Duality

If you think about it, most of us are actually plagued by a split personality disorder.
Unknown to us, if we're not sensitive enough to our conducts, we are more often than not, never the same person at any time.

Duality is an invisible mask we wear everyday.

I struggled a lot with this issue back in university.
I literally led a double life, one that I was adamant to compartmentalise without being to conspicuous about it to my friends.
As I reflect back, I realized that it has always been a struggle for me even before my uni days.
It's something we all struggle to achieve --
To be who we truly are, designed by God and for God, at any given place or time.

To me, and I reckon for any other Believers who are truly seeking His will, at some point of living that heavily masked and hidden double-life, we will hit a brickwall of sheer frustration.
Frustrated because we'll come to the realisation that it's tiring.
Tiring because though' you may get away hiding from your peers, deep down inside you know you can't hide from Him.
Tiring because of the guilt you that's gradually piling up on your shoulders.
Tiring simply because we weren't meant to lead a double-life, instead, to live but ONE life.
The Life that He has intended for us to live.

Although I have closed that chapter of my life, I still do struggle in being that one single-minded-unchanging person wherever I am.
When we're in our rooms, unseen and undetected by any other physical being, we tend to be at our most transparent selves.
And when we walk out of our rooms, we cover up our flaws and defects with our deceptive smile.
We create a dichotomy mindset between Sunday-Christian and Every-other-day-Christian.
Prententiousness is somehow embedded within us.
We struggle.
I do.

I guess it's a lifelong wrestle.
I'm thankful that I'm aware of the masks I put on everyday.
Being aware reminds me each day how weak I am and proves how much I need Him all the more.
And though "the struggle to live an authetic Christ like life is not easy", we rest in assurance that we are not in this battle alone.

(Inspired after reading an article posted by FES.
To read about it, click here.)

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The Office

"There is really no difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, "spirituals" and "temporals", as they call them, except that of office and work...
A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade,
and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and everyone by means of his own work or office must benefit and serve every other, that in this way many kinds of work may be done for the bodily and spiritual welfare of the community,
even as all the members of the body serve one another."
(Martin Luther)

Every morning, I wake up, put on my working attire and walk over to work wondering at the back of my head, "Is this my office?".
It's a blistering question which bugs me every other morning when I sit at my little corner of my cubicle at work.

Martin Luther expounded the fact that whether we're seated in a "secular" office or a "spiritual" office, our sole purpose is still the same at the end of the day -- "benefit and serve every other" and to simply bring Him the glory He deserves.
Yet, I can't help but to wonder what my "destined" office should be.

Each time I deliberate on this topic, I sigh a dozen times over.
It gets a little frustrating -- standing and not knowing where to move.
Personally, I've never been a career-minded person.
All those climbing-the-corporate-ladder talk could never seem to interest me.
Sometimes, I just wish God would just give me an audible order to step into the "spiritual" office instead of where I am right now.
If only it's that simple.

"Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to."
1 Cor. 7: 24

I know I should be giving my best at where I'm placed now; remaining in and with Him wherever and in whatever I do.
Somehow it seems hard.
It seems hard when you come home everyday feeling aimless and wasted, unsatisfied and unsure of what you were doing from 9am-5pm.
Yet, again and again, I'm reminded of a greater purpose beyond my being.

"Therefore the burning question for most Christians should be:
How can my life count for the glory of God in my secular vocation?
... Our aim is to joyfully magnify Christ -
to make him look great by all we do.
Boasting only in the cross, our aim is to enjoy making much of him by the way we work."
(Piper's "Don't waste your life")

To joyfully magnify Christ.
Just one adjective and it makes it one of the hardest thing to do.

Direct me, O Lord, I pray.

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My CNY

Fancy red in colour ornaments hung across the street, people busy rampaging malls for last minute shopping and the honking of cars at every corner of the road depicts this annual festive season call Chinese New Year (CNY).

I'm not particularly a CNY enthusiast for several reasons, some of which I'd rather keep to myself.
Having said that, I do try to appreciate it.
This year, I decided to take an extra effort to do so -
I decided to bring my little KodakEasyShare camera, not the best in the world but it works, to share a glimpse of what my CNY is like.

For starters, my whole family hail from the historical town of Malacca... except me, I'm the only odd one who got sesat in KL, born and bred in KL.
So every year, I'll balik to my parents punya kampung in Malacca.
My dad... Yes, this dude down here...

