After the pastoral staff meeting today which dragged into lunch time, I went to the pantry to make myself a cup of Milo to go with my biscuits because I was too lazy to get out to buy lunch. Pr. Suat was there. "So how did the conference go? How was the hotel?" I asked.

Apparently the hotel was horrible. "Did you know how it was when you booked it????"

"Of course not," I replied without batting an eyelid, "I can't really tell. Their promo on the net looks great and I booked according to our specs." And by way of cheap and good, we just had to take our chances with Geylang... so with sending a team of twelve who stayed a week there, I guess we saved a bit.

At least a couple of the men received propositions from the women who hung around the lobby and streets. Such a pity that we had not anticipated it and given a stack of our evangelistic brochures to our team so they could give out to the prostitutes and pimps. You can never underestimate how the word of God will work when it is received by a hungry soul. It was a bit funny our conversation veered off and focused on the lost opportunity instead.

"So how was the conference and did you learn anything new?" I persisted.

They had gone to Singapore to attend the cell church conference run by a church with membership of 5,000 people.

"No, nothing much. Actually I would say I learnt nothing new. All the things that were taught were just refreshers of what I already know, just repackaged."

One thing we discussed struck me. What is cell church about? It is about having a pastoral heart. It is about caring. You don't need to go to a conference to learn about caring because caring comes from the heart. God has already given it to us. Mothers and Fathers have a pastoral heart. In fact you don't even need to be a Christian to know about it. When you have a pastoral heart, you automatically care about a person. You want to know about the little inconsequential things. You want to know what they did, what they ate. You want to provide for your child a roof over his head, provide training for him to be independent, protection, clothing, the best college, you want to know how much it costs, how good it is for your beloved. Similarly when you are a pastor or a church leader and you have a pastoral heart over the people you lead, you are just as concerned over them as your children in little things. How are you today? How is that problem that we prayed for? How is your child? How is your job? We are interested in the little things in their lives. We expend our energy on them. We love them.

When you have a pastoral heart towards your people, there is really little these conferences can teach you because you are doing them already. But of course they do serve a great purpose because there are too many pastors and leaders who do not have a pastoral heart and so following all the steps and methods maaaay lead or teach them to develop a pastoral heart eventually. We had a good laugh over this, over many people's expense if I may add. Oh, the wickedness.

Sometimes we spend so much time and energy doing so many great and efficient and impressive programs and we forget to understand that impression of a church is vastly different from the temperature of a church. You can ascertain almost immediately the former when you step into either a small or a mega church but you cannot really know the temperature of a church until you stay with it at least a few months, get into the culture and know its people. Ultimately, people will be able to discern what they prefer and keep coming when we are warm and loving. We can package the new ever so nicely but it is the old values that are more enduring and appealing in the long run.

Now I know there are women who knit in lectures and there are women who knit waiting for traffic lights to change. I am neither. I am tempted to write about my shenanigan but then better not.

What do you do when the computers in your office are infected with viruses? Obviously running a scan on one computer at a time is not good enough since we are all networked and we are going to re-infect each other again. So today, we all had to go through a concerted virus-cleansing process which is by no means simple when you have to take into account twenty staff of whom half are pastoral who are in and out of the office all day and you have to get them all together, and two other floors of computers besides the main office, not to mention the kindergarten computers and staff. We had to plan the time to begin, all of us to do the virus busting at the same time. Internet cables off so that we are totally isolated. All thumbdrives to be formatted and external drives scanned. Remember to update the virus buster before you start! We tried to look on the lighter side especially when the scanning was in process and we could not use our computers, suffering varying degrees of computer/internet withdrawal symptoms, so we moved around checking on each other how much longer we had to wait until the scanners finished deleting the screens of viruses that were scrolling up the computer screens. What a horrible sentence that was, but that's how I felt. Ugh.

Will we be virus free after this? Gabe said, almost like he needed the assurance more than us, "Hopefully... I think so... should be....ought to...."

Interestingly, I probably sent a virus blessing each time to the visiting speakers who brought in their thumbdrives to upload their presentation files. Sigh. On the otherhand, when I peeped at SP's computer, his screen was extremely alive (!!!) with all the trojan horses that were being deleted so maybe he was a bigger culprit than I was. When I left the office, the others were still cleaning up. Some could not start because they had urgent work to complete so they are supposed to be in quarantine, no internet for them until they get cleaned up.

The look on Diane's face when we surprised her with our presence at her Euphonious Band Competition was priceless! I have to admit I lied when I called her on our way and said Aun was driving me 'home'.

So what do I think about the event? For us, it was very refreshing, sitting in an awesome hall with over two thousand enthusiastic students who greeted the contestants with loud cheers and screams. Before it began, whenever the video cam showed one of the female technicians on the screen albeit tudung clad, it inevitably resulted in wolf whistles and laughter in anticipation of the events to come. Another thing is, when you have an attachment to the person or event you are there for, you are able to make generous adjustments for flaws. So we really enjoyed ourselves tremendously and it was a wonderful night to remember.

