BLOGGER



Youngest kid of six with an inferiority and black sheep complex, but determined that God saves not just his soul to heaven but the remainder of his manic-depressive life, so others won't say he became a Christian and remained a jerk.


MAIN THEMES

On identity
i won't be transparent before i'm opaque. and you'll get to know me starting from the small things: who my favourite bands are. what kind of movies i like. who are my heroes.

On Christianity
I’m convinced that when confronted with sincere, real love, the Jesus factor will become obvious. But let’s not plant the cross before we carry it. I’m not trying to con you.

On dreams
Some dreams are meant to be achieved. I know that. But maybe other dreams are meant to drive us, privately. Never known to anyone but ourselves.


OTHER THEMES

On melancholy
It is a sadness that, when choosing between crying and sighing, will choose sighing. I'd almost say that melancholy is being sad about sadness itself.

On memory and nostalgia
It saddens me when life moves forward and people decide that certain things are worth forgetting.

On language
I've learnt that the word irregardless is filed as a non-standard word in the English language. That's a lexicographer's way of saying it's not a real word.

On politics
Crowds are fickle things. So when we stand in the thousands and cry against the present government, do we know who we're actually crying for?

On society
People always want the best for themselves. But I want to sometimes take second or third or fourth best, just so that the loser down the road doesn't always have to come in last. It must feel like shit to always come in last.

On growing old
Leasehold property make me feel sad. It doesn't matter how old the family photos are that you put on your wall. It's your family but it's not really your wall.

On philosophy
I ask you, if God loves everyone, and if God is also incapable of loving evil, how can there be such a thing as an evil man?

On a daily basis
One line quips, like this.


CHAT





Wednesday, August 06, 2008
MOMMY BLOGS

Athalia's been surfing a lot of mommy blogs. wait, correction. athalia's been surfing mommy blogs a lot. just a few, but she ploughs through them, right into the archives and devours everything. first it was heather's blog, dooce. heather's this ex-mormon mom with a little girl called leta and her husband jon.

because she (she here being athalia) reads it like the daily bread, i try to keep up as well. otherwise, she'll drop a line somewhere in the evening like "you know when heather something something last week?" and i'm "err... ya. but you know, i don't retain these things very well". so anyway, that's heather in the picture, on the right, on the today show. yes, i even knew she was gonna wear that dress before she did the show. i've been reading i tell ya.

but now it's not just heather anymore. it's also a british mom called antonia. with her little girl esme. and her lover ian (the first draft of this post had "boyfriend" but i've since been corrected. ian is antonia's lover). antonia's blog is called whoopee and i've just added her rss feed to my daily drip-feed. in a matter of days, i'll be acquainted with the daily lives of two young mothers, retained in homage to every ounce of liverpool junk that athalia has taken on board to read with a smile. difference is, these moms aren't hot. not even in the fernando torres kinda way.

nonetheless, antonia is frighteningly like athalia. they must have hired the same general to strategise all their domestic fights. which makes reading antonia's blog doubly important for me, as i've just pointed out to her: (1) because she likes it, (2) because she's like it.

mommy blogs are a whole blogging genre of their own. and reading them is gonna become a norm for me now. i just know it. and one day, athalia's gonna become one herself. heck, she's gonna become the mommy blogger of mommy bloggers. just she wait.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 3:32 pm ] | 2 comments

Sunday, July 22, 2007
ROMANCE IS CHICKENSHIT

Brodie: Holy shit, Brandi dumped you. Wait a second, aren’t you two supposed to go to Florida?
TS: Yeah. Should’ve left this morning. Oh, it gets worse… I was gonna propose to her.
Brodie: Where?
TS: The Universal tour
Brodie: Are you kidding? What part?
TS: When Jaws pops out of the water.

(silence)

Brodie: That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.
TS: Well too bad I’m not trying to marry you.

- Mallrats.

