Making Sense Of It All

So I get a call from Karen at 11 am while I am at work in Ballarat. "Er, honey, are you free to talk?" she asked, although I sensed a keener desperation in her voice. "What's up?" I say, and she tells me that she woke up today to find the house flooded. Water was leaking from the lights in the ensuite and had made its way into the master bedroom and what was even more worrying was that it had somehow made its way downstairs into the dining area.

I tried to suppress the initial instinct to panic, and the images of Titanic-level water gushing into the house that was playing in my head. Instead I switched into problem solving mode and tried to think of who she should call first. I then changed out of my theatre scrubs and told who I needed to that I needed to attend an emergency back home, and thankfully they were very understanding at my workplace.

I get another call from Karen while driving and she tells me that she was worried because water heater at the back of the house was letting out hot air, and I tell her to get away from the backyard to somewhere safe. The house was secondary to her safety and I try my hardest to keep within the speed limits. The Titanic was now exploding in my head, and I could not be there to save my wife.

It was a long hour and twenty minute drive home, and I called frequently to make sure she was okay, while trying to figure out what I could do from all this distance away. Find the main water supply and turn it off. She manages to call the plumber and he tells her to find the main electricity switch and turn that off too.

I felt a little more settled after that, and soon my thoughts naturally drifted to the question we all ask ourselves in times of trouble - "Why me?" and, if you are so inclined, "What is God trying to tell me? Have I displeased Him in some way?"

There were fleeting moments of anger, bargaining and denial all in the short space of my trip home. We are all meaning-making creatures and I was trying to make sense of this 'tragedy' that had blindsided us on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday morning.

Now I use the word 'tragedy' here carefully because, really, compared to everything else that is happening in the world right now (whether reported or unreported), how dare I classify this as a tragedy. But it was a mini-tragedy nonetheless - I was faced with the prospect of homelessness, and potentially months of work on the house. The thought of that still sends shivers down my spine.

By the grace of God, things were worse in my head than I had imagined, which is usually the case. Karen was safe when I got home, and she had dried up most of the house. The water was no longer dripping from the ceilings, and apart from some short-circuited wires and some skirting damage, I would like to believe the house has escaped relatively unscathed.

The insurance company was really understanding and helpful in our times of need, and the tradesmen were friendly and even brought some humour into a serious situation. We found out what the problem was - the original builders of the house must have accidentally driven a nail through a pipe above our bathroom, but instead of taking responsibility and fixing it, they left it alone - it'll be right - and the nail had held out until now.

We are now waiting for the building assessors to come by and see what needs to be fixed, which we are praying won't be major. We still have a roof over our heads, and Karen is safe, and that is the main thing for now.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

So why did it have to happen?

Here is how I have been processing it. This has happened:

1) For absolutely no reason. I think that sometimes we try too hard to justify everything that goes on in the world. We try and make sense of bombs going off and of buildings collapsing and of natural disasters that rob people of their lives and their homes. We are meaning-making creatures, after all, and meaninglessness does not sit well with us - every tragedy should result in goodness, and everything  should happen for a reason.

Try to apply that reasoning to the perpetrators that have never been brought to justice, or to the victims who carry their tragedies unresolved with them for the rest of their lives. Try to apply that to the people who have tried to live healthy but succumb to their cancers anyway, or the occasional smoker who lives well into their eighties.

We do not live in a fixed moral universe. The sun will shine and the rain will fall equally on both the good and the evil people of this world. Yes, we often reap what we sow, but not always, and yes, there is the law, and a judicial system in place, but justice is rarely swift nor adequate in our fallen world.

We live in a broken world, and all we can do is try to bring light into the darkness and life into areas where there is only death, and it heartens me to see some of us trying to do exactly that.

2) God must be punishing me for some sin. Once again, this thinking does not sit well with me for a couple of reasons - firstly, this really depends on your frame of belief - if you were an atheist, then No one is punishing you for anything, if you were a Buddhist, perhaps this is payback for some sin in a past life and so forth.

