I mean I want to see

My favourite $3 prawn mee

Decorative fruit cutting as I stay at home with the flu…

“I would say the generation of the ’50s and ’60s took the plunge into politics without ever calculating the costs of the risk and the benefits to be gained. They were driven by ideology. Today’s generation has no culture and averse to taking political risk. Really, an interest in politics is very necessary for the future. But I cannot blame the present generations, because they see the heavy-handed response by the government to dissenting views, even though they know that these matters involve their daily lives.

“So the result is that we have produced a younger generation who are meek and therefore very calculating. They are less independent-thinking and lack in initiative. It does not bode well for the emergence of future leaders in politics and business. Robots and computers can be programmed or if you like, can be trained. But the trouble, of course, is that computers lack soul and what we need in Singapore is soul. Because it is soul that makes society.”

Joan Miro, Ceci est la couleur de mes rêves, 1925

From our trove. The distinctive linen-like appearance and texture of Lao silk sets it apart from other varieties of silk…Such a delicate shade of natural indigo: Speaks a lot about the skill of the dye-maker. More on indigo here.

What a lovely Threadless design.

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

– Ephesians 2:10

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A friend posted this online; I like the lyrics.

From the archives. Handpicked cotton has to be deseeded. The cotton is then carded with a beater or a bow and finally the carded cotton is rolled into neat “tails” before spinning. Here, a young Toraja woman is engaged in the final stage of the work in central Sulawesi.

Delft blue hand painted tile from the Netherlands, 19th century.

我们出发了，迎风向前, 全力以赴吧！

有一片自己的天空，觉得真的真的很幸福。

“Passion persuades and, by God, I was passionate about what I was selling.” — Anita Roddick

Coco Chanel said she looked at every design she made and asked herself, “Would I want to wear this dress?” If the answer was “no”, she discarded the design. The best marketing advice I know is this: Market only things that you’re personally crazy about. If you’re wild about your product or service, the selling part becomes so much more easy, even effortless.

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Next recipe to try: Korean japchae — I love the crunchy, tangy, tasty dish!

Photography © 2011 Fredrik Nilsen

From a sample book of 1744 showing eight named shades of blue produced by dyers of Languedoc, France. Names range from “crow’s wing” to “almost white”.

SPENDING time with JX as we write copy, design tags, print and cut and make little gifts before the launch. She’s someone who makes you smile, think and laugh no matter what.

Working with
materials
images
words
…

Thinking of designs now that we know the skills and abilities of the artisans and craftspeople we work with…There’s nothing like travelling to the villages to see how weaving and traditional textiles are still a central part of life and culture.

In the meantime, I’m studying the tradition, trade and transformation of the textiles of Southeast Asia. There’s a good book by Robyn Maxwell (Australian National Gallery, 1990).

Southeast Asia presents one of the richest and most varied textile regions in the world. This is true both in the realms of textile patterning techniques and in the complexity with which textiles operate in autonomous belief systems.

Textiles often link people with their ancestors and promise a continuity with future generations. They confirm pledges of alliance and, in their exchange, acknowledge kin and social obligation. Because textile making throughout the region is predominantly women’s work, textiles are considered “female” currency in the exchange of complementary male and female goods. Locally crafted cloth may also suggest historical influences and ancient customs and practices that hint of continuities that once bound the entire Southeast Asian area before the advent of nation states.

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Sample box of of 40 types of indigo from India, Java & Guatemala.

INDIGO has been used in Southeast Asia for centuries, and was known as “blue gold” when it was traded.

Indigofera tinctoria was originally domesticated in India, where it is mentioned in manuscripts dating from the 4th century BC. It was recognised as a valuable blue dye by most early explorers of that region.

Secrecy often surrounds the use of traditional materials and techniques, especially dyestuffs and their application. The discovery and use of dyes by the founding ancestors is related in the origin myths of many Southeast Asian peoples, and on the island of Savu, one particular legend is suggestive of the secrecy that still surrounds the use of indigo there. Two sisters, believed to be the ancestors of the Savunese matrilineal moieties (Hubi Ae and Hubi Iki) into which the society of that island is divided, were about to receive their mother’s secret recipes for achieving beautiful indigo blue. The daughters knew nothing about the indigo process in which the active precipitate sinks to the bottom of the pot during the fermentation and liming of the mire of rotting leaves. One sister, hoping to cheat her sibling of the valuable secrets, crept out at night to steal the indigo. Unwittingly, she poured off the fluid in the pot and ran away with it, not realising that she had stolen onoly the think liquid wastes which settle at the top. Her descendants are supposed never to have been able to match the supremacy of her sibling’s heirs at indigo-dyeing.

The wealth and prestige of a family often depends upon the quality of particular textiles which women prepare. It is general practice for young girls to learn from senior female relatives the many skills of preparing and dyeing thread and weaving cloth. The secrecy surrounding the making of traditional textiles is desgined to protect the family’s skills, and their knowledge of special procedures and particular designs, against emulation by other family groups.

These precautions are of great significance in cultures where textiles are an essential item of marriage settlement and ceremonial exchange. For example, the Karen women, particularly the mountain-dwelling Pwo and Sgaw, protect their own special warp ikat patterns by working the designs in the forest far away from others.

In some cultures of Southeast Asia, anyone copying a family’s designs does so at risk of punishment: cloth or threads may be slashed, and the person who has stolen the patterns may be put under a curse. In other cultures, the attitudes are more pragmatic and weavers are permitted to borrow other women’s designs for a fee.

Southeast Asia’s quest for design and its receptiveness to certain splendid, decorative ideas from outside the region are seen in the creative transformations in local and foreign designs, material and decorative techniques.

Quick, easy, v v yummy. Image © me

GET the freshest prawns possible. Wash well, cut off the feelers, devein and slice halfway through.

Stuffing: Chop up lots of garlic, some chilli and spring onion, and a bit of ginger.

Dust your deveined prawns with cornstarch so the stuffing doesn’t all fall out, stuff, and pour 1-2 egg whites over everything.

Steam till the prawns turn pink — it depends on your steamer, mine were done after 7 minutes.

Serve with vegetables and rice.

A recent rainbow. Image © me

And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:

I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.

It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud;

and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.

The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

神 说 ： 我 与 你 们 并 你 们 这 里 的 各 样 活 物 所 立 的 永 约 是 有 记 号 的 。
我 把 虹 放 在 云 彩 中 ， 这 就 可 作 我 与 地 立 约 的 记 号 了 。
我 使 云 彩 盖 地 的 时 候 ， 必 有 虹 现 在 云 彩 中 ，
我 便 记 念 我 与 你 们 和 各 样 有 血 肉 的 活 物 所 立 的 约 ， 水 就 再 不 ? 滥 、 毁 坏 一 切 有 血 肉 的 物 了 。
虹 必 现 在 云 彩 中 ， 我 看 见 ， 就 要 记 念 我 与 地 上 各 样 有 血 肉 的 活 物 所 立 的 永 约 。
神 对 挪 亚 说 ： 这 就 是 我 与 地 上 一 切 有 血 肉 之 物 立 约 的 记 号 了 。

Genesis 9:12-17 / 创世记 9:12-17

BLESSINGS and joy to you as the Chinese year draws to a close!

So much to be thankful for in the past year…grace in abundance, a deepening of faith and a stilling of that perpetually restless part of me. The last year has been the beginning of a journey with God. Scripture is full of stories and testimonies of God’s friends who walk with Him through a thousand different episodes. I wonder what lies ahead.

From Timothy Keller:

About 150 years ago George MacDonald wrote a children’s book called The Princess And The Goblin. Irene, the protagonist, is eight years old. She has found an attic room in her house, and every so often her fairy grandmother appears there. When Irene goes to look for her she’s often not there, so one day her grandmother gives her a ring with a thread tied to it, leading to a little ball of thread. She explains that she’ll keep the ball.

“But I can’t see it,” says Irene.

“No. The thread is too fine for you to see it. You can only feel it.” With this reassurance, Irene tests the thread.

“Now, listen,” says the grandmother, “if ever you find yourself in any danger…you must take off your ring and put it under the pillow of your bed. Then you must lay your forefinger…upon the thread, and follow the thread wherever it leads you.”

“Oh, how delightful! It will lead me to you, Grandmother, I know!”

“Yes,” said the grandmother, “but, remember, it may seem to you a very roundabout way indeed, and you must not doubt the thread. Of one thing you may be sure, that while you hold it, I hold it too.” A few days later Irene is in bed, and goblins get into the house. She hears them snarling out in the hallway, but she has the presence of mind to take off her ring and put it under the pillow. And she begins to feel the thread, knowing that it’s going to take her to her grandmother and to safety. But to her dismay, it takes her outside, and she realizes that it’s taking her right toward the cave of the goblins.

Inside the cave, the thread leads her up to a great heap of stones, a dead end. “The thought struck her, taht at least she could follow the thread backwards, and thus get out…But the instant she tried to feel it backwards, it vanished from her touch.” The grandmother’s thread only worked forward, but forward it led into a heap of stones. Irene “burst into a wailing cry”, but after crying she realises that the only way to follow the thread is to tear down the wall of stones. She begins tearing it down, stone by stone. Though her fingers are soon bleeding, she pulls and pulls.

Suddenly she hears a voice. It’s her friend Curdie, who has been trapped in the goblins’ cave! Curdie is astounded and asks, “Why, however did you come here?”

Irene replies that her grandmother sent her, “and I think I’ve found out why”.

After Irene has followed the thread and removed enough rocks to create an opening, Curdie starts to climb up out of the cave — but Irene keeps going deeper into the cave. Curdie objects: “Where are you going there? That’s not the way out. That’s where I couldn’t get out.”

“I know that,” says Irene. “But this is the way my thread goes, and I must follow it.” And indeed the thread proves trustworthy, because her grandmother is trustworthy.

Everything has shifted. I’ve found the cornerstone to build upon. I absolutely cannot doubt that Jesus is alive. I didn’t have as dramatic a meeting with Jesus as Derek Prince, but meet him I did, and — everything changed.

