Tamil year. And that is how I learnt my Tamil :)

My dad's last years were not comfortable ones because he had Alzeimer's. I wish I had not been so busy, so far away in Singapore. I wish I had made more of an effort to visit him. During my last visit, he was convinced that R who was six then, was me. And he was confused as to who I was. I remember visiting him in hospital and he kept asking me what day it was, what date it was and I cried to see him looking so lost. Immediately, he asked me "Why are you crying? What do you need? Do you need any money? Have you eaten? Don't cry." And I felt six again.

I didn't get to see my dad before he passed away and that is a sadness I carry. I had heard he was ill, but I did not know how ill he really had been. I would have liked to have said goodbye. My sister tells me he did not recognise anyone at the end; she says that to console me, that in practical terms, my absence did not make a difference. I like to think my father knew how much I loved him; because I know, without a doubt, that my daddy loved me.

My Father and Me

2011-06-19T18:19:00.000+08:00

It's Fathers' Day today and we had our usual prayer for dads during church service. But instead of the usual blessing by the pastor, today a dad was invited to pray for the fathers.

His prayer touched me, because it gave me an insight into fatherhood - which, I admit, I had never spent any time thinking about. I have only ever thought about what it means to mother children, the joys and challenges of motherhood and what kind of a mother I was being to my daughters. But before today, I had not tried to look through the eyes of a father. And I realise, fatherhood is no less challenging.

I remember my own father fondly. Lately, I have also begun to wonder if my sister and I had lionised him, but nevertheless, I know my father was a bigger influence on me than my mother was.

Interestingly, when I think about my father, the first values and pictures that come to mind are all to do with money. From him, I learnt the importance of thrift and hard work. I remember he gave me a tiny notebook when I started school and in it he taught me to write down every cent I spent from the 50 cent allowance he gave me. My first set of accounts! My dad was an accounts clerk so I suppose he was teaching me the most important life skill he knew...

At the start of the week, my father would give me a 50 cent coin. He never gave me any combination of coins to make up 50. It was always one big 50 cent coin and I remember feeling really reluctant to part with the coin and receiving many small coins in return after a purchase. Somehow it had the feeling of breaking things up :) At the end of the week, I would have to show my father my little notebook in which I had written down every purchase I had made.

I remember the first time I broke the one rule my father had about money - never borrow. Never. My downfall was chocolate milk. One adventurous and greedy recess, I bought a whole bottle of chocolate milk to drink. To my horror, I got no change back after giving my 50 cent to the drink vendor! I was terrified because I now had no money for the week and worse, I would have to record one big purchase in my notebook! My dad would know!

In my desperation, I asked my friend Maheswari (oh how well I remember her name and her face to this day) to lend me 50 cents. And she did. The week passed uneventfully, the purchases were recorded, the notebook was inspected, no chocolate milk was mentioned anywhere...

But my day of reckoning came. Because the next week, my personal Shylock asked me for her money back. Many years later when I read the line "O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive...", this was the incident that came immediately to mind. Because that was when my dance of deceit and counter-deceit began.

I couldn't return Maheswary her money because every cent I spent needed to be recorded and even if I gave her back 10 cents at a time, what was I going to put in my book? It amazes me now to think back and realise the strange adherence to truth - I couldn't bring myself to lie to my father by inventing reasons that could have covered up the cents that could have been trickled back to Maheswary. Yet, I had broken the cardinal rule my father had set for me. Just one rule - and I had broken it. [Yes, this is the account of my personal Fall. The symbolism didn't escape me :)]

The final crunch came 2 weeks later, when tired of my evasive behaviour, Maheswary brought out her secret weapon - if you don't return my money, she said, I will tell my father. The terror that created in the heart of an 8-year old, I cannot describe to you. Maheswary's father had a black moustache and he rode a motorbike. My father was 58 and drove the car very slowly...

I was rescued from being thrown into the debtors' prison at the age of 8 because I sidled up to my mother that night and simply said, "Amma can I have 50 cents?" And my mother said "Go take it from my handbag." That was it. The end of my weeks of misery, my weeks of falsifying accounts, my weeks of terror at the sound of a motorbike.

To this day, I have an aversion to debts. I agonise when I see J's telephone bill lying on the table. I can't wait for the day the mortgage on my flat will be fully paid. And for 6 months now I have been putting off starting on renovation plans for the flat because I can't bring myself to take out a renovation loan.

I wonder if my father ever knew about this incident. But he taught me a life skill that has helped me a great deal, as a student, as a young adult in my first job, as a wife and and a mother raising a family. I have progressed today from notebooks to an Excel spreadsheet, but budgetting has helped me keep my head above waters all my life.

And as I think back on this Father's Day about my dad, I also wonder what I would have done if my mother had not given me the money. I don't quite know why she did that. Maybe she was distracted by the television show she was watching. Maybe she didn't quite hear what I said. Or maybe she too had been given a notebook and she knew the folly of the misspent 50 cents. :)

What's Next?

2011-06-17T07:39:00.000+08:00

On Wed, B asked me, "What do you see yourself doing next?" He was quite startled by the alacrity with which the plans came pouring out, I could tell :)

There was a time when I used to agonise about what I could do. But as I grow older I have become more aware of what I am best at and what I struggle with; I am surer about the gifts God has blessed me with; and I am more confident that working from my strengths and saying no to what I do not enjoy doing really is wiser.

And so I know these are what I want to be doing... I want to retire as soon as I can, even before I hit the mandatory age, because I don't care if there is another promotion or not. I want to go back to school and get a post-grad degree in Counselling. I want to be an adjunct teacher and get back into the classroom with the kids I love. I want to spend more time with the Young Adults ministry in my church and take time to mentor and disciple them. I especially want to mentor the young teachers and help them keep the love of teaching alive despite the hard time they have in school. I want to form a support group for young dating and married couples - just open up my home for these couples to meet and talk and work through the joys and worries of marriage with others so they know that life can be puzzling or hard but it can be handled with the help of others. I want to help with the Pastoral Counselling ministry in my church and have the time to listen to hurting people because I know we are all made of struggles and strengths. I want to enrol in a theological college and dig deep into God's Word. I want to spend time in the mission field and teach English and train teachers. I want to travel and open my home to young people who travel, maybe by running an informal B&B. I want to write, in my blog, maybe a book, maybe a collection of devotionals, maybe a memoir for young teachers. I want to be a grandma and love my grandchildren to bits.I want to read the books I have bought and stacked on the shelves with the thought 'one day...'.

God willing, that's what I want to do. God willing, that will be next...

Doc Visit

2011-06-13T15:20:00.000+08:00

My body is breaking down. I'm not sure if it is because I haven't taken a break in such a long while or whether it is just an onset of age-related nigglings. But today I am on medical leave because, for a second night, I threw up in the middle of the night and had the runs to boot. Since I was due for gynae appointment this morning anyway, I didn't go to a GP, but spoke to my gynae, Prof K, instead. He thinks it is acid reflux and has given me 2 days of medical leave and told me to try a bunch of stuff that includes sleeping on my left (yes, really!), raising my pillow, not eating within 3 hours of bedtime, keeping a food diary and not getting stressed. My BP is also creeping up, he says.

I like him. I have been seeing him since I was pregnant with J and he has grown to be a good friend. What I appreciate about him is that he takes a wholistic approach, never says "that's not my department" and listens to every ailment I moan to him about - "my elbow and fingers hurt, my neck hurts, my knee hurts, I can't wake up in the mornings, my migraine is back, I can't focus for as long as I used to, I'm depressed ...." Hahahaha. I think he is worth his weight in gold just for that patient listening :)

I appreciate Prof K all the more after my visit to the Clementi Polyclinic last Thursday. It has been more than 10 years since I visited the polyclinic but sadly, beyond the upgrade of technical facilities (now I can scan my ID card to get a queue number), I don't think much has changed in terms of quality of care. I waited 1 1/2 hours to see the doctor and my 5 minute consultation was such an irritating encounter I was glad I only went to get a referral to an orthopedic surgeon (for said elbow, knee, fingers and neck) and not for medical attention. The doc who attended to me was abrupt and didn't give me time to finish listing my woes and then told me "You are 53. This is all old age. You just have to live with it. Don't waste time and money going to a specialist." I then asked him what he suggested I do and his reply - "I will give you Panadol." If I had had an umbrella and I hadn't already waited 1 1/2 hours and didn't need a referral badly, I swear I would have hit him on the head.

It made me think though - how many people who can't afford anything more than the primary care offered at our polyclinics, who do not know how to negotiate the bureaucracies of getting specialist care and lack the self-confidence to know that "living with it" is not the only option available - are putting up with pain every day.

Me-time

2011-06-11T23:29:00.000+08:00

J and I make a terrible mom & daughter team moaning about work almost every day! Sometimes I think I should set a better example, but I'm afraid I don't. When she moans about work, I confess I can only empathise.

But I have been feeling a great deal more cheerful today than I have felt in a long time and I was wondering why... And I realise what has made me happier is the fact that I worked only half days for the last 2 days, conducted a seminar for JC students on Fri morning and had 2 unloading sessions with 2 dear friends - one via email and the other over dinner.

So that's it. The confluence of factors that keep me even-keeled - space, students and friends. Perhaps what I need to do then is to find ways of finding these pursuits of pleasure within my current work? Easier said than done.

Nevertheless this is the here and now and I will enjoy it. I've had an hour at the gym & the laundry is done. I have bought myself a green tea frappuchino and a roast chicken wrap. My iPad is powered up and the latest copy of 'O' awaits in all its digital glory. Finally, this is me-time. The speech I have to write for our Guest-of-Honour can wait.

Something Has to Give

2011-05-25T19:27:00.000+08:00

Hello blog. I have thought of you often. I miss writing. As I was travelling home today I wondered why. Why do I not have the time or inclination to write these days?

And I think it is the result of a number of things. The commute which tires me, the work that eats up my evenings, the diminished after-work life and the lack of reflection.

I looked over my last few posts and I realise I've been more melancholic these last few months than I was even when I was in the middle of my domestic troubles last year. I don't have the spirit to get up and face the day. I think about the stuff on my to-do list all the time. On the bus, in the shower, while I'm reading the Bible. I think the only time work isn't on my mind is when I'm exercising with Johan and that's because he talks to me all the time. So that's good.

But this cannot go on. I need to choose to change. I need to change my perspective or change my job or change the way I view my job. I am putting aside what matters to me for the sake of what I have to do. I have to change something. Question is, what?

Mismatch?

2011-04-28T15:08:00.000+08:00

Finally, I have come to the end of the first run of my training workshops. It has been 5 long weeks. Yesterday, the last day of my workshop, I don't know who was happier - me or the participants :)

I think I have identified what it is that makes me feel dispirited and joyless in my new job. I think it is because in the past few years, I have deliberately been cultivating a life that is more about thinking than doing, more about connecting than telling, more about saying yes to life rather than yes to work. Then just when I thought I was going to move forward in this journey by doing more of what I love, which is teaching, I realise I have actually moved back. I have moved back into a life of working without asking why, of doing without reflection, of valuing speed more than deliberation.

I think the life cycle I am at does not match the life cycle of the organisation I am in. The organisation is new, needing to grow quickly, needing to make an impact. What it needs are people who are eager to be pioneers, to be trailblazers. I am not. I am at a life stage when I want to be retrospective, when I want to make sense of life, and use my life experiences to mentor and guide the younger ones. I feel like Moses at the end of leading his wandering flock, not Joshua waiting to charge in with the flock. To Joshua the Promised Land was one of opportunity and promise. To Moses the Promised Land would have meant the reward for his toils.

I wish I knew how to manage this mismatch. I know where I am is part of God's design and purpose. I know I am called to do my work as unto the Lord and not men. I know I can trust God. I wish my heart would listen to my head more.

Blues

2011-04-11T21:40:00.000+08:00

I fear this is the year my blog will die. Not because I am tired of writing in it but because my world has shrunk and become less rich. The change in my job is not suiting me well. I feel like a fish taken from the sea and put in a fish-bowl. Like a wanderer told to walk in a straight line. And my evenings and weekends are no longer mine alone.

I am so dispirited I have even begun to wonder if there might be some truth in horoscopes. I used to be an avid reader of horoscopes before I became a Christian but not since. But over the Chinese New Year, almost every magazine I picked up had predictions for the Rooster in this Rabbit year and I confess I peeked. And all 3 predictions I read said the same thing - that this will be a difficult year for me career-wise. And so far, I must say, it has been just that.

What I thought was settling-in blues seems to be lasting far too long. Surely, surely, Lord, there must be more to work than this?

Piecing Together the Jigsaw

2011-04-01T18:48:00.001+08:00

I'm reading Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend and I'm amazed at the wealth of insights I receive every time I read and re-read it. I wish I had read this book earlier in my life; but I also wonder if I would have been able to appreciate its truths then.

I believe God brings me to certain points in my life when jigsaw pieces that had been scrambled before suddenly fall into place. I had this experience once before, when I did the Search for Life course in church in 2008. Now with this book, I am piecing together different aspects of my life again.

The term "boundaries" is usually misinterpreted and many of us (myself included) tend to think we have boundaries in place, in the sense we are not doormats, we behave, and we conduct our lives with a measure of decorum. But I am thankful to Joshua for asking me to read this book, for it has opened up a whole new dimension of self-awareness for me.

I have realised how I have not drawn boundaries in my marriage. I understand why I feel a need for approval from people. And I understand better, the times when I felt resentful even when I was "doing the right thing". These have been huge learning points for me, and after the Bible and Covey's 7 Habits, I will list Boundaries as a book that has had a life-changing impact on me.

I need time to unpack the impact of this book on me. And to censor what I am going to share :) I know you share my excitement over the book, R, and I am hoping you get round to reading it too, my dear older daughter :) I have discovered that I can never discover all of me!

"he was, but one..."

2011-03-26T23:24:00.000+08:00

I was reading a post by a young friend on Facebook, and I recognised a familiar angst, frustration. Unlike the legendary 7-year itch, many young teachers feel a 5-year itch. It is a point at which you have learnt enough of the craft and content to be comfortable in the classroom; but it is also the point at which you would have had time to assess your successes and be in a position to evaluate the impact of your work. Many young teachers feel a lack at this point: what have I really achieved? Does my work matter? What have my students really learnt? Surely there is more to life than this?

Having walked this path, it is a crossroad I recognise. In a way, the Ministry of Education also recognises this and there are processes in place to ensure that those who are more able are offered job rotations or promotions round about their 4th year of teaching, to keep them learning and not stagnate.

But there are sometimes many who don't get such an opportunity to grow, or choose not to take the path, and instead contemplate leaving the profession altogether. I am very aware that each person is called to walk a different path, but it saddens me when effective, caring Christian teachers leave. Because I ask, who then do you leave the children to? Who will take your place?

It is sad that the more effective and caring a teacher is, the more quickly he / she gets burnt out. And if the caring teachers who are willing to go the extra mile, and the next mile, and the next mile, leave, then the ones left in our schools might well be the ones for whom teaching is just a Mon to Fri job that ensures a paycheck.

So, my young friend, yes, there are injustices in the world. But as Jesus said, you will always have the poor with you. Will you always have that opportunity to have these students in your class for you to model Jesus to? The injustices of the world were there before you became a teacher and they will be there after you retire. But how long will you have that 14 year old in your classroom, maybe thinking about the latest gadget and wishing your lesson will end, yes, but still, in your classroom. Looking at your face, feeling your hand on his shoulder, listening to your words and experiencing the presence of Christ in you in a far deeper way than you will now realise.

