Journey mercies

I took the day off today to spend it with Naomi. We both hate the picture above because we're both not the let's-take-silly-pictures type.

The L family has been amazing in caring for me since I moved to London and joined the church. And 12 year old Naomi and I have a special friendship going on.

Her father suggested last Sunday I should arrange to meet her this week while she's still on school holiday, so I took the Friday off to take her out. When we were headed to have lunch together, I initially thought we might feel awkward, but we quickly warmed up and started talking about anything and everything.

As we chatted it dawned on me what was great with having a friendship with a 12 year old is that I'm relearning again to trust people, opening myself up to embrace someone into my life and be embraced back. A reinforcement of a lesson I think the Lord has been trying to get me to learn this week.

After lunch we went window shopping and we were in a store that sold knick knacks. One section had dozens of kitchen timers in various shapes.

"Let's set them all to go off in 5 minutes time, go away and watch what happens!!!" whispered the most childish of us two. Me of course.

So we furtively set all the timers to go off in 5 minutes and then casually sauntered to the front while watching the next person who was going to walk near the timers. In a few minutes it started going off but disappointingly soft and without much commotion.

It has been a real blessing to have the L family to willingly and lovingly accept me as a family friend. And an even more blessing to have friendships where there's a special connection where you know you mean A LOT to one another.

Today, I felt a little torn in facing the reality that I am no longer fully Malaysian that my fellow Malaysian friends can ever understand the person I am today - with the experiences, influences and thought-process I've had to go through the last two years; and not being fully accepted by the country I am in today because I am different from them.

Whatever the Lord's reason is for me and for others going through this experience, I know it is good. We are in unique positions to achieve things people who fully identify themselves in one set of culture alone cannot achieve. It'll be interesting to see what it is when His time comes to reveal it.

Thank God Valerie is around this two weeks for holiday. We met up tonight together with another friend.

It was particularly very good to have Valerie around because she was my junior in secondary school, junior in college and junior at EyeBeeAm. I always felt a little bad helping her to get into Hell, but seems like she is surviving much better than I ever did.

To have someone so intricately weaved into my past as she is, is a real blessing and joy to have around in times when I feel just slightly bit lost.

Lost in the sense that my past is slowly ceasing to be a strong steering compass for me and I can no longer depend on it as a trusted repeatable pattern I can rely on to bet on a predicted outcome. My present is nothing like my past and my future depends too much on my present and so I feel the weight of doubt pressing on me.

"What if I make the wrong decision today, which will affect my tomorrows?" whispers Doubt.

But Hope and Faith continues to protect me. If only they can urge Boldness to stop peeking from that corner over there and join them.

I'm convinced on influencing her to resign and join me in the UK. I'll be a happy duck if she does.

Labels: Musings

When living with the Korean family, I didn't have to do much house cleaning for a whole year because my landlord's wife did most of it. With two young kids, it was a difficult thing to demand I clean the house up when the kids made most of the mess.

Now that I've moved to a house with 6 other peers, house cleaning is a thorny issue. We spent more than an hour discussing the best way to go about with the house cleaning.

I was against having a cleaner come in - extra cost is one thing, but living as a Christian community I felt there would be great lessons for us to learn in doing our own cleaning rather than have other people clean after us. But, extra cost is a main thing as well.

Anyway, being the vocal person that I am when it comes to firm convictions I have - right or wrong;.I was glad most were voting against having a cleaner that I didn't need to actually impose my opinions (too much).

But I also dislike talking the talk but not walking my talk. So for the last 2 weeks I went on a cleaning craze. My family knows I'm not the neatest person around but seriously, ever since I moved to 52, I've been super duper hard working. I'm fussy about my kitchen in the first place, so that helps. My room's a perpetual mess, but I think because my mom always had a tight control over the state of the kitchen, it kind of rubbed off and now I'm a monster in the kitchen. I think I got too worked up over cleaning though because the moment I step into the kitchen now I'm scanning around to find what has not been done.

To the point that someone made a comment yesterday about not complaining over a matter I actually didn't even get bothered about. I guess I've been complaining a little too much in the last two weeks.

I worked up a new cleaning rota with some very firm comments in it. The one thing I'm determined to break is the habit of shrugging the shoulders and saying, "Not my problem."

The Korean kids have always irked me to no end whenever I ask them to help clean up and they whine, "But I didn't do it." And I always give them my do-you-want-a-good-thrashing specialty look in response. And it drives me mad when I hear adults saying that.

It's not important to me that the house isn't super clean. It is important to me that people stop deflecting responsibility and yet can be quick to complain and criticize others for not keeping things clean.

Now, if they can only get their act together and let me go back being my lazy self.

My one year in Newcastle for my undergraduate was a truly truly blessed time. It was filled with so much rich friendships, despite how little of each other's lives we actually knew. As long as we connected with one another during that period, the friendship was special, no matter how briefly that connection was.

