Beach Volley Ball "Barbecue" Session

Finally our long awaited 30th August has arrived. We woke up early this morning, each making our way from various place; many from home and some from work, to our RV point at Vivocity Level 3 Sentosa Express ticketing booth. As usual, some of us visited toilet, buy this, buy that and by the time we leave Vivocity, guess what, it is about 12pm. This is slighlty more than 1hr later according to what we had initially planned.

When we reached Siloso beach, there was a sea. Of course not the sea and beach kind of sea,here I'm taking about a sea of people playing volleyball. We thought we might be able to get a volleyball court thinking that we were still early. But alas, there was a volleyball competition going on and out of all the courts, only two were left for public usage. Guess we just have to make do with the beach. Changyan, Gloriane, Stephanie and myself started playing first while Eugene and Eric were making their way here. The sun was blazing hot and the beach was literally scorching our feet. For a split moment, I wonder are all Thaipusum burning Charcoal walkers all volleyball trained? Treading our feet on the beach seems like walking on burning coal...IT'S HOT!!!!

After playing for just about 10 minute (passing volleyball in our circle of 4), I totally entered into a state of "daze". It was so unbearably hot that I decided to call for a time out. To my surprise this time out comes in timely and very much needed as everyone of us is feeling the heat and close to natural combustion. Soon, Eric and Eugene reached and the first thing they head for, a soak into the sea. They were close to their melting point. Somehow most of us felt lethargic due to the heatwave, other than our hearthrob Changyan who's so full of energy and strength. He reminded me of those years when I was younger and hyper active. Likewise he reminded me how far different I had "mutated" over the years.

Back to the beach, the rest of the people started playing and now Stephanie and myself went for a dip in the sea. While we were soaking in the water, Eugene came to us and told us that Eric had gotten a court. Amazing yet nothing amazing. Amazing because Eric is always so resourceful and he click and build rapport with people as easy and natural as us breathing air. Nothing amazing because this is Eric and to him, it's a in born gift of building rapport with anyone, anywhere. They had a match with another team and they won with ease. Why with ease? Because the moment changyan or yongqing serve the ball over, the points are secured without any retaliation...

A tall and lean young man walk up to me and asked me if i recognised him. To be honest, I don't recognised him at all (Yang Yang, if you ever read this, please forgive me). After revealing his identity, I was totally dumbfounded. This person is non other than my long time friend victor's younger brother; Chuen Yang (we have been calling him Yang Yang since his primary school). He has grown from a chubby boy to become such a tall, lean and handsome fine young man and he is currently serving his NS and will ORD this November. Time really flies. Look at him and look at me and you will know what I meant.

Together with Yang Yang and his team, we played Captain ball. Within 10 minute of intensive running, jumping and yelling, both teams were exhausted and we ended the match with Yang Yang's team winning. My team suffered most "damages". Our joints and muscles are giving way and we were totally exhausted. It is at this moment we realised we forgotten that we had left something barbequeing and they were totally burnt!!! They were our bodies. Almost everyone of us were so well barbequed that we resembled lobsters. The person that was most well BBQ was Eugene and followed by both Stephanie and myself. We were in pain.......help....

It's currently 2am 31st August as I'm typing this entry. Stephanie and myself felt asleep at about 930am and we completely knock out after applying Aloe Vera Gel on our sunburnt body. I woke up at 130am feeling thirsty and went to the kitchen to get a drink, only to remember that I promised Stephanie that I will wake up in the middle of the night to hang up our washed clothes (still washing in the washing machine before we felt asleep). After drinking, I hung up the clothes and here I am writing this entry beside my sleeping Stephanie. She's currently in pain from the sunburn. Once a while when she tossed around on the bed, she will say "Ouch Ouch...". That's all for this entry.

Oh, one last thing, I thought that Eric is very much like Naruto. Today when I saw him walking alone down towards the sea and standing from afar looking at a group of youth like himself playing with their friends, for that instant, he reminded me of Naruto. If you are a fan of Naruto (like myself), you will know what is precious to Naruto and why this is precious to him, then you will understand why I say Eric reminds me of Naruto.

Reading Books is Linked to Vision and Dreams

Like I had mentioned in my previous entry, that I was never a reader until this year. Eugene once mentioned to me that a leader is a reader. A leader is one who lead his people with a vision. Visions are not meant for the lazy mind and reading is never for the lazy mind. I begin to see why. Just as much as I was never a reader, I was very much a TV couch potato and even till now, I must admit that I still am. Thank God for TV and TV programs.

However recently I had a revelation regarding why a leader is a reader but you never hear anyone say that a leader is a TV couch potato. Interesting yah? I begin to understand that reading unlike watching TV, tapped into our realm of imagination. When we read, what appears before our eyes are simply words, words and more words. There's no instant pictures or graphics and as we read, subconsciously we begin to form images in our mind. As time goes on, our mind are trained to visualised and we become discipline in "containing" the image that we desires to see. Just like working out our arms' muscle, likewise we are working on our brain muscle. As these brain muscles get stronger, we become more of a visionary.