So I say to you, don't give up. Remember Abraham. Remember God says "he was but one, when I called him, that I might call him and bless him" (Isa 51:2).

You and I are "but one". But the same God who saved the nations through the obedience of one, will multiply your efforts. The same God who sent his One and Only to save generations, can and will bless your students therough you. You will never know till you see His face, how he has used the faithfulness of "one".

All Work and No Play

2011-03-15T22:29:00.001+08:00

I have been training to be a Facilitator at a course that is run by the Pastoral Counselling Ministry of my church. It's an 8-week course and I've just finished the fourth week. It is a really interesting course called 'Search for Life', originally designed by a church in Australia. It's a fantastic course and created a whole new sense of self-awareness and self-discovery in me when I attended it as a participant in 2009. This time I am attending it to be trained as a Facilitator.

Though it is my second time in the course, I realise there is still more I can learn about myself. The last session on Family of Origin was fascinating for me. and I realise there are many aspects of my childhood that I have not explored or remembered. Thinking about my childhood specifically this time around has made me both pensive and grateful.

One thing that stood out for me is the realisation that I never played as a child. All the others in my small group had fond memories of playing with their siblings and/or cousins, they spoke nostalgically of games they played, but I had no similar memories. I only remember reading, and reading and reading. Because that was the one thing I could do on my own.

I spent a great deal of time on my own because although I was the youngest of 9 children, there was a big gap in years between my siblings and me. The sister just ahead of me was 8 years older and my eldest sister was 25 years older than me. Most of my sisters had left home - either because they were married or for their studies. And sisters in their teens and twenties had no time for a child.

Because I belonged to a small community called the Brahmins, playing with neighbours was out of the question. The other Indians were considered 'unclean' because they were of a different caste and children of other races were 'unclean' because they were meat-eaters unlike my strictly vegetarian family. And unlike the others in my discussion group, we did not live in a 'kampong' where there were common play areas for neighbourhood games. My one highlight was the monthly prayer session that my parents would go to - at the Samajam, a place specially built by the Brahmin community for them to have their elaborate prayer rituals far away from the masses. Here I would meet my cousin Jeya. And while the adults prayed, we kids would talk. But there was no rowdy play. We were, after all, at a mass prayer session, and clad in our long 'pavadais', there was little room for boisterous behaviour.

Thinking back, I feel a sense of loss that I never played. I think I just accepted such social isolation . Perhaps that's why books feel like companions. Perhaps that's why I like to be quiet and listen to people talk. Perhaps, that's why when my baby was born, I had no idea how to entertain her, except by reading. All the parenting I did was by reading as well. I read books on age-appropriate play for children and religously followed the suggestions. I read about how babies needed to be talked to, how to make mobiles, how to sing nursery rhymes. It was your father who played catch, who played ball games and taught you to ride a bike. And it was me who picked your books :)

I feel sad for that little girl who didn't play. But I marvel at my God who caught that little girl. I look back now and wonder at how I managed, at what I learnt. And looking at the two of you now, my daughters, I feel sure God was watching over us, giving to you what I didn't know I didn't have. I learnt to play because of you :)

I Like Things Just the Way They Are

2011-02-24T12:33:00.000+08:00

I know this about myself - that I don't embrace change easily. Yet, every time I struggle with change it comes to me as a surprise. Having known I am resistant to change, wouldn't I cope better?

In some ways I think I do. I am able to recognise those times when I snap at others or cross my arms during meetings or have a chatter in my head that is louder than the discussion going on around me as being symptoms of my refusal to embrace change. It takes me time to adjust to a new way of doing things, to new places, to new people. And I have made many decisions in the past because it was more expedient to keep things status quo.

But it seems to me that I am in a place / phase now where God wants to 'loosen me up', to change (yes, change!) me in ways I am not too crazy about. One phrase that has haunted me since last week is "new wineskins for new wine". I know there are many people who would get excited at the prospect of this. But I am not one of them :)

I have had quite a few changed circumstances to deal with last year - in the family, in my job, and now in my workplace and to be totally honest, I am feeling stressed. I would love some space and time to myself to think, to pray and to just make sense of the changes so that I can soothe the 'me' that is complaining loudly inside my head. I feel I don't have head-space and heart-space to deal with the needs of others right now.

I have hard decisions to make ahead of me. But those decisions would create more changes and I realise I am putting off making these decisions only because I feel there are too many things for me to cope with already. Right now I feel, maybe old wine in old wineskins is ok really...

The Old and the New

2011-02-20T22:28:00.000+08:00

In the 2 months I have been at my new job, I have heard a phrase repated many times, that I never once heard in my old office - the phrase, "when we have reached our age..." :) The phrase is a frequent preface to any number of observations from the many aches that are felt, the types of food that agree and do not sgree with us, the way we respond to work challenges to snippets of family life that are shared...

I realise that for the first time in my career, I am working with colleagues who are the same age or older than me. And I am puzzled why I find it a strange experience. One would expect, wouldn't one, that your colleagues would be of the same age as you? Why, I wonder, have I always worked with people younger than me? And I realised this last year - that I have only 1 friend who is a year older than me. Most of my close friends are really at least 5 to 10 years younger than me!

I am learning a different way of relating at work now. I curb my tongue lest my jokes are too cutting, I ask for advice and take care not to proffer opinions too quickly, I say my share of "at my age" :) I miss the easy camarederie of my younger colleagues in my old workplace; I miss gathering at the centre table for coffee and gossip; I miss crowding around computers to view the latest Kate Spade sale pieces. I expect I will be making new memories at my new workplace too. I know this is a transition phase and I will soon settle in. But we are moving to new premises on Tuesday and I for one am loath to leave.

Time and Tide

2011-01-31T13:09:00.000+08:00

Somehow I have a feeling that the usual rhythms of the year are going to be interrupted for me in 2011. In 17 days, R will be going back, and for the first time, I actually bought her a one-way ticket because she isn't sure when she would be able to come home next. That in itself feels strange for I realize her June semester break and Nov summer break had become markers for me. With C in Nicaragua and not sure of his break times, J's leave periods are up in the air too at the moment. Add to that the fact that I don't really have a handle on the work ebb and flow at my new work place, and the year seems a fluid one.

I am also thinking about what I can look forward to this year. So far, the big milestones seem to be work related - a workshop presentation at a conference in May and the official launch of ELIS in Sept. I also have a commitment to help with the writing of my church's 40th anniversary commemorative book and to be trained to help as a Facilitator with my church's Pastoral Counselling Ministry. Otherwise - a blank year!

The big project that I should embark on, but have a panic attack every time I think about it, is renovation of my house. I've found interior designers I can work with, I have approved of their preliminary plans. But I fight shy of putting down the 10% deposit needed. That seems so final! And I baulk at the thought of getting packers and movers in, of finding financing, of finding temporary accommodation, of supervising the renovation process, then the process of moving back in, unpacking. Whoa! I feel the familiar heart palpitations even writing about it :)

As I think about the coming year, I remember feeling 2010 was a blank canvas too. But looking back, I see that because of that blank calendar, I had space to handle the storms and sadness that came my way last year. And I wonder if the blank calendar was God's gracious provision for me... Perhaps, my loving Abba knew I needed head space, needed the familiarity of routine work, needed the cover given by comforting office colleagues and time to meet with friends and grieve...

And now, 2011 is a new chapter. And I am comfortable with the blankness. If there are blank spaces, I know God intended them for a reason. If there is a rush of work, I know it is a period of fruitfulness that God has blessed me with. The phrase God has given me for this year is "Hold lightly and release with love". I am not even going to pretend to know what that means. But I know I can trust my God.

Back at Blogging

2011-01-28T21:58:00.000+08:00

Helloooo blog!! I have missed you! I don't think I have gone so long without writing before! I've been waiting for Friday evening the whole week, waiting for this pocket of time when I can once again write. Life has been mad for me since December and so far, this year has been a bleah.

So, let's see what has happened since I last blogged. R came home for the summer holidays. - and in 2 weeks she would once again be off. C was in town for 2 weeks for a visit and we went to Bintan. We stayed in the bungalow we usually rent; I like it because it allows all of us to be together, cook what we want to and I make believe that it is my seaside holiday home :) I realised the Israel trip had exhausted me and the most strenuous thing I wanted to do was to get a massage. I think it was a good short break and with each visit C seems more relaxed and fits in with the rhythm (or lack of it) of our home. I'm glad.

Christmas was awkward with the changes in the family dynamics and so was New Year. But I really appreciated the girls, Prav and Srawan making sure that we celebrated :)

So 2010 with all its ups and downs is over and looking back I realise that the 2 phrases God had given me for the year held special meaning - "Build authentic relationships" and "Simplify your life and enrich others'." The year has indeed been one where my relationship with God has become more honest and toxic relationships have been cleared out. I have not been successful in making my life simpler though :) Unfortunately, I have developed a new penchant for Kate Spade bags... I blame the girls at work for this totally!!! :)

This year, I have also started a new job. I am now a Master Teacher and that exalted-sounding name means that I will be doing teacher training instead of the research and policy work that I have been doing for the past 7 years. Unfortunately, I'm not particularly enjoying my new job as yet. The happiest time for me these 3 weeks was the one afternoon when I ran a workshop for Econs teachers of a JC! I struggle to manage my mood every day and I know what exactly is wrong but I don't quite know what to do about it. Up till now, the work I have been doing isn't different from what I was doing in my last place and I am disappointed because I was looking forward to teaching again. But I know this is temporary and that once the courses have been developed I will be able to teach. I wish I had more structure, clear timelines, time to read and plan instead of the numerous "by tomorrow" and "by the end of the week" deadlines which make me dissatisfied because I don't feel I have given off my best.

This month,too, R turned 21 and we had a small do for her friends. It was quite fun actually, as she had arranged for a Bollywood dance class for her friends before we adjourned for dinner to an Arabian restaurant.

Birthday dinner at chili's...

Dinner at Nabin's

We also went on a short family holiday to Phuket which was marred a little by first R being sick, then J; a stinky air-conditioner in our hotel room and weather that was so hot that we could feel our skin burning just walking down the road to the beach! Needless to say we spent around 5 minutes on Phuket's famed beach :) Nevertheless, I was glad to be able to spend some time with my daughters so the holiday wasn't as bad as it seems...

The other exciting thing that happened is that my dear friend Mini gave birth to a son. Mothering again at 42 is going to be a challenge but all of us are excited about it. He feels like a joint project :)

Well I suppose a lot more things happened, though nothing else comes to mind now. I guess this has just been an update of sorts, not really blogging my thoughts. But it has been a long week, and right now, my mind just feels mundane :)

My Desert Song

2010-12-12T16:06:00.003+08:00

I first heard the phrase "a desert experience" from an old gentleman in 1997 who came to my school to ask if I had a temporary teaching position available for him. He was past 60 and I was reluctant to hire him as I wasn't convinced he could handle the students we had. It was the beginning of the year when we traditionally had large numbers of Pre-U 1 students who had no intention of staying once the 'O' level results were announced. And because they had no intention of staying in the school, they broke every rule they could.

But I was desperately short-handed and I agreed to hire him, thinking I would keep him till another more suitable temp teacher came along. But in two weeks I realised it was a disaster. The students in his class were having a ball of a time. They would walk in and out as the mood took them and they took advantage of his penchant for story telling by taking every chance they could to distract him from the lesson planned for the day. I knew I had to let him go, but I felt really bad because I could see that he was trying hard and that the job meant a great deal to him.

When I told him we could no longer emply him, he said nothing for a while. Then he asked me, "Are you a Christian?" I braced myself for some sort of appeal to common religious bonds, but that was not on his mind. He said, "God gives every child of His a desert experience. The Israelites wandered in the wilderness for 40 years and that strengthened them as a nation and they learnt to look only to God. I have had many desert periods. Now is one of them. I thank God for it. It is a privilege." That was all.

I have not met him again since then. His name was Mr Thomas John. And I have come to believe that our paths crossed that once because of that one message God wanted to give me. I had come out of a desert experience in 1993 - 94 and it was a time when I was struggling with many 'why's. Hearing his simple acceptance of the desert experience without question taught me a lesson in faith and trust.

Today, those words came back to me in a new way. It is a day when I feel dry, alone and un-needed. The re is a new loneliness these days that I find hard to shake off. I remember the miles after miles of brown, sandy dunes I saw in Israel and I find it hard to think of how people walking there day after day could give thanks. But that is what God calls me to do. To rejoice, to give thanks, to declare victory. Especially when I can't see the promise of an end.

I love this song!

Updated Blog

2010-12-10T17:20:00.000+08:00

Hmmm. I have waited a while to let the bugs settle but I have now updated the editor on my blog. One big difference is that now I have transliteration in Tamil :) I haven't figured out how that works yet but that sure adds to the fun of blogging :) The other big difference I appreciate is that it is supposed to be easier to upload multiple photos now and the line spacing is more even as well.But if you see my blog acting crazy in any way, let me know ok?

It Takes a Village

2010-12-10T14:44:00.005+08:00

I read today about a book called The Council of Dads by Bruce Feiler. It is about a young dad who is diagnosed with cancer and decides to rope in 6 of his friends to be 'dads' to his daughters in his absence. The concept touched me.

I have often felt parenting is a tough job and especially hard to do alone. Yet, it is very difficult to find like-minded people who share your values, philosophy and faith whom you can trust to help you with this important job. It also takes a special breed of friends who would agree to look out for your children as well as their own. This is especially so in Singapore where many parents struggle to make time for their own children and balance the demands of career and family.

Yet, I am convinced of the wisdom of having a council of dads or a council of mums. There is an African proverb that says 'It takes a village to raise a child' and I tend to agree. Parenting is often a case of trial and error. You have never done this job before, you try to equip yourself for it by reading, talking to friends etc, but there will always be moments when you catch your breath and wonder - did I do that right? I would have liked to have had a village at these times.

I thought about the concept of a council of dads / mums for a while. But I came to the conclusion that Feiler was really very, very blessed to have 6 friends who readily accepted the responsibility he offered them and stepped up. I can only think of one - and a very, very busy one at that! It speaks first of all of the depth of his friendships. These are friendships cultivated over a long time and at a meaningful level. There must have been time and love invested in building up such friendships and I wonder whether in busy Singapore, there are men and women who value this and are able to do this. It also requires giving of oneself (on the part of the friends) and asking for help (on the part of Feiler) - both gestures of humility that I think are possible for many of us here only when the imminence of death is real.

Many times I have offered to baby-sit for young couples but I don't quite know what it is - an innate shyness, a fear of obligation, maybe a reluctance to accept a favour? - but no one has actually taken me up on the offer :) Maybe they just don't trust me :) With my family, I have tried to be involved in the lives of my nieces and nephews, and their children, but to varying degrees of success. Mostly my young grand-nephews and nieces live too far away for us to connect meaningfully. It is sad, but I also realise that only 1 of my sisters has the opportunity to see her grand-children daily as almost all of my nieces and nephews live abroad and one sister is even estranged from her sons.

