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As any other weekend, it started on Friday night, I went for Kung Fu Panda movie, which I highly recommend you to watch. It’s hilarious. On Saturday morning, I went for Heryanto (Nyile) and Christine (Santos) wedding until around 2PM, then I headed straight to PC Show at Suntec. I accompanied a friend to get a highly discounted new, just-released HTC Touch Diamond. Retail price is $1,098, but Singtel is selling at $498 for 2-years contract. By the time we reached there about 2.45PM, everywhere in Singtel booth, they put up this sign that read: “HTC Touch Diamond Out of Stock. Contact us for reservation details“. No choice, my friend had to reserve a set which Singtel will only have it ready by Thursday earliest.

For me, I managed to buy a pretty decent $5 laptop sleeve case for my Macbook, as well as an in-ear headphone in Sony MDR-EX32LP for $38.

Few hours later, we arrived back at NBC for young adults fellowship, and after that, we dropped by CK Tang for a while before went to watch The Incredible Hulk. The movie was pretty slow, and there wasn’t enough action to thrill us, the viewers. Only three smiles from me for Hulk

I didn’t even realised I was sitting at the same seat number in Lido and GV for different movies on different day, cool coincidence eh?

Today, a friend from Australia came, so I’ll meet her with Dian at Vivo City for lunch, before heading to church for cell group and Sunday service. Hopefully I’ll still have energy to spare to accompany my colleague to Newton Life Church for Mandarin Sunday service. Now I need The Incredible strength

Now, if we think that is tiring, imagine our pastor, Rev. Dr. Stephen Tong, who cares so much for us, that he, at the age of 67, will have session for teens at Cibubur from 5 AM today, then preached in Indonesian language at Jakarta at 7 AM, followed by 9.30 AM sermon in Mandarin, then fly to Singapore for Indonesian language sermon at 5 PM (which usually ends about 7.15PM), then continued to Newton Life Church to preach at 7.30 PM. Early Monday morning, he’ll fly back to Jakarta to teach those teens again in Cibubur, and rushed for an afternoon flight to Kuala Lumpur, and continuing his usual journey to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and back to Jakarta on weekend. Phewwwww….. Now, that’s tiring !! If it is not for God and His truth and all of us, no one in the world would ever done that.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED !!!

After our fellowship on Saturday, no less than 84 of us went to watch The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian at Lido. Our fellowship ended close to 7.30pm, and immediately all of us rushed from Bugis to Lido for the 815pm movie. Most of us reached there around 8.05-8.10pm, quickly queued for whatever junk food there are at Shaw House I settled for two pieces of Bread Talks.

After all the adverst, the movie started proper close to 8.30pm, and here’s what I thought about the movie.

Warning: potential spoiler ahead.

The movie started as many movies, not as fast, to get the story into the audience. Some messages were sent across fine, like when Narnians can’t fight themselves, no matter what kind of tactics they employ, without the help of Aslan. It was made very clear in the movie, the moment Aslan came into the movie, how he reversed the battle for Narnians, from the position of almost losing to a clear victory. The message drive across was like our lives, no matter how much, how hard we tried to do things in our lives, without God, we will fighting a losing battle.

The second important point that the movie tried to send across, but probably didn’t succeed as good. After the movie, I felt that it’s though Aslan left Narnians to their own fight and Aslan was nowhere to be found in Narnians. The truth is Aslan was there in Narnia all along. It’s just that Narnians refused to believe that Aslan exists, and thus unable to see him. Similarly in our lives, it’s not that God doesn’t exist. He exists whether you believe in Him or not, but until you believe in Him, you’ll not be able to “see” Him.

Some sentences spoken were changed in the movie from the book, losing some important message in the process. I’ll just quote from Stand to Reason blog, who mentioned this fact too.

