From the East to the West!

It has been a while now since the day I fly with 'proper' airlines. Yo! I'm so blessed to have someone blessing me a free ticket from Melbourne to Perth; flying with Qantas hey! It was a super early flight, 610am. Thanks to Sigit & Nita who came right at the dot, 4am. Sigit said he forgot to set his alarm however he woke up automatically at 320am. Some kinda angel of the Lord must be working really hard to shake & wake him up! Praise the Lord hehehe...

After ding-dong for a while in the airport, we had the famous breakfast in the airport; the McD. That reminded me of Kuching airport; McD is a MUST-EAT & MUST-GO place when we have to send people off. I'm sure many of the SUT people agree with me.

Hey, they serve more varieties here. We only have muffins back home :/

This is cute!

Flying with Qantas is a new experience. The last time I flew with them was probably 13 years back. This is what I've observed so far. Most Qantas air-stewardess are very not only motherly but grandmotherly. Mind you I'm not trying to insult those air-stewardess who look a little older than those from the Asian airlines. They are very motherly and provide pretty good service. I'd definitely enjoy the Q-brekkie if I didn't have my McD. What they served was rather healthy; scramble egg, ham, potatoes, coffee / tea, orange juice, bread & banana.

Another thing that I like about Q is the 'head-adjuster' piece. It's a piece of adjustable cushion which allows your head to sit in the position that you feel most comfortable. Man, this is one of the best thing could happen to seat design. I remember the last time I saw the similar type of design was when I flew with Cathay Pacific in 2000, when I was on my way to my graduation. This piece of thingy really works wonders! I could rest / sleep so comfortably. Definitely better than the air-cushion-balloon thingy I reckon.

Don't look at my face, look at the adjuster next to my head!

Another breakthrough! When we landed, the air-stewardess announced that we could use our mobile phone even though we were in the plane. Now that's something new isn't it? Why do you think for many other airlines, normally they don't allow mobile phones to be used in the aircrafts? If you know, do tell me...

I arrived 25 minutes earlier than expected. The headwind today must be weaker than normal. Perth domestic airport is not as loud as others but it's alright. Perth is as cold as Mlelbourne during the night & early morning. Today was abt 4-5 degree. Day time is about 16 degree today.

Thanks to my uncle who fetched me & served me Bak Zhang!!! The best ever made by my auntie... YUMMYYYYY!!! ('mai jeles hor...')

I'm sharing the same time zone with my hometown now. Haha..in fact I'm gaining 2 hours :@)

Gotta go now, preparing to meet the Deputy in an hour time.

More amazing stories later...

God is good, yes all the time!

40 Days in the Desert...

Today marks the 40th day of my arrival in the Down-under. It's time for some updates. When I reflect and look back of my 40 days in the La-la land, I can't help but give thanks to God. Here are some of the happenings:

My flight took off from Kuching on the 8 June '10, flight delayed at KL and it finally arrived at 3am, on the 9 June '10. Thanks to Kiaw who fetched me real early in the morning. I reached my sis' place at 630 am, showered and took a 2.5 hours nap right away. At about 11am, Sigit brought me for lunch at the Korean Lunch Box at Glenferrie, where SUT is. Welly, Joshua Naw and later Kiaw joined in too. There goes my 1st meal here; surrendered to the Korean & yes the portion here is HUGE. If you start to convert it to RM it's rather pricey though. Generally a meal would cost abut RM30. Can you imagine a huge laksa cost RM30? Haha...one principle, just eat, don't convert! :)

We then hurried to the airport again at about 130pm to catch my 320pm 'Harimau' flight to Brisbane. Praise God, there was no delay. I was happy to see Hwei at the airport. He's a great host!

Over my 5 days at the sunny state we managed to go to Dream World, Glow-worm farm, and few other places which I have forgotten the names!

More pictures can be seen at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228041&id=592551367&l=e094775f86 & http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228050&id=592551367&l=1286f8b791.

On Friday morning, we drove to Gold Coast Airport to fetch Joshua. He almost got stucked in the immigration place because he was suspected to be part of the 'run-away' group. Hehehe...does he look like one??? Maybe!

