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Spent the evening at home having dinner with the family and then thought it would be nice to bring Hannah to pop over and play with aunty YX. I packed her into the car and she asked for the chinese childrens’ songs CD and off we went for a 15 min drive over.

“When Jesus died on the cross he had blood all over him” – Hannah

That was how the short conversation interspersed with Chinese songs went. As odd as it seems to me viewing from a 3rd person’s perspective, I took the opportunity to share the gospel and check up on her level of understanding. I can’t remember all the details but it went something along the lines of what is sin, explaining that sin needs to be punished and Jesus was punished in our place. Then I asked who Jesus died for to which she replied her cousins and her (after listing some naughty things her cousins did.. haha..).

In all it was interesting explaining soteriology to a three year old and it’s really much simpler than you’d think. Some things are harder to explain than others but the important bits are not too hard! Another funny thing was trying to explain the songs to her. Some of the Chinese was unintelligible but it was pretty funny trying to help a 3 year old understand what is praise and other ideas we take for-granted.

Everyone should be able to teach a 3 year old the gospel, I think it really tests your true understanding of the essence of what we believe.

Heh, and another year comes to a close. This one has been pretty quick especially after starting work. One photo for each month

January -  Just came back from a nice hong kong trip..

February – Josiah Tan is born

March – still bumming about, managed to take a trip to ubin and get some photos

April – Odd jobs with David Wang..

May – Fire exhibition at the victoria concert hall area. I must mention I get employed about now too.. haha..

June – same as previous month.. a small celebration for all the grads

July – Convocation. Proud moment for my parents I should think.

August – Next baby arrives! Ze Jing is born.. here’s the anxious grandma.

September – Eating breakfasts with bro each week since Dency is confined at home. Last of the unhealthy breakfasts too.. Anyway this is the month we shifted to Jln Bukit Merah too.

October – My birthday at Rider’s Cafe

November – I get the girlfriend of six years to agree to marry me. haha..

December – What’s better than a family of Herbsters? two! I was blessed by all their ministry.

So it was a pretty good year. I mean, convocation, Job, Engagement, Shift to new building.. so much more happened that I’m sure I forgot.. too much to be thankful for. Think I enjoyed digging up the photos, kinda didn’t want to hang around so long at the gathering so I could take some time to look through my year. Now that I’ve done so I think I feel better. Kinda feel like I just let the new year slip by though.. :\ don’t wanna live so thoughtlessly.

As an aside, after a few encounters I think I give people the impression that I am to following

1. Hard-assed Doesn’t-care-what-you-think
2. Doesn’t think and plan much

The startling truth is both are true! haha, to some degree.

For #1, People like me when I agree with them and am being #1 but hate me when they don’t agree and I’m being #1. Now how is that fair?? I’m just sticking to my guns.. too bad if its pointed at you.

#2 could be a result of me being a “cross the bridge when I come to it guy”. The truth is I don’t like to plan much but that’s only true when there are too many unknowns to plan for. I’m not a computer you know.. Now see if I plan when I have 42 domains to migrate on a server with a stupendous amount of customizations and information is readily available. That’s something you can plan for, otherwise you’re going to have a super organized, well thought out plan… for an outdated situation because the situation changed 27832 times since you worked out your plan.

Flowers for the Girlfriend

I haven’t given her flowers before. Some of you might think that is mad or strange but what I think is mad is when people give flowers mindlessly or because it is the norm or worse, to buy some credit or to impress a girl. My girl is already plenty impressed.  No need flowers. HAHA.

This is a late post.. was actually written on the 17th but had to wait a little before I published it.

Short Story:

If there is anything I’ve learnt over the past six years with YX, its that “I Love You” is something you do, not something you say.