Romance – i know a few guys who have a pretty different concept of what it is compared to girls. quite unfortunately for them and me, though, romance happens to be one of those things whom girls have the monopoly on – not least of all in the genre of weddings. romance to me is a girl secretly going off to play arcade fire on full blast if i’m having a bad day. but what do i know, romance is supposed to be about three-tiered plastic cakes, meaningless pyramidal wine glass stackups, spooky candle lighting ceremonies, tons of lace and flowers and the one to never forget – the magical diamond that quantifies love.

or have you never heard that love is a scientifically calculable entity, measured in no unit other than karats, plural. some girls will call that romance. i call that chickenshit.

the more weddings i go to, the more convinced i am that weddings are planned by three parties: the two sets of in-laws and the bride. cos i know lots of guys who get married and i know exactly what kinda guys they are. they don’t dig pink ribbons. but i don’t know what is it about weddings but all these men, who normally display more than the standard dose of personality, trade all that in on their wedding day in exchange for a smile of supposed enjoyment when nothing about their wedding reflects their personality. christians like to ask men to rise up, boring, boring cliché. you know where men should rise up? at the wedding planner’s. i’d like to go to a wedding where half of what i see reflects the groom’s personality. sadly, i’ve never been to one. they’re all full of flowers and sentimental vagina music.

one day, when i get married, i’d like to have a wedding that breaks all the conventions of what we think weddings are. not for the sake of being different or special but for the sake of honesty. why can’t people start their marriages with honest weddings? why do we try so hard to construct perfect weddings only to be let down when that mythical entrypoint cannot be recreated in the mundanities of daily living? why can’t we just be ourselves and throw wedding parties that look like us? if a guy likes 90s grunge and his girl has no preference, why should anyone have to hear even one note of the wedding march? do you see my point? it’s just an unending cycle of eating and vomiting the same culture till you no longer know what the constituents mean anymore, you just know they gotta be there.

somewhere in this world, i know there’s a brand of romance that comes completely honest, a romance that reflects the unique identities of the romantics, and i know that when i see the face of this romance, it is something i will love. when i see that brand of romance, i will get married.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 12:19 pm ] | 2 comments

Thursday, April 26, 2007
MAN BY CHOICE

No, i've never been an auto show kinda guy. nor an auto show models kinda guy. nor a gadgets kinda guy. nor a klse kinda guy.

how man am i?

based on an index generated by fictitious gender-neutral scientists in labcoats via transposition of westernised urban south-east asian cultural stereotypes over my self-examined valuations, i am 43% man.

these scientists shortlist the top ten man categories and you are rated on each of them. the list is as follows:

cars
computer games
drinking
busty girls
finance
sports
gadgets
politics
property
rock music

my list looks like this, with individual ratings out of ten, totalling to a percentage.

cars 3
computer games 3
drinking 2
busty girls 1
finance 0
sports 10
gadgets 4
politics 7
property 4
rock music 9
total man index 43

so as you can see, i'm quite a fair way behind what one might describe as the ordinary man on the street.

a guy called leonard said, "male by birth, man by choice". i'm still trying to get my head around that. if i'm 43% man according to the fictitious gender-neutral scientists in labcoats, then maybe i'm male by birth, unman by choice.

oh no. i'm unman!

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 10:59 am ] | 0 comments

Monday, March 12, 2007
300: FATHER OF ALL TITANS

300 has to be the most raw, limb-chomping depiction of historical/mythical epic battles to ever grace the cinema, and get this - it doesn't even try to be epic. gone are the sweeping shots of tens of thousands clashing in some poetic war, 300 has no intentions of serving up that drivel. Instead, what you get is the harsh collission of bodies and steel in a battle for honour so brutal, it makes 2000's Gladiator look like puppies falling over each other on a flower patch.

Gone also are bronze men with sunsilk hair in skirts, engaging in intricately choreographed swordplay while exchanging smartalec jibes. the horribly gay attempts at Greek history - Troy and Alexander - while possibly accurate (300's King Leonidas calls the Athenians boy lovers) just didn't cut it when juxtaposed with brute machoism. 300 solves that by giving you a bunch of blokes so bent on decapitation, there is barely any room nor time to breathe, or speak, much less exude wit and sexuality.