So, I wonder what the future holds for me. Right now it looks like I might be doing long-distance grand-parenting too :)

A New Thing

2010-12-09T16:41:00.003+08:00

Today I got contact lenses :) I have been thinking about getting them ever since I read about the new range of contact lenses available for presbyopia. I thought about getting the lens implant done but couldn't bring myself to try it so I have opted to try out contact lens first. I had the tests done and ordered the contact lenses before my Israel trip but I couldn't find the time to go to the optometrist before I left. I regretted it a great deal during the trip because I had to keep switching between my reading glasses and my sun glasses as it was blindingly hot yet I also had to refer to the guides and the Bible during the tour. So I ended up wearing my sun glasses on top of my reading glasses :) Yes, I bet I looked like a dork.

So today I went and got my lenses fitted :) They fit comfortably but my brain seems to have trouble adjusting to them so though I don't need my reading glasses now (I'm typing this without my glasses! Yay!), I can't see far objects clearly! I am supposed to try them for 2 weeks then go back to see if my brain has caught up with my eyes or whether I need a new pair of contacts. For now, it is pretty exciting though I keep reaching for my reading glasses automatically when I sit down at the computer or pick up something to read. Hahahaha. Old habits die hard.

Living to Tell the Tale

2010-12-06T15:10:00.003+08:00

I think I might have to re-think my thoughts on being a solo traveller. I have just come back from a 2 week tour of Jordan and Israel that definitely stretched my physical capabilities to the max. I am exhausted. And very glad that I booked a 3D2N stay at Bintan next week. I seriously need recovery time. I am also very glad that J booked me 2 massage slots last weekend, on Sat and Sun, because I needed them both!!!

In all, I have mixed feelings about my tour. The highlights of the tour were the many things I learnt, and cliched as it sounds, the Bible has come alive to me in many ways, most of all in an understanding of the landscape and social setting of the times. We were blessed by a truly gifted local guide who is a Messianic Jew, rooted in a deep understanding of the Word that has inspired me. Unfortunately, I was not able to live on the Word alone but needed creature comforts too and the poor quality of accommodations we had affected my mood quite a bit. I didn't mind the walking and climbing so long as I could have a hot bath at the end of the day and a decent bed to sleep on. It was not always to be. So, while I did learn a lot, I don't think my $4k was well spent.

On a happier note, I was very encouraged to hear from the editor of Seasons of Life (my church newsletter) that many readers were blessed by the serialisation of my 8 Not-So-Simple-Rules for Dating. That made me really happy. It was frustrating to edit my articles to 1500 words and I felt that at times my style of writing had to be compromised, but I'm glad to have had the opportunity to be published :) Maybe I should write a book like J keeps telling me to :)

A Germ of an Idea

2010-11-16T12:36:00.004+08:00

I chanced upon a blog today that has captured my imagination. It is written by a lady who is determined to "age disgracefully" :) I love that idea! I have been focusing on doing this gracefully and realise, hey, it is so much more fun being disgraceful about it :) My daughters, you have been warned.

Anyway, this lady (who currently feels like a bff) also maintains a website on travelling solo. And I love it! It was comforting to read about other women who feel that same nagging feeling I had yesterday but get off their butt and travel anyway. And there is a whole community of them whom I am longing to connect with. Their travel tales excite me and I feel I really want to do this - travelling solo. It is not an instinct for me. I still prefer to travel with my daughters and /or friends. But I am beginning to think, maybe, just maybe, there is another way. After all, after my first miserable night - which, my new bff assures me is a loneliness felt by every one of these solo travellers :) - I did enjoy my spa holiday at Javana.

So ... I just might ...

Counting Down...

2010-11-15T13:02:00.003+08:00

6 days to go! The reality hit me yesterday that my tour of Israel was oh so near! Last night I dusted off my suitcase, heaved it up on a chair and began my ritual of packing for a trip. One week before I leave, this is what I do. Then over the week I put stuff in, and take stuff out, and buy stuff I need... I think I actually enjoy the process of packing :) Being the compulsive list-er that I am, of course I have a travel packing list - 2 actually, one on my iPhone and one on my laptop - and tomorrow I will whip it out and start going through the list to be sure I have everything I need. No doubt, this is the reason my suitcases weigh a ton whenever I travel :)

I have mixed feelings about my impending trip. It is one of two "trips-of-my-lifetime" and part of me is looking forward to it very excitedly. But there is also a part of me that is anxious. You see, by nature, I am cautious. The time-tested road is the one that instinctively appeals to me. But over the years I have challenged myself in small ways to take the road less travelled, to take risks and to be open to new experiences. Many times I have succeeded and had a great time. Some times I have stayed safe. But every time a new opportunity presents itself, I feel the now familiar tug-of-war between cautious-me and intrepid-me.

There is no reason for my anxiety. I will be on an organised tour group, I am travelling with a trusted friend, J and R are fine in their own lives, work is at a low season and except for an aching knee, my health is good. Yet, there is a small familiar tug. I recognise it; I know it will go away. It feels like homesickness. But it's just resistance to change :)

My 53rd...

2010-11-09T21:47:00.016+08:00

Every year I gain 2 kgs in the week of my birthday. This year has not proved to be an exception :) My fondness for chocolate has become too much of a common knowledge and so yes, there has been an abundance of chocolate, chocolate cake and chocolate ice cream...

The best cake award of this year goes to the yummilicious cake bought by my CYAN cell group - a creation called Grand Cru Royale by Centre-ps which is a cakeshop in Tiong Bahru. They have an irritatingly slow website so I am not linking, but the cake was superb. It had a hazelnut praline crunch base and a chocolate mousse top and was absolutely delicious :) Thus began my eating odyssey on Wednesday, 4 days before my birthday...

On Friday, 5th Nov, which was also Deepavali Day, Johnson, Yvonne and Freya took me out for dinner at chili's. I have been wanting to try this restaurant for a while but just didn't get around to so I enjoyed the experience quite a bit. Dear Yvonne arranged for a surprise song from the restaurant staff and I got a birthday balloon too :)

And flowers, and books and a fridge magnet :)

On the eve of my birthday, I went on a day spa trip to Batam with my sister, J and Kelsey. It was a quaint place called Tempat Senang and we booked in for a 3 hour spa session. It felt like a mini holiday, boarding the ferry and getting picked up and driven to the spa. The spa owner had arranged for a birthday cake for me but it was delivered in such an awkward manner that it was laughable rather than a touching gesture!

I was quite disappointed by our reception because no one seemed to notice we had arrived. Then a lady came and asked us to choose our treatments and while we were looking at the spa menu, the chef came and said there was a cake for us. The lady was very puzzled and said she had no idea what that was about, she asked the owner who came and said vaguely, "Oh you didn't ask for a cake? Ok then" and wandered off! So we left the cake alone and went off to have lunch. During lunch, the cake made an appearance again. This time it had been cut and we were served 4 slices with a candle stuck on! Hmph! Like I said, a little more panache would have made it a thoughtful gesture instead of the awkward one it turned out to be :( That said, the masseuse was awesome!

My birthday was on the first Sunday of November so all of us with birthdays and anniversaries in November got prayed for at the E2 service. I was really glad my sister came to church with us and liked the sermon as well. Here I am with CYAN people and dear Emma and Ale (that baby is growing fast!)

I must say I had a GREAT birthday. Because J arranged for surprise visits by my friends. I must confess I messed up her plans quite a bit by refusing to have dinner and insisting on watching a movie at 7.30 pm when she had arranged a surprise dinner for me :) Poor Jen.

After church we went to Krish for tea but J wasn't done with surprises yet and I had 3 more surprise visitors for tea, bearing cake from - where else - Awfully Chocolate :) My dear friends, who shall remain unidentified and unnamed by request, I appreciate you :)

And my darling orchestrator of my birthday, thank you. I love you.

We went to watch 'It's a Wonderful After Life' in the evening and I liked the movie except for one sequence at the engagement party which was too long and too ridiculous to be funny. And ended the day at Swenson's... I should have taken the pic BEFORE we demolished the sundae instead of after it ;)

My birthday celeration did not, however, end on Sunday. My CYAN cell celebrated my birthday jointly with Emmy at Penang Kitchen on Monday night... Embarrassed me no end :)

Following this, my old friend Andy bought me lunch at Thai Express on Tuesday and I celebrated a joint birthday with my friend Fiona whose birthday is today by having brunch at Dome...

I think I'm done now... It has been a week of excesses :)

Reflection

2010-10-27T15:02:00.004+08:00

MM Lee has been on my mind this week. It has been more than 20 days since his wife passed away and the public spotlight is no longer on him. No more public scrutiny of his grief, his stoicism, his pain. And I feel drawn to pray for him.

He is a man I have admired for a long time. J laughs at me for this, but despite all the criticism I have heard, read and voiced myself, at the end of it all, I would still say I admire him. While I have long admired his political acumen, decisiveness, foresight and high standards, events in recent months have revealed a more personal side to him and I have come to respect him not just as a political leader but as a husband.

Ken says I should not hold LKY as a standard to measure men. He thinks LKY set too high standards that other men cannot measure up to. But I am tempted to ask, why not? LKY is right to say "Don't judge a man until the coffin has been closed on him". No one is perfect. But as men go, I think LKY is someone who has lived right. He may not always have done right, but it is very hard to say what decisions we ourselves might have made in the heat of political battle.

Yet as his life winds down, I feel I like him even more. His recent interview touched me in its honesty, humility and doggedness. What touched me most of all was his devotion to his wife. How many men will sit by the bedside of their comatose wife and read her poems she loved? To me, just this one act of love redeems him. And the opening line of the ST article on Mrs Lee's funeral said it all - "In the end there was just a man who loved his wife till the end." That's it.

A Pearl

2010-10-26T16:32:00.004+08:00

Writing is good therapy. Most times it works. Some days I can't. I seem to have entered a tunnel period. Maybe it is a phase. Maybe it is hormonal. Maybe it is a natural consequence. Whatever it is, I decided I would come write in my blog to distract myself. And to share a quote I found:

"A pearl is a beautiful thing that is produced by an injured life. It is the tear that results from the injury of the oyster. The treasure of our being in this world is also produced by an injured life. If we had not been wounded, if we had not been injured, then we will not produce the pearl." (Stephen Hoeller).

I feel encouraged by this thought. It gives meaning to an emotional state. And a hope that something beautiful will yet come out of all this.

I am Consumed

2010-10-14T15:01:00.003+08:00

AAAAAGH!!!! My portfolio has taken over my life. I have stuff I want to blog about but I have been devoting every spare hour to the portfolio! It is a monster that refuses to be sated. It is a whiny 2 year old that wants more, more, more. It is a naggy old lady who sits in a corner of my mind and says in a quavery voice "Isn't there more you could do? Are you sure you are done? What about..."

I am putting together this portfolio for a job I am applying for. And I have to compile evidence from my work life to show that I have met 5 Standards like 'Leading in Professional Development" or 'Contributing to School and Nation" and my least favourite one "Leading in Professional Ethos". Everyone I speak to says "of course you can do it" or "surely you have enough stuff to show" and I too think I do BUT the trick you see, is not in simply collecting evidence but in putting things together coherently, stitching it all together so the portfolio tells the story of my teaching career. And of course I am a perfectionist and in my eyes, I never seem to have done enough.

Other than this internal struggle, I also am contending with external factors such as office work that still needs to be done, of course, and office printers that do not work! The latter really gets my goat because these printers have apparently not been working for a while. But instead of reporting the malfunctioning printer(s), I think people have just switched to using other available printers. So when I reported one printer and the IT guy came to fix it he couldn't connect me to any other working printer because one after another of the printers he connected me to ended up not working :) Poor guy - what he thought was a routine 15 minute job ended up taking him 3 hrs!

Anyway, here I am, working on my portfolio again. I had Session #3 of my root canal this morning so I have the day off. I really want to get this portfolio done by tomorrow. I wish I had a PA who knew what needed to be done so I could just say "Print that document, tag and file" and it would be done :) I hope this job (if I get it) turns out to be worth all of this :)

Thinking

2010-10-05T13:07:00.002+08:00

Hmmm... I wonder if I should give my blog a new skin or a makeover of some sort to celebrate her birthday. Yes, my blog is a "she". What else would it be?

Happy Birthday Blog!

2010-10-05T11:00:00.006+08:00

Today is the fifth birthday of my blog. Yes, my first entry was on 5 Oct 2005 and today my blog is 5 years old. I spent a while thinking whether I should celebrate this date as an anniversary or as a birthday. But since a birthday is the specific celebration of a birth and an anniversary is a celebration of any event at all, I settled for a 'birthday' :)

I started this blog the year J went off to the US to study. It was a milestone event for me, my first-born leaving home to live on her own, without maternal supervision, may I add, in a foreign country. It was a hard time for me, a time of a great deal of anxiety about how she would cope, if she would make friends, how would she cope with winter, would she eat properly, what if she fell ill... The list was endless. As it turned out, she coped very well. Made new friends, broke a toe, kept crazy hours, loved her classes and started dating. During those years, this blog was a way for me to keep in touch with her, to tell her what was on my mind, what was going on at home. And she began a blog as well and until she tired of it, the blog was a great way for me to keep in touch with her life in the US.

My blog was also a way for me to share myself with my daughters. R was in secondary school and in a super-secretive phase when mum was an intrusion. An 'empty nest' was becoming a reality for me with 2 daughters quite absorbed in their own activities, and for some strange reason, I began to worry whether I had done all I could before I released my daughters into the big bad world. There seemed to be so many life lessons I had not shared. So I started this blog as a way for me to open conversations, to share who I was, to give advice without my girls rolling their eyes :)

But soon, I got caught up in my own blog. I began to enjoy writing for myself, not only for my daughters. It became the place where I could muse out aloud and I found that writing helped to crystallise my thoughts, to understand how I had changed, who I had become. Writing in this blog also strengthened my faith as I sorted out what I believed and why I believed what I believed. I gave thanks on this blog and shared my faith journey. It has also become a repository of memories - of holidays, of times spent with good friends, of family times.

My blog has also been the means by which I made new connections. I met new people - Jonathan who read my blog while he was in Australia and then commented on a blog entry and 2 girls in the US whose blogs I commented on. I was also contacted by a blog writer based in the US who writes on midlife issues who asked if she could link my blog to hers. And of course, my posts on this blog became the basis for the series on dating that I am currently writing for Seasons of Life, a publication of my home church.

So here I am, reflecting on my blog and how far I have come in these last 5 years. Much has changed in my life. J is back but R is away but unlike J, she hardly reads my blog. She doesn't even read her own :) I was in my 40s when I started and now I have entered the 50s... I am in a hard place now but there have been good times too and when I re-read my blog entries I realise I have much to be thankful for. So "Happy Birthday TreeByTheStream"!

And hey, if you read my blog, will you stop to say "Happy Birthday" too? And if you enjoy reading it or have been blessed by it or you have anything at all to say about it, will you comment? And if you don't have a Google account and can only post as 'Anonymous' please leave your name so I know whom I am thanking for stopping by :)

Getting a Root Canal

2010-09-30T15:44:00.002+08:00

I spent an hour in the dentist's chair this morning. It was Part 2 of the root canal process that began 2 weeks ago. I expected to be done in 20 minutes like the last visit but this one was excruciatingly long. So my jaw hurts - from being propped open for so long and my back hurts from the enforced immobility. Towards the end of the procedure my mouth actually started quivering like an unused muscle would when subjected to prolonged tension. It has not been a pleasant morning.

