It's been one and a half weeks that MJ has died and today is his burial day. What can we learn from the life of this person?
I'm not here to judge him as I don't have total truth of him. However, based on various account of his life, his childhood is indeed very pitiful.
The lesson that I've learnt is that when something bad happen in one's life, the way you respond is very important. Responding in a proper way will strengthen you and responding in an improper way will destroy you. When there's damage in one's life, it has to be dealt with and get it resolved internally, otherwise it will continue to haunt you even though you thought you can forget about it or ignore it.
God always want us to respond well and get healing from all these damages rather than to run away from it or to use human effort to resolve it. There has been many accounts of people trying to resolve their damage by themselves and they thought that they have it under control, but they fail to see how it has impact in their life negatively in some cases. There are also many accounts of healing through God and how individuals are being released from the bondage of these damages.
God brings miracle through his healing and grace.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Surprise
I'm actually very surprise that news about my blog has been spreading. Almost everyone who mentioned about the blog send regards to Beckham :p
Some even scolded me for what has happened to him :p Indeed, I deserved to be scolded if not for God's intervention.
Anyway, this blog is not meant to talk about Beckham, so don't expect too much of his story.
Miracles usually occurs in crisis and it's really stressful to be in crisis.
However, since I'm in this topic talking about Beckham, I'll just share what we are doing with him right now.
Beckham sleeps with us in the same room. Usually I'll put him on the bed beside my pillow. One third of the bed is reserved for him on my left, I sleep in the middle and my wife on the other side.
Then in the middle of the night, he will usually jump down from the bed to take his supper. Then after that he'll have problem getting up the bed. So he will go to my wife side of the bed standing up and tapping on the edge of the bed so that she will wake up and carry him to the bed and he will walk over our bodies to reach to his pillow. He doesn't come to disturb me to carry him up cos I'm in the middle of the bed and will probably can't hear him :p
So lately, I'm thinking if we should get him a ladder for him to climb up to the bed himself. But instead of getting some sort of ladder, we are now trying make use of a platform at the side of the bed and training him to jump to the platform first, then to the bed. But apparently, he is a slow learner and still could not get up to the bed himself :p
Well, it's just 2 nights since we started this exercise... will see how things goes.
Some even scolded me for what has happened to him :p Indeed, I deserved to be scolded if not for God's intervention.
Anyway, this blog is not meant to talk about Beckham, so don't expect too much of his story.
Miracles usually occurs in crisis and it's really stressful to be in crisis.
However, since I'm in this topic talking about Beckham, I'll just share what we are doing with him right now.
Beckham sleeps with us in the same room. Usually I'll put him on the bed beside my pillow. One third of the bed is reserved for him on my left, I sleep in the middle and my wife on the other side.
Then in the middle of the night, he will usually jump down from the bed to take his supper. Then after that he'll have problem getting up the bed. So he will go to my wife side of the bed standing up and tapping on the edge of the bed so that she will wake up and carry him to the bed and he will walk over our bodies to reach to his pillow. He doesn't come to disturb me to carry him up cos I'm in the middle of the bed and will probably can't hear him :p
So lately, I'm thinking if we should get him a ladder for him to climb up to the bed himself. But instead of getting some sort of ladder, we are now trying make use of a platform at the side of the bed and training him to jump to the platform first, then to the bed. But apparently, he is a slow learner and still could not get up to the bed himself :pWell, it's just 2 nights since we started this exercise... will see how things goes.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Court Case
I bought a pot for my mother-in-law and she complained that there's some problem with the pot.
So on 13 Nov at around 11:30am, I brought the pot to the service center for report. To my disappointment, no one was there. I guessed they had gone for early lunch. I do not want to stay there, but I do not know where to go.
Then I thought I might as well go back to my old office where I've not gone back for quite a few months as it was not too far from there.
I've moved to new office in Bukit Merah Central since Mar, but once a few month, while I'll go back to Peminpin to check if there's any mail for me.
I was shocked that there's 3 letters to me from IRAS. It was a court summon which was scheduled on 12 Dec 2008. The letter was sent on 5 Nov 2008. The reason being that I've not file income tax return for my company for the past 5 years (starting year 2003).
