Month: July 2007

cROoK


§ Crook

§ I feel crook today. I had felt this way from the time I woke up this morning but decided to go to the gym anyway and squeezed out a 40 minute slow run. I didn’t have to sprint but still had to jog to the platform at Syndal, to catch the 7:08. As I sat down at the end of the 4th car, I called Theresa and she said she was still at home so I decided to try and read a little. Theresa sometimes join in me in the train in Mount Waverley, which is the next stop from Syndal, about 3 minutes away. We’d invite strange looks when she gets on, sit next to me, chat a little, and I give her a quick kiss before I got off at Glen Iris.

§ Anyway as I tried to read on my own, I suddenly felt the cold and the aches all over my body. I knew then that the run wasn’t either the cold or a lethargic Monday morning. I was crook. I knew that for sure when I got off at Glen Iris and walked towards the tram stop. On the tram I could really feel the aches and suddenly felt very tired. I caught short snoozes but generally found it hard to keep my eyes open. I really felt lethargic. I thought maybe I needed some food.

§ When I got into office, I immediately fixed a hot cereal drink. That perked me up just a touch and I continued to struggle. However I had to soldier on, as my department is now down to just 2 lawyers and 1 support staff and it would be really bad for my boss if I took a sickie, leaving her as the sole lawyer holding this place. So while I still can, I’d just plug away. So I dragged myself through the 2 meetings (one of them so bleeding long – almost 3 hours!), the scores of emails and attached document and the few draft contracts so far. I feel just a notch better now but think I will definitely retire early – maybe way before 9pm…

§ FedEx

§ He’s done it. He’s matched the achievements of a legend. 5 consecutive winner’s medal at the premier tennis tournament in the world is no mean feat and although everyone has anticipated that RF would be able to do it, when it was done it still made for a talking point everywhere. It certainly dominated the tv screens this morning at the gym. The only setback was he tarnished his record of being a mister nice guy. I saw him arguing with the umpire, for the first time.

§ Dandenong Ranges

§ Kiddo, Theresa and I took a drive on Saturday, and headed for the Dandenong Ranges, which is out east, about 45 minutes from our place. In a way it wasn’t the best time to go there as it was very cold. It was about 2-3 deg when we set out and the whole time we were there, it didn’t get past 5 deg. The scones and pancakes at the Ranges restaurant in Olinda were very good however. Ing Tung and Chin Moi and their 3 kids were with us and they also enjoyed the occasion. We had to return early in the afternoon, as kiddo had a session at a nursing home with some youth group members and Theresa had a ladies’ meeting. So we got home, the 2 girls headed off to their respective places and I headed home. I did some quick and basic house cleaning, went out grocery shopping and returned to cook some food for freezing.

§ After the nursing home trip, kiddo went into the city to see Sarah, a mate of hers, in the Royal Children’s Hospital. Sarah had broken a couple of toes after falling over while taking in the rubbish bin. Poor girl. By the time kiddo got back it was way almost 8pm. That made the pork and fish rice porridge I had cooked taste even better but by then I had started to feel a little crook. It’s almost 7pm now. I want to go, will go but dread the tram and train rides and waiting in the cold. I’m so crook.

Gardener Lies Again


We don’t like P Kenyon at Man United. So when we get a chance to whack one over him, the temptation is almost always too good to pass. So now I think I found one. He has now said Chelsea’s problems – on and off the field – is now behind them. But we all thought everything was fine – P Kenyon said so himself!

I guess Kenyon would always remain the slimeball double dealing toothpick that he has proven himself to be.

So it WAS the Oil


John Howard the Prime Minister has done it again – he has pulled off another act to add to his “Honest John” reputation.

I first heard him speak when he was in the Opposition over 20 years ago, bushy eyebrows and all. His forte was his honesty and he really came across as someone you can trust, certainly a lot more than his opponents at that time, Andrew Peacock internally and Bob Hawke on the other side.

