This is the 3 counsins at the Fathers' Day dinner celebration. They always have great times when together. Times like this won't be very frequent when SA and EZ move up north with their parents. 

Unwind

One of the times I look forward to during any day is the time when we put NN to bed. NN will make sure that the both of us are around to accompany her to bed. When I'm not around, SL said that NN will keep on asking where is daddy.

This is also a time when we read stories to her. I remember Mr S.I. Tan said that it's not so much of quality time together with kids but adequate time. So, we make sure that we at least spend this time with her, other than bringing her to parks, swimming, my mum's place or LL's place to play with the cousins.

In addition, SL and I will unwind by talking with each other and sharing how our day have been. This has not only strengthen our relationship with NN but also with one another. Keeping the communication channel open with one another helped us not to hold back anything in our relationship.

It's funny that NN will only sleep when we are talking with each other. Just a moment ago, when SL was trying to put her to bed, NN refused to sleep and kept on asking for me (was out for a while). When I returned, I joined them on the bed and as I was talking with SL, she fell asleep within minutes. That never stop puzzling me...

Free Indeed

When Christ has set us free, we’re free indeed. No question about that. But that don’t mean we don’t plan for our retirement. At some point in time (senior years), we’ve to stop work (as in 9-to-5 active work). Therefore, we would require some form of income during our non-working years to support our daily needs. Even LCMS talked about a retirement fund for pastors…8-).

I might have sounded in my blog (Huh? Retirement?) like one of those who desire to retire early and sit back and relax and do nothing. But that is not what I had in mind. And yes, I know very well that I have a responsibility towards my fellow colleagues where God has placed me. Otherwise, I would have taken my uncle’s offer long time ago for the sake of the money he’s giving me.

Also, maybe we’ve a distorted view of retirement (in our Christian point of view) as well. Most of the time (like I’ve mentioned in my blog about my friends), a typical picture portrays a person slogging very hard in the name of ‘making it’ (by the standards of the world) at all cost, at anyone’s expense. Like money, it’s not bad/wrong unless we make it our master.

I know it’s very easy to get our minds clouded when it comes to anything to do with money. For me, I’m secure enough in God and also know that I’ve to give an account of my life to God. That in itself keep me in check always, not to mention that SL also always caution me in this area of our lives.

Lethargic

Hmm...these few days, I'm feeling very lethargic at work. Don't feel like working and don't feel quite well too. Not sure if it's because of the haze. One of my colleague even took 1/2 off yesterday to go back home to sleep. He said he didn't had a good sleep these few days, not sure if it's because of the weather as he has a very sensitive nose.

Seems like the Sumatera forest fire is getting out of hand and causing a lot of air pollution in Malaysia. I'm not sure if we're killing ourselves or are we killing our planet. Not that the forest fire is deliberate action by anyone. The movie Day After Tomorrow says a lot about how ignorant we human beings are when it comes to the environment. We take the environment for granted as if it'll be around forever. I like the re-cycling advertisement where this woman was talking a lot about re-cycling with her peers. When one of them ask her to go re-cycling centre, she puts on a facial expression which you can tell that she's just paying lip service.

We've a responsibility towards the environment or should I say God's creation.

Huh? Early Retirement?

Sometime ago during lunch, my friends were talking about how good it is to be able to retire with lots of money. One of them said that his dream is to own a small resort in Thailand and to sit back and relax looking at the waves crash into the beach.

I, too, would like to “retire” early but not in that sense. I don’t like the term “retirement”. It sounds like you’re not going to do anything anymore, just waiting for the day to come. I see it as being financially free. Meaning not needing to depend so much on a job or on anyone to feed me and my family. It also means to me that I can work out of choice and not necessity. Being financially free doesn’t mean you need to be rich and have loads of money. It also means that you’ll have more time to do what you want to do and not get tied down to the obligation of a 9-to-5 job.

I think many people (including my friends) think that achieving retirement is the ultimate, and stop working at once, and start rotting 8-). It is, in some sense but definitely not the ultimate to me. For me, it’s the beginning of working life without the fear as the driver but joy. I don’t think God work in fear creating the whole universe in the 7 days.

