Saturday, December 02, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
From the Land of the Rising Sun
Too many such dinners these days. Looking forward to a real sushi-yaki dinner soon...
Friday, November 24, 2006
Thanksgiving
While one looks eagerly towards that magic date when all deals must close and many-headed beasts slain, one is reminded that many parts of the world are clothed in that final burst of autumn splendour before the winds of Yuletide come. Caught a glimpse of that wonderful dress parade last month in land of the rising sun.
It's Thanksgiving today - I'm tired, but happy. When driving home just now, I thought: there is no other place I'd rather be in, no other work that I need to do, and no better friends in world than I have now. Too exhausted to write anything like I did three years ago in another place, but just a simple "Thank You, God, for You."
It's Thanksgiving today - I'm tired, but happy. When driving home just now, I thought: there is no other place I'd rather be in, no other work that I need to do, and no better friends in world than I have now. Too exhausted to write anything like I did three years ago in another place, but just a simple "Thank You, God, for You."
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Stepping into the Ocean
(Written in Osaka, Japan)
A Shin-kansen stop.
Up the stairs again.
What if I stepped out
Into an ocean?
In the world's largest aquarium tank - a beautiful beautiful whale shark.
This penguin did not move the whole time.
Sea otter, rub rub. Kawaii!
Pocky Fish
Images to bring a smile for years to come. :-)
(Osaka Aquarium, Japan Leaf Tour Oct 2006)
A Shin-kansen stop.
Up the stairs again.
What if I stepped out
Into an ocean?
I dreamt that I knew
the language of dolphins,
that I could hear the secrets of the sea.
In the world's largest aquarium tank - a beautiful beautiful whale shark.
Giant Atlantic Crabs - or Aliens!
This penguin did not move the whole time.
Sea otter, rub rub. Kawaii!
Pocky Fish
Images to bring a smile for years to come. :-)
(Osaka Aquarium, Japan Leaf Tour Oct 2006)
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
MIX Standards
Was reminded by Pizza Amigo how Singapore is in serious danger of losing that right honourable place of being "cheap and good", or at least offering "value for money" for most things.
During one of the lunch time jaunts that I take by mrt-ing within the ERP zone, I wanted to pick up a something healthy(er) than the usual Nasi Padang type lunch, and so stopped by MIX at the Raffles City Marketplace.
Now, Mix, being something of an international franchise of healthy food choices, has exactly the same storefront and menu in Singapore as it does in Hong Kong - and that was where I basically derived lunch at least two or three times a week when I was living there. It had been almost 10 months since I had a Central lunch, and I automatically ordered a Tandoori Chicken Wrap and a Detoxifier juice (without booster shot). I don't quite remember how much I paid for the juice but did make a mental note that the wrap cost S$7.50 which was almost the same as what it would cost in Hong Kong at HK$35.While eating my lunch back in the office, I had this slightly discomfiting feeling. Well, the food didn't taste exactly the same as it did in Hong Kong, which was mildly poignant in a vague sort of way (perhaps it reminded me that some of life's experiences could not be replicated exactly), but it dawned on me how insanely expensive things have become in Singapore.
Yes, I know that the wrap costs exactly the same here and in Hong Kong, but hey, we must surely talk about spending parity, no? It is a fact of life that income levels are substantially higher in Hong Kong than in Singapore, and a fact of life that few Singaporeans would be made conscious of until they worked in both places. For instance, a legal secretary can expect to earn an average of HK$20000 to HK$35,000 per month, and that's S$4,000 to S$8,000. Can a person earning an average of $1500 to $3000 here afford a healthy MIX wrap in the same way as her counterpart in Hong Kong?
Maybe MIX is targetting a different market segment here, but that could only mean one thing - the average Singaporean cannot expect to have the same standard of living as a person in Hong Kong because things have just gotten too expensive here without a corresponding rise in salary levels.
