50 years...

How does it feel to be married to the same person for 50 years? Does the "and they live happily ever after" work that long? Today we share this celebration of 50 years of the Khors journey together, their Golden Wedding Anniversary. They are known as Uncle Pete and Aunty Ruth to many. Ruth was the one who named our daughter. So, I always have a soft spot for her. She chose a good name for our gal. And so when I look at my girl, I'll always remember her.

I think to stay married today is a difficult thing. Divorce rates are on the rise. Marriage is an institution considered by some as archaic today. Many live together without getting married (even though studies show that actually married couples tend to stay together longer compared to those who live together without any strings attached).

Marriage is not a bed of roses, that's for sure... plenty of onak and duri tales. To fall in love, I think, is easy. To remain in love is the hard part. Boy meets girl (or vice versa). Boy falls for girl... dates and proposals. Those are the heady days. Then reality sinks. Living together brings quirkinesses together. You think you've got it all figured out, but reality is you've got to be flexible to learn and adapt as you go along. Norms and culture set roles for the man and woman. But lines become blurred with changing times and expectations, some for the better but very often too for the worse. Hence we have the institution of marriage in trouble today.

Love is actually no just a feeling... it involves more than that...

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 sums it up very well...

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

Living up to these verses is no easy feat. But to see Pak Khor and Mak Khor celebrate their 50 years together gladdens me. Mak Khor shared in church a couple of months ago about their relationship and it's nice to hear that they are still there for each other, for better and for worse. And is the "they live happily ever after" true? Apparently so according to Mak Khor, in her sharing tonight. It was a good sharing.... one spoke in Mandarin while the other translated, in between they got mixed up... the languages, LOL! The sharing was humourous but contained many snippets of wise words and advice. This is one dinner which I truly enjoyed attending....

Pete & Ruth from amech7 on Vimeo.

And this is little presentation that I did for them. The sound got lost when I uploaded it to the Net. Been having problem rendering it with the sound but somehow, yesterday night, when I converted it into the DVD format, just for once, the DVD copy worked. After that, I just couldn't get it to comply again. Divine providence??? I don't know. Technology is supposed to be straightforward.... but maybe... God bless them both!

Going Out to Jitra After the Flood

I was half-hearted about going cos I was thinking of sprucing up my house these next few days. And I was still feeling tired from so many things... flood, cleaning up and work. But because they adjusted the visitation time so that I could finish cooking my lunch, I went for this little outing with my church friends to distribute some food aid.

This was at Jitra, at one of the 'kongsi(s)' just in the outskirt of Jitra town. We went out to distribute some aid to those affected by the flood. This was our first stop. Kim's sister was the one who brought our attention to this place. She liaised us with a young Indian Pastor who was familiar with the areas we were to go. This is also an area where the foreign workers congregate. You find Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Vietnamese and Myanmarese (I think) apart from our own locals. This particular place was around 1 1/2 - 2 feet of water from the water mark that I saw on the wall.

Our next stop was a house in Kg Giam, where I think the first victim of the flood, a 64-year old German woman was swept away by the strong currents. A young man we talked to told us the water went above the rooftop of this house. Everywhere we could still see the waterline on the tree leaves. At such a house, you don't get to see waterlines cos the whole house is submerged. He also told us that the currents were very fast and strong during the flood and one would be easily swept away. You just flee with whatever you can because you don't have much time to do anything else.

Another house that was completely submerged. Everything looked so normal when we were there. Yet, the people here had just gone through a terrible time. Can you imagine, everything you own being totally swallowed up by the rising waters? I saw some mattresses being dried in the sun. In the towns, we throw away our flood mattresses. Many of these people don't have that sort of extra cash to buy a new mattress. As a church, we send funds to the villages in Cambodia to help them build schools and support their teachers. We are part of medical teams to countries like Vietnam. Yet, I feel we've missed something here; our own people. Perhaps there is less glamour working among local people.... I wouldn't know.

