Food for thought - Post Mortems ?

Don't hold post-mortems.

Don't spend your time brooding over sorrows or mistakes.

Don't be one who never gets over things.

Food for thought - Living or Life

We make a LIVING by what we get ;

We make a LIFE by what we give.

Coffee, anyone ?

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups made of Porcelain, Plastic, Glass, Crystal, some ordinary looking, some expensive, some exquisite.

He told them to help themselves to hot coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in their hands, the professor said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap looking ones.

While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups and worse, you were eyeing each other's cups.

Now if life is coffee , then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain. Life, but the quality of Life doesn't change. Some times, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it."

So beloved, don't let the cups drive you... enjoy the coffee instead.

The Olive Ristorante @ Labrador Park

The Olive Ristorante @ Labrador Park
Labrador Villa Road, Carpark A
Opening hours 12 noon – 11 pm
Tel – Ristorante 64792989
Fax – Ristorante 64798890
Tel – Office 63396833

If you like lush, huge, prosperous green trees, tall grass & bushes, sound of crickets, cool breezes, al fresco kind of restaurant, here’s one good place I recommend. I was there for lunch with my colleagues this week, and already I am attracted to the peace and quietness of this place. I can just imagine this same place at night.. warm cosy lights, excellent service and good food.

This restaurant serves excellent Italian food. I chose the “Chef choice – Rice pasta with ham, bacon and garlic served in olive oil”. The pasta (looked like macaroni, only much slimmer and longer, hee hee) was cooked till al dente and the garlic and olive oil was great! I enjoyed it.

Oh, before that, we had 2 appetizers too. One was Parma Ham, it is smoked ham (a little salty) wrapped around a slice of rock-melon. The combination of both saltish and sweet is something new to me. Delicious ! The next appetizer is escargots (aka snails). It was my first time eating them and they tasted like mushrooms to me, I decided I like them.. haha. Expensive taste ! My colleagues laughed! Well....

Besides this restaurant and all the greeneries, there is also a “secret tunnel” that you can opt to visit, guided tour, S$8 per pax (have to check out the specified times for them).

After our sumptous lunch, we decided to take a short walk. I was told that we could walk to the sea-side. However, as most of my colleagues did not want to walk too deep in, we found a location (Meeting Point 1) which overlooks the whole sea-side. It was so beautiful… been a long time since I went to the beach or even near the sea. If not for the haze and the company I was with, I would have skipped down the stairs leading to the sea-side… haha… next time.

Oh yes, the "damage". This restaurant offers set lunch of S$19.90+++ for weekdays only. Set lunch includes a starter (choice between soup of the day / salad), main course (choose between various kinds of pastas or pizzas) , dessert (we had strawberry ice-cream) and coffee/tea.

For those interested parties, you can either cycle, drive or take a bus. SBS Bus:Parks 408, serves to bring you from Harbourfront Bus Interchange to this park. Time is from 11am to 6pm.

Korean Movie - The Host

Did you watch the recent Korean movie, “The Host”? Characters include this big, ugly-looking creature (looks a little combination of the creature inside the “Alien” + smooth fish-like body + long powerful tail), a normal korean family who earns a living by selling tidbits in a park near a reservoir or river.

I was half expecting fiercer, ruthless and bloody scenes, but was sadly disappointed (ok ok.. I know what you all must be thinking about. But I feel, either you go all the way and scare everybody or you simply don’t, anyway, that’s just my personal view).

Rather, this movie chose to concentrate on how the Korean family stayed together during this whole saga (the grand-daughter of this family was caught by the creature but surprisingly survived). The family tried all ways and means to locate and save her even resorting to bribery of the officials. There were also little bits of humor here and there throughout the movie which adds to the “watch-ability” of this movie.

One of them was as follows (this one really caught my attention):

The father was forced to be separated from his family for further testing as the hospital suspected that he had been infected with a contagious virus since he was “exposed” to the creature before (he fought bravely with the creature and the creature’s blood splattered all over him).
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Evening time. Raining. Traffic light junction. A group of people were waiting for the “green man” to come on so they could cross the street.

Big TV screen on one of the shopping centres showed the News report broadcast that he (the father) had developed “flu-like” symptoms.

Everyone waiting at the pedestrian crossing looked at the Big TV screen.

Suddenly one of the man standing in the group of started to cough, sneezed and even spitted into the puddle of water in front of him.

Everyone instinctly shifted slightly away from this man. A woman who stood just beside him decided to walk away from him to another end.

Just then, a car whisked by at a high speed and splashed all the water against them !!

In other words, all of them GOT the virus (if that man was a carrier of cos !).

Very classic !

iPoke + iSpoke

iPoke incident

02Oct06 (Sun). I served cam2 during service in church. While my camera was on air, I felt somebody poked me at the back of my right knee. Who poked me? I tried to glance down to see who it was, but couldn’t see his/her face. However, I did see the Holy Communion (HC) plates with the bread and drink. It then dawn on me that maybe the HC server was asking if I would like to take Holy Communion.

I would love to.. but … but…. my camera is on AIR !!!!! So funny.. I tried to twist my legs so he/she would stop poking me.. haha.. not a beautiful sight to behold.

Thank God for a sister who sat nearby and saw what happened. She signaled to the HC server (most probably a new server) that I will not be taking the HC. Only then did the server realize it and walked away. Phew…

iSpoke incident

As I was recalling this event to another friend of mine, I suddenly realize that funny things happen to me when I serve cam2.

The previous most recent incident was when one of the pastors actually climbed up onto the platform I was on and spoke to me! And yes, I was on air at the moment again. I had a shock (thank God I quickly recovered). Haha…

A special note

Dear XXX,

Stay warm !

Love,
XXX’2001

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As I was browsing through my CDs last Saturday, I saw this particular CD from a ex-church friend. She recorded an album then and gave me one as a complimentary. That was what she wrote inside that CD for me.

Time flies.. that was in year 2001. Now is 2006. 5 years had come and gone.

“Stay warm !” – I stared at that sentence for a while.. after all these years, am I still warm or have I become cold? Or am I “warm” on the outside, yet “cold” on the inside, where no one except Daddy God can see?

Sometimes through the course of life, we find ourselves getting more and more disappointed in certain areas, esp those areas where we used to have so much high hopes/dreams about. Have we become too complacent, too lazy, too hesistant, to make a move on those areas or are we worried about so many things that we are not willing, even afraid to take that one little step out ?

I pray that we will be brave and step out! Take that step of faith! Cos we have a faithful Daddy God. With Him, even dreams that had been laying “dormant” for many many years will “erupt”! So let's start expecting good !