thanksgiving #3

so i gave up updating my thanksgiving every week. not that I dont have any, but sometimes i just dont feel like typing anything.

the past two weeks have been crazy at work. crazy in both good and bad ways. had to do up a branding video with a really tight deadline and many other work to do, i messed it up. it was the weekend before the boss wants to show it to the public, there werent many options i could take to solve it, or so it seems. there wasnt anything i could do within my power. but that's where the magic comes in. God allows such things to happen so that we know we are nothing without Him. i told him many times the past week that it is out of my hands, i'll just leave it to You to do whatever you planned. of course, i still couldnt stop worrying and stressing about it but He just solve everything over the weekend. the video turned out pretty well, and in a way that no way i could have planned for, even if i had all the time in the world before that to prepare for it.

it was also this period that i thought about my job, whether i should still stick around or to look for seemingly greener pastures elsewhere. he replied my prayers with a clear answer, not once but twice to be patient and stick around.

God answers prayers, may not be in the way we want, but if we choose to listen, He always answers. About half a year ago, two unrelated friends on separate occasions asked me why I dont ask out a friend of mine. I have never thought of that friend in that way before, so that random occurance just got me thinking if that was a sign from Him. He made sure I saw Him slamming the door on that.. twice again! He was probably telling me, "Dont even think about it!".

I thank God for being here, though I hate to think about it, I also thank Him for teaching me a lesson a year ago, I needed it.

As I ponder on another part of my life, do pray for me, for God to guide my actions and decisions, and for me to trust that He knows it best.

handmade photo frames

recently, i had to purchase some photo frames for work. i used to purchase them from the popular across my office but it has sinced moved out. feeling lazy to make a detour to toa payoh to buy, my colleague suggested this traditional shop along a row of shophouses nearby that still makes frames by hand.

in the era that most things are made in factories to enjoy economies of scale, it is quite nice to see that such small shops still exist. entering the shop,  we saw two men in their 50s working away on some frames using hand tools. we proceed to making our orders only to find out that the material we chose was not the usual ones my company picks. apparently some of our staff do frames there regularly, and after the owner found out where we were from, he immediately told us we picked the wrong type of frames.

this kind of service, you will never get from big scale retailers, such as popular. not that their service isn't good, but their business is just not built to provide such level of service.

as we walk away happily, a saddening thought came to my mind. how many of us these days would go into such jobs, in this case, i can hardly imagine any young person who would want to make frames like these two uncles for their career. these days, we are all looking for either high paying, comfortable environment or cool sounding jobs.

as the country progresses, we can only accept such losses are inevitable.

no i in team

i was just reading this article on soccernet about how arsenal just cannot keep their players year after year and how they dealt with it after each departure. there's this sentence that caught my eye, and reminded me so much of church:

"if a player is not going to commit to the club, you have to just move on without him. Sometimes a disappointing departure prompts other people step up to the plate and they share out the responsibility more among the team."

replacing "player" with "member" and "club" with "chuch", it totally makes sense. a lot of my ex-church mates have left the church, a lot of them very talented people with different gifts. of course I do not at any point think that they aren't team players, but this is more about other people stepping up.

using the music ministry as an example, the typical team of today is totally different from the team 2 years ago. they may not be as musically inclined as some people in the past, but they love God enough to put in the effort and to ignore how people may view their mistakes negatively. zheng long and crystal co-worship leaders, uncle see jwee and auntie siew lan playing the guitar and synthie respectively, they are but few examples out of the many that stepped up.

though it is always saddening for people to leave, the silver lining is that no one is indispensable, God always provides.

"Lukas Podolski isn't as good as Van Persie but he works hard and he's got different qualities; he's scoring goals at the moment and he's working his socks off for the team."

thanksgiving #2

kinda missed a week because work was just crazy last week, but here's this week's

#1 the challenging week at work
it was really a struggle to get work done, but at the same time having to be patient with an incompetent colleague. it would have been so easy to just be nasty but thankfully, God kept reminding me of  how we should speak to build people up. as the struggle continues this week, i hope that God continues to remind me whenever i feel like being nasty.

#2 saturday worship gathering
the opportunity for the entire team to just meet and catch up with one another, good food at aunty florence's and novotel hotel (except for the otah that cause zl and i to have diarrhea).

#3 funguspuff's wedding
my closest friend in jc and possibly during my army time too, someone that i liked for the longest time then. though being rejected back them was depressing, for a while, but now that it is many years later, im quite glad nothing happened as it probably wouldnt have lasted.

no bitterness but just pure joy for a friend who has found her companion to spend the rest of her life with. congrats funguspuff! thank God you found him!