Our niece Nicole, who now works in a hospital in Taree, northern New South Wales, has been going out with a bloke who has just started a Master’s degree course in RMIT here in Melbourne. Nicole told us about Jonathan when we visited her back in January. We got in touch with him, and on Saturday, Jonathan took the train from the city to come out here in the east and we picked him up from the station at Syndal. We then headed for Mornington to spend the day there.
We had lunch in a brewery (the “Tar Barrel”). The “Barbeque Board” was good and there was a lot of food so we took some in a “doggy bag”, for Jon to take with him. Jon and I sampled their beers too (I had a couple, he only had the one beer). We then drove to the pier, took a walk there and mingled with the very busy crowd, before driving further to Sorrento to introduce Jon to the famous vanilla slice.
Jon told us he comes from a family of 4. The eldest and youngest are girls, sandwiching 2 boys. He’s the second (the older boy). His dad was from Johore and his mum, Taiping. He had done his IT undergraduate course in Pekan, in the state of Pahang. He met Nicole in the Penang Chinese Methodist Church. I told him Tress and I too, met in church. We chatted throughout the day. He comes across as a fine young man so I guess Nicole has done well.
We got back at about 6, and dropped him off at the Glen Waverley station, for him to get back to the city. Back home, we walked the little fellows before going back home to put our tired feet up.
The night before, we were treated to a wonderful home cooked Sarawak Laksa at the Hippos’. Jason and Mel were there too. We chatted and caught up over the very good laksa. Jesslyn had taken on a new job with MS and would be leaving the Salvos. We talked about the growing pains of their eldest and other stuff that make up our journeys in life. They’ve become close friends and catching up with them and Jason and Mel is almost always fun and heart warming.
On Sunday, we were at St Alf’s and Rene talked about Matt 18 – the part about dealing with someone in church who sinned. I said to Tress, in a “discussion time” after the talk, that I don’t think we have allowed ourselves to be such a part of the lives of anyone in St Alf’s that we will come anywhere near seeing someone with any problems with any sin. Maybe that is what we need to do – simply allowing ourselves to be part of the lives of more people there. It hasn’t been an easy thing to do. Maybe it’s a cultural barrier, maybe it’s just me being tired a lot and not wanting to invest time or effort into taking relationships deeper than superficial greetings. We’ve been in small groups since we started going to St Alf (10 years now) but this remains a difficult thing to do.
Later in the arvo, I did the week’s cook. Our vegetable patch has yielded a fair bit of tomatoes so I had decided to make a pasta sauce and did a vegetarian spaghetti for the week. It tasted good so hopefully the week’s lunches will be good.
It’s now just over a week before Kiddo’s parcel is expected to be delivered. Little A will be here soon. Excitement, trepidation about how I’d manage to work and cook out of a small Air BnB joint , and a sense of wonder – they have been a potent and consuming cocktail of thoughts and emotions in recent months. It will be an experience that is entirely new for Tress and I and I have no clue how I’d navigate this part of my journey. I need to ask for that pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, perhaps.
Ante 