just minishorts.

Season's Greetings to all from the office. Has it been a smashing weekend? I just got home from 6 days of carolling, visiting, present-buying, church-visiting, and joy-spreading, so I'm deadbeat. My friend and partner YY asked me whether life has been rewarding, oh well… I suppose I've got to be thankful for a really FULL-life…

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Oh oh!! I found a few photos while rummaging through our childhood pics (my fiance and I are all too eager to show off our baby pictures…) It's so FUNNY! We both have photos in the same poses!! WAHAHAHAHAHA we're so made to be kekekkee…

This is Eric… at 2? 3?

This is me, probably at 2 or 3 as well.

Obviously we're planning to do one of those super corny baby-pics display for the wedding, and we're in the midst of digging out old old pictures for the scanning, 10 months ahead of time WAHAHAH (too many things to do, including the furniture buying, the house shopping, the honey-moon destination decision-making…)

Speaking of the wedding, well, Mom's been an active participant in the discussions regarding the preparations… in particular, she's been coming up with the oddest comments… like the other day, she was reading The Star's Metro section, while noting the number of year-end sales that furniture shops were offering, Mom said, 'So remember you and Eric have to buy new furniture for the bedroom lah, the new bed is a MUST…'

'OK… not planning to take second-hand stuff for the bedroom lah…'

'Yah, and you guys better plan to spend more on quality stuff, you know lah… the bed must be solid enough…' said Mom.

'It's Chinese culture lah I know, getting married the bedroom must be full of new stuff, including the wardrobe…'

'NOT only that lah, the bed is important, you know lah you and Eric… better make sure the bed is solid lah, afturds … you know, if you romp around too much in it and you break it…'

'Errrr…'

'EH it's true what, you know what newly weds are like lah..'
'MOM… '

OK my MOM is incredibly CANDID when it comes to discussions like this. Just a few days ago she was asking me about the honeymoon destination, and I said, 'We haven't quite decided where to go yet, long time away…'

'Go somewhere nice lah, get a nice tour or something… Go visit Taipei since you haven't been there before… '

'Eric says he wants to go somewhere with beaches and water woh…' I started… '

'Don't you wanna go on a tour…'

And so I went, 'Errr… Eric says that honeymoons not really for tours…'

Then my mom just said, 'Yah hoh, true that. Yah you'll be doing other stuff, yah Eric knows best.'

Sheesh.

I TELL YOU it's weird getting married hahahha. Anyway, am I happy? Yah I'm happy, I got a really nice pressie for Christmas!!

So was X'mas awesome? Great… Eric got generous hehehe… so I got a Brilliant Rose cross pendant yay!! Heather should be happy I'm using the Happy sticker that came during their launch weekend.

I love being engaged. It's Happy-fying.

I'm on leave! Finally, finally! YAY!

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Blessed Christmas to all and may all your dreams come true. And it's the Winter Solstice Festival this Saturday too so Happy Dong Zhi too all and may you keep your resolutions for next year alive and be merry to all. Also Selamat Raya Haji yah!! Have Fun!!

I've always believed in empowering people through responsible management, and have always been going against the tide of bureaucratic feudalism so obviously apparent in traditional organizational structures. So if anyone would ask of my personal opinion, it's rather obvious that I'd choose flat over layered structures yah?

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I was also having a chat with dear Bob over the Golden Compass fiasco the other day, and I really quite think it's absolutely ridiculous of Christians to start judging Christians for actually making that choice to go see the movie, especially in these precarious times… come on, surely small talk can be focused on something more relevant to current living in the world (i.e. the talk of town, bla bla… bla bla… OK I can't actually be too specific about that here…)

I don't know, what is your church discussing about recently? In home fellowship meets, do you now talk about how people who have some part to play in the production or consumption of that accursed movie will eventually end up in hell, or about what's happening in the country now? Which topic is being given more airtime?

Or rather, if you guys are (thankfully so) talking about the front page news, How do we discuss these issues, do you talk about 'what you can do?' or how praying can change things? (I'm not a very big believer in praying in tongues, because it makes the whole concept of praying so exclusive… I'm the live in prayer kind of person, prayer through action, you know? Tongues vs action? OMG quite obvious right? Surely there's some way we who call ourselves followers of Christ can actually do rather than hurdling around in weekly meetings sharing testimonies and then hiding into isolated corners prior into bursting out in incoherent babbling right now? I'm sure God gave us the other talents for some other reasons right?)

