Category: Personal Thoughts

Christmas and Abundant Dwelling


I slept in and woke up just after 7am this morning. I made coffee and toasts, sat down with Tress, packed lunch from Christmas leftovers, and showered, changed and hopped into the car just after 8am. Tress drove me to the station and I got in just after 8.30. All this was partly made possible because the gym is still closed for the holidays and I had decided not to take any time off work, which feels like a mistake now… sigh…

We were at Uncle Seng’s last night and as always, Auntie Anne had whipped up a fabulous array of delicious food spread across the entire kitchen bench-top of their home in Mount Waverley. Tress’ cousins and other relatives were there.

Earlier that day, we had just stayed home, watched the cricket and pottered about the home. I cleaned out the weber after cooking on it on Christmas Day, and generally just did small stuff, alternating with watching the cricket. England looked like they were determined not to lose – more than a desire to win – so the run rate was a boring 2+ and it was easy to just do other stuff while leaving the cricket on or alternating with other channels. Tress did the same thing, with all sorts of tasks like laundry, taking out bags of trash, letting the little fellow in and out while I got in and out in the course of cleaning the barbie… it was that kind of day.

Christmas Day we had slept in, after a late night on Christmas Eve. Sleeping in these days often means we wake up at 7 instead of 5, so we could have made it to church for the service but we had planned not to, so we just spent the day getting ready for the guests who were coming.

Ing Tung and Chin Moi are some of our oldest friends in Melbourne. While chatting later night with our other guests, it dawned on us it was nearly 30 years ago when we first met. They were very helpful when we first came to Melbourne and continue to be our very dear friends. The Tongs on the other hand, are our newest friends in Melbourne. We only met them maybe 6 months ago, when I was shopping for a new suit in the Doncaster Westfield Myer store. Jason and Mel joined us later that night for drinks and we reminisced even more, as Jason, Ing Tung and I were all with OCF Sydney back in the day – in the mid to late 80’s…

By the time everyone left it was nearly midnight and after we cleaned up it was just past 1am, but it was wonderful to have reconnected with old friends as well as strengthened new bonds.

On Christmas Eve I had left work at noon – the office closed at 12pm – and I dragged Tress and Kiddo to Indian Delight for lunch as I had become really hungry by the time I got home. The midday train was running the city loop – ie Parliament was the first stop, making its way through the loop and left for Blackburn only via Flinders. Stopping every station, it was a long trek home but thankfully the driver put a smile on everyone’s face. He playfully said he wanted to let everyone know the next day was a public holiday and went on to explain the reason for it. He explained the Christian faith in a 1 minute summary – essentially saying Jesus came into the world to save sinners – and wished everyone a wonderful Christmas. I was very happy the driver did what he did and the longer than usual journey home became very pleasant. It didn’t make me less hungry though so to Indian Delight we went and it wasn’t until 8pm that night I did another barbeque. Tress had bought a large piece of barramundi earlier that day.

After a dinner of very juicy fish and fresh salad, we sat down to watch the Sidney Myer music bowl Christmas Carol.

Just after 10.30, we drove to church for the Christmas Eve carol and communion service. The church was packed out and we had to park on the Uniting Church ground across the road on Koonung Road. The focus was pleasantly on Jesus and what He came to do, what our response should be and all that. For a while Tress and Kiddo were worried because as we were walking from the car park we thought we saw people very dressed up but as we settled down at our seats we realised that was only a handful of people. Peter and his staff though were dressed up more than usual and it was very nice to see the extent to which Peter and the church had gone, to make this occasion a pointed and important one. The service ended about 12.40am, and we got home just after 1.

Late nights, lots of food, lots of time with families and people you care for, all surrounding the central theme of Jesus’ coming. One of the numerous readings on Christmas Eve in church was John 1:14:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The abundance of providence and fellowship is, I’d like to think, very possibly a result of the Word having made a dwelling amongst us. Perhaps…

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Kids and Christmas


Its Christmas Eve and the workplace is abuzz for a warm reason – kids are running all over our area. These parents must have agreed amongst themselves this would be the “bring your child to work” day. 4 kids have been brought to the legal pod and introduced to us, with the youngest probably 3 years old or thereabouts. The chatter and noises are all over this area. Paper planes have taken flight and requests for scissors and sticky tape have been made.

