The day drawth near

In exactly a week's time, I will be holed up in office at about this unearthly hour. Will be there till about 5am, to verify data which are migrated to new system. Why this hour? Becos the project is running with very tight timeline, and we will have to take whatever window period there is... sigh, I pray that everything will go on smoothly. I will be on standby the entire weekend too.

The past weeks have been extremely busy period, preparing for the upcoming launch, and tying whatever loose ends we find, and there are many. In such times, my "task-oriented" character starts to take over, and it becomes more natural for me to give instructions here, there and everywhere, and not be swayed by how they would respond. Without this mounting pressure, I would have been more understanding and more "people-focused". Well, I guess its a good thing to be so focused once in a while. Really builds up the momentum to something big. And I do hope that my staff are with me on this. One of them has even fallen ill with heart pain the past week, and I suspect its related to this looming change.

As for me, I'm taking one day at a time, no matter how packed my diary is with meetings / trainings, no matter how many outstanding tasks there are to follow up on, and no matter how many public feedback we have or will be receiving...

Review

Guess what, I'm feeling a lot better already. Not sure what had happened between last night and today, but the dark clouds over my head have been dispelled. God must have heard and answered my prayers. And I am not so bothered by the work issues now. Praise be to God!

Today's ST papers had a feature about Brokeback Mountains, and I thought that the writer described very well his sentiments after watching the movie. I felt the similar sense of restraint being portrayed. I had watched the movie last week after hearing the raving reviews and hype. No doubt certain scenes made me cringe with discomfort and embarrassment, I felt that the movie did delve deep in its portrayal of love, fear, frustrations, and sense of being trapped in. It "humanises" the emotions of guys whose gender preference is not quite the norm. This is something that I will probably never learn about through my interactions with people I meet.

On the flipside, I feel that the movie has encouraged more gay couples to step out into the open and seek acceptance in the society. I'm not sure where this trend would lead to, but I do know that homosexuality is not in accordance to God's will.

On the whole, the movie was an eye-opener, although I wonder if a tinge of my "childhood innocence" was lost as I watched the movie.

Mind Battle

Had to battle another "attack" of negative thoughts today. Mainly due to work. Need lots of wisdom to chart out my path in this organisation, in a mature and positive manner, and to conduct myself with good sense of EQ. Something I'm not confident of achieving, but who says I'm alone...

As I was trying to deal with these negativity, I asked the Lord to bring His Word to my mind, and I was reminded of Prov 3:5-6. "Trust in the Lord with All your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight." Indeed I should not trust in human favour, but in God Himself.

CNY

As usual, my family spent our CNY in KL with our extended family. As usual, we stayed at my grandmother's house. And as usual, the house was almost brought down with noise and people on the second day of CNY, cos all the relatives came visiting. Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, Nieces, Nephews filled the whole house. Its nice to have everyone gathered under 1 roof. But somehow, I am still very distant from all my cousins, as we only see each other a few times a year, and the ice has not really been broken after all these years, and nobody's very keen to break the ice now! Sigh...

The big difference about this year's CNY is that my grandmother is no longer around, and everyone missed her very much. We all felt her absence keenly, as she would usually be the one to welcome us whenever we visit, talk to us, supervise the cooking of meals, basically, run the household. Now that she has passed on, there is a void somewhere.

Another highlight of the trip was that my dad's car battery actually died on us the day after we reached KL. In all, we had to jumpstart the car using other car's battery on a total of 5 occasions! As it was 1st day of CNY, we had difficulty buying new battery, so we simply lived with it and sought the help of relatives and strangers alike to jumpstart the car each time we needed to use it. Thank God we finally managed to get the battery changed on the 2nd day. Moral of the story? Check your battery often and get it changed when it is reaching the end of its lifespan. Also, keep a set of jumpstart cables readily available in your car. You'll never know when you'll be needing it.

Returned to Sgp yesterday afternoon, and managed to do some visitation yesterday. It was nice being able to visit friends here, just enjoying each other's company. Usually, I'll be in KL the entire CNY hols and miss out on the friends' visitation here.

Came back from watching the Geisha movie with friends a while ago. Enjoyed it thoroughly even though its review was not too fantastic. I was totally immersed in the plot for the entire 2+ hrs. I could just feel along with the characters as the story unfolded. Felt like a fairytale with nice ending eh, well, sort of lah... If you are the sentimental type of person, chances are, you will enjoy it too!

Chatted with my friends over dinner before the movie, and was encouraged by some sharing and "spiritual exhortation". As I ponder over it, I wonder whether has my Hope clique become so comfortable with seeing each other that we hardly share at a deeper level now? A sober realisation, and probably just my opinion. Rather than looking at the contributing factors, let me start relating to people at a deeper level. I only pray that the Spirit guide me in what I say or do.