I’d always been slightly sceptical and amused by whom I called “religious fanatics”. (Still remember joking with a friend: “If you talk to God you’re religious, if God talks to you you might need a trip to IMH.”) The danger is that there’s a great deal of self-righteousness about self-righteousness. We progressive urbanites like to think we’re so much better than other people, disdaining those religious, moralistic types who look down on others. The gospel does not say, “the good are in and the bad are out”, or even “the open-minded are in and the proud are out”. It says the humble are in. The people who think they’re on the right side of the divide are the most in danger.

Faith is ultimately a gift, it is not a virtue.

I’d always looked for truth as an abstraction, but I met Him as a Person. His life, words and teaching — and above all, His person, are the answer to that restless craving that had driven me all these years. It goes far beyond intellectual acknowledgment. How do I begin to describe it? Psalm 34:8 says “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; / Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!”

In the most often quoted phrase from Augustine, he says: “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

“I will remove your heart of stone”

I’ve always been self-reliant and a loner, an “I” (MBTI introvert as opposed to extrovert) through and through though I get by as an “E” in social occasions. I suppose that’s why I’ve always loved Graham Greene. This knowledge of Jesus has melted away a certain icy core in me, and that streak of loneliness I’ve been familiar with all my life.

Something as deep as the taking out of the Snow Queen’s splinters happened.

“and replace it with a heart of flesh.”

Whether it’s to succeed in our chosen field or to have a certain relationship or be free to travel the world, we’re often looking to some deep wish to save us from oblivion, from disillusionment, from mediocrity.

Almost always we first go to Jesus saying, “This is my deepest wish” — his response is that we need to go a lot deeper than that.

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George Herbert warns:

Go not abroad at every quest or call
of an untrained hope or mission.

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Remind them to be subject to rulers and authorities, to obey, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men.

For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.

你要题醒众人，叫他们顺服作官的，掌权的，遵他的命，豫备行各样的善事。
不要毁谤，不要争竞，总要和平，向众人大显温柔。
我们从前也是无知，悖逆，受迷惑，服事各样私欲和宴乐，常存恶毒（或作阴毒）嫉妒的心，是可恨的，又是彼此相恨。

Titus 3:1-3 / 提多书 3:1-3

In her book Creed Or Chaos? Dorothy Sayers said that over the previous century and more, politics had operated on the following basis: What was wrong with human society was not in the human heart. It lay in social structures, in a lack of education. It was a lack of applying what we know through science. Therefore, if we could just fill those gaps, human society would achieve greatness. But modern history is littered with disillusioned people who thought capitalism would make us better or socialism would make us better. The sins of the human heart just express themselves differently in each of these systems. Politics does not go deep enough.

Image © me

A BRILLIANT book I picked up as I was browsing…it’s written in a series of letters from a wife to her estranged husband, with dark and sarcastic humour in the middle of a slow, magnetic descent into hell.

Eva never really wanted to be a mother — and certainly not the mother of the boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him just two days before his sixteenth birthday.

Very smart, pitch-perfect, and harrowing storytelling. I’m just a quarter in and I feel — complicit in the story, dirty by association in the same way that my interest in gory human interest stories in the news can sometimes stray into voyeurism or Schadenfreude.

年年有“鱼”. Having a mother who teaches kindergarten means you can pick up all sorts of craft skills like making origami goldfish out of red packets. Image © me

Image © me

Image © me

A SPRAY or two of baby’s breath are an easy, frugal way to perk up the space! They’ve got a light fragrance too, so it’s good to be learning languages and doing reading with some of them next to me. The Mandarin name’s lovely too — 满天星 — “sky full of stars”.

Doing spring cleaning and I’ve got so. many. books! And too few shelves.

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A: Are you sure you weren’t so lathered up by the soft soap of small talk that you didn’t feel the razor?

A: I’m sure you had a witty comeback.
B: No. I just managed to let loose a bitter, inarticulate, disdainful croak.

C: As I sat there doing the ironing and watching Iron Man 2 on HBO, the irony struck me…I am Iron Man!

“福” means prosperity. Image © me

INSTEAD of decorating Christmas trees, we usually decorate the Chinese New Year 银柳 (pussy willow stalks) :-) This year there are angpow goldfish on red ribbons. Family gatherings aplenty before we lead up to reunion dinner!

We’re also having a gathering/open house at C’s on Saturday, Jan 28th, let me know if you want an invitation!

Speaking of gatherings and dinners, I really want to try this recipe for steamed prawns with garlic out. There’s this place called “Farmart” which sells live prawns, will check it out one day once I get someone with a car along for the adventure — alternatively there’s always placing an order with the Changi Point people.

I realise, with a bit of alarm, that I’ve become the bizarre single aunt who feeds cats in the park, quotes the Bible and talks on about obscure topics (textiles in Southeast Asia, anyone?).

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(On random people finding this page.)

A: I can hide this blog like Mr Rochester hid his wife.

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Time for some haikus.
The first for 2-0-1-2.
Hot and piping fresh!

Has it really been
months since I last wrote haikus?
Apparently so!

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Digging for the roots of the ministerial pay debates…Say what you want about Lee Kuan Yew, there’s no doubt of his placing national interest first and foremost.

When I was writing about passion and motivation and politics, I thought of that fire in the belly that was obvious in the pioneers of the country. Singapore’s greatest generation who grew up in untold hardship and privations, experiencing social and political upheaval, laying the foundation for the peace and prosperity of a new nation. Many of us are too young to remember how bad things were. Our present stability and prosperity have been built upon the cohesion, the determination and the planning of a small band of men, who were able to bring the nation together behind them.

How do you put a body together? Do you just start sewing limbs? No. You start with the spine. Churchill and a small group of men around him gave a whole nation the courage and resolution to fight against insurmountable odds. We had that spine in Singapore — in these different times, how do we find that formula for national unity and collective endeavour?

The first generation possessed what Aung San Suu Kyi calls the essential flame:

Power is by nature latent until a force sets it in motion. What starts up the engines of power, whether they be tanks and fighter jets and nuclear weapons or diverse individuals linked by a shared cause and modern technology? The means to unleash power that could change frontiers or crush men and their aspirations can become active only when an initial force sweeps away irresolution and inhibitions. The power of defiance, too, needs that first impulse to encourage passive individuals to put aside the inaction fostered by decades of fear or by natural human caution.

So then, is it “passion vs. power?” Does it have to be versus? Are passion and power natural opposites, or mutually exclusive in promoting political change, either of the ordinary variety brought about through constitutional processes in established democracies, or of the revolutionary brand that reshapes the destinies of peoples and nations?

…Such commitment is seldom given to pyrotechnic display, but it is always there, and it provides constant assurance that the essential flame that keeps our cause vibrant will not die out. It is passion, not of the sterile breed, but passion that moves hearts and minds and makes history. It is passion that translates into power. When such passion is brought to bear on public issues, it is a potent instrument for political and social change.

We need the leadership of a team with ability and determination, but at the same time they must have the capacity to inspire their people to unite for a national cause, to place personal and sectional interests second to national interests. At the same time, there’s the need to guard against narcissism and egotism in all its forms, even those that masquerade as revolutionary zeal.

Singapore’s ruling party and public policy makers are often uncomfortable with emotions, sometimes to their detriment.

31:00 - [On the topic of political team renewal] Some prefer recruitment through PAP branches, promoting the activist and the loyalist. Unfortunately, we have tried this for years and years, with such meager results. Now some propose that we create conditions under which we can appeal to the idealism of youth. The same idealism which moved the older generations in the 1940s and the 1950s. How??? How do we re-create the Japanese war, the Japanese occupation, the struggle for independence, the fight against the communists, the fight against the communalists?

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& I wonder why Lee has set a lower bar for our generation and “future generations” when he wrote this:

“When I went in, I had to be comfortable with my own self, that I can live with failure. And failure means it has failed, the communists have won and I’m in deep trouble…I prepared myself for the possibility of failure, for the possibility of being able to live with failure. In other words, if you want a soft life, better not get into this.

“So I led a pretty disciplined life; if the worst came to the worst, I could survive. I don’t need caviar for breakfast, or for dinner, or for supper. I can live on soya beans. I can live quite frugally if I need to. It became a way of remoulding my life in a direction or in a way which would withstand a sharp attack on it.”

(In that Han Fook Kwang Sumiko Tan book, pg. 234)

Compare soya beans to Grace Fu’s “standard of living”!!!

Hmph, had just wanted to have some light-hearted super-domestic chatter about prawns and ended up digging up Lee Kuan Yew speeches. :P Time to go and sleep.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

– 1 Cor 13

THINKING of motivation and calling — What matters to you more than anything else? To know a person, you have to know what matters to them, what gets to the heart of who they are.

// Where do you find deep joy?
// Where does the brokenness of the world touch you?

The quotation above says love is not “easily angered”, but I do think there’s a place for anger. One way to tap into what really matters to you is to ask what makes you angry. (There’s no point getting angry about small things like getting cut off in lane; you can always tell what sort of person a man is by the things that make him angry.) At the same time, vocation should not be fuelled by anger, for that’s destructive and soul-eroding.

Talent and ability are means by which we fulfil vocation, but they aren’t enough to help us discern vocation. Pay is never enough as a motivating factor. What is necessary to be faithful to whom you’re created to be?

When we talk of drawing people to serve as ministers, public service and politics are not everyone’s cup of tea. I’ve been following the parliamentary debates, which have been interesting. But I still think there’s a gap in how the ruling party understands motivation. As someone online said: “That is the gravest failure of your governance: inability to cultivate loyal, creative, passionate and selfless leaders.”

(Over the Internet, we’ve some way to go towards more mature kinds of political discourse…Part of the frustration of our contemporary position is that political language becomes increasingly dominated by the marketing of slogans, sound bites, and the calculation of short-term advantage. This is not helped by politicians who “self-pwn” despite their best intentions.)

I can sense a deep anger in society — anger at inequalities compounded by apathy and narcissism. I work with some people in situations where material poverty and the pervasive images of consumerism often sit side by side. This is an environment in which adult stress and depression — often intensified in, though not exclusive to, the lone parent household — limits the ability and willingness of parents to secure pressure-free space for children, or to provide models of adult choice.

