Setting Sail

My wife receives the Our Daily Bread daily devotion booklet very quarter. Occasionally, ODB offers free books to subscribers. About 2 months back, it was offering subscribers a free copy of God in Pursuit, Lessons from the Book of Jonah written by Robert M. Solomon. Being the official letter opener at home, I responded to the offer. I still felt a bit lost after the health issues last year and I had the urge to read a book that would set me straight.

If not for the kindness of the ODB staff, I may not have received the book. I followed the instructions provided in the ODB leaflet to text ODB for the book request. It involved inserting the subscriber's reference number in the text message but I inserted the number they used in their example instead. I did think that it was amusing that my wife's subscriber reference number was something like 1234567. I obviously wasn't thinking hard enough. Because of that blunder, the ODB staff called me a couple of days later to help me with the book request.

I found the book in my mailbox last week. It was quite timely as the church sermon last Sunday was about staying the course with God and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in our lives. The lay leader reminded us about Jesus standing at the door knocking. He joked that if he had written that passage, he may have been tempted to write it as Jesus breaking down the door and barging in. Quite honestly, I do feel like I have been keeping my doors locked and upping the volume on the speakers in my room. Not yet ready to open the door and hear what could be in store for me. 

On Monday morning, I took a look at the daily devotional calendar on my office desk. The page for Sunday was also about approaching the Holy Spirit with an open heart instead of your set plans. That prompted me to pick up the book to see what it had to say. And it had a lot to say to me and about me. I have been reluctant to allow God to mold and refine me because it requires effort. And I have already made a lot of effort. "Try not to rock my boat," says the Jonah in me. 

Yet from past experience I am most at peace when I followed His lead. Reading the book was a good start in the right direction.

Hospital Visits

Today I am at the doctors for one of my once in two months visits. There is a bit of waiting involved but it is okay, I don't have anywhere to go. Whenever I am here, I always think to myself that hospitals, even this one which looks like a hotel, are always for unfortunate situations unless you are expecting a child. But really it is far more unfortunate to have a health condition and not have access to healthcare. That is the reality for the poor people in many under-developed countries. So many common health problems can be prevented, managed or cured.

It is an awful feeling to catch something and not know if and when it will go away. Several months back, when my immunity was still recovering, I developed a viral wart on one of my fingers. At first, it didn't really bother me too much - it was a tiny hardening of the skin and chemotherapy had caused the ends of my fingers to be slightly numb. A couple of months later it got far more annoying and I could feel its presence. It was like there is me and there is this wart, except that I didn't know that it was a wart yet.

I was making regular visits to the skin doctor then for the over-sensitive skin I had developed, yet another side-effect of chemo. So I decided to show him the finger. The treatment he proposed was a liquid nitrogen freeze after paring down the hardened skin. The freeze was pretty cool, in both sense of the word, but the paring was a bit unnerving because they used a sharp blade without first numbing the finger. I tried that twice over the course of a month but it didn't get better. My finger became more swollen and I had to avoid using that finger to type.

On my 3rd visit, I asked the doctor for another option. He suggested we try the laser treatment, which has a James Bondsie intrigue to it. I was quick to say yes even though my kids were there and could have offered a second opinion. The doctor had to give me LA - it must have been a dozen jabs. Jabs to the finger is not a walk in the park. I didn't watch the laser burn away the finger, but I could smell it. And then toward the end, I could feel the pain, so the doctor had to give me a few more jabs. When it was finally over, a quarter of my finger tip was gone. It took about 2 weeks for my finger to fully recover.

Doctors may deliver painful treatments but it is a work of compassion. I truly admire the doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals from church who take the time and effort to go on medical missions every year. Through their efforts, under-privileged people get the much needed relief from all kinds of ailments. It is important for the rest of us who do not have the medical training to support such efforts where we can. 

Birthdays to celebrate the Journey

Chateaux de BonjourKitty

Mei Mei has been counting down to her birthday celebration since June. We had a celebration at her kindergarten during the week, which she enjoyed. She's quite unlike her brothers - my eldest son was indifferent about celebrating his birthday when he was in kindie; my second son hated it because he didn't like being center of attention. She wanted a My Little Pony cake that features her favourite character Fluttershy. I googled it today; apparently the character represents the element of kindness.  I was in charge of the cake and my wife was responsible for the party packs. It was the last kindie birthday party for us as parents. We've hit another milestone. I am sure that one day we would look back on this with much fondness.

Today we celebrated her birthday at home with family members. We don't have the energy to plan something big or more elaborate. Neither do we want to start a tradition that we have to pull our hair out to  fulfill every year. A simple lunch with family and having time to catchup is what suits us best. Mei Mei wanted a princess cake so we got her a fondant Chateaux de BonjourKitty, perhaps an overhang from our recent holiday in France. After the photo-taking, we had the heart-wrenching task of slicing up the chateaux which ended up looking like one of the castle ruins in Scotland.

When the guests were about to leave, I asked my daughter to take an afternoon nap before her Taekwondo class in the evening. I didn't realise that she had been quite worked up trying to fix the new Lego Friends set which she chose for her birthday. She wanted her brother to help but he was busy with his own Lego Minecraft set. I managed to get her to go to her bedroom but she was still annoyed about not completing the first part of her rather large Lego set.

