Can you see what I see?

I’m back, it’s been a ‘long journey’ in Brisbane. Well, Lisa and I are exhausted- yes guess the study is taking a toll on us. Ever thought studying is suffering? I do, for what I’m going through at least-the search for a roof, disagreements with my Sups, injuring my knee, having prob understanding what I read and then the software I use for referencing gave me nightmares, issue of our flat tenants moving out back home, then this fever-throat-cough. You know, that’s the deal that I ‘signed’ when I came to know Him. There are times of happiness and time of stress :)
That aside, for my friends who knows me and do not know Jesus, please spare me a few moments to introduce this friend who is actually in our (lisa & I) triangular relationship. I cannot let this day pass without letting you know this very special friend in our lives.

Part 1
This is a true story- One day, a woman caught committing a wrong act (sin) and was brought to my friend. "Teacher (friend), this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law Moses (10 commandements) commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?" My friend said to them, "Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her." But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and my friend was left alone with the woman standing before him. He said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And He said, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."
No one is sinless, including you and I. My friend(Jesus) does not condemn you and in fact forgives you and me- yes no matter how ‘bad’ we are. When I heard someone mentioned about writing ‘wills’ in case there are some unexpected events in life, it is crucial for you to know this moment that when you accept Jesus into your heart and take Him as your Saviour- you do not need a will to get into heaven, He accepts you for who you are! Then, do you still choose the life you are living now or one that is full of promise?

Part 2 For those who know Him
Well that’s in John 8:3-11
I just felt this speaking strongly to me- I’d like to share this-
Later in chapt. 9 Jesus cured a blind man. The Pharisees questioned him and asked his parents to testify that their son had been born blind. Again they asked him and he answered, "Whether he (Jesus) is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see." John 9:25

I was blind, now I see- We were once blind, now that we can see, let not the world affect your sight. I do get caught up with busyness, and at the end of the day I ask myself whether the things I do is meaningful. I do hope you can find that meaning in the things you do. Bring glory to His name!

Initially I wanted to start a thanks-giving entry, I’ll still do a short one
Thank God for His love and 'gifting' Lisa to me.
Thanks Lisa for being such a special wife, encouraging me when I’m down, doing so many things for the well-being of the house and whose truly a great testimony for all. I love you!
Yes, for those whose prayed for us and show so much concern, thanks to you!
And finally you, for it must be in His time that you read this and I know Jesus loves you for who you are!

Blessed time in all you do!

Happy endings...

Today Joerg and I got the chance to sleep in, after a week of squeezing our brain juices dry trying to write up our lit reviews... our colloquiums are in less than two months' time! Anyway, these two weeks have been challenging as we had been trying to wrap our brains around all the readings and organise the ideas... structural development theory?? Or social cognitive theory?? How to synthesize the findings of different research papers?? Etc etc... That's why we always look forward to the weekend as we put the papers aside and venture into the great outdoors.

This weekend has been quite enjoyable, starting from yesterday (Friday) evening, when we celebrated Teik Hong's birthday over pizza at our place. Teik Hong bought 10 pizzas (in 10 different flavours - that's the DOMINO'S effect!), with drinks, and there were 11 of us in all, so, 1 pizza-pie per person on average. More accurately, I think each person had about 5 slices each. (We initially had a leftover of 1 1/2 pizzas, but at the time of writing this, it's down to 2 slices, as we polished off the rest of it during lunch today with Norman & Vania.) Back to last night: Just when TH thought we were all done with dinner, and was distracted from having spilled the beans from Bill & Shau's beanbag and trying to put them back - no joke, can you imagine?? - we presented him with a huge birthday cake. It was great to see his reaction! At the end of cake and ice cream, we took the party over to Alvin & Vania's office, where the boys played pool, and the girls caught up with trashy mags and played some board game which I don't remember the name of. It was just a night of great fellowship and fun!

Today we spent a nice evening with the kangaroos in Wacol, which is one of the suburbs inland of Brisbane, just 20 minutes by train. I had seen some roos lounging around in the grassy areas between the Darra and Wacol train stations on my journeys out to Ipswich, and told Joerg about it, so over this week Joerg planned for us to make a trip out there to have a look - instead of having to spend $18 per person to visit a wildlife sanctuary, heehee... And we were rewarded! For the price of $2.40 per pax for the whole journey there and back, Joerg, Mei, and myself got to see a small group of kangaroos hanging out and having dinner in a field over at Wacol, just 5 minutes' walk from the train station. It was great! They were reasonably happy to have us observe from about 50 metres away, but would start bounding away if we got too close. All in all, I think we saw 1 big roo and 8 smaller roos around the place. We also saw lots of roo pooh, so thank goodness we had our walking gear. And the mosquito repellent.