It's a long story. This income tax thing has been my nightmare since I took over the full operation of this company in year 2004.
To avoid going to court, I've got deadline up till 8 Dec 2008 to submit the income tax return for 2003 - 2006 and pay a penalty totaling to $2550 :(
To cut story short, this period has been very stressful for me as I've not been keeping proper record and doing my accounts. Thank God, I came back to office that day and not few days later, I managed to get things settled on 9 Dec 2008. I've gone to banks many time to request for lost bank statement, got someone to do my accounts for me, find an auditor, digged out past records, account for the descrepancies, etc. Everything was very very rush and not to mention the amount of money I'll need to spend during this period :p
Thank God again that the project that I talked about in the previous post was finally closed after spending about 9 months on it. Otherwise, I don't know how I can take the stress.
So on 13 Nov at around 11:30am, I brought the pot to the service center for report. To my disappointment, no one was there. I guessed they had gone for early lunch. I do not want to stay there, but I do not know where to go.
Then I thought I might as well go back to my old office where I've not gone back for quite a few months as it was not too far from there.
I've moved to new office in Bukit Merah Central since Mar, but once a few month, while I'll go back to Peminpin to check if there's any mail for me.
I was shocked that there's 3 letters to me from IRAS. It was a court summon which was scheduled on 12 Dec 2008. The letter was sent on 5 Nov 2008. The reason being that I've not file income tax return for my company for the past 5 years (starting year 2003).
It's a long story. This income tax thing has been my nightmare since I took over the full operation of this company in year 2004.
To avoid going to court, I've got deadline up till 8 Dec 2008 to submit the income tax return for 2003 - 2006 and pay a penalty totaling to $2550 :(
To cut story short, this period has been very stressful for me as I've not been keeping proper record and doing my accounts. Thank God, I came back to office that day and not few days later, I managed to get things settled on 9 Dec 2008. I've gone to banks many time to request for lost bank statement, got someone to do my accounts for me, find an auditor, digged out past records, account for the descrepancies, etc. Everything was very very rush and not to mention the amount of money I'll need to spend during this period :p
Thank God again that the project that I talked about in the previous post was finally closed after spending about 9 months on it. Otherwise, I don't know how I can take the stress.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
God did not fail me again
I started to write my first program when I was 12 years old. At my current age, I could be classified as an expert in the aspect of programming. There is nothing that others can do but I can't, it's just a matter of how long I'll take to learn the new technology. After I've learnt the technology, things that can be done by anyone, I am confident to say that I can do it too.
Having boasted, I finally met a situation this year which is the toughest test for my ego so far.
Early this year, I took up a project which I estimated to complete in 50 days, but after half a year, I'm still working on this project with the same amount of money committed. The customer has done this project by themselves and they came to us to redo the same thing using different technology.
This project is a test of my ego cos the customer will always compare what I've done with what their programmer has done before. Because of the delay (which is not totally our fault), the customer has lost faith in us and always seems to condemn me that our program is not performing as good as their old system.
Initially, there was indeed performance issue which I've resolved using different design and performance was exceptable until customer was testing with other set of data and find that performance was very bad. We pushed the blame to the hardware that customer is using and the network.
We maintained that we have already optimized our program and there's no way to improved further and to prove our point, we arranged to do testing with the same set of data for our program and their existing program.
Initially, the result doesn't tell much as it seems like we were right that our program is not that bad.
However on 21 Aug, the final test result from our customer showed that the performance of our program was much worse as compared to their existing program. It took our program around half an hour to respond and their program just take barely a minute.
Our program is supposed to be more flexible with a different design to handle the flexibility, thus under certain condition, performance will be bad.
I was very stressed and loss at that time. I wrote a very depressing email to my working partners to express my depression. I could do something to change the design so as to achieve better performance (at least on par with customer's program) but that will require lots of time as I've already been working on this project for 5 months. Worst still, customer will lose faith in us and our reputation will go down to the drain. Time is really not at our side. I admitted total defeat this time and I felt very sorry to pull them down too.
However, I assured my working partner that I'm not giving up despite all the stress. I just want them to prepare for the worst.