Brute carnage. Carcasses stacked up in walls. Intelligence. Passion. Raw violence and fiery patriotism. And this is just the 300 Spartans. A hero is only as heroic as his villain is villaneous. And what better villain than the self-professed King-God Xerxes himself. Xerxes is the Persian king found in your thrusty bible in narratives circa ezra, and in 300, he is seen in his full opulence, boasting a brilliant throne enamoured with lions and phoenixes, carried by a sea of slaves. Xerxes himself is adorned in the full campness of apparent immorality - there are traces of all sorts of moral vices surrounding this guy, from lurid dancers to witchcraft and animalism - here's a villain so corrupt, so gross, so dirty, it will make anyone, much less a Spartan king, look like a right-wing conservative with a mission to clean up the filth. xerxes' personal bodyguards is a troop of masked leporous monsters and there are a few heroes in their ranks too - most of them semi-human mistakes of nature, these freaks are gathered from the "darkest corners of his Persian empire" to show the Spartans that Xerxes can.

But the Spartans are the Spartans - bred for war, they take anything in their stride - from massive elephants to magicians to a whole sky filled with arrows. These Spartans are almost non-human themselves in their unquenchable zeal to defend their nation's freedom. meanwhile, the movie flits from the battleground to the dirty politicking going on in the background as Leonidas' queen attempts to get the whole might of the Spartan army unleashed by a superstitious and corrupt senate.

300 is the war movie to end all war movies. when i said earlier that it is epic without trying too hard to be it, i meant that it manages to show such a big heart, such a large courage, and so much passion for their cause without resorting to the giant widescreen shots of big battles that have become so common in movies of the genre, it's also become so tame. director zack snyder has opted to keep our eyes in the thick of the carnage, preferring to dish us torn-up limbs rather than seas of soldiers melding. for this, snyder deserves credit - not only for sticking true to the ethos of the frank miller graphic novel that preceded the movie, but also for resisting the urge to play the game on the same terms as larger flicks like LOTR. and by so doing, snyder succeeds in dipping the viewer's eyes into the bloodsoaked grounds and bring the brutality much closer to home.

so if you're tired of epic movies that unneccessarily exaggerate heroism for only a moment's sake, if you're tired of super goodlooking godlike actors with their hair all in place when they fight, if you're tired of wimpy losers pretending to be toughmen, and if you're tired of sensitive caring soldiers who spend equal amounts of time concerned about puppydog emotions as they spend executing enemies, then 300 is that angry, out-and-out feet-stoping, throat-roaring cut-their-heads-off father of all titans movie that will remind you that killers kill, soldiers soldier and bloodthirsty badass heroes give the enemy nothing but take from them everything.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 2:13 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, March 05, 2007
I'm gonna lay off the misery because all i've been recently is a miserable git. and my life really isn't so bad so i'll just knock it off. and so, in its place, something completely menial.

HOW DO YOU SEDUCE?

I was in a conversation recently about seduction. and the question going round was "what will you do if you want to seduce someone?" it's a valid question. some people will dress a certain way, some will turn on certain charms, and others might even go splash the cash. if nothing else, knowing your modus operandi helps you know when you're unconsciously trying to spin some chick when you're not supposed to.

"I will turn on the geek", that's what i said. i'll find something in the conversation and geekify myself over it, in a supposedly hip display of inane expertise. after all, everyone likes inane expertise, right? well, maybe not. nonetheless...

i think i can be a geek over some aspects of music, like the beatles, britpop, and sixties. i'm even better at film - and i think i can hold up pretty well on almost any genre or film movement since the Lumieres. but what i think i'm best with is world cup history. there ain't nothing like world cup history for me, and i recently also told my friends that i'll take on anyone who's watched the world cup from 1966 onwards.

actually, i doubt my seduction strategies will yield much. who da heck turns to the legendary 4-3 1970 semi-final between Italy and Germany when he wants to seduce a girl? well, granted i've no business seducing anyone right about now (or, like, whenever), i don't think my ridiculous approach to social allurement is gonna get tested very much.

"oh, but i know this girl who knows her music, and she knows her films, and she's really into football", one of them said.

then you better keep her far from me.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 11:26 am ] | 0 comments

Saturday, December 23, 2006
My sister's wedding double ceremony has been going on and I've come to understand more clearly what I "do" and what I "don't do".