He's a baba - Peranakan.
Yet, I don't look one bit mixed blood.
Cis.
Con-job betui.
Turned out to be a typical sepet-eyed chinese pulak.
Anyway, I always find myself struggling coping with language diversity during CNY.
On one extreme, my dad's side will be speaking Malay to each other, while on the other extreme, my mum's side, they pulak will be conversing to me in either Mandarin or Hokkien.
Tongue literally tied wei.
It intrigues me though to observe how diverse my relatives are from both ends.

When I was younger, we used to have reunion dinner with my paternal relatives.
Now that most of them are scattered everywhere else, we don't really have reunion dinner.
So, reunion dinner for the pass 3 years was more of an immediate family affair thing, which suits me better. Never really fancied extended-family reunion dinner.

On the first day of CNY, just like every other Chinese, it's the yearly visitation ritual.
A ritual where I prepare my CNY "speech".

Uncle A: So what you doing now?
Me: Oh, just graduated. Now studying lor...
Uncle A: Wah, graduaated oledi ar... So big d... Working as what now?
Me: Yalor, I very big d. Working as Research officer in USM.
I research and write articles on a given topic.
Uncle A: Why never bring your girlfriend for CNY?
Me: Aiya, no girlfriend how to bring. Maybe next year lar uncle...

Yup, it's essential to prepare speech for CNY.
Must always be ready.

This is my maternal relatives. Half the time I don't really know what they're blabbering about but just laugh along when they laugh lar. Nice people though =)

There's a family "tradition" that we do every year when we're in Malacca.
Besides visiting and all, Malacca is also a heaven for sumptious food and they say all the best ones are the roadside punya kedai.
True enough, that's where we go to every year.

This stall sells mee rebus.
Memang sedap.
This guy who's selling is the third generation, taking up what his great-grandfather made famous in the streets of Banda Hilir and Ujong Pasir.
My mom actually remembers his great-grandfater selling mee rebus in her neighbourhood when she was younger.

If you're in Malacca, you ought to stop by this stall.
It's just opposite the Portuguese settlement in Ujong Pasir

And this....

... is my late grandfather's (maternal) house.
The few things I do enjoy about going back to Malacca is the chance of visiting this very typical Malacca Chinese wooden house.
My mum grew up in this house and stepping into this place, it gave me eyes of what my mum's life was like when she my age.

What's even cooler is this house has a well! Just that it's square instead of the fairy-tale-like round shaped well... But still...

It's been there since my mum was a kid.
It's OLD but still ada air.

What made this year's CNY interesting was the opportunity to catch up with my Aussie cousin and his wife in Malacca. They were up in Malaysia for holiday.
When I was in Aussie for two months back in my primary school days, this cousin of mine used to bring me around theme parks and all.
Since then, I labelled him the "cool cousin" and it was great catching up with him again, what more with his wife.

Our last stop before we balik KL was for another session of satisfying our taste buds.
My dad loves this particular shop in Tengkera that sells Duck noodles.
It's really GOOD.
Just for satisfactino sake, we stopped by and whacked puas-puas before taking off.

Duck Noodles.

So that's basically how my annual Chinese New Year would be like.

The ritual visitations I have to make, the differing world of my paternal baba relatives who speak Malay and my maternal relatives who speak hokkien or mandarin, the amount of food I consumed and the stress I had to go through on the road, well, it's really not that bad if you actually make an effort to appreciate it.

My tip?

Bring a camera along.
It helps you open up your eyes to the little things :)

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Red is The Season!

Before I shoot off to Melaka for Chinese New Year, just want to do a quick shout out to all of you..

Have a great Chinese New Year!
Drive safe! :)

God bless!

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A Chestbox

I was flipping through my journal the other night, a totally random thing to do.
As I turn the pages of past entries, the events that I've penned down came to life.
That's the beauty of keeping a journal.
It keeps me in check of myself through the eyes of a book, scribbled down by my very own hand.

Browsing through 2008, it gave me a glimpse of things I've packed and placed into a corner.
I haven't done much reflection on 2008 yet, haven't really had the time.
And that's probably why I'm still swaying back and forth between 2008 and 2009.
Closing a chapter is always something hard to do, even if it's a bad chapter.

God is amazing.
He proves to be in every way; in words and actions.
In good times or bad, I'm thankful that He has always placed himself somewhere within me, reminding me of who He is in any space of time.
The past, the present or the future, God is still there.
He is still the same (Hebrew 13:8).