Kids and Christmas – they’re like… horse and carriage? I’ve nearly forgotten what it’s like to have kids running around this time of the year. Christmas is so different without them.

That was probably the first Christmas present for me – seeing these kids at the work place and looking, sounding happy.

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Deo, Dad, Dongzhi and Dread


 

Lots of stuff happens at this time of the year. Today’s my late father’s birthday. He would have been 75. Yesterday was the winter solstice and we were at Gerry and Jesslyn’s for some “Dongzhi”. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve. We’d had a few parties already. Events at work too, other than the usual year end rush to complete tasks.

In all of these events one’s attention is spread across different parts of one’s life. What matters most is being with people you care about. After all that’s what started it all in the first place – God wanting to dwell amongst men. Some events you don’t particularly care about but you attend anyway, because otherwise for the rest of the year it become awkward. Like work events. Some events you look forward to because it is with people you care about and you just want to be with them. Some events you brush off with no hesitation because they involve people you don’t particularly want to socialise with.

And so when we got a missed call and a text from someone I can’t particularly care for, I simply responded by asking him to stay away. Just as I have several times now.

Lots of stuff happens at this time of the year. Some are meaningful. Some are curious. As long as I can give the best of my time and effort and it is with people I care about, I work at being with people. It’s not at all a bad time of the year…

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Date with Eusoff Chin – 22 Years Ago…


Somehow I managed to get 5 people to come along that day, in the Sultan Abdul Samad High Court complex in Kuala Lumpur. That was 22 years ago now.

I remember there were photos with my parents and grandparents and Tress. They must be in an album in the wooden trunk at home. Hopefully they’re not in the shed. Those photos were probably a tad dark, but I guess the Sultan Abdul Samad complex was probably dark generally – not a lot of light. Not especially since the presiding judge was Eusoff Chin, one of the more overtly corrupt judges Malaysia has known.

22 years later, my dad’s gone and so have my grandparents. My mum look well in a recent photo I saw in a facebook page. Tress has been wonderful and is my joy and comfort every day, far more than the event of 22 years ago has done for me.

I was called to the bar in Malaysia 22 years ago today. I have been a lawyer since, to earn a living. Except for a period of working for a Christian mission not for profit of course. I don’t know what my role as a lawyer through the years have done in terms of helping along for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven.

The journey continues. I still wonder if I ought to be doing something else.

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Emmanuel – or Manuel (as in Fawlty Towers)


Last Sunday we had a pulpit exchange amongst three churches in Blackburn north and a minister from a church on Surrey Road spoke. His mention of this being the silly season rang in my ears this morning as I went in to the office to be greeted by a string of emails flying around.

The rush in the shopping centres at this time of the year which churches like ours have bemoaned is often accompanied by an annoying parallel in the workplace. In a corporation like the one I’m working for, somehow the rush to get stuff signed before Christmas/New Year never goes away. My cynical mind tells me the smoke and mirrors that prop up places like these, require reports to show things have been done. To-do lists and task list need be marked off to evince accomplishment within a specified timeframe – in this case the calendar year is obviously the parameter.

I was asked to work on a document last week and proposed some communications to people affected by that document. I sent that communication to the relevant senior executive late last week (Thursday) and this morning I was asked to provide an update. I said I had not heard back from that senior executive and was asked to remind that person as senior executives are presently distracted by a range of matters now.

Similarly, in a discussion with the boss yesterday, I was told the Board is presently “a bit twitchy” and so there is a need to manage communications more closely.

I can’t say it is the silly season per se which caused all this running around in a sense of near panic at so much to do and so little time to do it in, but I am quite certain it doesn’t alleviate it to say the least. I get the bit about people going away for a few weeks and wanting to ensure as much gets resolved as possible before that. To stress for weeks – often unnecessarily – to make that happen however, almost make the whole thing a bit of a self-created much ado about nothing.