How are we modelling adult choice? A society that is generally disabled in its choice-making will produce childish adults, bad at the nurture of children because they are not secure in their adult freedoms. In the long run, unintelligent political education will produce either conformism or cynicism — or a debilitating mixture of the two — and will undo any good that emerges elsewhere in the system. Why do we have difficulties in getting people excited about the calling of political service? Do we have “top tier talent” professionals who are cynical or conformist, and are we perpetuating this sort of mindset in the younger generation?

If people are not developing into real political subjects, there is a major area of adult freedom that remains uncultivated. Learning to assert one’s claims, needs and dignities as an adult is also important. A society that pushes us towards dependent and frustrated patterns of behaviour will not enable adults to be “at home” with their limits and their choices in a way that makes it possible to welcome or nurture those who are bound to be dependent, who are still learning their own freedom.

When I made the decision to eat chilli crabs with my hands and fingers, pay was not a key factor. Loss of tidiness was. I had some ground to believe that crabs must still be eaten with fingers. If the balance is tilted further in the future, it will make it harder for me to lick the gravy off my fingers (yummy), and crab not to be eaten the RIGHTFUL way. That crab would have died in vain! OH CRAB!

– Grace Fu spoofs. She’d said:

When I made the decision to join politics in 2006, pay was not a key factor. Loss of privacy, public scrutiny on myself and my family and loss of personal time were. The disruption to my career was also an important consideration. I had some ground to believe that my family would not suffer a drastic change in the standard of living even though I experienced a drop in my income. So it is with this recent pay cut. If the balance is tilted further in the future, it will make it harder for any one considering political office.

Conflicts of interest and desire, the unavoidability of loss, the obstinacy of others…

The language of “choosing to serve” reveals a scepticism among the public about the whole idea of Singaporean politics as serving a common interest, providing a language for much public debate and moral wrangling. Have those adults who’re offered a choice to serve learned to choose — the whole messy and time-consuming business of reflection, the thinking through of our relationships and dependencies? Grace Fu attempted to articulate this process in an honest way — she mentioned considering her family, for instance — but didn’t tease out what she said in her bite-sized FB post. The denial of the difficulty of choice is a denial of the very realities of mature choosing.

The process of “choosing to serve” is — or should be! — so much more than just “under one million, don’t bother me”. To look at choices just as an economic consumer is to flatten the landscape of our life, to just look at pay packages confirms that ambivalent strain of rivalry that both energises and skews culture. The flattened landscapes of “consumer” choice fits well into a political landscape where responsibility for the interest of the other may be obscured.

We need to break out of talking of the calling of politics just by referring to pay packages. Somehow the matter has to be addressed at another level, in a wider context. We have to challenge assumptions that we are, as human beings, committed first and foremost to victory in the battle for material goods. When social and economic competition have become increasingly violent, some will be more systematically disadvantaged, some will become more and more incapable of letting go the compulsive, even exhilarating, struggle for position. Either there is no possibility of finding a way in to the world of serious economic acquisition and negotiation, or that world takes on an obsessive character — unsurprising, given the bleakness of the alternative. The skewed character of work is intensified by the lack, the thinness, or the impotence of the remaining social rituals that embody love, or charity.

Enriching notions of choice & social good is not just the responsibility of the politicians.

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On the business front, am astounded by the Byzantine politics of the fashion industry. How does all this *work*? What makes it possible? Whose labour, in what conditions, whose investment, whose profit?

& on the reading front, picking up my Hrabal in Mandarin translation and biting into substantial, good stuff…

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I like this speech by Eddie Teo — but sometimes there should be enough of telling hoop-jumping teens they’re the “best and brightest in the land”. Please read this other article to balance things out…

Getting to an elite college, being at an elite college, and going on from an elite college—all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE. You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers. They come to signify not only your fate, but your identity; not only your identity, but your value. It’s been said that what those tests really measure is your ability to take tests, but even if they measure something real, it is only a small slice of the real. The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.”

(I am sick of the use of “elite” in Singapore, but don’t have the mental energy to continue to write any more :P )

I AM conscious that I am addressing members of Gen Y in the land of opportunity – a deadly combination. On top of that, you are the cream of Singapore’s Gen Y, and you sense that the world is your oyster. Some of you may have interned in a global company or visited Palo Alto and had a glimpse of how vibrant and exciting the corporate world can be. But you have made a choice to work in the Public Service when you were 18 years old. Was it the right choice? Was it wise to opt for nation above self, unlike other members of your generation? Why should you be the one to be responsible for the nation’s well-being while they need only be responsible to themselves?

2. I want to spend the next twenty minutes or so giving you some sense of what to expect in the Public Service. Not just the joys and the upside, but also the challenges. As you know, we have a unique and remarkable system of ensuring that the best and the brightest of our young people are recruited into the public service, and then nurtured and developed into public sector leaders. No other country spends so much money and effort to select the top students from its schools and then sends them to top universities worldwide and locally, on scholarships, before they join the Public Service. And we have been doing this for the last 49 years.

3. Why do we do this? We do it because we realise that Singapore has only one key resource – its people. Without the best people at the helm of our Public Service, our political leaders would not have been able to bring Singapore to its current level of development. If our Public Service had been weak, incompetent and corrupt, all our best plans would have failed and the best ideas of our political leaders would not have been implemented. An unsuccessful government with a long record of past failures would have produced a failed state. Other failed states usually continue to exist long after their systems and institutions collapse, as their government leaders continue to milk the depleting state coffers. But given our small size and lack of natural resources, without good government, Singapore would have disappeared soon after Independence. And we would not have been able to organise a seminar like this one today, reflecting on the future problems facing Singapore. Long ago, we would have run out of money to give out scholarships and our best and brightest would have migrated to greener pastures.

4. But being successful in the past does not guarantee success in the future. Singapore’s population has changed with global experience, higher education and affluence, and the public now expects much more from the government than it used to in the past. As Singapore and the world changes and becomes more complex, the government must also adapt and change, in order to better cope with new problems and challenges. From time to time, we should pause and take stock, because no matter how effective and efficient, no system is perfect.

Why Scholars?

5. Why do we think that you scholars will make good public servants? First, because you are among the top students in our schools. Second, because we choose you not only because you are academically gifted but also because we think you have other qualities such as commitment, integrity, leadership and people skills. In other words, at the point of recruitment, we assess you to have the potential to become good public servants and we think you have a more than even chance of reaching the top in your public service career. Of course, you could sometimes prove us wrong.

6. There is a common misperception that all scholars have it made from the start and that a scholar’s future career in the public service will be easy and plain sailing. Becoming a scholar is no guarantee that you will become a public sector leader. Many scholars, including President’s Scholars, have not made it to the top. Potential alone is not enough. You must demonstrate your ability through sustained and tested performance over a period of time. Public servants are expected to perform during good times as well as bad. Some people perform well during good times but collapse during a crisis. In considering candidates for promotion within the public service, the fact that they were scholars is never considered a special merit point. When looking for a Permanent Secretary, if we find a non-scholar more deserving than a scholar, we will appoint him or her, rather than the scholar. After all, that is what meritocracy means. We will appoint the best candidate, whether or not he or she is a scholar.

7. However, if a scholar does not rise to the top within the public service, it does not mean that he or she has failed. Not every scholar can be a Permanent Secretary. Some may fit well in vital niches or do specialized jobs in which they continue to make significant contributions. Some may lead smaller agencies or statutory boards and perform with distinction. Others leave and do well outside, in jobs that better fit their skills, passion and aptitudes. We have ex-scholars in a variety of jobs – in politics, the corporate world, academia, the media world, the health sector or less well-trodden paths such as the voluntary organizations or NGOs. So long as they are still in Singapore or working for a Singapore company, we have not lost them.

Where Have All Our Scholars Gone?

8. If we look at the list of officers at the grade of Permanent Secretaries today, we find that four out of 27 of them were non-scholars. Only one was a President’s Scholar. To me, this indicates that the system is working. If all Permanent Secretaries were scholars, we may wonder if they were truly promoted on merit. Because a few were not scholars, it suggests that we do not promote people just because they were scholars. But, on the other hand, if only a small number were scholars, we will wonder if the scholarship system is worth it. Why spend so much to produce so few who can make it to the top? So, within the Public Service, my view is that the system is still working and therefore worth retaining.

9. If we look at the Cabinet, we find that there are 13 scholars among the 21 Ministers. The Cabinet has six Ministers who were President’s Scholars. But while the Cabinet appears to have done better than the Public Service in this respect, we should remember two points. First, some of the Ministers who were President’s Scholars were at one time public servants or military officers. Second, among retired Permanent Secretaries, there were nine who were President’s Scholars.

10. Among the CEOs of the top 13 Singapore companies listed by FORBES, only three were scholars. The CEO of three of our iconic companies – SIA, Singtel and CapitaLand - were not scholars. So the private sector has a smaller share of scholars. From time to time, we hear the lament that the public sector has deprived the private sector of its share of talent. I think that is a gross insult to the CEOs we have. Many of the CEOs of our top companies may not have been scholars, but they are talented people who have done well because they have what it takes to succeed in business. They are smart, daring, resourceful, determined and savvy. I am not at all convinced that if we release half our scholars into the private sector, the Singapore economy will do much better. Not all scholars have the business instincts to make them outstanding entrepreneurs. Besides, the PSC selects only a small number of scholars per year out of a much bigger pool of academically gifted students. There is plenty of talent out there and the Public Service seeks only its fair share of Singapore’s talent.

Rising Public Expectations

11. Having spent so much resources and money on scholars, our taxpayers have a right to demand that the success rate of individual scholars should be high. However, what is even more important is that successful scholars who reach the pinnacle of government should also excel at problem-solving and implementing well formulated policies to steer Singapore through difficult times, as well as into the uncertain future. The more we invest in our scholars, the higher is the expectation of the public. If our public service is supposed to comprise the best and brightest in our land, it must provide world-class service and superior solutions to our problems.