While I was lying there with my molar being 'rooted', I had a lot of time to think.... I started out thinking about the work I should do, then I decided I would go through my prayer list :) And for the first time in a long while I actually finished praying for all on my list! Hahahahaha. So I think I will be better prepared at my next visit. I think I will download an audio bible to my iPhone and listen to a book while I am there. I thought about downloading songs but I realised that was not a good idea because the dentist had his radio on and when there was a particularly catchy song my feet started tapping the air and then I heard an exasperated "Don't move." Right. So no music.

This root canal job is costing me a tidy $2k, but my friend tells me it is a reasonable price, so I will not grumble too much. Sadly, sadly, I am beginning to feel a twinge of pain in my lower molar as well and I didn't like the way my dentist's eyes lit up above his mask when I mentioned it to him. Then I heard a muffled "One at a time, one at a time" and so I think the man has found a goldmine in my mouth...

Choose

2010-09-26T10:54:00.001+08:00

I shared at CYAN for the first time last Wednesday. Preparing for it took a long time and I learnt what it meant to wait on the Lord. For dear Emmaline, who asked for it, here is my 'mini sermon' :) To those of my readers who don't understand 'Singlish', ie the Singapore-brand of English, I apologize...

Choose

I used to teach in a school called Jurong Institute that was located in Toh Tuck Road. It was an old building but it occupied quite a big area.

There were two gates by which you could enter the school (not counting the hole in the fence that was used by those who came to school late and left early). One was the main gate – it was wide to allow cars to drive in. The other was narrow and meant for pedestrians. It was a school policy, which only the Principal and Heads of Department seemed to know about, that the narrow gate would be for the students to walk through so that they would be out of harm’s way and not dash across the path of cars turning in to the school.

But every morning, guess which gate the students insisted on walking through? Of course, the wide one.

They would saunter in, in twos and threes, chatting, or listening to their mp3 players totally oblivious to the teachers and parents who were trying to drive in through the same gate. Things would get really exciting 5 minutes before the school bell rang because both the students who were late and the teachers who were late would be rushing in through the wide gate. There were many near misses. Mercifully, there was only one accident.

Every time I saw this drama at the school gate I wished I could yell at the students "Come in through the narrow gate!” Maybe that is what God is yelling at us too. Maybe He too is shaking his head seeing us sauntering through the wide gate that leads to death. For in Matthew 7: 13-14, Jesus says,

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life and only a few find it.”

Let us consider the verse. There are three points to consider: (1) the size of the gate, (2) the number of people who enter, and (3) the end of the path.

John MacArthur points out that “Jesus presents two choices and only two - two gates, the Narrow and the Wide; two ways, the Narrow and the Broad; two groups, the Few and the Many; and two destinations, Life and Destruction”. Ultimately there are only two choices – to follow Jesus or not.

Many people today find such a stark choice unacceptable. The idea of “and” is more attractive than the idea of “or”. So we hear statements such as “the world is not black & white” or “that may be right for you, but not necessarily right for me”; we hear terms such as “situational ethics” and “relative truths”.

But if we come back to the Scriptures, that is all God presents us with – the narrow way or the broad way; the way to life or the way to destruction.

The narrow gate sounds difficult; it sounds as if it would be a struggle to enter through it and indeed in Luke 13, Jesus says “Strive (make every effort) to enter through the narrow door”. The narrow way seems lonely, there are few people who enter by it. In contrast, the wide gate is open, welcoming. It is where the crowds are and it sounds so much easier to get in. People walk in the broad way easily, without much thought, carried along with the company. The narrow way is not popular, it is often solitary. And maybe those who saunter casually and easily through the wide gate laugh at those foolish ones who are filing in through the narrow door on to the narrow way....

But Jesus says wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction. He says just because you see many people walking that road you must not be seduced by it. No matter how attractive other ways look, they will lead us to death. Perhaps not physical death (as my dear students were in danger of) but as LT said, spiritual death, intellectual death, emotional death. And Jesus tells us to choose.

Let us come back to my story of my students. Why did the students use the wide gate? Why didn’t they walk a little more and come through the narrow gate? Their reasons were simple.

“Cher, so lecheh-lah cher…”

The students I caught were incredulous that I could not see how much more convenient the wide gate was. The answer was so obvious to them. It was the first entrance as they walked up the hill and it was wide open. Sure, the cars had to dodge them, but that wasn’t a big deal, surely?

The size of the gate makes walking through it easy and sometimes we do just that, because doing something the right way sometimes requires making an extra effort. And I think of Daniel. How much easier it would have been to eat the food provided for him. He could have reasoned to himself, I am an exile in a foreign land, how am I going to find the food I need. I am under the rule of the king, how am I going to go against his authority. Many times I too have reasoned my way into sin. Sometimes the wrong way just seems more convenient and obvious.

But Daniel chose the narrow way. He negotiated, he found creative solutions because He was focused on pleasing God. I am sure it was so lecheh for him, to eat nothing but vegetables. Maybe the person who prepared the separate meals for Daniel and his friends grumbled at how lecheh they were.

Settling for a way that does not honour God because it is inconvenient is a slippery slope, my friends. Yes, it might mean taking a longer route, yes, there will be some inconvenience, and yes you might feel foolish. But only the narrow gate and the narrow way lead to Jesus and we will do well to remember the warning - “There is a way that seems right to man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Prov 14:12)

The second reason my students would give me is this...

“Cher, other people also...”

With teenagers (and those who haven’t matured beyond their adolescence), ‘because everyone else was doing it’ was reason enough. Many of them would wait at the bus-stop for each other or would travel to school together and so would walk in through the wide gate, busy talking and laughing, sharing ear-phones... The thought of stopping each other and reminding each other to go through the narrow gate never ever occurred to them.

Sometimes, we too get carried away by the choices and decisions of others. It is easy to follow the crowd. Two years ago, I did just that. At my workplace, we had a team leaders’ meeting at the end of the year when work allocations for the following year were usually announced. Half way through the meeting I left to go to the toilet. When I opened the door to enter the room again, every single team leader in the room turned to look at me. I was taken aback. Clearly something had been said but I didn’t know what. Within minutes 4 notes were passed to me, asking me to look at the work allocation more closely. Then it dawned on me. An unpopular colleague had been placed in my team the following year! There was a great deal of animosity against him in the office and the general talk was that he did not do the work assigned to him, drew attention to what he did do, and made himself look good in front of the bosses. This colleague was also very assertive and usually got his way.

Egged on by my friends, I did a very foolish and unprofessional thing. I spoke up at the meeting and refused to take the colleague into my team. I went so far as to give my boss an ultimatum. I said either take him out of my team or make him the team leader because I refused to work with him. I put my boss on a spot, I misused my seniority, I played a power game. It was easy to walk through the wide gate. Because I had the support of all my friends.

But God gave me no peace. During my QT the same night, He confronted me. And I accepted that I had shamed my God by the way I had behaved. God convicted me of not only behaving badly, but also of being a bad example to the other Christians in my office. The next morning I had to eat humble pie. I spoke to my boss, I apologized. I also apologized to my Christian friends. My other friends were too busy shaking their heads at me to care! But I knew I had walked through the wide gate because of the support of the many.

The persuasion of friends is a dangerous thing. Once when I hesitated, my friend asked me impatiently “Do you always do only what is right?” and I thought to myself “No I don’t” and sinned. Thinking back, I ask myself how I could have been so foolish, but at that moment it seemed as if I had committed so many sins already that one more didn’t matter. I sinned because I wanted to please my friend and I wanted his approval.

The wide gate is very accommodating of company, my friends. Many walk through it. But a popular choice is not necessarily a right choice. And in the laughter of company we will miss the still, small voice of God.

“Cher, never think so much lah…”

This was the third reason my students offered me. They walked through the wide gate because they didn’t think about consequences and alternatives. Walking through the wide gate was just thoughtlessness. They were focused on getting to the assembly area before the bell rang. They did not think there would be drivers rushing in as well, they didn’t think there was another safer way. Some of these students did not deliberately set out to do wrong. They just did not think about their actions and the choice they were making.

Sometimes, we slide into sin in the same way – through carelessness, negligence, because we were not watchful. Sometimes this complacency sets in when we are too comfortable with God’s grace and love. Sometimes, we let our guard down because we are riding high – all is well with our world, we are busy doing God’s work and we think to ourselves “Lord, I could never leave You, I could never do what so-and-so did.”

Friends beware if that thought ever comes to your mind. If you hear or see someone fall and say to yourself “I don’t understand how such a committed Christian like him could do that” or “I would never do that”, you are in danger. Because everyone of us is capable of every sin given the wrong circumstance, place or time. Satan is an expert fisherman and he knows exactly which bait will catch which fish.

We must not live unexamined lives. The Psalmist cries out “Search me o God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there is any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting!” (Ps 139:23-24). A thoughtless life leads us in the way of destruction. It is a life of moral short-cuts and ultimately a path away from God.

In the end, my friends, it is a matter choice – narrow or wide, in the company of a trusted few or the merriment of many, towards destruction or towards life. But it is an important choice and one that we make every day with our thoughts, words and actions.

Today I speak to you, as someone who has not stayed on the narrow path, someone who has walked through those wide gates, who has enjoyed the thoughtless company of people headed for destruction. I have turned back only by the grace of God. I want to encourage you, don’t live the convenient, easy, popular, thoughtless life. CHOOSE to enter by the narrow gate, choose the path of isolation if need be and you will choose life. For, my friends, the promise of God is this – “If the Lord delights in a man’s way, he makes his steps firm; though he stumble, he will not fall, for the Lord upholds him with his hand.” (Ps 37:23-24)

My Comfort

2010-09-14T11:39:00.000+08:00

"Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter,
you will restore my life again;
from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up.
You will increase my honor and comfort me once again."

(Ps 71:20-21)

CYAN Retreat

2010-09-11T22:20:00.005+08:00

Just got back today from church retreat in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. It was a 3D2N retreat for the young adults in my church and I went along as this is where I serve in church. I love worshipping and praying with young adults. They have a zest, passion and freshness for God that energises me :)

We had a fantastic speaker for this retreat - Mr L.T. Jeyachandran - whom everyone calls "LT". LT's speciality is Apologetics and we all came away challenged by his deep knowledge of the Word as well his insightful explanation of how we need to latch our own narratives onto God's meta-narrative. I was especially stirred by the picture he painted of the uniqueness of man as the only one created in the image of God and how the sin I commit mars the dignity of my unique human condition.

It was a good weekend away. Amazingly, there were no traffic jams on the causeway at all, both on Thurs and on Sat. The hotel was also a pleasant one and I had far too much to eat :) But I enjoyed the time away, and the opportunity to catch up with the young adults in other cells whom I normally don't have time to talk to during CYAN cell nights.

The Right Thing

2010-09-07T13:51:00.002+08:00

The quote for the day was this: "Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time." (Arnold Glasgow) I wonder, though, is it simple? Sometimes it doesn't feel like I know what is the right thing to do. And I can't say I have always done things the right way. And I have my share of missed opportunities - times when I could have done the right thing but lacked the courage or will to.

I doubt I will ever reach a time or phase in life when I can say this is right for me at this point in time and I am doing it the way I want to. I would like to be able to say that. But that is not always possible for me. Yes, sometimes I don't do what is right for me because I think about the implications of my decision on others. Many times I have done what is right in a bull-headed way and negated the effect of my right action through the manner in which I did it. Once I was drawn into doing something wrong because I took the bait when my friend said "Do you always do what is right?" It seems incredibly stupid now but the knowledge I had done so many wrong things before consoled me into adding one more wrong action to my long list.

Sometimes, preachers make decisions look so easy. Do what the Bible says. Right is right in God's eyes. Wrong is wrong. But sometimes two decisions both look and feel right. Then what?

Then I need wisdom and discretion; then I need good friends' advice; then I need to tell myself "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths." (Prov 3:5-6)

Teachers' Day

2010-09-03T14:35:00.002+08:00

It was Teachers' Day on 1 Sept. It is a school holiday and traditionally on the day before, all schools have a half day of celebrations. I have missed Teachers' Day every year since I left teaching. I suppose it is because my love language is 'Words of Affirmation', but I have saved every card that my students have given me, all stuffed in folders. The first few years in my new job, I used to take out these cards on Teachers' Day, just to assure myself that I had done somethings right :)

I had a very nice Teachers' Day this year, thanks to Facebook & sms technology because I heard from many students, all over the world :) I guess it is far easier to connect with me from the ease of their homes now. I also had a dedication in The Straits Times and that was sweet. I guess all these wishes were extra special to me because of my rotten year . My self esteem was feeling quite bashed up and bedraggled so I feel blessed that my students bothered to write. Just needed to feel some love :)

I spent the day determined not to work. I had a nice long QT. I pampered myself with a visit to House where I had a long luxurious massage then got waxed and my nails done. I had CYAN in the evening so I got to worship and there was prayer for all the teachers so that made me feel the day was nicely wrapped up. Love from others, love for self and love from my God.

Who Tells You the Truth?

2010-08-31T22:41:00.000+08:00

I have been thinking about this since J and I talked about it on Sunday... Should the truth be told? Why? Sounds like a GP essay topic, doesn't it? :)

I used to find it hard to tell the truth, especially when it concerned telling unpleasant truths. I also found it hard to tell the truth about how I was feeling and I admit that I have chosen to take the easier way out of situations by lying or mitigating the intensity of what I really felt. It is a hard thing to do - telling the truth - and many people (me included) cop out, because telling the truth is often hurtful.

Since our conversation, I have been paying attention to the times I have not told the truth in the past 3 days. It is not a pleasant experience, hearing a lie come out of your mouth and recognising it, saying to yourself "ok that's a lie" and then saying it anyway....!!!! I'm not going to tell you the actual number of lies I caught myself telling, but I realise that on all the occasions I caught myself lying, it was either because I cared what the other person thought of me or because I was afraid of the other person's reaction. Once I lied (this was absolutely the worst one!!!) because I did not want the other person to think I was a bad Christian (hang head in shame, yes...) and twice I lied because I was afraid of the other person's anger.

Interestingly, not wanting to hurt the other person's feelings was not high on my list as a reason. And I asked myself why. Was I such an uncaring person? Surely it would be better to lie if telling the truth meant hurting the other person?

I think there are 2 reasons to this aspect of me. One - I am a teacher. It is important to me that others learn. There is no desire or intention in me to judge the other person when I point out things. Setting wrong things right, correcting misconceptions, pointing out alternative viewpoints, suggesting a better way of doing things - this is what I think I need to do as a teacher. An occupational hazard, I suppose.

Two, I feel, if the people around me don't tell me the truth I need to hear, how will I know? Who will tell me "you are wrong" or "you sounded arrogant" or "you should apologize" or "that doesn't look good on you" or even "you have put on weight"? Only people who love me. Only people who are courageous and honest and care for me more than they fear my anger or hurt. I have such friends and for this I am truly grateful.

The bottomline is this - it takes courage and love to tell the truth. Jesus said "I am the Truth." And every time He encountered half-truths and lies, He gently persisted till the truth emerged. Go and bring your husband He said to the woman at the well; go sell your riches and follow me He said to the young man; you won't have the courage to stand with me He said to Peter. I'm sure all of them cringed or felt embarrassed or got really angry. Yet Jesus spoke the truth.

I know I have grown because many people spoke truths into my life. Many of these truths embarrassed me or made me feel defensive or angry. But I also know that each person who spoke the truth I needed to hear was used by God to grow me and growth comes through pain.