In my Christian frame of belief - really, God has forgiven all my sins on that cross where Jesus died. Not some of my sins. Not only the sins I committed before I became a Christian. Not only the small sins. All of my sins. Past, present, future, and really, is Christ's death on the cross not big enough to cover any sin? All of my sins.

3) God wants me to learn something from this. Now this perhaps, I can subscribe to. I am not being punished, but I am being refined because God is still interested in who I become and how I interact with the world around me.

I think if there is one thing that God desires from me is my full dependence on Him. That means to humble ourselves completely and depend on Him alone.

What does that even mean? 

I must say that I don't fully comprehend that yet - we are created to work and look after this earth that He has made, and we naturally take pride in what we have accumulated and built with our own hands.

For me it was this house - I remember that a lot of my confidence came from this home we had acquired, the furniture we had painstakingly assembled, this land we owned. It was a source of great pride.

If there is one thing God despises, it is the proud, because it is with this same pride that we pass judgement on other people's lives, it is this pride that shields us from the real problems affecting our communities and the world we live in, this pride that leads to self-centeredness - when we were made to love our God and our neighbours as ourselves. Strangely enough, this pride does not bring satisfaction but discontentment - a need to acquire more to validate our very existence.

And so here I am, humbled once more before God, as He pries my hands a little more from the things that I am desperately trying to hold on to dearly, reminding me to let go a bit more of the things that invest all my confidence in.

I have to let go of my sureness in this house, all my belongings, my beloved wife, my dear family members, my job, my status, my health - all these things that I thought I have control over, or think that I am in control of - it is days like this that remind me that I am in control of absolutely nothing.

And so I come before my Creator once more with fear and trembling, and truthfully, I am still learning what it means to trust Him more, especially in my comfortable middle class existence. I have not known hunger for the longest time, I have been spared from homelessness, my health has had one or two scares in the past but I have my health now.

I am still trying to process this, and writing about it has allowed me to put my thoughts into some cohesive form, although in truth, I am still shaken by the thought of what could have been, especially if neither of us were home to notice it in time.

Letting go of the tangible things that I can put my trust in to put my faith in the unseen is so hard even for a 'veteran' Christian like me. Days like these show up what my foundations are truly made of.

²⁴ “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. ²⁵ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. ²⁶ But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Matthew 7:24-27

Call Me, Maybe?

We are blessed to be in an era where technology is moving at breakneck speed. Our smartphones are now an extension of our bodies, our laptops are getting lighter yet more powerful, our video games are now motion-controlled, our films jump out at us in three dimension. Now if someone can invent self-cooking meals, self cleaning dishes and self-cleaning and folding laundry, I can then safely say that we are at the pinnacle of human civilisation.

One of the things that we are moving away from is the humble home phone. I don't really use it anymore nowadays except to call back to Malaysia to remind Mum that yes, I am still her son.

Ah, such memories, the telephone. I remember the good old days when the set we had at home was the corded phone with the analog ring, and it would give that satisfying whirr-click whenever you made a phone call. As four or five year olds, we were making such important phone calls - randomly garbling at some stranger in Bangladesh about how our five-year-old day was, or telling some nice French auntie what we had for breakfast.

It wasn't long before the phone bill arrived and our parents had a near heart attack, gave us a good scolding before they decided to buy a lock pad for the phone. It was quite simple really - a small lockpad that fit into one of the numbers was all it took to stop our grubby little fingers making calls.

Ta-da! Itchy fingers cured!

A few years rolled on and there was great excitement in our household when we finally got the telephone with buttons instead of an analog ring - what amazing technology! Our parents got a little forgetful and our tiny fingers got itchy again - and once again the bills with the interstate and overseas calls arrived, and another lock pad was required.

How phones probably look like to all kids.

The lock pad for the button-operated telephone was a plastic square that only had the number '0' exposed so that you could ring for help if needed (kind of like the grand-daddy of the 'Emergency Calls Only' on our modern day smartphones). We had so many fun days chatting to the nice Emergency Operator sister....

One of my proudest moments as a child was hacking the locked telephone. It was out of desperation really - I needed to call Mum at her office, and I sat there blankly in front of the telephone, the orange plastic monstrosity standing between me and my mother.