We then drove to Tweed Heads before going to Gold Coast city. We saw so many old antique cars there. Apparently they were celebrating some kind of festival & it was a real treat for us! The most happening part was the parade at the end. It was so hilarious; many dressed up in the mood of the 60's & 70's with imitating different famous characters. Believe it or not Joshua 'kenak' molested!

More pictures can be seen at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228491&id=592551367&l=c6c5b02840

We then drove to Gold Coast before arriving at our main destination at the Bryon Bay, the most Eastern tip of Australia. Guess what! We had Sizzler for lunch! Can you imagine three grown-up men spending almost 3+ hours enjoying themselves feating? Hahaha...yes we did! We basically did nothing but eating and chatting about everything under the sun.

Oh yea, before the late lunch we went to the tallest residential tower in the world, Q-Deck for a view of the whole Gold Coast. It's quite stunning I must admit.

When we reached Bryon Bay, it was already dark. After taking shower, we took a walk at the quiet street. We ended up buying some stuff and celebrated Hwei's birthday in the hotel room. Hehe...we even had the opportunity to watch one action movie. While half way watching the 2nd one, we all almost dozed off.

More pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228519&id=592551367&l=a09b609ab5

We prayed hard for a good sunny morning and God was good! We didn't have a super-clear morning, at least it didn't rain! The forecast said we'd be expecting storm that day. Anyway, we woke up at 5am, in the freezing temperature & managed to take quite a few good pictures. We also saw dolphins around!

Oh yea, I almost forgot about something. God was so good. Though we didn't see great sunrise, we did see a full rainbow while we were on our way back to the hotel! It was beautiful!

More pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=228798&id=592551367&l=5cba6bf2df

When we reached Hwei's place, we were all gone flat! Thanks to Hwei's sister, Alice, her gang & her cooked so much that evening! They invited few good friends to celebrate not only Hwei's birthday but also James, Michael & Chang Ming. Gosh, what were the similarities? They are all Foochows!

Alright! Enough of my honey-moon vacation story in the Sunshine state! What happened when I came back to Melbourne then? In the 1st week I attended 2-day refresher course for teachers who have never taught in Victoria before. Overall the course was really good. It gave me a good overview of the education system in the state.

Right after the course I worked really hard in job hunting. Waking up in between 9-10am and online till past 12 midnight was my daily routine for the that 4 weeks. I did not fail even to leave my comfortable cough for 10 minutes. The only time when I left the seat was when I needed to go to the toilet or get something to eat! 1st it was sending the resumes to the schools in Victoria, after a while I got impatient & started sending more resumes to more schools across the countries. It was such unbearable thing to do; sitting at home writing and sending applications to countless-countless numbers of schools. I even tried places like Darwin & Alice Spring! Yoohooo...see how desperate I was!

How did I survive spiritually & emotionally? God really has been so good. Indeed He never fails guiding & affirming me; through the sermons that Ps. Ian & sis. Ruth in Hope Waverly Center as well as Ps. Mark's sermon today-Let Your River Flow! I especially remember the messages on Daniel, Freedom in Christ and definitely the story of Joseph have deeply moved my heart! I remember clearly that Sunday when I decided to respond the call by walking up to the front to be prayed for. I understand it takes the humility to respond in this way & what I wanted to do was to let God speaking to me even more...

I have always wanted to do more reading & since I have to travel by using train, it's a perfect time for me to read this book written by Philip Yancey, 'Reaching the Invisible God'. I found some simple answers to many simple questions that many would always ask yet do not have clear answers. Great book to read indeed! Everytime I travel now on the train, I have the opportunity to reflect on many things! This is so great - making me a thinking Christian, we all ought to be a thinking Christian; a believer that is alive not just keep doing & doing!