This was another house that was flooded. Hidden behind the bushes, it's difficult to spot the house if you don't look for it carefully. At the height of the flood, you can't even see the rooftop! And again, the currents here were fast because it's near the Jitra Irrigation Canal. The mother of the lady of the house had just undergone an operation and could not walk much. The Pastor said a prayer for her before we left. And the lady, herself had just had a baby. She was only 2 weeks post delivery when she had to clean the whole house all by herself. Most of us would still be pampered at 2 weeks post delivery. Her kids were so happy to see us.

These are folks with less who lost more. We throw away our old TVs in working condition and don't think much about it. In one of the houses, I saw a small old diode TV sitting on the table. We throw away so many of our usable things. These people find it hard to afford those things. Our kids eat out at KFC, MacDonald's, Pizza Hut at whims. For these kids, I think it would be a grand treat to be able to eat at those places. And these folks are in our midst.... not just found in some other countries which we seem to be sending our mission teams. We spend so much of our resources and manpower there.... those which can be utilized here too. Perhaps it's a time to evaluate ourselves.

It's been a while since I went to places like this. I get too insulated by my comfortable life that I often forget what is out there. I wonder too if they get enough aid. I get the impression that aid these days is filtered by race first too, just like the recruitment of the civil servants. Cos when the head begins to rot, it'll spread downwards. And we, the people are the parts below.

So did I regret going? Nah! Sometimes everyone of us needs a little push to move. I am glad to be reminded of the blessings that come my way and that each of us can do a little to make our world a better place.

Miss X and Mr Y

Chromosomes at play and this is biology. When you have X and X you get a girl. An X and a Y get you a boy. That's how they tell us boys and girls are made.

Then bring in a little Math and you realize that there is a constant and a variable. The constant here is X and the Y is the variable. In a nutshell, looks like we need X in the world. X is the girl in everyone of us. Yup! Every guy has a girl in them.. LOL!

And it is a no wonder that guys today are spending more time at the hairdresser. Nope, barbers are out! Many guys actually balk at the thought of going to the barber. I even have friends who say they won't send their sons to the barber cos they don't cut well. And you have guys who go for facials too now. There are tons of skin care products which cater for the XYs. The girl in every guy is coming to the forefront now. It's a latent thing, biologically substantiated too. LOL!

I've also noticed many teenage boys and young men looking more and more girlie these days. I sometimes find myself making remarks how 'pretty' those guys look. I guess the XXs are also finding such feminine looking guys appealing too. I wonder whatever happened to the macho and rough image....

Anyway, guys looking like gals. I guess that's another round of revolution we're going through. 100 years ago, it was the other way round, gals started to wear the pants (literally, LOL!) and look where we are now. Perhaps this is the beginning of another change; we'll soon be seeing guys staying at home, full time dad, househusband while their wives wears the pants of the family.

The order that we know twisted.... yet again. So Ms X has become a little more of a Mr. X while Mr. Y has become more of his other X. Nurture has a lot to do with that too as mothers these days spend even more time with their sons than the preceding generation. Busy generation we are!

Microsculpting and Tinkering...

For a change I'm going to focus on the marvellous and wonderful things that we, humans are capable of.. sometimes despite a disability.

Enter the world of Willard Wigan. Ever heard of micro sculpting? Can you imagine a sculpture on a pinhead or in a needle hole? They're so tiny that you need to use a microscope to see it! Marvellous pieces of art he's come up with! You've got to see it to believe. BTW, he's dyslexic!

This is a video with him describing his work. It's worth a watch!

And this guy.. Gever Tulley. I like his style... he started a summer school called The Tinkering School. The things that he encourages and allows kids to do at his summer school; most of us would balk or flip over.. play with fire, give them a pocket knife to own, throw a spear, deconstruct appliances (in other words, take apart he appliances at home), break the copyright laws....for digital media, drive a car for the under-aged kid.... but I think kids learn better from first hand experience.

They are life's lessons. Do we allow our children to tinker? Hardly, right? Kids today are too busy cramming theories. I've got friends with grown up kids who still holler for their parents to go change a blown light.... and the distance that separates them??? It's a couple of hundred kilometres. Learning by tinkering... growing up, that's what we used to do when we had so much time to play (as in real play and not the computer games). Kinda different what our kids go through, right? I'm going to start with my kids.....