2016, almost done

when you pass through the waters, i will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.

when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, 
nor shall the flame scorch you.

- isaiah 43:2

need. provision. lack. sufficiency. wonder. grace.

just a few o'them

life gets complicated

lessons from our 15th house removal - 2

immutable fact of life: 

material possessions grow insidiously inexorably and unforgivingly even when you already have a no-additional-clutter policy in place. 

one principle rules:

aggressive decluttering. harden the heart. silence the weeping.

the packers come today. i'm all excited and anxious. because when you downsize it's like an open-ended task. you want to cull enough to avoid a bazaar effect at the new place, and you want to avoid temptation to go straight out to the shops. 

lessons from our 15th house removal

1. have fewer things. it makes a difference
2. a place for everything and everything in its place is not an irritating mantra. it is a strategy for family peace
3. get professional packers and movers. don't believe what people say about getting a truck and doing-it-yourself. this will save you your sanity your friendships and various sibling relationships
4. have a packing bag in which you have emergency supplies like labels sharpies cable-ties and felt protectors. the needs come at unexpected times
5. have lists and lists and lists. indulge your inner OCD
6. remember that this time too shall pass

and finally, what they say about location location location is all true.

taking stock, 2016

1. we buy a new place! we renovate again! we see God's provisions for contingencies we cannot begin to anticipate! and we move next week! i cannot begin to imagine the what-if's if we did not have a higher help
2. several more getaways. the promised land, for the first time. a road trip with J and J and Y. spain. times together, just two of us. summer with J2. winter with J1. undeserved pleasures but gladsome ones nevertheless
3. my second mission trip, which clarifies my thinking that it should be my last. simply because the greater good is served better in other ways
4. correspondence with Y. she makes me try to be a better example
5. people. patients and colleagues and friends and bosses. who smoothen my rough edges and who restore my soul
6. and, in other news, E mellows a bit this year. we irretrievably lose fewer pieces of furniture

merryyyyy christmas to you and yours!!!

...that in the dispensation of the fulness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth - in Him.

- eph 1:10

in the fulness of my time, i too died, and my life is now hidden with Christ in God.

in the light of immeasurable grace one supposes one can be charitable towards the fat man in red fake snow manger dioramas and mangled carols. 

housework

as i begin my annual vacation and start doing housework again, some thoughts apply:

• laundry multiplies at a rate not commensurate with number of bodies
• hairs on the floors, ditto
• dishes on the table in the sink and on every surface, ditto

also, when you are packing to move, things appear from your past that you have not seen in years. things are like that.

26

searing excitement roaring passions bated breaths

giddy delight and pretty baubles

daily supply computer glitches routine routines

and children and kin and dogs

half my lifetime

at the level of my days' most quiet needs

my good and perfect gift

from God of all good gifts

to J1, on the eve of his day

i see a boy in church. he is slight of build and urchin of face and i think of another little boy, once, across the fields of yesterday. he is older now. bigger stronger and wiser. he is gentler and marked by lessons. he has even more dreams.

what would you have me be, he asked me once. nothing too much, son, and everything. 

i would have you walk in faithful joyful obedience to the Lord of your youth, and i would have you walk the adventures of the paths he marks out for you. i would have you walk unafraid. i would have you walk in holy excitement. and my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory. 

be blessed in the coming year, child. be filled with fullness of comfort delight and cheer.

benign neglect

in time to come, if people ask me for parenting tips, i will have to say, none, really. because that, together with the God of the universe, is a winning combination.

J1 and J2 have grown up. i like 'em.

sq62

long. unpleasant.