There is nothing fancy about big cities which always offer better, louder kind of lifestyles. There is nothing fancy too about big-mega churches. I've the opportunities to visit two other churches over the past 2 weeks. Those who have been 'out' of Hope Kuching would understand how heavenly Kuching is - and yet many might take things for granted, ignorant to certain extend and refuse to accept many facts of life. It really takes great humility to realize that in all things that we do, at the end of the day it is really about God and I. The song 'My Reward' says 'Jesus You are my reward, to hear Your voice on that day, it's all I'm living for...' It's a good song; tough to receive.

God has amazing ways to work things out. With much praying & hope in the Lord for few weeks God started to make His plans even more visible. Just last Thursday when I was still busy settling my license stuff I received a call from a school in Perth. The lady asked whether I was still interested in the music teaching post. Who would say no??? So on the next day over the lunch I had a 40-minute phone interview with 2 heads of the school. The interview went pretty well. At about 5pm, the Deputy called me & offered me the job! He spoke to my ex-principal & she spoke highly of me. The 1st thing that came into my mind was S-T-R-E-S-S!!! This is just too overwhelming. My responsibility is not only to teach music from Kinder to Year 6, there are also 2 groups of choirs, a band & some liturgies singing, etc. They have few public performances through out the year too. As the matter of fact, they need to perform in the Art Festival in 4 weeks time!!!

The world is really small. The Deputy also know my ex-Deputy! Wow...amazing!

I'm flying to Perth this Wednesday morning. It's gonna be a super early flight; 610am, arriving at 830am Perth time. I would need to rush to view few rooms which are near to the school. Then I would have to rush to the school and get many things started!

Awwwwwwwwww...I realize when we ask God, when He gives, we need to learn how to handle it. The moment when I was given the job, my confidence dropped tremendously. Argh...someone told me that's how normally a melancholy person would response in such situation. Ouch! :@)

I am ready to see how God's love & Grace continue to be shown more visibly in my life in the new land. God reminded me again in the service today of what I experienced in Cape Town almost 3 years ago. He who brought me through then would continue to be faithful to do the same today and tomorrow because He is a God who is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow!

I pray that you too will be encouraged and make Him known!

p.s. Many thanks to Sigit who has been so supportive & helping me in so many ways; airport transit, Lifegroup, Church, license, food, etc. / Welly for being my super postman / Kiaw the superwoman who is always ever ready to lend her hands / Antonious who taught me much in the Word & also the photography session / Joshua who is the 'panadol' dealer / Eric who inspired me to see how God can transform a person like him hehehe / and many other names that I won't mention here (Chieng, Nita, Yuli, Frans, Mai, Audrey, Lily, Sonia, Kai, Chai, Vincent, Louise, Timmy and many more...)

We Are Free!!!

I was blessed by this story which I heard last Sunday whom Ruth preached about. The story goes like this:

There was a quill seller who brought a few quills to a market one day. In order to stop them from flying away, the seller had to tie a string unto their feet. The quills therefore could not fly but walk in the circle all the time.

A pro-life guy came to the market and saw what had happened. He was upset about it. He went to the seller and gave him a big sum of money and buy all of the quills. He was so happy and started to free each of the quills. To his surprise, the quills did not fly but continue walking in the circle. The pro-life guy tried to shoo them away, they flew away but eventually after few seconds they came back walking, again in the circle. He finally felt disappointed and walked away.

The story tells us that at times we do not realize that we have been set free by the blood of Jesus. Just like the pro-life guy in the story, He has paid for us all and yet just like the quills we do not realize it.

I pray that we will know and experience the Truth even more as we live our days.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

John 8:36

A Signpost from God...

Just a moment ago I had the idea to write something about something. God just revealed to me that many things are really not coincidence but it is Him who engineers many things together so that His glory may be made known to all men.

I just sent Christopher to the airport. He came back just for a few days from JB though his holiday is much longer. Many may ask why. He'd just say 'For the Kingdom's sake!'. Each time when I see or think of this brother, I will always remember God's grace, faithfulness and goodness in his life. From the impossible, God can do the possible. He managed to get into his choice of course, Architecture and into his choice of university after his STPM. Despite of the education system and everything else when God moves, nothing can stop Him.