A natural curiosity had overwhelmed me about how these phones worked - because even when you pressed the buttons on these newer phones - you could still hear a clicking noise in the phone corresponding to the number you had dialled.

And here was my brainwave - I wonder if I could tap out the numbers on the receiver. And so I tried - 9 - nine light taps on the receiver of the telephone. They had to be light taps, mind you - anything too heavy and you risked getting disconnected and had to start all over again. -2- two light taps on the receiver and so on till I completed the seven required numbers.

An actual picture of my
seven-year-old self

I cannot describe to you the simultaneous joy and pride I felt as a seven year old when the phone started ringing and I heard my Mum's voice on the other side.

"Mum!" came my triumphant voice. "Yes, is everything okay?" she asked, before realising "Eh, how come you can call me one? You broke the lock is it?" came the undertones of impending punishment.

I was too excited to remember why I had called her in the first place, and was just dreaming of all the phone calls I could make now that I had hacked the phone.

We'll get to talk again, random French auntie!

Another land-line phone trick you might want to try:

If you dial #196 (or maybe without the hash, I forget) on your home phones in Malaysia and put down your phones, it will automatically ring, and you can pick it up and prank your parents by pretending there was a call for them. Watch them walk all the way downstairs and then speak into the phone quizzically when there is no one there. Make sure you run out of reach at that point when they realise they've been pranked, and make sure you've hidden all the rotans (canes) first.

This method is also good for waking up family members in rooms with a connected phone, which my father used as a substitute alarm clock to wake my brother up for work!

This tip was provided by my primary school friends when we were eleven, who had obviously spent a lot of time hacking their phones as well.

Thinking about Eating.

I remember being told this story when I was a child - my uncle had gone out and bought a whole carton of bar soaps. In his mind it made complete sense - it was a non-perishable item, and you could keep it for as long as you wanted. If prices of soap went up - well, you have just saved yourself some money. A few months later, and he had only gone through three or four bars of his hundred-something soaps sitting in his store room. He noticed that the rest of the soaps had lost their perfumed scent, so he had to throw them out.

One of the things that I am re-learning here in Ballarat is how I eat. People who share a meal with me will always wonder if I had eaten at all that day - I would always be the first to finish, I would eat at least three bowls of rice in a sitting and I used to 'push past the point of pain' - eat despite being full. (Hands up all you Asian children).

My friends used to joke that I didn't have worms - my whole gut was just one big worm. (At first I laughed. And then I ate my friends.)

I try to think about my attitude towards food, and in a way it is heavily influenced by my parents. Growing up, two things were valued in the family- education (including books) and food. My clothes were hand-me-downs, I had to be fairly imaginative with sparse toys, and entertainment (cinemas, video games, expensive toys) was wasteful. These were things you weren't meant to spend money on.

Food, on the other hand, was not regulated as strongly. As kids, my Dad would change about a hundred ringgit worth of fifty sen coins, and a jar would sit downstairs. You were meant to have fifty sen a day as pocket money, but no one really raised an eyebrow if you took more to spend at the school canteen.

In a way, I guess my parents, like all parents, wanted for me what they couldn't afford in their days. Dad used to tell me that he was so poor during his college years that he and his best friend would just drink tap water for lunch, and that would be all they would have for lunch. The thought of my father having to go without a meal still knots me up in my stomach and almost brings me to tears.

And so we ate, and we ate, and let's just say I was quite the tubby little boy growing up. I have pictures of me as a nine year old with my shirt buttons begging for mercy as the buttonholes wrinkled from trying to contain my little elephantine body, while I grinned like a mini Kim Jong-Un.

Were it not the dual mercies of puberty and my bout with dengue, I think I would have required my stomach to be stapled about five years ago. Heck, the doctors would have taken a look at me and offered to staple my mouth as well, I think.

It's true what they say - once you hit your thirties your metabolism slows down a lot. The only problem is that now that I am well and truly into my thirties, I still eat like my twenties, and therein lies the problem.

These are a few new ways I am learning to look at my food:

1) Do not deny yourself anything. What?! I hear you say. I know, he's trying to get us to fatten up so that he will look thin in comparison, you say.

