au revoir

having used up my quota of allotted space for photos on this blog i am now here instead.

come visit with me. stay for a bit. leave a message. become a friend.

for D and S: philemon 7

every place we go to God gives us some people who bear our burdens with us. we have found joy and consolation in your love, and our hearts have been refreshed.

last thanksgiving

in true chinese fashion, our turkey marathon begins the night before. 

HOM makes his farewell bird. we have old friends over. the talk flows easily, in Christ. the year has not been easy but it has been full. there is plenty to be glad for. it is a good night.

the table misses two places. the house misses one dog.

for a young man

so quickly, and not quickly enough. twenty years ago i did not dare think we would come to this. an impudence it would have been then to peer into now. even now i look in wonder at the child who has become a man. child of triumph and laughter and weight and worry and surprises good and bad my child of ineffable joy. we thank God for you. we thank God He keeps you. 

i bow my knees... eph 3:14-19.

d-day deliberation

i tell myself, only half desperately, this is it. the packers come next week. before i fully recover from jet lag before i truly and adequately de-clutter and right when i still feel thanksgiving-ish. we've been suspended between here and there for so long that this is a final tremendous relief. we've been itching to be doing for so long that i am now frozen in anticipation. aaargh about sums it up.

bling pursuit

one tapestry needle one candle flame a pair of tweezers one new hard cellphone case countless internet how-to's several memories of releasing subungual hematomas much neck-ache and an entire hour of tremendous eye-strain later, my iPhone has its own set of phone charms. yeah!

a tale of two cities

the iPhone battery drops 1% every 4 minutes in singapore.
the same battery was 82% last night and 76% tonight here in the states.
go figure.

in case you were wondering

i meet people from home. how have you been? what did you do in the past six years? the subtext says, have you been bored? how did you tolerate it, not doing anything much? i perfect my sweet non-commital smile-cum-murmur and move on.

for the record, the six odd years have been a gift. i have been well. i can't tell you exactly what i have been doing. nothing economically profitable, i'm afraid. some non-economic activity, with some joy and satisfaction and perhaps profit there. i've been writing living epistles, by God's grace. i've been building a home.

modern day samaria

HOM punctures a tire on the highway. as he waits for the auto recovery people, he meets:

• traffic police cars escorting the trucks into the container park, who do not stop for him.
• irate motorists in speeding vehicles narrowly avoiding him, who do not stop for him.
• a policeman who questions his presence at the roadside, and toddles off at punctured tire.
• a driver who stops and asks if he needs help, whose car has a malaysian plate.

the lesson to learn, he says, is:

• japanese cars shudder when trucks rumble past them.

i tell him the lesson is:

• malaysians make better wives.

breaching the fortress

i visit a friend in hospital.

there is an entire bank of gantries blocking access to the elevators. please register yourself first, the girl manning the gantries says. i am directed to another station, much like the bank tellers', to surrender my identity and my cellphone number. only now do they allow me to swipe my ID and to clear the gantries and summon the elevator.

wow. in the old days life was not so secure perhaps. it was certainly simpler.

excuse me, are you any good?

i tend to fall for rousing endorsements.

is this good? i ask the baker of her desserts. the best, she says unhesitatingly, and i return home with stuff i do not set out to buy. is this good? i ask the lady at the little bakery today. it depends on you, she says. some people like it.

what i say is, political correctness is the new name for lack of enthusiasm is the euphemism for poor business sense is a nice way of saying something else.

watson's

the sign says, buy 2 get 1 free. the cashier is sweetly apologetic. this is already at the reduced price, she explains, so the sign does not apply. you would have to pay the higher, canceled out price, in order to get the buy 2 get 1 free deal, even though the sign is there, and you have no way of knowing any better until you attempt to pay for it.

do you have a membership card? she asks as she rings me up.

the world's local bank

local singapore bank. automated answering system. for this, press that. for that, press some more. don't lose heart. male voice. australian accent. aussie!

what i say is, if you have to be tortured by bad accents, it should at least be your own.

home, ver 2.0

HOM and i check in to the hotel again. this is our third set of rooms in the same place in a little over a month. our rooms increase in altitude with each incarnation. quite clearly, we are moving up the loyalty ladder. do you feel like this is home? HOM asks me. you bet. 

J1 calls this his third home. there's his home home, there's the army barracks, and there's here, where he bunks with his dad every time business brings HOM here.

song of love

i visit with an old couple. 

he is quiet. she is talkative. he is slow. she darts. he is deliberate. she finishes your sentences for you. he butters her bread for her breakfast. she cooks a full meal for just two. he clears the table. she shares her vegetables with him. be careful, they tell each other. the road is slippery. she nurses him without question in sickness. he falls apart when she falls ill.

love learns to be patient and kind after fifty years.

priorities

my mother has learnt, late, to navigate the online world. she keeps in communication with her vast social network via facebook. she has an elago pen that keeps her ipad screen free of fingerprints. she has a bilingual device, which is more than i have. i show her how to upload a photo onto fb.

good, she says. now show me how to make those little circles with the smiling faces inside them. 

mrs. parkinson's law - c. northcote parkinson (1968)

mr parkinson in his element delivering snide digs at the institution of modern courtship marriage the home family life and the aftermath. surprisingly sharp and to the mark too, which one expects not to find in a book written when one was a toddler. the only problem is he takes seven chapters to actually get to mrs p's law, and i get there to find it is a variant of the second law of thermodynamics. his own law was better. but as a study in domestic science this book is a delightful rip.

the years of man are three score and ten, but the psalmist forgot to add that a man may be married for fifty of those years, and even married to the same woman.

modern travel

HOM and i do a count of the electronic devices traveling with us. i have four and he has five. we have ipod ipad iphone and several other alphabets as well, and we do not count the shaver, which technically is electric not electronic. frankly, if the check-in luggage did not turn up we would be fine as long as we could still get connected. 

sands of time

still here. still leaving soon. another magnificent autumn.

He gives me thorns and rocks and rains and strings them together

with joys and pleasures and glimpses of glory.

streams in the desert

i am making a way in the desert

and streams in the wasteland,

- isa 43:19

the wasteland and the desert are not easily recognized, i learn.

i wait for the unmitigated sorrow and undiluted pain

and forget God plants flowers in the arid places

and gives sweet waters with the bitter.

thank God He does.