Tired

yes i am. partly because i'm still battling this cough from last week, and partly because The Wife is away. back in penang for her semester break. without her around, i seem to lack motivation to do stuff. including blogging. which is why i'm writing this today when i should have written it yesterday.

day before yesterday, as i was in the bus on the way back to seremban, i found the long journey rather pointless without The Wife waiting for me at the end of it. so last night, i decided to sleep in the office. nothing new, i've done it before after late-night meetings. and it saves me close to RM10 in bus/train fare.

the good thing was, i got to meet up with my sister. had dinner with her, and helped her pack and move a load of stuff to her new place. was great to catch up with her.

this week's not so heavy on work (thank God). in fact, i was hoping to take friday and saturday off and go up north to The Wife. there was even a plan to go to hadyai. however, all hopes were dashed when my Boss scheduled a meeting for friday afternoon. i tried to wiggle out of it but to no avail.

The Wife and The In-Laws are wondering if my Boss is a Monster who purposely schedules meetings so that his employees can't take holidays. i don't think he is and have tried to convince them that he did so because there were no other available dates. because next week we have staff meetings on monday and tuesday, and on wednesday christina and josephine (two of my colleagues in the youth ministry department) are going to Kedah. so then have to meet on friday lor.

anyway, thank God for the seremban trip which (i think) went well. hopefully the seminar we did there, "The Bible: Don't Play-Play!", helped the students get more grounded in God's Word and whetted their appetite so that they'll learn to read, understand and enjoy it on their own.

also thank God that tomorrow is Labour Day. hopefully i'll be more my cheerful self after a day of rest. =P

thank you for reading, and praying. 'til the next post, God bless! =)

The Chart

here it is! (i hope this works...)


it was kinda small, so i resized it. now it's blur. nevertheless, i hope it's legible...

the starting-point is the blue box in the top left-hand corner, and from there you can follow my convoluted thoughts either to the yellow, deistic conclusion; or the green, buddhist/hindhu ones.

feel free to leave comments! =P

intro to religions was very interesting indeed. only bad thing was that i fell sick with fever, sore throat and aching bones on the second day of class. this eventually evolved into a cough, which i am now recovering from. now must do assignment, sigh. Dr. Solomon Rajah gave us many options to choose from, and i've decided to do the one which compares the Christian concept of salvation with the Sikh one. =)

apart from that, i'm taking the next two days off from work. want to spend some time with The Wife before she goes back to penang (it's her end-of-semester break) and leaves me all alone, sobz.

lastly, please pray for our seremban trip this weekend. we'll be speaking at 2 scfs on friday, having a combined scf meeting saturday morning, and jason will be preaching at my church on sunday! pray for anointing as we speak, for meaningful interactions with teachers and students, and for the ability to connect and build relationships through which the grace and truth of God can flow.

thanks and "see" y'all next week! =)

interesting thoughts on the bus

a few days ago, while on the bus going back to seremban, i began to ponder about The Meaning Of Life. as it happens once in a while, i contemplated the possibility that i might be mistaken about Everything... about God, Creation, Redemption and etc.

maybe there is no God. maybe men are just monkeys who grew too clever for their own good. maybe human beings aren't significant at all on the cosmic scale - just part of the happy (or sometimes not-so-happy) accident we call 'life'. maybe there is no purpose or meaning to life, and our existence is utterly futile and absurd. how can we know? how can we be sure?

how can we be sure of anything? well, to start off, i reject the postmodern notion that we can't be sure of anything. because, in fact, if you're sure that you can't be sure of anything, you are already sure of something, thus making your original premiss invalid. and if you're not sure that you can't be sure of anything, then you're admitting that there is a possibility that we can be sure of something. either way, the statement commits suicide.

it's like this statement: "i always tell lies". if it's true, it's a lie, but if it's a lie, then it's true. the statement commits suicide.

so, believing that we can be sure of something, what is it that we can be sure of? i decided to begin with Descartes' famous words: i think, therefore i am. i think that this is a pretty good starting point, because it's obvious that some thinking is going on here and someone has to be doing the thinking. i call this thinking entity, 'myself'. if i don't exist, then who is claiming non-existence? looks like "i don't exist" is another of those suicide statements.

from that starting point, i drew a chart in which i tried to explore the possible origins of my existence. interestingly enough, i came to two possible conclusions. the first is a theistic one: we were created, directly or indirectly, by a First Cause (whom i'll call God). note that this is still very, very far away from the Christian God; this First Cause could be a polytheistic community, a monotheistic being, evil, good, personal, impersonal, and etc.

the second one is very close to the claims of philosophical hinduism/buddhism. namely, the world was never created but has always been, and has a cyclical existence. humans too have always been, and also have a cyclical existence - the cycle of death and rebirth.

