A novelist is different

from a journalist.

I just read a blog entry of an old friend on Facebook. Cyberspace is kind of strange, the way it shrinks the space between people and make them feel closer to each other than they really are. Or the truth could be that it makes them realise that they are closer to each other than they appear.

The entry talked about observing an old uncle with a paper bag trying to cross the road. He was mumbling  and singing softly to himself, but failed repeatedly to cross that bustling road. 

A helpless look on his face. Strange looks from all around, those who gathered at the bus stop waiting for each of their rides. 

Was he singing a Hokkien song, or some inconceivable dialect? 

No one really knows. 

Some at the bus stop thought, perhaps he's quite mad. Not my friend. The old man continued to hum to himself, a secret song. And my friend thought secret thoughts. "I wish you happiness, singing-uncle-by-the-bus-stop."

A novelist writes. And so does a journalist. Both observe the common life, and also the very uncommon.

A journalist, seeing such an old man, will think: Why what when where how? Is there a news peg? Is there a story? What's my lead?

But a novelist. Ah. Sure, he thinks, is there a story?

But he is also a quiet observer, drinking in the people seen, the sounds heard. For in them, the secrets of life lie.

The novelist, upon seeing the old man with two paper bags, will think - and write - that it just is.

Yep it just is.

God save the Queen

In light of the US subprime crisis and other infectious financial diseases, this letter is highly timely. And very funny.

Read on.

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.
(You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).
Your new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'colour,''favour,' 'labour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix '-ize' will be replaced by the suffix '-ise.' Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ''like' and 'you know' is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter 'u'' and the elimination of '-ize.'

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can't sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist,then you're not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth - see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys.Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.
God Save the Queen!

PS: Only share this with friends who have a good sense of humour (NOT humor)!

How can one boy

have so much anger in him?

It has to come from somewhere, hidden in time.

So much hatred and poison spewing forth. He must be hurting very much inside.

He's so young, so very young. Everything seems hunky-dory on the outside. He's all smiley, mild-mannered, even pleasant to everyone.

Somewhere else in his mind, at the same time, he's wishing death to the people he hates.

This is the youth of today.

This is him, crying out for help, but at the same time making sure you don't get to come close enough to do so.

It's 'please help me, but stay the eff away'.

How, God, do we do this? There's only You.

One day down to

Razor TV.

We're launching on 08/08/08!!!

National Haha

Since National Day is on its way, here's Dick Lee's 'freak song' concert.

Applause, please, for Count on HIM, Singapore.

Another story

from the same night.

It wasn't told during the Festival of Praise, no.

But Hillsong did a few songs from their new album This is our God.

Simon bought the album (CD+DVD) a few days ago, but I didn't get a chance to see it nor the DVD features.

But tonight, after I came home from FOP, I started looking up stuff from the album. And I unearthed Mike Guglielmucci's story.

From an excerpt on the web:

Mike has touched thousands upon thousands of lives with his passion for God and love for mankind.
In Oct 2006 Mike was diagnosed with a blood disease, later the diagnosis was changed to cancer.
Mike is at this point of time quite sick, spending time in Sydney in hospital.
Mike believes strongly that God will heal him, and is remaining strong, still using every opportinity to share Gods love to those around him.

Mike wrote the song Healer, featured in Hillsong's new album. Here is the video testimony by Mike and the Hillsong team. It's a powerful song of faith.





Watch the worship session live here.

When pain wracks your body and cancer eats away at your bones, and you still say 'it is well with me soul' - that's security in knowing who God is. Because He's more than enough.

Healer

You're my Healer

You hold my every moment

You calm my raging seas

You walk with me through fire

And heal all my disease

I trust in You

I trust in You

I believe You're my Healer

I believe You are all I need

I believe You're my Portion

I believe You're more than enough for me

Jesus You're all I need

My Healer, You're my Healer

Nothing is impossible for You

Nothing is impossible for You

Nothing is impossible for You

You hold my world in Your hands

I went to the Festival

of Praise this evening.

It's good to see Hillsong reinventing itself with new sounds, and to see such young, gifted people writing and jamming praise songs from Parachute band. Omega Levine has quite a story to tell.

So he was born with his finger stuck to his nose bridge - thus he was born without a nose. Many painful memories and major operations later, his nose was reconstructed.