I don't do lace.

I swear, I don't (and won't) do lace. Or flowers or ribbons or, like, large sheets of cloth. I don't do little glass ornaments or things that hang from places.

I'll tell you what I do do. I do driving people to places and pulling open huge grille gates that haven't been pulled open in years. I do climbing ladders and changing bulbs and carrying chairs upstairs to downstairs. I'll do all that but please, don't give me anything with lace on it.

In my family, I get teased for not liking to handle stuff like ribbons. Nobody understands why I would opt out of a decorating session that involves weaving all these things that look like ripped stockings together. In my house, my self-imposed exclusion from a gathering like that would probably be read as laziness or being unhelpful. But I don't know how to say it because nobody understands. I just don't like to handle stuff like that. It's the texture, or the feeling. I just don't do it.

So when the duty list came out for this wedding, and the blank fields for volunteers to sign up for duties needed to be filled, I jumped in and put my name next to all the traditionally ra-ra man's jobs. It's my way of telling everyone what I want to be known for around the house, for future reference (read chinese new year 07).

Oh, and one more thing I learned. Actually, I acquired this piece of skill when I was a child - I've only just remembered to use it again now. When everyone in the house is busy doing something, and you are tired and just want to chill, don't do it where anyone can see you. However you wanna chill - with a book or a notebook - bring it into the bathroom and chill out there. Cos when everyone's busy doing something, your total absence will interpret better than your half-arsed arse.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 3:16 am ] | 0 comments

Monday, August 28, 2006
I was cross-dressed as a child.

I’ve just gone through the E06 conference at church and in it, God opened up some really serious bandages where the wounds underneath have not healed, most of them even after many, many years. But I’m not gonna serialise my journey here. I’m just gonna tell you one story. You see the title of this post, and the opening line – I’m not trying to also tabloidise my life. Running expose sob stories about childhood is not what I’m doing here. And if I may disclaim before I go any further, I had a happy childhood. Compared to other kids, my parents stuck together, I was shown lots of love and my friends in school were usually great. But I have one story to tell you today about my childhood and I don't want to sugarcoat my life and only talk about happy things.

I was cross-dressed as a child. I must have been about five or six or seven and I was told that I was needed to help try on a dress. It was for a friend’s daughter who was “about my age, about my size”. Active little boys don’t wear dresses. As simple as that seems to understand, I was eventually coaxed into wearing the dress in the name of being an obedient kid. It was horrible. And I felt so shamed.

My perpetrators laughed at me for a few minutes and then told me to change back and then confessed that it was a joke. I think to some of them, it’s still a joke today. But it scarred a very little boy, and when the E06 conference took the bandage off this incident, it was still a gaping wound – fresh as yesterday.

Was God there when the cross-dressing happened? Was he watching? Why wasn’t I protected from this kind of bullying? Just because he’s a little boy, and he’s wearing a dress, it’s cute? It’s not cute. What kind of sick worldview allows the humiliation of children like that?

On the last night of the E06 conference, during the concert, they brought out this little girl on stage. Something like a surprise feature song. She sang Jesus loves me. She must have been about five. And as she sang, something in me broke and I fell on my knees.

I didn’t have the benefit of Sunday school when I was a boy. I didn’t grow up knowing that “yes, Jesus loves me”. So, did he love me then? Did he love me when I was a five year old myself, getting cross-dressed? As the little girl sang, I saw myself as a little boy in a dress, standing awkwardly, ashamed, shamed and stripped of my dignity as I paraded myself. Who was protecting me then?

I heard the voice of God speak to me, in the middle of my sobbing, telling me “son, I felt shamed too. Son, I was stripped of dignity too. Son, I want you to know that I felt everything you felt, exactly as you felt it, and I hurt with you. Tonight, I’m crying with you”.

Who is this God that he hurts with me like he experiences my experiences? Who is this God who goes through hell with me because he loves me too much to let me go through hell alone? He kept speaking to me: “Son, I will protect you. I will protect you. I will protect you”.

In the bible, when Joseph and his brothers reconcile, he tells them “you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, for the saving of many lives”. If I finish this story now, it is no more than another cheap tabloid story with a sensational plot. But if I believe that God meant it for good, for the saving of many lives, then I am compelled to say this as well.

