on not worrying...

While I was speeding away on the cab ride down from work yesterday morning, I realised strangely I was devoid of the sense of fear or worry. Somehow I took the whole news of my mom's fall pretty calmly, and acted matter-of-fact-ly from start till end. Not to say I was "bo-chup", or nonchalant, I actually asked myself what will I do if something terrible did happened to my mom. As I didn't have the full information of the accident then, it was kinda "weird" having that sense of peace. I mean, others would probably have freaked out from the news.

Then I recalled the goodness of my Lord in all the things He has done in my lives, and of others. And again I was reminded of the passage in Matthew 6 on not worrying, and the story of Job, summarised in James 5:11. So I said to God," Lord, it's all in Your hands man." Then it made sense~ the peace I had was not of my own but of God's!

Thanks and Glory be to You who fulfilled all that You promised

on an exciting two day...

Eh, to cut the long story short, my mom had a fall yesterday. Here's the e-mail update I sent to the people in my CG:

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Hi people. It's been a crazy two days, but am glad all things went well, by His grace. Here's what happened:
 
I received a call yesterday morning from my sister around 10.40am in the morning. My mom had a fall outside of home. She was taken to the A&E department at NUH in an ambulance. Details were sketchy, as my sis was not with my mom when she fell, and my sis had second-hand info from a kind samaritan. Thank God I was able to verify that my mom was indeed taken to A&E at 11.10am. Then I rushed down to join my sis at NUH to begin a 4 hour wait, while not really not knowing what happened to my mom. All we knew that she was not in a critical situation, and we're not allowed to see her.

At 3pm, the hospital warded my mom for observation. We got to see her and fish out the full story. My mom had too little breakfast, and she had a fainting spell. She's on medication*, and fainted because she didn't have enough food inside her body**. She fell, and landed so badly that she dislocated her right shoulder and have bumps/"bua du koos" the areas of 20-cents coin on the back of her head. The doctors managed to put her shoulder back in place (ouch), but they needed to ward her for observation. We were just thankful that my mom didn't break any bones, or have any more drastic consequences in the fall.
 
So thank you for praying for my mom! And sorry if you received multiple copies of my sms-es, or didn't received them at all. Think all the x-rays from all the sensors and equipment interfered with my texting of sms-es. Keep having the "msg failed sending" caption appearing on my phone, and got tired of seeing the same messages^.
 
Another good news is that she's able to be discharged this afternoon and able to come home to rest. So praise God for His taking care of my mom and my family, through-out this whole event. Thank Him also for the helpful and supportive doctors and nurses, and even my mom's ward-mates that took care of my mom. And thank you (again!) for praying!
 
Please continue to pray for my mom. She keeps saying she's feeling "全身痛", but doctors says that will pass. She also have to go back to follow-up with the physiotherapist (who will train her in exercises that will speed up the healing process of her right shoulder muscles); the orthopedic (who'll look at her bones); and the cardio-specialist (to determine that her fainting spell had nothing to do with cardio-diseases).
 
Ok, catch up more with you guys on Sunday. Night!
 
In His Time (^^ >) a-jack
 
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."- John 13:34-35 
  
 
* for diabetics, high blood tension and cholestrol-related problems. She had to take 10 different kinds of medicine daily for all above illnesses.
 
** in my mom's words, she had 2 bites of nasi lemak. Why only 2 bites? Because she wanted to "diet". My sis and I rolled our eyes at this part of the story...
 
^ Plus don't want to cause interference with the readings of the test on and ECG or x-ray machine. :P

On a well-put question...

(taken from http://www.reverendfun.com/index.php?date=20080204)

on takeaways from Sunday's sermon

Date: 10 Feb 2008

Title: When Our World Collapses

Text: 2 Corinthians 1:1-5

Introduction

Ministry, Giving, Leadership

1. Suffering in 2 Corinthians (Chapter 1, 4, 6, 11)

2. When our world collapses, respond in 3 ways:

A. EMBRACE the Comfort of God (v4a)

the word "comfort" appear 10 times in 7 verses.

from root word in  Koine Greek,  παράκλητος (Parakletos) - "one who comes along side"

"comfort" is used in the present tense - ongoing action! God always comforts us

"... in ALL our afflictions" Psalm 103:13-14

 
B. ENCOURAGE with the Comfort of God (v4b)

James 5:11 - Summary of story of Job, as well as revealing to us the nature of God in Job's story 

Empowering grace of God

(v4) "... so that ..." --> Purpose! God allows all things for a purpose.