Yesterday I spoke to an external adviser who, after nearly a week of sweating over some advice he provided, came one big circle to land on nearly the same spot. Much ado about nothing has a resonance about it on many occasions in corporate space but at a time like the silly season, when I get to ask “what does this all mean”, it resonated more resoundingly.

It’s one week to Christmas Eve. Emmanuel? We’re too silly in this season with all our busy-ness to make Him welcome, I’m afraid.

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Sweaty weekend


There was a corporate team building event last Friday afternoon, as part of year end/Christmas thing for the corporate services team. Since a new executive general manager came in earlier this year (end March I think) a bit of reorganisation has come about and the legal department has moved from being part of commercial services (reporting to the CFO) to this new “CST” team, which also comprise internal audit, risk and compliance and some parts of project management.

The event was an “Amazing Race” type of chasing around the city. The company, Uplift Events, was the same joint which organised the same event while I was at AIA. To complete the trifecta, I had helped the company when it was setting up and I had helped with stuff like the shareholders’ agreement, web terms and disclaimers and participation forms and disclaimers and the like. To see the company grow and keep going has been a little pleasing.

So Friday I went home tired… but when I got home, the sight of a mound of mulch greeted me. 3+ cubic meters of stuff to be shovelled/raked/ barrowed was horrifying, especially after crisscrossing the city for a couple of hours earlier in the day.

Tress, Kiddo and I decided to just go out for dinner, and when we came back, we worked for about an hour, until it turned dark close to 9pm. I was glad we started as not only we did some work we managed to create a work system and momentum which we could then just pick up on the next day.

And so early on Sat Tress and I woke, had our coffee and toasts and then went to work by about 7am. Tim, who had provided us with the mulch, had also loaned us a large wheel barrow and a couple of shovels. One was a pitch fork which was certainly the right tool for the job. Before long, Kiddo joined us and after a few hours we managed to clear the mounds and spread the mulch through the areas which needed it. Around noon, after cleaning up, we went to Madam K and then off to the city to catch the King Kong musical at the Princess Theatre on Collin Street.

Unfortunately, I fell asleep momentarily a couple of times – the show was a spectacular one mechanical wise as the animation was surprisingly smooth and natural considering it was given effect primarily through cables and pulleys, worked by maybe half a dozen athletes. The music and acting was so so…but it was entertaining all the same.

On Sunday we went to church, went back to Madam K for lunch after that, and then off to some grocery shopping. Then after returning the tools to Tim we went to the Whitehorse Carols at the Whitehorse Civic Centre on Whitehorse Road. When we got home it was nearly 9pm and we had time to fix my lunch and I was so tired I could barely wake up this morning.

Christmas is only just over a week away and it was a busy weekend but best of all, it was loads of activities for the whole family right through the weekend.

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The Sydney Morning Herald – How Labor booby-trapped Australia’s future


This is a well written summary of why someone like me who once admired both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating and also once thought highly of Kevin Rudd, came to the conclusion that Labor is not to be trusted at all when it comes to fiscal management of the country. Labor thinks the world owes it and its supporters a living.

Paul Sheehan in the SMH today:

When Joe Hockey was growing up and dreaming of becoming prime minister, he would not have imagined that his dream would lead him to joining a bomb disposal unit. Tomorrow, he will unveil the first bomb he must dismantle and it is almost nuclear in its capacity for destruction.

At 12.30 on Tuesday, Hockey, who has also been the stand-out thespian of the new federal parliament, will unveil the real horror, dysfunction and narcissism of Kevin Rudd’s contribution to Australian political history, disably assisted by Julia Gillard. Hockey will release the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, known in the trade as MYEFO, which will show a budget deficit much worse than Labor led us to believe, probably close to $50 billion, debt obligations much higher than Labor led us to believe, and unfunded liabilities that are so irresponsibly crushing the government will have to walk away from many of them. The most monumental folly is the National Broadband Network, whose economic rationale was worked out on a piece of paper by Rudd. The scheme subsequently created by former communications minister Stephen Conroy would cost more than $70 billion and never recover its cost of capital. The Abbott government will have to start again.