10+12=22. not including transit.

the demographic. moscow airport.

gah

to be young again

headphones on

notes in the 'phone

with a calculator

and an ipad

doing homework

in a coffeeshop

back in the day, sir, the library was good enough

i am malala (malala yousafzai, 2013)

i finally read this gift from J1.

it reminds me that human beings are made in God's image and that there is much which is courageous and beautiful and worthy even when there is much which is cruel and wicked and weak. 

it reminds me that God's goodness extends to all of us regardless of religion.

it reminds me of that clear-eyed uncomplicated idealism of the young ones that God uses to remind older people of important things in life.

it makes me less cynical. it must be a good book.

thoughts on saturday morning

is it just me, or has

church become very noisy

outside is full of hi's and good mornings

inside is chatter and news and updates

fellowship is a wonderful thing

but i want to be still

where can i go, if not 

the sanctuary

last sunday was especially noisy

tomorrow is sunday again

steadfastness

...i mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. in so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world - watching with Christ in Gethsemane. 

- bonhoeffer, writing from Tegel, 1944

the preacher says, what profit has the worker from that in which he labors? i have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. he has made everything beautiful in its time. 

- eccl. 3:9-11

whither the work-life balance? whither the giftings and the choices? perhaps, dare i say, the passion be in faithful pursuit of excellence faithful discharge of duty and faithful service to others.

a testament to freedom - bonhoeffer

finally (kinda) finished it. it's taken me two-odd years.

life gets in the way of reading. not to mention that scourge of modern middle-aged life, facebook.

perspective

did you have a good break? i ask HOM. or was it too stressful? because i know the emails and the problems do not stop even if he is on leave. and tempus fugit.

he thinks for a bit. it was a good break, he says. and it was stressful.

on reflection, it will be like this as long as we have internet access supervisory duties and a job to go back to, i guess. also, internet access supervisory duties and a job to go back to are not unmitigated horrors.

king David says, ...of thee the whole, and out of thy hand we have given thee.* we are grateful for the whole and for the privilege of giving out of the whole.

*1 chr 29:14

giving thanks

J2's long haul flight back to Montreal gets cancelled at the airport. she finally makes it to her destination, twenty hours late. then she picks up her cat and begins her two-day, six-hour solo relocation drive to her new home in her geriatric two-door sedan.

she makes it eventually. so does my heart.

barcelona in review

first off, barcelona has wide open pavements with generally courteous drivers and cyclists who share. vive la birkenstocks, i tell HOM. this has been a trip even my plantar fasciitis could handle. for a place with so many dogs and for a trip in the heat of summer, it has also been a pleasant, dog-poop-free trip.

you can eat up and you can eat down, and both satisfyingly. which is harder to achieve in some places than you might think. HOM says the trouble with french food is that it is such a big deal and takes up the whole night in addition to costing the earth, and the trouble with good british food is that it is elusive. in barcelona you can eat scrumptiously in holes-in-walls and you can buy jamon sandwiches and gelato off the street and you can also eat at hisop and montiel and feel just vaguely profligate. what you need is google and a data plan.

the catalans bring their dogs everywhere! we see more dogs than children! the dogs are almost uniformly better behaved than children! except for the chihuahua we saw trying to bring his mistress for a walk last nite. it makes me feel good to see another dog as ill-mannered as E, i tell HOM happily.

also, by a twist of fate, catalan women apparently come in my size. years of frustration have driven me to uniqlo and teenage sections and stretchable t-shirt material and sub-optimal fits. here i discover i am model size, pretty much. this could be a city to visit again and again.

if you notice, we did not do too many museums and monuments, but we did do la sagrada familia, and it was gorgeous. and we walked the length and breadth of the gothic quarter and inhaled the historic atmosphere and we oohed over casa batllo. 

it was a lovely trip.

tripadvising

HOM happily reviews eating places hotels and other consumables. i'm leveling up in life, he says. they gave me my junior reviewer badge! they gave me my senior contributor badge!! 

the points have no concretizable value whatsoever, he says in a bit. but he writes on. there is esprit de corps, and great fun, in giving to a commons that social media has unlocked, and that we have largely ignored in real life.