The day I made Jesus my God, he became my protector. More than that, he also became my redeemer. Today, he is redeeming me from years of hurt and anger from being mistreated as a child. He is returning to me the self-worth and self-image that was destroyed in two minutes of shame. I don’t know what kind of life you’ve had and I won’t pretend to know it. But I know my life. And I want to tell you that I know Jesus knows what he's talking about when he says he knows humiliation, betrayal, shame and hurt.

If it feels like somewhere in the past, a part of you has died, today, maybe Jesus is saying “Do you want a new life?” I want a new life. It’s so easy to say I want a new life, but when your heart is put to a decision to receive Jesus for that new life, suddenly, it’s so hard. But I’ll tell you, go find me someone else, some holy man or god or deity, who knows what it’s like to be humiliated for no reason like maybe you were, and I’ll tell you to follow him instead. Find me some other teacher of life who knows the shame of being stripped and hung out in public to be laughed at like I was, I’ll tell you to follow him. You won't find any other god who knows what it means to be shamed. Only Jesus who knows how you feel, because he too was bruised even before you were bruised. This same Jesus has new life to give you, if you only choose it.

If you do, then pray this with me: Jesus, I make you my God, to protect me from shame, to defend me from harm, and to heal me from hurts. If you are really real, come and be my God. Amen.


Please don’t comment on this post. I didn’t tell this story as a dialogue with the world, I told it as a testimony. Please also refrain from using my name if you are testifying this to others who don’t know me. But if they know me, you have my permission to share this with my name attached. Thanks.

Labels: , ,



Genusfrog [ 10:10 am ] | 0 comments

Friday, July 14, 2006


Men have no excuse. For too long we've been hiding behind the excuse that "men don't like to talk", "men don't communicate well", "men are not so emotional", "men are not relational", as if these excuses were pulled out of the Genesis pocket guide to gender traits. It's not biblical and it's an absolute lie spun by the same kind of nonsense authors who bring you books like Women are from venus, men are from mars. It is completely and utterly unbiblical. Jesus was a communicator, Jesus talked a lot. He was extremely in touch with his emotions and he was always firecely relational.

All these men who come out and say "oh, we're just wired like that" are just plain lazy. Yes, that's what it is: laziness. too lazy to do the difficult job of emoting and communicating. how many times have i spoken to people who say that their fathers cede communication and emotions to their mums? is it a familiar story to you? talk to father: "how's work? how's money?" bam. bam. done. talk to mother: "how are you feeling? are you sure you're ok?"

I was recently discussing with a group of guys that fathers were all like that, and they all knew that fathers out there want to communicate, but they just don't know how. they make all these inroads but most of the time, they end up saying the wrong thing and it creates friction. it has to stop, but it can only be stopped if the sons of today stop hiding behind this phantom excuse that men are not built to emote.

Claim back that space man. Come on, there is nothing in the bible that justifies men being unemotional and unrelational, and Father God Himself is every bit the kinda guy who wears his heart on his sleeves and want someone to know it. If guys aren't gonna claim back this space which we've subcontracted for so many generations to wives then the communication and emotional gap between fathers and children is always gonna be there. Malachi 4:6 says that God is gonna turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their father.

Wake up man, all you men! The only way you can ensure that your children in the future don't have testimonies that begin with "my dad is the typical chinaman dad who doesn't show emotions and we have a communication problem" is if you take responsibility for your communication skills and start emoting like Father God emotes. It's a poor excuse, it's been used to death and what's worse, it was conjured not by God but by some postmodern chick author with a nothing more than a psychology major.

Let's not hear anymore "we're men, we're not emotional" cockledoodledoo. Because the last time i checked, you were created in the image of a fully emotional Father.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 1:07 pm ] | 0 comments

Monday, May 22, 2006
When I was ten, we had Physical Education (PE) in school once a week. Whenever we had PE, we’d have to have a change of shorts and singlet – usually in the colours of our sports house. But it’s not easy to change into shorts in a boys’ school. Some kids can make things complicated if you change in front of each other, and without proper changing rooms, the only other alternative were the perpetually wet toilet stalls, wet with what I never wanted to know.