Rudd also authorised the spying on the President of Indonesia and his wife, a booby trap that duly exploded in the face of his Coalition successor. Rudd also poisoned the relationship with China, with his lectures to Beijing, which has also come back to haunt the Coalition government. Then came Gillard, who directed a decisive shift of funding and power to the unions. She exposed the Commonwealth to a massive unfunded financial obligation for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

She provided political cover for the disgraced union official Craig Thomson. And she set up and then stacked the Fair Work Australia bureaucracy with former union officials and Labor lawyers.

Labor booby-trapped the future.

It is also busy booby-trapping the present, putting improvised explosive devices everywhere, with the help of the Greens. Together, they have engaged in scorched-earth, rearguard, morally bankrupt obstructionism as if the 2013 federal election was a meaningless exercise, the will of the people has no moral authority, and the idea of a mandate, delivered by the only poll that matters, is an empty ideal to be ignored. The worst among equals in this cynicism are Labor’s leader, Bill Shorten, his deputy, Tanya Plibersek, and the Minister for Gutter, Anthony Albanese, assisted by the deputy leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt.

Contrast their scorched-earth cynicism with the response of the defeated Coalition government in 2007, when it conceded the public had rejected its Work Choices industrial relations policies and Labor had a mandate to create what would become Fair Work Australia. This was the great issue in 2007 (after the unions spent millions to make it so) just as the carbon tax and curbing people-smuggling were the great issues of 2013.

For the past year the Coalition restricted itself to a small but emphatic range of policies that clearly differentiated it from Labor: repeal the carbon tax, repeal the mining tax, re-introduce temporary protection visas (which closed off asylum status), re-introduce the Australian Building and Construction Commission and end Labor’s deficit spending. This was the message. These policies became the mandate when Labor was thrown out of office in a landslide and the Greens suffered an even more emphatic 28 per cent plunge in their vote and lost the balance of power in the Senate.

And what do we get? Labor and the Greens opposing all four mandates, and everything else, and some of Labor’s booby traps already exploding. Rudd’s authorising of spying on Indonesia’s President and his wife blew up on Tony Abbott, who suffered further damage as he doggedly covered up for Labor. Labor’s multi-billion-dollar expansion into school education, a state issue, also exploded when Education Minister Christopher Pyne ineptly fumbled his attempt to rein in its costs and impositions.

The government must now wait until July 1 next year, when the new Senate is sworn in, and hope the independents and the eccentric Palmer United Party senators are more moral and pragmatic than the Greens, who think 8 per cent is a moral majority and a mandate to obstruct everything. Everything, that is, except removing the debt ceiling, where the Greens sided with the government, but only because they feared if they did not the government would start slashing spending with a chainsaw.

The key figures in dealing with Labor’s booby traps are Hockey and Eric Abetz, the leader of the government in the Senate. Hockey has shown the most ticker in dealing with debt and deficit, and Senator Abetz has carriage of the crucial reform agenda in industrial relations. After Hockey, he has the most bombs to defuse.

Crucially, in addition to restoring the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and tackling the tainted culture of Fair Work Australia, Senator Abetz must navigate the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill into law. This is the bill that will drag the unions out of the 19th century. It establishes an independent watchdog, the Registered Organisations Commission, with powers modelled on those of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, to bring union governance into line with corporate governance.

The bill is designed to create a stronger, cleaner and more transparent union sector.

Labor and the Greens are opposing the bill at every step.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/how-labor-boobytrapped-australias-future-20131215-2zf8y.html#ixzz2nalkcAH3

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Sim and Mark


A benefit of social media like facebook is birthday reminders. So yesterday morning I was quick to wish my sister a happy birthday. I thought about what I wanted to say and was able to then quickly transmit those thoughts – almost instantaneously.