Dilemma

Since SL started her new job, I’m the one to send NN to the babysitter. Today for some reasons, she cried all the way from our home to the babysitter’s place. When we arrived, I carried her and she stopped crying for a while and started wailing again as I began to approach the babysitter’s home.

I felt bad for having to send her there. The ideal scenario is for one of the parents to be with the child. Of course, in today’s society it’s quite tough to achieve that, especially with all the human wants. I use to tell SL to give me 8 years and she’ll be able to be a stay-home mum (and yes I do have a realistic plan to achieve that). Furthermore, that’s what she wants to be. She always ask me (jokingly) if she can stop work and stay home. Of course, that’s what I want too, especially if we want to have a 2nd child. Nowadays, babysitters’ fees are not cheap at all. Since none of our parents are available to help take care of NN during the day, we’re left no choice but to send her to a babysitter. Our hope is that when NN is slightly older, she would want to follow her grandmother during the day.

I’m very tempted to accept my uncle’s offer for me to help him run one of his company. Basically, he owns quite a number of companies. Due to his lack of trust of outsiders, he has called me numerous times to help him but I hesitated. Firstly, because it’s not my area of expertise. Secondly, I’m enjoying what I’m currently doing. The dilemma is he’ll be able to offer me much better than what I’m currently getting, and probably this will allow us to live on one income.

At the moment, I still have not yet decide. I’m just trusting God to show me what to do. This is life and it’s what we’ve to go through by the grace of God.

Fathers' Day

This is my 2nd Fathers’ Day. Time flies, memories are still so vivid when I was in the labour room with SL. And now, NN is almost 2 years old. Reflecting back at these 2 years, being a father has been quite a joy, no doubt there are times where I feel like pulling out my hair (literally!). My mum use to tell me so many times that you’ll know the feeling when you become a father. It’s true, it’s a feeling that’s hard to describe.

The toughest time as father for me is when NN contracted pneumonia at 6 months and has to be hospitalized for 3 days. My heart ached so much when seeing the doctor put in the needle for the drip into her little arm. She was wailing non-stop. Never have I felt such heartache before and even now writing about it still causes tear to well up a little in my eyes.

It’s a great responsibility to bring up a child, not only as a good human being but as a child of God too. Having said all these, it’s been great being a father! And hopefully I’ll be a 2nd time father soon. Ya, only God know when. 8-).

Sharing of Lives - 16/6

I had a great time sharing and laughing during our Wednesday LIFE group in BLC. We explored the book of Ecclesiates. Almost all of us identified with how King Solomon describe life as a whole. How meaningless it is at times, how bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Like the book of Job, ultimately we’ll need to look beyond all these, i.e. life is meaningless, life is full of sufferings, unfairness, and look towards God, otherwise it is really meaningless.

Power of Reconciliation

My wife and I first met at a church Christmas musical program. We remained friends for a few months before popping the question (not marriage proposal ok?). That was almost 12 years ago and now we’ve been married for 3 ½ years. These years have not been easy going, especially during our courtship.

We almost broke up when we were studying in the US back in 1996. It was due to some character flaw in me. However, we managed to pull through and our relationship got stronger since then and needless to say I’ve changed too! 8-)

I guess the both of us can’t do what we’ve done (her acceptance of me again and my character/attitude change) without the help of God. I called this the power of reconciliation. I was reminded again of this scenario when I was reading Bill Hybels’ book titled Fit to Be Tied. One of the key things mentioned to keep a relationship going is reconciliation. He said that we’ve to tell ourselves that our spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend is not our enemy when we’re in an argument or disagreement or quarrel (or whatever you want to call it) because often times we feel that way and it don’t help a bit for reconciliation to happen. He said that Jesus has reconcile us back to him, likewise we’ve to reconcile with one another. It saddens me how easy it is for people to quote irreconciliable differences as the reason for divorce.

Reconciliation is no doubt one of the weapons we’ve used to ward off any attacks on our relationship.

New at this...

Yeah, life together as One and beyond…that’s the title of our blog. Don’t get me wrong this is not a romance or cloud 9 kind of blog. This I hope will be a diarized version of my wife’s and my life together and beyond our lives. My friend & pastor reminded me to blog and I thought maybe I should start already. After all, I think it’ll be great to be able to look back at our lives 5, 10, 15 years down the road. Here's a start to a new way to diarize our lives...