Of course honesty doesn’t always make you look good, as in the case of a murderer, for example, who confesses. This sort of honesty doesn’t exculpate. Unfortunately for the PM, this time it is this sort of honesty. He has now admitted to ganging up with Bush and Blair against Iraq to secure oil supply. I think he’s the first to so admit. Blair has stepped down, and Bush will too, soon. According to polls here, Howard will, before the year is out, join these alumni of ex-leaders who ganged up against and wrecked Iraq. However I don’t recall the other two admitting to oil supply as a reason for the terrible war.

Elections are due this year (and I have to vote – it is compulsory here) and many have assumed Labour under Kevin Rudd will romp in. Rudd is a bit of a Blair type – a smooth and suave communicator but not always solid on substance. Unfortunately there is no Gordon Brown in the Australian version of New Labour. In fact there aren’t too many solid candidates in Rudd’s shadow line-up (though not quite Malaysian cabinet standard, not by any means) so I’m not sure why Labour is ahead in the polls and is expected to win. I certainly don’t see the equivalents of a Costello or a Turnbull.

I don’t know if John Howard’s latest act of honesty was driven by any attempt to regain lost electoral grounds. Maybe he is going to announce the elections soon. I haven’t read the context of the admission as I only caught one of those Beeb one-liner news items (see earlier entry). I will of course, look it up and there will no doubt be op-ed pieces on it in the next few days. The interesting thing is the openness of a leader who has again demonstrated that doing the right thing in the here and now has its place, no matter how much damage has been done in the past. Maybe it is a sort of confession on his part, knowing his days are now numbered. Either way, there’s a lesson somewhere for some leaders in other parts of the world.

Another Nail in the Coffin


I was in Malaysia in December 2006, not long after the explosive matter of the murdered Mongolian translator hit the newsstands.  Within a space of a couple of dinners with some friends and old colleagues, it became obvious that there was more than meet the eye and as usual, it involved allegations of wanton abuse of power by powerful public figures who think of themselves more as feudal lords than public servants. All the dirt is coming out now, as the murder trials of the piñatas take on their usual farcical course. The star witness of the prosecution is now a victim of prosecution impeachment proceedings. A significant but previously absent piece of evidence has suddenly emerged in the form of a mysterious man and his vehicle, elements totally unreported before. It is as though an author of a bad script has suddenly inserted a brand new act into this comic tragedy. Comical in that the shenanigans of the legal fraternity of Malaysia have become a joke which has long turned into a source of annoyance, nay a scourge, to the frustrated public. While Malaysians used to laugh at the “irrelevant” remarks of Augustine Paul the high court judge, they now face the prospect of having a totally ineffectual and irrelevant judiciary and public prosecutor’s office and so can no longer afford to laugh. It is more obviously a tragedy on at least two fronts. The emotional storms the family of the victim must be going through, are sins for which the perpetrators of this heinous crime would hopefully, at least grieve over if not severely punished. The other tragedy is the continuing degradation of the sense accountability and law enforcement/public order machineries which has plagued Malaysia for so long. Malaysians are fast losing any hope of salvaging its public institutions and the sense of what’s right. Nothing short of deliberate and concerted public meetings to strongly and aggressively voice total disaffection would do.

Can we both be right?


I was just chatting with someone earlier today and the issue of religious dogmas surfaced again. A few days ago a couple of high profile terrorist attacks took place in Britain, in London and Glasgow, Following the Glasgow one (a couple of twenty-something medical doctors loaded up an SUV with petrol and crashed into the Glasgow airport), a couple of medical doctors from the middle east were detained in Brisbane. Both were working as doctors in a Gold Coast hospital, both are Muslims with one of them having Palestinian parents and was himself born in Jordan. He may have been an Indian. Anyway, we were talking about this piece of news and someone remarked why so much violence emanates from religions. Someone else retorted that was because religions create bigotry, especially religions which insist they are right and everyone else is wrong. Exclusivity is always a bad idea for societies trying to find ways to live together more harmoniously.