I actually learnt this lesson from Karen - if you feel like eating something, just go ahead and eat it. If you deny yourself anything, that food item is suddenly placed on a pedestal and we all know that we want what we can't get (hands up all you unrequited lovers).

Suddenly the M&Ms become a guilty pleasure and then you binge when you finally do get to eat it because you never know when you'll be able to eat it again.

And so nowadays, if I feel like eating something, I will. Not in large amounts. Just enough to satisfy the craving. So stop when you are full. Food, like everything else, should be made our servant, and not our master.

2) You don't have to finish it. A lot of my attitude towards food is based on an inherited scarcity mentality. My survival instincts tell me that whenever I eat, it may be my last meal, so stock up! It may have been true for our ancestors and perhaps in war time, but it does not apply to us today.

Nowadays I no longer 'push past the pain' and stop when my tummy tells me I am full. You don't have to clean up everything on your plate. Really, it's okay. You can always cook that meal again or return to the restaurant.

Contrary to what your parents were brainwashing you with growing up, no one made a sizeable donation to the starving children in Africa just because you finished all the food on your plate.

The war is coming! Eat!

3) Shop wisely. I believe that the way we eat starts all the way at the choices we make at the supermarket. Never shop when you are hungry.

We live in a generation of excess - we have rows upon rows of fresh and processed foods and we are spoilt for choice. There is a convenience store or a supermarket within driving, if not walking distance from wherever we live.

And get this - the food will always be there. We shop so often from a scarcity mentality again - as if the war was coming. I have seen mothers with supermarket trollies that creak under the weight of their weekly groceries, filled almost to the point of overflowing.

Or maybe they ran an orphanage. (No, it was definitely a mother.)

Grocery shopping is retail therapy for some.

Don't buy double of anything. That other packet of Tim Tams or Oreos will be there when you return. The more you have at home, the easier it is to reach for it when your hands are not doing anything else, even when you are already full.

One other tip - sometimes we think we are hungry, when actually we are thirsty. Drink two glasses of water when hungry and wait for five minutes to see if the sensation goes away. If still hungry after that, then eat.

I am no health guru and I am myself learning to view my eating habits anew. It is not easy considering that I come from a culture where we meet up over meals, late night suppers are everywhere and we are obsessed with finding out where the good eating places are.

I have no inclinations to be thin, just healthy. I hope this helps some people think about our eating habits as well. The word 'habits' suggest that how we eat is influenced subconsciously. Maybe you have some other realisation you have come to about your eating habits. Thinking about how we eat and why we eat are the first steps to changing these long-standing habits.

A Love Story For Our Times.

(WARNING: This article contains spoilers about the movie Amour, as does Wikipedia, if you think about it. If you intend to watch the movie, do yourself the favour and watch it instead.)

Karen and I went to watch Amour last Sunday, Michael Haneke's film which won the Oscar for the best foreign film this year and was also the winner of the Palme d'Or, the highest prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

This unassuming movie deals with two difficult topics - that of growing old and suffering with illness, and the realities of caring for a loved one who has been debilitated by disease. These are themes rarely explored in any movie, yet so poignant and relevant given that we are moving towards an ageing population.

The Movie

The first thing that you will notice about this movie is the absence of a soundtrack. This lends to the realism of the movie, and it is this silence that haunts - long after the credits have rolled (without music) and throughout the movie as well.

Anne and Georges are two retired piano teachers in their eighties. They have one daughter living abroad but are managing happily by themselves in their home in Paris.

They return from a concert of one of Anne's former students and talk about how proud she is of him. They have been married for many years and are great companions together, and you see it as he stands in the bathroom doorway while she removes her make up. He tells her she looks beautiful tonight. She smilingly asks him what is wrong with him, as all wives do when their husbands surprise them with a compliment.

The Beginning of The End

The next morning, they sit over breakfast and discuss the day ahead when Anne suddenly blanks out for about half a minute. Terrified, Georges tries to snap her out of it, and ambles to the kitchen sink to get a wet cloth and dab her face with it. He leaves the tap running as he leaves to call for help because she is still not responding, when the kitchen tap suddenly stops. He returns to find her back to her usual self, and they have an argument as to what had just transpired.