So I used to wear my sports shorts under my school uniform shorts. I was in green house, so I used to have green shorts underneath the dark blue uniform shorts. I did this for about a year. Sometimes, if you’re not careful, your sports shorts might actually be longer than your uniform ones, and when this happens, it’ll stick out like a hem. It used to happen to some of us, but nobody really cared. Where it did happen, it was only once a week, on PE day, and even then, you knew exactly why the boys chose wearing their sports shorts underneath instead of all the other options.

There is a breed of teachers in primary schools who are decidedly cruel. For some strange reason that may or may not be connected to low self-esteem, these grown adults like to pick on innocent defenseless young children and humiliate them. I’ve seen many in my time, and one of them – not the worst, just one of them – was an English teacher called Mr Ho.

The teachers have a table in the canteen that is the teachers’ table, where they all sit during lunch and talk about politics or whatever. It’s quite near where the kids sit. One day, a PE day, I was just walking by the canteen when Mr Ho called me. I was ten. When you’re ten, you don’t talk back to teachers, you completely respect their authority over you. Mr Ho summons me to the teachers’ eating table full of other teachers. Some were my teachers, some weren’t. Some I had impressed in school, some I was dying to impress.

“Fergus”, he tugs at my shorts. “Why is your Sunday longer than your Monday?” and he laughs. The other teachers watch on.

I knew something was wrong. I just didn’t know what. I don’t remember what I said in response, but he made his figure of speech ten-year-old friendly.

“Why is your inside shorts longer than your outside shorts?”

I think I said “It’s for sports”, but I didn’t even dare to go away until he dismissed me. I knew he wasn’t dealing with it from a disciplinary position because he didn’t care. He laughed with the other teachers and sent me off.

I felt so embarrassed that day. I didn’t know where to put my face in the canteen, and for the rest of the day, I didn’t know where to put my sports shorts either. At that time, I thought it was the prerogative of any school teacher to humiliate students like that – in spite of my parents lodging the odd complaint or two about some terrible teachers, I still grew up with a sense that a student had little protection to all the small things that cruel teachers wanted to do to poke fun at them.

Today at church, we had a young adults session that involved going back to past hurts and reconciling them. I’ve worked through a lot of my major hurts already – from being unfairly forced to reach school late, and getting punished for that, to being cross-dressed as a child and getting laughed at – and so from the depths of some long forgotten past, this small incident came back so clearly today.

Why is your Sunday longer than your Monday?

It wasn’t monumental. But as the years stacked on, and as I slowly developed a poor self-image right into the throngs of uni life, only God knows if Mr Ho’s cruel words played no part. As for me, today’s resurfacing of this incident will mark the end of my hurt.

To a Mr Ho who thought Std 4, 5 and 6 English in St Andrews Primary School, Muar, Johor in 1990, thin man with crew cut hair and a deep voice, to you, whether you’re reading this yourself, or if your children who are now college students are reading this, or if anyone who knows of you is reading this, I forgive you. You probably don’t know that your words hurt a 10 year old boy really deeply, but they did. Nonetheless, you’re off the hook now, because I’m forgiving you, and I’m filing your callous words somewhere between “spoken without thought” and “spoken under the influence of some demon” – no, I’m really serious about this. I really forgive you. I hope you’re living a fulfilled life as a retiree now, because I somehow suspect that in the early 90s, you musn’t have been a very happy man. I also hope that you’ve become more of a man since then. Because the boy you made fun of is now a man. So I hope you’re one now too.

Labels: , ,



Genusfrog [ 9:53 am ] | 3 comments

Thursday, May 11, 2006
Have you ever had your gender identity challenged?

If yours came in the form of some cathartic childhood experience or a monumental adolescent moment, maybe you have a case. Mine came this past weekend, under pouring rain, in the form of a dainty blue parasol.

The Malaysian rain is cruel, this much I can say. It goes across fourteen states, seeks out the neighbourhood you’re in, waits for a day when you are not in possession of your standard rain armour, chooses precisely the portion of night when you are least prepared for it, and then rains itself helter skelter.