That is a problem isn’t it – the world insisting no one should be dogmatic and claim exclusive ownership over truth. Religions, in my mind, are necessarily dogmatic. Why set down principles of relating to God and the consequential rules for this and the after life, if you don’t believe them to be true? In fact you shouldn’t just believe them to be true you have to believe they are the only ones which are true. If you don’t, if others are also true, why start something new? Why not just use the other, pre-existing one? After all, one isn’t talking about building a better model of say, a car or a computer or a phone, because newer or better models of those tools make those tools even more effective. Essentially a car is to get you from point A to point B and you make a newer model only because it brings you from point A to point B either faster, or in more comfort or safer or using less fuel. You don’t make a new car for any other reason, do you? Or maybe you do but surely that is just consumerism gone mad (as in having fifty varieties of margarine on the supermarket shelves) and has nothing to do with making sure you get from point A to point B, because the old beat-up whatever does exactly that already.

My point is, when one starts a new religion, surely the motivation must be the idea that all the other religions don’t bring you to God, that some aspects of their teachings are not quite right with the result that you may not reach God? Man seeking God isn’t exactly like finding different ways to eat chocolates and that discovering another way is always a plus. If religion A already lets you find God, you don’t start religion B unless A didn’t actually let you find God. If merely parts of A were problematic but you still got to God anyway, wouldn’t religion B then be false if it didn’t contain those bits of A which did get you to God? And if A did get you to God, shouldn’t those problematic bits be fixed but didn’t matter anyway because you still got to God via A? Why start B? I’d be pretty disappointed with a God who doesn’t have a set of standards, for whom anything goes. If God wants us to come to Him, He’d set down a way and that’d be it. I guess I’m trying to say truth in religion is necessarily exclusive. If A is true then everything else must be false. If there’s something else which is true, then A must have been false. I’ve heard this described as an “either or” principle, as opposed to a “both and” principle. I think my point is especially focused if you agree that often, A and B actually say very different things. So, they cant be both right and they cant both get you to God. I guess you can call me an “either or” person and if that makes me a religiously dogmatic exclusionist bigot, well…that’s not so nice but I guess I’m in that sense, one.

One Down, Bring on the other Two!


One down, two to go. Winter, that is. June has somehow just whizzed by amazingly quickly. Perhaps it was the busyness at work in particular. It was maybe also the other events – kiddo’s entrance exams for Mac Robertson High, our 15th anniversary. Whatever the cause(s), the feeling has been that I have had very little time to just take things in. I feel like I have been rushed and swept by the tides around me. While I much prefer this to sitting around waiting for things to happen, it also feels like I am not charting my own direction. I guess I’m experiencing the perennial challenge to find meaning in the midst of the hustle and bustle of activities which constitute living. In as much as I have enjoyed the activities of the past 3 months or so, they have affected the life I live in ways which I don’t necessarily like.

For example, I have had to spend a lot of time dealing with trains and trams. I spend a great deal of the start of each morning working towards getting on that 6:48, 6:59 or 7:11 at the Mount Waverley station, or 3 minutes earlier at Syndal, where the gym is. This morning for example, I had to cut my run down to just 30 minutes and rushed through my showers with the sole aim of getting on that 6:56 at Syndal. I missed it so caught the 7:08 which meant I didn’t catch 7:10 or 7:16 tram at Glen Iris, no matter how fast I huffed and puffed my way up the 200m stretch to the tram stop, which meant I got in close to 30 minutes later than I would have liked. My mornings are ruled by this insane preoccupation with catching that train or that tram. All that, because of the other insane race against time – that of getting my work done.

Maybe that’s it – the endless chasing and meeting of deadlines means you lose sight of what is important to you and where you want to go, especially if these deadlines are not your own. Meeting such deadlines is a cold achievement devoid of any real thrill of making a difference, or should it? I know, I know – work ethics demand we do the work to the best of our ability without any regard for personal agenda. I’m not saying I don’t get any satisfaction from doing my job. I’m just saying the rush, the zipping by of the hours and days this process involve, robs me of a sense of “that’s what I want”. At the end of it all, it’s cold and means little.

