New Year, Half-Time

Happy New Year!

It says on my blog profile "30-something husband, father, son.  Sometime lawyer, fulltime Christian"  Well, that 30-something part will be changing sometime later this year!  As I hit 40, it's a good time to look back on the first half, before looking forward to the next!

The 30-something years have been a thrilling time, with lots of ups and downs.  This year Lyn and I will celebrate 14 years of marriage, getting to know, appreciate and hopefully tolerate :) each other better each year.  God has really blessed me - never a moment I've regretted with my wonderful wife who helps me to be more than I ever thought I could be.  My son was born in the year I turned 30, adding to my daughter who was born 2 years earlier, and completing the set :)  It was tiring!  But now I look at them - 10 and 12, by God's grace, healthy, learning to be obedient, learning to love God more and more each year.  And all the sleepless nights, terribly early mornings, primary school traffic jams and yelling about 听写, stack models, lost spectacles and wallets don't seem quite so bad now.

Entering my 30s also saw me take what was, to me then, the mind-blowing step of leaving the safe environs of the legal service and everything I had learned, to join the big bad world of private employment.  To my great surprise I found myself doing all sorts of work I didn't think I could do or ever learn.  There were arduously long nights, burned weekends (see picture of working weekend and disaster area desk circa early '08!), lots of missed meals and nervously tense times, especially during the financial crisis of 08-09, but I was blessed to work with and learn from humble, hardworking, generous, courageous and often brilliant colleagues and mentors.  I learned about JADE (not the semi-precious stone), condors (not the South American bird), MBS (not the casino), reverse repos (not a funky gear shift), 757 (not an airplane), bucks (not a male deer), yards (not the back of your house), naked shorts (not a type of kinky underwear), SORO (not a sad day) and ETPR (not a new expressway). [Answers below, if you must know, all you terminally curious people]

In those ten years, the wife and I started to lead our own cell group, which God has blessed each year with new and wonderful people who continually challenge us by their willingness to follow whenever we say "charge!", hence pressuring us to, well, keep charging despite our constant inadequacy - but God is able!  We started our outreach and bread distribution with rental flat residents, made even more new friends, and began to understand what real, courageous, meaningful, useful, persistent Christian living means, beyond our cloistered holy huddles in church and comfortable homes.  I went on four overseas mission trips with the whole family, with the first when Daniel was 1 year old, to last year when he was 10.  I saw with my own eyes, in our outreach in Singapore and overseas, that truly the fields are white with the harvest, but the workers are few.  We really need more - there are so many people to love, who need God's love and provision, and are desperately searching for it!

My brother passed away, the saddest day of my life.  My Mum was miraculously healed from cancer, one of the happiest days of my life.  We didn't buy a big house when property prices fell, which occasionally irritates us when we see others who were smarter and/or braver.  But we did manage to get my parents a place just a few floors below us, which enables my parents to spend lots of time with their precious grandkids, for Lyn and me to enjoy simply the best dinners, and have long conversations with my Dad about his questions on the Bible, which is just priceless!  Just thinking about our own special "under one roof" arrangement makes me well up with gratitude for God's provision.

I'm looking forward to the next decade.  There will surely be ups and downs again, but as my blurb states at the top of this blog, I'm trusting that God will write more stories in my lifebook, often lengthy, sometimes funny, occasionally sad... but always victorious.  May He continue to prick my pride, stir up my compassion, strengthen my backbone to do the right thing.  May I continue to receive His undeserved mercy, appreciate His love, and work out my grateful response, in awe of the One who saves.  

God bless you, friends old and new, family and loved ones.  May you also know the blessing of the One God who loves us unconditionally, as a father loves his children, who knows the plans He has for you, a plan to prosper you, not to harm you, a plan to give you a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11).  I've known Him now for many a year.  In good times and in bad, and there has been many a terrible day, He has never, ever, let me or my family down.  For all things work for the good of those who love Him, and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28)

==============

JADE - Joint Asian Derivatives Exchange.  A now-defunct joint venture on commodity futures, between the Chicago Board of Trade (now taken over by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and the Singapore Exchange
Condor - a type of option strategy used to express a market view that there will be little volatility in the underlying
MBS - minimum bid size.  The smallest price movement allowable on a listed security.
Reverse repo - an agreement to purchase securities, and then sell them back at a higher price in the future.  The fellow who buys the securities is essentially lending money to the seller, with the securities as collateral.
757 - MAS Notice 757.  A MAS Notice imposing restrictions on lending Singapore dollars to non-resident financial institutions
Buck - a million dollars
Yard - a billion dollars
Naked shorts - selling a security when you actually don't have it at all.  Contrast with covered short, which is where you sell a security which you've borrowed from someone else.  You have to buy it back later to return to the fellow you borrowed it from.
SORO - Senior Operational Risk Officer.  World's funniest (well really, saddest) job acronym.  Fellow who is responsible for monitoring and coordinating responses to operational risk
ETPR - Error Trade Price Range.  A range of prices within which, even if an erroneous trade is executed, the exchange will not cancel the trade.  The primary reason is to preserve market certainty.

If you got all of them right, then "10 points for Gryffindor!" :)  Anyone got any other weird esoteric financial gibberish to share? :P

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