beach bumming

HOM and i do the tourist thing and bring ourselves down to the beach. a pretty and well-appointed beach it is too, with public amenities and orderly arrays of bodies on beach mats and towels and a balmy breeze under a clear blue sky.

the only problem with the beach, i always say, is the sand.

not the cava

possibly my favorite drink discovery this trip. aqua gaseosa con flavor.

la cova fumada

this place takes hole-in-the-wall to an entirely new level. there is no signboard. the seafood is heavenly. the service is prompt.

what i say is, data plans and google have changed the face of successful modern travel.

barcelona thoughts

• the catalans love their dogs. i love that ♡
• the old gothic quarter is like old paris, only much cheaper
• tapas ought to have their own food group
• after a lifetime of clean uncluttered preferences, i find myself strangely drawn to gaudi's voluptuous statements

having kids

when do we get to stop worrying about the children? HOM asks me. we don't ever, i guess, i tell him. is this not depressing?

...when i think that God, his son not sparing, sent him to die, i scarce can take it in; that on the cross, my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin.

and yet i would not begin to know what love God has for me, had i not been given son and daughter to watch over in love and worry.

vita mutatur

J1 says, this time last year was the best time, when you and dad were free to travel and J2 and i were free to spend time with you. will we ever have such times again, now that we are all growing up and apart?

life changes, i tell him. i wish i can say something wise and comforting.

then i remember that God replaces the years the locusts eat. there will be new and richer memories. non tollitur.

st. a de b

J2 shows us around the city and town that have been her home for the past four years. i've loved it, she says. there's a homeliness and community that i've not known before. there is a tinge of sadness as she prepares to say goodbye and make a new home elsewhere. 

i remember my own salad days when i said goodbye to five years of memories and friends and thought then that my heart would break. take your time, i tell her. keep the memories.

God will bring even better memories, but the old ones make us richer.

commencement 2

father and daughter. friendship and tension. camaraderie and argument. when they are good they are very, very good. the trouble with the two of you, i tell HOM, is that you are both too strong passionate opinionated able and capable. 

let her be. let her grow. when we were her age we could conquer the world too, and our parents couldna tell us any different. too. 

commencement

J2 graduates. she was just a little girl but she's all grown up now, J1 says wistfully. life changes, i tell him. but it's true. she was just my little girl, and she is eager cap'n of her ship now.

live your dreams then, baby girl! be brave and strong. be gentle and soft. grow common sense with ideas and ideals. find your place in the sun and make it a little better. i would be happy to call you friend, but i get to call you daughter, which is my great blessing.

two paper-cuts on two fingers

in one day.

smacks of negligence, ma'am.

like the flowing river - paulo coelho (2006)

he writes about almost inconsequential things - chance meetings and impulsive adventures and missed opportunities - with a dancing light touch that draws you into his narrative almost unawares. he writes with compassion and gentleness and courtesy and faith. he introduces me to japanese mongolian spanish persian and french stories, and of course brazilian ones too.

no matter. he makes me want to write again.

before the storm

i love the evening sky before a storm, when the normal bit is just an iridescent fragment and the clouds seethe with greys mauves and navies and are amorphous and ominous. i love the stillness that holds everything in suspension just before the action starts. 

i love that calm in life too, just after things start to happen and just before things happen. like children growing up and starting to fly and not quite swooshing off yet. or like work finally finding a foothold and you get the sense that you could do this some more. you could say i am in an optimistic mood.

i miss the sky before the snows back in Virginia too.

the smoker in the carpark

there is a middle-aged gentleman who habitually smokes in the covered carpark. i know, because i see him when i walk E. there is a prohibition on smoking in such a place. i have a natural desire to avoid conflict. so do most people.

today i decide not to avoid conflict. i call out to him, hi! i do not think you are allowed to smoke here!

he completely ignores me. i say louder, hi! you are not allowed to smoke here, you know!

when he ignores again, i walk up to him and say, hello, do you know that you are not supposed to smoke here?

