Here are some of the things I discovered:

1. It is quite possible for your body to shed a lot of weight in the process. The good news is that I lost close to 10kg's in those 40 days. The possibly bad news is that some of it might have been muscle mass.

2. So much of our social patterns revolve around food. Spartan eating habits and rare sit-down meal times took an obvious toll on my social interactions and the relationships formed around it. Fasting can very well encourage anti-social behaviours.

3. A good chunk of auditory stimulation actually comes from our mouth cavities. After 40 days of gulping down liquid, *crunch-crunch* sounds like a sweet symphony.

4. Fasting like this causes you to be more sensitive and responsive to the signals from your stomach, and less reactive about it. Now I get to drive my stomach, not the other way round.

Cute little facts aside, the thing that has been most unexpectedly meaningful for me was the conclusion of the fast - where I felt that old chapter has been completed and a new one ready to be written. Who knows what this next year will bring.

As exhilarating as it has been, such a lifestyle does take its toll, if not on me, then on the people closest to me.

So here's to airing my thoughts again, so that they don't rot in the dark. You can bet that I'm serious because I haven't just started a new blog, or redesigned it (common indication of hype).

Wish me luck!

Why do I love stasis so much? We have bought into the lie that stasis is trustworthy. We have somehow understood that unchanging is good, which it is, for far fewer things that we think.

Stepping back and taking in the larger picture changes a few things around. For example, the human body is ever changing. The walk is a constant state of imbalance. Something is always shifting. So changes the sand dune, the wind and the forest. Never static, never the same, ever.

If all of creation that is alive shifts and steps through time like a dance, whatever gave us the permission to sit out and watch as beauty passes us by? Whatever banished us to sit at the edges of the ballroom, mark the 1 to 10, and bicker among ourselves, when the Creator Himself waltzes across the floor, searching and beckoning for His bride.

What would community mean in the context of such a dance? What of my relationships? What of my life? So much seems to have been dismantled and deconstructed. The scaffolding that once stood tall and strong has been taken away and there is no more to hide behind. No longer "there's more to it that meets the eye". More like, what you see is what you get.

Where do I belong, father, and who is my community? The only thing that I've been able to distill of love so far is belonging and identity. When the niceties and the functions of a relationship are stripped away, along with the obligations, the affirmations, the disgruntlements, and the iron-sharpens-iron bits, all that's left has been a nominal sense of belonging, and identity, which of course, looks devastatingly pathetic in our power hungry Romanic civilization.

Who do I call my family? Except those who belong to me, and those whom I belong to. Those whom I identify with. Those who would die for me, whom I would I die for.

What would it mean for us to cultivate a sense of belonging among us, where we no longer reach across with our strengths, but huddle together in our weaknesses? What of dying to oneself and yoking oneself to a greater body, a plurality? How far off have we drifted? How wicked twisted perverse do you have to be to start driving in screws between the fingers and the palm, independence between the eyes and the nose, inorganic separations between the stomach and the groin? Perhaps thick sheets of cold hard steel, gritty slabs of machined concrete, or total dismemberment - nice clean cuts, neatened with a searing torch - final death, never to be joined again.

I'm sure the Husband would be delighted with his Franken-bride - yet this is what we have become. No longer drawing blood from the same heart. No longer paining with the rest of the nervous system. No longer taking instructions from the one head. Democracy, they call it. Freedom she writes.

When will we realize that the freedom of the hand is found in complete synchronization with the forearm and the triceps; in dire dependence to the heart and the other systems of the body; in absolute submission to the head? No wiggle room for rouge cells with a mind of their own - cancerous, they're so endearingly termed.

What is real? Identity is real. Belonging is real. Knowing and living in a reality of a self that is larger than oneself. That is real.

So may we learn to love one another.

...I spent three years studying multimedia - Design, Animation, Video, 2D, 3D, Sound, etc. At the end of the three years, it came to a point where I had all these tools, but nothing worthwhile to say. It was as if someone had given me a trumpet, but the only song sheets I was given were intoxicating jingles that the pied-piper wrote to persuade all the mice into buying his brand of cheese. This is where my search for the truth and a worthwhile message has led me...