My sister is the “steady Eddie” of the family, or whatever the feminine equivalent is. She is the one consistently, steadfastly and unassumingly by the side of my parents, particularly my mother (even when my father was still alive).

Sim is 3 years younger than I. Her husband Daniel is the livewire of family events. An antique dealer, I once bought a really nice period piece of an Omega De Ville from him. “Bought” is a stretched term as what I paid him for it probably meant it was practically a gift from Daniel. Sim and Daniel live on Penang Island with their 2 kids. One often hears stereo typed remarks about Penangites being tight so maybe Daniel isn’t a true Penangite in that sense because he is often generous to a fault. Generous as he is, what comforts me is his very obvious love and devotion to Sim and the family.

Nicole is an intelligent and determined teenager. They visited Melbourne in 2010 (or was it 2009) when she had finished her primary school with a straight A’s assessment and we gladly rewarded her with an Apple iPod. We rarely have the opportunity to spoil them so it was the least we could do. Before we moved to Melbourne, we would visit Penang regularly. Nicole was a young girl then and I remember staying at the Park Royal in Ferringhi Beach, looking out a window with Nicole to see hot air balloons coasting the beautiful beaches. I said to her those were “hot air balloons” and I can still hear her mimicking me as she pointed at those balloons. I hope that image of her pressing her face against the window and pointing at those balloons, would never be erased from the every forgetful mind of mine. I now see her on her facebook pages, blossoming into a confident young woman. I’m very proud of her.

Isaac is Nicole’s younger brother and he too finished primary school with a flourish and we rewarded him in the same way, just as I promised when we gave her sister her reward. He’s a lovely, loving and lovable young man, with a low almost husky voice. When he was younger, he was sometimes teased with a “lau lang” (old man) moniker. Ticklish in so many ways and emitting a hearty laugh when tickled, his “Despicable Me” cover photo for his facebook page is thoroughly appropriate. He’s now at the venerable Chung Ling High School, one of the most prestigious schools in Malaysia which regularly produces top performers in public examinations. I’m very proud of him.

A schoolteacher, Sim’s facebook pages are often postings by her students who obviously love and adore her. Maybe her consistent and steadfast manner are by-products of her devotion to those around her, including her students. She is the embodiment of everything one would extol about Confucianism. What a loss it would be to Penang and Malaysia if she and Daniel were to move to Melbourne, but what gain to people here.

I miss Sim and her family. She has done so much for mum and everyone else. My brother and his wife visit them often and when they do, we are treated with pictures of their adventures – all on facebook of course. They were there recently and it was truly a treat to view those photographs. The modern day scattering of families to different corners of the globe has been made easier by the ubiquitous postings of local events on the global media. For all its ills, facebook has done wonders in this regard and I am so grateful.

Happy birthday again Sim, and thank you Mark Zuckerberg. 

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Home – Where The Heart Is


We were at Alex and Li Har’s on Sat night and left relatively early. Kiddo was arriving from Singapore the next morning at 6.30. Also, we’d been working on the garden a lot earlier in the day.

After a week of strangely cool and wet start to the summer, Sat was gloriously sunny and mildly warm. We were itching to start working as early as 8am but we thought we’d be inviting poor reaction from our neighbours if we powered up the tools that time of a Saturday morning. So we did some internal work – vacuuming and the like for an hour or so until we heard someone else up the street with his mower. So I stopped the vacuuming (Tress took over) and went out and started the hedge trimmer. That was just after 9am.

It was just after 1pm when I got into the house and after catching up with Mitchell Johnson’s heroics against England to have us sitting pretty to wind the second Test in Adelaide, I washed up and we went to Madam K’s as usual. After lunch we got the groceries we needed for the dinner at Alex’s, then went home and watched some more cricket before skyping with Kiddo before she pushed off to Changi Airport.

At Alex’s as is often the case, we caught up with some people we hadn’t met for a while but also made some new acquaintances. Malaysians continue to make their way to Australia and make a life for themselves away from the fecundity of corruption, bad practices, racism and bigotries that characterises the administration of the Malaysian BN government as well as the civil service. Having lived here for nearly 10 years, the novelty and the attached romanticism has well and truly be shorn off to reveal the warts and all that. And yet I’d sooner put up with such imperfections than cop the Malaysian malaise.