There is another aspect to this, of course. And that involves how we receive the truth. If we lash out at the person who tells us the truth, if we belittle them, if we react by turning on them and listing their faults to get even, then, my dears, you will be lied to. Who speaks the truth to you? Cherish them, for they love you much. Because, only very few people will speak the truth to you without fear or favour. May God bless you with such friends :)

Man Watching

2010-08-28T21:36:00.002+08:00

The title startled you I know :) But I have been man-watching, yes. Not in the same way that young girls man-watch. But watching to assess, to see for myself what I value. And I realise I have changed much.

When I was younger it was physical attractiveness that caught my eye. When I was a teenager, I once said something unforgiveable. My sister had a colleague who I admired a great deal. She was tall and beautiful, she dressed well and spoke with such confidence. I was an awkward, overweight teenager and I worshipped the ground she walked on, and very smitten by the fact that she was so nice to me. She did not get married for a long time and then one day she brought her fiance to our home and introduced him to us. He was clearly much older than her, overweight and balding. I actually became really, really upset. I ran into my room and was very angry with both her and him. She came in to say goodbye and to invite me to the wedding and I blurted out at her - "He looks like a monkey. You can't marry him. He is so old and ugly." To this day, I don't quite understand what made me say that. My sister shushed me and apologised profusely but I shamefacedly remember how gracious that lady was. She brushed aside my sister's embarrassment and said to me, "One day you will understand that he is a good man." It took me a long while to grow up enough to understand her words.

Now I realise I don't look at men who are dashing. The men who make me smile today are different. I like to watch men who carry their babies; men who sit in cafes and are lost in their books; old men who hold their old wives' hands; men who pray with their wives and children; men who celebrate their women; men whose eyes laugh. Blessed are the women who have found them.

Strength

2010-08-28T16:56:00.001+08:00

"In the depth of winter
I finally learned that
there was in me
an invincible summer"

- Albert Camus

Random Thought

2010-08-25T15:12:00.001+08:00

Sometimes, when my pastor preaches, he says there are some questions he wants to ask God when he gets to heaven. His questions are usually theological. My mind is too small for that. I have absurd questions that I want to ask God when I get to heaven.

For example, if I am not flat on my face in awe of God, I really want to know about Noah and the Ark. It is a story that is told in Sunday School and easily believed by 3 year olds but likely to be received with much skepticism by adults. It is one of those stories in the Bible that non-believers love to take apart.

But I really do want to know too - Were insects on that ark too? Why cockroaches God? And how did Noah feed this zoo that consisted of the whole ecosystem? And clean up their poo?

I don't have the answers. All I can say, right now is, I don't know. But it is in the Word of God. One day, He will tell me. Or maybe at that time, I will not care.You think I've gone nuts, right? :)

Time

2010-08-23T17:41:00.005+08:00

" For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace."

- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

I love these verses. They give me perspective. They help me to look beyond the confusion, irritations, disappointments and pain of the day to day. They teach me not to be complacent or arrogant when all things seem to be going my way. And they teach me to wait, because God isn't done yet. Sometimes we build bridges; sometimes we have to burn them.

The Horror! The Horror!

2010-08-23T13:27:00.002+08:00

I googled myself today and guess what I found? This:
"Vara" by Charles Spiteri is the AHWA 2006 short story contest winner. In the short story category, the judges felt that "Vara" displayed great strength of narrative and characterisation, and gave a fresh resonance to some classic horror themes."

AHWA by the way, is the acronym for Australian Horror Writers Association. I suspect ALL my students. I know one of them is "Charles Spiteri". But I am not above suspecting my friends either. I am the horror that stalks you by night. And day. Beware.... :)

More Than Birds & Grass

2010-08-22T18:29:00.001+08:00

I have a fridge magnet that says "The best things in life are the people we love, the places we have seen and the memories we have made along the way". With every passing year I find myself agreeing with this thought more and more.

There was a time when a healthy bank account was very important to me. For a long time, money in the bank meant security. I fretted when my bank balance ran low and the yearly bonus was the high point of my year. I was also reluctant to spend money - especially on myself. I now realise that this attitude to money masked deep insecurities within me - a lack of self-esteem, self-love and a misplaced belief that a healthy bank balance meant I was somebody.

I thank God for how He has set me free from the love of money. For that was what it was - a love of money for what it meant to me. It was a long struggle and one that caused me a great deal of anguish. Even today, there are days I look at my bank account and feel fear. But in a strange, strange way, God has loosened the grip of my fingers. It has happened through the many many debts I have helped to settle. And I realise that which each loan that was not returned, with each debt that was paid only to recur again, with each disappointment and heartache, God has helped me to let go. He has taught me that money really does come and go, but He remains. He has taught me the truth of Matthew 6: 25 - 30:

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

It is strange that today I can actually give thanks for something that caused me a lot of heartache and tears. I can give thanks because I know this to be true - God , and God alone has been my Provider. My Jehovah Jireh. He has indeed faithfully provided for me and my family.

We do not live in luxury and there are many things I confess, I desire. But by loosening my grip on money, God has taught me many lessons - that people matter more than things, that I must give without expecting obligation or returns of any kind, that someone who gives you more does not necessarily love you more and vice versa. I have learnt that money is a means, a tool. I have learnt that God is my only real security and when I am anxious about tomorrow, I must look at my yesterday and see how He provided for me. I have learnt that I must hold everything God gives me with open palms - to receive with thankfulness and to let go. At the end of the day, it does not matter how rich I am, but how enriched my life is, and how I have enriched the lives of the ones I love. Because God loves me more than the birds of the air and the grass of the field.

Those Were the Days, my Friend

2010-08-17T16:30:00.001+08:00

I came across this photograph in our Public Service in-house magazine. Do take a look. This was when we were on our highest moral horses and determined to keep the hippies with their guitars and drugs and questionable attitudes out of our clean Singapore. And what better way to identify the hippies than by their long hair, right? So we used to have these posters up in all government offices and yes, the rule was enforced :) We even banned guys with long hair from entering Singapore. The immigration officials brandished scissors and guys with long hair were given 2 options - cut those locks off or board the next plane home :)

The 1970s Hair

I am OK

2010-08-16T10:20:00.003+08:00

"I learned that it is perfectly ok to be different. It is ok to be intelligent and ambitious; informed and generous; and comfortable with power. And that it is natural to want to have a strong voice and to want to play a bigger role. Because the alternative is to stay unfulfilled, restless, and powerless."

- Marina Kotsianas, 'What I Learned on My Way to 50+"

I found this quote in a website I was browsing. And it resonates with me. For too long I realise I have been pretending to be dumber than I was, not voicing my opinion even when I had one, uncomfortable when making decisions that needed to be made, just to keep the family going and an ego satisfied. No more. It is ok to disagree, it is ok to say, "thus far and no more". I am OK just the way God made me.

Bonding in Bintan

2010-08-11T12:20:00.003+08:00

I know I have been to Bintan too many times when the receptionist at the hotel recognises me and says "Welcome back ibu" :) It is true. They should offer me Frequent Visitor status.

I was back at Bintan on National Day, with old friends. I read somewhere once, that it takes a long time to grow an old friend. And that is how we got here, my friends and I. Over a long time. We all used to teach together in my beloved school, Jurong Institute, which sadly, no longer exists. I am very glad our friendship has survived beyond our workplace :) Hey, we need a name!

It was a brief (but intense) 2D1N holiday as Bintan is only an hour away by ferry. It being National Day, the ferry operator actually distributed little Singapore flags to all the children on board. The sad fact was that none of the children seemed excited about these flags they were given. Even sadder was the fact that WE got really excited when we saw the flags being distributed, but got none :)

The absolutely first thing we did was to get a massage (of course) and foot reflexology while waiting for our villa to be ready. And once again, dear Shamala proves that she is an, ahem, "technical wizard" by getting her finger into the view finder... :)

I would say we walked along the beach as after all, we were on an island...

but this is where we really wanted to get to... Yes, my friends, you KNOW this is true ;)

I would say we swam in the pool, but again, with the exception of Mini, this is all we wanted to do...

So, hey, it was a GREAT holiday. In no order of importance, the highlights of our holiday were

fantastic, honest conversations
great massages
'silky tresses' from the hair spa :)
the end of 'teetotaller' status for one :)
Tamil songs especially "athi thai thai thai (sic)" and ""sentamizhnattu tamizhichiye" :)
lots of laughter
reciting the pledge at 8.10pm :)
pseudo dieting :)
'Sex and the City' - oh, ever mine, ever thine, ever ours... hahahaha...
pigging out at buffet breakfast
jacuzzi :)
great conversations - oops, have I said that already? Never mind, it is worth repeating :)

I had fun. I know you did too :)

My Patient God

2010-08-03T12:48:00.002+08:00

I have a friend, Rita, whom we tease mercilessly, because she repeats almost everything she says. She does it for emphasis, and especially if it is a nugget of wisdom, she needs to be sure that her listeners have got it. Really, really, really got it :)

I think it is an occupational hazard. We teachers tend to do it – to say the same thing over again, in case you didn’t get it the first time. That’s how we become dangerously close to being nags. Ok, I admit it, we do nag. The one thing that shuts me up is when I remember Solomon’s priceless analogy of the nagging wife and a dripping tap (“A quarrelsome wife is like constant dripping on a rainy day”! (Prov 27:15)

But, I have learnt, in my walk with God, that His way is different. He never hits me on the head with a sledge-hammer. Though there have been times when I have wished He would and just tell me what I need to hear! Nor is he like the nagging wife in Proverbs.. drip, drip, drip…aaagh!

No, God has been gentle with me. There have been aspects of my character He wanted to put right. There have been lessons about myself that He wanted me to learn. There was knowledge He had wanted to reveal to me. But He has been very gentle with my fragile soul.And He has repeated many lessons in different ways.

I spent this last weekend reading through some of my old journals and I have been amazed at some lessons I have recorded. There were verses that I had forgotten, there were sermon notes that made a different sense to me now than then. I remembered advice given to me by my best friend that had hurt me then but which makes sweet sense to me now. An old dream that was interpreted to me… And I am amazed at my God’s care for me.

A good teacher knows, the child will not learn unless he is ready to hear what you have to tell him. He needs to be at the right place emotionally, intellectually and in terms of maturity before he can receive what you have to teach him in a meaningful way. And I realize God has been preparing me and growing me and waiting for me in the same patient way.

Over and over again, I have seen God’s patience with me. Patient when I rejected Him and turned to other gods, patient when I struggled with Him and said no, patient when I searched for Him, patient when I fought Him and wanted my own way, patient when I turned away from Him and tasted the fruit of sin, patient when I waited far off not trusting that He would welcome me back home again. And now, He has been patient, while I have been angry with Him, patient while I argued, patient while I cried.

Yet through it all, He has taught me about myself, my weaknesses, my strengths, my needs. And He has taught me about Himself, who He is. Yes, my God repeats Himself. He has repeated lessons I have not learnt. And He shows me repeatedly that He never changes. And He repeats no matter how many times I ask Him, just how much He loves me.

Contemplating, Considering....

2010-07-25T08:10:00.002+08:00

I am thinking about going on a Holy Land Tour. It is a trip I have been wanting to take for a long time. My friend, Dot, and I almost went last year but the trip got postponed because the organisers had left booking the air tickets too late. Now another opportunity has opened up with a group from the Singapore Bible College. Should I go?

My heart says, yes. My head says, you have got to be kidding me.

My sister Su said, go. Because she postponed a trip to Trinidad and missed the chance to see her good friend before she died. My bank account protests and pleads with me to be a responsible mum. My best friend says, go - you promised me that for one year you will not sit out and that you will dance. My body says, 14 days of touring? are you up to it? The voice of Ms Not-good-enough says, you aren't in a good enough place with God to walk where He walked. But the voice of Ms Child-of-God says, what utter rubbish, when did Jesus ever say that?

In London

2010-07-23T16:45:00.000+08:00

I thought last year had been a year of much travelling but this year has turned out to be just as mad. This month especially, I have felt quite disoriented because I literally moved my clothes out of one suitcase into another. I was in Depok, Indonesia for a conference til Fri 9 Jul, then moved into an overnight bag for my weekend in Bintan with the girls on 10 Jul, and then into a bigger suitcase for my trip to London on 15 Jul.

I feel out of touch with what is going on at office and am quite ready right now for the routine and normalcy of the work week. Makes me wonder - would I chafe if I were to retire? I keep talking fondly of looking forward to retirement, but sometimes, I am not so sure I would enjoy days of nothing but leisure. And there is quite a bit of truth, I have discovered, in Paul's words in 1 Tim 5:13 - talking of the idle women in church he said "And besides they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house, and not only idle but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which they ought not" . Hahahaha. This I must not become :)

So what have I been up to in London? There was the baptism of my newest grand-niece, Marisha...

Catching up with family...

Great Quiet Times at Maya's dining table with this lovely reminder of God's creation...

Many cups of cappucino (skinny!), many many slices of Maya's chocolate cake.... Watched a movie (Inception) that messed with my mind in an exciting way... Watched a play (War Horse) that was a technical wizardry where the life sized horse puppets outshone the human actors hands down... .

And celebrated my niece Vidhya's first wedding anniversary at a fantastic Italian restaurant... To think it has been a year already since I last was here for my sister Su's 60th birthday and Vidhya's wedding!

So here I am, going to pack in a bit, getting ready to go home. I pray I will have as enjoyable a flight back as I did coming here. I pray I don't get another kiss-y couple in the seats next to me! Pray all the babies will sleep. Oh yeah - pray for journey mercies :)

On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand

2010-07-14T12:48:00.000+08:00

Conference in Jakarta

2010-07-07T23:13:00.008+08:00

So here I am blogging from a university town called Depok, about an hour's drive from Jakarta. The traffic chaos I had experienced on my last trip into this city is still fresh on my mind, and of course, nothing has changed.

I am here on an official trip this time, attending a conference with other delegates from South East Asian countries. There are 4 of us in the Singapore delegation. Mostly we feel like frauds because we don't have even a fraction of the problems that the other countries face. The focus of this seminar is on how marginalised minorities in some SEAsian countries can be helped to access mainstream education. These marginalised minorities usually speak a different language from that used in the schools and therefore the children who do not speak the mainstream language find it difficult to cope in school and drop out early. This leads to succeeding generations being trapped in the same economic state and unable to progress because their mother tongue isn't the language of education.

Anyway, I must say that, thankfully, the colleagues I am travelling with are a crazy bunch, so we have kept each other in stitches. We raced off to shop and eat the first day we got here before the conference started and booked our massages ;)

The conference started yesterday and I must say we were taken aback by the way the room was set up. I felt like I was a UN delegate, what with the Singapore flag on my table and all.

That look on my face is nervousness - in case we were asked to share our country's experiences with Multi Lingual education ;)

Here we are with the delegation from Malaysia...

And flying our national colours... We almost ended up posing with the Indonesian flag though because they are so similar!

Fruit of the Spirit

2010-07-01T10:59:00.003+08:00

I felt challenged today to examine the presence of fruit of the Spirit in my life.

Paul says in Galatians 5: 22 – 23 that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

God knows I struggle with all of them! It is easy to let my eye pass over the words, and agree, yes, they all are admirable traits. But wait, I say to myself. If God is within me, then I should be exhibiting these characteristics. They would be the “fruit” – the result of the Spirit’s work within me. And like a tree bears fruit – naturally, effortlessly, abundantly – my life should exhibit these characteristics as well.