Yet, I plough on and when my eyes and mind tire late in the day and I long to go home, another round of rushing kicks in. This time it’s the reversed trend of catching the right tram so that I don’t miss the 7:25 train at Glen Iris to go back to either Mount Waverley or Syndal. If I do, the always erratic 7:40 would see me arriving home after 8, which is always a bummer. Yarra Tram has a tram tracker hotline which you can call to find out what time a tram is arriving and if I hurry, I can just about hang up the phone, undock my notebook, pack up and make a quick dash for a tram which is due to arrive in 3 minutes. However, if the boss is still in, it’s good form to just nick in and say good bye for the day. If this was the case, it has to be the next tram, whenever that is. At times, I have had to sprint from my cubicle to the lift, get down to the lobby, sprint across the hall to the glass door (which seem to know my rush and so open at a glacial pace) and do an Asafa Powell to the tram stop. I would then spend the next 5 minutes catching my breath and hoping my heart holds out, and also hoping Theresa wouldn’t pick that moment to telephone, lest the heavy breathing suggests it wasn’t my workload in the office requiring her to keep my dinner in the oven.

Assuming I manage to get on the tram on time, arrival at Glen Iris some 20 minutes later signals another assault on the cardio respiratory system. Often, the tram stops, the passengers get off and the shuffles last only about 2 seconds before they turn into trots across the road. If the rail crossing bells start to signal, the trots escalate into an almighty stampede. This time, the distance is more than double that between my glacial glass door and the tram stop. The route also involves a 30m ramp going up, towards the station platform so while I still often manage catch the 7:25, the recovery can take the whole of the 12 minutes from Glen Iris to Mount Waverley. God forbid that Theresa should call then. I’m certain I looked absolutely pale on those occasions as I sit panting and rubbing my chest. Like Detective Murtaugh liked to say, I’m getting too old for this (expletive deleted).

On arrival home, it’s another round of rushed activities. I’d put my gym clothes in a bucket to soak away the 12-hour old perspiration, get out of my coat, jacket and shirt, pack my clothes for the next day, and go downstairs for dinner. It’d be way past 8 by then. After all the washing up, and if I pack lunch for the next day, it’d be close to 9pm. We start thinking about bed around 9.30pm. So you see there is precious little time to talk or just think about the day. This goes on for a whole week and come weekend, the cycle of house cleaning, shopping, cooking, ferrying kiddo to her activities and church on Sunday, would leave us so little time. The rush goes on. The cycles are endless. Yet this mouse prefers spinning away, chasing endlessly, on that little treadmill in the little cage, more than having no wheel to climb onto at all. It may be tiring and challenging and raises all sorts of questions but it also makes for a full life. Now for the remaining 2 months…

Living


I woke up a full 25 minutes later than I intended this morning, so I missed the gym. I had felt I needed to, to get the week kick-started. It was such a long week last week and I was so bushed that on Friday night, the last thing I wanted to do was to be in church for a long night of movie and fraternizing. Oh I know I shouldn’t use that word but on that night I really felt that way. Any form of socializing, unless it is with a very small group over a warm meal and a few bottles of very good red, was to be avoided. Anyway there I was, in the church hall on a cold and tired Friday night, watching this movie called One Night with the King. It was on the story of Esther of the Old Testament. The sound was a bad, as obviously it felt like one of those cheap movie sessions Malaysian schools used to organize – the hall wasn’t meant to the a theater and it showed. We ploughed through the 120 odd minutes of celluloid, after which we worked our way through cakes and other delights totally unsuited for such a late hour. Despite all that, it felt good to be in the company of church friends so as tired as I was it was not a totally bad way to end the week.

