Above all else

Self-help books often tell us that we need to plan our career. But I can only think of one friend I know who really ended up doing what he planned to do.  Me?  When I was a kid, my ambition was to be an Autobot.  When I realized that wasn't going to happen, I decided I would be an author, because English composition was my favourite subject.  Centrepoint was my favourite hangout, not because I was a cool Centrepoint kid, but because my Mum would leave me in Times the Bookshop to read and when I was done there, there was MPH across the aisle!  When it occurred to me that there didn't seem to be any Singaporean books being sold in the bookshops, I decided I should be a journalist.  Those people seem to be paid.  Then I heard that English was important for law too, so I decided I'd be a lawyer.  I was a very quiet boy, so I thought I'd be the type of lawyer who would sit in an office drafting stuff.  Then in my final year I joined an advocacy competition to try to win

Well, the day had to finally come.  Daniel went for his eye checkup and he has to wear specs.  This fella does nothing but read books and play computers, so I suppose it was just a matter of time! Mummy wanted these yellow specs.  Nat said "they look like mucus".  Ha Ha Ha!  Rejected. I wanted these blue ones.  But Daniel vetoed.  "I don't like blue!"  Confirming the degree... We'll go with the safe black specs.  Nobody could agree on any other colour! Clearly, hasn't learned his lesson about spoiling his eyes.  Sigh.

As you might have guessed, I've been thinking a lot about where my daughter should go for secondary school recently. On one hand, I want her to excel to her fullest potential, and based on what we can tell so far, she's the sort of person who likes to win and achieve things.  That suggests we should send her to the best school she can qualify for (depending of course on how well she eventually does).  On the other hand, I worry that encouraging her to be an overachiever in school and presumably later on, worklife, may affect the chance of her building a happy family life.  I've certainly experienced that the harder you work in the office, the less energy you have to spend with your family.  But I suspect there's a big streak of chauvinism behind this, because I don't think I would be considering this same dilemma for my son. Recognising that, I'm trying to put aside that unfair lens, and re-look the matter with a fresh perspective.  Psalm 127:3-4 says abou

Today's sermon by Pastor Wee Long really spoke to me.  Here are my takeaways. 1. Community is important.  It's common for people to say faith is a personal thing, only between you and God.  But let's face it, if we're absolutely and courageously honest with ourselves, the real reason why we want to say that faith is a "personal" thing, is so that no one can judge us, so that we don't feel embarrassed by our own inadequacy, and no one can pressure us to do more than what we are comfortable with.  If we keep our faith merely "personal", then we don't need to feel bad when we skip church once in a while, when we choose not to tithe, when we choose to stay silent when we should speak up, when we choose to follow the crowd when we should stand out. For some reason, we think that if no one sees and judges us, we're OK, so we prefer to keep our faith merely "personal".  But we must realize that God sees it all.  And yet we are