Its not something that the garmen want us to realize but eventually we all will feel it - once buying organic lactose free milk, tomatoes on the vine and low carb chicken wrap lunches become a not unreasonably expected way of life. Of course, someone will tell you that you can always eat $3 lor mee at Amoy Street, but then who's going to actually consume anything at the giant Vivocity and all the new fangled malls coming up in the next few years?
Please, don't tell me it will be the rich IR tourists from Hong Kong and elsewhere, or the next batch of IMF delegates.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
The Sound of Colours
Last Saturday, when world outside was too unsafe to go out into, and I was likewise unsafe for it, I brought out my stash of "sick-reading" - Calvin & Hobbes, Pearls before Swine, Dilbert.
Nothing too wordy, you see, for such times. For I am persuaded that this worse-than-usual flu episode was made even worse not only by Sumatran brews, but by reading too-long bond documents in a too-cold conference rooms and continuous all-parties calls all week for deals that threatened to launch, or not.
I love forests and trees but whenever I sleep with a fever I always dream of this:
So, when Pearls Before Swine became too heavy and cynical for a headcold, I turned to Jimmy Liao, and was drawn deeply yet again into his magical world of colours and achingly human poetry.
A year ago
I began to notice
that my sight was slipping away.
I sat home alone
and felt the darkness settle around me.
(translated from Jimmy Liao: 《地下铁》 The Sound of Colours)
In Liao’s bittersweet telling, a blind female narrator ventures forth into the subway, searching for an unnamed something or someone. It quickly becomes clear that nothing can restore her eyesight, but acquiring vision is another, more heartfelt, matter.
A year ago
I began to notice
that my sight was slipping away.
I sat home alone
and felt the darkness settle around me.
(translated from Jimmy Liao: 《地下铁》 The Sound of Colours)
In Liao’s bittersweet telling, a blind female narrator ventures forth into the subway, searching for an unnamed something or someone. It quickly becomes clear that nothing can restore her eyesight, but acquiring vision is another, more heartfelt, matter.
Written in Chinese, the story is set in Taipei, but it could well be any teeming, multi-ethnic city. At each subway station the girl alights onto an imagined landscape; dolphins frisk at one, clouds drift below another.
Liao pays subtle homage to some of Modern Art’s great colorists; there are visual references to Matisse, Mondrian, Chagall and even Escher’s monochromatic dreamscapes as she descends and ascends, again and again, tap-tapping out the new terrain where memory and wishfulness intersect.
There are none so blind as those who would not see.
(all graphics from The Sound of Colours, by Jimmy Liao)
An Aside:
According to one dictionary -
timbre: noun, the colour of sound.
I miss the pizza there.
Liao pays subtle homage to some of Modern Art’s great colorists; there are visual references to Matisse, Mondrian, Chagall and even Escher’s monochromatic dreamscapes as she descends and ascends, again and again, tap-tapping out the new terrain where memory and wishfulness intersect.
There are none so blind as those who would not see.
(all graphics from The Sound of Colours, by Jimmy Liao)
An Aside:
According to one dictionary -
timbre: noun, the colour of sound.
I miss the pizza there.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Attempt at Modern Art
At the George Brecht Exhibition at Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), they let you create your own work out of "playing cards" that represent words, numbers and symbols of one's own imagination.
This sequence: The Four Seasons.
"A" first sign of Spring, pink in a petal
Summer Berries fall with a Stick in the Bush
Autumn Leaves fly over Two tall Towers
Santa in the Chimney, his Sleigh on the roof
This sequence: The Four Seasons.
"A" first sign of Spring, pink in a petal
Summer Berries fall with a Stick in the Bush
Autumn Leaves fly over Two tall Towers
Santa in the Chimney, his Sleigh on the roof
Attempt at Surrealism
Meet Burnie, who's just joined from Figueres, a little town outside Barcelona where one could visit the seriously weird Salvador Dali Museum.
Haven't found the classic dial phone yet (need to go Clark Quay), so this will have to do for now.
The original inspiration - The Lobster (Aphrodisiac) Phone, Salvador Dali
Monday, September 25, 2006
IMF Party!