12. We are sometimes the victims of our own success. Having had good government for so long, can we continue to sustain the high standards we have set ourselves? There is a price to pay for success. If we strive to be world-class, we will be judged by world-class standards. If we say that we have one of the best governments in the world, the public will expect it to solve virtually any problem Singapore faces. Some of our citizens are now beginning to expect the government to do the impossible. Many citizens are now less prepared to give the government room to make mistakes and are less forgiving and more demanding. They tend to regard explanations as excuses. Take the recent floods. To some Singaporeans, saying that floods are natural disasters and Singapore cannot be flood-free, sounds like a cop out. Every time something goes wrong in Singapore, citizens ask: “If our public servants and Ministers are so smart and paid so well, why can’t they prevent the problem from occurring, or solve it for good after it occurs?” More and more citizens, especially younger Singaporeans, agonize over the fact that there are still poor people in wealthy Singapore. Many worry about the widening income gap between the rich and the poor.

13. But as one academic astutely observes, it is always better to pay for the price of success than the price of failure.[1] Give me the problems we have today of managing success, and the expectations that flow from it, then having to solve the basic problems of poverty, hunger, ill health and rampant corruption in third world countries. It is far better for a government to be in the happy position of managing the expectations of success than having to cope with the despair of failure. Sincere but questioning citizens will help set the bar higher for excellent public service performance. Idealistic citizens indicate that our people are not uncaring.

Stay Pragmatic & Operational

14. As you spend time today reflecting on Singapore’s future, please remember that as public servants, you will often be judged by the citizenry on how well you execute and implement policy rather than how beautifully crafted your policy papers are. Not only are you required to think deeply and further into the future, you must always be aware of current problems and how to solve them. Tactics are as important as strategy. Being operational is part and parcel of being a good public servant. As I have said before, our system of governance is not one where scholars think and non-scholars do. Scholars are expected to both think and do. So, if and when you are deployed to an operational posting, please take it in the right spirit. It is meant to keep you rooted to reality and the ground, and to help you understand how policies are best implemented.

Conclusion

15. So, be aware of the future challenges you will need to face as public servants. As someone who spent 35 years in the Public Service and is still associated with it after my retirement, let me assure you that you will not regret your choice. The excitement and vibrancy you feel interning in the private sector can also be experienced in the public sector. The fulfilment you get in serving your fellow citizens and helping your nation succeed can equal, if not exceed, that of reaping profits for your company and yourself. While you are in this country, enjoy yourselves while you can. Always retain your sense of empathy for society and the people who are less fortunate than you. Make the most of your lives in university to learn, interact and socialize. Studying is important; so is excelling in your exams. But as the best and the brightest in the land, you should be able to do much more than that.

Thank you.

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

– Romans 10:17

READING Derek Prince’s biography now, and it resonates….

“He was tempted to dismiss this whole matter of religion as merely a condition of psychology and social class — a view popular among wags at Cambridge…He could not reason his way to the reality he sought. But perhaps there was a way. The Shaws and their pastor friends had not proposed a truth to be analysed. They offered a relationship with a person. Derek could analyse all he wished, but he knew he could not enter a relationship just by thinking about it. Perhaps this Jesus was real, and perhaps, if He was real, He might just make Himself known if Derek invited Him. It was worth a try anyway.

…Derek also began discerning the will of the Holy Spirit. He had often heard men speak of hearing God’s voice, and it made him uncomfortable…But now, in the desert, with little sound but the howling barrenness and the company of his own thoughts, Derek sensed another consciousness pressing itself into his mind. It wasn’t a voice but it was more than a feeling, as though there was a separate mind attempting to make itself known in his thoughts. It began as an awareness of a will, something like an unformed idea. Then, words grew from the impression of this will until he had understanding of a specific idea, a thought that someone outside himself had communicated as though he were inside him. He soon came to understand that this was the voice — the will, the thoughts, the impressions — of the Holy Spirit.”

I’ve just discovered his sermons and his life this year, and it’s like streams of clear water — they’ve helped to lay the foundation right. He’s a world-class scholar, and in every fibre of his being a servant of God, with a precise, systematic, unemotional teaching message.

*

He who does not backbite with his tongue,
Nor does evil to his neighbour,
Nor does he take up a reproach against his friend

– Psalm 15:3

One of the best lessons, Gordon Smith said, that we can learn, is to leave well.

If you have to leave a position, leave a relationship, step down or move on in some way, leave well. Leave with generosity and goodwill, don’t undermine those you’re leaving or those who’re coming after you.

Don’t leave behind fractured relationships, or create a mess bigger than what you faced, or snipe away at others to bolster your own sense of self-worth and self-righteousness or because you feel injured and something’s festering.

A: I’m tempted to cut my hair really short.
A’s husband: I’m tempted to grow my beard really long. Yes?

This poem is a falling leaf in your garden.
Let me stay within your sight for a while.

This poem is a still-frame in your mind.
One face for memory. Another for solitude.

This poem is a page in the book of your life.
A beautiful woman is waiting for you outside.

(Yes, I’m still writing…Somehow Amy Grant’s song above makes me think of Leaving Las Vegas. Must be the drunkard’s cry line.)

I HADN’T believed in fate, and brushed off the element of chance in the people I talked to through some work I do, and the coincidences that happened with regularity.

Then a few years back, some coincidences made me think I was going insane — it just wasn’t possible that I would be talking to this person *again*, and be exactly the right person to help, for instance, or have this message come at the right time, or have the other person have this connection etc etc.

What a mess that’d all been…In any case, you go through stuff, you learn, and you move on. No point getting stuck.

It took some almost frightening coincidences to shatter my stubbornness — I’m not talking about little sprinkles of kismet, more like a sledgehammer coming down hard with a “pay attention” message. I know now that God’s hand was in my life. How gracious He’s been in extending that invitation to make a U-turn, repent, and follow Him.

[Faith is a very personal thing, and I hope I'm not turning you off ( "tactless nagging or unimaginative ranting or pushing off of religious tracts")! But I remember how Eric called me up all the way from the US to tell me: "It's true" not knowing I'd already believed and expecting me to scoff -- well, I have to tell the people I care about (that's you), too.

"My little children, let us not love in word, nor in tongue, but in deed, and in truth."

-- 1 John 3:18

In any case, the best way to "testify" is through a life transformed. Gandhi was once asked what it would take to turn India into a Christian nation -- he said: "If Christians would be Christians."]

It took a great deal of throwing into the kiln to begin to soften up that stubborn, self-willed pride :-) Work’s still in progress…There are immense chunks of self-centredness and arrogance to melt away. Still, I’ve had some rough edges sanded away, and am much more…at rest. Was kind of “like a fountain troubled,” as Shakespeare said, “muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty.”

Here’s one of my favourite passages from Archbishop Rowan Williams:

“Relationship is the new thing at Christmas, the new possibility of being related to God as Jesus was and is. But here’s the catch and the challenge. To come into this glorious future is to learn how to be dependent on God. And that word tends to have a chilly feel for us, especially us who are proudly independent moderns. We speak of ‘dependent’ characters with pity and concern; we think of ‘dependency’ on drugs and alcohol; we worry about the ‘dependent’ mind set that can be created by handouts to the destitute. In other words, we think of dependency as something passive and less than free.

But let’s turn this round for a moment. If we think of being dependent on the air we breathe, or the food we eat, things look different. Even more if we remind ourselves that we depend on our parents for learning how to speak and act and above all how to love. There is a dependence that is about simply receiving what we need to live; there is a dependence that is about how we learn and grow. And part of our human problem is that we mix up this entirely appropriate and lifegiving dependency with the passivity that can enslave us. In seeking (quite rightly) trying to avoid passivity we can get trapped in the fantasy that we don’t need to receive and to learn.

Which is why it matters that our reading portrays the Son in the way it does – radiant, creative, overflowing with life and intelligence. The Son is all these things because he is dependent, because he receives his life from the Father. And when we finally grow up in to the fullness of his life, we shall, like him, be gladly and unashamedly dependent – open to receiving all God has to give, open to learn all he has to teach. This is a ‘dependency’ that is utterly creative and the very opposite of passive. It is a matter of being aligned with the freest activity we can imagine, God’s eternal love, flowing through us.

At some level we all recognise this, because we’ve all seen something like it at work in our family lives and even our closest friendships. Depending on each other, receiving and learning, are natural things, natural expression of closeness and trust. Yet we have over the long millennia of human existence created a whole culture in which there is a basic impatience about learning – we want to get to the point where we can say, OK that’s enough, I know what I need to know – and about receiving – we don’t want to be indebted to others, we want to stand on our own two feet. Like many in this congregation, I suspect, I can hear voices from my parents’ and grandparents’ generation saying they don’t want charity, they don’t want to be beholden, they don’t want handouts from the state or anywhere else. There’s something brave and admirable about much of this when what it represents is a generous unwillingness to burden others. But it can also reflect a stubborn hankering after a life that is under my management and doesn’t need support from outside.

One of the worst effects of this culture of impatience and pride is what it does to those who are most obviously dependent – the elderly, those with physical or psychological challenges and disabilities, and, of course, children. We send out the message that if you’re not standing on your own two feet and if you need regular support, you’re an anomaly. We’ll look after you (with a bit of a sigh), but frankly it’s not ideal. And in the case of children, we shall do our level best to turn you into active little consumers and performers as soon as we can. We shall test you relentlessly in schools, we shall bombard you with advertising, often highly sexualised advertising, we shall worry you about your prospects and skills from the word go; we shall do all we can to make childhood a brief and rather regrettable stage on the way to the real thing – which is ‘independence’, turning you into a useful cog in the social machine that won’t need too much maintenance.

In the last year, the issues around how we regard childhood in our society have been opened up for discussion with new intensity by a number of important pieces of research like the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood report or the Cambridge Review of primary education. There has at last been a wake-up call about the ways in which we are crushing and narrowing children’s experience; and there is a long and significant agenda there for debate in the months ahead.

But behind the details, there is one central issue. Can we as a society accept and even celebrate the fact that there is a place for proper and mature dependence – that human beings need to receive and learn: not so that they can get to the point where they stop receiving and learning, but so that they can acquire the habits of receiving and learning in ever-new settings? Can we help children enjoy their dependency so that they don’t just leave it behind but get to manage it with freedom and imagination as they grow older?

And that involves two difficult lessons for us adults. One is simply to reconnect ourselves to our own capacity to receive and learn with joy and excitement – to become like little children, as Somebody once said. The other is to be ready to give the nurture and security that children need – to create the safe places where they can learn, where they can make their mistakes. To do this is to show that we treasure dependency and that we shan’t either exploit it or ignore it. Embracing and celebrating our own dependence gives us the vision and energy to make sure that others have the freedom to make the most of their dependence too. And this means working to give all the children of the world the security they need.