To pacify her, I asked her whether she knew what age the toy was suited for. She replied that it was for children between the ages of 6 to 12. I reminded her that she was a new 6 year-old girl and even some 12 year-olds may need help with that set.  I told her that the fun in Lego is in the fixing process. She accepted that she was probably too young to fix it all by herself but she wasn't convinced that the doing was more fun than the finished product. But at least it settled her enough for her to catch a nap. Later in the evening, my son said that she actually did pretty well fixing her Lego set except for one mistake.

This year, I wish her the joy of life's journey. I wish that she enjoys the process of growing up even though it takes time to understand the process of growing up. I pray that like the Fluttershy cartoon character she will grow up kind. I hope that she will not be easily frustrated when she faces a challenge. Instead remember what's written on the birthday cake we brought to the kindie - Girls Rule! And, don't be in too much of a hurry on the journey Mei Mei because your parents are not yet ready for that milestone.

Fuel Pressure Gauge

Not My Car

In my previous blogpost, I mention that my car stalled twice. It provided my family with a bit of excitement when it happened the second time, late on a Saturday night. I took it in for urgent servicing the following Monday. When I described how the car was behaving to the service manager, he was a bit surprised that I drove around for a week after the first breakdown. It turned out to be an issue with the fuel pressure gauge. Don't ask me what a fuel pressure gauge is for. I tried googling. Why would a gauge not be there just to gauge?  Instead the defect caused the car to jerk and stall. I didn't think it was wise to wait until I could fully understand the workings of this mysterious gauge before I got it fixed. The  gauge was replaced and I've not experience the same issue since. But every now and then, when I am on an uneven road, I wonder whether the car is jerking and whether it would stall. Maybe it is time to get a new car?

Last week, in separate lunches, my friends asked me whether I still think about the condition I had last year. And I have to confess, it is a bit like the fuel pressure gauge issue - everything is a good as can be, but it is at the back of my mind. Sometimes it feels like it is an uneven road. Do I worry? Is it constant? Well I still feel my neck for enlarge lymph nodes regularly. I do see many things through an additional set of lenses. When my brain processes a thought, there is this additional line of code that it reads before I make a decision. Is that worry? I can't say for certain that it is not. 

What is also more apparent to me these days is that it doesn't take cancer for people to lose their lives.  We live in ever growing uncertainties where there are more immediate ways people can lose their lives, just like that. Countless stories in the last month - whether it is due to neglect, negligence, depression, misguided thoughts, pure evil. It doesn't take the big C. This keeps things in perspective for me. Whatever it is that I may worry about, it just isn't that bad. And if it gets bad enough, I need to rest on the promise once made on a lonely cross "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise".

Maybe it is not yet time to get a new car.

Preserving the Past

The one thing about a holiday in France is that it takes a long time to get over it. It has been more than 3 week since we got back and we are well into the second week of school. My car had stalled twice in the past week and it turned out to be a defect in the fuel pressure gauge which I paid over SGD500 to fix today. Yet I am still thinking about the holiday in France. It doesn't help that a number of people have been posting photos of their wonderful summer holidays in Europe on Facebook. My sister is holidaying in Switzerland with her family right this moment.

With France it was so easy to get a sense of the place. Magnificent castles and palaces in the Loire Valley and Paris telling the stories that make up the history of the nation. The beautiful towns of Amboise, Colmar and Strasbourg which retained the charm of their half timber houses - you would think that you were in the set of the Beauty & The Beast. We didn't go to the Lourve because my kids were fed up with too much history, it was coming out of their ears. There is grandeur everywhere you looked in Paris - Place the la Concorde, Arch de Triomphe, Pont Alexandre III, Notre Dame, Montmatre. As an Instagrammer, I had panic attacks trying to decide what shots would fully capture the sense of the place. 

Coming home to Singapore felt like I had just gotten off an adrenaline-high from an amusement park ride, not that I do many of those. It feels like everything around me seems slower, less exciting. My Instragram posts switched back to photos of what I am having for lunch. Contempt with familiarity. Yes we have historical buildings too - Victoria Theatre & Concert Hall,  National Gallery Singapore, The Fullerton Hotel, Clifford Pier, Raffles Hotel, the pre-war buildings in Chinatown. But we could have and should have done better to preserve the old buildings that used to stand in Raffles Place.  We almost tore down the primary school which my wife attended, what is now CHIJMES. 

So you can tell how I feel about the debate on the fate of 38 Oxley Road. Yes it is a private home of a man who wanted his family life to remain very private. Yes, he saw the danger in the state immortalising the old guards and was constantly reminding the nation to strain forward towards the future.  But he knew that there was a deep longing for Singaporeans to have a means to remember him by. Whilst he had a personal preferences on what should happen to his family home, he also knew that his life was not his own. His life, as he had made it, was for the people he served and for that reason, rightfully or wrongfully, people feel that they he belonged to them. I remember the long lines that we all joined to pay our last respects when he passed away. And the truth is that as a nation we are still a little lost when we think about how we keep his memory alive - it is far less psychotic to visit a LKY memorial than to chant "I will contribute to the progress of Singapore because of what our great leader LKY has done for us." Singapore is a young nation and we must be very careful to retain our cultural heritage. France is a few hundred years in the lead in preserving its heritage, so we have to do better on catching up on the past. 

(I really appreciate the transparency and context provided in Parliament today)