Soulmate

I was recently having lunch with my colleagues and we were laughing about whether it was important for a couple to share common interests (thanks to a colleague who is going on follow-up dates after going on a cruise for singles). After some probing, it was revealed that this colleague of mine is not too keen on this lady due to a lack of common interests. She was more Chinese (her interests - karaoke and HK dramas) whereas he was more English-speaking and had other interests that did not include hers. Intrigued, I polled various people around the table on whether they thought having common interests was important for any relationship to last. The conclusion was that it definitely helps, but you need not if you have enough other things in common like religion or if both have different interests but one of them is easy-going enough to go along with the other person's interests. If both have different interests and both refuse to budge to participate in the other's interests, well, I guess the relationship has to have other groundings (e.g. religion, perhaps kids?).

Anyway, this made me think of a wish I used to have when I was young - that I would find someone who was an exact clone of myself. I know many people cringe when they are asked if they would like to hang out with a clone of themselves, but I used to be filled with delight and glee at what marvellous wonderful conversations we would have and what fun activities we could enjoy together. Because this person would be an exact replica of me, she would totally understand where I was coming from when i made a remark (and how I am always looking for the funny side of things and to have a good laugh), she would instantly agree with me when I share a view that is against the grain and against mainstream and be like "Totally right? I fully agree with you!". She would care about the same altruistic causes as me (eg helping people find their passion, life their lives abundantly the way Christ wanted us to, which actually means carrying the criss, not having all our flesh wants), and be enraged about the same trends (eg environmental degradation, over prevalence of wireless technology and slavery to mindless entertainment and games). We would spur each other on towards our goals, having the same goals, which would be so refreshing since I feel like I'm going it alone most of the time. She would laugh hysterically at the same jokes, chuckle at the same foibles I encounter at meetings. She would understand how certain things transport me to the divine (eg a perfectly made cup of Hong Kong milk tea, certain songs, a really good piece of writing), and not laugh at me if I really dread or struggle with doing certain things (e.g. paying bills, keeping track of my finances, having insurance). She would help me look on the bright side of people and things, just like I always do for the people around me, and share verses to encourage me. This would be the closest to a soulmate I could come to! Of course it would be great if she had some differences from me like it would be fine if she was more reserved (somehow I tend to get along better with more reserved people), better at certain things, had a slightly different view on things but who could explain it so gently to me she would never break my heart.

In fact, in my life I have had the privilege of encountering some people who embodied certain traits I described above. Eg there was this guy, K, who was as idealistic or even more idealistic and non-rat race-chasing than me. He was a Christian when I was still a Buddhist-Taoist and puzzling about the futility and emptiness of the academic paper chase. At that time, he seemed wise beyond his years and we would have long conversations, sometimes deep into the night, theorising about life and people. I will always remember him fondly, having nursed a huge crush on him for more than 2 years. Another person I can think of is my best friend of many years. She is my ideal chat mate and we have such awesome chats because she is as eloquent and of the same intellect as me and we have enough common shared experiences to laugh at the same things and to empathise at the same horrible experiences we encounter. This best friend of mine is currently in HK making lots of money and living the high life. I know, my soulmates are greatly varying :P The last person I would like to cite is this girl I met in university, who if you believe some of the things she shared at certain private moments (which she would deny afterwards), went through some horrible stuff in her childhood. But she is the most warm, supportive and gentle person I know. She doesn't have a mean bone in her body, and in the 2 years I have known her, she never made a sarcastic or caustic remark, never made you feel bad when you spoke to her, and as a result, you knew your innermost secrets and fears were safe with her. This doesn't mean she agrees with everything I say too, which would be insincere, but somehow she would try and empathise, laugh about it even, and somehow get her point across, that perhaps I wasn't totally right. What a wonderful, marvellous person! I must say others who share my sense of heroism and grand feats for God might be people like Elizabeth Elliot, Keith Green etc. I love these great giants of the faith! Unfortunately, I don't have any living person whom I am close to, who is of the same mind as me on these issues. Though I have been praying for a Christian sister who will be closer than blood, this hasn't materialised so far. Ah well, we can't have everything in life, and in the meantime, there is Jesus who is always with me. I just need to get closer to Him. A lesson in itself! More in my next post.