Further to the last class party in August with an 80's theme (complete with Coney Dogs and Aha! tracks), we were going to have a "Back-to-School Birthday Bash" for E and S last Sunday, but since (i) some of us couldn't find our old school uniforms and (ii) the rest couldn't fit into them anymore, we settled on a "IMF/World Bank" theme. The idea was that we were going to sit around and talk about erhm...useless topics of universal interest - something we have been able to do quite well since the happy days sitting in the corner foyer in Bukit Timah... :)
And what's a theme party without games! Found this very educational children's website that had dowloadable flag outlines of every country in the world, and so we played "Color the [Obscure] Country Flag" contest!
And what's a theme party without games! Found this very educational children's website that had dowloadable flag outlines of every country in the world, and so we played "Color the [Obscure] Country Flag" contest!
By the time Mongolia took on the Reich colours, we were all rolling on the floor in stitches...
Finding God V: Conversations that Disturb and Entice
(from page 191)
"Moving through our problems toward finding God requires a fresh understanding of community and a courageous willingness to enter it. We must learn how to talk with one another so that the object of our conversation is to disturb one another with how manipulative, defensive, self-serving we are. Our conversations must also entice us to influence others for good, to enjoy our uniqueness, to rest fully in the goodness of God, no matter what happens.
When community is working, tensions may seem unresolvable and pressures overwhelming, but the opportunity to find God will remain if we stay involved. We must not yield to the urge to retreat into the silence of safe superficial chatter. We must keep talking. And our words must matter.
The richest conversations always tell a story. Each of our lives is a dramatic story of how a relational, passionate, thoughtful, purposeful and depraved person handles the experience of life. Woven into our story will always be the tragedy of our using people, our defending ourselves against them, and our worshipping ourselves. The fallen structure within each of us sees to that.
But the indelible stamp of the Savious insures that the story will also include a tale of noble inspiration, usually in an almost unrecognizable subplot, but still undeniably present. Those good passions, whether smothered beneath bad ones that rule us or released to become a driving force, are neither effective or commendable until they draw their energy from a confidence in God's goodness.
Both the storyteller and the listener need to hear the doubting soul struggling to find an identity. They need to look eagerly for the movement of God that frees people to give, to be, and to worship. Typically, conversations that lead us toward a deeper awareness of God first disrupt, then entice.
Most interactions should be pleasant ("Hi , how are you?"), functional ("Would you pick me from the airport?") or important ("As elders, we need to decide how we are going to deal with this disturbing news.") No one is quite so irritating as the junior counsellor who turns normal conversations into therapy sessions. Uninvited probing into motives and weighty expressions of concern spoil pleasant, functional and important conversations.
But true community must include meaningful moments when the quality of our relationships with God, others, and ourselves are discussed. Each of us have friends who know us well and care about us, friends who live honestly enough to wrestle with unanswered questions. With those friends, we need to risk a level of self-disclosure that makes us uncomfortable.
...
Good conversations are often disturbing. They deal with the edge in someone's voice that puts others on guard. They face up to the pain that a friend's snub or a parent's neglect has provoked. Good conversations uncover the terror and rage that often lie hidden beneath a veneer of comfortable relationship. If there aren't times when the very foundations of our relationships are torn away and we continue on only because of Christ, we are not building strong and real relationships."
(Exhibition, Caixa Forum, Barcelona)
When community is working, tensions may seem unresolvable and pressures overwhelming, but the opportunity to find God will remain if we stay involved. We must not yield to the urge to retreat into the silence of safe superficial chatter. We must keep talking. And our words must matter.
The richest conversations always tell a story. Each of our lives is a dramatic story of how a relational, passionate, thoughtful, purposeful and depraved person handles the experience of life. Woven into our story will always be the tragedy of our using people, our defending ourselves against them, and our worshipping ourselves. The fallen structure within each of us sees to that.
