rubbish gang

john who burns dvds for me in exchange for meals like these. he burn i cook. we eat. share talk videos. govt. badawi. racism. church. our plain good life in melbourne. maidi whom God sent in the last minute when my computer crashed for the week. 2 8000 word assignment at stake! solid neighbours. solid folks. i am the oooldest of all. they are still undergrads in tow. 3 big and generous singaporeans lodged in the middle of winter. battling a recent burglar and one eeevil estate manager. we all know who she is..shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

diary of a prayer

dear God, i didn't expect to be here. have long resisted the idea. melbourne was more than a figment. a mere holiday destination. sometimes, a needed reunion. then again, it happened only at tarrawarra. grace touches you at an unknown hour and the road widened, with every gateway falling away. the more i walked and explored, the more tangible the thought became. confirming your quiet call. leading on. courage received. one season of uncertainty and the rich fullness of another three. an awaited arrival. complete the harvest, now. a return home to grace. everything i hold in my hand.

this kingdom you described is not some abstract palace in the sky. it is life, given and gifted to me. in full and humble recognition of your footprints, our journeying, yours' beside mine. i remember your mercy Lord and the love you have shown from of old. do not remember the straying paths of my youth, but in your love, remember me. psalm 25

Jesus said, 'This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, at once he starts to reap because the harvest has come.'

mark 4: 26-29

crab-talk

yahoo news (http://www.physorg.com/news100094217.html) reports the discovery of a new species of freshwater crabs that has been living in rome's ancient watery ruins, fountains and waterways longer than anyone had imagined. ahhh. freshwater crabs. how i miss keeping them. just contacted keong to do some tetra-terrium shopping when i come home. planning to set up a landshore tank with upturned branches and a carpet of sand and water to cover. caecilians, rainbow crabs. the occasional shrimps and food-fish are on my list. home...is to find and set up my own tank again. this was the one i had to dismantle shortly before i left, in july 06. what a foilage! what a waste. resurrection beckons. nostalgia remains. a missing tank. one missing room. and nearing home.

winter schapps

winter, here again. ice streams on air, neckscarf, gloves and a knapsack on my back. tree branches, almost bare. night chills and comfort socks. cycling 'neath clouds of grey. nowhere and everywhere. eager to pack for home. a year in daylight and a season's end, leaves are falling, sun sets at five. piano pieces on my laptop. lyrics and memories to a good old song. edible times-spontaneous menus in kitchen pots, the warm ginger soups, cold ham, sushi rice and morning creams on french coffee. quick runs & thermal swims in blueriver pools. chapel silence. holding a hand of hope on the wings of a prayer. gratitude for life, received...well-lived. fifteen more. and still, so many more daygifts to be opened. i'm ready to go, Lord. knowing, in leaving, i live. closing one life and re-opening another. finding and reclaiming my faith in You again, once more.

'Give, and there will be gifts for you; a full measure, pressed down, shaken together and overflowing, will be poured into your lap...' luke 6: 38

finding gifts, each day

the things, times and tasks i will miss doing, catching and accomplishing, sometimes possible only because u are living on your own, in a different culture, time and place. sometimes, you seize many visions at one go. i have learnt not to put a full stop to life when God may have only placed a comma, better still, an ellipsis...

education

just received 3 emails and some msns from my first 3 batches of students. wonderful always to hear a blast from the past. one of them just graduated from smu business (O1A01)and is going ahead to do an MA in Lit Studies in NUS, in spite of harmless protests and quizzical looks from pragmatic folks who wondered why she didn't want to do something more 'practical.' I call that courage. Her decision that is.


Another from the same class obtained an A for her hons thesis! On Changi Village. We shared the same supervisor and a serious love for anthropology. Again, one of the many subjects that nus, or rather the soci-dept has relegated away. it still thrives in ntu school of humanities thanks to Profs Kwok Kian Woon and Geoffery Benjamin. Head there, people!!!
Another lad (OOS24) switched from science to do arts and just managed to get a place in nus psych hons. he's tackling something on cognition and religion for his thesis. kewl! The other (OOS14) has been jet-setting elsewhere, having finished a summer course in the States. he quit nus architecture to do aeronautical engineering at ntu, all for the sheer love of planes. One unforgettable talkative stubborn verbal soul (still is) quit ntu mass com and followed his heart. finally got into nus law after 3 persistent endless appeals. somebody or something has to give in afterall- an inner call surpassing a faceless institution.




there are so many more whose names i've yet to mention. i particularly respect those who pushed on even though they did not manage to qualify for the so-called top unis here (one even rejected a place there) but have nonetheless gone on to chart their own learning journeys and lifepaths. one even quit varsity to set up his own business.











