Making others worry

Tomorrow at 1 pm is the deadline is for packing to be completed to move to the new office. I only managed to start packing yesterday and today I still tried to do some works instead of focusing to pack. This made my boss and several colleagues to worry about me.

The admins started to remind me yesterday. Then my mentor looked for me several times to help and I declined because I was busy. Only in the afternoon, he managed to hold on me and helped me onto some of my part. Then my best friend in office said that I would need 3-4 hours to pack of which my reply is just nice since tomorrow I plan to come at 9 am - what an arrogant answer from me. My neighbor in office was surprised that I did not look panic. Instead of heeding to her reminder, I took it as compliment.

What I failed to see is the impact of my bad habit of last minute. Or perhaps I ignore them purposely. For example, my neighbor in office had a dream where she and me and few people were controlled by something and we were trapped in darkness. It is a good bridge as we are all controlled by sin if we do not get the light who is in Jesus.

I also missed to do important stuffs such as preparing insurance document for my wife and calling CPF about HPS, calling a shop about our bumper for baby cot, and taking care of the order from Amazon. All of those I missed.

So I pray that God may change my heart of stone and give a heart that regrets and is willing to change.

Excited even when things are difficult

Recently I think about my counsellor’s suggestion to think on how I can stop and pause when I am excited. The reason is that when I am excited I tend to go on for long period of time in doing that when I am actually already busy with others and end up neglect those more important things. I mentioned to my counsellor that if I can pause such as take a deep breath and acknowledging both my desires and my responsibilities, I can re-prioritize and make decision with bearing the consequences in mind.

The problem is that how I can stop. One of the ways that work is the pomodoro technique where we give a small break every 25 minutes. Well it works for me but the frequency is perhaps less than half. Most of the time I either forgot to set the time or ignore when the 25 minutes is up.

Today I receive different perspective on this. My best friend in office asked me what if I am someone who tends to be excited? Do I have to deny myself which may end up to another crisis such as mid-life crisis asking who I really am? How about maintaining the excitement and deepning it to maintain the excitement when things are difficult. What he observed is that I am excited to do or go to certain destination. But when I reach that milestones of destination and see things are difficult, I will reverse the direction almost in the opposite instead of going to the direction that I wanted to go before. In other word, I can be excited, but excitement with grit. Just like this blog. When things are difficult such as time is running out like now, I tend to give up. So thank God that today I still managed to maintain the excitement to do 3x 5 minutes of duolingo and this 5 minute blog. And may I be reminded of what my friend says: we can be confident if we have a strong backing. So if God is with us, what are we afraid of? Perhaps we don’t feel afraid and feel more of ashamed or embarassment or something else, but perhaps down in our heart, at least in my heart, there is a fear that forgot that our God is bigger than anything.

The Case For Christ

Written on 25 Nov 2017

Today I got the chance to watch the Case for Christ in the cinema. It is based on Lee Strobel’s journey captured in the book with same title to prove that Jesus’ resurrection did not exist scientifically.

Initially I thought that it will be purely on the mind with all the arguments. It turns out there are many emotional aspects as well. That reminds me that we, human, are integrated in terms of mind and emotion.

It was inspiring to see someone who truly seeks the truth. Many of us especially me often excuse myself of not studying by saying we just need to trust. Well it is true that salvation is by grace alone. But each of us is granted with different talents. And if we are educated scientifically, there are no reasons that we should bury them and just ignore our ability and training to ask scientific questions.

Some of the questions were how reliable is the Bible? How can we trust Jesus’ resurrection that was told with different details in the four Gospels? How did we know that the 500 over witnesses did not lie? How did we know that Jesus really died? Why did Jesus need to die?

Another thing I learnt is perseverance. When Leslie Strobel decided to follow Jesus, she experienced strong opposition from Lee Strobel that she felt like giving up. But the suggestion from her fellow believer is this: God will make things beautiful in His time and our part is to be patient and keep asking God to give us a heart of flesh and not a heart of stone that does not want to see the truth.

Start Packing in Office

This Thursday afternoon my office will move to new building. Although the move has been announced long time ago, I only started to pack today, and around 15 minutes only. So practically there are still many things that I need to pack.

As happened many times before, I underestimated the time needed to do something. This morning I expected to give only 15 mins for briefing our test engineers to do something. It turns out that it needs 45 mins in the morning and another 45 mins in the afternoon to make up on what I did not cover in the morning. Also, there is a section meeting that takes 1.5 hour in the afternoon, something that I forgot to account today.

So I targeted 2x25 mins for packing today and only realized 15 mins. And that 15 mins was the last 15 mins I was in the office today. Well, it is still something to be thankful of since I was thinking to do something else in my last 15 minute in office.

Also I wanted to do some calling about insurance but did not manage to do so. I also have not started typing the review of the IEEE paper of which deadline is today.

Another underestimating effect that I experience today is that our helper is not feeling today. So I left home later than usual so that I can arrange the lunch delivery for my grandma and our helper. I also went down to Sheng Shiong after dinner to buy some breakfast tomorrow together with bread and Chye Sim in case they need them tomorrow. That takes time as well.