But the indelible stamp of the Savious insures that the story will also include a tale of noble inspiration, usually in an almost unrecognizable subplot, but still undeniably present. Those good passions, whether smothered beneath bad ones that rule us or released to become a driving force, are neither effective or commendable until they draw their energy from a confidence in God's goodness.
Both the storyteller and the listener need to hear the doubting soul struggling to find an identity. They need to look eagerly for the movement of God that frees people to give, to be, and to worship. Typically, conversations that lead us toward a deeper awareness of God first disrupt, then entice.
Most interactions should be pleasant ("Hi , how are you?"), functional ("Would you pick me from the airport?") or important ("As elders, we need to decide how we are going to deal with this disturbing news.") No one is quite so irritating as the junior counsellor who turns normal conversations into therapy sessions. Uninvited probing into motives and weighty expressions of concern spoil pleasant, functional and important conversations.
But true community must include meaningful moments when the quality of our relationships with God, others, and ourselves are discussed. Each of us have friends who know us well and care about us, friends who live honestly enough to wrestle with unanswered questions. With those friends, we need to risk a level of self-disclosure that makes us uncomfortable.
...
Good conversations are often disturbing. They deal with the edge in someone's voice that puts others on guard. They face up to the pain that a friend's snub or a parent's neglect has provoked. Good conversations uncover the terror and rage that often lie hidden beneath a veneer of comfortable relationship. If there aren't times when the very foundations of our relationships are torn away and we continue on only because of Christ, we are not building strong and real relationships."
(Exhibition, Caixa Forum, Barcelona)
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Travels in Iberia IV : The Guernica Does Exist
Even the very excellent National Museu Centro de Art Reina Sofia in Madrid will have a shop set up at the end of its special exhibition Picasso: Tradicion y Vanguardia selling this to tourists:
heh. I didn't buy the certificate, but I did see The Guernica at the exhibition, which will probably count as one of the most memorable musuem experiences that I have had, thanks to the well-considered layout of the exhibition and a very intelligent audio guide.
The guide also gave quite a lot of insight into the artist's state of mind and psychological condition during the period he painted the Guernica. I was very surprised to see the number of preparatory drawings displayed that Picasso had made leading up to the painting the final mural. There were many more things that he could have included in the picture - various people, objects, symbols etc. He was so impacted by the war that he had many things to say and represent, and what finally appear in the famous painting we see today were what he finally decided to include after many revisions. I guess it's like any piece of great art or literature, we don't always see the intense thought (and probably psychological tug of war) that had gone into their creation. It is even more telling to see the smaller paintings Picassao made after he finished the Guernica of each part of the work, with all sorts of variations, as if he continued to obsess with the images of war, not having exhausted all he wanted to show us.
It was a rare exhibition and I am glad to have had the chance to see it. My favorite amongst the three is the Manet. But all three are really powerful in presenting the reality and shock of human cruelty and pain. I guess, whether or not the artists intended the message, the paintings show that Evil does exist. We have all seen it.
heh. I didn't buy the certificate, but I did see The Guernica at the exhibition, which will probably count as one of the most memorable musuem experiences that I have had, thanks to the well-considered layout of the exhibition and a very intelligent audio guide.
The audio guide in particular thoughtfully led the vistor through the exhibition in a way that brought to life the history and genesis of the Picasso masterpiece. The Guernica also met for the first time two other great Spnish paintings that inspired it: (1) The great Goya painting, Shooting on 3rd May 1808, borrowed from the stately Prado Museum down the road and (2)the startling Execution of Emperor Maximilian by Edouard Manet, 1867-8
Loved the way the audio guide engaged the viewer in the experience: "Now, look across the room at the Guernica again and then go behind this wall and turn to your right, you are now looking at the painting that first inspired the Guernica. Press 13 to hear more about Goya's - Shooting on May 1808".