Saturday was therefore the start of my recuperation from the week, including the events of the previous night. I was particularly looking forward to it as we were supposed to look at a couple of houses which we had seen on the internet. As it turned out, one was a dud and the other has been sold, but that was only one part of a damp squib of a weekend. After the usual house cleaning, we dropped kiddo off at her morning class (final one, with at least a few months’ break). After replenishing my wine stock, we went off all the way to Wantirna South, for the first inspection. The internet copy writer was extremely skillful, for what was a small unit stuck behind another one occupied by very messy owner/occupier was given a description like it was a Taj Mahal perched on the Cote d’Azur going for a song. We left the house, dropped off the dry cleaning, picked up some bread and went to pick kiddo. After lunch with her, we went to do the weekly shopping, after which we headed home. I fixed up the wiring for the home phone (a new set with an answering machine, which Theresa picked up from the recent Myer stock-take sale). The made-in-China electrical extension cord was a challenge and by the time I was done it was time to go look for the second house, which turned out to have been sold the previous day already. I was peeved at the agent for making us go to the property, when she knew it has been sold. If it was to lure us to see other property it failed, because I don’t think I would want to deal with her again. That property was so close to kiddo’s present school so we were really keen on it but then again I know God has His ways of dealing with us.

We went home and it was nearly 5pm but we weren’t hungry so we watched a DVD – Stranger Than Fiction starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson. Dustin Hoffman played a role as well, in what was a very novel plot. Will Ferrell played an IRS agent, Harold Crick who lived a regimented life. His life was actually written as a fiction by Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). Their paths somehow crossed when Crick started hearing Eiffel’s narratives of his life. He thought he was going cuckoo, saw a shrink, who referred him to a Professor Jules Hilbert (Hoffman) who worked with Crick to unravel what was going on. It turned out Eiffel was writing a tragedy and she usually kills of her dramatis personae. Crick was waiting to be killed of but fortunately for him Eiffel had a writer’s block when it came to the ending. She struggled as Crick’s life took a turn for the better. One of his assignments took him to an Anna something (Mary Gyllenghall) and they hit it off after a rocky start. Eiffel finally had her writer’s block cleared up and found a way to kill her guy. By then Crick had figured out it was Eiffel who was writing his life and managed to contact her. He got her outline of a script, gave it to Hilbert, who thought it was a poetic and most beautiful ending so Crick should opt to go this way, rather than a mundane death albeit much later. He thought the book (titled Death and Taxes) could end no other way. The brave Crick went ahead and lived the final moments of his life exactly how Eiffel wanted. Except of course, Eiffel had struggled with the idea that her character was real and she was killing a real person so unbeknownst to Crick, changed the ending which saved Crick. Hilbert of course thought the ending spoiled it, thought the book would have been much better had Crick died as per the original version. It was a strange movie, but enjoyable.

We finished the movie just before 7, I cooked some vermicelli for dinner, after which we did something we hadn’t done for a long time. We caved in to kiddo’s pestering and played monopoly. She won, we lost, she was happy and we went to bed. Yesterday afternoon after church kiddo had lunch with the youth group followed by a jam session so Theresa and I went for lunch on our own. We went to Shangrila Inn at Brentford square – she for her char koay teow and I had my laksa. We went window shopping at Forest Hill after that before we went home and I did some ironing and cooked some more, for this week’s dinners. I also boiled some red beans for supper. SBS had a EPL classic match on where United thrashed the tractor boys 9-0 with Andy Cole scoring 5. It was great to see Giggsy turning the Ipswich defense upside down for half if not all of the goals. I wondered again if United would be better next season than they were. With Hargreaves, and the two latin dancers they should but one never knows. Maybe Anfield would be more threatening this time around. Apparently they are close to signing Spain’s Torres for over 26 million GBP…

And so it was a very uneventful weekend, but great because it had loads of family time. It was also great because yesterday morning, I found myself really getting stuck into acknowledging God and worshiping him. That echoed again this morning just by listening to some songs on an SD card which I thought had gone walkabout. I found it again yesterday and the songs on it (Amy Grant mainly) were inspiring stuff. It drained the battery on the phone but just listening to music about worship for a change (instead of reading) was great. Mundane stuff huh? Living, I guess.