Mindfulness

Recently due to the setting up of several WhatsApp groups at work, I have found myself constantly glued to my handphone. I used to marvel at how my boss (who is now on maternity leave) could respond to any WhatsApp msg within half an hour, and now I am one of them! But I must say this sort of responsiveness comes at a cost. I am a lot less mindful of what i am doing at any one time, of my surroundings, and even when I'm supposed to be relaxing, I find myself checking my Hp several times an hour, which smacks of a kind of distractedness which surely cannnot be good.

Due to the close shave with death my second Son experienced (for more on that, see my previous blog post), due to my fatigue from responding to WhatsApp msgs and fighting a fire all morning, I have been rethinking if I want to live this way. This was further confirmed from chatting with another coworker who talked about how she went from being always very conscious and deliberate and aware of what she was doing, where she had placed her things, to how one day she had carefully laid out a piece of Bak Kwa for a Bak Kwa sandwich, then absent-mindedly went to the kitchen and spread jam on her bread! When she came back out to the living room she was scratching her head as she never would have made such a mistake! We both realised and concluded that this sort of distractedness surely cannot be good for us long-term. I'm therefore a lot more aware of what I am doing now. I vow not to check my Hp so much and to not respond so fast, so immediately off i can help it.

Which brings me to another point - that of fear of man or or God. We all know we ought to fear God rather than man - stories of Daniel, Paul's lettters etc etc. But I am realising that practicing it in real life is much harder than I thought! For instance - why do i respond so quickly to my bosses? Why do I feel so edgy and full of unreat when they are angry or unhappy with something not going well? I feel quite ashamed - these are all redolent of fear of man. And I also realised I don't have the physical consistution to survive in a constantly high stress environment. I start feeling like going to the toilet,I get mysterious aches in my chest and armpits, I am just not doing well. So my conclusion is I need to get off this treadmill of seeking man's approval all the time, and just do what's right and do the best jin I can each day, as a love offering to my heavenly father And if that doesn't get appreciated, so be it. I should look only to my Heavenly Father for approval every day, every moment. Pray continuously, rejoice in the Lord, be joyful always, give thanks continually.

I cannot give thanks enough

Last week was a rough week for me, with events developing very fast, work spiralling out of control and meeting after meeting, but I do want to give thanks for 2 very important things that God did for me.
Yesterday at the food court, I was eating with baby and mum and maid and my 2 boys were playing with the escalators. To cut a Long story short, my younger boy ended up hanging onto the handrail of an escalator, walking up the metal side bar on the outside and didn't jump down in time and as he went higher and higher he started sobbing and there were horrified gasps from Singaporeans all round as I ran there and asked him to jump down. After a while he was too high and I ran up the escalator in the hopes of catching him on TOP and thankfully suddenly he was in the arms of a black t shirt stranger. I was soooo relieved. I wouldn't have caught him in time and I think he would have fallen and hit his spine from such a height and perhaps have been paralysed if not dead. I still can't digest this. I almost lost my boy or became a parent to a paralysed child. I think I seemed to have been very tired that day and my reaction time was like in molasses. Cos that morning I was answering WhatsApp messages nonstop from my bosses and fighting a fire. And then shocker number 2: I realised my wallet was missing. After hunting around fruitlessly, suspecting even this poor shuffling male cleaner who cleaned our table and kept touching his pockets (my mum trailed him to the toilet), I just sat there morosely at the foodcourt bench, in a daze, thinking about the money I lost, the need to freeze my credit cards and the cost of replacing my IC, and as I walked off, this young man came running up to me and said, did you lose a wallet? I said yes and he said they have it! Apparently I left it on a table next to the escalator l. Thank God!!!

The Joy of Appreciation

I have finally gotten down to writing all those New Year (was meant to be Christmas but hard to do in the thick of work and kids all demanding my attention) cards for most of my colleagus. I must say for once, I did something quite fruitful and productive with my hours of insomnia (too used to sleeping at 2 plus when I was on leave so hard to sleep before 12 even when I wanted to!) and actually finished writing thoughtful, individually personalised cards to each of my 18 colleagues.

I had the inspiration because of how wonderful the note I wrote to an ex-colleague was (I was so proud of it - it was inspiring, encouraging, warm and pretty cos I decorated it with stickers) and how good it made me feel. I was sure she appreciated it. So I decided since this was something I was good at, why not extend it to all my colleagues? Share the joy so to speak. So I bought this box of pretty cards from Urban Write, and set about doing it.