I was at vernon’s, together with gordon and carol, and it began thunderstorming just before we left. If like me you live in greater kl and are aware of recent precipitation trends, you’d know that rain falls circa 5pm when everyone’s leaving the office for home. it can go on as late as 8 but nothing much further than that. In all unlikelihoods, though, I was found out at vernon’s without the security of my standard black umbrella at what must have been midnight to1am.

Flashback: you might remember my last encounter with a Pink Umbrella – I had a torrid time trying to exchange a pink umbrella with ktm commuters – I’ve since obtained an umbrella black as midnight on a moonless night. Unfortunately, though, I did not have it with me that night.

Vernon produced two umbrellas as he sent us off. Gordon threw his open – a huge multi-coloured one good enough for two. Ok, so he n carol came in the same car, so fair game. What I got, however, was a totally different thing altogether. My umbrella had tassels! Or whatever you call them when they’re not on carpets – you know, it had frilly things on the rims. Ribbony skirting, if you will. Literally, my umbrella had a girly edge. It was my very own surrey with a fringe on top.

“I’m not carrying this!”, I exclaimed at gordon n carol. “carol, you carry this and I’ll hide under the big one with gordon”. (I knew exactly which was the girlier thing to do.) No was the reply. It wasn’t practical. Our cars were parked on different sides of the road and though it’s just five paces away, it’s five paces under crazy windy rainstorm (the kind where the rain goes sideways).

Resigned, I shrugged off whatever was left that resembled machismic pride and stepped into the rain with the frilly parasol in my hand. She-ra here I come. I swear, apart from the fact that it was black as night and hailing oceans, I knew for an absolute certainty that I looked like this:



It didn’t even really help that in my haste to get in the car, I closed the umbrella while it was on top of me while awkwardly half-standing by my opened car door. All the rain on the dainty shelterpiece fell on me, like one more kick after a round of laughter. I barely closed it – the latch didn’t quite hold, so I left it half-opened on the passenger seat floor and fled for home.

Right now, the parasol sits in the backseat of my car, dried up, folded tight, tassels hiding beneath a mountain of incidental back seat objects. I don’t think I’ll be driving many colleagues to lunch these few days. If I get evasive about lunch plans, you’ll know what I’m actually on about.

Vernon: thanks mate, for your parasol, or your mum’s, or whoever’s. I’ll say that whatever insult I’ve made of it should be offset by my appreciation of its function and the extension of its limited fame. Now why don’t we arrange a secret meeting for the recovering of said shelterpiece?

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 9:32 am ] | 0 comments

Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Question 1: What is the best praise you’ve ever received?
One time, I got nominated for something. And the person who nominated me, in supporting his nomination, said that I was well-versed, helpful and an effective problem solver, among lots of other things. Hearing all that made me swell up with the most amazing pride.

Question 2: What is your dream praise, and from who?
Maybe to hear my dad say that I’ve made it as a man.

It’s incredible what praise can do. Especially if, like me, you’ve battled the years of low self esteem. To hear a fellow person say great things about you is already nice. Praises rock the houses down.

But recently I’ve run into some bible verses that have put things into perspective. In John 5, Jesus says that he doesn’t need the testimony of man – he’s only after the testimony of the Father. And we know that Paul, in Philippians 3:8, considers all the achievements of man “rubbish” compared to gaining Christ.

Which made me wonder: if the praises in Q1 and Q2 mean so much to me, why doesn't the praise of God seem anywhere as important? Is it just because i can't physically hear it? Am I shallow? or crazy? or unbelieving? Or is it a common fact of life?

I think everyone is like me. I think maybe because nobody cares about God's applause, it makes him sad.

Labels: , ,



Genusfrog [ 4:23 pm ] | 1 comments

Thursday, July 28, 2005
MANHOOD

What does it mean to "be a man"?

You may seem man when you're with the guys, but when you're alone, do you still feel man?

Biblical manhood calls for rising up and taking authority. How is this different from the kind of brash maleness that women have been subjected to for the last 5000 years?

*

This Friday and Saturday, I'm going for our church's men's camp. But it's been quite a while now that these questions have been on my mind.

