Am migrating to the following blog sites

http://firefly749.multiply.com
http://firefly749.blogspot.com
http://firefly749.spaces.live.com
http://firefly749.wordpress.com

Had been really busy coping with issues cropping up at work.

Life in urban Singapore never seems to stop. Lke waves,they keep coming one after another; some of these are of “Tsunami scale”

Hopeful things beckon in the year 2006. I have 2 goals for my workplace - a dynamic organisation and a happy team Also felt that it will be a year of growth as I learn to relate and interact with various people..I am more of a task driven person you see.

Ganbatte

There are 2 types of Christians in town - the “天” type and the “地” type.

“天” types have pined all their hopes and energies on the future. They belong to the missionary class, who see the salvation of souls as the highest call that God can have on one’s life; because the great Christian hope, is ultimately not found in the present age but in the one yet to come! So the kind of activities that “天” types engages in are prayer meetings, bible studies, evangelistic outreaches, worship songs etc and the kind of books that are read include Hudson Taylor Missionary biographies, Elizabeth Eliot on relationships, Richard Foster on disciplines and so on. These folks are notably, very regular in their attendance and invariably become the bulwark of the church lay leadership. Also, ministry in church is a passion, while secular work generates far less satisfaction, meaning and excitement.

“地” types express their spirituality differently. They may not exhibit contagious enthusiasm in the area of church ministry, but they seek to work out their faith in the work place, in their area of influence, in their family; they try to minister in areas where light is most needed, in places where there is darkness. They try to bring what is taught about heaven, back to the real practical world, where more often than not, there are no clear cut answers. The activities they get involved are mostly secular, and the books they read, inform them about their jobs, such as Human Resource, Finance, Information Technology and Supply Chain. Because if God has revealed to us truths from heaven, then surely, it will become manifest, in the wisdom and work of our lives, especially in the present age. Our faith is vouched by our actions, in the sight of the world.

My point is, that not everyone who has a “天” type of outlook, is spiritual, and not everyone who has a “地” type is unspiritual. Man (including the Church) looks on the outside, but God looks on the inside.

Yet the converse can be true. We should not excuse ourselves in labouring for the future, by being overly preoccupied with the present. We are sojourners in an alien land, awaiting in child birthing anguish for our heavenly home.

In my thought journey, I was mildly rebuked to have this dichotomised view of “天” and “地” . There should not be a distinction; true spirituality ought to be both at the same time, whether you are a full time church worker or workplace minister:

Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven

In this transitionary period, we have one leg in heaven and one leg on earth; we need to be careful not to be polarised in our spirituality. There is a need for integration and consistency. There is a need for integrity in our lives.

I also know that our God is one whom the bible make known as “who was, who is, and is to come”. He is the God of not just our past or our future, but He is the author of life - our past, our present and our hope for the future.

Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord; that he looked down from his holy height; from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms to worship the Lord.

~ Psalm 102:18-22

Have been innundated with lots of work lately, which explains the long absence from blogging. Sorry folks

Was talking to Sebby during one of our lunch breaks. What makes a good sales man? Being able to lie positively? It appears in this age and time, that most sales people are more interested to make a quick buck than to sell a genuinely good product/service. And how do you know if a product is good unless you make it yourself? Which means that for those of us starting sales job….are you sure what you are selling is value for marnie? But there is one thing I certainly know that we ought to sell! Greateast value for marnie man…prizes for those who guess correctly!

There are many rags to riches programmes that capitalize on people’s disillusionment with their current lifestyle - being bossed around, with low pay and long working hours, with little promotional prospects. How to get rich fast and attain financial freedom? If you do not have an ivy league track record, then 3 ways - do sales, do finance or set up your own business. Certainly, a few die-hards with abit of luck (or blessing) will make it. The rest is left holding on to their tattered dreams, year on year. Question is, what is the point of it all, even if you are rich? You live 80 years and still mati wat… So what if I have no financial freedom, I can still survive on milo peng and hor fun!

Ultimately, I am in desparate need to get to know people with an ideal slant in life. Am surrounded by much pragmatism here in S’pore man. Not that its bad…its just alittle homogeneous for the health of our society

For those who do not know, I am currently working in A*Star, a government body coalescing all the high tech and biomedical research institutes. My department is actually providing R&D goods and services to meet the needs of the research community in an aggregated manner. Sounds good rite? But its a new setup, and there are lots of teething problems and rooms for improvement.

