It isnt too late for Malaysia to do all it can to oust Najib Razak. Certainly, the family of Altantuya would be appreciative.

Najib Razak is so tainted efforts to to oust him should not stop. At every turn, Malaysians must spare no efforts to resist him and have a go to oust him. Bring him down.

I just found out a certain Putri Norlisa Najib is a practising lawyer in the KL firm of Kadir Andri Aidham and Partners. I wonder if she has a corner office, driver and no billing targets…

I guess Altantuya would never get to see her children building a career in law, or any other profession.

Tress attended a colleague’s baptism in a church on Swanston Street in the city yesterday. Kiddo was playing the keyboard so I had to drop her off by 9am for their pre-service practice. I went to get a coffee after that, at Gloria Jean’s on Kingsway at Glen Waverley. I took the opportunity to scan through the Sunday Herald. It also meant a different kind of start to our usual Sunday morning routine.

The jagged nature of last Sunday continued when I got to church and the band started to play. I thought the volume was way too loud and went outside for a while. After a few minutes I thought it was probably not a good idea to remain outside for the duration of the service so I went back in, but the band remained very loud so I stayed right at the back of the hall.

The singing session tapered off and the chair (Jason) started, saying something to the effect that we ought to proclaim healing. Perfect, I thought. I have been asked to lead the communion and my little piece was going to be on how I believed physical healing wasn’t part of atonement, contrary to what this church believes. I guess I was just trying to make my little statement of what I thought. The only problem was it jarred badly with what Jason had said just a few minutes earlier. However, like Tress often said to me, my little statements often had the effect of an ant peeing because it was a non-issue with most people.

And so it continued. Jason felt it right to let the service flow by having people come up to say their individual pieces instead of having a sermon delivered. I guess it’s good to have members say their piece but I wonder if the worship service is the right place and time for this. I have little doubt it does a world of good for the person who spoke, but it often does little for the listeners, especially if the speaker had no idea where he (or she) was going and went in circles as a result. Or worse, what was said actually trivialised the whole experience of being a Christian.

Not every speaker made me cringe of course – some were marvellous punchy testimonies. I’m afraid however, that even after all these years in this church I still have to wrap my head around to the idea of letting anyone speak, regardless of what that person was saying or the message that was actually being communicated.

Take this one about receiving a message from God about taking sports drink to alleviate a pain in the leg. There was prayer for a problematic leg, and then there was “a word” – about a remedy. It turned out that person has been exercising a lot and was losing mineral salt. Naturally taking a mineral supplement helps in this situation. But the message was that it took prayer and “a word” – which was confirmed because more than 1 person had that same “word” – for God to deliver a healing which has been deprived for years.

Later that arvo I talked about this with Tress and kiddo. I had to stress 2 points. The first was that you could easily have a group of Muslims or Buddhists or Atheists discussing their religion or philosophy and come to the same independent conclusion. Does the confluence of conclusions prove the veracity of God or the message? Does the fact that there was unity of message (conclusion) prove that God is real and that the message or conclusion actually came from God?

The other point is that the very prescription of taking a banana or sports drink to alleviate a mineral depletion condition is a common one. In my past life, fellow runners and gym addicts have got together and spoke about the same thing. An affected runner would get the same advice from a bunch of other runners, all independently. Does that make the prescription a godly one? I don’t know. I think confluence can come from a variety of circumstances. If the remedy is a common one, or if a group has had the same exposure to similar thoughts, ideas or teachings, the chances of common conclusions – “word” – just escalates. It doesn’t prove anything.

I’m not saying the person’s experience wasn’t real or that it wasn’t a thing to be thankful to God for. All good things come from God and we are to be grateful to Him. I am concerned however that we don’t attribute things to God when simple explanations work much better because by carelessly attributing things to specific messages from God, we may actually trivialise what He does for us. God has given us brains to think. It is perfectly kosher for some of us to share a same thought. That thought, just because it is shared, does not become a special “word” from God. Not even after prayer. It is part of the mindset created by a belief that signs and wonders must permeate our lives so we seek them out at every turn, even from car registration plates.

Maybe I was being a proud pain-in-the-neck, I don’t know. Maybe I was simply demonstrating years of being in a conservative church. I thought however that the Sunday pulpit is sacred in that you need to ensure that it is a platform from which God’s word is appropriately and reverently taught. It is not a platform to encourage a feel-good session delivered at the expense of fast and loose theology.