Yet I know, if I am honest with myself, that I have struggled (and continue to struggle) with each of these characteristics at different times. How to love, when I am not loved back? How to rejoice when there is overwhelming sorrow? How do I keep peace when I want to retort with anger and bitterness? I have little success I think with the rest as well. To wait when there is little hope or sign of change? To be kind when the instinct is to be distant? To be good? O Lord, who other than you is good? My fickleness in abandoning God when I give way to temptation… Gentleness? I hear my students laugh. And above all – self control? Sigh…. Not even close.

But I take comfort in knowing I am but a ‘Work in Progress’. That in God's eyes I am being made perfect, one day at a time, one trial at a time. I am not yet all that I was created to be. One day, I will be.

Don't Settle!

2010-06-28T10:08:00.001+08:00

"Sometimes life's going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle."

- Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

It's a Matter of How You Look at It

2010-06-26T22:44:00.003+08:00

"The past cannot be changed. What is done is done. But the perception of the past can be modified. You can hang on to the anger and the memories that keep on destroying life day in and day out OR you can be set free to live one day at a time. You can help heal the past with humour by enlarging your perspective, dropping your fears, and seeing many of the hurting incidents of the past as the ridiculous anecdotes they really are. You can laugh today because you did all your crying yesterday."

- Anonymous
http://www.learnwell.org/laugh.htm

Filling in the Missing Bits

2010-06-20T19:45:00.004+08:00

Wow! Has it been 3 weeks already since I last posted? No wonder my teacher friends are moaning about the June holidays coming to an end! It seems like June just started!

Well, what has happened since my solo spa holiday? Two events stand out - the Pastoral Care Ministry Retreat that I went on and my Hong Kong escapade with my friends. I will post about my HK trip when I have got all the pics together since most of the pics involving me are in my friends' cameras :)

I went on a one day retreat organised by the Pastoral Care Ministry of my church. The theme was 'Dreamwork' - how we could make meaning of dreams, especially recurring ones. I admit I was quite sceptical before I started and it seemed like a strange theme for a church sponsored retreat. But I came away with new insights. Dream interpretation is solidly rooted in the Bible. The dreams of Jacob and Joseph, the dream interpretations done by Joseph and Daniel , the assurance that Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, was given in a dream ,all point to the fact that God uses divine dreams to guide us and speak to us.

I had not paid much attention to this aspect of spiritual direction before and I found that the retreat expanded my sense of how God speaks to us. I also had the precious experience of having a dream that had haunted me for 4 years being interpreted. I had this dream sometime in 2006, and although 2 others had interpreted the dream for me, their explanations had not sat well with me. As the retreat director said, when the dream is interpreted as God's intended message for you, you would feel a 'tingle' - "the inner knowledge that something is true and on-the-case". At this retreat, I had the opportunity to try and unpack the dream for myself and felt this "tingle".

So this has been something I have been turning over in my mind... The retreat director said the dream might not have made sense at the time I dreamt it but that God sometimes gives us dreams that point the way and He reveals things in His time. And I think it is no coincidence that this dream makes sense to me only now. I admit, I am intrigued.

My Solo Spa Holiday: Day 1

2010-06-03T20:17:00.010+08:00

I have so much to tell you about my wonderful weekend retreat to Javana Spa Resort. I went for a 3D2N trip over the Vesak Day weekend to this resort that is set on a hill. Believe it or not, I first read about this spa in Her World in 1998 and I have been wanting to go there ever since. But money was tight and it wasn't exactly a place one can take children to, so the trip did not become a reality. Till now.

When it turned out that J was not going to be back from the US and K was going home for the summer and I was going to be alone for the long weekend, I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to put into effect my new goal - if I have to choose between sitting it out or dance, I will choose to dance! So I booked myself into the Javana Spa Resort...

Day 1: Fri 28 May 2010

Well, the first day, frankly, was awful.

I had been booked on a 7.00am flight on Garuda ( I hope never to fly it again!) so I had to leave home at 4.50am to be in time for check in. Learning point - never let travel agents book you in flights leaving before 8.30am or you will spend a fortune in taxi fare to the airport because the midnight charges are in effect till 6.00am!

Well, to be fair, my trip started nicely enough - I got a cab, got in time to the airport, checking in was a breeze, I had a leisurely breakfast at Starbucks....mmmm. The flight to Jakarta lasted an hour. As Jakarta is an hour behind us, I landed at 8.00am. I sailed through immigration as well and waiting at the arrival gate was the Javana Spa rep with a placard. Then started the first of my irritances. I was told I had to wait 20 minutes for another party of 6 women who were also going to Javana but were on another flight. I ended up waiting 50 minutes. They were in an SIA flight which carried far more passengers and consequently took far longer at immigration.

But that ended up being the shortest of waits that day. I was wondering why the Javana rep was so edgy while waiting for the group to arrive and soon enough I learnt the reason... The traffic was horrendous! What was described as a 2 1/2 hour ride took us 5 hours!!!! The traffic literally crawled. In fact the traffic was moving so slowly on the expressway that scores of children were walking around hawking drinks and snacks.

The kids were all lined up along the expressway and some of them lugged cartons of mineral water, fruit baskets, keropok down from what appeared to be a kampung inside the thick vegetation. It was then that i realised this traffic jam must be a regular affair!

By the time we got to the spa I was hot, tired, sore-bottomed, frazzled and definitely in a foul mood. But the spa staff was wonderful. They made soothing noises, clucked at the traffic and the heat and promised us that we would soon feel relaxed, now that we were at Javana...

I had a prettily laid out lunch with a really cold glass of water-melon juice. See those breadsticks? They undid all the effects of the spa food. Lethal.

My first experience of eating alone was not pleasant. Strangely, I felt exposed. This surprised me because I have spent many hours in HV Starbucks or Coffee Club by myself and all I had needed was coffee and a book. Yet on this holiday, that I was dining alone seemed to stand out. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that Javana had few amenities , with no internet, no phone, no TV and nowhere to go other than round the compound. So almost everyone was there either in a group or as a couple. I'm sure many of the guests must have been puzzled about my solo visit to a place where there was little to do except talk and read.

Anyway, I found day meals easier to handle than the evening meals, maybe because of the ducks. This was the outdoor table that was my refuge and if you look closely behind me you will see my dining companions :)

Well, after lunch I was shown to my room....

... a king-sized bed with french windows that opened out to this view...

But I was freaked out. Because before the manager opened the door of the room, he rang the doorbell. To warn the spirits.... Aaaagh!!! The moment I closed the door behind him I dropped my bag and prayed over the room!!! Made sure the Holy Spirit was the only spirit occupying my room that night!

Because we had arrived so late, I missed the afternoon nature hike, but I had the first of my 3 massages that afternoon.... blissssss.... The massages were the most indulgent part of my trip. A massage every day.... But after the massage the day went downhill.

At 6.30 they served mocktails by a fireside. I walked into the lounge and felt like I was back in the school canteen, with all the benches full and no one making space for me. I walked straight through the lounge, out to the lobby and circled back to my room again. I sat and read for half hour then ventured to the dining room and sat at the table by myself and felt the first wave of loneliness.

I don't even remember what I ate the first night of my solo holiday. I kept my eyes glued on my book, smiled at the waiter, and when dinner ended (at 8!) I went back to my room and cried. I prayed and wrote in my journal and harangued God and had a full blown pity party for myself, saying over and over again I shouldn't have come, I should have found stuff to do in Singapore (visit my sister, clean the house, finish up office work, shop, watch movies) and asking God how was I going to survive another 2 days.... The silence was the deepest I have ever experienced. I think I would have even welcomed the sound of the cicak that I hate. I finally fell asleep.

The next morning, I danced with God.

My Solo Spa Holiday : Day 2

2010-06-03T19:55:00.000+08:00

Day 2: Sat 29 May 2010
My second day began with a loud knock on my door - a knock guaranteed to wake up even the soundest of sleepers with a start - at 5.30 am! Thankfully that meant it was 6.30 am in Singapore and that wasn't too early for me (plus I had slept really early the previous night...).

This was the sight that greeted us as we gathered to set off for our first activity of the day - a hike to Waterfall Nombor Dua (No. 2). What I really wanted was a cup of coffee. What we got was herbal tea. Sigh.

Well, I was pretty excited about the hike really. I had stopped exercising for a while and I must say the hike has in a way jump-started my exercising again. The hike was a great ice-breaker and by the time we reached the waterfall half an hour later, I had 6 friends - 2 Indonesian men who belonged to the same sports club abd travelled together, a Japanese couple (and the husband looked like Ng Eng Hen, I swear) and a gay couple, one of whom had lived in Singapore for a few years before. They all had one thing in common - at various times they all either caught me when I slipped, or helped me over tricky bits :)

The highlight of my second day came at the end of this trek -Waterfall No. 2. The manager had encouraged us to wear our swimsuits under our trackpants for the trek so we could swim in the waterfall. I was very very sure I was not going to put my feet into the freezing water let alone get into the pool, but I wore my swim suit anyway. And I am so glad I did! Because when we reached the beautiful waterfall, I stood there on the edge of the pool, watching some people jump in, screaming because of the cold, and remembered, dear Wai Yin, my promise that if I had to choose to sit it out or dance, I will dance.

So I danced....

The water was freeezing, but this was the highlight of my holiday - the time I decided to get in and walk through the waterfall!!! I really thought I was going to drown and I couldn't see anything because of all the water pouring down on me. But I had a great sense of accomplishment. The feeling is indescribable. And when we got out of the pool, the guide had towels and steaming cups of ginger tea waiting for us! It was easily the best ginger tea I have ever had :)

When we got back, it was past 7 am and we had breakfast. Each day, a staff would plan my day's programme for me and give it to me at breakfast. My second day's programme included an aerobics class (a fantatstic aerobics instructor! How I wish he was teaching in Singapore and not Javana...), another massage (mmmm), a pedicure with foot reflexology and an exercise class called 'Below the Belt' (well you can guess what areas were targetted in the class).

I also went on a nature appreciation walk...

and that sums up my second day at Javana.

Dinner that second night was a much more pleasant affair. The morning hike had broken the ice and when I walked into the dining room, the group of Indonesians who had helped me in the pool waved me over to join them and though I had a hard time following the conversation at the table (because they spoke Bahasa Indonesia), I was grateful for the friendship.

Sleep came easy....

My Solo Spa Holiday: Day 3

2010-06-03T19:08:00.000+08:00

"The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands..." (Ps 19:1)

These beautiful skies and towering mountain greeted us on Day 3 when we gathered again for an early morning hike to another waterfall - Nombor Empat (No. 4). The guide promised us that this one was bigger and the most beautiful of all. He also warned us that the climb was more difficult.

I was really buoyed up by my encounter with Waterfall No.2 and wasn't going to miss No. 4! My new found courage began to fail me quite soon because the path to this waterfall was indeed more treacherous than the day before. It had rained the previous night and the rocks were very slippery. My shoes had seen nothing more challenging than the floor of the aerobics room in MOE and the roads of Dover and I slipped, slid and slithered with abandon.

Our trekking group was severely reduced as many who had been to Waterfall No. 2 had decided one waterfall was all they needed to see. The going was the roughest I have tried. Footholds were cut into the rocky face but it was a steep descent and the makeshift bamboo handrail that kind souls had put in place did not extend along the whole trail. But again, as in the day before, I found many helping hands. A gentleman who had just arrived in Javana the night before, broke off a sturdy branch and offered it to me - "nak tongkat?" - and it literally was a life-saver. A Caucasian man who was behind me regaling me with stories of the years he had spent in Singapore assured me - "Don't look ahead at the rest of them. Just walk at your own pace. We aren't in any hurry..." and then when the going got tough he sidled past me and went ahead so he could lead me over the rough patches. The worst bit of the trek was when the footholds stopped and we had to walk sideways along a ledge of rock. That's when I wanted to turn right around and go back!

But I made it to Waterfall No. 4!!!

And though it looks like I am cavorting with strange men in these pictures, I assure you my dears, that these were just really, really kind strangers who encouraged me and guided me across the rocks to walk into the waterfall :) And it was a wonderful feeling!

I walked through that wall of water, not able to open my eyes, gasping from the sheer coldness and volume of water pouring down on me... and then in just a few heart-stopping seconds, I was on the other side of the fall ... and it was absolutely calm. Whenever I read again the words of God in Isaiah, "When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you", this is the experience I will remember.

The other Singaporeans and I had decided not to risk being stuck in the return jam, so we left early before the rest of the guests checked out. So I had time only for one more massage and an aerobics class.

Isn't it a pretty room? No stuffy airconditioned room smelling of stale sweat. Just open windows and a lovely scenery to look at while exercising.

Well that ended the nicest part of the day, because things went downhill again after that. There was a traffic jam - not as bad as the one we were stuck in on Friday - but energy-sapping nevertheless. The Garuda flight I was on was delayed by an hour - and the only one in the boarding area who reacted to the announcement of the delay was ME....

It was 11.45pm by the time I got home on Sunday. It had been a tiring trip and that seems ironical when you consider the fact that it had been a spa retreat on a hill. But the aspects that had spoilt the trip - the traffic jam, the delayed flight - were not really the fault of the spa management and there was nothing they could have done about it. But I have no regrets. I learnt of a strength within me I did not know I had. And I rested in God's love.

Excited!!!!

2010-05-24T14:41:00.002+08:00

YAY!!!! I am going to be ticking off one from my To-Do list! I am going on a spa holiday on my own this weekend!!!! I just had the tickets and the booking details delivered to me at my office! I am super excited! I'm going to the Javan Spa Resort which is a 2 hour drive from Jakarta. It is totally rustic, with no telephone, no tv, no internet. It is just going to be God and me. When I come back on Sunday I will either be a raving loonie driven to distraction by all that solitude or an ascetic saint who will resign to go live in the mountains.... :) Woooo hoooo!

When the Lights Come Up

2010-05-20T23:56:00.002+08:00

I just read this post on a blog I follow and it got me thinking...

"A situation on the plane ride home got me thinking. I sat on the aisle seat next to a guy about my age and in the window seat was a pretty gal about my age too. The two of them were talking--I wouldn't say flirting--but talking. The girl was definitely a sweet, friendly girl. When we landed and the lights came on, I could see things more clearly. The girl in the window seat had a huge rock on her ring finger on left hand! Yes, she was either engaged or married. And I wondered...would that girl's fiance or husband be happy if he was an observer of his woman's conduct on her plane trip. No she didn't technically do anything wrong--she could argue that she wasn't flirting.

But I began to think--asile lady's conduct was on the edge, toying with the line of too friendly--too friendly for the status of engaged or married. And not to impose something spiritual on a simple story...but I thought to myself. I have a status as well--I am engaged, betrothed to the king of the universe. Does my conduct demonstrate that status. Or am I flirting with the line of being too familiar, too friendly with the world? Is God cringing at my conversation with the guy next to me on my proverbial "plane?"

Even this evening I can think of a conversation I had that probably made God cringe. It is too easy to forget that I am Christ's Betrothed. When the lights come up, would my unseen behaviour, unspoken thoughts and unheard words shame me or stand up to God's scrutiny?

A Good Week

2010-05-20T23:26:00.005+08:00

After I stopped trying to do new things (my failed experiment) it turns out I did do somethings new after all... On Tuesday, we had a Car Rally organised as a bonding activity for my division and I went to parts of Singapore that I had not seen. And yesterday I went to the Asian Civilisations Museum on my own in the evening and surprisingly enjoyed wandering around the exhibits quite a bit.

