Above all else

Happy New Year!  As I'm sitting here typing, the wife and I are watching a re-run of Pretty Woman on the cable.  Even more than the movie itself, the soundtrack really brings back a lot of memories - anyone else remember Roxette?! According to Wikipedia, the movie was released in 1990. As we stand on the verge of 2015, that means it's been about 25 years since the teenage me sat in the cinema with my classmates and watched that movie.  25 years!  Wow. Those 25 years have been tumultuous.  But they seem to have passed in a flash!  Thankfully, I do have some memorable milestones.  I imagine many people also have similar milestones - you know, graduation, when we get married, when our kids are born, our first jobs, our career breakthroughs, and of course our stumbles, though few of us like to talk about them. But you know, just about everyone has similar milestones.  So what's there to make my life, or yours, special?  I've come to s...

So I just got back from my first ever skiing experience in Niseko, Hokkaido. I was less terrible at it than I thought!  Overall, I have to say that it was pretty cool, swerving and coasting down the slopes in big S-loops, a million powdery snowflakes pattering on our faces, and cotton-draped pine trees swooshing by the side.  And now I know why so many friends and colleagues have been raving about skiing! I remember hearing a sermon once, where the speaker was talking about skiing, and how you have to sort of counter-intuitively lean forward into the slope, rather than lean back, in fear of falling down. The point being made was that, as with skiing, we need to learn to lean forward into life's challenges and tackle them head-on.  Holding back actually increases the chances of wiping out! And when I was on the slopes with the instructor, that's exactly what the instructor said.  Lean forward into your ski boots instead of leaning back.  It's hard...

I heard it said that it's not what you know, but who you know that counts. So here's a story about that. I recently went for a dinner with some colleagues - I got a last minute invite because a couple of people couldn't make it at the last minute!  So as I was leaving for the dinner appointment, I mentioned it to my wife, and she reminded me that we actually knew someone who worked there.  Just an ordinary lady who serves at the restaurant, who we became friends with and brought to church as part of my cell group outreach activities.  So I told my wife, yeah, I'll definitely say hi if I see her there. So when I got there, she did happen to be working that night, and I said hi, and I even managed to get some extra dishes for free!  But boy were my colleagues impressed, because they'd been lining up for months to get a reservation at this restaurant, which was evidently super popular (neither Lynette nor I are foodies, so I guess we didn't understand the s...

Well, all the exams finally ended a couple of weeks ago for my kids - what a relief!  So here's a bit of reflection on our experience... First, for the Primary Six one - as I wrote in an earlier blog entry here , Nat was hoping to get into a particular school through the Direct Schools Admission exercise, and didn't quite make it at the final interview. I had wanted her to go to that school because I'm from the affiliated boys school.  At the same time, Nat also didn't get an offer for my wife's alma mater, which my wife wanted her to go to, especially because it's near home.  So... basically I didn't get what I wanted, my wife didn't get what she wanted, and Nat didn't either. Or so I thought. So a few days after Nat got the rejections from schools A and B, we got an email from School C.  Nat got a confirmed offer!  We had been reluctant for Nat to interview for this school, because it's rather far away from home.  But Nat had insisted...

The newspapers today covered the latest Population Trends report, showing that the rate of singlehood is on the rise, and that those who do get married, tend to get married later.  By comparison, I got married pretty early, at 26.  My wife was only 24.  This in turn means our kids are generally more grown up compared to the majority of our peers.  When younger friends or colleagues find out about this, one question I sometimes get asked is, how did you know when you're ready to be married?  Or ready to have kids? My answer is usually this.  I was never really ready.  Once you're out of puberty, people stop maturing merely through the passage of time.  We mature through the experience of events.  Whether we're 20 or 50, if we're not yet married, then we're not ready to be married.  If we're not yet a parent, we're not ready to be a parent.  Like swimming or cycling, we can buy the floats, the trunks, the bicycles...

I had cause to talk to a friend yesterday about God.  One of the things that men like to pride ourselves about is that we are logical, and we operate on facts.  And men often say that's the reason why we can't accept faith in God. So why then do I accept faith in God?  I too pride myself in being logical and demanding facts before I accept something as the truth.  But look back at that sentence.  See the word "pride"?  I don't think it's the lack of logic or facts that stops men from coming to God.  It's pride.  And I can totally empathise with that.  Believing in God ultimately involves surrender.  Not surrender of logic.  But surrender of will to the One who knows better.  There is a huge difference between the two, but it's convenient to confuse them.  Like you, I  too want to hold on to my plans and desires, and when confronted with an alternative - God's alternative - we say, that's not logical, when reall...

Everyone loves happy endings.  We especially love happy endings if they're happening to us.  This is particularly true on social media, where we generally put up happy news on our status updates and blogs.  This tends to make our lives look and sound like the forest of the Smurfs, where everybody is constantly singing "La la la-la-la-la, la la-la-la laaaa...!".  But life isn't really like that at all, is it.  As the subtitle to this blog says - sometimes stories are sad.  And in this case, also somewhat lengthy :P I have two kids - a 12-year-old daughter Natalie, and a 10-year-old son, Daniel.  This blog post is about Natalie.  Natalie is smart, hardworking and responsible.  And like her Dad, she loves winning.  She's in the best class in a brand-name school (excluding the gifted pupils), and even in that class, she's among the top 5 or so.  I'm really proud of her. Some of you may have heard of the Direct School Admissions...

Every first Friday of the month, my church cell mates and I distribute free bread to the residents of a rental block.  Sometimes we distribute other stuff, like masks, during last year's haze.  These are residents who qualify for rental flats, which by definition means they are low-income earners.  Our work has no strings attached - we just love the residents, and the bread opens the door to a trust relationship so that we can help them with any bigger problems that they may have. We've been doing this work for more than 2 years, but we continue to learn new things all the time.  One of the most important lessons is that the residents don't really need our bread all that much.  The bread is great of course, but what they really want is simply to be loved, to know someone is on their side in tough times, and yes, in good times too.  Many of them are elderly, and not all of them have kids who have the opportunity, or sometimes the inclination to spend the...

The classic 1985 story of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card gives some insight into the mentality of war.  Early on in the book, when the boy Ender is attacked by his classmates, he retaliates and beats his opponent into complete and senseless submission.  When asked why he retaliated so violently, Ender's response is, "I have to win this now, and for all time, or I'll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse." The recent movie re-make put it in even plainer terms.  "Knocking him down was the first fight, I wanted to win all the others [in the future].   So they'd leave me alone ." Let me be very very clear - I'm not saying at all this gives anyone an absolute moral right to beat anyone else into submission.  I'm just saying it's an understandable sentiment, and a very tough call to make.  But what would make someone feel this way about conflict?  And in the light of today's front page news on the Straits Times, the Is...

A well-known American catchphrase is "Do you know where your children are?"  It's often used at the start of radio or news programmes - say the 10 o'clock news, and I suppose it's meant as a reminder to check if your children are safely back home. My wife and I have a good relationship with our kids at this point of their lives.  Dan is only 10, and he still pretty much listens to everything we say, although actually following through is a different thing of course!  Nat is 12, and she's starting to hear the voices of friends and the media a bit more loudly.  Like many of her peers, she has a mobile phone, but she's only allowed to use it at home (basically to keep in touch with her friends on Whatsapp) and the wife and I regularly check on her conversations. At some point, I suppose this will no longer be appropriate, but right now, I've found this to be a helpful arrangement.  We occasionally catch her joining in gossip or playing tweeny c...