imagine a tornado going through your throat.

you may have seen pictures of the mayhem and destruction that is the aftermath of a tornado, hurricane, or tropical storm. imagine what that would do to your throat. that's what happens every time you cough.

and i'm doing alot of that lately as i've been coughing since last week. the deep, chesty, hacking kind of cough that grips your whole body and makes you shake with each cough when a fit of them arrives. it starts as a tickle in your throat, of some mucus in your nose, which trickles down to become gobs of disgusting, yellow-green phlegm.

oh well. c'est la vie!

sorry for neglecting my blog again. here's what i've been up to:

last weekend i was in taiping on a ministry trip with colleagues from the ipoh office. we visited 3 SCFs there, ran a combined youth programme, took a youth fellowship, and visited 3 churches. for me, the highlight of the trip was meeting with old friends like chee eng and his parents. =) also got to meet up with some taiping youth i'd met in previous trips and camps, and it was good to renew those friendships.

i had to go to the office on monday, but took off on tuesday hoping to stave off the cough. i could sense it there, crouching to attack me at the very moment my immune system was at it's lowest. unfortunately, as you'd have known from my first two paragraphs, my off-day was in vain.

after that, it was off to STM (seminari teoloji malaysia) to take a course for
my part-time masters. a very interesting course it was too: Strategic Planning and Implementation for Youth Ministry, lectured by Dr. Herbert Tan (see pic). we have sitiawan roots, so apart from the course material being fascinating and practical, it was great to see Herbert again. =) unfortunately, now i have to do the assignment for that. and i'm still stuck on the assignment for the previous course i took, Intro to Religions. and over the coming too weekends, i'm taking one more: Intro to NT. after that i won't be able to take any more, unless i can cut down the assignment backlog.

on top of all that, over the weekend our house developer finally sent people to properly fix the myriad cracks in the walls of our house. 'finally' because we've been pestering them for months, and 'properly' because we've been insisting that we didn't just want patch-up jobs which would crack again before you can say 'cracked again'.

you can imagine the noise, dust and confusion. for one or two really bad cracks, they had to hammer the cement off that portion of the wall and re-surface it. we had to cover all our furniture, move away those which were flush to the wall, and worry about our things being stolen by the indonesian workers. (that last one was mostly the area of The Wife; she's naturally suspicious of people, whereas i usually give them the benefit of the doubt. hence, we complement each other.)

and of course, after that there was the pain of moving back furniture and cleaning the house when all i wanted to do was try to rest as my throat tried to cough itself out of my mouth. to give credit to The Wife, she did 90% of the work and only complained a little bit. i need to think of a way to show her that i really appreciate her... i know, i'll mention it on my blog!... oh wait, i already did that. see Dear, now your hardworkingness and goodness to me are famous throughout the world-wide-web. or at least, among my 10-or-so regular readers. =P

back to the office and i landed straight into 2 camp planning meetings, for CSI (Christian Scriptures' Investigators Camp, 16-19 august) and YWC (Young Writers' Camp, 29 Dec-2 Nov). the latter happened last night, which meant another lonely night away from The Wife, sleeping on the cold, hard floor of my office (it's not really that cold and hard, but it sounds dramatic to describe it that way). also, there was staff meeting and training which stretched over monday and tuesday; and i chaired the SUFES Prayer Meeting this morning.

with all that going on, it's no wonder that i've only just managed to catch up with my email backlog and found the time to type this post out. still have reams of work to do for upcoming camps in august... do pray for a speedy and complete recovery from the cough for me, and for God to continue to sustain me and teach me as i serve him in SU.