So its pretty challenging and am working my butt off. No time to blog ah It is taking quite a while to adapt from a commercial environment to a government body…think its gonna be challenging for my kind of personality, and it isn’t gonna get easier with time. Appreciate lots of prayers man!

What is hopeful however, is that biopolis is really a cool place. In time to come, I am sure that lots of people will be joining in. Remember the tonnes of scholars recruited by A*Star? I suspect that many will be starting off from these research institutes. As for private institutions, I think it will take quite some time before they are ready to take commercial risk and plunge themselves into Singapore. That had better happen fast man, cos those students banking their hopes on the biomedical industry will be in for a rude shock if the industry don’t mature fast enough to meet their job expectations. (sigh…Singaporeans are really a pragmatic lot rite?) And of course, people like Yau Chong (EDB), play a most critical role…they need to bring in the cheese!! Ganbatte

Thomas Merton wrote:

No one who simply eats or drinks when he feels like eating or drinking or smokes whenever he feels the urge to light a cigarette, or gratifies his curiosity and sensuality whenever they are stimulated, can consider himself a free person. He has renounced his spiritual freedom and become the servant of bodily impulse. Therefore his mind and his will are not fully his own. They are under the power of his appetites, and through the medium of his appetites they are under the control of those who gratify his appetites.

For those of you with problem changing the timezone in blogsome, you can refer to this link:

http://www.blogsome.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=649

Cos it allows me to:

• Backup everything in txt file format! That means portability
• China friends can view it unlike blogger which is blocked by the country’s ISPs
• Got Categories!!!
• Allows you to edit the html/CSS files
• Free upload of photos
• It’s free, just like blogger

This is my confession. No, I m not gay…its just that I have noticed a weird occurrence in Korea. About 75% of the korean men I meet have single eyelids. A similar percentage of women have double eyelids. Really really curious why the discrepency. A rought calculation:

1. Assume that 75% men have single eyelids
2. Assume that 75% women have double eyelids
3. Assume that the genetic potential to have double eyelids is equal bwt men and women and that the discrepancy is caused by cosmetic surgery for women.
4. 25% men (and hence women) have natural double eyelids
5. 75%-25%=50% of total women have gone for cosmetic makeover to get the ratio in 1.
6. If y is the percentage of single eyelid ladies that go for plastic surgery, then
7. y X 75% = 50%, y = 67%!!

Not to mention nose jobs, jaw aligmnment, mammary enhancements…etc etc. wow wee…I am intrigued! Why such great social pressure to have slim bodies, big eyes, double eyelids, long lashes, pearly skin, silken hair? I am tempted to say that ladies here are the more superficial sex…vanity vanity…tsk tsk. But yet, what gave them the impetus towards vanity? Men?

Chew on it…if all man like fat, ugly and featureless ladies…will the cosmetic industry be the same? No…we will have lipo-enhancements, mammarian miniaturisation and maybe, perhaps sand paper haha. Yes…I really do feel that may just happen. So whats the issue here? I guess its simply our definition of beauty.
I struggle with this superficiality alot. Still do. But I know our God does not look at the outward but a man’s heart. I wish to see things his way. Don’t get me wrong, I am not about to start looking for bad lookers…(you won’t want to label your future wife that anyway). But, perhaps whats wrong is that we are not looking deep enough. Inner beauty. Something that last more than 10 years without artificial enhancements. Something organic. Something that will flower with age rather than the reverse. Something full of life and abundance. Something that will bring joy and healing to those around. Something that will overcome the world’s prejudice with a power not of this earth. Somebody that reflects an image of Christ into our dull stupid eyes.

Past 2 days have been pretty packed. Am currently attending some systems training. Enjoying it lots cos it is really squeezing alot of mental juice out of me.

In a way I feel that my brain is like an AMD chip…can process things at a good speed…but burn out really fast Need to develop more endurance…train, train….discipline, discipline.

Wanted to mention about the casino decision that our country made. I guess God is not so much concerned about the world’s decision-making capacity (they are not expected to perform well in the first place). Rather, what is the church’s response to it? How about you or me?

The above issue takes at least half an hour to express….off to bed for now…

I shall never again, squeeze 1 month of study into 3 days. Tomorrow is my exam, and I am taking a break after that!