A visit to the doctor and tests reveal that she has had a small stroke. She goes for a procedure to clean out the arteries in her neck but unfortunately returns completely paralysed on her right side due to failure of the procedure.

Georges takes her home in a wheelchair and looks after her, where she makes him promise that he will never send her back to hospital or a nursing home. At one point, she confesses that she does not want to continue living. He becomes her dutiful carer, however, and they enjoy a life with some meaning - conversations, meals, helping her with her exercises, a visit from her former pupil. There is a new normal for the couple.

The second thing you will notice about this movie is that it all takes place within their home - every minor drama unfolds within the confines of their living room, bedroom, kitchen, toilet. The home almost becomes part prison and part refuge for the both of them since she has had a stroke.

The Daughter

One of the side dramas which unfold is true of any family - the absent children who return, laden with guilt, but also with motive. Their daughter Eva returns with her partner, and tries to talk Georges into moving Anne into a nursing home, but he angrily insists that he has promised Anne that was not an option.

There is a scene where Eva sits next to her mother on the bed and talks about her own problems - of how her current partner had lost money in the stock market, and how they needed money to invest into property. I thought this scene was particularly sublime, because we are shown where Eva's heart lies, a daughter caught up in her own problems, with very little understanding of the daily struggles of her parents. She is trying to be caring of her mother's present suffering, but has one eye on her own future.

The story progresses with Anne suffering a second stroke, which leaves her demented and babbling incomprehensibly. Georges continues to look after her despite the strain it puts on him. Here was his wife, once proud, dignified and independent, now dependent on him for her every need, like a child.

There is a scene where he is trying to convince Anne to drink some water, but Anne, with some manner of understanding, spits it out in almost juvenile defiance. Before he realises what he is doing, Georges slaps her across the face. She stares back at him angrily, and he is helpless and guilty all at once, trying to deal with both the burden of trying to genuinely care for her and her stubbornness of wanting to choose her own fate.

Their daughter returns on another visit, and in his own moment of childish defiance, Georges locks up the door to the bedroom where Anne is resting to prevent Eva from seeing Anne and passing more passive judgement on what's best for her mother.

Eva finally gets to see Anne, and confronts Georges, who says that he is doing his best to honour Anne's wishes, and in fact had hired two nurses to look after her.

The Nurses

The nurses were depicted quite accurately and with a sharp eye on how subject we are to the kindness of strangers once we are debilitated by illness.

One is an experienced caring nurse who gently looks after Anne and tends to her needs tenderly. The other is a young girl, who treats it as a job and is quite gruff in handling Anne. Georges angrily dismisses the second nurse, cursing that one day she suffers the same fate in the hands of another when she herself is defenseless.

The climax of the show takes you by surprise. Anne, in her dementia, calls out in pain, and Georges rushes to her side. He checks to see if she has soiled herself, and then sits by her bedside and placates her with an ambling story of how he was at a camp when he was a young boy of twelve. He talks about the postcards he used to send home to his mother, telling her what a miserable time he was having, and sighs with a smile at the memory of it. His soothing voice seems to placate Anne, who stops calling out.

Georges then grabs the pillow next to her and smothers Anne, while crying into the pillow above her. She struggles for about twenty seconds before she stops breathing.

All this time, I was secretly thinking to myself, man, this show is going so slowly. One scene later, and I am crying uncontrollably, trying to stop my shoulders from heaving. It was the overwhelming human-ness of it all that got to me. It was a terrible act, but you could tell that paradoxically, he did it out of love.

The film ends with Georges buying some flowers to place around Anne in the bed and then taping up her bedroom door, which now becomes her tomb. He sleeps in the guest room, and it is not long before he sees an apparition of Anne, who is healthy once more, and finishing up the dishes before telling him to hurry up and get dressed, they were going to be late. Georges is a little confused, but obediently puts on his coat, and follows her out of the house.

The director does not reveal what happens to Georges, as he does not wish to place judgment on his actions. I think that it is indeed impossible for us all to be the judge or jury of his actions, and manage our lives based on our own moralities and understanding of life and suffering.