and because he is unable to ignore me any longer, he says, mind your own business.

sir, it is because everybody minds their own business that smokers flout the ban with impunity. 

also, a man should not get to middle-age and not have learnt how to respond civilly. mind your own business is uncouth and juvenile and shows a lack of vocabulary and intellect.

new generation

a young trainee drops by my room to chat. tomorrow's my last working day in this hospital! she tells me. she ends her residency soon, all three years of it. the exam's next, she says. then perhaps a baby. have a baby! i tell her. it's the physiological thing to do. have several of them!

not really, she says. babies are expensive, and she tells me how. i can pooh her concerns and say, girl, you make your own rules and your own budget. but then i realize that perhaps in my time things were simpler and truly cheaper.

handover

my young supervisee G asks me to write her a reference for her next endeavor. in my heart i think, so soon already? so-and-so, i write, has intelligence and intellectual curiosity in addition to compassion, and she has my support. she tells me i have helped shape who she is. it was my privilege, i tell her. remember you come from a goodly heritage. i was taught by R. remember to give back.

my new favorite cake

fragrant buttery pandan-coconutty indulgence that invites you to inhale as you ingest. i want a butter pandan cake, i tell HOM. he makes me this baked-cendol bit of magic.

resolutions, belatedly

new year's, to be exact:

• to read more voraciously, since i'm not getting younger and there is much more richness of soul to gain,
• to start drawing and coloring and painting, maybe maybe, because i have resolved this unsuccessfully for several years now,
• to be nice without feeling embarrassed. hey, in fact, i don't care if you are embarrassed either. like giving up my seat and watching out for the next person and smiling randomly,
• to be fierce about what is important, without feeling guilty. like, calling out unsocial behavior like men peeing in public bushes and smoking in prohibited places, and
• to do the right thing to have compassion and to walk in broken humility.

if i cut down on my letris time it may well help.

misnomer

i meet a child called Quintus. is this your fifth child? i am impressed. fifth? huh? you gotta be kidding, his mama says. 

he's our third, mama says. perhaps Tertius would be more in order. 

various feelings of disappointment and disgust*

we are fresh from the weekend by-election and from two weeks of campaigning and i wonder if noblesse will ever oblige in this country. will we not, i wonder, with alternating frustration and impatience, engage in a discussion of ideas? why will we not? why do we so consistently and determinedly drive the debates into depths of ill-chosen words and unchivalry? why do we teach our youngsters in school the importance of sportsmanship and then, when they reach adulthood and the age of reason, we reverse all that and just hit below the belt? why is the gutter the jousting grounds, sirs? remember you have to hold your heads high after! how do you do that (and not blush)?

*in re the bukit batok by-election, May 2016, during which various comments were made about the opposition candidate which sadly degraded the quality of discourse. 

thoughts on easter sunday

Christ the Lord is ris'n today, alleluia!

easter sunday-resurrection-my life-abundant joy is not a continuum. my mind grasps the connection poorly. it is enough, perhaps, that my mind can surrender to it. Christ died. it was sufficient. he arose from the dead. i have the promise of hope in my deepest darkest need. that too is sufficient. i can look to advent.

maundy thursday

so, during supper, fully aware that the Father had put everything into his power and that he had come from God and was returning to God, he rose from supper and took off his outer garments. he took a towel... and began to wash the disciples' feet.

- john 13

help us live in the same awareness Lord, of who we are in you, and what we have in you, and help us live in glad generosity amid apathy inertia and need. thank you that you give us the possibility, and that you make it possible.

st peter's primacy

do you love me more than these? a man was asked a long time ago.

yes, i love you more than these. but what of my weakness under duress? 

do you love me?

yes, but my tongue runs away and i say what i bitterly regret after.

do you love me?

you know all things; you know i love you. you know my love is imperfect.