In our own society, there are problems enough – children who have never known stability in their family life, who have never known a father or who have been pushed into taking responsibility for a parent or for brothers and sisters, with a mother who is ailing, addicted or otherwise incapacitated; children with workaholic parents, materially well off but deprived of warmth and relaxation with their family; worse still, children and young people who are systematically exploited through sex trafficking, children who are trapped in gang culture. Worldwide, all these problems and more are all too visible; perhaps one of the most appalling phenomena, still affecting hundreds of thousands of children, is the exploiting of children in the meaningless and savage civil wars in places like Congo and Sri Lanka – children who are abducted, brutalised, turned into killers, used as sex slaves. To hear of these experiences is almost unbearable, yet the scandal continues.

These children are created, like all of us, to become fully and consciously children of God, to enjoy that glory we reflected on a few minutes ago. Their suffering is an insult to the purpose of God, a contemptuous refusal of the gift of God on the part of those who keep them in their different kinds of slavery. God’s gift at Christmas is relationship, not just another human relationship but relation to God the Father by standing where Jesus stands, standing in the full torrent of his love and creativity, giving and receiving. To come into that place and to be rooted and grounded there means letting go of our fear of dependence and opening our hearts to be fed and enlarged and transformed. And that in turn means looking at how we handle dependence in ourselves and others, how we accept the positive dependence involved in lifelong learning and growing, and help one another deal with it positively.

So the important thing is not that everyone gets to stand on their own two feet and turns into a reliable ‘independent’ consumer and contributor to the GNP. What we expect from each other in a generous and grown-up society is much more to do with all of us learning how to ask from each other, how to receive from each other, how to depend on the generosity of those who love us and stand alongside us. And that again means a particular care for those who need us most, who need us to secure their place and guarantee that there is nourishment and stability for them. As we learn how to be gratefully dependent, we learn how to attend to and respond to the dependence of others. Perhaps by God’s grace we shall learn in this way how to create a society in which real dependence is celebrated and safeguarded, not regarded with embarrassment or abused by the powerful and greedy.

God has spoken through a Son. He has called us all to become children at the cradle of the Son, the Word made flesh, so that we may grow into a glory that even the angels wonder at. To all who accept him he gives power and authority to become children of God, learning and growing into endless life and joy.”

*

Still find poetry immensely restorative. A couple I’ve liked recently:

Remember Me
Hal Sirowitz

Every weekend your mother & I tour cemetery plots,
Father said, the way most people visit model homes.
We have different tastes. I like jutting hills
overlooking traffic, whereas she prefers a bed
of flowers. She desires a plot away from traffic noise.
I let her have her way in death to avoid a life of Hell.
But when you light memorial candles for us, arrange hers
in the center of a flowery tablecloth, but place mine
on the windowsill. Don’t say any prayers for me,
just wet your finger & pass it through the flame.
Remember me by the tricks I have taught you.

*

From Jo, whom I believe firmly is one of my “soul sisters”.

Nest
Louise Gluck

A bird was making its nest.
In the dream, I watched it closely:
in my life, I was trying to be
a witness not a theorist.

The place you begin doesn’t determine
the place you end: the bird

took what it found in the yard,
its base materials, nervously
scanning the bare yard in early spring;
in debris by the south wall pushing
a few twigs with its beak.

Image
of loneliness: the small creature
coming up with nothing. Then
dry twigs. Carrying, one by one,
the twigs to the hideout.
Which is all it was then.

It took what there was:
the available material. Spirit
wasn’t enough.

And then it wove like the first Penelope
but toward a different end.
How did it weave? It weaved
carefully but hopelessly, the few twigs
with any suppleness, any flexibility,
choosing these over the brittle, the recalcitrant.

Early spring, late desolation.
The bird circled the bare yard making
efforts to survive
on what remained to it.

It had its task:
to imagine the future. Steadily flying around,
patiently bearing small twigs to the solitude
of the exposed tree in the steady coldness
of the outside world.

I had nothing to build with.
It was winter: I couldn’t imagine
anything but the past. I couldn’t even
imagine the past, if it came to that.

And I didn’t know how I came here.
Everyone else much farther along.
I was back at the beginning
at a time in life we can’t remember beginnings.

The bird
collected twigs in the apple tree, relating
each addition to existing mass.
But when was there suddenly mass?

It took what it found after the others
were finished.
The same materials - why should it matter
to be finished last? The same materials, the same
limited good. Brown twigs,
broken and fallen. And in one,
a length of yellow wool.

Then it was spring and I was inexplicably happy.
I knew where I was: on Broadway with my bag of groceries.
Spring fruit in the stores: first
cherries at Formaggio. Forsythia
beginning.

First I was at peace.
Then I was contented, satisfied.
And then flashes of joy.
And the season changed - for all of us,
of course.

And as I peered out my mind grew sharper.
And I remember accurately
the sequence of my responses,
my eyes fixing on each thing
from the shelter of the hidden self.

first, I love it.
Then, I can use it.

*

Infirm
Gwendolyn Brooks

Everybody here
is infirm.
Everybody here is infirm.
Oh. Mend me. Mend me. Lord.

Today I
say to them
say to them
say to them, Lord:
look! I am beautiful, beautiful with
my wing that is wounded
my eye that is bonded
or my ear not funded
or my walk all a-wobble.
I’m enough to be beautiful.

You are
beautiful too.

A mock-up of the back of our business card, designed by my lovely business partner.
Design & image © Silk & Parchment

LOVE what I’m doing!

Thanks to all of you readers who’ve supported us by following the Facebook page :-) I hope you’re not too bored with the pictures of silkworms and looms yet.

There is a sense of urgency for undertaking action to keep indigenous weaving traditions alive.

These words by Sandra Niessen really speak to me:

The decline of Batak culture is not sitting well with me. Not at all. I see it most clearly from the vantage point of the weaving arts. Yes, there are still weavers. People can point to them and say, “See, the weaving craft in the batak area is still alive.” But I see something different: the most skilled and advanced manipulations of the loom have been forgotten; the social rules enforcing quality have been forgotten; most of the motifs have been forgotten; weavers have been forced by the market to adopt a division of labour and their weaverly knowlddge has narrowed. When the oldest generation passes away, the sophisticated knowledge of one of the richest and most beautiful weaving traditions in the archipelago will have disappeared, even though there may still be a few weavers left, toiling over their South Sumatran look-alike textiles that are the only ones truly viable on the market.

It’s a complicated task and takes rural-urban cooperation, this business of preserving textile traditions. Follow the link and read about Sandra’s inspiring vision…

On my side, a grant committee member spoke of “scaling” — I’d to emphasise that while we want constant learning, it’s also about what our partners prefer, learning from them, and enabling their choices — while some like to work in city workshops, others prefer to stay at home with their looms so they can help out on the farm and take care of their families. Not everything is about mechanisation — small and steady can have a positive impact such as sustainability, authenticity, and integrity, especially when it comes to crafts development and cultural protection and preservation.

*

I didn’t know how active my uncles and aunties are on Facebook till my uncle, using my aunt’s account, took a look at my page, scrolled through the photos and asked my mother why there weren’t more pictures of my parents during the baptism ceremony!

If any of my elders have managed to find this blog, a big “Hello!” to all of you!

Image © me

Handsewn stitch by stitch by Hmong tribeswomen. Image © Silk & Parchment

BRIGHT cheery yellow, with a swirly little tail detail and clean white hooves — this giraffe says “Hi!” to all of you in a special sneak peek this Monday morning… :-)

He’s already on his way to a home in Canada — keep an eye out for his siblings and his friends, the elephant and the pink bunny rabbit!

We’re still working very hard and weaving away. Am so excited! Just one month more to the launch…

A (posted to Egypt): I found a nice Salafi man who sold me his honey.
B: … OK. That kinda sounds gay.

C: I thought I’d get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual.

Trees in Pasir Ris. One of my favourite “happy places”. Image © me

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

他要像一棵树，
栽在溪水旁，
按时候结果子，
叶子也不枯干。
凡他所作的，尽都顺利。

– Psalm 1:3 / 诗篇 1:3

SETTING the foundation right’s very important, as well as putting down deep roots in the right place.

In the midst of honing our business plan and getting perspectives from others, including those in grants committees. There are all these buzzwords in business, but what do they mean?

What I want is to bring benefit to as many parties as possible — that’ll be the root of “scaling” operations.

Am learning so much!

*

“Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are.
I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing.
You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions.
In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

如 今 我 把 你 们 交 托 神 和 他 恩 惠 的 道 ； 这 道 能 建 立 你 们 ， 叫 你 们 和 一 切 成 圣 的 人 同 得 基 业 。
我 未 曾 贪 图 一 个 人 的 金 、 银 、 衣 服 。
我 这 两 只 手 常 供 给 我 和 同 人 的 需 用 ， 这 是 你 们 自 己 知 道 的 。
我 凡 事 给 你 们 作 榜 样 ， 叫 你 们 知 道 应 当 这 样 劳 苦 ， 扶 助 软 弱 的 人 ， 又 当 记 念 主 耶 稣 的 话 ， 说 ： 施 比 受 更 为 有 福 。

(Acts 20:32-35 ／ 使 徒 行 傳 20：32－35)

Paul’s emotional farewell to Ephesians.

Thinking of tithing and what’s being taught. The earliest apostles did not get paid — tithing used to be from men who own their property — not widows, single moms, low income families, sick people wearing out their savings. Instead of feeding the poor, the church seems to be taxing the poor. People are threatened with the curses of God if they do not tithe. Even the unbelievers can see this is wrong, and they call it “fleecing the flock”. In the Bible, God wanted 10% of what the property owner had produced on his land as a profit, not 10% before expenses. Does the church preach the gospel to the unsaved, or support “me first” programmes?

There’s an intense temptation that riches and prosperity bring in any culture or society. Even today, politics is often a game of appealing to people’s sense of greed. Money is the hook that gets people both secular and religious. Human nature tends to pull in “security” from as many sources as possible. As fallible humans, we are insecure, and gather “secure” things around us, like a scared child surrounds herself with stuffed animals when she is afraid of the dark.