Okay, it wasn't word for word, but essentially that was my story - my answer on my FAQ and my best shot at side-stepping the dreaded holed-in "I work for church..." response.

It's funny how it started as an attempt to seem a lot bigger that I really was - cast as far and as wide a sight as possible. It was a nice, noble, inspiring vision, and it drew the attention off the less than average financial renumerations that came with the package (to which, my stock answer would be "that's the price you pay").

Fast forward to present day, the seed of conviction, where given time and space, grows and consumes you. This is where I find my consumed self, more convinced than ever before that there is too much noise in the air, and everyone needs to go home and revise their parts.

Which brings me to my point of frustration. I am weak. We are all so weak. If one day all 6.5 billion of us decided to stop tooting our horns and reconsidered our song sheets for a collective moment, the silence would drive us to our graves, and the sheer volume of brainwaves generated would make us deaf. I find myself in this dilemma where the soothing sounds of the horns keep us sane, yet all they do is keep us sane - so much so that we craft our ideas of freedom around our selection of trumpet music, and are absolutely petrified at the thought of silence.

So do we stop the music and let our ears ring for a bit? Or is there a more elegant way around? How do you change the tyres on a moving car?

For now, I am humbly grateful that there are people who will keep tooting their horns so that I don't go mad, yet knowing full well that we're all, in one way or another, working ourselves out of our jobs.

May it be that the only music we'll ever need is silence, and that true beauty be found in all that is heard.

To be clear, structure is neutral, like the ideal amplifier. It only makes more apparent the good or evil of the original signal that is coming through. Also, all structures have an expiry date - the day it is built, it is destined to be torn down; though its temporal nature is solely attributed to the common short-sightedness of its builder.

Vision on the other hand is understood to be eternal, transcendent, overarching. The things you see but are slightly out of reach. It is where we are headed - a glimpse of the endgame

Sparks fly at any attempt to integrate the two. Structures tend to be more elusive simply because they are tangible, present, easy to grasp and are simply a delight manipulate. In the presence of such practical pressure, vision, for most people, is reduced to a contrived idealistic sentences that just needs to be penned down and gotten over with. Structures invite you to a cushy sense of pseudo-security in an inanimate construct, while a vision requires intimate trust in another person or being.

That's where the dichotomy falls into a binary mess - and that's as far as it'll ever take us to world peace.

Here's where it gets interesting, because according to the Christian world view as I've come to understand it, such a dichotomy does not exist - since there is a vision that spans eternity, and the presence of a builder who has the ultimate long-term plan to see the vision come to pass. You see, it's dawn upon me that the vision is the structure.

This demands a drastic shift in the way we live on two accounts. Firstly, the Vision along with its recapitulating micro-structure has already been revealed - the former, the full glory of the Creator covering the earth; the latter, a life laid down as demonstrated by Jesus, justified in His Resurrection. Secondly, Any attempts to reinvent or re-engineer either results in time lost for either capturing the vision or incarnating the structure - two admittedly monumental tasks in themselves.

Obviously, this revelation has very little value to the ventures who cash in on the very existence of such an escapist duality, but if the Hebrew Scriptures and the waning bellows of Creation all around us are anything to go by, the groom is on his way to claim his bride, and the five lamp-bearing virgins who hadn't brought extra oil will be in for a rude shock.

Money is like playing the keyboard for you, or cracking your back.
It's no different from sitting down and sipping coffee with you, or maybe sipping coffee has been monetized.

Money seems to be over-emphasized and under-emphasized at the same time. How did money become so polarized from everything else? It has become something of an over glorified bag of chips. Imagine if one day everyone traded on tic-tacs instead of the green backs.

There is so much muck and gunk associated with money. Greed thrives on money. Poverty is the victim of money. Bankruptcy - just because you don't have dolla', people see you like you have nada.

What if one day we swapped currencies. If one day we were free from the sub-prime circus of America. If one day we were released from the oppressions of the rising interest rates and inflation. What if one day, we went money free, ate vegetables and had our own farm. If we weren't affected by the Chinese businessmen and the big media mongrels. What if we were free from all of that?

