Mankind

"I love mankind - it's people I can't stand!" Linus Van Pelt in Peanuts

I Need Inspiration!!!

It is becoming an increasing challenge to keep this blog updated because it is more difficult to find blog-worthy stuff to blog about. Life after the army is much quieter and things are beginning to settle down. Though I did get a letter stating that I will be on standby for mobilisation. The lousy army can't leave me alone for three months.

I am not complaining, I am doing ok. Waking up, going for breakfast, reading the papers, going to work, coming back home to relax. My job gives me a sense of challenge and satisfaction, my boss is good and my colleagues are friendly with none of that office politics crap which I want nothing to do with. I have a roof over my head, enough money to use and provide for myself. Things are falling into a sort of a timetable and I am fairly satisfied with how I spend each day although I still think I don't leave enough time for God, that is a constant struggle.

This so called "lack of inspiration" in my life have highlighted all the mundane stuff I often take so for granted in my life. Yes, life in the commandos was high-key and exciting filled with challenges and milestones. Thanking God for giving me the strength to complete my 72km route march is one thing but what about giving thanks for the mundane, your everyday life? Now I have started giving thanks for having the ability to support myself, having a good job, having good friends and a loving family to look out for me. Now I thank God for the mundane.

Cell Group

I was having lunch with my boss on Thursday and the “lunch table talk” eventually when to church (my boss is a Christian). He ask me whether I was part of a cell group in my church, I told him that I was part of one and I am now looking for joining a working adults cell group in my church. Then he said something that shocked me especially when it was coming from an elder Christian. He told me that he was a cell leader before and from the perspective he had as a cell leader, he is convinced that the cell group system was not good for Christians and warn me not to get too involved. I was quite taken aback by that remark because I often thought that being part of a cell group is considered good for a Christian.

I could not shake that remark off for the rest of the day. I got to thinking, how did a healthy church going Christian come to this conclusion? Looking at how my boss practices his faith, it would not be illogical to think that he is currently part of or even leading a cell group. But here he is criticizing the every system I have come to see as one of the foundations of being Christian. Did not the early church of the apostles work very much the same way, meeting in small groups eating, worshipping and fellowshipping together?

Then I started to look for examples of Christians who did well alone. Joseph was one example. He spent most of his young life alone but he kept the faith and was used mightily by God in Egypt. I am not saying that we are all Josephs by any stretch of the imagination, but it does lend weight to my boss' arguments. I also started thinking about my experiences in cell groups, most of which is not good. When I think about times in COR with the El-Shaddai cell group, I think I spent more time just trying to fit into the social circle than learning and talking more about Christ and if that is the case the cell group is nothing more than a social club.

Maybe it is just me, but perhaps going alone has its merits. I am relieved of the pressure and distraction of having to fit into the social mold of a cell group. I am not saying that cell groups are bad; I am saying that perhaps cell groups though good for a majority of Christians may not be good for all. My boss chose to go it alone in his walk with Christ, I just might be tempted to do the same.

Chad Vader

A while ago I posted a couple of Star Wars fan films on this blog, namely "Troops" and "Chad Vader". These films have considerable quality, are funny and are done by super dedicated fans of Star Wars with nothing better to do. What I did not realize is that one of these films I posted happen to be the first of a series, so here's presenting "Chad Vader" episode 2 and 3.

P.S. You have to have knowledge of some of Darth Vader's more memorable quotes in Star Wars to understand some of the jokes but nonetheless enjoy!

Episode 2



Episode 3

Open Road

Last week during a meal with Audrey, I asked her a very unusual question. I asked her if I was an approachable person, and she in all the honesty which I have grown to rely on and appreciate, said, "no". Then I asked her if I should change that, that I should make myself more approachable, she said that if I did I would not be "me" anymore, adding that I was a guy who prefers to be distant and thats just the way it is.

Honestly, I was quite uncomfortable with what Audrey said. Not the part that I was unapproachable(I was comfortable that way), but that I should not try to change the way I am. Because I fear that being distant and keeping people at arms length will give people a wrong impression on me. It already has in some cases.

Though I must say I do have a few friends who I am very close to and pour my heart out to in certain times and I take this opportunity to thank them (you know who you are). They are the ones who chose to look past my distant self and approach me to extend the hand of friendship and for that I am grateful. :)

But I guess Audrey was right, I should not make apologies for who I am. God made me, fearfully and wonderfully for His purpose and I should not care about people's impressions on me be it good or bad. That is their problem not mine.

Someone once said that life was like walking on an open road. There are some people you will pass without notice, there are some who you will stop to talk to for a while before going on your separate ways. Then there are some that will walk with you on a certain length of your journey and then turn a different direction when you reach a crossroad and yet there are a few who will take your hand and walk with you together to the end. And if I walked this "open road" being the way I am and not trying to be someone I am not. I will have no regrets, I am ready.