I grew up with four strong-willed sisters, a very gentle mum, a self-professed workaholic dad and a brother who dislikes anything macho. It has been a tricky affair negotiating my manhood. What I've observed from my dad is that a man works hard for his family, teaches his kids (about pop songs, world wars and shakespere), and determines the disciplinary tone in the house - that's been great!

But while relevantly replicating what I've learned from my dad may have to wait a few good years, I'm finding being a 25 year old single man quite a challenge. I mean, I go out there and interact with fellow young men, many whom I consider "more man" than myself, and I wonder what makes them who they are and I who I am. And then I go out there and interact with young women, and I become aware of this whole idea of who women are and what separates them from who I'm supposed to be.

Before I go on, let me set one thing straight: gender is influenced by both nature and nurture. There's no two ways about it. No number of pop psychologists can deny the fact that a man is born of the male sex and together with that comes a physique that predisposes a man to certain things. Likewise, no number of biologists can deny that as a boy grows into a man, his idea of maleness is shaped by the men he sees (and apes) along the way.

Now that I've got that out of the way, let me make a controversial (but funny) statement, which I think cracked Mel up a few days ago. Recently, I've learned so much about being a man from pastor lee choo.

WHAT?

Yea, you read that right. Pastor's wife. I think we've all learned so much. How does this happen? There's so much to learn from her because she is so Biblically woman! That's why! It's hard to find 21st century women who are strong, courageous, driven, dynamic and ambitious who at the end of the day submit to their husbands and allow them to take authority. When I consider ps lee choo, I realise that Biblical womanhood (and Biblical submission) is nothing, absolutely nothing like what the world thinks it is. If women all over the world could be empowered like ps lee choo and still be submitted (not submissive), then no one would have a problem with the whole idea of Biblical female submission. She's everything feminists want without being everything feminists are!

Am I detracting? Perhaps a bit, so let me draw it back. When we understand what God made women to be, and what women are called to, we also understand the flip side - what God intends for men. I have learned so much about being a man from observing ps lee choo because as I witness a mighty woman for God standing up for women everywhere, it gives me a good idea of what being a man ought to be.

I've never been closely led by any strong man before. Fuyee my cell leader is strong, still, I've not been led by him long enough, consistently enough for me to fully learn Biblical manhood from. I didn't have to learn about manhood from a female pastor if I spent more time with my male pastors but ps chew isn't the one working closely with the young adults, so understandably, I learn from ps lee choo instead. It's a bit of a roundabout but I'm learning.

Now, on Friday, I hope to be able to learn straight from the man's mouth at men's camp, because ps chew is going to be taking 200 of us men through a range of male issues at the camp. I do want to hear it from the real and really strong men. There are lots of guys I admire in church - strong influential men who are models of who I want to grow up to be like. I need to surround myself with such men.

Incidentally (and not in any way accidentally), the young adults in my church are doing this talk show called Living Room in two months, I'm in the committee. This episode is about gender identity, and this is exactly why all this has been on my mind, and why as a group, we've been discussing and learning so much from ps lee choo, who is guiding us through gender identity issues so thoroughly.

So it's all been timed very aptly - this is the year I grow into a man. I'm attending my first men's camp this weekend and I somehow ended up on a committee doing a talkshow on gender identity. Indeed, God is faithful. And the circumstance I've found myself in convinces me that His call for me to rise up as a man, to take authority, to increase in strength and to grow as a leader has never been louder than now. In fact, it is so loud, it ought to be deafening. And the only reasons why I've not been any faster to act is because I've been deaf or blur or both.

But He has called me to be a man. I'm learning so much about what being a Christian man is that if I were to blog about the details, it would take a series lasting a few weeks before I run through all my thoughts. And I'm still learning, heck, I've just started. And I will come good, I promise. And when I come good, you will know it.

You will know it from a mile.

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 6:47 pm ] | 0 comments

Tuesday, July 27, 2004
BOOK REVIEW: IS FERGUSONG WILD?

">I've just started reading John Eldrege's book Wild At Heart about christian...

Labels: ,



Genusfrog [ 9:06 am ] | 0 comments