It's wonderful knowledge just sensing that each of them have grown to be autonomous individuals who are more than capable of standing apart and away (sometimes, that becomes a necessity) from narrow (and oh so subjective and relative) societal norms to pursue a responsible field of knowledge they really wanted and (more importantly), loved. To Cerina, Bingfeng, Shang, Vincent, Eric, Songhui, Cuili, Annie, Hazel and Alex...yep, gimme a five! nah, how a'bout a ten!!!
something i found from one of my readings...more than food for thought. my lecturers in nie (there was only one who seriously taught and shared herself as a teacher. i still remember her name...) were too busy covering the syllabus to help us critique this. ahem...

Education is not the art of training and subjugating people to serve the profit of others. It is the art of helping people to know themselves, to develop the resources of judgement and skills of learning and the sense of values needed on facing a future of unpredictable change, to understand the rights and responsibilities of adults in a democratic society and to exercise the greatest possible degree of control over their own fate. To educate is to look for truth, to stir discomfort in placid minds of the unthinking, to shake ideologies, disturb complacency, undermine the tyranny of anti-intellectual commercialism which reins in the marketplace and in some of our legislatures, to the disadvantage of all of us. To educate is to reject the false analogies of the marketplace, to see justice and equality as noble aims rather than as obstacles to a takeover bid, to insist that human progress has no bottom line.

What a challenge for everyone. Tough but worth more than a casual pursuit.... Grow, go and be on your way then......we each, must own our road...

quote retrieved from Hoy and Miskel. (1987). Educational Administration: Theory, Research and Practice. New York: Random House

this is the life!

final assignment done. one more touch-up to go for the other and already i am scribbling around to live the perfect mode of existence over here. i woke at 4 am and edited the marketing essay to completion. thanks again to all who did the surveys and gave me enough data to fill an 8000 word paper to the brrrrimm.

watched 2 movies today. a rare luxury that is quite impossible to fulfil in singapore. lygon nova (where artsy films are shown and atas undergrads / postgrads/ well-read lao ah soh and ah peks and yuppie taitais hang around) offers $5.50 films for everything screened before four. technically cheaper than home's. i caught Deliver Us From Evil and My Best Friend. The first film addresses the massive cover-up of some priests by the roman catholic archdiocese in los angeles concerning members of its clergy who committed pedophilia over the span of many years. it was shameful, chilling and shocking but it didn't surprise me. very painful to watch too but humbling to the core. it details the advocacy-work of catholics working within and outside the church to address the issue. impressed me so much i went ahead and got myself a copy to share with my community back home. a stark and needed contrast to another film about religious life i caught last year, Into Great Silence, about a group of carthusian monks in france. 3 hours of coarse & barren fidelity and one hears the purity of silence and the still small voice of the Lord. 2 faces of the same church. broken and whole, the body of Christ. faith lost, torn and challenged but some are healed and regained. what it means to be christian in today's world.... My Best Friend was done in the tradition of The 8th Day. the french piece dealt with friendship between 2 men, one who was divorced and betrayed, the other simply did not know how to be a friend. a humorous mix of masculine dialogue, materialism and desensitisation which finally ended in the most human discourse between 2 protangonists at the end of the film. all through a gameshow. thoughtful. and ever so subtle. definitely a far-cry from those jack neo's 'THIS IS THE INTENDED MEANING OF THIS FILM AND I WILL PASTE THEM TO YOUR FLAT FACE' kind of film-making. artless.

popped back home, mailed a few emails and cooked myself a swordfish steak topped with celery and japanese rice. cycled to return my crashload of books. always a relief to return these books back to the library. along the way, a line of yellow trees brightens the path. an enigmatic protest staged by some disgruntled undergrads towards the 'melbourne model' greeted me. an effigy from the uni emblem with torn angel wings overlooks several gravestones carved with different student id tags. i think i know why. will share with my class. cool.

sneaked into high-tech law library to blog. some students are smoking outside. winter blues. exam hues. more than thankful that postgrads are spared from all that old nonsense. i remember very quickly those pangs and crammings during my nus days. all over. well-deserved. country-road sale tomorrow. got myself a membership. advanced notice. up to 75% off. opens 8am tmr. some nice clothes to support my transition back to work. for now, the open space...breathe.

kid marvel

my formidable marvel & gp / dvd collection (everything from merciless dictatorships to environmental pollution, child abuse, empires and kingdoms, indigenous cultures, weapons of mass deception, bush-ology, queer, straight and transgender ideology, extraterrestial life, hollywood and holocaust, cubism, lennon, democracy, drugs and sex, animal testing, genetic patent(ing), commerce and contamination, adverts and sexploitation, pandemics, haiku, endangered animals, gandhi, princess di & pol pot ) grows bigger each day. just made a vintage gambit and grouchy looking man-thing engage in battle while magneto and doc-oc stand bochap by the shelves. both grin in despicable delight. they will join my home collection in 2 weeks and start an orgy of laser beams, force fields, power blasts and brainy kicksmarts to come...yeah!