Violence

One of the many things making news recently was the comment made by the pope about Islam. The furor started when the pope quoted Byzantine emperor Manuel Palaiologos the second. The quote was

"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The pope later apologized... well sort of. He said and I quote

"I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages in my address which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims"

Note the careful choice of words in the pope's statement. He is not sorry for what he said, he is sorry that people just happened to be offended by what he said. It is like shooting somebody and being sorry that the person just happen to be in the path of the bullet you fired. In other words, the pope is sticking to what he said. He still believes that Islam is built on violence.

But after all that is being said you would think that muslims around the world outraged by the pope's comments will set out and prove him wrong right? Well... no. This excerpt from an article in the Associated Press says it all.

"Palestinians wielding guns and firebombs attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday, following remarks by Pope Benedict XVI that angered many Muslims.

In a phone call to The Associated Press, a group calling itself the "Lions of Monotheism" claimed responsibility for those attacks, saying they were carried out to protest the pope's remarks in a speech this week in Germany linking Islam and violence.

Later Saturday, four masked gunmen doused the main doors of Nablus' Roman and Greek Catholic churches with lighter fluid, then set them afire. They also opened fire on the buildings, striking both with bullets."

The irony seems to be lost on them. Here is somebody linking your religion with evil and violence so you decided to respond with violence? Did they ever think that there is another way to protest the pope's remarks other than fire bombing churches? Perhaps hold a peaceful rally or something like that? And what was the pope thinking? Did he think he could get away with a comment like that? Or did he think his statements about Islam would be proven right? Is he right? A bit of food for thought.

Chivalry

Yup, chivalry is dead, but I did not murder it. And it is definitely not Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with a candlestick. (Sorry, couldn't resist. Hahahaha!!!)

While listening to a certain morning radio show I heard the DJs bemoaning the death of chivalry and invited people to SMS their views. One of the SMS messages they read (obviously from a woman) lambasted men for their bottomless egos and called all men MCPs (Male Chauvinist Pigs). I thought to myself, "chivalry is one thing, but calling all men chauvinistic and pigs? Who is the chauvinist now? Definitely not the gender starting with the alphabet 'M'. " Blanket judgments on people just because of a few bad experiences is hardly fair. Just because I know a few annoying people means that all the people I meet are annoying. And people who lay blanket judgments annoy me. :P

But I do know of a few women who try to have their cake and eat it too. They expect to be equals with men(nothing wrong with that) and given preferential treatment at the same time (something wrong with that). I once heard a lady friend (who was in a relationship) of mine commenting, "what's mine is mine, what's his is also mine." I won't comment on the outcome of the relationship the end result should be quite obvious with that kind of mentality, but these are the kind of people that are killing chivalry. People like this turn men off from chivalry.

I guess if we want to resurrect chivalry (if at all possible) women must realize that chivalry is not an entitlement, it is a privilege. Being a women does not entitle you to chivalry, instead, be a woman that a man be can chivalrous to, and feel good about it later. Maybe recognizing that might be the first step.

Sin and Sinners

Okay, I had a case of food poisoning and didn't go to church last weekend. I spent half my day at the toilet and the other half at the net, since I had nothing else to do but to wait for my next trip to the toilet. I stumbled upon something very disturbing. It is called the "God Hates Fags." An anti gay movement base in America founded by Fred Waldron Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church. The video provides an idea of what they are all about.



Now there is no doubt about what the bible says about homosexuality, it is wrong, it is a sin and a sin that goes unforgiven will damm you to hell. But I think there is a critical error in judgement on the part of Mr Phelps. I believe we have to separate the sin from the sinner. I read this article in one of my books that I think serves as a good counterpoint and also serves to make my point. It is titled "No Right To Scorn

I happened to be in Washington, D.C., on a day when 300,000 gay rights activists gathered there to march. The October day was chilly, and gray clouds spit raindrops on the column of marchers snaking through the capital. As I stood on the sidelines directly in front of the White House, I watched a rather remarkable confrontation. About forty policemen, many of them mounted on horses, had formed a protective circle around a small group of Christian protesters. Thanks to their huge orange posters featuring vivid renditions of hellfire, the tiny knot of true believers had managed to attract most of the press photographers. Despite being outnumbered by the gays 15,000 to 1, the protesters were yelling inflammatory slogans at the marchers.

Faggots go home!" their leader screamed into a microphone, and the others took up the chant: "Faggots go home, faggots go home. ..." When that got tiresome, they switched to "Shame-on-you-for-what-you-do." Between chants the leader delivered brimstone sermonettes about false priests, wolves in sheep's clothing, and the hottest fires in hell (which, he said, were reserved for sodomites and other perverts).

"AIDS, AIDS, it's comin' your way" was the last taunt in the protesters' repertoire, and the one shouted with the most enthusiasm. I, along with the protesters, had just seen a sad procession of several hundred persons with AIDS — some in wheelchairs, some with the gaunt and sunken faces of concentration-camp survivors, some covered with purplish sores. Listening to the chant, I could not fathom how anyone could wish that fate on another human being.

