It was a tiring 5 hour trek. We started from Bukit Timah Hill at about 9am and ended at the MacRitchie Reservoir at about 3pm including an hour for rest and refreshments. We wanted to simulate the feeling of walking hours without end but could not replicate the upward incline of Mt Kinabalu. At the end of it we were all bushed; we took off our shoes at the canteen, and the iced sprite tasted heavenly. At home, it was the bath and the bed! Enjoy the pics (click for pop-ups; rest cursor for titles)!
Please take a few moments to pray this for our Malaysian neighbours:
God Almighty, who is sovereign over all nations, we confess the failures and sins of this great nation and humbly beseech you for changes that will lead to a better Malaysia. You put up rulers and you set them down. We pray for corruption to be uprooted; for justice to flow like a river unhindered; for integrity to be nurtured in the institutions. Lord, remove the despair and feeling of powerlessness of your people. Let all Malaysians feel hopeful as they vote on the 8th of March and help them to vote conscientiously for a better Malaysia for all races and religions. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.
The Straits Times featured this piece of news which I thought was a crude and gruesome image of the Barisan Nasional and its ‘unexplained baggages’ that it is carrying into the elections.
The body of a man, suspected to have been murdered, was found in the luggage compartment of a bus carrying a Puteri Umno team to the nomination centre in Semenyih yesterday. The bus driver stumbled upon the unidentified man’s body, bundled in a thin mattress and stuffed into a bag, around 10am when he was checking the luggage compartment after the Puteri delegation had alighted at the Kajang Stadium to join Barisan Nasional supporters accompanying the candidates to the nomination centre. Judging from the injuries on his body, the man could have been murdered more than 48 hours ago, Kajang police said. They believe the death was not connected to the elections.
The painful reality is that despite the skeletons in the BN closet, they will still gain the majority and form the next government. Talk about disenfranchisement and despair! In moments like these I feel grateful for what we have here in this little red dot.
It was sad to hear about what happened in the game at Birmingham. Arsenal should properly grieve over Eduardo’s broken leg, and then channel their anger, shock and sorrow for their Brazilian striker into the remaining games and win the EPL championship for Eduardo. Make this a turning point for their season. They are capable of reprising what Dennis Bergkamp did for them during the recent memorable years.
“The Chinese people were from Akkadia in Mesopotamia and migrated to China overland after the Tower of Babel incident in the Bible.” This fascinating hypothesis or postulation about our Chinese origins is deduced from the Chinese pakua, the circular eight-side diagram, often with a central mirror (or yin-yang symbol) hung over doors of Chinese homes to ward off evil. Read Random Musing post about it HERE.
I still find it hard to believe you can deduce that from the pakua.
A recent survey of 200 Singaporean singles done by Social Development Services was cited in a Sunday Times article today. The survey results on dating expectations of single women were:
80% of Singaporean women expect their boyfriends to pay on dates and 92% of men will do so.
50% expect men to open the doors to cars and restaurants and 88% of men will do so.
90% expect expect men to send their girlfriends home after a date and 94% of men will do so.
96% of women expect their boyfriends to initiate the celebration of special occasions such as anniversaries and birthday and 92% of men will do so.
88% of women expect their boyfriends to dress up for special occasions such as birthdays and Valentine’s Day and 78% of men will do so.
24% of women expect their boyfriends to carry their handbags and 70% of men will do so.
Dr Ilya Farber, 39, an assistant professor of social science and philosophy at SMU said this: “If those are the most important items on most people’s dates checklists then the human race is doomed”.
Again I am thankful for the undeserved blessing of a wonderful wife, my wife Jenny. Either she is from an earlier generation or she is among the 20% of Singaporean women with different expectations or both.
I am part of the Church Resource Ministries Singapore(CRMS) executive committee: behind left to right are Dave Tang, Wu Shen Kong, Keith Webb, James Creasman (President); in front from left: myself, Joanna the secretary, Shoo How Beng, Bishop Moses Tay, and Eric Chua; missing from pic: Seng Chor. These men are all about leadership development and they have volunteered their time and resources to serve with James Creasman in this ministry. I was inspired and encouraged to hear both from the President as he talked about his vision for the ministry and the Bishop as he shared a prophetic perspective about what God is doing in the church in Singapore. The CRMS have several prongs but one of its highly useful resource is the Focusing Leaders’ Network which they run a few times a year for pastors and missionaries as well as a few for marketplace leaders. In fact, Seng Chor and I are currently running one such network with a mix of pastors and marketplace leaders. Get to know more about James and his world HERE.