This week is our Public Service Week. This is an annual event that encourages us civil servants to think about our jobs, find meaning in what we do and also build better ties. The Car Rally on Tues was organised to commemorate CPDD Day. 5 of us piled into my colleague Flo's car and went in search of clues from Waterloo Street to Bussorah Street to Onan Road in the east before heading out to west to Hort Park and back to MOE.

This is my team... Mental note to self - NEVER stand next to Flo :)

Some of the highlights were:

eating ice cream within 1 minute - ouch my teeth hurt.

discovering that the base of the golden dome of the Arab Street mosque was made of soya suace bottles!
trying and miserably failing to play 'chatek' (if my sister-in-law had been on our team, we would have aced it!)
trying to decipher the answers to inane, ridiculous clues such as "what house?" (huh?) and "where is love?" - definitely the most frustrating bit for me!
having to eat piping hot and mouth-searingly, tongue-numbingly chilli paste saturated curry puffs within 5 minutes. This was easily the most tortourous activity for me

Note: this pic was taken BEFORE we bit into the puff!

As part of PS Week, we are also encouraged to go on Learning Journeys and I chose to go to the ACM yesterday and I will be going to Fusionopolis tomorrow (no prizes for guessing why). Although there were many intriguing exhibits I decided to start with the special exhibition 'Treasury of the World' as the exhibition is scheduled to end in June. I thought I would have time to see the rest after that, but the bejewelled exhibits were so beautiful I hardly noticed 2 hours passing. If my bag had not been so heavy, I would have stayed till the museum closed at 7pm.

It has been a good week. I feel my world has been widened, my soul stretched.

No More Rescuing!

2010-05-18T19:06:00.004+08:00

Yesterday I read this passage in the book 'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott that described my life and gave me great advice:

"My Alcoholic Anonymous friend told me about the frazzled, defeated wife of an alcoholic man who kept passing out on the front lawn in the middle of the night. The wife kept dragging him in before dawn so that the neighbours wouldn't see him, until finally an old black woman from the South came up to her one day after a meeting and said, "Honey? Leave him lay where Jesus flang him."

And you know what, I have finally done that.

Not-So-Simple Rule #8: The Mettle of a Soldier is Tested in Battle

2010-05-13T18:51:00.004+08:00

I have neglected this list for a while now and it has been bugging me. So, here we are, my daughters, at the end of my list of Not-So-Simple rules – No. 8. And what does it mean to test the mettle of your date as a soldier? That when you choose a man to date, my daughters, you must watch how he fights with you., for it will save you many tears in the years ahead.

Last month, I read about a young actress who got married in South Africa; she cooed to the media about how she and her husband had fought only six times during their courtship. Perhaps that was a sign to her that the life ahead was going to be one of marital bliss. If I were her mother I would have been seriously worrried. Because, my daughters, if you and your date do not argue or have full blown “I’m so going to kill you” fights at all during your courtship days, be wary, for it is a sign of dishonesty or disengagement; not perfect harmony.

My daughters, all of us are fallen beings. None of us is perfect and when two complex human beings come together, it is unnatural for them to have an intense relationship without ever having conflicts. The best of friendships are the ones that survive misunderstandings, fears and tears, and, my daughters, I really do pray that the one you date is first and foremost, your best friend. Just as in deep friendships, in a dating relationship, a lack of conflict is not a healthy thing.

Each one of us is uniquely made and each one of us has a personality, a plethora of likes and dislikes, values, opinions and habits. If you analyse the different romance novels and movies, you will find a kernel of truth beneath all the fluff, and that is that many people are attracted to someone quite unlike them. It is immature to expect your date to be like you and to have the same personality as you. Yet many couples of different personalities have a successful relationship because they have learnt to celebrate their differences, to build on each other’s strength and compensate for each other’s weakness. Far from being an ideal partnership, a relationship that has no conflicts is, most likely, not an honest one.

My daughters, it is important for you to talk about issues that matter. It is important for you to be able to disagree and hold different views. It is important that the man you date respects your mind, your opinion and your dignity. It is important that he fights fair. The relationship, my daughters, must not be an issue of control or power play because if one has to win, then it can only mean that the other has to lose.

For some men, the fear of conflict is so great that they withdraw from anything that has even a vague whiff of confrontation. They will not be happy with the situation, but they will not express their real feelings and so you will never have a quarrel. To outsiders this might appear to be a perfect relationship, but danger can lurk beneath the calm surface. The soldier who is afraid of conflict has no mechanism to handle conflict and represses his feelings. Repressed or ignored feelings, my daughters, do not just disappear.

Some men see conflict as threats and feel a need to assert themselves most often through anger; they raise their voice, they intimidate, they insist on being the victors. In such a relationship, my daughters, you will find yourselves trying to keep the peace at all costs. You will be looking out for trigger points, you will accommodate his needs and you will be fearful .

Some men sulk. They mope around, waiting for you to cajole them out of their unhappiness, baby them out of their sadness and nurse their hurts and you will be the one to give in. This , my daughters, is emotional manipulation and your conflicts will not get resolved because the issues will simply tire you out.

My daughters, which type of a soldier will you date? Some soldiers avoid fights; some soldiers rush into battle and lose their heads; some soldiers retreat and nurse their hurts in silence; some soldiers will fight to win at all cost, no holds barred. And when the battle has been fought and won, my daughters, ask yourself, how is peace restored? Some soldiers are grudging and take a long time to make peace; some soldiers will want to rub their opponent’s nose in the mud and remind them of their lost battle every chance they get.

My daughters, the mettle of a soldier is seen only when you are able to see how he fights, how he wins and how he loses. The good soldier does not shy away from battles that need to be fought. But the good soldier respects the courage and strength of his opponent and gives his opponent the dignity of a fair fight. The good soldier is gracious even when he wins and the good soldier will treat the vanquished with dignity.

It is natural to think of dating and courtship will be an exhilarating time. The movies always end at the point when they kiss or when they get married.; the media has definitely created enough make-believe. But real life begins soon enough and when it does, I pray, that you will be blessed with good soldiers, my daughters.

I love you both very, very much.

Get a First!

2010-05-07T18:54:00.007+08:00

For one week I resolve to do something new every day. It will be a list of 'Firsts' for me. Why? Because I am going to celebrate every new day that God gives me.

Day 1: 7 May 2010 - I used Google Map on my iPhone to find my way to Westbourne Road. YAY!!

Day 2: Sat 8 May 2010 - I learnt how to blog through my mobile phone today. YAY!!!

Day 3: Sun 9 May 2010 - Ate almonds coated in dark chocolate with sea salt and turbinado sugar. YUCKS!!!!!

Day 4: Mon 10 May 2010 - I did something new but it is secret and J can vouch for it. Shhh...

Day 5: Tue 11 May 2010 - I paid a deposit for my first ever SOLO holiday!! YAY!!!

Day 6: Wed 12 May 2010 - Sadly, I didn't do anything new today :( Fail...

Day 7: Thu 13 May 2010 - I have given up on this list.... :)

I Will Dance

2010-05-07T18:27:00.002+08:00

Last night my 'kawan' WY took me out for dinner. She dug a lot of rubbish out of my soul. And she blessed me with this song, which is her wish for me. So, yes. When I have a choice to sit it out or dance, I will dance. One year, WY. For one year from last night, I will dance every time I get a chance.

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat
But always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed
I hope you still feel small
When you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Living might mean taking chances
But they're worth taking
Lovin' might be a mistake
But it's worth making
Don't let some hell bent heart
Leave you bitter
When you come close to selling out
Reconsider
Give the heavens above
More than just a passing glance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a real and constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
(Where those years have gone)

I hope you still feel small
When you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes, I hope one more opens
Promise me you'll give faith a fighting chance

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
Dance
I hope you dance
I hope you dance
(Time is a real and constant motion always)
I hope you dance
(Rolling us along)
I hope you dance
(Tell me who)
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
I hope you dance
(Where those years have gone)

(Tell me who)
I hope you dance
(Wants to look back on their youth and wonder)
(Where those years have gone)

A Morning with Philip Yancey

2010-05-06T17:21:00.007+08:00

Why do we ask for autographs?

I was going to say no one would want mine, but I realise that is not true. Many students have asked me to write in their autograph books. And I have had my share of writing "Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you.." in the autograph books of classmates when I was 10 or 12. Do any of these classmates and students keep these autographs I wonder. And what significance does it hold for them?

Yesterday J and I attended a Writing Seminar conducted by Philip Yancey and at the end of the morning I stood debating with myself whether I should stand in line to get his autograph on a copy of his book. By the time I decided, I was second last at the end of a long line.

A number of things intrigued me - why did I feel a desire to have this man's signature on the front page of my book? After all, he did little more than sign his name, and his name was already on the book anyway! If he had written a special note (eg "To dear Vara, my ardent admirer"), I could understand. That would have made the experience special and the book would have been accorded special status because it was distinguished from the other thousands of copies of the book on book shelves and in stores every where. Yet, I knew when I stood in line that he would not.

Did I want Yancey's autograph because he was famous? Wouldn't that make wanting to get Yancey's autograph a form of idolatry? Was I making him out to be a larger-than-life figure? That would ironically be undermining his testimony because his books were intended to point me to God and not himself.

And what about the self-consciousness I felt? Why this feeling that People would smile to themselves if they saw me standing in line? That somehow by getting up and walking out of the auditorium they were displaying superior attitudes to those of us who stood there clutching our copies of Yancey books, waiting for our 30 seconds of proximity to greatness.

A friend messaged me to ask where I was and I told him I was contemplating standing in line for an autograph. "Interesting" came the reply. "I have never done that before." I replied "Me neither." But in the cab home I realised I had. I have 3 autographs in my possession. The first was the autograph of an Indian actor, Kamalahasan, whom I bumped into in CK Tang's in 1978. The second from Joyce Huggett (who wrote 'Listening to God') and the third from Paula Rutherford (who revitalised my teaching with The Skilful Teacher workshops in 1996). I had not, however, stood in line for any of these other 3 autographs. And of the 3, I no longer have the same breathless, adolescent adoration for Kamalahasan I once had. Joyce Huggett and Paula Rutherford, I still admire, for they both touched me personally with their work.

So perhaps, that's what drew me. The sense that through this person's life work, he had impacted me. And I wanted a sign, an acknowledgement that somehow we had connected. A small sign - his name, not in print, but in his own hand, that reminds me that one morning in May, I had been inspired to write, by this man, who had devoted his life to "building his faith, word by word". Maybe when we ask for autographs we just want to remember again, a moment that meant something to us.

All is Well

2010-05-02T20:03:00.004+08:00

At my 50th birthday party in Nov 2007, I gave a speech in which I gave thanks to God for being in my life when I had a ‘train wreck’ in 1993. And I want to give thanks again for God’s presence in my life at this point when I again face a ‘train wreck’.

God is the strength of my heart, the song on my lips, the hope in my every morning. He is my faithful friend, my counselor, my consoler. He knows who I really am, no matter what anyone says or thinks and He tells me he loves me over and over and over again, no matter how many times I ask him. He blesses me, he protects me, He provides for me. Because I have God, I have everything.

"You O Lord, keep my lamp burning;
my God turns darkness into light.
With Your help I can advance against a troop;
with my God I can scale a wall."

Psalm 18: 28 - 29

I fear nothing. I have all I need. Because I have God.

"You Raise Me Up" - like you have never heard it before

2010-04-29T18:15:00.004+08:00

I can't believe it took me so long to discover Anita Renfroe!I heard her 'Momsense' when J sent me a link a few years ago but since discovering her "All the Wrinkled Ladies" I have been stalking her on YouTube :) A woman of God with a great sense of humour! She cracks me up and I think you have to be ahem a 'certain age' before you get the importance of singing an ode to your underwear :)

"All the Wrinkled Ladies"!

2010-04-28T12:57:00.000+08:00

I LOVE this song!!!! Hahahaha...

Back from Melbourne

2010-04-15T18:32:00.004+08:00

Sooo... I am back! I left on 31 March for a conference in Melbourne and came back on 12 Apr so that accounts for my long silence.

It was a good trip. I actually managed to spend 12 days in Melbourne with just 2 days of vacation leave because I could take conference leave for the days of the actual conference and the Easter weekend gave me a few extra days as well. I love it!

I stayed with my nephew's family and spent time catching up with my grand nephew and grand niece. R was on Easter hols so I got to spend time with her as well. Also met up with old friends Neena and Bee. Drank many cappucinos. Met old friends Pushpa and Ganesh, sadly didn't spend as much time with their children as I would have liked. Ate many chocolates. Visited a church that met in the sports hall of a school and had the strange experience of seeing a basketball hoop every time I raised my eyes to worship. Went on a hyped up, overpriced Hangman's Tour of the Old Melbourne Gaol - do not, do not waste your money on this if you are ever in Melbourne. Also did a day trip to Mornington Peninsula with my nephew's family and wandered around a maze which made me err.... a little claustrophobic... just a little :)

The Conference was a little bit of a disappointment. The quality of presentations was uneven and it appears as if the schools were all at different levels of competency where the infusion of ITC is concerned. But it was still a learning experience and I particularly enjoyed the school visits we made as it is not easy to get to visit schools.

All things considered, I had a good time. The past month has been a trying one for me on the home front and the trip to Melbourne gave me a chance to get away and rest. The time I spent with family and friends also left me feeling loved and supported. In the end, this is what matters - the people I love and who love me back.

A Taxi Conversation

2010-03-28T22:11:00.005+08:00

I went to visit my sister in Sembawang this evening. That essentially means 2 long taxi rides that cost me $30.00 in total. These visits to my sister are almost always the only times I wish I could drive... The MRT ride from where I live to Sembawang takes a little more than an hour and after that I would still need to get a cab or ask my nephew for a ride, so all in, it takes close to 2 hours just to get there! So, yes, call me a spoilt Singaporean if you will, but when I decide to go visit my sister, I take a cab. Both ways. Sometimes, money isn't every thing :)

So, today, I had 2 interesting conversations with the taxi drivers who took me there and back. The first one who drove me to Sembawang regaled me with stories centred around the theme "People are ungrateful and don't remember the good you have done for them". This involved various cousins and their families who had availed themselves of his services as a 'caster out of black magic spells' yet now did not want to have anything to do with him. While the tales of different cousins and the troubles they had gotten into and that he had rescued them from were entertaining, after the 4th story, I kind of got the picture. He was not just a taxi driver, he was a misunderstood saint. I was also suitably impressed by his insistence that he found Indians the best of all and unlike many other taxi drivers, he was NOT a racist :)

The driver who drove me back from Sembabwang to home, was a different personality altogether. I arrived at Dover with immense respect for the man. He spoke very well and it turned out that he had retired and was sharing the taxi with 3 other retired men who were all no longer dependent on the income from their driving. This gentleman said at 17 years of age he set himslef goals; he had worked as a crane operator in the Middle East drawing $7000.00 a month, volunteered to be retrenched during the 1987 economic crisis and returned to Singapore with a golden handshake worth $250,000.00. He has 2 children who are both aircraft technicians living in Australia, he has 2 grandchildren there and every 6 months he hangs up his car keys and travels to spend time with his children. He owns 3 houses in Johore Bahru, his flat in Singapore is fully paid up, he has no debts, his children give his wife $4000.00 a month which she saves for herself. The picture seemed similar for the other 2 men he shared the cab with - one had 2 houses in KL, the other had a bungalow in Malacca and they had all fully paid up mortgages on their HDB flats! I am truly full of respect for this man.

