The Alpha Marriage Course

The church organised the Alpha Marriage Course (which ended last weekend) recently. This is an 8/9 weeks course (how forgetful, I've forgotten). As many as 13 couples signed up for it. The course was held in Royale Bintang.

The backdrop....the date changes every week.

The content showing the topics for each week. The first week was the introductory course and the last week was the celebration cum graduation course. (not listed in the content).

The participants listened to watch a video on the appropriate topic conducted by Nicky and his wife Sila. In between, the video will paused for discussion between the couples. It is totally private and confidential.

Sila Lee...

The course starts with dinner. As this is held in a hotel, there is not much work for the helpers in this area except we did try to serve the participants coffee during the discussion time but later found it better to have the professionals doing it. So the waiters/waitresses took over.


The setting.....it is supposed to be romantic; candle lights with dim lights. Very nice. When I was the participant many years ago, it was held in the Youth Center. The helpers had a lot of work to do preparing the ambience.

So this is how it is like....a romantic dinner.




Participants were given nametags like this.

This whole course was handled and coordinated by Justine and Eric Ting. At the time this picture was taken; Eric was away for a month....Justine had to managed on her own.

Why study?

I found this bookmark in a store in Oxford. This is what it says:
WHY STUDY?
The more I study
The more I know

The more I know
The more I forget

The more I forget
The less I know

So why study?

A walk in the woods

Across our house is a stretch of secondary jungle. The king scout promised his son a long time ago that he will take him into the woods and climb the hill there. Today was the auspicous day.
(The promise was made three years ago).


This is the jungle and here is where the adventure begins...



One has to be prepared before going into the jungle....glove, parang...and a smile!!!


What is that finger pointing to? He must have seen something....I think I see it too!



Wow!!!! A big spider. He claims it to be the biggest spider he has ever seen. In our fast paced world where entertainment comes in a click and it has to be instant; I am glad that my son still finds discovering nature a wonder.

It's a red leaf...different from the others. He used his parang to cut branches like this as they made their way in.

This was as far as they went. See our house in the distance.

When they returned after half an hour, there was so much plan in their brains. They are returning into the jungle soon to build a tree house! After that they plan to camp in there...(hmmm...).



A closer look at the plan. I wonder if the tree looked as simple as this and building a tree house is as simple as it sounds! They are going to ask Uncle Albert to sell them some old wood (hahaha).

It's really good to see the boys enjoying their evening together doing something as simple as this. Looking at how teenagers grow now and how attached they are to the world of internet and computers; I am very thankful that my boy still finds this entertaining. May we find joy in doing simple things like this.

facebook

I have been on the Facebook for two years or so now. It was Irene Chen who started me on it. She is my penpal from primary school. What started off as connecting with people whom I know has now gone totally off course. I wanted to keep my group of friends small; limit it to family and close friends only. Unfortunately, this just can't be done.

Today I opened up my fb to find that the friend request has gone beyond 150. I really can't be confirming every person who requests as I don't know, or don't remember almost all of them. A majority of the requests are from students; past and present. The problem with these people is; they do not use their own name and pictures. I have foreign names with beautiful faces staring at me (I don't think I know of anybody from Twilight or Hindustani actresses) and I have not the slightest idea who they are suppose to represent. I don't want to press the ignore button (unless I am very sure I know that I don't know them).

What shall I do? If I ignore them; would they know that I have ignored them? If they are my students in school, they may feel rejected and I don't want any of my students to have the feeling that I have rejected them (which is not true; of course).

One reason I have stopped being active in fb is I have lost my privacy....then again the cyber world is not meant to be private.

Wesley Pang

On 17th August 2010 at 3 plus in the morning, my nephew Ong and his wife, Janne became the proud parents of Wesley Pang. This bundle of joy weighs 4.1kg!!!! That's a real heavy baby.

Ong is the firstborn for his generation from my family. Wesley is also the firstborn for his generation for my family. My family is the maternal family for Ong as he is born into the Pang family. This has automatically elevated our status....my parents are now great grandparents, of course my sister and brother-in-law are grandparents now and my siblings and I are grand aunts and uncles. I told Dan that he is now an uncle and he reacted, ' What? I'm too young to be an uncle!'

Come to think of it, I was Dan's age (11) when Ong was born. Both Ing and I helped sis to babysit him. He was a real chubby and cute baby.

Wesley is an old English name. It is the family name of the founder of Methodism; John Wesley. Here is a famous quote of John Wesley : make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.


Introducing the newest addition to the family : Wesley Pang.


Here is the picture of his father .... see the similarity... especially the nose. Couldn't find any baby pictures of Ong, this is the closest that I can get of him in his young age. Don't have any pictures of Janne; so I can only make a comparison with the father.

CONGRATULATIONS TO PETER AND JANNE!

chocolate walnut bread

I baked two loaves of bread today. Need two loaves to feed the whole family. I thought I have this recipe in my blog but it was just the picture. So decided I might as well put the recipe down so I will not forget.

I have been baking bread for years. But none of the recipes which I used earlier are with me....somehow I lost them. Maybe by blogging them, I will not lose the recipes anymore when I try out new ones. Bad habit of forgetting the old ones when I start a new recipe which I like.

Again; this is for AJ7. I just remembered I tried a cappocino orange bread which is nice but didn't bake it anymore as Dan doesn't like the slight coffee taste in it. Will try it again soon and blog the pic and recipe.


1 egg plus enough water to equal 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp sugar (I use slightly lesser so it won't be so sweet)
1 tbsp margarine
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
2 1/4 c bread flour plus 1 tbsp
1 tbsp dry milk
3/4 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup walnut halves
1 tsp yeast

I bake it at 1kg weight...turns out ok. Slightly more dense than poppy seed loaf because it has lots of chocolate chip in it and also walnut.

hula hoop competition

This evening we had hula hoop competition. The first contestant was .....

Master Dan....showing off his skills and cute movements.

Followed by Mr Lim....over- confident contestant. He was real confident of winning.

Then Ms Lyn reluctantly took the hoop and twirled it around effortlessly.

Finally....the last but not least.....Ms Ting.....unfortunately nobody wanted to take a picture of her.

And the results......Master Dan managed to keep the hoop round his tubby waist for 30.4 seconds. The over-confident Mr Lim clocked in 20.8 seconds; much to his dismay and disappointment. Ms Lyn....drum roll.......did it in 3.25 minutes!!!!!!! (She requested to stop because she had enough of it). Sadly, the final contestant couldn't even keep the hoop round her waist even though the size of her hips beat the rest, it didn't help to keep the hoop around her. Anyway....she is not discouraged, if she can get the hoop to stay, she will belanja the whole family makan besar at Kensington!