Survived the first week of Greek

Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta ... I only knew these icons in Maths and playing Alchemist (online computer game!) It's pretty challenging with the professor covering 4 topics in the first class. I have barely learned my alphabets! Not funny at all. Discovered that the English definite article 'the' has 24 different permutations in Greek depending on what word it accompanies. Must get it into my head that it's not about how the words are ordered in a sentence that gives the sentence its meaning but the cases found in each word. It's complicated ... but just to give a feel of what I mean, a sentence like ' love Starbucks coffee I' would be a good sentence. Just have to look at the words carefully to know which one is the object and which is the subject of the sentence. Besides Greek, there are the requirements and workload for the other courses. Try not to let them overwhelm me. A step at a time, a day at a time ... with lots of organisation, focus and discipline. Of course, not without a large dose of grace, wisdom, strength daily!

Been doing quite a bit of experimenting with cooking since we have dinner together quite regularly. It's pretty encouraging to see what I cooked being finished up! At least gives me some motivation to cook... or to learn how to cook! Celebrated Mooncake Festival with some friends at my place, complete with mini mooncake, red bean soup and baby yam. Had a good mix between us too, from Canadian, Indonesian, Singaporeans and a fellow Malaysian. In case anyone is wondering, the moon is very full and bright over here too. In fact probably clearer without air pollution. Yes, revealing my fascination with the moon, stars and stuff in the sky (sorry, not sure what the proper collective noun is) and weather related matters. Well, here I am just grateful for everyday that we can still see the sun and having fine weather.

A goalless draw from Liverpool. It's definitely better than losing to ManU.

Post-Modern in the Garden

Figured I should pen down some thoughts from the summer courses I took. One thing that struck me when I was looking at Genesis was how similar the temptation of the serpent in the Garden sounded to the post-modern position. The desire to evaluate what is right or wrong independently of God is age old. The post-modern thinker who insists 'I will decide for myself what is good for me' is nothing more than Eve being dressed up in modern garb. It is only natural that a pluralistic stance must follow to support it. Since we've decided we will the final judge of what is true and right, we are left with no choice but to respect every other position held to be just as good or equally valid. The final outcome is nothing short of absurdity.

Even those of us who claim to take God at His Word may sometimes deceive ourselves, and in fact, consider our opinion of His Word to carry more weight than His Word itself. Often I want to 'experience' His Word, that is, put it to a 'test', as if giving God a chance to prove His Word to me. What arrogance! He is God and I am not. How easy I forget that. In past generations, men tend to think that he is being tried by his Maker and is conscious of how far he falls short from 'The Standard'. According to C. S. Lewis, it appears today as if God is in the dock and humanity is trying Him. Thus it is God's job to convince me that what He says is true, that He is good, fair and just. Basically to prove that He is God. I, on the other hand, assume the role of a judge, and decide if He passed the test. How often I catch myself being quick to question His very existence or His benevolence, the moment I experience some slight discomfort or disappointment. Sigh ... How long will it take before I accept my finiteness and inadequacy to make accurate and consistent evaluation of what is truly good, right or godly? Without a complete and exhaustive knowledge of everything, past, present and future, there is no way I can judge perfectly. It's high time for me to honestly and humbly consider and admit to my limitations.

God, help me to take God seriously and take Him at His word because You expect nothing else and deserve nothing less.

New Term Begins

The past few weeks have been a season of Hellos and Goodbyes. I have been kept busy completing my assignments and taking care of some newbies who've arrived recently. Met a young lady from Singapore who's doing her post-graduate studies in UBC. We hit it off straight away and she bunked over in my room for a couple of days when she was waiting for her apartment to be ready and available to move in. Made friends with a young Singaporean couple and Malaysian lady at Regent's Orientation. Brand new arrivals. The Singaporean couple stays in a single bedroom suite above me and the Malaysian lady, from Kluang, lives just across the road. It's been great getting to know these new friends and helping them to settle in. We've been cooking and sharing meals together and so, keeping up the tradition. Besides these, there are a handful from England and Scotland in this intake, so it was great to finally talk to real football fans. Just to side track, I'm appalled England lost to North Ireland! My friend in Australia sure knew me well when she 'prophesied' I will be making lots of friends.