C. EXALT the God of Comfort (v3)

"... we are ABLE (NASB)/ we CAN (NIV) 

stewardship of suffering

Wounded healers (Henri Nouwen)

Jewish blessing - Berakhah

"Blessed be the Father.." (context of suffering)

2 Corinthians, Ephesians and 1 Peter

Conclusion

Give Thanks! Let worship be our first act in suffering.

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Text in black is the sermon notes outline given by church. Text in green are the thoughts I jotted down from the sermon. Thank God that Pastor David gave us so many learning point even from these short 5 verses. His stories of personal growth and sufferings are both moving and illuminating. Also give thanks for pastors who are not afraid to share their weaknesses from the past, and being real and authentic.

on a easy-going Chinese New Year's Eve

Went to office in high spirits~ Half day mah, get to leave office at 1pm. Busy morning though, as we rushed about with catching up with operations matters, a short department meeting as well as me facilitating the morning staff devotions. Talked about the "wicked having no rest"... :p But still enjoyable, even though we didn't get an "ang pow" from our boss~ :D No worries, we'll get it from him somehow during next week.

 

Normally we usually go for lunch at 11.30am, to beat the lunch crowd. So on wednesday, was really feeling drowsy and lethargic, from low blood sugar. Thank God the lunch at Holland Village Pho Hoa's Vietnamese Noodles shop more than made up for our long wait. There were only 3 of us, as the colleague who dropped us off had to rush home and prepare "shabu shabu" beef for her family's reunion dinner. :p

 Still it was enjoyable slow lunch, as we wolfed down the yummy beefstock soup. First time trying vietnamese fare, and found it refreshing and delicious!~ After that, we traded our drinking stories as al three of us were boozers. Nothing bonds drinkers more than sharing our stories of how drunk can we get. :D

Reached home around 4 plus. As my dad had to work till quite late, we decided to postpone our reunion meal to next day. Had a simple meal with the rest of my family sans daddy. Sister went out to party with her friends, leaving mom, myself and my bro at home. Was alternating between watching TV ion the living room and playing online game in my room. But this year didn't stayed up to 守岁 all the way. Knocked out by 2.30am. Man, I'm getting old liao... :D 

Pho Hoa Noodle Soup (Holland Village)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Restaurants
Cuisine:	Other
Location:	18 Lorong Mambong, (S) 277678.

oooooo, half day on Chinese New Year's eve, so had to have late lunch. Took a ride on one of our colleague's car to Holland Village. We were wondering what's for lunch, when we stumbled onto this delightful Vietnamese noodles shop. The soup stock is fantastic! And so's their version of "popiah". And the Vietnamese drip coffee... heavenly! Wanna go there soon...

How to get there:
http://www.streetdirectory.com/asia_travel/travel/travel_id_32668/travel_site_32194/

on that darned butterfly effect...

yeaps, the "flaps of a butterfly's wing in Brazil can indeed cause a tornado in China", metaphorically speaking. Remember I was saying how i went back to office after collecting my spectacles on the previous Saturday? I'm in the operations department, and sometimes emergencies and unforeseen circumstances cropped up.

 In this case, our work is affected because an undersea cable in Marseilles and/or Alexandre was cut by the anchors of passing ships. So what has a marine accident halfway across the globe got to do with sunny island Singapore?

Big time, if you're expecting information from India. The cable(s) that was cut affects internet connectivity between the Indian subcontinent and the rest of Asia. So we were expecting some files from India last week, but because of the outage, they arrived corrupted. As they were time-sensitive information, I had to go back to office and download from the primary site, do up the information before sending it to my counterparts in Guam. Thank God that the whole process was smooth.  

I remembered, even as I'm blogging this entry, that something along this nature also affected us last year, when an undersea earthquake disrupted some cables that were laid off the island of Taiwan. Argh, the boons and banes of being interdependent in a globalised world! 

Related news link:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/02/01/internet.outage/

http://sunnytalkstech.blogspot.com/2008/02/detailed-images-find-undersea-cable.html