Was feeling a little despondent in the morning, but the storm clouds soon gave way to bright sunshine Feel blessed once more I often learn by falling…but I realise I always grow by picking myself up. The feeling isn’t perfect, but the end result is not bad

Just canoed with a friend recently @ MacRitchie reservoir. Scenary was great and the air was fresh. Our kayaks were alittle heavy…I was quite peeved that we couldn’t get the lighter competition ones. And we are restricted to a baby area for canoeing!! Wah man….such a big reservoir, can only paddle around baby pool

Anyhow, we disregarded the rule from the start…went about canoeing where ever we wanted and in the process, knocked down a tortoise and sunk a swimming monitor lizard (it just disappeared under water when it saw us…)

Another interesting moment was when I send the boat crashing into the branches. My friend bore the brunt of it in the front seat and gave me a slight dressing down.

Overall, a nice place to come to when you need some time to yourself and want a bit of scenary. You will need to get a one star certification though, if you want to use the lighter canoes and have a bigger play area.

Wow man…this is exciting!! Canoeing at MacRitchie Reservoir… (See below)

STATEMENT BY DR YAACOB IBRAHIM,MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER RESOURCES, AT THE COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY DEBATE 2005, 8 MARCH 2005, 2.45 PM

Members in the House may be pleased to note that there are plans to open up facilities for walk-in members of the public. For example, PUB is working with the Singapore Canoe Federation to start a kayaking centre in MacRitchie Reservoir. The centre, expected to be launched later this month, will not only cater to school and national training but will offer rental of kayaks for members of the public. As we anticipate a high level of interest from the public, there are plans to open up similar centres for kayaking and sailing at other reservoirs, such as Bedok Reservoir.

Was waylaid by the last episode of a Korean Drama screening on Ch 8. Ending was tragic. Its powerful emotions involved touched a certain part of me. Love and death. A common theme binding the two of them is pain…suffocating, greivous pain…terrifying and desolate.

I guess there is someone who understand such pain - a man acquainted with many sorrows. I am thankful because he took on, what I could not handle by myself. He has taken away my pain. And the world’s sorrow too

Prof. Tolkien was a Christian;
and as for the Lord of The Rings (LOTR) trilogy, he acknowledged that it is “fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” (Tolkien’s Letter, 1953)

C.S. Lewis reviewing the LOTR wrote:

Even now I have left out almost everything - the silvan leafiness, the passions, the high virtues, the remote horizons. Even if I had space I could hardly convey them. And after all the most obvious appeal of the book is perhaps also its deepest: ‘there was sorrow then too, and gathering dark, but great valour, and great deeds that were not wholly vain’. Not wholly vain - it is the cool middle point between illusion and disillusionment.
‘But why’ (some ask) ‘why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?’ Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterisation. Much that in a realistic work would be done by “character delineation’ is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf or a hobbit. .

The value of the myth is that it takes all the things we know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by ‘the veil of familiarity’. The child enjoys his cold meat (otherwise dull to him) by pretending it is buffalo, just killed with his own bow and arrow. And the child is wise. The real meat comes back to him more savoury for having been dipped in a story; you might say that only then is it the real meat. If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joy. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly. I do not think he could have done it in any other way.

牵我的手，我的主啊
请你别离开我
这条路我还要走，我需要你来作伴。

牵我的手，我的主啊
请你别离开我
有时我会怕，有时不知怎样走
有时好像听不到你的声音

牵我的手，请你跟我作伴
给我的脚步又稳又定
走到你的门前，听到你的声
跟我说：“进来，我的孩。”

这一首福建歌，非常亲切，常常带给我很大的安慰，使我最颓丧的时候，知道神的手，总是扶着我。它也形容着我在向神寻求方向的时候，所面对的矛盾。但我深知，寻找他的人，必会得到启示。他是一位真神！

Just had dinner with my sis. She was advising me that I really ought to carry tissue paper around. Girls are always impressed with guys that carry tissue. (Is that true??)

I defended myself - Macho man don’t carry tissue paper. *laughs*

So what kind of guys do girls prefer in today’s society? Macho Man or Sensitive New Age Guy?

I have finally succumb to this 21st century activity - blogging. Here goes the first entry.

What is the objective of blogging?

To update your present friends on the progress of your life and vice versa
To meet new friends in the internet world
To double up as an online journal/diary
To crystallise one’s thoughts
As a platform to share and testify about the reality of God in our lives
Vanity Vanity Vanity - to impress other people?
An outlet for overly expressive and opinionated persons like myself to vent

Not really sure which applies to me now. We shall see…

Wowee.
Its my first blogging experience. I wonder how am I gonna carry on this strange 21st century activity