Of course, besides all that, I still remembered to play! Visited the PNE which is a huge Fair here, with lots of stuffs lined up. They have bands, dance performances, a sort of trade fair with all sorts of merchandise, all kinds of rides you can think of, games stalls not unlike those you see on TV, heaps of food stalls. Especially liked the motorcycle stunt show/competition. This Fair goes on for about two weeks. I went on this crazy ride - The Revelation is one of the fastest and most exhilarating extreme rides in the world! Designed like a giant airplane propeller, the Revelation holds two to four riders comfortably in the cockpit seats at each end of its 160 foot arm. Riders take off quickly spinning up to 100 kph and experience the same intense "G" forces as fighter pilots! The combination of the rotation, tremendous height, high speed and the rush of wind will definitely reveal the intensity of the ride. Not for the faint of heart, the Revelation is for the ultimate thrill seeker! So it spins you 3 rounds forward ... and 3 rounds backwards!

The summer 'holidays' is officially over. Managed to complete my last Summer school assignment last week. Classes starts tomorrow for the new term. Will be taking some core courses including Introductory Greek, Christian Thought and Culture (CTC) and Old Testament Foundations. CTC sounds promising and very exciting, with 25 lecturers taking different segments or something like that. Basically it's a newly designed core course to introduce some basic values and things which the faculty feels depicts what Regent stands for.

Celebrated Grandparents Day today with a friend and her in-law family. She's from FGA KL, married to a Malaysian whose family have migrated here for many years. The whole family are committed Christians. I actually didn't know her very well when she was in KL so it was really sweet of her to extend me the invitation. Quite a large family and a few other guests were present too. And boy, what a treat it was. Her father-in-law cooked laksa and she prepared satay, complete with all the condiments and 'kuah'! Better than anything you can get here. Of course, you can imagine me and laksa...with tears streaming down cause too pedas! So shy. Been feeling a bit down the past 2 days so I'm grateful it ended on a high note.

Happy Mooncake Festival next Sunday - enjoy the mooncake and lantern playing even if you don't 'celebrate'! There's such a large Chinese community here that they even get the famous Hong Kong brands of mooncakes flown in and sold at the Asian supermarkets.

Fascinating and Frustrating Facts about Vancouver

I went for a post-modern urban bus tour of the city a few weeks back and it was interesting to see the city through the eyes of a Geography Lecturer from UBC (University of British Columbia). The campus I am staying in sits on prime property. I should put up photos of some of the houses in my neighbourhood – more like mansions. There's a lot of development taking place on campus itself. People actually buy property here and live on campus. And because the land sits on University Endowment Lands (leasehold), land owners do not pay provincial tax. However that also means they do not qualify for Vancouver City facilities like free public library membership - and that includes me! People here are very proud of their parks and gardens and every year pass laws to allocate more land for parks and gardens! There are laws to ensure that house owners maintain a relatively neat garden in certain neighbourhoods. Walkways for pedestrians are very important so if your bush is growing into the walkway you will have to trim it so that it does not obstruct the pedestrians. In some ways, due to the British and French influence, one don't really feel that this place has a very American culture.

The roads here are very well-planned and laid out like a grid. The numbers are in order like the streets that run from north to south in consecutive numbers, like 4^th Avenue, 5^th Avenue, etc. and the perpendicular roads are given names. So you will usually mention the intersection like 4^th and Oak. Ontario divides the city between East and West . Thus if you are travelling along 2^nd Ave West, it becomes 2^ndAve East after you pass Ontario Street. Same goes for the parallel streets. Likewise house numbers gets smaller as they approach Ontario on both sides (east and west) and they are divided by the block between the streets. For example houses between 4 ^th and 5^th Avenue may be from 1400 -1500, and houses on the next block from 5^th to 6^th could be from 1500 -1600. It’s quite cool really cause these are noted on the street signs and also on the maps. This is how most parts of the city are planned! So if you have the address, you’ll roughly know whereabouts you’re heading for. But must be mindful tha the number of the houses here do not always run in running series of alternate numbers like they do in KL. While they are in ascending or descending order, they are not in definite series and can be anywhere between 5 to 12 numbers apart on the same street! On the streets where the the houses are larger, the numbers tend to be further apart, as far as 20 numbers apart. In this way, every other house can end with a 'nice' number and say, avoid those that end with 4s. You see this more prominently in the expensive housing areas – to attract Asian buyers.