Changes in two key lines from the book greatly weaken his character. The first one happens when Lucy finally meets Aslan face to face. She remarks to him that he’s bigger. In the film, Aslan says that every year she gets bigger, so shall he get bigger. But here’s the actual interchange in the book:

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “you’re bigger.”
“That is because you are older, little one,” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.”

This is actually a very profound idea and one of my favorite moments in the book. When we deepen with age and experience, we’re able to see further into the rich depths of God, and our understanding and awe of His greatness grows. It’s very clear in the book that the change is happening all on Lucy’s side, but the film leaves the impression that Aslan has changed (whether that was what they intended or not)

The second change is even worse (being more explicit) and involves another of the ideas most memorable to me–one that recurs throughout the series.  In the book, when Lucy realizes she’s failed to do something she should have–and could have–done, she asks Aslan what would have happened had she done what was right: “Please, Aslan! Am I not to know?” Aslan responds powerfully, “No. Nobody is ever told that.” Aslan has authority and perfect wisdom–rebelling against his command has consequences, and Lucy’s not doing what he had revealed for her to do causes new difficulties for everyone. But make no mistake, Aslan is quite aware of what would have happened had she obeyed. Compare this to the film version where Aslan’s response to Lucy’s plea is: “We can never know what would have happened.” We? Yikes! I’m not a fan of open-theist (open-lionist?) Aslan. These changes are small–just a few lines here and there, but they have huge implications that weaken Aslan.

The last part when Susan kisses Caspian was the worst part of the movie. I agree, a simple kiss on the hand will be much more noble and romantic.

Overall, the movie was good for 2.5 hours, I didn’t even feel the movie was that long. Despite all my criticism above, it’s a good movie. It’s just that some subtle changes to the sentences and the movie, that weaken Aslan, in turn weaken the movie message compared to the book.

Highly recommended. FOUR stars from me.

May 1st was Labour Day, a public holiday. Many of us took the opportunity to rest at home, many like me went out the whole day to make us even more tired than our workdays. I left home about 11AM to Queenstown, Dede’s house for gathering. While the girls were busy cooking lunch in the kitchen, the guys were busy playing Nintendo Wii in the living room. Eventually, those girls joined in the fun too. Boxing game was truly tiring, you move A LOT as you try to punch the other guy upside down, and hopefully managed to hit an upper jab. That game didn’t last long as it was very tiring to play such a game. We settled for Tennis game that was more fun, and doesn’t require so much muscle power. Bowling was fun too.

When the lunch was ready, we grabbed our own food, and watched Moulin Rouge VCD, courtesy of Dewi. I stayed until around 3.30 PM, and then I left to East Coast Park for BBQ with another group of friends. It was an occasion to celebrate Suwanto and Ceria birthday as well.

Thirty-three and going strong for Suwanto

Twenty three or twenty eight?

The girls

The baby and father

The couple and a lamp post

The chef and his chicken wings
 

Everyone else who will make sure all food are consumed

The yummy yummy dinner

More healthy food are also available

Doggie doggie, hungry?

The skating girl
 

For all other photos, it’s in my photo album. There’s a video created for this event too. Check it out.

On Saturday 29 March, my company, Barclays Capital, arranged an Amazing-Race-style race called the 3R Race, focusing on three internal key “R” messages. It was hold in East Coast Park from 9AM to 1PM, where almost 500 people attended. There are a total of two wings, wing A and wing B, of seven stations each, a total of 32 teams, 10 people each, making a total 320 participants. My team called The Humpty’s Dumpty’s started off to a great start, trying to complete each challenges in record time.

A beautiful sunny morning in East Coast park

We started with “Einstein” puzzle, you know, the one, where they gave you some clues, you need to know which nationality lives in which house, drinks what beverage, and own which kind of pet. Next up was to test our body flexibility, we were given ropes that can barely pass our body head to toe, and we need to move the rope from one person to another holding hand. This is one challenge where a lot of people realise how much fat they need to shed, haha… !! The next station proves to be even more challenging, with our team needed to match a list of 16 countries against languages, flag, and population !! Languages and flag matching are already very challenging, having to guess how many people lives in each of those countries makes live much more difficult.