The gay marchers themselves had a mixed response to the Christians. The rowdy ones blew kisses or retorted, "Bigots! Bigots! Shame on you!" One group of lesbians got a few laughs from the press by yelling in unison to the protesters, "We want your wives!"

Among the marchers were at least 3000 who identified themselves with various religious groups: the Catholic "Dignity" movement, the Episcopalian group "Integrity," and even a sprinkling of Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists. Over 1000 marched under the banner of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), a denomination that professes a mostly orthodox theology except for its stance on homosexuality.

This last group had a poignant reply to the beleaguered Christian protesters: they drew even, turned to face them, and sang, "Jesus loves you, this we know, for the Bible tells us so."

The abrupt ironies in that scene of confrontation stayed with me long after I left Washington. On the one side were "righteous" Christians defending pure doctrine. On the other were "sinners," many of whom openly admit to homosexual practice. Yet one side spewed out hate and the other sang of Jesus' love.

I think its time for us Christians to wake up. The very same gospel we use to preach the love and peace of Christ is being used to preach hate and scorn. Although I pray that the gays will one day see the light and turn from their homosexual ways, I also pray that the Westboro Baptist Church and others like it will also see the light, separate the sin from the sinner and once again preach the gospel the way it is meant to be preach. They are the ones doing the real damage, not the gays

Paris Match

"Remember how we started? Remember how we found that feeling?" Sound familiar Dom? Haha! Dom was curious about my MSN nick and I like to take that chance to introduce to you one of my favourite jazz outfits named "Paris Match" based in Japan. They were introduced to me by Stanley, my army friend.

I have never been a fan of Japanese music, even if it was jazz, but there is something about Paris Match that attracted me to their music. They portray a consistent image, naming all of their albums by numbers, avoiding putting too many pictures of themselves in their album prefering to use landscape and imagery instead and they do excellent covers of English pop classics like "Arthur's Theme" and "Lets Stay Together"(My personal favourite), provided you can excuse their bad English.

It seems that whatever they do, be it Bossa Nova, Jazz etc... Their style is still recognizable, they never let the genre of music they are doing consume their creative licence. They have a "Paris Match style." Which blends in seemlessly with any genre of music they do and speaks to their consistency. All in all they are a mature, laid back and musically and technically one of the best bands I have seen of any genre. Too bad you can't get their CDs here, I had to ask a friend to buy it from Korea but there is always P2P file sharing. Hahaha! :P

Here are a list of their albums
1) Volume One
2) PM2
3) Type III
4) Song For You (Christmas Album)
5) Quattro
6) b5 (Flat 5)
7) 5th Anniversary (Special)
8) After Six

PS. Here their site http://www.jvcmusic.co.jp/parismatch/index2.html (its in Japanese)

Jakarta

I admit I was guilty for not posting in this blog that I spent the week that past in Jakarta, for job purposes. It was an educational trip, the traffic was well... I can't comment on the traffic without cursing and swearing so it is best not to. It became immediately apparent that I had to pick up Bahasa Indonesia fast considering the fact that I would be there quite often from now on. Rarely anybody speaks a word of English. Not even in what was suppose to be an international airport, and added to that, what little Bahasa I know is Bahasa Melayu which most of the locals do not understand. So that was for first impressions

On a side note before leaving for Jakarta last week, I wanted to inform my friends about my trip through SMS. I tried spelling Jakarta on the "all powerful" T9 mobile dictionary every handphone on earth has but I simply could not. Jakarta was simply not in the dictionary. I remembered that the word was spelled J-A-K-A-R-T-A, but my phone would have none of it, saying that I was wrong and had to spell the word in manually.

So I thought, "ok, I must have remembered the spelling wrongly." Therefore I turned on my computer and logged on to the "really all powerful" "dictionary.com" and typed in J-A-K-A-R-T-A and lo and behold, my spelling was right. Jakarta simply doesn't exist in my phone. So I got curious and tried to input words like "Singapore", "Taiwan", "Malaysia" into my phone, all of it was there except "Jakarta". The capital of the most populous Musilm nation in the world, you would have thought that at least earned you a place in the dictionary, even if its a phone dictionary.

Indonesia as a nation has been through a lot, terror bombings, tsunamis, earthquakes and fickle minded volcanoes that can't decide went to erupt. But there were no signs of that in Jakarta, it was business as usual. It definitely speaks volumes of the peoples' will to survive and make a living for themsevles. But I can't help but feel that the people in Jakarta are also in denial of whats happening in their country, turning a blind eye to tragedies and trying to go about their business. This is a country that needs God and definitely needs a lot of prayer, though I admit I have no particular burden for Indonesia I do acknowledge the nation's needs and will not hesitate to put my hand to the plow if required.