Diane's band was the fourth group to play. They were the five finalists who had been chosen out of twenty bands at the preliminary round. I told myself I was there to enjoy and share the moment with her when I saw how the other bands were supported with their hundreds of supporters who cheered loudly for their teams and hung their banners on the balconies of the hall. The judges' decision would account for 70% and audience vote 30% and 30% is a lot.

So here's the video of Crash and Burn's second song which swept the hall away. The audience loved the vocalist who had bugs bunny teeth and made such funny faces that nobody minded his pronunciation or was it the sound system? They made such a wonderful concerted effort that the judge who commented was overwhelmed and said the team worked very well together, and the violinist was FANTASTIC! Well done, all praises to God, you really deserved to win! So here's the arrangement of Mamma Mia that blew us all away...

Of late I have lost faith in the power of the pen to move hearts and minds but today brought a welcome and wonderful respite.

In the last quarter of 2008, we had requested the PB to shift our water meter to outside our garden wall so as to make it easier for the meter to be read. They sent a man to assess the situation but he could not give me an estimate. I approved the job to be done, since the meter belonged to them anyway and surely we could trust them to give us a reasonable price seeing they are the official water works department. But nooo... when the bill came, I held my breath at the whopping RM623. How can you justify RM623 to shift a meter a distance of less than one meter, just by connecting a rubber tubing through a drain under my wall? Bear in mind I was quoted half the amount by a private plumber whom I had rejected because stupidly, I wanted to be legit.

So what did I do? I wrote a letter of appeal of course, complete with photographs of the job.

Of the bill, they wrote, "You signed the consent form to the job" ... so you should pay.

I replied, "That may be so, but your man could not give me a quote and I expected you to be fair."

"As a vendor, it is not justifiable for you to charge us, the consumer, for transport when the meter is part of your billing mechanism."

They charged me RM159 for Miscellaneous, but I have learned in Accounting that Miscellaneous should be only be for the smallest, difficult-to-categorise amounts.

I wrote, "Kindly provide us with a breakdown for Miscellaneous and Materials Used."

I think they were a bit uncomfortable because the following week, they sent people to take stock of every screw that was on my meter outside and then supplied us with a list of the screws, rubber tubing and sealing tapes used. Miscellaneous was for "supervision."

I wrote, "You charged us supervision RM159 on top of your labour costs of RM114?..... and transport of RM120 for 12 kilometers?"

Shame on you. (Not written.)

They replied, "Yes it is so." Your bill is still so much, kindly pay up.

What if they cut off my water supply? So I replied, Ok, I am paying in protest and I am forwarding my complaint to the Consumers Association.

They replied later, Thank you for your payment. We have made the proper investigations and everything was proper.

Sigh. Sigh. And sigh.

That was in January.

Today I received a letter, copied from the Chief Minister's Department, that they have considered my appeal and have reduced my bill to RM326.75. Halved!! Even a leetle less than the plumber's quotation. O_O Praise God! Wah Lau Leh!! Thing is I already paid the original bill. Maybe now they should give us free water for the next three years. It is quite incredible. My dead faith feels the stirrings of resurrection.

It is a totally unexpected encouragement that has come opportunely at the start of a week which has started off as so strained. It is not so much the money but the principle that you cannot simply overcharge and expect to be paid. I am a little re-believing that sincere and earnest (not necessarily good) writing is able to move the tide in any direction provided you are willing to be open and sincere to share your thoughts and reasoning and that not everything is absolute and written in stone.

I just watched the ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A FIFTH GRADER show. It was hilarious ... Aun and I laughed so much. They got a girl, nickname - Katie Kat, 18 years, a hs valedictorian to take part. We liked it that she was so very pretty and vivacious. Then of course they also had all these very cute and talkative fifth graders to take the tests with Katie. Katie was good, she won one by one of the questions.

What is the river that forms the border between Kentucky and Indiana?
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Ans. Ohio River (I don't know US geography leh.)


What is the most common element in the universe?
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Ans. Hydrogen (I thought it was carbon. Lol)

What is the universal blood group recipient?
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Ans. AB (I was split between O and AB, buut I would have chosen AB)


The Egytian spinx has a human head and the body of which animal?
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Ans. Lion (I thought it would be more exotic than lion but I could not think of any that is, so yes, I would have guessed lion too, heh).

There was a second grade English question which asked them to pick out compound words. Too easy. Cafeteria is not a compound word.


She won all the way to USD 300,000 and then the final question... (fifth grade) which would make her winnings half a million.

In the 14th and 15th century, England had a 100 year conflict with which country?
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Ans. France (She said, "I don't think it was France because France is not good at wars, so would not have lasted 100 years. I think it's Spain.)

Aww.

So according to the rules, she had to say before national TV, "Although I may be a high school valedictorian, I am NOT smarter than a fifth grader." haha

But she still went home with USD25,000. I think her dad didn't mind. He was grinning from ear to ear at her contribution to college fees already.

Tomorrow they are getting a Mensa member "genius IQ" the announcer announced. He looked much much older than Katie Kat. They are having fun making fun of the adults. Just too funny for words.