I met up with Christina in Hong Kong, who I got to know better when she visited Malaysia after my time in Newcastle. We had a great time catching up. She asked me what I would like to have for dinner and I immediately declared - hawker food! And she accused me of being like Ah Chan, who demanded the same thing last time she was in Hong Kong.




As she took me around err... one of the many Hong Kong markets (some place that sold lots of goldfish), we passed a stall that sold chow tau fu (smelly taufu) which smelt like rotten chicken. I made a face at it but when Christina told me how much Yvonne Chan looooooooves it I thought I would give it a go.

Labels: Friends, Travels

It took me a while to warm up to the folks in my office (about a year!) because my experience in the past of getting too involved with work took me down dangerous paths. I wanted to draw my lines very strictly and see my work as part-time and being a Christian as a full-time job.

But, I can live so much in the past (my experience in previous jobs) and the future (what I want to do with my life) at times that I neglect my present too much. And so the Lord has drawn me out of those bubbles to embrace my present.

In small ways, the Lord began to teach me how to open little by little gaps to embrace my colleagues and my job.

This week has been a time that reminded me how good the Lord's favour can be.

One of the more scarily intense Account Directors today very firmly and repeatedly praised me for the work I was helping him with in front of my manager, who beamed at me when he left. Inwardly, I sighed a sigh of relief because it was just yesterday I was moaning to a friend about how I seemed to be so busy with work, but at the end of the day feel like there's so little output.

A warm and friendly colleague who never fails to draw out a smile from me no matter what my mood may be was telling me about how he has heard glowing reports of me - which meant a lot when he is in a different department that never crosses paths with my department.

As I was intently focusing on work this afternoon to get some documents out of the way, my manager and some other colleagues were joking together when one of them from one corner drew me into it and said it must have been my fault. Another manager followed on with it and enthusiastically told me to admit to it, which led to some fun bantering. If I drew parallels to a high school class, it's like how a bunch of popular kids were having fun together and by drawing me into their bantering was like them giving an odd bean like me their seal of approval.

I can't help but feel a bit amazed that despite how little my conscious effort is into building working relationships, my apathy towards building any relationship at all with senior management and slowness with work, I still feel a warm and strong ray of sunshine falling over me in the office.

I cannot help but remember how astounded I was after my first real year working in EyeBeeAm, my manager had nominated me the Best Team Player award for the Malaysian team. I was more astounded when one of my team members patted me in the back and sincerely said I deserved it. My mind could only think of alllllllllll the late nights struggling to stay afloat with work, how when I first joined the team, my team leader had looked at me with baleful eyes and declared at the rate I was going with work I would not last at all. At the point I was given the award, I was still feeling worried that everyone is going to soon realise I'm a fraud and have no real ability to do the job they were entrusting me.

It still makes me wonder, why no matter how little aptitude I feel I have towards work, no matter how little effort I put into the politics of work relationships, people still always end up giving me the thumbs up.

Of course I know though. And here's the reason for my unplanned success - clinging helplessly and desperately on God when you are absolutely certain you're rubbish at your work; and praying for each individual colleague that crosses your path even despite having reasons not to like them.

It's amazing how the Lord blesses and how good the blessings can be.

It actually makes me want to scratch my head with puzzlement why people suffer and work so hard on their own strength when there's a 100% guaranteed returns method to achieve true joy and fulfillment and that is be trusting in God alone.

I envy peers in Malaysia who don't have to work too hard in managing their lives - especially those who still live with parents. Especially those who don't need to juggle cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, buying groceries, working, ironing, planning, etc.

But I also think I am extremely blessed for having to do all that and failing to do a good job so that I can try, try and try again.

It's amazing thinking how my parents coped when they had me and my siblings and it reminds me that things can only get potentially tougher. Especially with someone like me who gets interested in all sort of different things and the moment I feel like I got the knack of juggling things, I then want to add more things into my juggling routine.

Still, I cannot help but shake this feeling that this new season in my life, with my move to 52, the church house (previously lived in the church flat - there is a difference!) marking this new season, is some how going to be an extremely good season.

I feel it in my bones.

First weekend in my new flat, better than expected but even more busy in some ways! Six flatmates and the house being a drop-by-anytime-you-like place means lots of human traffic!

Surprised how easily I've fallen in love with my wee room - also known as the "storage room". Less space to clean, means easier for me to keep it tidier. And I'm a bit of a hypocrite. I've turned into a judgmental neat freak despite being a truly messy person and went tsk-tsking at the state of the carpets, toilets and kitchen.

Highlights of new house are that they have a grand piano in the living room AND a ping pong table beside having large sofas and TV - that's how big the house is for 7 people to live in it!