I watched “Burn After Reading” over the weekend. I sometimes wonder if ICC is often like that. I love to be spending time with God’s people but I sometimes wonder also. Life is an even more terrible thing to waste.

 

It’s a bright sunny morning. The tree at a neighbours visible from our TV area is usually green but lately, these red leaves have been sprouting out. It looks gorgeous.

It’s a beautiful morning.

After fixing brekky for kiddo, tress and myself I dropped kiddo off at church for a band practice.

We later went back to church at 11am, to do yet more stage work. The stage looked better after a full day’s work by about a dozen people – ready now for an upcoming wedding, the first for the church for a long time. It will look nice for the occasion.

I got this email just a few minutes ago.

I just received this message from a friend.  I don’t know the source of the message; I also don’t know the credibility of the content, but just be aware.
Below is the content on the message:
“Hello there. I just wanted to let you know to stay away from the beaches in the month of July 2009. There is a prediction that there will be another tsunami on July 22^nd. It is also when there will be an eclipse of the sun. It is predicted that it is going to be really bad and countries like Malaysia (Sabah & Sarawak), Singapore, Maldives, Australia, Mauritius, Si Lanka, India, Indonesia and the Philippines are going to be badly hit. Please try and stay away from the beaches in July. It is better to be safe than sorry. Please pass the word around and also pray for all beings.”
Thank you and have a nice day.
Bless you

I don’t know what to make of this.

We live in an age where it is easy to be park our brains somewhere while we hit the “forward” button. We do it with the best of intentions. We think we are doing something good. In fact when we receive something like this, it almost behoves us to hit the “forward” button lest we be accused of receiving information but failing to act.

I disagree.

It may very well be that come July the quakes do happen and the tsunamis do hit. But I could also win the lotto grand prize and Manchester United could win the lot.

Nice maps and charts accompanied that email. But so what? It wouldn’t take a 10^th grader 20 minutes to cook up a graphic illustration like that. Does the picture legitimise the content? It certainly prettied it up. Maybe it would make more people also hit the “forward” button than if there were no pictures. It doesn’t however make the content any more legitimate.

It didn’t make me want to forward it more than if it did not have any pictures. I am just as likely to delete it, and I did.

Why does someone send an email like that without trying to do anything to verify the contents? If there were attempts to verify, then why not let the recipients know? Even share the outcomes of the research? That would then really be doing the recipients a favour. To “forward” it blind is no help.

Am I withholding information or failing to act on information if I don’t “forward” such emails? Don’t be ridiculous. What am I withholding? Scuttle bug. If there were more to it, then why were the additional bits left out?

The recent long weekend over the Easter break was fantastic. Tress, Kiddo and I had a good break and I do feel like I had a good clean break. I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling refreshed and happier than before the break.
On Thursday we went out to PP for dinner. The next day, after sleeping in a bit, we went for a drive to the Mornington Peninsula. I charged up the GPS the night before and early on Friday, I poked around with it to see where we could go in the peninsula. Even though I woke up just a bit after 6am, I still felt like I had slept in. I browsed the Melways and then randomly picked out Arthur’s Seat at the peninsula as a spot to visit.
We took off a bit after 9am, hit the Eastlink and drove up to the peninsula. We hit Dromana a bit under an hour later. At a toilet break, we picked out a spot for a maze adventure. It turned out that the “POI” in the GPS was also for the same place – the enchanted gardens or something like that, at Arthur’s Seat just off Dromana.
Kiddo was particularly excited about going into a maze. It turned out that the place had several mazes, including one made of corn tree – a maze’s maze, if you like.
We spent close to 2 hours there and then drove towards Mornington for lunch. We had wanted to go to the “Old Bank Café” but it was closed, so we ended up having fish and chips. We walked around the town for a bit after that before driving further along the esplanade. We wanted to stop again for coffee but couldn’t find a spot we were after.
We got home close to 5pm.
Later that night we had a Good Friday service in church. Steven was not well so some of us spent the whole night attending to him.
On Saturday kiddo had practice in church so I sent her there again. I brought along some bibles which we were going to give to baptism candidates, and left them in the office. After attending to some mail, I went home and went for a walk with Tress. We then went grocery shopping to cook for Easter Sunday lunch at church the next day. After picking kiddo up we went for brunch at Glen Waverly. It was some quickie yum cha after which we went to get some wine for Steven’s birthday party that night. We went back after that and Tress did her gardening while I did the vacuuming. Tress then did the cooking while Kiddo and I played some video games. She thrashed me of course, as usual.
Steven’s birthday party went really well that night. It went so well he actually walked out of the restaurant without paying! The matre de looked around to see who would foot the bill but hey, it was a 10 course meal for 7 tables so no one was in a hurry to volunteer to “pay first”. I think as I write this the bill still hasn’t been paid. Gotta learn this trick from Steven.
Because Kiddo was playing the keyboard, we went to church early on Sunday morning. We helped around with the water for the baptism tub, set up the tables for lunch and generally got busy. Church was full that morning and after I was done and wanted to join the service, I actually had to look for a seat – an unusual occurrence.
My mate had a big cookout later that arvo but I couldn’t go – had to play driver for a bit and then Tress was down with a bad headache. She went to bed to rest up and Kiddo and I took out an old DVD (Two Towers) and tried to outdo each other reciting lines. I think she won but only just.
We lazed around on Monday morning, Tress looked and felt much better – even cooked lunch. After lunch we dropped Kiddo off in church – again – a whole bunch of them were meeting up to go to the Planet Shakers’ concert in the city. It’s a 4 night thing and she’s staying over at a mate’s house each night, along with 6 other girls. Tress and I spent the first of 4 nights by ourselves. We had durian for dinner that first night. See the previous entry…