Long Story:

Its has been six years since we started everything, time sure flies. From the 14th of November 2004, the time I was soon finishing NS and she was carrying on to J2 until now when we are both working. That’s our whole tertiary education together. Its been a blast spending a quarter of my life with her already, I wonder what the rest of my life will be like. No doubt even more things will change and we will keep learning but I feel like we’ve already changed so much and learnt so much from each other. I’ll share some of I’ve learnt here:

1) I can’t have conflict resolution and keep my pride

How silly it is to think that I can enjoy fellowship in any kind of healthy relationship without surrendering my pride. In 2 Chronicles 7:14 God shows us the pattern for restoration with him, a model we would be wise to follow when dealing with others, not just those close to you. So here’s how we settle things all the time! It used to take 3 days, now it takes a couple of minutes to hours..

1. Humble myself
2. Communicate with the offended one
3. Stop doing whatever it is to hurt each other

2) Don’t do thing for each other as leverage against him/her, do it lovingly

Colossians 3:23  and 2 Corinthians 9:7 speak about working and giving to God but the same is just applicable when working out differences in people and doing things for the sake of others. When you’ve agreed to it, don’t whine or complain later! Do it in love! Through the years we’ve been doing things we probably don’t like or are not used to for each other and so many times the whole value of the action is lost when we do it grudgingly or “just for her sake”. The “just for your sake” should become “I’m glad to do it” not “aiyah bo pian la, she like what..”. How do I know I love her? When I recognize that her needs are more important than my own (speaking in the realm of preference here!) and that it really doesn’t matter if I get my way and damage our relationship.

3) How you spend your attention and time reveals your true priorities.

When I wish I were watching TV / playing game / out fishing or *insert whatever I enjoy here* and I actually go ahead and choose it over something else. That shows it is more important. When your attention is sucked into the TV screen or that football match instead of listening to something important, you can be sure it is more important. It really doesn’t matter what you think or say, what you do with your time, money and attention tells far more and is a definitive answer to what is more important at the moment.

I’m glad that after so many years we’ve been able to learn so much about ourselves and each other! And I’ve very glad she’s still with me in spite of knowing all that.. haha..

Its been crazy hot and stuffy everyday just as I was starting to look forward to the cooler end year weather where I don’t have to turn on air con and can wake up to crispy cool air in the morning. As a side note I think I’ve been losing muscle mass and getting flabbier! I lost a couple of kilos but feel more sluggish and fat still. lol..

Been looking at how my life is just a flat line nowadays with so little time at the end of the day. Trying to stretch it and do more stuff only ends up making me dead tired and I crash a few days later sleeping 10 hours a few days in a row and still feeling its not enough. Catching up with sleep and then letting sleep catch up with me again as YX puts it, saving and saving, working, looking forward to simple things like sitting around, eating, walking. All with people whom I’d like to spend time with.

Having less time to yourself makes the important stand out just a little more than usual. I feel like life became abit more efficient after I started working, more out of necessity than want. I still enjoy work, sometime it gets slow, especially when others in the office look troubled. I enjoy actually having a relationship with my colleagues even though it doesn’t get very deep. Last week I was listening in to the a meeting on the other side and it was like

“wah siao! server so many problem.. see lah, every week got dai ji one.. must pray man! what else can we do? need to start weekly prayer meeting again!”

lol.. made me pretty amused.

Another thing that has been on my mind is kinda like what I heard today, that being a minister is not just about acquiring skill sets, counseling techniques and a bag of illustrations and neat teaching tricks. God is interested in character more than any of that. A great (negative) example of that is Samson! so.. I would have said sso much to learn” but for me its more like “so much to change”

Looking forward to the end of the year! and how God can use a broken pot like me. I find it interesting that I can think all this, decide all this and the insides still feel abit slow and depressed. Well, will wait for it to catch up then!

It was a very interesting night up and trying to fix a problem that wasn’t at our end. Still, I’m quite thankful it happened. I had to go down to the data-center at 4am to take a look at the equipment and check that everything is working.

After checking a zillion times I finally got the data-center people to realise that the problem was at their end. I learned many a thing that night that I wouldn’t have ever learned if it were just any other day. Also, I got to stay home after sleeping from 730 to 1230 shiok man.. I still feel like sleeping now.. but work is calling.. haha..

Probably meeting ZG later for lunch if he can get out of bed.