The bus system is not difficult to figure out – generally no. 4 goes along the route of 4^th Ave, no. 25 on 25th Ave. Yeah, doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. The part I’m not so impressed with is, you must choose the right bus stop to board the bus because there are different bus stops along the same street for different buses (I suspect they are for different bus companies). So while I have a couple of options I can take to my destination, I have to choose which bus I want to wait for because the bus stops are not located near enough to each other for me to change my mind or if I want to take the first bus available. Have they heard of consolidation? The skytrain here is very much like our LRT system which connects to the larger area of Vancouver into the suburbs, but generally not as well connected as ours, especially in the city. The nearest one to me is about half an hour away on the bus. The seabus is what they call the ferry that takes you across to North Shore. By the way, gas (gasoline) here has been rising quite steadily, something like 10 - 30% in the time I've been here. It's about CAN$1.30+ per litre.

Here the banks charge for every single transaction, including ATM services, request for statement, debit card transactions, etc, except making a deposit! This is the practice for most banks. So what you have to do is sign up for a banking plan, which gives you certain number of transactions for free, depending on the type of plan – similar to a mobile phone plan. Quite shocked initially, then I thought of how I used to complaint that Maybank charges for more than 4 ATM transactions a month. When registering for a new handphone number, with some companies you can select 'Asian friendly numbers' and will be given options of numbers that end with 3s, or 8s, and not 4s. Here they charge for making and receiving calls on the cell but you can buy a plan to send text messages, like CAN$3 to send 50 messages a month! Just to give you an idea, a basic plan costs about CAN$20 (excluding tax and other 'fees' for voice mail, call display and text messages) and gives you about 200 minutes - you get charged for incoming and outgoing calls. Others can give you more minutes, say off-peak like evenings and weekends. They will reduce it to about 100 minutes of outgoing calls during peak hour. Any extra minute above that, you are charged CAN$0.25 per minute which is crazy because a local call from the public phone costs CAN$0.25 per call! Yes, it is cell and text message here. They don't understand what is sms! Some prefer to use a land line which is only CAN$25 per month for unlimited local calls.

Postage is pretty expensive. Standard local mail costs CAN$0.50 plus tax and to Malaysia, it's CAN$1.45 plus tax. I've mentioned before that tax is not reflected on price tags. In Vancouver, you pay PST (Provincial Sales Tax) and GST (Goods and Service Tax), which is a whooping 7% each. Tax is levied based on the kind of goods, so for example, there's no tax for essentials and here, that is bread and milk - sorry, not rice! So you kind of hold your breath when you go shopping, not knowing how much more you need to pay for tax.

Let go .... let God be God

The Lord has really been speaking to me about letting go and to trust Him. It’s been pretty tough and I’m glad to have a friend here to help me process some of the crazy stuff that runs through my mind. So much fears to deal with and have been plagued by doubts. Perhaps it has something to do with spending too much time in my room, just working on my assignments. It does not help that the weather has been so lovely, bright and warm … makes me wanna go out and play! Anyways it's really about surrendering to God and letting Him take control of my life. There is no way I can make this Christian life by my own effort and I’m tired of trying. I'd much rather give my life over to Him and ask Him to take over the driver’s wheel. Why is it so hard to trust Him? It’s not as if I can trust myself!

The Lord showed me a picture of me getting up a bus (must be because I do that a lot here), carrying all my baggage. When I’m on the bus, I continued walking as if I needed to do something to get me to the destination of God’s promises and purposes! I still carried the baggages of fear and anxiety, reluctant to put them down. Then I looked for a map and tried to figure out how we're going to get there. When the bus goes through certain sections, I queried why we took this route and offered suggestions of alternative routes to the bus driver, which in this case is Jesus Himself! I’m so busy, so tired by my own doing. And then the Lord turned to me and gently told me – 'Cheryl, trust Me.' Today I felt the Lord asking me again, as I was doing the cleaning – 'Cheryl, have I ever failed you?' It’s no coincident that all the songs that Alex put in the IPod shuffle that he, Fabian and Yi Mei gave me, are all along the lines of putting my trust in Him. I am very grateful for them. It was like a long play worship session and they really ministered to me.