Jesus did not come so that we would be rich financially. That was not the “good news”. The good news was that God would redeem us from their troubles and provide for us, assuring our spiritual welfare. The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof. The Lord is a God of compassion, and of mercy — all we have to do is to call upon Him in faith, if we need help.

This expectation of provision has been perverted by some false teachers. Some churches have become odd financial investment corporations. If you do not invest your money, you will not receive any dividend from God. This has turned so many, many people off “god” because of this kind of fraud. Large ministries have large operating costs, and these should be paid for out of free will, not because God “spoke” to the preacher to tell them to give money, or be cursed.

As Derek Prince said:

“Never push people to give to you. Never manipulate, or try to dominate. Always give people their free will to make their own decision without making them feel guilty or obligated.”

Jesus accepted free will offerings, and gave back more than he received. He came to sow truth, sacrificing Himself, to reap a harvest of souls for the kingdom of God by offering atonement and forgiveness for our sins. He did not compel all people to give 10% of their money for vanity projects. I think some preachers need to learn the difference between God blessing them and them helping themselves to God’s money.

Real Christianity may not always be on display. You will find them in people who work in hospices, in orphanages, in special schools, in counselling services — staffed by people who live for low or no wages to serve others. They share their bread with the poor. They build schools and hospitals in foreign countries, and teach other people’s children as if they were their own. They teach the kingdom of God to others, and live the life that Jesus taught. When God is really with someone, the miraculous is always possible, and people’s lives are changed forever. People’s hearts are really touched in a special way. Lives and bodies are healed.

The real Christian will be the one who listens to you all night when you have a problem, who will come to you when you have a need. They will love you when you hurt them, and forgive you, and pray for you. You may hurt them carelessly and they will still take you back as a friend. They reach out to lives ravaged by sin. They are willing to help anyone with a problem, or addiction, to overcome. I pray that what the despairing, needy world sees more of is this kind of Christian in the future.

INTERVIEW season again (admissions interviews are due by February, and I’ve a new crop of people to meet), and I was thinking of the authority that parents have over children, teachers over their charges, pastors over their flock, political leaders over their electorate, bosses over their charges, husbands over their wives, and so on…

Those with power over others have the responsibility to use authority well — I’m suspicious of all forms of domination.

At the same time, what does it mean to submit to and respect rightful authority? Some subordinates seek to manipulate and take charge by various means — there’s a need to gain identity, glory, recognition, power, and satisfy the need for attention and self-glorification. This is a consequence of the desire for love and self-worth with a focus on the ego.

There’s the underlying need to weaken or emasculate emotionally and spiritually, and divest others of their authority and power over others. The energy is terribly aggressive, very determined, callous, controlling, selfish, power-hungry, and manipulative. There’s a great deal of pride.

This hampers others’ ability to grow into their own, or exercise their rightful influence.

Political authority? Well, it’s always easy to criticise — I do respect the team we have, and I’ll pray for their wisdom and wellbeing instead of tuning in to the backbiting. There are certain criticisms that have to be voiced out — such as the use of the ISA, the casinos, and so on, though.

Employer/employee relationships provide many opportunities for glorifying God. On both sides of the transaction, we can imitate God, and he will take pleasure in us when he sees us showing honesty, fairness, trustworthiness, kindness, wisdom and skill, and keeping our word regarding how much we promised to pay or what work we agreed to do.

In terms of relationships, I’ve learnt my lessons well: when to take a step back, when to get rid of ego and the need to control, always to encourage and aid others to grow as much as possible instead of feeling threatened. Let go of that need to be controlling — be gentle with my own vulnerabilities.

This is not to say that women can’t be strong. But perfectionism is no excuse for disrespect towards others, and we should never seek to control or manipulate others.

Ah well. It’s always easy to preach about love, much harder to act it out!

“There will always be people trying to control you for some reason or another. It may be for money, power, or security of some kind, or perhaps to give them significance. The three main needs of the human are love, security and significance. People do not know how to obtain these from God, so they will try to manipulate you in order to achieve these ends. Watch out when someone is telling you that you should be doing something, or you owe something to them. This is often the sign of the manipulator. So often Christians use the Bible as a means of manipulation. They show you one scripture out of context to prove that you should be doing something. The Holy Spirit never uses force or pressure. He always suggests things and allows you to make a free decision.

“Never push people to give to you. Never manipulate, or try to dominate. Always give people their free will to make their own decision without making them feel guilty or obligated.

“Remember Jesus was and is the Lamb of God. Remember the Holy Spirit as a dove fell on Jesus as He was being baptised in the Jordan river. The Holy Spirit always falls on the “lamb” nature. The lamb nature is meek and humble, never seeking its own, always obedient to the shepherd.

“Most people misunderstand Jezebel’s role as one of a sexually perverse person. She may have been, but her primary role was one of usurping proper authority. Her husband the king was supposed to be the ruler, but actually, behind the scenes she was calling the shots. When Joram saw Jehu he asked, “Have you come in peace, Jehu?” “How can there be peace,” Jehu replied, “as long as all the idolatory and witchcraft of your mother Jezebel abound?” (2 Kings 9:22)

– Derek Prince

We need to turn to God for our needs for love, security and significance, not use others to feed these thirsts and hungers in ourselves.

Let others receive attention and recognition for their good works. To God be the glory. & these lines really spoke to me:

Remember Jesus was and is the Lamb of God. Remember the Holy Spirit as a dove fell on Jesus as He was being baptised in the Jordan river. The Holy Spirit always falls on the “lamb” nature. The lamb nature is meek and humble, never seeking its own, always obedient to the shepherd.

The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control — what’s within us that is feeding hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissessions, envy, and all sorts of sexual sins? And how do we get rid of that?

STARTED 2012 with a restorative run in the park (when I say “run”, I mean “wheezing shuffle”), then attended service in church — there’s a series on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and I felt very inspired by Rev. Peter Chen’s talk on what it means to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world.

A question I’ve grappled with: Some of the best — kind, patient, generous, lovely — people I know aren’t Christian; some of us who follow Christ have fallen short of God’s standards.

“By their fruit you will recognise them.”

凭着他们的果子，就可以认出他们来。

(Matthew／马太福音 7:16)

I think the best religion is that which brings you closest to God — and God is Love; we’re all learning how to best polish different facets of love.

There’s that question of what to make of Jesus Christ. Christ is real, and He lives, and He invites you to seek if He is really who He says He is.

The Bible says that when we truly follow Christ, we will be “pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (James 3:17). Well, I can only say that I’m still a work-in-progress! :-)

It’s great to start each day eager and happy and looking forward to what lies ahead…the new business gives me strength as it’s a social enterprise, and there’s also a lot to learn as JX and I wear different hats and deal with different types of people. So far we’ve met the loveliest craftsfolk, were involved in an accommodation scam in our travels, received much generosity from such hospitable people… :-) Many adventures! And very good vibes about the venture.

(I’m still learning much about project management, business finances, Excel spreadsheets etc, and am *just* beginning to document what we’ve sourced. No mannequin? Errrr….wrap up a vase? What’s the best backdrop for photos?)

Our business is not just to maximise shareholder wealth, but to serve as a blessing to community, to create jobs and enabled dignified livelihoods, provide fair wages. We should demonstrate our Christlike behaviour to colleagues, clients, vendors, suppliers, the Government… Ah well, big talk for someone who’s still taking infant steps!!

You know, one of the best lessons I’ve learnt in 2011 is true forgiveness. You make the past your past, forgive and send blessings towards those who need them, dust the bad vibes off, ask for forgiveness….and feel incredibly light and unburdened. Don’t carry around rocks of resentment, and don’t carry around bitterness in your hearts — they only act to fester any sores. Travel light!

Are there any rooms in your life that are locked up and full of darkness and dust? What can you do to bring love and light in? What can you do to unlock those doors, give everything a good dusting, throw out what’s not true, lovely or useful — and shake up the good vibes?

*

Here’s a tasty sangria recipe that’s easy to use for potlucks and gatherings:

Combine one bottle riesling (I’ve tried cava once and it works out well too), 60ml cointreau, and 250ml lemonade (I like Waitrose) in a pitcher or jug. Add sliced oranges, lemons and limes, nectarines, strawberries and mint leaves and stir to combine.

Add crushed ice to serve. It’s a very pretty drink — slice the nectarines thinly. You can add cucumbers too; I like the green of lime and mint and cucumber against a warm palette of fruits. Sangria’s a very fun drink to serve and tastes bright and fruity and very yummy!

Quentin Blake illustration. Image © me

DEAR reader,

May your home be full of joy, abundance and happiness, and may clear, uncluttered energy course through your life in the months ahead. :-)

Blessings upon your health, relationships, finances, creative endeavors and all other parts of your lives too!

May our eyes be open to all the wonders in our lives, and may we be grateful for all that we have and be at peace with where we are, and at the same time send love to others.

May our hearts and souls not be hardened but remain open, giving and glad.

Be well, do good, have fun — may you be safe, may you be loved and receive grace, and may you grow in each situation you face.

Let me know if I can help your journey in any way!

All best wishes,
Yvonne

Painting in Chiang Mai. Image © me

LEVI-STRAUSS’S Tristes Tropiques (1955) remains the great masterpiece of what Susan Sontag called “the anthropologist as hero” setting out to witness the supposed “world on the wane”, the Rousseau-ist paradise where sensual and passionate natives lived in a throbbing and intricate cosmos, where there was no separation of nature and culture, individual and community, immediate experience and meaning. The book is a masterpiece of French literature, a turn within the great tradition of fictional realism stretching from Balzac through Flaubert and Zola into the twentieth century.

Fieldwork has been, and remains, the defining mark of the discipline of anthropology. Field data are not Dinge an sich but are constructs of the process by which we acquire them. I’m reading Paul Rabinow’s Reflections On Fieldwork In Morocco, which points to fieldwork as an ethical experience and quest, and examines how it contributes to the human sciences. He speaks of “the comprehension of the self by the detour of the comprehension of the other” — much of his book is concerned with the difficulties and complexities involved in the comprehension of the other.

