Every day for 1 hour, between 11.00AM to 2.00PM... the sound of fingers striking on piano keys sifts through our apartment corridor. I believe there is a little girl that stays on the same same floor as us. She must be a very diligent scholar of music as I never fail to hear her practicing every day. But we have never seen her before. I am quite certain that this musician must be a little girl because of the sometimes erratic way she practices... sometimes fooling around with her scales a bit and sometimes rushing through the pieces with a slight tinge of impatience... which reminds me very much of myself during my piano practicing days. I wonder if her mother nags her to practice like mine did. I wonder if she dreads playing the same repitition of majorm minor and chromatic scales and appergios. I wonder if she gets bored of painstakingly working through a long piece by Bach or Brahm, note by note and bar by bar... never realising how beautiful it all sounds until weeks later after so...

Salut, everyone! We've just attended our first French class on Monday night. I was actually feeling bit sian of having to attend some sort of class and worried that I might get bored halfway through. Plus I was disappointed that I didn't manage to squeeze myself into one of the Italian classes which was my first choice. But French could turn out alright too! There's 15 of us in the class, and our teacher Julie is from the South of France. She's a jolly person and is a fantastic teacher. It would have been a tremendous waste of money to have an uninteresting teacher anyway. So I am glad that this could be some form of educational entertainment for MH and I every Monday for the next 10 weeks. I'm already picking up a smattering of French sentences, and it's quite amusing to put on those exaggerated French accents. Our teacher encourages us to exaggerate the French accents as much as possible because it's apparently better to force it out at first and let it so...

First connect group for 2006 last night. Our connect group has evolved into a couple's group. Besides D&G and ourselves, 2 new young married couples have started joining our group. That leaves only the other "pseudo couple" (more on that next time) so technically, we are ALL couples in a sense. All of us are young, below 30 years and married for less than 2 years. I'll describe the 2 new couples: Couple 1: An indonesian couple who've been in Australia for 3 years, but recently moved to Sydney from Melbourne and started joining our church. Married 1 year and 2 months. The wife is a graphic desginer and the husband is an accountant Couple 2: Aussie-Chinese couple. The guy has been in Australia since he was 3 years old (when his family migrated to Sydney from KL). The wife is an Indonesian Chinese and also been in Australia for most of her life. He's a structural engineer and she's currently studying at uni and working part-time in a childcare centre. We...

My gong-gong was found to have died peacefully on Wednesday morning, 25th January 2006, in the nursing home he was then staying at. His health had deteriorated to such a degree that he required full-time professional care. I visited him once there last year when I was back in KK for holidays just before we moved to Sydney. He had changed so much over the years. But I was more surprised that he seemed more talkative then. He was always so quiet when we used to visit him at his house. Perhaps it was because he was not constantly being overwhelmed by my more talkative grandma. Or perhaps his hearing condition had deteriorated so bad that he couldn't hear anything we said, so he tried to talk more to keep up his end of the conversation. Or perhaps we all seemed more inclined to listen to him more now, so he felt more comfortable speaking now that he had an intent audience. Or perhaps he somehow knew his time was coming to an end, so he was making up for lost time to pass on whatever wo...

Xing Nien Kuai Le... Nien Nien You Yue!!! The second statement is something new I picked up from a sermon I heard in my hometown church during the CNY. Allow me to share an excerpt with you: In all your years may you always have "more than enough" in abundance of blessing!!! The interplay of words for the "Yue" or Fish should be of significance to us as Christians because Fish essentially signifies Christianity (since the time of the early Christians). Plus Fish is also significant because we are called to be Fishers of Men. And if you take the greek word for Fish which is "Ichthus", it's actually an anagram for greek "Iesous Christos Theou Uios Soter" which translated to English means "Jesus Christ the Son of God, Saviour". So "Nien Nien You Yue" also means "May every year, you have Jesus Christ the Son of God, Saviour". Cool eh? So during CNY I went round greeting everyone with "Nien Nien You Yue...

Our Chinese New Year Holidays are now over. We touched down in Sydney at 5.00PM on Sunday 5th February. We flew by Austrian Airlines for the first time, and I give it a two thumbs up... but that was because we upgraded to BUSINESS CLASS as their flight was overbooked... MH and I were so psyched!!! This was the second time I was flying business class... the first time was only a short trip from KK to Singapore the first time I left home for overseas university education. We were really treated like honoured guests, the seats reclined in the most comfortable way, and the meals were exquisite with freeflow of bread and rolls. And I was especially excited about the complimentary toiletry bags which included "Origins" products... not any cheap generic stuff in there. Even the men's shaving cream was from "Origins". So you can be sure that we had a very comfortable flight. It's certainly good to come home to a home... our home... once a place develops this familia...

I want to write a few thoughts on my childhood friends. During my recent trip back to KK for Chinese New Year, MH and I went out for coffee with some of my old comrades. Irwin was back in KK too... it was soooo good to see him because I hadn't seen him in ages. I can't explain how I felt. It was a little different from meeting Wini and Janice because I still see them a little more often. But seeing Irwin again made me remember the days gone by at youth fellowship and serving together as leaders and in the worship team. It all seems like it happened only yesterday... but then again as I watch the new generation of youths jumping about the church, it can also seem so long ago and I feel strangely older... not old (because I am not old yet)... just old-er. We met at the Coffee Bean at Damai... which was where Burger King used to be at in "our time". Sigh, again I cannot explain how good it felt to be sitting together with Wini, Janice and Irwin, reminiscing about the old...