Kiddo’s away with a bunch of folks from ICC at a Planetshakers’ conference which runs till Thursday. She’ll be staying with Sarah, together with the rest of the girls.

Tress and I decided to indulge in a durian dinner, so we went out and got the Musang King frozen durian pack.

I think there are too many activities in ICC. In as much as I appreciate being busy – keeps me from mischief and lets me feel good – I just can’t see the recent activities helping anyone in particular. It is almost we are just keeping ourselves busy for our own good.

On Sunday morning as we drove to church in a glorious sunny and cool morning, I mentioned to Tress that if we weren’t church goers I would just as soon pack up for a drive somewhere. It could be to the beach, to the wine region, or even to nowhere in particular. It would be great to simply enjoy the great outdoors.

We’re Christians, so going to church is a duty so instead of heading out to the great outdoors on a gorgeous day, we head for church. Relatively speaking, it is an old, drab building with poor lighting and it is certainly not a very warm building. It is bad enough to be indoors on a day like Sunday, it was much worse to be in a building that ICC is. But at least we were fulfilling a religious duty so there was a reason to forego pleasant, wholesome activities. We were “giving to Caesar…”

On Saturday however I wasn’t so sure. There was a “Missions Training”. It went on for over 3 hours. It was supposed to be for just 3 hours but true to form, it started late, it dragged on and by the time it was done it was almost 1pm. It was scheduled to start at 9.30am. To get there in time but to also make breakfast for kiddo and ourselves and drop the dry cleaning off before that, there was just no sense of being at rest for a weekend. It was rush-rush-rush, only to arrive just a couple of minutes after 9.30am and wait around for others to show up. It started close to 10am. At the end of the session, I made some noises, and was the first to rush out of church, feeling befuddled at our choice of weekend activities.

Kiddo had a class at 1.15pm. After dropping her we went to do some quick shopping, to avoid going back and forth between her class and our home. We had to pick up some stuff to cook for a dinner party that night at a mate’s home.

I think the worst part of it all was that activities like that don’t benefit anyone except ourselves and for those who aren’t going for any mission trip and have heard stuff like that a number of times before it was all just pointless. Maybe it helped the organiser and the speaker by avoiding a miniscule turnout and if that was the case, then perhaps it was just a tad too high a price to pay for that kind of return. I was there mostly because I felt obliged to. I think I wouldn’t feel that way anymore and would only show up when I absolutely have to.

There was always something on. The previous Saturday the stage in church needed fixing. The Saturday before that there was a “wider leadership” meeting. Next Saturday there would be a Board Meeting. And, for each of those Saturdays, there would always a late Friday night preceding – one where Tress and I would rush home after work to prepare the home, fix dinner for kiddo and then send her for her youth meeting, then attend to others’ needs. Frankly, I don’t enjoy Friday night cell groups. It feels like work. I can’t wait for it to finish, send one of the members home some 30 minutes away and get back home to hit the sauce and then the sack.