On contrary, what pops out of a TV box are ready images that enters through our eyes and right into our mind. Without any need for us to activate our imagination, we constantly just feed on whatever images that are fed to us. This is comparable to us opening up our mouth and someone keep feeding us with food. There's no need for us to work out in any aspect and we become the passive recipient. prolong repetition of such passiveness causes our mind to be lazy in visualising. We move from visionary to become vision-no-more. We move from hearing/seeing the language of the Holy Spirit (which is visions and dreams) to finally receive hand-out from the world. Instead of tapping into the fourth dimension to change our third dimension, we are stuck in our third dimension. Talking about manhood, now I begin to see the damage pornography has on our man today such that it totally block off the language of the Holy Spirit and in turn, replace these God given visions with perverted visions that totally plunge man into a lazy state of mind. Now I begin to realised why bible is a book, not a tape, not a comics...haha...

Start being a reader if you are not yet. Read!!! But be wise in the choice of book you are reading.

Disclaimer: In my own opinion, watching TV is still very necessary. Personally some information such as those from Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, etc I still prefer receiving them from TV.

Making My Marriage Heaven on Earth by Setting Boundaries!

I had just finished a coffee break with Eugene at Armara Food Court and as we reached the ground level, we stopped at the open space sales where they were selling some Christian books. As usual, I will stop by to do some browsing. Trust me, to begin with, I was never really a book lover neither was I a reader. Eugene once told me this, that a Leader is a Reader. I have not forgotten that sentence which he had made since then and I began to start reading newspaper everyday and keeping myself well informed of what is happening in our world today.

For the instance when I was browsing through the books, I thought why not get some books that will help me be a better husband. Everyday whether we realised or not, we are somewhat investing in somethings. All these investment ranges from the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the stuff we buy. I was thinking so why not invest in my marriage. Many a times we spent our money, time and effort investing in buying things for our spouse, bringing them for a good meal, going on overseas trips together. Of course all these are good. But nothing beats the investment of being a better husband to my wife. I'm very determined to make our marriage a heaven on Earth. A woman looks the most stunning and gorgeous when she's in love. Marriage is never the graveyard of love. To me, it's the beginning of something even more beautiful and the start of a lifetime journey of fun and excitment.

Back to the book store, this book titled "Boundaries In Marriage" (By Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend) caught my eyes and without any hesitation I bought it and WOW!!! It's a super solid book and it really addresses some issues that Stephanie and myself are facing as a newly married couple. Here's some insight....

- Some people are against boundaries because they see them as selfish; other actually use them to be selfish. Both are wrong. Boundaries are basically self-control.
- Self Control/ boundery serves love, not selfishness
- Bounderies are not something you set on another person. Bounderies are about self.
- We don't define bounderies to punish our spouse.
- When bounderies are defined, we know who is responsible for what. We are responsible for our feelings, attitudes, behaviours, choices, limits, desires, thoughts, values, talents and love.
- Love can only exist where freedom and responsibility are operating. Love creates more freedom that leads to more responsibility, which leads to more and more ability to love.

I'm filled with excitment as I'm reading through this book because I'm excited and really looking forwards to bringing our marriage to even greater heights.

Do you have friends??

Tonight we had our zone meeting at Allan's place. We started off with a praise and somehow something was very different. Everyone was simply full of excitment and we were praising God at the top of our voices. We were so loud and vibrant that we drowned the music of the guitarist and it seemed as if we were leading the guitarist. Followed by praise, we went through some admin and Jeremy began to share a word....

Jeremy shared about the importance of establishing strong friendship among ourselves. It was very inline with what I had shared with my cell group last week after zone meeting. I asked my cell group a question, should one day this cell group no longer exist, will we still be calling up each other to chat up each other, will we be asking one another out for a drink, etc. To bring the question nearer, currently are we even calling each other up and meeting up with one another other than just twice a week because of cell group meeting and service? If not, the question are, do you have friends? Have you first been a friend to others?

Proverbs 18:24
A man who has friends must himself be friendly, But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Dear, where are you??

This morning I woke up at 10am. The moment I opened my eyes, I look beside me, I look around the room. A tinge of sadness just gripped my heart. First thought that filled my mind, "I didn't get to see my dear, I didn't get to kiss her and I'm starting to miss her." Don't get me wrong, my dear is away for a long vacation or a business trip. She was soundly asleep beside me last night. Just that this morning I took half day leave and that's why she went off early to work without waking me up. I MISS HER!!!

Like I said, a tinge of sadness just gripped my heart when the first thing I woke up I don't see her. I have so get used to see her every morning and suddenly when I don't see her this morning, I was sad as I felt I had come to take her for granted; taking for granted of seeing her in the morning, taking for granted of hugging and kissing each other in the morning, taking for granted to "fast march" to mrt station together, taking for granted of squeezing like sardine in the train every morning. I'm not a morning person and in the morning, my patience tends to be shorter and I'm more dull than anything. Hence many a time, I was impatient towards her and like what she always say, that I don't take the initiative to kiss and hug her in the morning.


This morning she did not wake me up because there were times when she woke me up to have breakfast with her but because I need not report to office early, I was upset with her and at times even "reprimanded" her. But this morning, when she's not around me, when I realised that she had quietly left for work so as to let me sleep more, my heart just grieved and I realised how much I miss my dear and a part of me wanna say .... " Dear, I'm sorry...."

My Birthday 2008