I must say I surprised myself, by having something nice to say even for colleagues I did not know very well or who only started work for a while. I tried to make each note personal, conversational, light-hearted and also made sure I added a note of appreciation for their work or their personalities. I would point out little things they suggested, good ideas, which i thought were brilliant, memorable work moments (eg stroller video, AM bill) and horrible work moments (eg AMK launch), and tried to show faith in them or some enthusiasm about what 2017 would bring in terms of work (eg our work would come into fruition and hopefully touch the lives of many Singaporeans). For some colleagues, I realised didn't need much words. I just had a say I must say I really enjoy working with you, and it would have said it all. For one particular colleague whom I have this chemistry with, of whom I am rather fond of, I tried using the approach for some others where I tried to point out what I appreciated about her, her reliableness, how i could always count on her to get her work done well, but it was starting to sound like work appraisal so i deleted them.

I also reverted to my cheesy Sec school/JC days where I started giving them labels on the front of the card, eg to my ever-smiling and sunny colleague, to my calm and unflappable colleague, to my fun and fashionable colleague, and I must say I was quite pleased with my effort, even though I was pairing these precious cards with packs of cheapo Famous Amos cookies which only cost me a dollar each (some sale at 7-Eleven). But I figured - I want to give them a practical thing they would definitely use/consume, and didn't want to break my bank doing it, so what better way than to give out chocolate chip cookies? Anyway the highlight of my gift was the card. Oh, and I also would end off each card, most cards, with wishing them a marvellous 2017 that is better than 2016, not because circumstances will be better (though i wish they will be) but because our reactions to things will be better! Something I learnt from Pastor Pacer's sermon at end of 2016.

The strange thing was that the day after I gave out these cards, several of them couldnt quite look me in The Eye or took the effort to come look for me to discuss something.

I read the parable of the Mustard seed today and I prayed that these little "seeds" would germinate and grow fruit that I may or may not see. God may you bless these little seeds and make them grow! Amen.

A Mind-Blowing Parable

Know about the butterfly effect? Well it’s the theory that a small thing like the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings can lead to large consequences later like a hurricane. I haven’t fully understood the mechanics of how that happens but I feel like I am experiencing the butterfly effect in my life right now, where a small seed that is planted in my mind is sending ripples that are ever expanding and could lead to dramatic life change later on.

Ok so what happened was this – I facilitated the parable of the shrewd manager last Sunday, and as I prepared, I found out that I had misinterpreted this parable all along, or rather had just had a very superficial understanding of what it meant – something about Christians being more shrewd in the world and not getting conned. I never thought very much about the parable and some sentences definitely didn’t link with my explanation. Well, turns out the lesson of parable is nothing about that. In fact, it is a very relevant, very hard teaching that goes against the grain of what society espouses and lauds, and against what our flesh wants, teaching us about the best way to manage our money.

In the parable, a dishonest manager who is going to lose his job, used whatever time he had left while he was still manager to cancel huge debts owed to his master, so that he would have friends who would help him later when he was jobless. Firstly I was like what? Was what he did even legit? Cancelling his master's debts without seeking approval (sorry if my government side is showing - can't shake it off) and why wasn't his master angry? The passage says that the master commended him for his shrewdness!

Ok so first, my research reveals what he did was legit - as he appointed manager he did have some authority over the finances, much like how if you are a Director in a company you can sign off certain checks and approve expenditures up to a certain level. So I can accept that. And at that time he wasn't kicked out yet, just informed he would lose his job in the future. So while what he did was not to the master's benefit, it was not against the law. Another fellow facilitator (the one who went to theological seminary) added that in their society at that time, people were highly reciprocal, so he would expect these people to return the favour later, perhaps in about the same amount. And combined with how he doubted he could find another job after being laid off - the amounts he can cancelled ensured he could live off the favours for life. Pretty shrewd move on his part.

So one lesson we could learn from this is that we should use money, while we still have it, to maximise the benefit or advantage to us in the Long term. In fact the definition of shrewd is to have a good grasp of the situation, using it to one's advantage. Ok so far?

But Jesus says we ought to apply this type of shrewdness to the way we manage our money as Christians, so it's a bit odd. Are we to similarly "con" our Organisations of the money for our own benefit? Are we to provide for ourselves and accumulate wealth at all costs? Well turns out the objective of Christian life and the reward system set up by God are very different from the world's. God wants us to depend on Him and not money (ie not trust money or huge bank balances), and to be like Him (ie kind, compassionate, merciful and abundantly generous). And He rewards people who do that well with eternal treasures in heaven.