(limited) jordan thoughts

1. amman moab and edom currently mean more than just words on a page
2. agatha christie's middle east stories are pretty good pre-reading for atmosphere
3. the pita! the hummus! the veggies! the oil!
4. the rugs! the colors! the juxtaposition!
5. the air-conditioned indoor smokers are a major reason to reconsider a visit though

israel thoughts

1. it's an oasis of efficient modernity
2. their bus drivers are superb
3. old jerusalem is worth several prolonged visits
4. so is jaffa
5. the pita! the hummus! the veggies! the oil!
5. how did i read the bible all these years without even considering geography history and culture?? is this the price of evangelization?

to J2

not so long ago my little girl was born and i went home and she stayed in hospital because she was too tiny and then she was unwell and got better. then she grew and got herself an infectious smile that starts from her eyes and her special way of grabbing bulls by their horns and a deep sweetness in her soul. and now she suddenly is another year older. 

... those that wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles... isaiah 40:31

my child, i pray that you will renew your strength all the days of your life. may you soar gloriously and fearlessly and do so faithfully and fruitfully. 

saturday morning in town

the reason some people shy away from tradition must be because tradition is so aggressively paraded in the lead-up to commercially advantageous traditional celebrations like chinese new year.

i have high pitched chinese prosperity tunes coming out of my ears.

when i shut my eyes i see mandarin oranges and unending rows of couplets.

red is quickly becoming the color to avoid.

on second thoughts it's just christmas in another language.

random thoughts

at the bus-stop
i see a young woman holding two kids' hands
a little boy and a littler girl
and i - older and freer i -
suddenly remember J1 and J2 as toddlers
and the many mistakes i have made
and it is bittersweet.

the lord's prayer

old familiar words that i mouth week by week which calm me down, pavlov-like. 

ours, really? ours, and not mine, nor thine, this Father, provider, protector, companion, friend? grant that we may share in hallowing thee - nay, grant that we may not share in dishonoring thee - and thy name, which we bear and by which we are known, for better and for worse. Thy kingdom and thy will, on earth and in heaven - how puny our desires and preoccupations when we remember that! and what measure of confidence and faith God would have us wrap in our daily bread - that we should trust Him to perceive and to provide. what measure of debt our God forgives, and what measure of debt we begrudge! - whose wayward feet would wander unawares, and swiftly, and gladly, into perdition, were our Savior not there to turn us aside. this is our God, to whom belongs the kingdom and the power and the glory. 

not quite pavlov-like. magnificently and triumphantly-like, and comforting-like, rather.

taiwan-hk food

disclaimer:
i'm super picky and mutinously stick to a constricted palate

best meal in taiwan:

breakfast in taipei, where i get my fix of deep fried crullers with soy milk

least objectionable provincial food:

turkey rice at chia yi

most common ingredient in taiwan:

five spice powder. gah

best meal in the trip:

dim dim sum lunch, hands down

second best meal:

won ton noodles from ho hung kee

third best meal:

shrimp dumpling noodles from road side stall

taiwan, hk, sgp impressions

the most spine-chilling sound a pedestrian can encounter in a chinese-predominant country is the hacking sound of a fellow pedestrian vigorously clearing his throat. most often this sound is the prelude to the splat of that which is cleared hitting the ground. woe betide thee if thou wast within splashing range of the splat.

on a related note, that betel quid rears its head again in hk and taiwan, although perhaps not as fervently as in myanmar.

the chinese diaspora, in increasing order of cultural acceptability: chinese-hk-taiwanese. i would put the average singaporean somewhere between the hk and the taiwanese, who are generally the most genteel of the lot. i can say this only because of my ethnicity, by virtue of which i share all their obnoxious genes.

taiwan impressions

1. they like their dogs
2. they also like five spice powder
3. and, they have a pretty kawaii sense of style

li'l derp

that moment when you stop looking at corgi photos on the internet and realize that that relentless piece of furry destruction who lives in your home that eats everything in his way has grown up to become a recognizable corgi himself.

study in contrasts

hong kong, january 2016