God has been helping me so far in my work. In my line, there's always unpredictable events to handle and so far I managed to find solutions to whatever problems that I faced even at areas where I've got no knowledge about. God has never failed me.
I have faith that God will bring me through this although I don't see how is it possible. I even have 2nd thought that God may fail me just this once because of my ego. However, it is with this tiny faith that God will not see me die that kept me thinking and not giving up. Within 4 hours, I found a break through which could be a solution to our problem. Within 2 days, I experimented and make minor change to a big program but improve the respond time from half an hour to 10 seconds.
It's simply amazing as now we have a faster respond time, more flexibility, more functionalities and better design. We were on the verge of losing the battle terribly. But somehow the whole event was overturned and we finally won the war. I would not have done it without the tiny faith that I held on strongly to.
Having boasted, I finally met a situation this year which is the toughest test for my ego so far.
Early this year, I took up a project which I estimated to complete in 50 days, but after half a year, I'm still working on this project with the same amount of money committed. The customer has done this project by themselves and they came to us to redo the same thing using different technology.
This project is a test of my ego cos the customer will always compare what I've done with what their programmer has done before. Because of the delay (which is not totally our fault), the customer has lost faith in us and always seems to condemn me that our program is not performing as good as their old system.
Initially, there was indeed performance issue which I've resolved using different design and performance was exceptable until customer was testing with other set of data and find that performance was very bad. We pushed the blame to the hardware that customer is using and the network.
We maintained that we have already optimized our program and there's no way to improved further and to prove our point, we arranged to do testing with the same set of data for our program and their existing program.
Initially, the result doesn't tell much as it seems like we were right that our program is not that bad.
However on 21 Aug, the final test result from our customer showed that the performance of our program was much worse as compared to their existing program. It took our program around half an hour to respond and their program just take barely a minute.
Our program is supposed to be more flexible with a different design to handle the flexibility, thus under certain condition, performance will be bad.
I was very stressed and loss at that time. I wrote a very depressing email to my working partners to express my depression. I could do something to change the design so as to achieve better performance (at least on par with customer's program) but that will require lots of time as I've already been working on this project for 5 months. Worst still, customer will lose faith in us and our reputation will go down to the drain. Time is really not at our side. I admitted total defeat this time and I felt very sorry to pull them down too.
However, I assured my working partner that I'm not giving up despite all the stress. I just want them to prepare for the worst.
God has been helping me so far in my work. In my line, there's always unpredictable events to handle and so far I managed to find solutions to whatever problems that I faced even at areas where I've got no knowledge about. God has never failed me.
I have faith that God will bring me through this although I don't see how is it possible. I even have 2nd thought that God may fail me just this once because of my ego. However, it is with this tiny faith that God will not see me die that kept me thinking and not giving up. Within 4 hours, I found a break through which could be a solution to our problem. Within 2 days, I experimented and make minor change to a big program but improve the respond time from half an hour to 10 seconds.
It's simply amazing as now we have a faster respond time, more flexibility, more functionalities and better design. We were on the verge of losing the battle terribly. But somehow the whole event was overturned and we finally won the war. I would not have done it without the tiny faith that I held on strongly to.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Beckham almost strangled in the lift
Few months later (I can't remember the date), we were bringing Beckham home from my in-law's place. I was carrying him and holding the leash with another hand intending to hook to his collar. Joyce was holding to the other end of the leash.
I went into the lift first, then the life immediately closed with Joyce standing outside holding on the the leash.
I panicked and I didn't know what will happened. Immediately what comes to my mind is to remove the leash from Beckham. But before I can react, the lift went down already and then I felt the leash left my hand at great speed.
Luckily, I've not hooked the leash to Beckham's collar yet. Otherwise, he will be strangled and hanging at the top of the lift and that will be a terrible sight.
I went into the lift first, then the life immediately closed with Joyce standing outside holding on the the leash.
I panicked and I didn't know what will happened. Immediately what comes to my mind is to remove the leash from Beckham. But before I can react, the lift went down already and then I felt the leash left my hand at great speed.
Luckily, I've not hooked the leash to Beckham's collar yet. Otherwise, he will be strangled and hanging at the top of the lift and that will be a terrible sight.