But the damage of childhood rejection and the pain of difference, and the 'why have you done this to me, God?', coupled with a seething hate for God and everyone around him, Omega almost ended his life.

Until the Maker of heaven and earth spoke.

'I love you,' He said.

That was how He created heaven and earth, I suppose. 'I love you' was what He meant.

I've founded a new 'production company'

called Northern Lights Dreamfactory.

So to speak. It's home-made stuff done on my little lappie, but it's fun and rewarding.

Just finished the video of our Nepal mission trip, with the help of my little macbook and Pam's camcorder. Listening to the voices of the missionaries and letting them speak for themselves is one of the key strengths of the media.

Camerawork's not very good and quite shaky, cos extreme zoom-ins require tripod and a heavier camera. But we use what we have. Shaky can be an edgy, MTV style, yeah? :)

Anyways, now working on the audio and video transitions and the soundtrack. Flow's not there yet, but ahoy it's on its way!

So I was thinking of a name for the end credits.

What are northern lights?

According to wikipedia:

Auroras (North/South Polar Lights; or aurorae, sing.: aurora) are natural colored light displays in the sky, usually observed at night, particularly in the polar zone. They typically occur in the ionosphere. Some scientists^[who?] call them "polar auroras". In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis, named after the Romangoddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for north wind, Boreas. It often appears as a greenish glow or sometimes a faint red, as if the sun was rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis is also called the northern polar lights, as it is only visible in the North sky from the Northern Hemisphere. The aurora borealis most often occurs from September to October and from March to April. The Cree call this phenomenon the Dance of the Spirits.

Its southern counterpart, the aurora australis/southern polar lights, has similar properties. Australis is the Latin word for "of the South".

Benjamin Franklin first brought attention to the "mystery of the Northern Lights." He theorized the shifting lights to a concentration of electrical charges in the polar regions intensified by the snow and other moisture.

Light of the north, dance of the spirit. Mysteriously beautiful, glowing and encompassing. Wow. I knew I had to use this name for our church's video productions.

Here's to more!!! Anyone care to join me?

A million thoughts running

through my head at once.

But which one is it I commit to paper? Ink to parchment. Or rather, font to digital memory. 

It's all about choices. 

What, when, how you speak. 

Like Lucky's unstoppable stream of consciousness in Beckett's Waiting for Godot, the insufferable multitude of 'think' ensuing from him lays bare the human predicament. 

Beckett's tragicomic absurdist play was my lit text in JC. The fullness of its meaning didn't fall on me then. 

We're indeed waiting for Godot, or God, but meanwhile the spaces are filled with the monotony of thoughts translated into insomany words. 

I think postmodernism is just a generation trying to cope with technological advancement, heightened education and literacy, 'freedom' of thought, and other ideological freedoms. Since there are too many freedoms to choose from, pluralism is the keyword of the day. 

Keyword being highly associated with the newly-founded verb of 'googling'. No longer just a noun. 'Let's google the meaning of the word "metanarrative".'

But no, 'little narratives' (Lyotard) are the soup of the day, so let's tell your/his/her/my story, our way.

And definitely, if you hold on to any monolithic, absolute truth(s), you're in hot soup if you're in postmodern company.

See, one thought leads to another, and another to another's other. 

Just please, let there be an absolute something or Someone, or somebody else could get hurt ingesting too much or too little Prozac. 

What maketh man is his very, very fine mind; yet it is also his undoing.

That's the way the cookie crumbles.

Brilliant sunsets are

God's way of showcasing simple, glorious beauty.

Why?

Because it happens every day without fail. Yet it lights up the entire land with its fierce, captivating fire every day, as if it was the last every time.

I saw this, in the hyperordinary act of walking out of my office. One of my rare early clock-outs, of course.

The burning watercolour of red, orange, yellow ebbs as the light scorches the horizon. It almost burns your retinas just looking at it, but not quite.

But enough to burn something deep in your heart.

That if God could create a new sunset every day's end, and a new sunrise every morning, what couldn't He do?

Everything may be in a one lumpy mess, all gooey and grey and black and hideous. Hate, deceit, anger, disappointment, all that leaving and quitting and giant mountains that you must climb; and fall, dust off your bleedin' knees, and climb again - the sun rises, and the sun sets.

And everything, new the next morning.

No, your problems don't go away. Just like cancer, Aids, and bad governments don't go away. But yet, the morning is new.

So is the enduring love of God. New, every morning.