And then we went away and started a new community, a new country founded on new principles - or the oldest principles ever. If we spent all our days preparing and propagating safe havens - beginning at the dinner table, surrounded by trusting relationships. What if we went along and cultivated technology to bring grace all over. All this assuming that the beasts and machines we claim to be so fallible will one day conk out, and we will be ready to pick up the pieces. We will sift through the concrete carnage, slice through the asbestos clouds and bring salvation.

When the economic systems go bust, we will have chicken and rice and salads galore for dinner. When the power goes out, we'll have ample firewood for singsongs and marshmallows every night. When the education system is called for a bluff, and the harsh brittle trophies we slip into our personal ads become nothing more than low grade dunny paper, we will hire on faith, hope and love, and we will pay out in a common future.

What if, one day people didn't need to be machines to stay alive, and social classes made no sense. What if one day we were all one big family and no one was better than the other, just unique, different, special and honorably appointed to his or her very own task - tailored to fit.

Many people have tried to make this work, but I know one who has been working at it for 6000 years, and is showing no sign of slowing down. I know a person who showed us the very first release of the new patch that would make this possible, and we have been given the technology to participate in this day, and especially this age.

We can't make this work on our own, but perhaps, together with the Gracious Original Designer.

When it all works out, money will be another bowl of rice for a hungry kid.
It will be a warm bed for the stockbroker who lost the bid.
Money becomes the symbol of hope for the single mom,
and it becomes the words we use to say we care
when everything else gets lost in translation.

Just like cupcakes, just like a ride home. Just like a song.

No more, no less.

Long coats black and grand
you strut the streets big outside
void within.

Happy makes me sad,
makes me weep inside because
happy only makes us monkeys.
Don't you see?
Don't you see
the empty creeds we recite
with each foot step,
mouse drag,
key tap;
Every scratch of ink on paper
and clink of coffee on its lonely saucer.

The creeds of darwin and worthless chemical scum,
that make sweatshops worthy of us,
and how it's done.

Can grass find life and vitality
under a marble slab?
Can it grow? Yet that is the very thing we try to do —
to redeem the ground below,
and destroy anything that seeks
to silence its waning bellow.

Oh Creator, how long?
Oh Creator, have mercy.
Have mercy
on us, the oppressors;
the victims of oppression.

May the BIG ISSUES of life not be the Beemers
on street side pumping clouds of strife
into these heated conversations on
triflings and bling-blings and
one-night flings.

God have mercy,
Creator lend an ear.
Hold out your hand,
Open your eyes,
and help us


out here.

Michael Moore presented a rather stark view on the American healthcare system in Sicko. One of his blows to the system was how the volunteer rescue workers at ground zero during the September 11 event weren't taken care of by the "system" the same way that the "official" rescue workers were - respiratory diseases and all. One of the volunteer nurses was asked why she jumped in and help without thinking twice about her insurance policy or her health cover.

"My airway was totally burned that first week. I had trouble breathing by then... But, we wanted to see if we could dig anybody up alive, we wanted to see if we had lost anybody, if we were missing somebody... I wanted to help, I was trained for this. Y'know, you see somebody who's in need, you help'em..."

There's something about fulfilling a purpose, or an original design that moves me to tears. When a 100 piece orchestra plays as one sound. When a car hits the tarmac at full throttle. When a trained nurse takes on ground zero. I think the Creator feels the same about us.

Today is Easter Saturday 22 March 2008. I'm sitting here in a dining hall in Camp Manyung, Mt. Eliza together with Aunty SL, Aunty M, Uncle C, Winnie, and Uncle TK. We've come up from Melbourne to this place to celebrate Jesus' Death and His Resurrection. That is what Easter is all about.

Part of our celebrations this year, two people got baptized in the icy cold sea water yesterday evening. This is what individuals here get to do to symbolize making the important choice to follow Jesus Christ with all their lives.

During these few days of celebration, we had a number of sessions where we discussed who and where we were as a Community of Jesus Chirst Followers planted in the City.