This taxi driver said when he was 17 he decided he would live by one main value - Discipline. As a result he said there were 5 Principles he lived by:

Not to be a 'coffee shop cabbie' (meaning he would put in the hours on the road and not idle at coffee shops during his shift)
No drinking
No smoking
No gambling
No womanising

He said by living in this way, he had a happy home, his children respected him, his wife was contented, he wasted neither time nor money and he had peace of mind. It seemed like a simple and maybe even a trite formula, but what I was hearing was a man who had lived his life well and was enjoying the fruits of his labour. It is a life to be emulated.

Where I Am

2010-03-22T13:15:00.002+08:00

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

- Soren Kierkegaard

For all that has been, Lord, thanks. For all that is to come, Lord, yes.

Back from Travels

2010-03-06T08:35:00.006+08:00

Soooo.... who missed me??? :) I'm back from a 10 day work trip to San Francisco and Vancouver. Like my gmail status proclaimed, I didn't want to go. I hated giving up my schedule (I had a CYAN retreat planned, there was the ICTLT Conference that I had registered for), I hated rushing around getting stuff for the trip (winter wear, boots, office wear....), I hated the thought of travelling with strangers, I wished I had more time to settle my household (pay the bills, stock the fridge... ). And most of all, I dreaded the winter. You see, I get really sad in winter. The day is grey, it gets dark by 4pm, it is so very cold and just to pop out and get a sandwich I have to put on layers of clothes and I feel miserable. I was also wary of the planned itinerary - it was a young person's itinerary, 3 cities in 8 days. I felt tired just reading it.

But yet again, God has taught me a lesson and I realise I need to go with the flow and stop resisting change. Schedules make me comfortable, predictability is safe. But maybe that attitude is shutting me off from exciting new opportunities. Maybe it is time to take some risks. Not foolhardy risks but risk trusting God to care enough about me, risk trusting that God means it when He says He is holding my right hand.

The verse He gave me was Isaiah 40: 29 - 31, a verse that Brandon shared on at CYAN. And it was assurance from God that He knows where I was, what I was feeling, what I was scared of. That He will give me the strength for the journey, that He was in charge. And that is what came to pass. The itinerary was changed a week before we left to just 2 cities, the weather was so mild that I used the bulky parka I bought only twice, the people I travelled with were extremely kind, the interview panel I sat on clicked and we were amazingly in synch in selecting candidates,the SIA flights were so well timed that I am hardly jetlagged. It was a good trip.

And what was the best bit of the trip for me? This - my hotel room...

I had an amazingly beautiful room to myself in San Francisco and Vancouver! And I loved having a king sized bed all to myself with soft sheets, warm quilt, comfortable pillows... It was the best 4 nights I had ever spent in a hotel. And in Vancouver I had the view of a lake from my window... Very shallow, I know, but I loved the sheer creature comfort of it all.

And the saddest? That it was too cold for me to eat the ice cream.....

So, now, I am back in Singapore. It will be work again on Monday. The predictability I had longed for will be back, I will be in synch with my diary again. But I am already looking forward to my next trip - Melbourne, 1 - 12 April....

Wisdom

2010-02-18T09:45:00.001+08:00

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is within it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more."

~ Mark Twain

Not-So-Simple-Rule #7: Ghosts of the Past Don't Stay in the Past

2010-02-11T14:45:00.000+08:00

Remember that song by The Backstreet Boys which went

" I don't care who you are

Where you're from

What you did

As long as you love me.."

This song exasperated me soooo much! But whenever I opened my mouth to comment R used to roll her eyes. (Well she still rolls her eyes at me now, but that is another story....)

You see, my daughters, what this song suggests is that the only time that matters is NOW. Only the present matters, only how you feel about me now matters. And that as long as there is love, then nothing else matters either. This works out fine in movies and songs, but in real life, you will find, my daughters, that who he was, where he came from and what he did matters a great deal!

Every life experience we have marks us in some way. Life experiences can change a person for the better or worse, entrench attitudes and values in a person, influence the decisions he makes, create situations that would have consequences later and generally form a pattern that informs the person's present life. And it would be foolish of you to ignore the past of the man you date.

Asking questions about your date's past can be a very difficult thing to do. It makes you sound like you are prying and being judgemental. Your date might ask you if you can't accept him the way he is. All of this will make it really awkward and you might be tempted to say you would just let sleeping dogs lie and to look to the future rather than the past. Difficult as it may be, this is one conversation you need to have.

If your date had serious relationships in the past - if he was married before (God forbid!), if he had a long-term relationship of any sort - you need to know and you need to ask how and why it ended. Past relationships will tell you a great deal about the man you are thinking of dating. You need to know why and how the other relationship ended; you need to know what his ex said when the relationship ended; and you need to know what he thinks of this past relationship. You see, my daughters, real life is not a 'Friends' episode. Men and women who have married or been in a long term relationship cannot wipe out the emotional entanglements and effects of the relationship and continue to be friends as if nothing had happended. While the desire to say 'let the past be past and let's start anew' would be very strong, it is important for you to know that the same things that went wrong in the past relationships could go wrong with you.

And, my daughters, if the man you date ever tells you he thinks he isn't good enough for you, stop and listen. Don't rush to console him or brush it aside or try to be magnanimous but stop and ask him why. Sometimes, when men tell you they aren't as "good" as you think they are, there is something there. No one knows his past like he himself does, obviously, and sometimes such statements are a 'test' to see how much you will accept. Sometimes it is a feeble attempt to 'come clean'. So before you brush it off as something that happened long ago or something that will not have an impact on your future, think. Because what he is telling you about his past may not be as paltry as he makes it out to be; and because 'small' transgressions have a way of becoming more exaggerated versions of themselves.

Just as you must not tolerate even the hint of violence in your dating relationship, you must not accept past peccadillos without asking yourself if it hints at a character flaw that could manifest itself again, this time in a way that could be painful for you. Because, my daughters, ghosts of the past don't conveniently stay in the past and I don't want the ones to be haunted to be you!

Where Did the Time Go?

2010-01-27T17:26:00.006+08:00

I think it is significant that my last blog entry was on 24 Dec 2009, because since then life has been a whirlwind and I am only now beginning to feel I can catch my breath. I heard a phrase on 'Bones' last night that seems to describe it well - "time has gotten away from me..."

Anyway what has been one of the big developments in my life is that The Big M has come to stay. I chanced upon a website the other day that listed 35 symptoms of menopause! And I counted - I have 16 of them. The one that speaks to me most is Number 9: "Crashing Fatigue".... So it has been a tough few months and my daily moods have ranged from sadness to madness and all things in between. But I feel better able to cope after knowing why I feel all these random aches, pains and general misery. And I am glad you have been so understanding my daughters, because I can't imagine me being all that easy to live with these days :)

The last few weeks after Christmas have been crowded largely because we have had an assortment of guests staying with us - all friends of J + one grand-nephew. In all, we have had 5 guests on top of my 2 daughters and daily life for me has been a series of linen changes, towel changes, stocking the larder with milk and toilet paper, and eating. So I ended 2009 5kgs heavier. ("O this too too solid flesh would melt / Thaw and resolve itself into dew" to misquote Hamlet ... hahahaha). In between our days were marked by 1 emergency visit to hospital at 3am, 1 biking accident with a fractured collar bone, 2 surgeries, the tragedy of 1 terrapin's death, 1 bizarre experience of someone being hugged by a tipsy stranger, 1 ardent admirer who came a-courting to my door with a chocolate and a rose and 3 neighbours' greatly mystified by the random ang-mohs flitting in and out of my home.... Yeah, that about captures the randomness of the past weeks :) And now, all of J's friends have left except for K who will be staying with us as she is volunteering with Teen Challenge for a year.

I hardly know where Dec went and now the weeks have gone by so quickly and it is February already. I meant to do a recap of 2009 but .... sigh.... I hope I get around to it. I'm just going to post this now so that my blog doesn't languish. I hope I find time to blog again soon. I do miss it when I don't.

The Reason for the Season

2009-12-24T10:28:00.002+08:00

Mild He lays His glory by

Born that man no more may die

Born to raise the sons of earth

Born to give them second birth!

Hark! The herald angels sing

"Glory to the newborn King!"

Blessed Christmas everyone!!! Let us keep the Christ in Christ-mas!!! God became flesh to reconcile us to Him! What love!!!!!

Not-So-Simple Rule #6: You Can't Make Bad Batter Better by Adding Good Batter to It!

2009-12-01T13:00:00.002+08:00

I have neglected my Not-So-Simple Rules for too long! So here we go again!

First let me be upfront and say Rule #6 is especially for R! Yes I can hear you screaming :) But trust me, this one you really really need to know.

Rule #6 - You can't make bad batter better by adding good batter to it.

A good cook will tell you, if you made a batch of batter for pancakes or waffles or fried chicken and it didn't turn out right, just throw it away and start afresh. That would be the best option. But many amateur cooks and cost conscious mums try to make the bad batter better by adding stuff to it - like more butter or more flour or more cream or even add it to a batch of good batter and hope that the good batter will mask the mistake and somehow 'rescue' the bad batter :)

But the end result, my daughters, is always that the bad batter ends up costing you more - more money, more wasted time, more heartache, more frustration. It would have really been better to throw out the bad batter and start afresh. You really can't make bad batter better by adding good batter to it.

So what does all this have to do with dating? You can't date a 'bad boy' and think that you ("the good batter") will be the one to change him. (I can hear you screaming again.)

You see, my daughters, many women are drawn to 'bad boys' - especially the ones who seem to be waiting to be rescued; from themselves. There is a little bit of "the saviour" mentality in many women; maybe it is the maternal, nurturing instinct in us, maybe it is the innate desire to fix things and make it better.... The fact remains that many women are drawn to 'bad boys' and we begin to think that we will be the ones who will make the difference - that all that this guy needs is a friend who believes in him, a friend who accepts him and is willing to stand by him while he works through his problems etc etc etc....... But trust me, my daughters, there is wisdom in Jeremiah's words "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil." (Jer 13:23) Bad boys can't be made good. Instead it will be the good girls who will get drawn into an unrewarding, demeaning and destructive relationship in the end.

I don't think I need to describe these 'bad boys' to you. They walk around with a devil-may-care attitude, they admit to having a huge problem that they want to break but can't (smoking, drinking, drugs, anger, gangs etc etc ) and then suggest in some ways that maybe they can't change on their own - their family doesn't believe in them (their mother / father / abusive siblings / step parents - the variety I have heard is endless), they don't have true friends, noone cares... Then they will talk of themselves as misunderstood beings, guys who could be someone different if only.....

That "if only" my daughters, must not be YOU! :) No, you cannot help him quit smoking, no you cannot be his friend while he is in a gang, no your friendship isn't going to save him, no you must not spend hours on the phone counselling him, no you cannot go with him to talk to these people who are making his life miserable.

And if, my daughters, you have already started a friendship trying to fix one of these "bad boys", you must have the strength to end it because the "bad boy" date is also emotionally manipulative. You will get calls and sms messages that portray him in different dire situations, his friends will call on his behalkf to talk to you, he will moon around in your presence, you will get messages that he is crying or drunk or suicidal. So you see, it is better not to get into one of these friendships at all because you will be sucked into a relationship that will drain you and get you in deep waters because the fact is, the saviour he needs is not YOU.

Dating a "bad boy" will mean moving from one calamity to another, from one situation to another because even when there are no problems, he will invent one as it is your sympathy that is keeping you hooked. And as long as he can keep you sympathetic, as long as he keeps you believing that he needs you, you will stay. And that will be a disastrous decision. So, my daughters, if the batter is bad, chuck it down the kitchen sink no matter how tempted you are to try and save it. Because you can't make bad batter better by adding good batter to it.

At a Hard Place

2009-11-17T21:15:00.005+08:00

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

These words resonated with me when I did King Lear in my pre-university days, thinking of how hurt my father had been by my brother. The words came to my mind again this weekend after I visited my eldest sister in KL.

It is sad to be old and alone. Loneliness is hard to bear no matter what the age. But in old age it is harder, for added to the pain of loneliness, is a sharp sense of failure. A realisation that we have come to almost the end of our days and we have lived the best part of our lives, yet we have little left to show fo it. To be bereft of loving relationships in the winter of our lives becomes harder to bear because there is little left to hope for.

I am at a hard place. I want to care for my sister in her old age but I struggle with the sacrifices my family and I would have to make - giving up a room and privacy; the financial burden of carrying another dependent; coping with the stress of paper work needed to bring her here, hire a maid. Questions arise in my mind - how will this affect my family? what will I do when she needs medical care? what if she rubs my husband up the wrong way? am I ready to take this on for what could well be the next 10 years?

Then I remember that when I baulk at sacrifice, I dishonour my God who sacrificed His Son for me. When I wonder will I be able to afford it, I am questioning if my Jehoveh Jireh will provide for me. When I ask will my children and I handle the stress, I am asking if we, His children, have enough love.

It is a hard place. But I am reminded - "Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." (James 4:17). My heart is heavy.

Somthing to Think About

2009-11-12T13:45:00.005+08:00

"Nations, like individuals, languish when they only have uncritical lovers or unloving critics. "

"One paradox of the human condition is that the most logical point at which to undertake painful reform is in good times. The pain will be less then. But virtually no society, and especially no democratic society, can administer significant pain in good times. It takes a crisis to make change possible. Hence, there is a lot of wisdom in the principle, “never waste a crisis.”
- Kishore Mahbubani, Dean,LKY School of Public Policy, NUS.

Prof Mahbubani is a thinker I respect. This afternoon I will be attending a talk by him at my office and I am really looking forward to it. He is an old school gentleman and sometimes I wonder what would happen to Singapore when his generation of fearless speakers passes on.

Here are two articles Prof Mahbubani wrote that we have been asked to read as a preamble to his talk:

"Can America Fail?"

"Can Singapore Fail?"

To Love

2009-11-06T22:11:00.004+08:00

On Wednesday at CYAN we had an interesting speaker - Rev Matthew Lo. He spoke on 1 Cor 13, the passage which is oft quoted during weddings...

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." (1 Cor 13: 4 - 8)

It is a verse I have hanging in my kitchen as well and like something you see every day and do not notice, I have not paid attention to these words in a long while.

Wednesday's sermon touched me because the message seemed to be a simple one, but when it was unpacked, I realised how difficult it was to act on. Rev Lo pointed out that although this verse is often used in weddings, Paul was not writing this letter to a couple about to get married. Instead, Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth which was disunited, envious, quarrelsome and sexually licentious. As the speaker pointed out, the world had got into the church. And Paul was offering love as the only antidote that could pull the church back to what it should be.

I was struck by Rev Lo's question - can you show love in a love-less world? Can you love someone who hurts you again and again, wrongs you again and again, remembers nothing you have done for him and offers you nothing in return? If it was Christ's love we are talking about, the answer has to be yes. Because love keeps NO record of wrongs. Love ALWAYS trusts, ALWAYS hopes, ALWAYS perseveres. But as Jesus says, it is easier to love someone who loves us. But He calls us to show a different kind of love. To love in a love-less world? It is hard.