The guide also gave quite a lot of insight into the artist's state of mind and psychological condition during the period he painted the Guernica. I was very surprised to see the number of preparatory drawings displayed that Picasso had made leading up to the painting the final mural. There were many more things that he could have included in the picture - various people, objects, symbols etc. He was so impacted by the war that he had many things to say and represent, and what finally appear in the famous painting we see today were what he finally decided to include after many revisions. I guess it's like any piece of great art or literature, we don't always see the intense thought (and probably psychological tug of war) that had gone into their creation. It is even more telling to see the smaller paintings Picassao made after he finished the Guernica of each part of the work, with all sorts of variations, as if he continued to obsess with the images of war, not having exhausted all he wanted to show us.
It was a rare exhibition and I am glad to have had the chance to see it. My favorite amongst the three is the Manet. But all three are really powerful in presenting the reality and shock of human cruelty and pain. I guess, whether or not the artists intended the message, the paintings show that Evil does exist. We have all seen it.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Finding God IV
"Someone is here! Final reality is personal. I know it."
(at page 155)
(Bronze door, La Sagrada Familia, Barcelona)
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Finding God III: Lamech vs Enoch
Talking about Eden on earth the other day, Larry Crabb says in this book that we each have a choice to make: either we try to rebuild/recapture Eden in our lives, or make our pilgrimage towards Heaven. He contrasts Lamech and Enoch, both the 7th generation progeny of Cain and Abel. He says: Lamech declared: “I will build my city! I want my pleasures now.” Enoch said: “I will build God’s kingdom! And trust God to one day build a city for me to enjoy.” Because God cares deeply about his children, many times he chooses to relieve our suffering and solve our problems. But because his love is.. rooted in what he knows is best for us, he provides us with something more interesting to live for than ourselves. He catches us up in the supernatural reality of living for an eternal kingdom.
"As we explore our lives, we must never get so immersed in ourselves that we fail to remember that there is something far more wonderful to ponder. If I am to reject Lamech's approach and come to God as Enoch came, I must surrender my fascination with myself to a more worthy preoccupation with the character and purposes of God. I am not the point. He is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me.
The question we need to ask is this: Are we merely living, or are we walking with God? Are we merely committed to feeding our own souls, to arranging our lives around getting our needs met, to building our cities? Or are we committed to knowing God, to cooperate with him as loved participants in a plan larger than ourselves, to becoming like the Son whom the Father adores, and to waiting for the city that Christ is building right now?
The path to joy lies not in recovery from wounds, or setting boundaries, but in identifying and repenting of our commitment to advance our own well-being as we see fit. When that commitment takes priority over our determination to know God and make him known to others, then my friend is wrong. Our worst problem is sin, not pain.
We need to see ourselves as more sinful than wounded. We need to face the ugly, self centred energy present in all our conversations. As we become more aware of our self-centredness, our demand to feel better weakens under our developing humility. Awarenss of our self centredness puts us in touch with our longing for a clean heart and a giving spirit. Awareness of God's forgiveness makes us gratefully amazed that we are accepted by someone who sees us at our worst. "
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Travels in Iberia III : The Other End of the Ocean
Confirmed lah.I like the sea best when it is The Ocean, with its waves crashing on deep rocky cliffs.
First fell in love with the ocean when I stood in front of it two years ago during the US Leaf Tour in the coast of Ogunquit, Maine.
On this trip, I saw the other end of the Atlantic Ocean. It was just as awesome.
We were at Cabo da Roca, which is part of the Lisbon Coast and officially the most Western point of Europe. Interesting to think that at one point, the civilized world might have thought it to be the furthest point one could walk till one reached the end of the world. The Portuguse poet's Land's End.
Where does the sea end and the sky begin?
According to GPS equipment, we were at:
Latitude - 38' 47' North
Longitude - 9' 30' West
It was a good place for one to spend the afternoon talking to the ocean.
Finding God II: The Second Journey
Two phone calls, from two good friends, received during the trip. Each informed of a decision/desire to embark on a second journey.
Was reading this from the chapter "The Second Call" in Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel:
Was reading this from the chapter "The Second Call" in Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel:
"Many people between the ages of 30 and 60 - whatever their stature in community and whatever their personal achievements - undergo what can truly be called a second journey.