One of the things daddy has learnt and would like for you to know is that the journey of life is a cyclic one. Our facilitator in one of the discussion workshops described it as being in three different coloured zones - green blue and red. I'm not absolutely familiar with that way of thinking yet, but Uncle Tim has been teaching us something similiar called "Listening Point cycles" (LP Cycles).

A listening point cycle consist of 4 phases - Living Life, Events Accumulating, a Listening Point, and a Choice Made which leads to a new level of Living Life.

At the Living Life stage, you would just have made a choice about an earlier LP, and things seem to be moving along pretty straightforwardly.

After a while of Living Life, things will begin to happen. Sometimes one big event will throw you straight into a Listening Point. Other times, it will take multiple small events before you're at a point where you're ready to listen.

At the Listening Point, it's the time when you're ready to hear from God. He'll speak to you in your prayer times. He'll also speak to you through people around you, through daddy or mommy or even your younger siblings. There is a certain sense of peace and sweetness that comes when you "hear" the voice of God. I hope I would have had the time to cultivate that sensitivity in you in the years that I get to spend with you.

At a Listening Point, you get to make a choice, which always comes in the form of the Spirit/Flesh response (although, this is a seperate discussion altogether). Please promise me you'll choose the Spirit. Choose love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faith, goodness, humility, self-control.

Dear Child,

With every step you take in life, you'll find yourself somewhere on this cycle. Please remember that strength and health is found in going round and round as fast as possible. There is not point in staying at one place longer than you need to, and if you decide to go backwards, you'll get badly hurt.

Some people are going to come and tell you that one place is better than another. No! Don't listen to them. As you grow older, the size of the LP cycles will vary, and you might even find that there are multiple LP cycles going at the same time. By the time you're old enough to understand compound cycles, I believe you'll know how to deal with them.

With all this in mind, remember that this is a tool that we use to understand life. It is for giving us strength to engage with The Creator's Purposes, to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, to constantly be listening to The Spirit, and to be ruling the earth together will all the other human beings.

If it isn't already obvious, know that I love you. And I look forward to seeing what amazing things Our Creator is going to bring into being through you.

Love,

Dad

The house move is complete. I feel like I'm finally in 2008. Jan and Feb felt like 2007 extended. There are too many knots to deal with in the details, but it has something to do with me not taking my annual leave earlier, and my thresholds all weighed down in Feb.

So for me, 22 Feb hasn't just been my birthday, but also my New Years'.

Sam's here. She's coping very well. you can read about how much I've done to make her transition here a pleasant one (not much really). Having her here makes a huge difference in the way that I view my work, my life, and all the stuff I've been wrestling through.

It used to be just Aaron and I, two buddies roughing it out in the urban jungle; but now, it's Kor, and Kor Kor and Sam. Very different feeling. It's given me a clearer focus of what dealing with a whole new generation will be like - this time, 5 years apart.

My parents are on their way here. The few phone conversations I've had with dad have been teasers to what it'll be like to have him over, together with mom. I don't think I've ever appreciated my parents as much as I do now. Can't wait.

Tomorrow is our Equipping Weekend away at the Dandenongs. I'm really quite pumped about that. This is where we get to set everyone up for a big year - complete with a full tank to plough through 2008. Personally, the one thing that scares me about us in '08, is that the only thing we've really got down pat is probably the Vision of it all. The outworking of Mission, Strategy and Plan is going require a lot more than just a few smart-alec's fiddling around with their transient realities all day long.

We're going to need the strategists, the managers, the logistic specialists, the event coordinators, the biscuit arrangers, the toilet roll monitors. MAN! Never in my life have I felt more helpless couped up my strength that shows itself more as a weakness and an impediment.

But hey, someone's got to cast the vision, so that someone else can make it happen. Some of us sow, and others of us reap - but it's the same harvest.

Welcome to 2008 zakky.

What a day it has been. This morning, I gathered up my courage. Hoping against all hope, I called up the agent.

If you never ask, you'll never know.

It started off with me rattling off a bunch of words that I strung together on the computer screen. It ended with me being grilled on the specifics of the nearby apartments whose prices I was comparing. What started as an effort to fish out "what's your lowest price" from the owner, ended up with me putting through a clear cut reduction of $20 less per week, with an additional year on the lease. She forced it out of me, literally. They are trained, the machine is infallible.