If there's one thing He keeps reminding me,
it's the fact that in spite of all the ugliness of world events, relationships, crimes, political instabilities and insecurities, God still paints beauty into the picture.
More often than not, we look at the ugliness instead of His goodness.
Our human eyes are sensitive to things of insignificance.
We end up overlooking His divine providence.

Each entry continues to remind me of days I cherished and also days I can only wish never happen.
It instantaneously brought back a surge of familiar feelings.
Things left unsaid, unspoken and unfulfilled came crawling back.

Journal is like a chestbox of faded memories, forgotten emotions and forsaken promises.
Just when you think you've forgotten em' all,
your scribbly handwriting comes bringing em' all back again.

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A Pebble Calling Out To The Rock

From the ends of the earth I call to you,
I call as my heart grows faint;
lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Psalm 61:2

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Words

Generally, I would say I'm slow to anger.
My level of patience can be stretched.
But there are a few things I really can't stand.
One of which is when people are rude and display disrespect in the things that they say.

It's a total bummer when you try to be nice to another person but instead of receiving a reciprocal respond, you get nothing but a smack in the face.
It disappoints me when people say things without thinking the repercussion on the person who hears it.
Word has meaning.
And meaning can bring a person a long way in life.
Words are not merely alphabets to a language, it carves out the person within us.
If you say to a 5 year old "You cannot be a doctor", the 5 year old will never be a doctor although he may have had that capacity to do so and all this because of the words he was brought to believe in.

People can call me stupid or a fool.
It's ok.
I can pretty much take it.
Like I said, my level of patience is above the average.
But it frustrates me that people go on thinking it's ok to say things like that,
disrespecting one another in words.

"Handle them carefully, for words have more power than atom bombs"
Pearl Strachan

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It's a Small Small World!

Goodness gracious me.

I just found out that one of my best friend's school mate whom I've met before, is actually related to me!!!!!!
He's my cousin weiiiiii!!!

*GASP!*

I'm telling you, the world is getting freakishly small by the day.
You'll never know, the person next to you could be your long lost aunty.

And believe it or not, we found out we were related through FACEBOOK.
The power of FB.
Jangan main-main
tau...

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Friends

Back when I was a kid, Sunday school was like my second home.
I've befriended many people.
As we grew older, some stayed and became up till' this day my closest friends but many left as well.
I totally lost contact with those who left.
It's almost as if they disappeared from the face of the earth.

But I always say, life is full of surprises.
You see, back when I was in primary 5-6 and maybe up to form 1 or so, I had a good friend back in Sunday school whose name was Jason.
No, not this Jason.

Dei Bruce, don't perasan.
It's not you I'm talking about here.
Continue eating that duck tongue.

Anyway, the Jason that I knew back then disappeared and was unheard of since.
I never knew what became of him..
Which school he went..
Which church he went..
No news, nothing.

Until about few weeks back....

I realize one thing, as we grow older, the world seems shrinking bit by bit...
Everyone's inter-connected somehow.
It's more like 3-degrees of friends rather than that 6-degrees of friends theory.
It's freaky.

Believer it or not, Jason and I somehow manage to get in touch again after almost 12-13 years of silence through another friend.
You would think that we would have our mini "reunion" in KL right? But nooooo... of all places to have our mini "reunion", it just had to be in Penang instead of KL!
Two old Sunday school childhood friends, born and breed in KL, end up having a reunion after almost 13 years in PENANG.
Funny, ain't it?

While ceasing the chance of meeting up with my old buddy,
I met some new friends as well.

I'm pretty surprised that he could actually remember me.
Gosh.
Though we've grown up, I could tell that he didn't change much in terms of his well-disposed friendly character.
Personally, meeting up with him has encouraged me somehow.

I've had many friends who grew up with me through Sunday school but along the way, have strayed away.
Whenever I hear such news about them, it saddens me to know that they've succumb to the desires of the world.
I've walked down that dark narrow road myself, but I can only thank God for bringing me back each time I got lost.
To meet up with Jason and to know that he's still firmly rooted spiritually, it's a breath of fresh air for me.
I guess it's sort of a reminder to me that there are still friends and people out there who are still continuing the good fight.

Jason & I.
Two childhood friends who after 13 years of silence,
end up meeting in Penang instead.
Life is a funny adventure.

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