*

Kinship, politics, economics and religion.

Most of anthropology and significant portions of the other social sciences concentrate on how society or culture reproduces itself through institutions, symbolic work, power relations, or the cunning of reason. Geertz, Levi-Strauss, Bellah, and Bourdieu, each in his own distinct way, provided a trailblazing response to how traditional philosophic work should be combined with empirical inquiry.

As scholars, we should step outside ourselves to reflect on how our own life-histories are contributing to the perspectives we are accumulating. The point about the difficulty of being sure of one’s interpretation has been made many times before, most notably by Clifford Geertz in his account of ethnography as “thick description”, that detailed explanation of the symbolic actions of speech and gesture which allows us to understand the meaning which actors ascribe to their performance.

*

Bahasa practice: Oh dear, I can’t catch a lot of this…

TB:
Lonceng sekolah berbunyi. Murid-murid berhenti bermain lalu datang berkumpul.

Guru: “Baik-baiklah berbaris!” Murid-murid berbaris baik-baik, masuk ke kelas, lalu duduk di bangku. Amat bertanya kepada guru.

Amat: “Bu, bolehkah saya bertanya?”
Guru: “Ya, boleh.”
Amat: “Apa Ibu bisa berbicara bahasa Ingerris?”
Guru: “Ya, bisa. Saya belajar bahasa itu di universitas. Apa engkau mau belajar bahasa Ingerris?”
Amat: “Ya, saya mau belajar bahasa itu.”
Guru: “Anak-anak, apa engkau sekalian mau belajar lagu Inggeris?”
Murid-murid: “Ya, ya, marilah kita bernyanyi!”

*

I’ve been on a lemongrass kick lately, just made some lemongrass drink for a gathering and I love how the whole apartment smells of lemongrass!

It’s a very simple recipe. Put six stalks of lemongrass, bulbs bruised and cut into 6-inch strips, together with 2-3 pandan leaves tied together into a knot in two litres of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 30-45mins. Add rock sugar to taste. Use stalks of lemongrass in the glasses to garnish. Don’t put too much pandan as you don’t want the taste to overpower the lemongrassy goodness :-)

Another recipe from my friend’s Laotian uncle: Roast nuts (cashews, peanuts etc), add salt, and thin slices of lemongrass. V V V yummy…

Christmas Day, St Andrew’s Cathedral, 2011. Image © Wu Dan

AT HOME & reading some of my presents while keeping my feet warm and cosy with the softest shea-butter-infused pink socks (very thoughtful present from H) — I *love* these lounge socks, which are made to be worn while inside the house on a rainy or cold day…they’re soooo soft and smooth.

Had caught the flu when I was away, so it’s been lots of bed rest, hot tea and lemon honey for me.

The baptism went well for all of us; I’m glad many friends I’d invited had gone down to the cathedral, and had enjoyed themselves. It’s the first time in the cathedral for D, from Yunnan, for instance, and she took many beautiful photos. There was also a guest choir from South Africa who sang gospel songs with gusto! I love the hymn selection too, with lots of Christmas favourites :-)

Praise be to Jesus! The Lord, in His perfect timing, will take care of the situation.

To do:

// Grant writing
// Finish reading anthropology books
// Indonesian learning
// Website matters

Christmas Day, St Andrew’s Cathedral, 2011. Image © H. Schoon

In baptism, God has touched you with his love and given you a place among his people. God promises to be with you in joy and in sorrow, to be your guide in life, and to bring you safely to heaven. In baptism God invites you on a life-long journey. Together with all God’s people you must explore the way of Jesus and grow in friendship with God, in love for his people, and in serving others. With us you will listen to the word of God and receive the gifts of God.

DEAR Heavenly Father,

You have led us to You not by chance, but according to Your divine will. Thank you for helping me to see Your goodness and glory and Your great love for us.

Thank you for Your goodness in calling us to know You and to put our trust in You.
Increase this knowledge and strengthen our faith.

Thank you for ransoming us with the precious blood of Christ.

Thank you for giving us your Spirit to help guide us and protect us and empower us.

Grant that we may receive the fullness of Your grace
and the washing away of all our sins,
for without these blessings no one can enter Your kingdom.
May your Spirit live and work in us,
that we may be Yours forever through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I pray for our families and loved ones, that they might come to know You and Your grace. Help us to serve You and play a part, in our own little ways, in Your plans.

*

What is baptism?

Baptism marks the beginning of a journey with God which continues for the rest of our lives, the first step in response to God’s love. For all involved, particularly the candidates but also parents, godparents and sponsors, it is a joyful moment when we rejoice in what God has done for us in Christ, making serious promises and declaring the faith. The wider community of the local church and friends welcome the new Christian, promising support and prayer for the future. Hearing and doing these things provides an opportunity to remember our own baptism and reflect on the progress made on that journey, which is now to be shared with this new member of the Church.

The service paints many vivid pictures of what happens on the Christian way. There is the sign of the cross, the badge of faith in the Christian journey, which reminds us of Christ’s death for us. Our ‘drowning’ in the water of baptism, where we believe we die to sin and are raised to new life, unites us to Christ’s dying and rising, a picture that can be brought home vividly by the way the baptism is administered.Water is also a sign of new life, as we are born again by water and the Spirit. This reminds us of Jesus’ baptism. And as a sign of that new life, there may be a lighted candle, a picture of the light of Christ conquering the darkness of evil. Everyone who is baptized walks in that light for the rest of their lives.

As you pray for the candidates, picture them with yourself and the whole Church throughout the ages, journeying into the fullness of God’s love.

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

John 10.10

The Liturgy of Baptism

Presentation of the Candidates
The candidates may be presented to the congregation.Where appropriate, they may be presented by their godparents or sponsors.
The president asks those candidates for baptism who are able to answer for themselves

Do you wish to be baptized?
I do.

Testimony by the candidate(s) may follow. The president addresses the whole congregation:
Faith is the gift of God to his people. In baptism the Lord is adding to our number
those whom he is calling.
People of God, will you welcome these children/candidates and uphold them in their new life in Christ?
With the help of God, we will.

At the baptism of children, the president then says to the parents and godparents
Parents and godparents, the Church receives these children with joy. Today we are trusting God for their growth in faith. Will you pray for them, draw them by your example into the community of faith and walk with them in the way of Christ?
With the help of God, we will.

In baptism these children begin their journey in faith. You speak for them today. Will you care for them, and help them to take their place
within the life and worship of Christ’s Church?
With the help of God, we will.

The Decision

A large candle may be lit.The president addresses the candidates directly, or through their parents, godparents and sponsors

In baptism, God calls us out of darkness into his marvellous light. To follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life with him. Therefore I ask:

Do you reject the devil and all rebellion against God?
I reject them.

Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil?
I renounce them.

Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour?
I repent of them.

Do you turn to Christ as Saviour?
I turn to Christ.

Do you submit to Christ as Lord?
I submit to Christ.

Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth and the life?
I come to Christ.

Signing with the Cross

The president or another minister makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of each candidate, saying

Christ claims you for his own. Receive the sign of his cross.

The president may invite parents, godparents and sponsors to sign the candidates with the cross. When all the candidates have been signed, the president says

Do not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified.

All:
Fight valiantly as a disciple of Christ against sin, the world and the devil, and remain faithful to Christ to the end of your life.
May almighty God deliver you from the powers of darkness, restore in you the image of his glory, and lead you in the light and obedience of Christ.

All:
Amen.

Prayer over the Water

The ministers and candidates gather at the baptismal font. A canticle, psalm, hymn or litany may be used.

The president stands before the water of baptism and says

Praise God who made heaven and earth,
All:
who keeps his promise for ever. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
All:
It is right to give thanks and praise.

We thank you, almighty God, for the gift of water to sustain, refresh and cleanse all life. Over water the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation. Through water you led the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land. In water your Son Jesus received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us from the death of sin to newness of life.

We thank you, Father, for the water of baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, in joyful obedience to your Son,
we baptize into his fellowship those who come to him in faith.

Now sanctify this water that, by the power of your Holy Spirit, they may be cleansed from sin and born again. Renewed in your image, may they walk by the light of faith and continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Lord; to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be all honour and glory, now and for ever.

All:
Amen.

Profession of Faith

The president addresses the congregation

Brothers and sisters, I ask you to profess together with these candidates the faith of the Church.

Do you believe and trust in God the Father?
All:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

Do you believe and trust in his Son Jesus Christ?
All:
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven,
he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Do you believe and trust in the Holy Spirit?
All:
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

Baptism

If the candidate(s) can answer for themselves, the president may say to each one N, is this your faith?

Each candidate answers in their own words, or
This is my faith.

The president or another minister dips each candidate in water, or pours water on them, saying
N, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

All:
Amen.

If the newly baptized are clothed with a white robe, a hymn or song may be used, and then a minister may say

You have been clothed with Christ. As many as are baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
If those who have been baptized were not signed with the cross immediately after the Decision, the president signs each one now.

The president says
May God, who has received you by baptism into his Church, pour upon you the riches of his grace, that within the company of Christ’s pilgrim people you may daily be renewed by his anointing Spirit, and come to the inheritance of the saints in glory.

All:
Amen.

At the loom…Image © me

Image © me

IT’S been a good trip :-) I’ve learnt a lot and benefited from heaps of hospitality and generosity from our hosts and new friends.

Now’s the season of plenty and blessings…

My baptism’s coming up on Sunday! Time for some quiet reflection and reading after that packed trip we took. It’s also a celebration of God’s good will and abounding grace in my walk with Him…Christmas is a time to focus on His greatest gift, to concentrate on what’s of vital importance in our lives, instead of cluttering our time with the unfulfilling and the unimportant.

Image © me

Image © me

IT’S the perfect time for visiting northern Thailand — the weather is cool and sunny and there’s no rain. Excellent food, too, from khao soi to streetside desserts and this eggplant stirfry that really hit the spot. :-) Great start to the second leg of the journey!

It’s a very walkable city, and I love how ancient stupas and golden temples are just scattered throughout the old quarters.

