Winter has set in alright. Mornings get as cold as 6 degrees now and it is getting harder to wake up. I still struggle to get into the gym before work. Last week I only managed it once. This week looked better and I’m back to 3-4 times. There are 3 large cookie jars sitting atop a filing cabinet in my office, barely 10 feet away. This week I have consciously stayed away, as much as possible. In previous weeks however, I’d stick my hand in one of them and fish out a few, several times a day. They’ve all gone to waist, and though my belt is still on that last hole (or is it the first?) I can feel it struggling and I really hate to loosen it a notch. Also, for over 2 months now, I have had one large coffee almost every morning. Although I made mine a skinny, it is still one large cup more than I used to have, on a daily basis. My coffee consumption is back to 4-5 cups a day and the last time I made it a long black was a long way back. I remember someone saying black coffee cause reduction in calcium absorption and at my age and given my propensity for poor dental health, I was conscious of preventing calcium deficiency so along with my increased caffeine intake, I added increased lactose intake together with all the white creamy fatty goodness of milk, skinny version notwithstanding. The worst culprits however, are the dinners. I get home about 7.30pm these days so I don’t cook. That means I don’t decide how much I eat. When I get home, Theresa often gets the food ready while I put the gym clothes in a soaking bucket, change and put my stuff away. By the time I’m ready for dinner, the damage has been done as a huge plate would be sitting on the kitchen bench-top. It’s great stuff and I hate to hurt her feelings but while it tastes fantastic, it is almost always too much, especially for an 8pm dinner. At that hour, I’d want to eat only a tiny sliver of anything, if at all. So you see, gym is becoming a necessity and those mornings I struggle to crawl in, are what’s saving me now, from a total disaster requiring new clothes altogether.
The Friday night bible study sessions in church are becoming difficult to concentrate on. Joe Hu, the Taiwanese lay leader, teaches in Mandarin and his son, Abe translates into English. They did John last year and that was great. This year, he has been doing Leviticus and while it is still pretty good as a whole, I’m finding that his interpretation has been laced with embellished lessons. Maybe I’m not sophisticated enough, but a lot of the stuff he said just aren’t there on the pages. He’d say something like leprosy means sin. It’d be alright if he just came out and say they were all personal applications and he is just drawing parallels but when he made it sound like that is what those chapters actually say, it creates havoc by making us look for symbolic matches to every thing said. While a lot of the rules, rituals and practices set out in that book obviously mean something, I thought the important principle was that God was creating a unique people, and setting them apart from other races. These rule and rituals make the Israelites different. They are created by God for them so He was creating a Kingdom where He is King and those are His rules. Whether each element of each rule represent something depends on whether other parts of the Bible say it does, not whether any Bible scholar says it does. A Bible scholar may know different shades of meanings to words, nuances, customs, culture or tradition which may lend a certain angle to what a certain element may mean but it is only conjecture, no matter how likely that interpretation may be true. This qualification however, has not been made and often, in the following home group meeting, time would be spent guessing at the different meanings of certain elements. Sure, it is not an unhealthy exercise but it is frustrating to see folks trying to find a definite answer when there probably isn’t one.
A dear friend is in Melbourne now, taking a break from what must have been a pressure cooker of a situation for him in Malaysia. He’s taking the opportunity to also look up some schools and houses, for when he eventually moves here later in the year. He’s here with 2 of his 3 young sons, with the youngest one remaining in Malaysia with his wife. I was on the phone with him yesterday and he said he had taken a drive to Mount Buller the previous day. Wow – all the way there with 2 young boys (5 and 7, I think). While it must have been great fun, it must also have been challenging. He’s such a close brother to me and while I’m glad to be at work and am enjoying the busy schedule, I wish I had more time to spend with him. He obviously needs to just sit down and chat. We’re catching up with him for dinner tomorrow, out in Berwick somewhere. While he is a very successful businessman so money would be the least of his problems, I don’t envy him his days ahead, as he moves lock stock and barrel, and relocate to Melbourne. How many families have done what he would be doing, because Malaysia chooses to continue its racist policies? Uprooting is a painful and potentially traumatic experience. We’ve been here for over 2½ years now and in some ways, are still adjusting to life here, like struggling to wake up in winter mornings. Yet we are one of the more blessed ones. We’ve lived here before (albeit in Sydney, which in some ways is a different world altogether), God has blessed Elysia and Theresa by letting them fit well in their school/work and recently, I have begun to enjoy the work here in my present place as well. Not all families blend in this way. Many struggle, some return after a while, preferring familiar surroundings to promise of a better future especially for the younger generation. This is so despite the fact that Melbourne, especially the area we are in, is increasingly populated by Asians and seeing and hearing Malaysians and Singaporeans is a near everyday thing. In fact on my floor, there’s a guy who speak in a way to make you feel like you’re in some office in Jalan Seri Kota instead of St Kilda Road.
Ante 