We managed to pass the next challenge thanks in no small part to Google search. The were 10 pictures, and some description of “iconic” buildings in Singapore and we were supposed to guess what they are. Mind you, “iconic” doesn’t mean Esplanade or Singapore Flyer, but it’s more like the Cathedral of Good Shepherd, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple, Sri Mariamman Temple, or Yusof bin Ishak for the face in S$10,000 bill. As we were allowed to use any kind of help, human or electronic, some people went around East Coast park to get some answers. Most of us whipped out our phones and Blackberrys, busy hitting Google search. We managed to get 9/10 right within the stipulated 10 minutes, a very good effort indeed from the team.

Some games we didn’t do well were like Chinese whispers. The message “Foster open communication and active listening” from the first person has became distorted to “First, active communication, then active listening” by the time it reached the tenth person. We only managed a pathetic two points in that game.

Chinese whispers game

Right at the end, our AP COO even managed to perform a pantomime, performing the song “Watch the Lamb” from Ray Boltz, depicting a third-person view of Jesus walk from Jerusalem to Golgotha to be crucified for mankind sins.

For some reason, Youtube doesn’t allow embedding of this video.You need to click on Youtube logo to watch.

The final part of the event was of course the announcement of the winner. Guess what, out of 32 teams participating, The Humpty’s Dumpty’s WON!!! Our team collected a total 74 points, eight points clear of the runner up, Barang Barang, who collected 66 points. No one million dollars prize as in Amazing Race, so a gold medal was at least what we deserved for winning a race.

The Humpty’s Dumpty’s, the 3R Race champion !!!

Overall, everyone had great fun, and many of us posed for photos afterwards.

You can see how happy I am.

After being thrashed in soccer on Wednesday evening, at least I played a game I’m much better at in tennis on Thursday evening. Both nights I reached home beyond midnight, waited for my washing machine to finish, ended up I slept beyond 2 AM for the past two nights. There’s another Master class from Rev. Dr. Stephen Tong tonight, but I didn’t go, as I will need to wake up very early again tomorrow morning (it’s Saturday tomorrow !!). I will be participating in an Amazing Race-style race in East Coast Park at 9 AM. It’s a company event and there’ll be at least 500 participants expected tomorrow morning, so if you happen to be at East Coast Park tomorrow, do drop by and say hello. You won’t miss 500 people wearing the same shirts tomorrow, really.

After the race, I hope I can go back home to change and shower before I go to our young adults fellowship. Sunday morning, as usual, it’ll be playing tennis again (this time with much better opponents), go back home, shower, visit my sister and her babies, then Sunday Service at church.

The baby is really cute now.

Since we didn’t managed to visit Sentosa, we went to East Coast instead, and still have lots of fun.

My niece is certainly having a great fun

She’s not afraid of water nor the waves that came crashing through her legs. She even dragged us deeper into the water, but the rest of us who went there unprepared with any pants to change refused to go deeper, *maybe* next time. Of course, we need to be wary of her safety too.

After having some fun in East Coast, on our way back to Boonlay, we stopped by Chinatown to see if there are any happenings. Sadly, only these decorations greeted us along an empty road.

Of course that won’t deter yours truly to pose for some pics.

Most of the shops there are open, not many stalls are even open for dinner.

The next day was spent in Johor Bahru. For once, I knew that, since late Jan 2008, we are no longer required to fill in embarkation card to enter Malaysia, so cool, save one more paper to fill up every time I go to Malaysia.

City Square shopping mall are quite empty too, with some decoration with money and rats in it (expected).

Good Fortune, Prosperity, Longevity, those material things that every one wants, hope, and wishes for all the time.

PS: Today is Valentine’s day. Hope everyone enjoyed a great day. Did you?