A family we recently came to know, and who have only been here a couple of days, have just told us their eldest son has been offered a postgraduate course in medicine. They are very happy – we met the young man before and he is a pleasant, courteous, responsible, hardworking and intelligent person. In other words, just another blot that represents that massive brain drain that has been taking place for decades now. I don’t think any of the families we met at Alex’s on Saturday night thought they made a wrong choice in moving to Australia.

We woke early on Sunday morning, made coffee and toasts, and just as we were about to leave, Tress read a face book message from Kiddo saying they had landed around half an hour earlier. She was making her way through immigration and customs so we shot out the door, got in the car with the little black jedi, and tried not to drive too fast as we headed to Tullamarine.

Kiddo ended up waiting for us, but soon we were home and it felt wonderful to have her home again. We had time to shower, changed and then went to church as always, to listen to a next segment on the Advent Conspiracy. ‘Spend Less” was the challenge and last night at home we had on the Better Homes and Gardens program and a segment was on getting gifts off the store of a sponsor, Big W. The message in church was ringing at the back of my head and I wonder how retailers would react to something like Part 2 of the Advent Conspiracy. Wouldn’t a thriving retail industry bring benefits to the society at large in any event? Wouldn’t the multiplier effect of some sort work its magic through the economy so that the intended beneficiary of “Spend Less” of the Advent Conspiracy would in fact be better off if people not heed the call and instead, do as everyone else does at this festive season – ie spend the average of $1,200 per person on gifts? There’s always a counter argument isn’t there?

And so I was glad when Jordan Hitchcock quoted CS Lewis in his sermon on “Spend Less’ segment of the Advent Conspiracy, and said our charitable work must be such that it impedes our own enjoyment of resources entrusted into our stewardship. Until we are prevented from doing something because our charitable work consumed our resources, we have not done enough. I wonder if this is simply a better challenge to meet than to simply spend less.

As soon as church finished we left. Kiddo had been struggling to stay awake, having been awake for probably more than 20 hours at that stage (could be more…) We went to lunch and when we got home, the lounge soon became a snoozing space, as even I, as I watched Day 4 of the Second Ashes Test in Adelaide, fell asleep. Surely Australia was going to win and I had been hoping we could do it in 4 days but Joe Root was resolute and the Aussie bowlers looked like they were starting to tire at the grind and proceedings became sleep inducing. I had a glass of tonic water drizzled with a tiny splash of gin so maybe that made it easier to join Tress, Kiddo and LBJ as they wandered through dreamland on a warm Sunday afternoon at home.

It occurred to me then, that we often did that while living in Malaysia – ie snoozed at home on a warm (hot) Sunday afternoon. Not for the first time, the saying that home is where the heart, rang through. Seeing Tress, Kiddo (and LBJ) snoozing in the lounge made me feel I was truly at home as I knew that was where my heart was then.

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Nelson Mandela and a legacy I think some can use


And so the great man, Nelson Mandela, has died. 95 and in so many ways, “not out”! Other than recalling earlier articles in British newspapers which alluded to his tendencies to be militant during his days in the African National Congress, I associate him mainly with the truth and reconciliation process he introduced to seek a united South Africa torn apart by apartheid.

That process has become a model for many countries. It ought to be provide some clues to Tham Fuan and the other leaders of the LifeGate Church of Christ. All that constant harping of Jason not coming to the table forgets one thing: they are not interested in the truth of what they did to Jason. Without that regard, reconciliation is a hollow call. One cant, I imagine, have reconciliation without truth. The truth here is they marginalised Jason over a period of time. Excluded him especially in talks to remove him. The question of whether this happened and why they did it, is a question which must be answered before reconciliation can follow.

Mandela was a great man. He left many legacies. Truth and reconciliation as two sides to a coin is one of them. It would do us good to pay attention and mimic this great man.