Well, I can’t change the past. What I can only do is tomorrow. I need to remember that there are many commitments that I have already made including meeting different friends for the next three days. I also need to remember that this coming Sunday is the 10 km run. So I need to be careful in the activities. One thing I am grateful today is the fact that I can let go the beginning of day and end of day of manufacturing build support since my colleague is there and objectively there is no need for me to call in. That was a good decision.

Franchising Church

Today my previous pastor becomes the guest pastor for today’s service. It was great to listen to him again and on how he confirmed his calling to serve in Indonesia as a lecturer in a seminary. He then shared on how he had been to different churches in different part of Indonesia since he came back to Indonesia this year’s March.

He said, it is a sad thing to see there are more and more “church franchise”. That means there are a group of people who try to copy paste the success of a particular church which has different culture than the local culture. An example is on how the Western church has segmentized the congregations into several services such as the traditional service, the normal service, and the contemporary service in the name of satisfying different needs or even in the name of evangelism.

The danger is that we stop thinking the moment we relies to much on the franchise. Perhaps for food it is still possible as we want the consistency of the taste. But when it comes to human, it is not wise to force a certain system with cultural baggage to be implemented. Even if it starts with copy paste, it requires for an adaption to the local context.

Also, I learnt that a lot of us, both church goers and not, tend to like the idea of harmony. But somehow we stick to be with people with the same background and we are not comfortable to be with those who are different than us. So in other words, we are not ready to pay the cost for realizing those harmony image.

The suggestion is to have a mental image on the impact of the harmony. Also, we need to have a common goal to pursue, a goal where we can prioritize it over our differences. This reminds me not just for church but for my office. We have many talented people but often we can’t be in harmony and so wasted unnecessary efforts. How good it is if we can have the same purpose and putting aside our differences. How to do it? Let’s start from the smallest which is for me to learn to be less last minute to increase the quality of work according to what is needed.

Having my bag trapped in MRT

Last Tuesday I went back home as usual from office. I stood near the opposite door of the door I entered in Queenstown to give way for next passengers. Dover is a unique station and so the door just behind my back was opened. Somehow a part of my bag’s strap went out and the door was closed.

My immediate reaction was just to watch and then pretend nothing happened after an unsuccessful attempt to pull it. When the stations reach Clementi I tried again and it’s still not working, my bag was still trapped. So I became anxious but didn’t have any solution as we can’t speak to the driver.

I tried to go to the nearest communicator to find there is someone standing to it. So I went back again. Then one person gave the advice to me to call the whatsapp number on the sticker pasted in mrt. But no one picked up. So at the end I decided to press the emergency button. But because the staff also could not do much, I waited until the end of the train where the door will be opened when going back. It was fortunate that there is train fault that the train stopped at Joo Koon instead of Tuas Link.

Lesson learned, things can happen anytime. And during those time, it’s very hard to pray. Thankfully we have God who is not passive. He is in control and will help us even when we do not remember or know how to ask for help. And somehow we will be able to go through it with His grace.

What else make it hard to write

This is my second post this month. I did not manage to write again for the past two days.

I forgot why I did not write on Tuesday night although I had something to write about - the experience of having my bag trapped by the mrt door in Dover that caused me to press the emergency button and had to go to Joo Koon for the door to open again.

As for yesterday, I did not write because I was too angry for myself. Because I was busy replying e-mail, I did not check the message from my wife resulting me miss the train where she was in. How stupid I am! That’s what I told me myself. How could you do that, another scoulding to myself. Thank God that I managed to handle that strong emotion and accepted the fact that it took time to cool down just the way my red ear needed time to recover on last Tuesday due to the nervousness and embarrassment of my trapped bag. So at the end I did not write yesterday night.

Today I almost did not write because I am too tired. At 9.30 pm I was too sleepy that I decided to sleep for a while. It was because I woke up again that I finally can start writing again.

I also need to remind myself that I am not doing this for quota or for avoiding the lowest record of number of writing. But let this be one of the way for me to stop and to reflect my excitements and re-prioritize.

Too Busy To Write

Again, I feel that I am too busy to write. This is my first post in November even when there are so many things that I have learned this month. For example, by God’s grace, I learnt a lot during my trip to Bangkok earlier this month. Also, there is re-org happening in my department. I had a wonderful cell group session last Saturday. At the same time, I know some people who are struggling. My counseling continues well and asks me to rethink the way I prioritize. My office is going to move soon to the new building. In short, there are so many things that are happening. But somehow I feel I am too busy to write.

What I was trying to say was perhaps that I do not want to slow down. When I do not even want to spend 5 minutes to write, that means I do not want to slow down in any way that I am doing. I want to keep doing things, switching to another task right after I am done. I do not want to pause and write my thoughts, my worries, my exhaustions, or the things I am grateful of.

After this, I need to write feedback to five of my colleagues. It is going to be tough. But I guess the idea is to just write what my thoughts are just like finally I took the courage to write down these thoughts no matter how immature or how incomplete it is. I just want to write, organize my thoughts as I am writing instead of waiting them to be very organized. So, let’s get back up again, write small, take the courage of being imperfect.