And so the offer went in. I was melting at my desk from all the stress that was piling up in my body. Sometime later, she calls back with a counter-offer - $10 bucks less per week with the additional year. I was ready to just throw in the towel. Spoke to Winnie. Spoke to Uncle Tim. I got Uncle Aaron on the case, who was just waking up. It was only 8.30am in Sarikei.

It's been a painful day. Days like these, you get ground to the bone, and the essence of who you are, and what your sub-stance is, gets tested.

In the end, what really made everything come together was when I got on the phone with your grandpa. I got to explain the situation - placed all my cards on the table, and worked through my thought processes. He chipped in a few thoughts, but the one thing that stuck most was what came after I took a stab at answering "What do you think is the best choice?"

"That's the right choice", he said, and it totally made my day.

My child, If I turn out to be half the dad your grandpa was to me, there might be hope for you and your generation. For your sake, I hope I turn out fine.

Daddy
06-Feb-08

Today was a funny one, a rather exhilarating one. We went to inspect one of the places in the morning - 10am in the morning to be precise. We were the only people there, the agent was nice - too nice, in retrospect. We really liked the place, and decided we were going to apply for it.

On the way out, the car was parked on an incline, and me, being your adventurous/try-it-all Dad, decided to give Winnie a driving lesson. We were parked on a pretty steep incline, with the front of the car facing upwards on the slope. Whenever Winnie would release the brake on her automatic car, the car would jerk backwards, and to make things even more exciting, there was another car parked behind us.

So I said, try slowly releasing the brake, and the car will hold itself (being an automatic car). What we didn't realize, that the car had its gear engaged in "R", which meant the car would accelerate backwards, instead of counteracting the backward force.

We tried it, and that experience made Winnie sick.

It also made me realize a few other things -
1. Winnie really does trust me.
2. The car won't hold itself on an incline if the gear is engaged in "Reverse".

No, we didn't cause any damage, thankfully.

I got back to the office, prepared all the documents to apply for the place, and even wrote a letter to the landlord, explaining how much we liked the place, and why we were the most eligible tenants on the face of this earth to lease this apartment.

In the afternoon, on the way to inspecting another property, I get a call from the agent telling me that my application was approved and we could move in on the date that I nominated on the application form. Winnie and I were over the moon. I remember saying many times "Phew... that's it. We've done it. That's all there is..." Such a sigh of relief. It was a nice feeling - we were thanking God, calling around and just being generally happy.

The rest of my day went just like that. It felt like a birthday and a present was handed over to me.

Uncle Euge even prayed a prayer of thanksgiving when I told him about it in the office. It was "miracle story" material. I so wanted it to be the miracle. I so wanted it to be done and over with.

I even called you your grandparents - it's their Anniversary today.

Much later in the afternoon though, things began to sink in. First, we realized that in fact, the price that we offered for the apartment was way above market rate - no wonder they were in such a hurry to seal the deal. No wonder they were so nice, and pleasant. We were sheep led to the slaughter.

That evening, Winnie and I got home, and we were talking about how all these things unfolded - blaming it on the migrants (haha...), the international students (double haha...), gentrification, the greed of humanity and every other possible scapegoat. We didn't really make an effort to include God in the picture, so you can imagine how icky the conversation got.

We did end up with a few other options and solutions to try out, but the point is it feels like we got to the first milestone of the race thinking that it was the finish line, only to realize there was some more to run - and you know how much Daddy hates running.

My child, here's what Daddy's learnt so far, and would like for you to know.

There are going to be lots of times when God does things that you like, and you're going to say "God did it. How great is He!". There are other times when God does things that you don't like, and you're going to say "Tough luck. God why don't you help me out here."

From what I've been able to conclude, nothing happens without God's intervention - and for some heart-wretching, stomach-churning reason, He gives and takes away. Everything will only make full sense in big-picture retrospect. Maybe the trick is to set your eyes on the view of the race FROM the finish line, while you're still in the race.