He will see YMM through anything, because the church is His, the Church is Him.

Even if I'm unsure of anything else, of that I'm certain.

I don't need a conduit

to God.

That was all done with when the veil to the Holy of Holies tore into half, all the way down the centre of the temple. And when Christ said 'It is finished.' It certainly was finished, completed, dust-both-hands done.

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. 

At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. - Matthew 27:50-1

Now I can approach God myself. Or rather, it is Him who approaches me. 

So, beware of people who claim to be conduits to God. Only Christ is the Way... and even then, it's not quite the same as being a conduit, because Christ is also God. But he is the Way to the Father, that's certain.

Beware of those who don't claim to be conduits, but simply act like so.

Because we can listen to God, we can have a direct line to God ourselves.

It amazes me that even when I don't have time for Him sometimes to listen to what He has to say. I'm so occupied by thoughts, work, miscellaneous trivialities.

But the moment I drop them - the moment I turn away from them and look towards Him, He speaks. At the drop of the hat. That's how much I'm loved. I'm forgiven for forgetting, and He just speaks.

He can't wait to speak to His children. We just have to listen. 

       God, you're so faithful, merciful, and infinite in your love. I don't understand. But sometimes I catch glimpses of your glory. And that is enough.

A new, unknown future

and I don't know what's coming at me.

But God says, hey, it's okay. Every little thing's gonna be alright. You'll see. Hasn't it been this way all this while?

That's true, God.

Every day, work changes, and becomes something else. My work scope changes, people come and go, expectations pounce suddenly.

But it's not this I'm concerned about.

Things are moving fast elsewhere too. People are going, in dribs and drabs, sometimes in an avalanche. Loyalties shift, dreams die, confusion sets in, anger rises.

Does it hurt? Yes it does, goodbyes aren't exactly the mood of 'pop the champagne'.

But we move on, we press on. Why?

Because 'there must be more than this'. There is more than this, and I know it. What are we fighting for? What are we willing to die for?

And also because it's not about me.

How I feel, how I imagine things to be, how I perceive things ought to be done - this is all secondary to our higher calling. Nothing to lose sleep over.

And if we don't move on, things will start moving without us. Yes, God is on the move.

In the film Chronicles of Narnia, it was said that 'Aslan is on the move' - cue emotive, heart-thumping music, and bring on The Lion.

But, away from reel life, God is on the move - in ways that are unseen, unheard (of), and sometimes unnoticed.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. - 2 Corinthians 4:18

Sad or afraid I may be, but I know I am loved - and I'm loved the same yesterday, today and forever.

Every little thing's gonna be alright.

This is how Delirious has it -

Every Little Thing

Everything must change
There’s a mirror showing me the ugly truth
These bones they ache with holy fire
But I’ve got nothing to give, just a life to live
If your world is without colour
I will carry you, if you carry me

Every little thing’s gonna be alright
Every little thing’s gonna be alright [x2]

There’s no-one else to blame
I live my life between the fire and the flame
I’ve built my house where the ocean meets the land
It’s time to live again, pull my dreams out of the sand
Let your world be full of colour
I will carry you, if you carry me

When it’s all falling down on you
You’re crying out but you’re breaking in two
When it’s all crashing down on you
When there’s nothing you can do
There is someone who can carry you

Written by Martin Smith/Stuart Garrard ©2003 Curious? Music UK

How can I forget to

mention that it's been a good nine months since I last blogged?

A baby could have been born in that time.

Yes, negotiations had stalled. Work, and other things.

Now we're back on track, I hope.

It's interesting how

Simon and I were just discussing about how some blogs go on and on only about food, and nothing else.

Of course, those are called food blogs. That's a focused theme of great human interest.

Food is a tag of choice, of identity even. There are even scholastic views on the tenets of food practices founding the identity of a diaspora... or imagined community, Anderson-ian style.

But really, for the bloggers who call their online musings food blogs simply because they have nothing else to write about - that's a totally different ball game.

Don't get me wrong, I love to talk about food as much as I love food itself. I can go on and on about it. And I love hunting down the best food places - hawker, attas and inbetween.

But that can't be all there is.

Then again, there are those who do exceedingly well with food blogs (and it's not just the wonderful photos). I love those.

I won't offer a Hollywood ending by giving an intro-body-conclusion deal.

This is an indie ending.

You go figure.