It is so good to see Chris each time his confidence increases over time; being sure of what he's doing in his studies, ministries etc. Thank you Chris for being the vessel that God uses to be the signpost for many others to see. I will always remember His great work in your life & knowing that this is only the beginning makes everyone excited.

Salute salute to you :@)

Jia you!

p.s: That reminds me too about looking at life in different ways. Many things are NOT in our control, therefore we don't have to try so hard to change it. It will be better if we could seek God's way in our situation...easier said than done huh? Jia you everyone in the journey of discovering more about Him who has set us free!

authenticity...

It's the 2nd day of July. It's exciting and at the same scary to see how time flies SO fast! Someone mentioned this 'the older you get, the quicker you feel time flies'. How true it is? It is VERY true indeed. If you don't feel it now, you just have to wait; your time will come, and it's rushing really fast.

Quarter 3 is an important season for many; Secondary 3 & 5 will be having their public exam soon, for the church many big events are in the calendar waiting to be launched. One of them is the Official Opening of the New Church Building. From the day when I stepped into the church in Nov 1999, people have been talking about this since then. Finally after 10 years, the day is approaching. Soon and very soon we will have a permanent place called 'home'; a place where many can find hope because this is where God's presence dwells. I pray that this memorable 20 09 2009 will come true. Argh...if we still can't move in by then, maybe few of us should really just go there and camp there for a night! Anyone wanna join in? It will be a fun night, I'm sure!

Just a week before that, Bible Conference (BC) will be held in MBKS Auditorium. We'll have Merdeka Worship Retreat just 2 weeks before BC an the Youth will have our very 1st Anniversary the day before the Worship Retreat. Scary huh?! Not forgetting some members are going to Singapore to attend the 1st Global Conference (GC) a week before the Youth 1st Anniversary.

Aren't we 'worked' harder than our 'real' earthly work? To certain extend, yes we are. But that shouldn't be a surprise, should we? From the day we sign up as Hope Family Member, we knew all these were coming, sooner or later. Actually when we really think about it, Jesus really never promises us a bed of roses after believing Him. Maybe in certain times, there are so beds of roses somewhere, but they come with the irritating thorns. Argh...don't you want to take out your scissors to cut off the thorns? It's annoying, isn't it? Yes, of coz it is annoying! Otherwise Jesus won't ask us to Deny ourselves, Take up the Cross and Follow Him! What a tough thing to do huh! Yes, its tough, but that's the price to pay.

I pray that my Christian walk with the Lord is not just based and seen as what I do in the ministry alone. If people recognise me as someone leading worship on stage that's good. If people see me as someone who play great music, that's ok. But if we all can be recognised as a person who love Jesus so much that we are willing to love His people in many practical ways, we indeed hit the mark!

I love Paul Baloche's song 'Jesus My Reward'; where one of the lines says 'I just want to hear You say Good & Faithful Servant...'. That's all we need to hear from the Lord when we see His face.

Till the day...

unleash the potential...

Ever since the change of the government, few things have been happening. One of them is the issue about limiting number of subjects to be taken in the public spm o-level exam in the country. Why do we have such thought? Thanks to the inefficiency of some kind of scholarship department in the country who fails to manage the scholarship entrance requirement properly; maybe there are a lot of academically smart students who managed to get 15A1s and yet did not get the scholarships. Therefore by limiting the numbers of subjects taken to 10, it will help. This is a JOKE, don't you think so? The Biggets joke from an educator point of view. By the way, anyone can tell that this is a joke. You don't need to be a teacher to tell you this.

After a few days later, I received another sms news alert. Here is the headline 'BM teachers in Chinese Independent Schools will be given training by Education Ministry to help them teach the language better'. What do you think? No doubt most students from the Chinese schools are poor in BM. But that's just the fact! The learning of any languages need a lot of time to practice both in spoken and written forms. In the Chinese schools, Mandarin is the main medium. Unless those 'bm specialists' really know the context of the situation, it is absolutely a way of wasting time.