I know in less than two weeks' time, I'm going to look back on this incident, and I'll know that it was God all the way.

Love,

Daddy
05-Feb-08

This is very new to me. I've never written to someone that I don't know, but hey, I'm not sure I really know many of the people whom I DO write to, so let's call it even.

These are a bunch of entries that you might read in 2015, or 2020, or 2030, depending on how successful you mother and I will be at teaching you to think, read and understand stuff.

I'll start with today.

Today is the 4th of February 2008. Where I am sitting now, there is a bunch of officeworks boxes containing some of the more "packed" stuff. We're moving from 202/150 Peel Street, to some yet unknown place. There are two properties that we're going to inspect tomorrow. Renting a place to live in is very expensive because of all the international students who are coming here from all over South East Asia.

I hope when you come around, I'll have a nice place for you to stay and to call home.

I'd put in a notice to vacate the current place by the 20th of February, which is around 16 days from now. I've done this before, and I believe it'll happen again. Between now, and that date, I would have moved into a new place, and your Uncle Aaron and Auntie Samantha would be doing most of the unpacking and filling out of the new place. I won't. They'll be arriving on the 16th of February - 4 days prior to us having to move out. After that, your grandparents will be arriving on the 24th of Feb, 4 days after I vacate this place. Isn't that interesting. I never thought that would be the case.

Anyways, we'll be celebrating your grandpa's 50th birthday on the 25th (talk about number patterns) Feb, and I've yet to think up what we're going to do to make it really special. Your grandpa has been an awesome dad to me, and your uncle and auntie. He bought your auntie a macbook just a week ago - they cost 2 times as much as a standard laptop. I miss them and I look forward to seeing them and splurging on them when they come.

I'm still learning my walk of faith, and I am so conscious of switching between fear and trusting God at every moment. Some moments when I flip into fear, I go nuts trying to look for a place on realestate.com.au, and I end up in a paralyzed heap. At other times I am at peace, knowing that The Creator has provided so much for me, and He will provide for me some more.

Child, this is part of learning to trust The Creator. He always seems wait till the 11th hour. I'm not yet quite sure why, but Uncle Tim says that it's because He always gives His children the freshest. My take on it is that nothing beats a good story, and the feeling of help coming through in a time of absolute helplessness. Either way, you're going to find yourself in difficult situations one time or another. I think the most important thing isn't necessarily the outcome, but rather the journey you take, because at the end of the day, Our Creator will work everything for the good of those who love him, and who trust him.

Learn to trust God. There really isn't any other better way to live.

Love,

Daddy

The stars are most visible when it is the darkest.

I love the gray sky. I love power cuts. I love when my mobile goes quiet, and all that is left is a remnant of the machine world, trying so hard to hold its own in sonic real estate.

Maybe it is my heart that is cluttered with artificiality. Veins and vessels pumping silicone instead of blood. What do I really want? What do the people around me really want. If electricity never existed, the world would be a better place. a simpler, quieter place. People wouldn't fight that much because the sun god regulates the day; and at night, everyone needs a huddle to fend off the cold. Autonomous man is a curse and a crippling disease that will eat us alive before dawn breaks.

It puzzles me that most of what we say we want and need, we don't really, rather it has become more reactionary rather than inspiration. Why do we want? Isn't "because" a good enough answer? Isn't "I was inspired to..." worth anything anymore? No, because this, or this, or that, or that.

Fear. Lucid Fear written all over its sorry face.

Where does fear come from, if not from the lies that tell us we are dirt, that we are post-modern survivalist apes who have no choice nor say nor influence on the way anything goes. Lies that tell us we must this or this, or that. Shadows that freak us out at night, that only result in scarlet walls when we try to fight.

Those silly things. They waste so much of our time and energy. Just turn the lights on for crying out loud! Yet sometimes the dark is more comforting because we have much to hide.

And who told you so? If not the master shadow puppeteer who roars with no teeth. He turns us all against each other, in our sorry states. He creates images this split us into our sorry denominations.

It's about time someone flicked the switch...

See my side bar. This is zakky//thoughts on hyperdrive!