i'd like to post up the chart i drew for you all to take a look at, and see if you can follow and maybe critique my train(s) of thought. but i don't know how. maybe later.

for now, work calls; i have a meeting to attend at 11.00 am, tomorrow i'll be in STM studying Introduction to Religions, and i'm busy preparing for the SU youth team's visit to seremban next weekend. tata! =)

hit and miss

we hit horton hears a who, and missed the spiderwick chronicles.

what am i talking about? =) The Wife and I had a buy 1 free 1 coupon for GSC movie tics. we wanted to watch spiderwick, but sadly it was no longer showing in seremban's famous Terminal One. [well, it's famous in seremban anyway. if you're not from seremban, don't be worried about never having heard of it before.]

so, last sunday, after sharing with the youth of Cornerstone Baptist Church about Complacency from Amos 6:1-7, we traipsed off to midvalley hoping to catch spiderwick.

oh, before that some of the Church uncles treated us to a Delicious Lunch: Yam Noodles, Ulu Yam Lor Mee, Fried Mee Hoon, Taugeh, and Salad Yau Char Guai. nyum nyum! =)

ok, back to the topic. to our horror, the line for buying tics at midvalley reached to the moon! [warning: slight exaggeration here] but undaunted in our purpose, we proceeded to join the line. however, as we slo-o-o-o-o-owly approached the tic counter, we were aghast to observe that the only remaining times for spiderwick were 9.20pm and 11.00pm! no way we could watch it unless we planned to sleep in midvalley.

so, we ended up watching horton, at 4.30pm. now, i was abit apprehensive at first. my impression of the trailer had been, "hmm, a talking elephant. doesn't look very interesting." i'm glad to say that the movie was much, much better than its trailer.

for one thing, horton is based on a book by Dr. Seuss, and some parts of the dialogue and narration are taken directly from the book. this was great, because i really enjoyed the clever rhymes and word-play. for example, the movie opens delightfully with:

On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool,
in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool,
he was splashing... enjoying the Jungle's great joys...
when Horton the Elephant heard a small noise.

Besides that, the movie was hilarious! to me at least. i laughed until there were tears in my eyes. =D those of you who've watched comedies with me before can imagine my hearty laughter ringing throughout the cinema. hope i didn't spoil the experience for any of the other patrons. =P

and finally, horton was really good because it has certain values and ideas behind it that make it really interesting to think about, even if it is "just a cartoon". for example, the Kangaroo refuses to believe in the Whos because, "if you can't see it, or hear it, or smell it, or touch it, it doesn't exist." very scientific empiricist isn't it? i think that the way she's proved wrong in the end, paves the way for people to believe in abstract constructs like love, beauty, truth, and yes - God.

also, there's the catchphrase: "a person's a person, no matter how small." to me, this speaks against discrimination. children are often overlooked in an adult's world. one could also take the idea and apply it to other factors. one's personhood doesn't depend on one's size, colour, race, or creed.

of course, there are also questionable values. for example, in the end the joey (that's a baby kangaroo) Rudy stands up to his mother and disobeys her. does this mean that it's alright for children to rebel against their parents? are there higher values which makes it legitimate for a child to go against his parents? is it possible to honor one's parents without obeying them?

There's alot more that can be picked up from this seemingly simple little cartoon. catch it if you can! =)

Work:
- i (and other SU staff) will be going to malacca tomorrow to check out the campsite for the IG Camp which will happen next month. this will take a whole day and will mean a night away from the wife.
- i'm preparing for a session at an SCF in Subang this friday. it's easter-based and meant to be evangelistic. i plan to explore the question of what happened to Jesus' body.
- the Camp Chit Chat outline session has been pushed back to this saturday and next monday. i have to prepare a session on 'exams and stress' for that.
- i will be in STM 16-19 April taking a module, 'Introduction to Religions'. should be interesting! =)
- i appreciate your continued prayer support! =)

two speaking engagements

coming up this weekend! speaking at taman melawati SCF on the topic "Christ's Ambassadors" on friday, and at Cornerstone Baptist Church YF on the topic "Complacency" on sunday.

i have a dNa planning meeting at 2pm today, and the deadline for handing in and presenting our outline sessions for Camp Chit Chat is on the coming monday.

with all these things going on, i'm pretty busy. sorry about not having time to blog much. please pray for me ya. =)

switching to non-work-related-stuff: last saturday, chenmay and i went for a little reunion with some of my high school friends. we had chocolate fondue! =) here are a couple of pics for you to drool over:

the fondue... yum yum! =)



Friends! from the bottom, going clockwise:
me, The Wife, Michelle, Lavanya, Chung Ming, James, Gwen Ai, Malcolm.
Guen Boh, who was our gracious host, is behind the camera. =)

it was great to see these old, old friends again... to renew the bonds of friendship, and catch up on the years in between. =)

ok, back to work now!