Beckham lost and found
Aiyo, this dog Beckham is so attached to me. It seems like he only feel comfortable when I'm around. When he is been babysit every morning, he'll usually stare at the door waiting for my return. The only thing that can attract him away from the door is probably his dinner... haha
On 16 Jan 2008, we went home quite late and we decided not to bring him back home from my in-laws place. We wanted to test how he responded staying out for 1 night. That night was a terrible night for my in-law cos Beckham refuse to sleep. He will walk in and out of the room and disturbing my in-law by requesting to get up to the bed, then jump down from the bed and then disturb again... haiz
The next morning, I received a phonecall from Joyce while at work saying that Beckham has left the house and gone missing. Apparently, he missed us too much that he squeeze through the gate at my in-law's place and went out looking for us. When he has been discovered missing from the house, he was nowhere to be found.
Joyce and I quickly rush home from work. We search high and low and confirmed that he is really missing. It was a terrible time for us and it seems quite unlikely that we can find him. We walked around the neighbourhood, going up and down a few blocks, driving around to see if we can spot him, but there was no sight of him anywhere.
We decided to make a police report, although it will not help much. Joyce was crying and I'm very depressed too. It's very unlikely that we'll never get to see Beckham again. He has only been with us for less than 4 months and I can't accept the fact that we lost him so soon. Though, it's just a few months, the bonding was so strong.
Bad things come to my mind... Could he have been hit by cars, could he be found by some worker and the cook him, etc. It's ok if someone found him and keep him as pet, but if he is dead, it's so depressing. When I drive, I keep looking to see if there's any dead dog on the road.
I prayed a lot that day and wonder if God can really answer prayers. There's nothing much we can do but to wait.
In the afternoon, we decided that we have to do something although the chance of finding him is low. We decided to make posters. It's may seems easy to make some poster, but we met quite a few obstacles. The reason being that my notebook was left in the office. I've got difficulty getting any picture of Beckham. Could not find cables or software drivers is not available in Joyce's notebook to get pictures from phone or digital camera. I can't remember all the obstacles that we faced. Time is not at our side cos the longer we delay, the slimmer the chance of finding Beckham. But somehow or rather, alternatives were available by chance and I managed to get a decent photo of Beckham which we took few days back.
On 16 Jan 2008, we went home quite late and we decided not to bring him back home from my in-laws place. We wanted to test how he responded staying out for 1 night. That night was a terrible night for my in-law cos Beckham refuse to sleep. He will walk in and out of the room and disturbing my in-law by requesting to get up to the bed, then jump down from the bed and then disturb again... haiz
The next morning, I received a phonecall from Joyce while at work saying that Beckham has left the house and gone missing. Apparently, he missed us too much that he squeeze through the gate at my in-law's place and went out looking for us. When he has been discovered missing from the house, he was nowhere to be found.
Joyce and I quickly rush home from work. We search high and low and confirmed that he is really missing. It was a terrible time for us and it seems quite unlikely that we can find him. We walked around the neighbourhood, going up and down a few blocks, driving around to see if we can spot him, but there was no sight of him anywhere.
We decided to make a police report, although it will not help much. Joyce was crying and I'm very depressed too. It's very unlikely that we'll never get to see Beckham again. He has only been with us for less than 4 months and I can't accept the fact that we lost him so soon. Though, it's just a few months, the bonding was so strong.
Bad things come to my mind... Could he have been hit by cars, could he be found by some worker and the cook him, etc. It's ok if someone found him and keep him as pet, but if he is dead, it's so depressing. When I drive, I keep looking to see if there's any dead dog on the road.
I prayed a lot that day and wonder if God can really answer prayers. There's nothing much we can do but to wait.
In the afternoon, we decided that we have to do something although the chance of finding him is low. We decided to make posters. It's may seems easy to make some poster, but we met quite a few obstacles. The reason being that my notebook was left in the office. I've got difficulty getting any picture of Beckham. Could not find cables or software drivers is not available in Joyce's notebook to get pictures from phone or digital camera. I can't remember all the obstacles that we faced. Time is not at our side cos the longer we delay, the slimmer the chance of finding Beckham. But somehow or rather, alternatives were available by chance and I managed to get a decent photo of Beckham which we took few days back.