To end off the trip, we took the train one station down back to Darra, and headed over to a little Vietnamese eatery nearby; of the three different dishes we ordered, all were sumptuous! We're definitely going back there again. And bringing friends too. Real value for money!

All in all, this weekend was a happy ending to a somewhat stressful week. We had a little situation crop up back in Singapore, but we're trusting God for the outcome... after all that He's seen us through, we believe that He will make it work out in His time. We can already see some signs of a solution; just continuing to pray His will be done. Will share the good news when it comes! :)

More than you expect

It’s unusually early to wake up at 6am on a Saturday morning…yet, that was what we did to catch the rising tide, and spent an exciting day at Bribie Island. It was the good old fishing PLUS getting to drive our own (rented) tinnie – a small, simple boat made of aluminium – to some of the fishing spots around this marine-rich island. We did see dolphins making merry, stingrays and fish schools while on the boat. Expecting more than the usual shore fishing trips, I was hoping we’ll have feast for dinner. In the end, we had mixed haul of a tailor, flathead, shovelnose ray, an unidentified fish and a sand crab. We only took home the tailor, which we steamed for dinner… nothing like your own catch for a meal!

Like life, this trip to Bribie was very much like experiencing God’s providence in our lives – we were expecting more, and we did experience more, but not in the way we expected. Lisa and I prayed for good fellowship with these not-so-new-found friends and the friendship’s been growing. No doubt we were caught up wanting more (fishes)- we did get more than we wanted, God provided the warmth and fellowships :) This fellowship started with the frequent daily dinner we had together, it’s the doing life together that’s extra special. Weekends with such activities are always good but weekdays with the books and neverending journals are :( haha!

Church is special today especially with singing "Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)" a newer version of Amazing Grace…. Not the William Wilberforce version it’s like back to the child like faith that I felt before, and that the ‘world’ is taking us away.

My chains are gone

I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy reigns

Unending love, Amazing grace

Go on and sing out to the Lord!

Amazing love…..

How sweet :)

ps. Pictures courtesy of Mei... thanks Mei!

Very slo..ow afternoon

For those who are checking back frequently on this blog: Joerg and I take turns to write our entries, and we decided not to post too often, otherwise we won't be able to keep up! Apologies to those who are used to a new entry every day... I think for us, you can expect one new entry at least once a week or once a fortnight!

I'm writing this in the middle of a hot afternoon, in my office. I have reached a mental block on my work, so hopefully this will 'loosen' my cortex a little bit. This will be one of my more frivolous entries...

Well somewhere along the way we seem to have bypassed Spring and headed straight into Summer. Just to give you an idea- it was 33 degrees yesterday. What a scorcher! Right now we're sitting on a more-or-less comfortable 25 degrees. We've given up our morning walks to Uni- we wouldn't be able to make it up all those hills! We try to make the hikes back home in the evening so that at least there's still that bit of exercise. So for the past two weeks it's been a cruise down to UQ, which is not bad, and takes all of 10 minutes. A bonus for us last week was seeing a dolphin playing in the waters of the Brisbane river. That's really rare, and Joerg reckons it must have wandered in together with the tide. That was the one and only time we saw it; been looking out over the last few days but no sightings again.

We're well and truly down to serious stuff with our research... no playing around! Last night poor Joerg stayed up til 2.45am to finish what he could of his literature review, believing that he had a meeting with his supervisors today. I had hit the sack by 12.30am! This morning he got up at 8am and continued to chip away at it. Thank God, he managed to do most of it (which probably constitutes 10% of the whole thesis) and submitted it by 12pm as directed. We rushed in to Uni at 1pm, only to find out that his supes only wanted the written work, not a face-to-face meeting, so that they could discuss his work next Monday! Anyway it was good that that was done, so now he can enjoy the rest of the day, and the weekend as well (read: "Gone fishing").

What was I doing? I have to confess, this week has not been one of my better weeks. Now that I actually have to put the readings down and start pulling all the threads of ideas together into a comprehensive review, my motivation has flown out the window. I love to read, but ask me to synthesise ideas and what it all means, and I'm lost for words. I need at least 5000 of them (words, I mean) right now! I guess I'll chip away at it slowly, and just put it all down now, organise the ideas later. Must remember Who I'm doing this for!

Am looking forward to this evening... a relaxing time at Blacon St. with the rest of our Oz family. SL is making laksa! But before that, hope to get more stuff done so that I can enjoy the evening guilt-free. Tomorrow it looks like we're on for Montville... Fred, I'll take pictures so that you can enjoy it as well, from your laptop!

Alrighty, time to get on with it. 1 hour more. Jia you, jia you!!