Maybe Tress and I are just tired. And we cant get away on a long weekend like the Easter weekend coming up, because Kiddo was rostered to play the keyboard. We cant talk her out of it once she is rostered.

The thought of next weekend is itself tiring. Apart from the Board meeting it is my mate’s turn to host a senior citizens’ lunch. He had asked me to co-host this with him and I had agreed a few weeks ago. So the only time I have is Saturday morning, likely to be completely filled up with house cleaning and like chores.

The following weekend is the long Easter Weekend. I just hope to have a little breather then.

Last Friday I rushed out of the office to get home as early as I could. Kiddo was going to play the keyboard for the pre-bible study worship and she had to get to church by 7pm.

I got home on time, and after dropping her off, Tress and I went for dinner at the Proud Peacock in Glen Waverley. Kiddo had been fed the teenage staple of Hungry Jacks earlier – Tress stopped to get “something healthy” from there on way home.

We went back to church just a bit after 8pm. I was coming down with a slight headache which came about from an unhappy Regional HR head just before I left office. That has since been resolved of course but at that time it sat uncomfortably with me. I thought he was just shooting the messenger when he had a go at me. Sometimes I wonder if I should challenge the message I am asked to deliver, if I half suspect I was going to be shot for delivering it. Maybe not.

Anyway the headache subsided in the course of the evening and thankfully it ended not too late. We had to drop someone off on the way home but again thankfully, that was only a short distance away from the church. We got home in pretty good time, to catch an old flick.

Kurt Russell in Executive Decision was a perfect tonic for a mindless escapade and Tress and I settled down in the couch to enjoy it. We didn’t finish it though, as the totally predictable outcome didn’t have enough to keep us out of bed.

After Tress put in a full load of laundry the next morning, she and I went to our usual coffee place. After that Tress went home to tidy up the garden and I went to church to do some work to fix the stage we had helped build a few weeks ago. The new parts of the stage needed some levelling work. Tim showed me what needed to be done, and a bit after that Brian showed up and the 3 of us got started. Tim had to go and once we settled down and sort of knew what to do, he left. I found out later that he had his own engagement party to prepare for. Poor guy – he didn’t even get a congratulatory handshake from me! Anyway a little while later David showed up and all 3 of us buckled down to get the work done.

We finished in the early part of the arvo and I went home to do some vacuuming. Meantime Tress dropped kiddo off for her class. After I finished at home we picked her up and went to do some grocery shopping. We came back home, Tress warmed up some fried rice and we settled down for that. I had to do some preparation for the communion, so I went into the study for a while. When all of that was done we settled down to just have a chat, dinner and television. I used the fried rice Tress cooked to be wrapped up in a thin omelette and kiddo enjoyed that.

We watched tele and played cards for the rest of the evening.

After church on Sunday, a few families went to the new house of David and LL. They bought a tenanted property and the tenants recently moved out and they just got the keys. We all went to offer our unsolicited opinions on how to renovate the place and after about an hour busying ourselves there Jason prayed (yes, a “house blessing”). We then adjourned to Sofia’s in Wheelers Hill – there were maybe 20 of us so that spacious, cheap and quick restaurant seemed the logical choice. Alex and I had couple of Crownies. We left after 3 and Tress and I went for some grocery shopping again to cook dinner.

I fried some noodles, froze less than half of it, refrigerated less than half, and Tress divvied up the remainder between lunch at work the next day (for her) and a little bowl for a small bite. Kiddo and I weren’t hungry and I had been sipping Chinese tea (West Lake brew) while cooking and didn’t feel like eating.

A bit after 6 we went out for a good walk, first in the cricket oval and then just around the neighbourhood. The weather had become cooler and it was a great walk.

We came back, watched 60 minutes while I made my own lunch after which Kiddo watched “So you think you can dance”. We went to bed early – just before 10 and that did heaps of good for me this morning. My 7.7km was relatively breezy and I have not felt this comfortable for a 40 minute run (with 5 mins cool down) at this pace for a long time now. I hope it wouldn’t be too long before I get back in the groove of doing my regular 45 minute runs getting in 8k without the cooling down minutes. When that happens, I can seriously work at eating less and reduce weight.