Finally we've got the poster printed. However after printing a few pages, we ran out of ink :(
Anyway, we decided to just put up whatever we've printed out first. To decide where to put the poster is crucial cos it's not possible to reach out to all areas. We finally decided to put the posters at all the bus-stops nearby and the lift area for those blocks within the vicinity.
This is when I realized that there were many blocks at that area.
It takes us a very long time to put up the posters. It was almost evening time when we've finished the 1st batch of posters pasting.
Joyce is very tired due to crying and walking around to paste the posters.
As we ran out of ink, we went to shopping center to buy ink for the printer for next batch of printing at around 5+pm. At that time, I received a phone call from a school girl who claimed that she saw Beckham running towards around a coffee shop area around 2pm. She tried to catch him but he was difficult to catch. She expressed sympathy cos she lost her dog before. I was so grateful for the call and it gives us hope.
Knowing that there's some effect with the poster, we continued printing more posters and pasting it at the lift area. Time seems to pass very slowly and there's no more phone call until closed to 8pm. A lady called asking for more detail of Beckham and it seems like she saw him at a pet shop. This lady saw the poster and immediately went to the pet shop to check if there's any missing dog. She saw a dog who look familiar and gave us a call. She gave me the number for the pet shop and asked me to call the shop to check it out.
We were very happy as the chance seems very high. Immediately we call the pet shop and it sounds like we've found Beckham, so we quickly drive to the pet shop. True enough, Beckham was found :)
He looks pathetic... dirty, messy and locked up in a cage. We were very happy until we are at a loss of words. Thinking back, we should have taken a photo of him then.
He was found by a man. This man had a hard time trying to catch him. He cornered him until Beckham hit a car and then he managed to catch hold of Beckham. This man adopted a dog from that shop before (that dog was discarded by the owner due to some skin problem). These people who own pets understand how we felt. Therefore, he brought Beckham to the shop.
The shop was not very close to my in-laws place (though not too far) and we never knew this shop existed. Thanks to the poster and these good people, we finally found Beckham within 12 hours.
Through this incident, it shows that there are many good people around. At the same time, we saw some ugly incident. As we went around to remove all the posters that we pasted, we found some of the posters removed and crushed on to the floor.
Thank God that the timing is so nice. The shop owner intended to shave Beckham down the next day and probably sell or give him away.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Perth - Just in time itinerary
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As I've said, Perth was a very good trip that we had. One of the thing that makes it wonderful was there's quite a lot of just in time events that happened in Perth.
It was a free and easy self drive trip. The itineray was all planned but with flexibility. On the 2nd day, we visited Penguin Island. We had to take a ferry to cross over to an Island. It was a very small Island. Originally we planned to take the next ferry back to mainland which is 2 hours later (I can't remembered exactly). We were at the other end of the Island when we felt that there's nothing much to explore further. We decided to rush for the ferry which will be leaving in a few minutes. We ran and ran to catch the ferry that was about to leave and luckily we managed to catch it before it leaves and that saved 2 hours of our itinerary.
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While in Margaret River, we bought tickets to visit 3 caves and we only had 2 days there. The 3 caves were quite a distant away and it's not near to where we stayed. After visiting the 1st cave, we decided to rush for the 2nd cave before it closed. We were lucky to reach just in time to join the last tour for the 2nd cave despite the fact that we lost our way once a while. There are some visitors who came later and missed the tour and will have to come back again the next day.The next day, we visited the last cave and proceed to the next town and have more time for other part of the itinerary and don't have to missed things that Joyce has originally planned for.
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While in Pemberton, on the way to Albany, we decided to go to another attraction, the tree top walk. Measuring the distant, we are not sure if we can make it in time as we are not very sure what time it closes. Most of the attraction in Perth closes at 5pm. We decided to try anyway without putting much hope to be on time. The past few days, we had been losing our way most of the time while driving. We almost lost our way while driving to tree top walk too... but luckily we were back on track. And again, we were to last visitor to enter Tree Top Walk before it close, we reached there just at the time of closing. Once entering, we can take our time to walk.Finally, on the last day, almost met with an accident on the road due to other driver's fault. Thank God, I reacted fast enough to avoid it.
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