Monday, February 18, 2008

packed weekend

that's what the just-over weekend was. packed, a little hectic, but productive and enjoyable, too. =)

on saturday, The Wife and i rose and shone at around 6.30 am. we rushed out of the house and were off to methodist boys' school, kl (henceforth mbskl). as sometimes happens, the rush caused a little bit of irritability and ruffled feathers... heheh =P

we were at mbskl for the kl/pj scf convention... a coming together of scfs from all over klang valley. there were about 200 youth in the hall that day. actually, i'm quite sure that there were many other scfs which were not represented there. if every scf in klang valley participated, it would be a really massive gathering... anyway, the theme of the convention was 'carpe diem', seize the day. hopefully, students left with a sense of urgency and a burning passion to do what God has called them to do. for they only have these few years of opportunity, while they are in high school.

after the convention, we went to ss2 to have lunch with a bunch of volunteers for Young Writers' Camp... the lunch was at some crazy expensive place. i mean, RM15-17 for a bowl of noodles?!? once we saw the menu, we decided not to eat. couldn't afford it. but then the volunteers insisted that we eat, and refused to let us pay. such kindness! =)

the end result of the YWC lunch was, we established that we do want to have the camp this year. also, the goal of the camp will be to nurture young christians who want to write [as it has been in past years] rather than trying to raise up writers from scratch [which is well-nigh impossible and would probably degenerate into a kind of 'how to score in spm english' camp]. next step is to pull a committee together and begin meeting to pin down camp dates, a camp site, and all the nitty-gritty details of running a camp.

after lunch, we went to ikea (this was The Wife's idea) and bought some stuff there. including two toilet brushes, a spatula, some rawhide bones for Frodo, and some hanging basket thingy that i tried to convince The Wife we neither needed nor wanted... [edit: but it does look nice now that it's hanging on our back door grille =P]

from ikea, we went to my uncle's house in SS1 to see my parents. after CNY, they had gone back to sitiawan to sort and clear out stuff from our old house. that saturday, they came back to PJ as they were flying back to KK on sunday. so, it was good to go and spend some time with them. they also brought lots of stuff from the old house for us. some of it was my own stuff, like my old tennis racket, a fishing reel that my dad gave me many years ago, and etc. others were household things, like plates and pots and stuff.

however, we had to tear ourselves away from being with my mum and dad in order to go for the dinner with the emmanuel efc youth advisors. this was made harder because my uncles and cousins on my mum's side were having a big gathering in another uncle's house in SS24. but i had to miss it, as i had already given my word and made and appointment to have dinner with the efc youth advisors.

anyway, no regrets. we were treated to a massive, RM48 german buffet at euro deli. german sausages! pork knuckles! lots and lots of meaty meat! hahaha. good food and good fellowship - what more could anyone ask for? we really ate enough to bust our buckles! =)

after a good nights' rest in my uncles' house in ss1, the next day found us rushing to kl. unfortunately we underestimated the travelling time from my uncle's house to bethel baptist church, which led to us arriving about 10 minutes late to the church. this church was the church where i preached my second sermon ever, and they called me back to preach again! [either i didn't speak too badly, or they are rather desperate for speakers... hehehe] thank God, all went well as i preached on the topic "start well, finish strong". an improved version of what i preached at changlun. [this was during the trip to alor setar, which you can read about here and here] =)


after that we walked from the church to Pudu LRT station. along the way, there were many little stalls selling all kinds of stuff. The Wife almost bought a bag, but decided against it because it wasn't roomy enought. as it was, we ended up going back with a pair of slippers, a lobster/crayfish/giant prawn for my cousin, and a pair of carp (!).

we then went back to my uncle's house in SS1, rested, packed all the stuff from sitiawan into The Wife's Car, collected guppies and plant cuttings from my aunty (The Wife has a 'thing' for fish and plants, heheh), and went to my other uncle's house in SS24. we visited for awhile, gave my cousin the lobster/crayfish/giant prawn, laughed at the surprised delight in his face when he got it, chatted abit with my uncle, aunty and grandma, and then left.

by now we were tired, and we should have gone home. but did we? nope. we went to midvalley megamall!!! haiz. it's all GSC's fault. they gave me a "free ticket" because it's my birthday month. so we tried to use it, but couldn't get good seats at any movie worth watching... bleargh.

but the trip to midvalley wasn't wasted, because we ended up going to to carrefour (seremban doesn't have carrefour) and buying broccoli, fish fillets, dishwashing liquid, and other assorted groceries. we also explored the gardens, but went back to midvalley's food court for a pasta dinner before heading back to home, sweet home.

we slept well on sunday night. phew! =)

p.s. sorry this post comes so late. i wanted to get it out on monday, but was caught up with staff meetings til tuesday. then wednesday was spent calling up teachers in klang valley to talk with them about ZMax camp and ask them to help us publicise it in their scfs, and preparing a session on purity which i delivered to the UNIM (uni of nottingham m'sia) vcf on wednesday evening. well, better late than never, right? =P

3 comments:

ling said...

eh unim cf? thats cool to hear. my best friend's there. his name's ngee zheng. dont know if u remember him but he has also met your sister before =)

siehjin said...

ya ya, i met someone with a name that sounds like that! but i thought his name was 'yi zheng'. he said that's the hanyu pingying of his name. is it the same guy???

ling said...

yup! the spelling's 'ngee' but the pinyin is 'yi' =)