The film ends with Eva walking into the now empty apartment, sitting in the chair where her mother used to sit, quietly considering the house.

 *********************************
I think it is an amazing film, that causes us to pause and consider our own humanity. With ageing partners and parents, this is a show that will resonate with all of us.

We want to label things good and bad - Eva is selfish and unfilial, but has her own very real worries as well. Surely Anne has lived a good long life and don't all old people die eventually, with the young to take their place?

Georges was the picture of caring husbandly love until he effectively kills Anne. But was it an act of mercy? Is there value in living if there is no quality of life?


We are quick to judge the actions of others, but have very little understanding about the context of their circumstances.

It's never black or white, it's often grey, and we tread on these eggshells each and every day. It is these complexities - this pain, this suffering, the small victories, the surrender - this is what makes us human.

Now if you've read this far, could I please convince you to go see the movie anyway. Make up your own minds about this.

The Sunday Fear

Just spent a weekend here in Ballarat, with Karen coming up to visit for the first time. It was a wonderful weekend spent exploring cafes, art galleries and warming up the credit card in quaint clothes shops, secondhand bookstores and craft markets. We spent the evening watching the seriously moving Amour, which is the subject of another post later, I'm sure.

It came time to say goodbye, and we had a long, slightly teary farewell before she drove off towards the city lights and I entered the quiet solitude of my house once more. She had filled it with her raucous laughter and noisy conversation and bustling ideas, she had organised the heck out of the house, she had whipped the kitchen into submission.

And now, devoid of her personality, there is now only the quiet. And the disquiet.

For as long as I can remember, I always suffered from Sunday evening blues. I think I am not alone in this regard - many friends have called it by many other names - 'the Sunday Dread' and more recently, I have heard some Irish friends call it 'The Fear'.

What is this commonality that makes us hate Sunday evenings? Is it the work and school that the week brings ahead for us? Is it because play time is over, and now we must ready our serious faces, our thinking brains, our labored smiles for the week ahead?

I can't explain it. A friend, for example loves his job. Like loves it. And you could see why - he is the perfect fit for his work, and the company ethics and people are all fantastic, and in line with his values. He excels at what he does, and yet, come Sunday evening, the Fear will sit in his heart in an inexplicable way.

I wonder if it has to do with conditioning, and how Mondays always meant school for us growing up. Another week of homework, assignments, difficult teachers, complicated friendships and overwhelming expectations.

And it is an almost universal, potentially irrational dislike for Mondays. I remember the Bangles complaining about Manic Monday and The Boomtown Rats confirms in their song 'I Don't Like Mondays' that they want to 'shoo--oo--oo-oo--oo--oot the whole day down'  and of course, the iconic Garfield comics.



I truly wonder if perhaps it is just a first world problem, where relaxation is confined to the weekends and it's go-go-go the rest of the week.

Personally, having worked shift work in Emergency, I can say that perhaps it really has far less to do with the day of the week than with the actual day your work starts. If I have more than two days in a row off, and then a stretch of work days ahead of me, then the evening before work becomes my new Sunday evening.

Don't get me wrong, I love what I do, and it is a privilege to be able to do meaningful work. I think perhaps sometimes we want to put off putting on the responsible adult clothes just for that little while longer, and hit the snooze button on seriousness, just one more time.

Have a good week ahead, everyone.
 

The Race to Fitness

Being in a regional centre and away from the hustle and bustle of the big smoke, one of the luxuries that I have found myself with is that of more time.

There is a saying about the 'country mile' which is an expression given to how a mile in the country feels longer than a mile in the city. Let's just say I have been blessed with 24 'country hours' to spend each day.

One could do many things with 24 country hours - one could study fervently (hah!), brush up on absent cooking skills (now, let's see - how did I manage to burn that water again?), catch up on one's newfound hobbies (see previous post) or reacquaint oneself with that lifelong love-hate relationship with the sadomasochistic habit - exercise.

I will reiterate this - I am not the sporty type. Unless Scrabble or Monopoly has been recently inducted into a physical sport, I am not inclined to fitness. As a friend loved to say, the only exercise I ever got was when I 'jogged my memory, leaped to conclusions, jumped for joy or pushed my luck'.