Image © me

Image © me

SITTING by the riverside catching the sunset and having a cup of Earl Grey after wandering about … there are always new places to discover every time I’m in Bangkok. Found this wonderful place selling old maps and spent an afternoon looking through their trove; wandered down little alleyways in Chinatown; had tea in a traditional Thai house and checked out lovely boutique hotels.

I adore the old Thai houses (you see an example of them in Jim Thompson’s house) and the wonderful teak and ebony and other hard woods used in buildings and furniture, with those intricate carvings or simple design. Solid, good quality wood. So much more lovely than the stuff you get from Ikea, for instance.

Also, Thammasat University holds new meaning for me now that we’ve learnt more about student movements in Thailand and had Charnvit Kasetsiri come over for a guest lecture…

Silk, teak, rice barges, the hum of the city …

Gifts

The apple whole
Distant stars in darkness
The friends who come and see you
And the friends who don’t

Old teak and ebony
A thread in hand
Letters unsent

The white waves
A straight spine
The land’s curve
The river’s song:

Travel. Arrival. Delight.

*

I like the restaurants at the Oriental for the river view…Lord Jim’s was full of ladies who lunch with their lovingly coiffed hair, pearls and high-heeled shoes.

It’s relaxing to watch life on the river go by at the terrace later.

Good holiday; nice digs; very relaxing! Wish you were here …

To do

// Pack for Indochina trip. The north will be cooler.
// Web designer stuff
// Business errands
// Christmas cards: Send out the last batch
// Indonesian
// The next SE Asian language to pick up: Thai.

*

Translation for today:

Jemari kedua tangannya memilin seutas kawat kecil menjadi sebuah postur manusia yang tengah bergerak seperti menari. Matanya mencermati tiap garis lekukan. Lalu ia meliukkannya lagi. Ketika merasa sudah tepat, senyum pun menghias di bibirnya. Tanda bahwa sketsa sudah jadi. Siap untuk diwujudkan menjadi sebuah patung. Melewati proses yang panjang.

Itulah cara Wahyu Santosa, pematung bercorak realis di Yogyakarta yang berbeda dengan para pematung lainnya dalam mempersiapkan karya patung. Pria kelahiran Ngawi, Jawa Timur, 18 September 1972 ini menggunakan kawat sebagai sketsa perencanaan karya. Bukan menggunakan coretan pensil di atas kertas. Kawat selain sebagai sketsa juga sebagai cara memudahkan dirinya mendapatkan gambaran awal rancangan bentuk (study anatomi), sikap tubuh dan gerakan-gerakan dinamis (gesture). Sekaligus menjadi alat peraga dalam mengeksplorasi ide-idenya. “Sebenarnya hampir sama dengan membuat sketsa memakai pensil. Pakai kawat lebih praktis saja. Mudah dikoreksi kalau ada kekurangan-kekurangan. Misalnya kurang nekuk, ya tinggal ditekuk saja. Selain itu sketsa kawat bersifat tiga dimensi. Ini lebih memudahkan saya untuk mewujudkannya ke dalam bentuk patung-patung saya yang sesungguhnya,” ujar Wahyu menerangkan sketsa uniknya. Memang kenyataannya jarang pematung menggunakan sketsa macam dia. “Disamping itu, kawat tersebut masih bisa terpakai lagi untuk membuat sketsa patung-patung lainnya di lain hari,” tambahnya sambil tersenyum.

…

“Dulu di Ngawi saya pernah menyaksikan seorang tua mencuri beberapa butir padi di sawah. Ya hanya beberapa butir saja dari sebatang padi di ladang milik seseorang, lalu pindah ke ladang orang lainya lagi mengambil beberapa butir lagi. Mengumpulkan butir demi butir untuk makan keluarganya. Saya miris melihat itu. Bagaimana orang desa yang miskin - demi mempertahankan hidup keluarga - terpaksa mencuri. Meskipun ia tahu itu perbuatan buruk namun ia melakukannya secara beretika. Mencuri atau mengambil sedikit saja. Tidak berlebihan.”

Pengalaman-pengalaman hidup secara “live-in” dengan orang-orang biasa di desa ternyata sangat mempengaruhi karya-karya patung perunggu realisme Wahyu. Orang-orang biasa yang dalam kehidupannya bisa sangat bersifat baik namun juga bisa muncul nafsu jahatnya di saat keadaannya kepepet. Itulah yang terasa khas dari patung-patung karya Wahyu. Tentang orang-orang biasa yang merayakan kehidupannya yang sahaja di tengah problematika hidup. Orang-orang yang dalam kesehariannya bergelut dengan keterbatasan, sebagai penerima imbas, pejuang murni dan pahlawan kehidupan. “Orang-orang biasa pantas dihargai, bukan malah dicemooh, disepelekan, dan bahkan dimarjinalkan,” ujar Wahyu berpendapat.

A good read, about a life so different from the yuppie lifestyle in SG that lets us up and go to Bali or Bangkok or Phuket or Borneo come long weekends…

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I need to read proper books and good fiction. Checked out a couple of Chabon books, and reading the few Dickens novels I’ve not read, also that whole stack of anthropology books.

Had an unexpected offer of a job, but I’ll give up a regular income for a year or so to get the business up and running. There’re heaps and heaps to learn about my chosen field, and I think if I opt for a PhD in England it’ll fall under anthropology.

I can look forward to a December in the libraries after I’m back from vacation/research trips.

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Things to save up for:

// As usual, my contingency PhD money
// Canon EOS 7D.
// Investment stuff
// My baby — the business :-)

A tranquil morning … Image © me

At the Blue Elephant. Image © me

Image © me

In Chinatown … Image © me

// Alone, Bill Evans

// Classic Early Solos, Art Tatum

// Solo Monk, Thelonious Monk

Satisfying thud
Of mountains of notes hitting
The recycling bin :-)

“a spasm of words lost in a cosmic indifference”

– George Buttrick

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

– Psalm 46:10

“He has planted eternity in the human heart.”

– Ecclesiastes 3:11

WE TALK about la longue durée in the Annales School of historical writing.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re a mere pinch of dust scattered across the surface of a nondescript planet. Prayer brings to mind this perspective I daily forget. It reveals our own true state of fragile dependence, and brings our concerns up into a larger reality, God’s sphere, how He sees things.

It helps raise our sights above the petty circumstances of daily life to offer a glimpse of lofty perspective. I realise my tininess and God’s vastness, and the true relation of the two. At the same time, I look at another human being and see not only a “poor, bare, forked animal” but a person of eternal destiny made in God’s image. Value depends not on status or race or creed but on the image of God a person bears.

It is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is. We see the creations of nature as the signature of a grand artist.

And God already cares about this sister’s cancer, the riots in another country, victims of natural disaster, our wishes for happy families. When we pray, streams of mercy flow, and we are nourished. Things that became disjointed, on another plane perhaps, are set in the right perspective, in the right frame.

To whoever’s reading: I wish you health, I wish you peace, and I send you love.

雨过 … Image © me

… 天晴！ :-) Image © me

// Write to Indonesian partners & apply for research visa.

// Plan Indonesian research trip. Bali, Tuban, Medan.

// Bahasa self-learning: gear up! I’m still far from fluent. Masih kurang lancar … Semangat!

// French and German have gone to bits from disuse. Listen to more podcasts.

// Applications and grants. Lee Foundation.

// Work out tutoring schedule for next year to take in research trips.

// Meet D, C, and DR and run errands.

// Send out Christmas cards :-)

// Christmas wrapping!! :-))

Read up on anthropology and textiles of SE Asia.
Finish writing poems.
Save and monitor investments.
Freelance stuff.

& huzzah! Top grades for my research paper on Wong Lin Ken and the role of the intelligentsia/intellectuals in SG politics :-) Top grades too for the study of Singaporean investment in Myanmar. One more exam, and I’ll be done…

As someone once said sarcastically, getting an A- is like a nightmare for me.

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Happy birthday, LM Montgomery! Thanks for Emily of New Moon and Anne of Green Gables and many pleasant hours reading as a child.

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Mozart cheers me up immensely during revision.

Lirik Lagu Nidji Laskar Pelangi Lyrics

mimpi adalah kunci
untuk kita menaklukkan dunia
berlarilah tanpa lelah
sampai engkau meraihnya
laskar pelangi takkan terikat waktu
bebaskan mimpimu di angkasa
warna bintang di jiwa

refrain:
menarilah dan terus tertawa
walau dunia tak seindah surga
bersyukurlah pada Yang Kuasa
cinta kita di dunia selamanya

cinta kepada hidup
memberikan senyuman abadi
walau hidup kadang tak adil
tapi cinta lengkapi kita

laskar pelangi takkan terikat waktu
jangan berhenti mewarnai
jutaan mimpi di bumi

repeat refrain [2x]

laskar pelangi takkan terikat waktu

There are three different Dubais, all swirling around each other. There are the expats, like Karen; there are the Emiratis, headed by Sheikh Mohammed; and then there is the foreign underclass who built the city, and are trapped here. They are hidden in plain view. You see them everywhere, in dirt-caked blue uniforms, being shouted at by their superiors, like a chain gang – but you are trained not to look. It is like a mantra: the Sheikh built the city. The Sheikh built the city. Workers? What workers?

…As she says this, I remember a stray sentence I heard back at Double Decker. I asked a British woman called Hermione Frayling what the best thing about Dubai was. “Oh, the servant class!” she trilled. “You do nothing. They’ll do anything!”

READ this article on Dubai…

Who built our glistening skyline in Singapore? Who put up the cathedrals of consumerism?

We don’t often think of the construction workers here as well, it’s usual to look the other way — if you look at the supply-side economics of the property and construction industry, the labourers are seen as a “cost” by developers. Coolies still exist in this day and age; our grandparents were coolies, but got citizenship — nowadays, “unskilled” labour are imported via the “use and discard” model.

I like to greet the cleaners at the park — try saying “thanks” to the bus driver — look at the construction workers around you and offer smiles. I don’t believe we’re as Dickensian as what the article portrays in Dubai, but it always helps to be kind.

At the same time, there needs to be concrete protection in terms of legal rights and ways of recourse.

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A: Thailand 1976; Philippines 1969-72; Egypt and Middle East 2011…As I’m reading about student and youth movements in SE Asia, Egypt is undergoing similar upheaval…
B: These numbers seem like 4d to me LOL.