I know I'm sesat like that lah can? It still annoys me to death that I keep getting spam on 'why you should boycott The Golden Compass' when it ought to really worry us to death that discussions for company financial decisions are beginning to take into factor when the elections are going to happen and some idiots are screaming nonsense like, 'I'm not going to vote because I no longer believe in the system.'

Cis bedebah.

Surely most people (who come from Good Christian families who only watch movies made by good Christian people, read books by good Christian authors, eat food at restaurants owned by good Christian businessmen and work for good Christian employees) have received the mass mailed warnings to warn us of the perils of going to THAT terrible movie written by that terrible man called Phillip Pullman.

Well if you haven't, I have, and although this happens almost all the time in the family I own, I still haven't been able to escape being annoyed by the circumstance.

Or perhaps, it puzzles me to hell why was I encouraged a good education when I am not allowed to make good use of the education. Very much like the banning of The Satanic Verses, or the tirades against that absurd-money-raking bestseller called The Da Vinci Code, or even frightened fundamentalists parents forbidding their poor kids from reading about Harry Potter and his amazing (fictitious spells), here we go again.

Nicole Kidman is going to hell, by the way, for playing a part in what is so obviously a movie that is anti-God.

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I say my friends, there is a difference between being anti-religion, and being anti-God. But of course, somewhere in between the years, Satan has totally succeeded, and now that God has been so successfully intermeshed between that deceiving concept we obediently claim to be our differentiating religions, we're doing the very thing thats driving human beings apart. Let's judge, let's condemn, it's in the name of God, we say.

If you watched the movies and were you to be even so close to realize what allegorical references actually mean, it's true, the books through the movie indeed is telling us about the problems with organized religions (that inevitably is built up through hierarchy-addicted power-hungry tyrants). But come on, half the population in the world aren't really that bothered, and very quickly, the story's just another rehashed-and-retold one… and if I may risk being labeled heretical to actually say this, much like how much of the stories in the bibles could be considered rehashed and retold stories from various cultures around the world.

So the contents, running a checklist here - you've got the protagonist, some helpers, a kind of systemic ruling system that keeps things under control, the people who're desperately trying to keep the systems intact, and those who believe in a world of pure free-will. OK what, a lot of shows have done that before lah. Lord of the Rings — like that also kan? Star Wars - also like that mah. Narnia like that also. All also like that. What's so special?

Eh you dunno, Phillip Pullman's book got something called a God-Killer you know. And some more the characters named after God based on the Hebrew / Christian faiths. So he must be of some Satanic cult thing… you wanna go Heaven or not? Better not read.

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Maybe because I go to a Lutheran church, and that the founder of the Lutheran denomination had to go through a lot of literal shit just to break down systemic religious systems that oppressed intellectual thinking that this kind of mass-emailing annoys me to death. Didn't our God, His Son had to go through the same kind of anti-government warfare in order to prove what it meant to conquer the cross?

It's Advent, and instead of telling people to spread the love, love your neighbour (and enemy) as your won, we're busy spreading e-mails of hate, telling each other to boycott movies, if you're a good Christian. 'Act accordingly, read carefully.'

What would Jesus think if he were actually here?

I watched the movie btw, and the ending was really quite bla. Am I converted to Pullman-ism? Not quite. Impressed? No, it's watered down, and quite fortunately so. Will I watch the rest of the trilogy, why not? When the show comes out. Do I think it's Satanic? Who cares?

It's Advent. Time to spread the love.

Three weeks till 2008. Fuiyoh.

Speed is but a feeling, time is but speed, time is but a feeling. I'm already in my late twenties.

Shit.

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And then when we meet up, we're talking about company prospects, and we're throwing out difficult jargons like vertical movements, or other difficult things like, 'When's the baby due?'

You know how we keep insisting that we won't get caught up in the cycle?

And yet how we keep insisting that we want to be a little bit more normal than others, because it's extraordinary to actually lead a comfortably normal life?

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How is it POSSIBLE to be normal and not get caught up in the cycle? We're stuck in it, the whole thing, caught up in the entire radius. Now unless I'm dead, I'll be in it…

Might as well learn to enjoy the ride. Three more weeks kan? Resolutions time.

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MUST BE MORE FOCUSED AND CREATE MORE RESULTS.