If there is one thing I will do sporadically though, is I will jog. I blame this on my college years in Singapore when not only did you have to excel in your studies, you had to pass a fitness test as well - the NAPFA (National Physical Fitness Award) test as they call it, which still sends a shiver down my love handles when I think about it.

Anyway, to this day, when I feel up to it, I will bring myself for a jog. 'When I feel up to it' being a liberal expression meaning anything from oh, once a week to about once a month. The body always goes into a certain kind of shock when I start running - it's like 'Oh, where are we going? Are we going for a nice stroll along the river, huh? Wait, you're moving too fast, wait! Wait!!'.

Word travels quickly from my brain to my legs warning them of forthcoming punishment and the legs and the rest of my body soon organises its Unions and then go on strike. A strike looks like this - profuse sweating, your thighs burning up in protest, your heart pumping in your ears, your ankles threatening to give way at any moment, your chest wall sending out the occasional pain signals to trick you into thinking you're having a heart attack. All this is done to remind you who the real Boss around here is.

I have decided to take up jogging again here in Ballarat, and one of my favourite places here is the Steve Moneghetti track around Lake Wendouree here. It is a 6 km run around the scenic lake, and I was determined to finish the 6 kms in my six months here in Ballarat.

"'Bye, lady!"

I actually surprised myself and managed it in my second week here. Granted, there were cute old grannies in their four-wheelie frames waving and winking at me as they strolled past, and little girls in their pink helmets yelling out 'Excuse me, lady!' as they sped by in their pink tasseled tricycles, but you know, I finished the 6 kms. Of course I needed to be brought by ambulance to the Emergency Department for IV rehydration and electrolyte replacement after the run, but hey, I finished the 6 kilometres.

Okay, so none of the above happened, but it sure felt like it did.

Having completed the run around the lake, I had it in my head that I was now up for a marathon. Well, here's what Google taught me - that running actually puts three times the stress of normal everyday activities on your body, in particular your knees.

I am reminded of this line from the Baz Luhrmann's 'Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen' song - Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone. I am trying to be kind to my knees. I love my knees, though they have taken a lot of courting again to convince them since my ski accident of 2003. 

Since completing the run around the lake, I was confident that I could repeat the feat on weekly basis, at least once, but strangely enough that has not been the case. I experience what every runner calls "the wall" at 3 kilometres, and then I either be kind to myself and walk the rest of the way, or punish myself, and push through to the end, although my body would hate me for it.

I don't think it is healthy to always push through because there is always a great temptation to equate exercise then with unpleasantness and oh, you know, self-torture. Believe it or not, we are all ultimately Pavlovian creatures and if that association keeps happening, then there is a great chance that we will end up forsaking exercise once more and returning to that pleasurable Mistress which is television, and chocolate cake. (Mmmm... chocolate cake... *drool*)

Well, I finally timed myself today, having been happy just to complete the 6 kms at any rate for this past month. It took me exactly 30 minutes to complete 6 kilometres. Multiply that by the length of an actual marathon (42 kilometres) and it would take me three hours and thirty minutes to complete a marathon, under the presumptions that i) I am able to maintain running at a constant rate over the 42 kilometres and ii) I don't die first (which is a distinct possibility).

The world record for a marathon is 2 hours and 3 minutes and 38 seconds. This guy from Kenya could have finished the race, bought a Coke and popcorn and sat through Run Fatboy Run while waiting for me to cross the finish line.

Okay, enough with this demon that is Comparison. My pledge these six months is not to overdo it to the point of injuring myself, and to quit when I'm not enjoying it. I will run because I want to, and I will stop when my body tells me to. 

I will be kind to myself, because as the rest of the Baz Luhrmann's spoken song puts it

Don't waste your time on jealousy,
Sometimes you're ahead,
Sometimes you're behind.
The race is long, and in the end, it is only with yourself. 

Learning From The World.

One of the things that bring me real joy, and is officially now a favourite past time, is watching international or foreign movies.