Well, it’s time to sit back and enjoy the ride. Don’t want to miss out the fun. Not knowing or being in control is part of the adventure. Some parts may be rough and I need to listen when He tells me to hang on. Other times, I simply rest in knowing that He’s taking me there and that I am completely safe in His hands! I thank God that He understands my fears and knows my anxiety. He does not judge me for them but offers to exchange them for an easy yoke and a light burden. What a glorious exchange. I thought I signed up for graduate school but the lessons I am learning is back to Foundations 100! Whether it is walking on water or trusting Him to supply all my needs, the bottom line is the same – I’ve got to get my eyes of the storm and keep my eyes on the Lord.

Postcript: I understand this may not be a side of me that many know about. Sorry if it came as a shock! You've been warned. This blog is not for the faint hearted.

Good Work-out

Finally reached the end of the week. I took up a part-time position in my residence which basically involves cleaning of rooms as people check out and preparing rooms for check in. During the summer rooms are rented out to short term guests, not unlike a hotel. Only difference these are full facility units, including 2-bedroom townhouses. So there’s a lot more cleaning to be done. Although I’ve only worked less than 30 hours this week (including Saturday and Sunday ), it’s been pretty exhausting. On top of that I still put in the necessary hours to work on my assignments, which means staying up until 3am or waking at 6am to get some work done before I start my part-time job. Well, it is no Maid in Vancouver fairytale but it’s a lot more real – pay is good. It’s quite an experience.

Initially I thought I could manage it since I don’t have any classes and it's just withing the building. But after working from 10am- 8pm on my first day, I was simply too knocked to do any studying that night! So decided I’d just do it for this week and I’m glad it’s over. After a long day of work, I’m relieved the guys have offered to prepare dinner as it is pay back time for Michael who’s just finished his very extremely hectic Hebrews crash course few days ago. He’s been joining us for Sunday dinner but not been able to help with the preparation or stay too long. So dinner will be at his apartment unit tonight – we’ll have the place to ourselves since his roomies have all moved out!

Wasn’t able to go to church today but managed to attend mass yesterday evening in a Catholic church. Yup, you heard that right….makes the church visitation round complete by visiting different traditions! But the service was too short. We (Daniel joined me) were slightly late, trying to find the church and it was over in 45 minutes. Without any bulletin, it was hard to follow the liturgy which everyone else had no trouble knowing how to respond, when to sit or stand, etc as if they've all been so well-programmed! I thought about it and figured that’s probably how some may feel when they walk into my church back home. People know when to lift up their hands, clap, say Amen, sing in tongues, etc. as if we’re all very well-programmed!

Hear ye, hear ye

As you'd notice, I've finally changed the song on my blog. It's a familiar song and may bring to mind the trailer for 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy'. My apologies to those who listen to radio streaming when checking my blog. I hope you can disable it although I admit I've not figured out how to do that for my browser. I've also allowed for comments by non-bloggers. So feel free to drop me a line if you are up to it. Will try to update my blog more often.

Been here 1½ month and have received all sorts of news from home. The sudden and tragic death of a young lady friend whom I've known from my youth. Besides KL, this news came to me from New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia. It is very sad. Then a couple who is very dear to me informed me they've broken off. Another has just began a brand new relationship, which will be maintained long distance. 2 engagement announcements from good friends. There were breakthroughs in the workplace for others. One who has remained faithful despite being in a very corrupted environment. God vindicated recently by opening a door to a fantastic job offer. Another who has been longsuffering and remained submitted to a very unreasonable and insecure superior for an extended period of time. Made things very difficult even though both were holding senior positions. Only to suddenly receive news that the company had dismissed the boss when they discovered a huge and costly mistake committed by him. Unbelievable turn of events. Indeed they will testify that the battle belongs to the Lord.

That's life. You cry with those who weep, rejoice with those who laugh, comfort the broken and celebrate the victories. Ultimately it leads me to worship and acknowledge that God is very much alive and actively working in our world. I don't always understand and since He is God, He may or may not choose to explain. I don't get to decide that but I can choose to trust Him. And this I do because I think to myself, He is God and I am not.