I wonder if anyone remembers her? For some years she sold her family’s delicious wantan noodles at $2 a bowl at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic Mechanical Engineering Canteen 4 to long queues of hungry students. She has since retired. But she was more famous than many have realized. She was once featured in the Straits Times(click on pic for pop-up) in 1970 as the girl who walked more than 30,000 miles (the earth’s circumference is only 24,900 miles) as at the time the article was written. This is not surprising as she started hawking at seven with her later- to- be-blind father. Selling the noodles in the 1950’s at 30 cents per bowl the family plied their popular noodles from Telok Kurau down the East Coast Rd, St Patrick’s School, Dunbar Walk and Cold Stream Avenue. Those were the days where they knocked two bamboo tick-tock sticks in a unique rhythm to solicit customers and provided a delivery service that rivalled today’s best.
Why am I writing about this? Well on Sunday I had to opportunity to have lunch with my wife’s former classmates, and the husband Nicolas, was one of the hardworking brothers of Ah Fong. He was trying to reprise the old recipe but by his own admission, could not, because in the good old days they ground the chilli, and made their own noodles from duck eggs and flour without water. He could only blend the chilli and buy the noodles, and the secret ingredient- pork lard- was not added. No wonder it scored 6 out of 10. But nevertheless the company, hospitality and light banter was the main thing.
Long long ago Jesus said to his disciples, “The poor you have with you always…” Today he would just as well have said of the modern church, “…the late you have with you always.” Many churches are plagued with this chronic condition.
Recently I had this idea of arresting impunctuality by locking up the worship hall 15 minutes after the worship service begins. It was a “crossing frontier” idea; a suicidal idea; an incitement sure to cook up a storm and perhaps lead to the first lynching of a local pastor.
Concerts do it. Latecomers curse the management, blame themselves, the traffic and whatever else - but never the artistes -when they are locked out. They know its done out of respect for the performers and the paying customers, but it still rankles them. Somehow you get the feeling that in church it will be different: they will get hot under the collar and raise an uproar with the leadership or just move to another church.
I tested the idea with my colleagues and yes it doesn’t deal with the root problem. Yes some members will get angry, and some will move to other churches. Yes it may be better to educate the people and have a talk with the habitually late.
But I was thinking maybe such a drastic action will jerk the habitual latecomers to some behavioral change.
Are we barking up the wrong tree? Is punctuality such a big deal compared to the seven deadly sins, or the purity of the gospel, and the mission of the church? Is it a “main thing” or just a “peripheral” issue of discipleship and Christian maturity? Or should we just resign to the fact that “the late you have with you always”?
I had a meeting with Rev David Chee (in red shirt) and Rev Vincent Hoon. We had to cancel our mission trips to Myanmar because of the instability there last December. Pastor Thomas has felt for some time before, that we need to develop another missions field or two. The cancellation have confirmed for me the need to prayerfully explore other places. We arranged to meet with Rev David Chee of New Destiny Fellowship, an Assemblies of God church that meets on Saturdays, who works in co-operation with a pastor in Chiangmai, Thailand. God willing, Thomas and I will go there with him at the end of May for an exploration trip.
Rev Vincent Hoon, an Anglican priest presently seconded to Light of Christ Church Woodlands is a friend I met at a Love Singapore pastors prayer summit years ago. He was the one who activated me into mentoring. We still meet together with Rev Kenny Fam for peer mentoring. Vincent spent several years in Philippines as a church planter, and the blood, sweat and tears of those pioneering years with a very young family bore fruit: three Filipino churches were planted. I spent some time helping Vincent to migrate from xanga.com blogsite to wordpress.com. I hope he will thrive as a blogger in this new environment. Take a look at his blog HERE and drop a comment.