A day after that, I received another news alert. It says 'Education Ministry wants feedback from the public on whether passing SPM English should be compulsory in order to obtain SPM certificate'. Actually anyone who wants to give their views on this, can call 03-7723 7070 or email kpkpm@moe.gov.my. I did! I sent them an email and surprisingly I received a reply after 2 days. It's either very few people wrote to them, or they are just too effective. Let's have good faith that they are just too effective now and walah... Malaysia dah ada harapan huh?! Hope is on its way! I told them that our Malaysian English level is already very low (look at the way I write the blog, you'd know!) In my mail, I also mentioned that if I were the employer, I won't even employ a person who just gets a Pass in English in SPM. What so big deal about getting a Pass? Arghh...Geramnya aku... I better continue with my report writing...

t.w.o camp 09'

What do we have after the O.N.E camp? T.W.O camp of coz! T.W.O stands for 'Together We Overcome'; the theme for our very 1st Youth Boot Camp. We spent a night over the weekend in Santubong Resort for a time of fun & fellowship. The camp started on Saturday morning, ended with lunch feasting at church on Sunday afternoon. In total 101 signed up, 3 last minute couldn't make it.

We took 2 big buses + 1 church van. Apparantly the buses must be quite comfortable that people felt alseep while on the way to the camp site. Eric was meditating, very seriously.






Few of the 'obstacles' that blocked our way


Great Tent of Meeting!

Love the tag!


The Black & White!
Love the colours!

It started off by completing 2 ice breaking games. There were 6 groups each with 14 members. The biscuit eating game was really fun. Thusan was one of the big winner for this!

Biscuit-eating competition

Apart from this each team had to work on designing their own group flag. I must really compliment every group. It was absolutely amazing to come out with such design in such a short time! Clap Clap Clap!

Ngajat dance before designing the flag?

Hard work paid off finally!

Guess whose is this?

The main activity 'Amazing Race' on the hot Saturday afternoon became the big killer. This activity meant to 'help' youth to exercise their 1-year accumulated exercise into just 2 hours. You can imagine how 'jia-lak' that was. Overall however it took them 3.5 hours to complete the race. For many, it could be torturing in the beginning but when the whole thing was over, it was indeed pretty rewarding.

Run for life!


Guess what were they doing?

There were singing NEGARAKU!

Various game stations; torturous?

Big sacrifice huh?!



This is the first time I saw Santubong beach. It's not bad at all. Different ones have been telling me how terrible the beach is.

Dropped Dead!

Dinner prepared by Family Group!

Evening Saturday service was great. Everyone was in the relax-mode & this made the praise & worshipled by Sam really great! No more proper long pants, shoes, etc which always hinder people from expressing fully in their praise & worship. Ps Laurence shared the story about Samuel that we should respond to God immediately when He calls just like what Samuel did.

Evening Service!
I received one comment from a young leader. He says this: Wow, I never know we can praise & worship God in such a good atmosphere by just using a guitar & keyboard'. Well, the bottom line is, the heart that matters. On the top of that, in a casual setting, it's easier to get different ones to participate too.

We celebrated Jonathan's bday that evening. He had a good surprise!

After the service, different groups were busy preparing their group presentation for the next day. Wo...many didn't even sleep; some hang up at the pool side, some in the room chatting & having pillow fight etc etc. I couldn't take it anymore so I slept at 1am. Hehe...

These kids never stop growing; looking up & down for plates, bowls basically anything that can contain the food!

Morning High Praise is always refreshing!

The presentation on Sunday morning was hilarious. I must say this is one of the best presentation ever, looking at the limited practice time that they had. It exceeded my expectation. Well done guys :@)

We love you Rex! U Rock!

Group presentations; thumbs up to everyone!

Lunch at church was great. Thanks to few of the working adults who helped to set up the main sanctuary for us. Thanks to the family group too who willingly cooked the dinner for us on the 1st day. The food was fabulous!

For the next camp, we must organize a 2-3 night camp. However though it was a little short, the impact of the camp was great. Looking forward more getaway trips!

Great group of Committee. I trust that through the process of organizing this you guys have learnt much from one another!