Which essentially means we ought to use temporal money to bless others, help the needy, and the more we do it, the more treasures we store up for ourselves in heaven that do not ever fade or disintegrate or lose their shiny newness (like buying freehold land except we get to enjoy it forever and not just for our lifespan). Sounds like a good investment doesn't it? We just don't know the exchange rate :)

So, any selfish Christian who only cares about ourselves and “preparing for our retirement” should do that! In fact the more we can outgive others, the better off we are. Another commentary said we should always manage our money in a way that ensures our dependence is on God and not money, which means not trusting in huge bank balances (akin to barns and huge storehouses of grain).

Ok hard teachings (this trader in our midst kept exclaiming to himself this was very relevant to him) but I am definitely going to accelerate my rate of accumulating heavenly treasures. Gonna set some limits to what I intend to spend and save, and give the rest away…. Gotta be shrewd and not naive!

The Immense Satisfaction of Cooking

I am always on the lookout for moments of true pleasure in my life, either the temporal fleeting kind like “that was such a good cup of mocha” (Laaf cafe at Katong) or the more deep-in-your-belly satisfaction that also warms your heart, reflecting true enjoyment, and which brings back remnants of that feeling whenever you think about it (like writing a blog post I am proud of, or having prepared a very good bible study materials!). Well, turns out, cooking a wholesome, healthy meal for the whole family that does not take a lot of time, uses up food that is soon going bad (reduce food waste!), and costing less than if we ate out, gives me that deeeeep satisfaction I was describing earlier.

Let me describe a recent example that sparked this post – this was a Saturday, when my in-laws were out of town and so we had the whole day to ourselves. After eating out for lunch (yucky fatty Wee Nam Kee chicken rice), I had the idea of making cold noodles for everyone, using instant noodles instead of soba, and adding shredded carrots, cucumbers (which we had plenty) and I just had to go to the supermarket nearby to find some frozen salmon belly or similar meat that I could fry up in a jiffy to serve a delicious satisfying meal.

I managed to buy 2 packets of frozen halibut fillet (5.90 each) but after googling several recipes on how to fry halibut, which all seemed too difficult (need lots of oil to deep fry, or a big oven to bake them), I decided to just improvise and do it with the least time (as dinner time was fast approaching). So I cut up some carrots, the wilting vegetables in the fridge, lots of onions, a little garlic and some oyster mushrooms (to add some protein in case the fish wasn’t enough for so many people), cut up one halibut fillet and started cooking. I opted for noodle soup, which was faster than cold noodles, used the mi goreng instant noodles. So I fried up the garlic and onions, then added water and started cooking the carrots. Then I added the mushrooms, noodles, fish and lastly vegetables and when it was all done, I added the powder seasoning.

The end result was a very yummy (thanks to the seasoning) colourful bowl of noodle soup with lots of vegetables and also rich buttery cubes of fish. I was pleased though the fish wasn’t completely thawed, and I didn’t know the exact amount of time I needed to cook it, it turned out exactly right. I cooked several batches for kids, myself, maid, husband and mom and they all liked it. And they had fibre (unlike when you eat outside), and I only used 1 halibut fillet and half a pack of oyster mushrooms, plus used up those vegetables that we’re going to get thrown away if they didn’t get cooked soon. I think this meal appealed to the healthy-eating, reduce food-waste, economical side of me. *Smile*

80-20

It's that time of the year again, December, when no one (well at least me) really feels like working and after slogging at an insane pace in Oct and Nov (and pretty much all year round), I really feel like slowing down and spending more time with my kids and family and friends. And to take some time off for myself. But alas, work never stops and the two days that I spent back at work turned out to be quite busy and I still haven't managed to clear those few large pieces of work I had been meaning to. Sigh... One way is to take th advice of the nice octogenarian I spoke to at a recent farewell dinner, and to stop vetting everything in great detail (which is what I feel passes my own standard) so that the work can at least proceed and I am not a bottleneck. 80-20 and that sort of thing. Well I think I finally need to do that because I have quite a bit of admin still to do and that dratted work and other urgent but not-important stuff to clear! Sigh...