A man can have piled up an impressive portfolio of dollars and honors, and get his name in Who's Who, and then wake up one morning, asking, "Is it worth it?" Competent teachers, nurses, and clergy can reach the top only to discover that the job no longer fascinates. There is no where higher to go. They find themselves terrified of stagnation and asking, "Should I switch careers? Would returning to school help?"
Anne Tyler's heroine in her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Breathing Lessons, is driving along a country road with her husband. Suddenly the middle aged woman cries out. "O Ira, what are we going to do with the rest of our lives?" This is the question of the second journey.
Second journeys usually end quietly with a new wisdom and a coming to a true sense of self. The wisdom is that of an adult who has regained equilibrium and stabilized. It is wisdom that gives some things up, lets some things die, and accepts one's limitations. It is a wisdom that realized: I cannot expect anyone to understand me fully. It is a wisdom that admits the inevitability of old age and death.
The second journey begins when we know we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the morning program. The second call is a summons to a deeper, more mature commitment of faith where the naivete, first fervor, and untested idealism have been seasoned with pain, rejection, failure, loneliness and self-knowledge."
Friday, September 15, 2006
Travels in Iberia II: The Three Bears
In between that moment when we were driving on the ubiquitous motorways leading out of Lisbon city, and the other winding down the heavily tourist-resorted coastal area in Cascais, we entered a bosky realm of pointed castle turrets and mammoth moss-covered trees crowding out the dancing sunlight. In what seemed like one upward curve in the road, we found ourselves in an archetypal fairyland, with dense undergrowths of ferns and grey stone walls stained with every shade of sierra on the sides.
Ok, if you photoshopped away the tourist buses and backpackers who were commendably walking their way to the top (who probably saw more lilyponds, gingerbread houses and real fairies along the way), you could probably understand why this particular corner of the European continent was eulogized by poets:"If I had Aladdin's lamp, the genius should transport me, my household and my books to Sintra....the most blessed spot in the habitable globe, will almost bring tears to my eyes." - Robert Southey
And for course it was Lord Byron's "glorious Eden", and Samual Taylor Coleridge always said he was going to retire there.
It was probably the best part of the entire trip for me, and the one that I was most looking forward to. The two German sisters that we met the night before were completely raving about it, and hey, who wouldn't want to visit the place which inspired Southey's (thought popularly to be Grimm's) "Goldilocks and the Three Bears"! :-)
I can't quite figure what it was that lent to this sense of unreality. Maybe it was the spruce and fir vegetation (lush, but not the Kota Tinggi kind of lush, as I was telling my travel buddy), or the strange mountaintop Pena castle with its colorful assemblage of minarets and sentry boxes (on entering the front gate of the castle, it looked exactly like the place where a wicked king might have locked up Rapunzel!), or because you could just imagine yourself spending a whole summer here sitting on a moldy bench at the edge of pretty Monteserrat town writing a book while little rabbits and frogs skipped past you into the forest.One wished there was more time to explore the Park (the castle's private forest) with its lakes, trees and walking trails. Or to explore the other palace, a little way below that had an intriguing name like Sete Ais ("Seven Sighs") and attractions like the Magpie Room.
We spent most of our time in the curious Pena castle, which was an absorbing blend of Hispanic-Moorish architecture on the outside and Italian renaissance drawing rooms and toilets on the inside. It had an amazing balcony looking out to the Sintra borough, with the ocean in the distance, and clouds rolling over the hills dotted with clusters of Portugese red steep roofs at your feet. That particular scenary from that vantage point had a deep impact on me, because I had always pictured that when God set on Judgement Day on His great high throne, this would be the picture before His eyes, his beautiful natural creation before Him, and his people coming out of their houses to meet Him.
I think it was at that moment during my trip when I was looking out of the glass-less windows of the stone balcony that my mind started to really rest from the stresses of pre-holiday deadlines, and to let the cool mist take away mundane cares...