If you think about it, by the time you hear or know about it, these movies have already undergone a trial by public opinion in their native countries so that you don't have to sift through the rubbish movies in order to get to the good ones. Time saved!

I am not so much interested in being specialised and watching films that no one else would have heard about. What I am interested is in the stories that unite us, and those that set us apart, and the lessons that we all have to teach each other that transcends race, religion or creed. Stories like Roberto Bognini's Life is Beautiful and Jeunet's quirky Amelie comes to mind.

Thanks to the beauty of some of these movies being available on Youtube, I have recently seen two really high quality Indian movies - Kahaani and 3 Idiots. (All subtitled of course. Mere (My) Hindi is very rusty.)

Talk about Indian movies and all you have is the stereotype of 3 hours of catchy music, gaudy costumes and trees galore for the multitudes of Indians who somehow spontaneously break into song and dance several times a day.

Kahaani was a classy departure from that stereotype - an Indian thriller featuring an assured pregnant heroine (played by a classy Vidya Balan) and a gripping storyline which keeps you guessing till the end. The mood and the cinematography was of the highest quality for this movie, despite being made on a shoestring budget.

3 Idiots is still fresh in my mind right now - one of the highest-grossing Hindi movies of all time, both in India and abroad - it follows the life of two guys who enter an engineering college carrying all the hopes and pressures of their respective families, and have their lives changed by a remarkable friend they make in college. Kind of like Dead Poet's Society, but better, and with song-and-dance sequences thrown in for good measure.

The writing was of the highest quality and you just kept being delivered life lesson after life lesson without being preachy in a very entertaining comedy. The casting was perfect and I just can't recommend it enough if you have, oh about 2 hours and 44 minutes to kill. Absolutely worth it.

So in my quest for more excellent foreign films, have you guys seen anything lately that you can recommend?

Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, European, South American to name a few - the world has so much to say, and I would like to see it for myself.

Thy Kingdom Come.

It’s been four days here in Ballarat, and I must say that it has been a really pleasant sea change from the city. One hour and fifteen minutes through some of God’s breathtaking flatlands brings you into this old gold-mining town. It is really nice when people who don’t know you catch your eye as they pass you in corridors, offer you a smile and help you with directions if you look sufficiently lost (which I do, very often).

This week has allowed me to travel back to the city to share in a really precious moment with a lovely couple back home in Melbourne. We had all taken time off work and travelled to bid farewell to their 20-week-old twin daughters who were born prematurely and did not survive. Words cannot describe how beautiful the occasion was, how touching the speeches, how apt the celebration of their brief lives and how moved we were collectively as a family, as friends and as a church.

All of us milled around at the start, trying to remember the last time we attended a funeral here in Melbourne. For many of us, it was our first time. As my brother aptly pointed out, we are so much more adept at congratulations than condolences.  

Watching the strength and brave good-natured humour of the parents in these difficult times was an encouragement and testimony to all of us present at the funeral. Our tears flowed freely in our collective grief, the hugs long and sustained. I absolutely lost it when they brought the delicate white boxes carrying the girls out of the room. It was just so final.

It was at moments like these when I have to remind myself that we have a God that is good, but He is not safe. That we are not exempt from the trials that face us all, but carry a hope that this is not the end of the story. 

I looked around at the people gathered there that day and I am reminded that church, despite all its flaws and failings, can be an amazing community that rallies in the time of need, both to multiply your happiness in times of celebration, and to lighten grief by shouldering it with you in times of sorrow.

Like many others there that day, I know our lives were touched and would never be the same. How do we live today in the shadow of the very real power of Death, the final enemy that God has yet to overcome?

The Lord’s Prayer says ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ Pity us as Christians if all the good we do here is to earn some buddy points with Jesus so that our mansion in heaven one day will be bigger than our neighbour’s. We are the bringers of God’s Kingdom here, today, on earth, as it should be in heaven.

Let us live lives of joy, of encouragement, of generosity, of forgiveness. Let us laugh together freely, weep without reservation, live gratefully. Let us choose community over individualism, trust over worry, meaning over purposelessness, love over intolerance. I can personally say it is easier said than done, but I must try.    

Let us bring life where we can, and usher in God’s Kingdom.