SUN HO

So it was reported that Sun Ho, wife of Pastor Kong (from City Harvest Church) lives in a rented Hollywood Hills property that amounts to 28,000 SGD a month.

You need not guess what my reaction is. I am raging mad with the sheer lack of decency. Of course, one might say I am jumping to conclusions for, it might be her own money she earns from making all those songs which are so popular, eh?

Anyway, I intend to follow this very closely and so it is necessary to head into the internet forums to see what stupid people are saying to defend Sun Ho.

Here’s one:

abundance on June 20, 2010 at 10:44 pm

This is truly the meaning of God provides and our God is an abundant God. Jesus wore good clothes. Jesus had a treasurer. Jesus carried boxes of money around when he went around his ministry. These is what Pastor Kong Hee said in his videos. God does not want us to be poor! Jesus is rich! Jesus is not a destitute.

Since his/her display nick clearly says abundance, I am not surprised. I don’t think the writer is absolutely factual about carrying boxes around or wearing good clothes. But aside from the factuality of Jesus’s clothes, there is an important slip of logic here. It does not matter whether Jesus was a destitute or not. It is the question of whether it is reasonable to leap to the conclusion that whatever Jesus was then justifies the way Sun Ho spends money, especially if the money was indeed church funds. It is how the money was spent, how one is morally responsible to the community that matters more. If religion were about being rich, then it does not combine ethics, but I am sure most orthodox religious views on money is that when rich, one ought to consider how best to spend that money in a way that is faithful to the teachings of Christ, and in that sense, ethics is built within that system of thought.

The next response I find more ridiculous is:

Eyesore people on June 20, 2010 at 10:52 pm

Why? She is doing so well… if brad pitt can afford to stay why can’t she? Eye sore to our own citizens? Should be proud of her!

There are three errors committed here.

1. She is doing well – where is the evidence she is doing well, and by well, I mean doing well enough to support her lifestyle on her own. Even if we do not have the evidence, we can make some reasonable comparison, like Stephanie Sun, or famous Asian stars like Jet Li, do they stay in those houses, but then again, Jet is is a far-off comparison. I would not use him.

2.  If Brad Pitt can afford, why can’t Sun Ho? But remember? Brad Pitt makes many box-office hits and he is damn gorgeous? Sun Ho – how many songs are famous? This comparison is silly and ill-founded.

3. We should be proud of her? This is the worst. It is like saying, we should be proud of someone whom we havent’ actually verified her “doing well”.

This next comment I find insulting:

ay on June 20, 2010 at 11:04 pm

To those 1st 3 people commenting. Keep your rubbish comments to yourselves & Be jealous & Continue living in ur poor little life. Both of them has worked so hard & put so much effort in building up a church. Definitely more then what ur WHOLE GENERATION ever have!

I don’t know what is hard work, and I am sure there has been some hardwork to raise the size of the congregation over the years to that huge an amount, but this kind of hard work, does it bring benefit, I mean ojective benefit rather than subjective benefit where one feels good going to church every Sunday, to the community and the world? Does it educate people? Dies it help them? Does it make society a better place, a more tolerant place, a more altruistic place? Nurses do hard work too, teachers do hard work too, but the point is to what end? You can do hard work but your motivation is to earn big bucks and pamper yourself, and not so much to help the community, but hey, if it gives the illusio of helping people why not.

“more than your whole generation”? What an insult to the generation of aunties and uncles who have slogged so hard for Singapore during our industrialization years, including the one where we had the Asian financial crisis.

I wish there were more freedom of speech to talk about such issues and I think Singaporeans are starting to be more conscious of such topics and begin to see how the pieces connect – religion, money.

In the meantime, I hope people in the church have the integrity to admit wrong where wrong has been done. (but yet to be proven ..by CAD)/

FALLEN AMBITIONS

I have great ambitions, which is why I am still in my current job, because I believe I can make a change, I feel so close to it. Not only that, my ambitions are very ambitious. I want to revolutionize the way people think about things, about education, about logic, about religion and science and so on.

Surprise surprise, my voice fall on deaf ears and I am soon beginning to realize how insignificant my voice is. That is the beginning of the mid-life crisis ain’t it? When you realize you are not that special anymore, that your dreams are fluff, when nobody believes in you and what you can potentially change for the better.

There are days when you feel like shit. This has got to be one of those days in its extreme form. It is okay. I will survive. I will get on and find people who believe in me and most of all, to improve myself more from now on.

I have come to realize that one’s self esteem is so fragile. There are a few steps to become more self-assured. One, don’t care what others think – I think this one, I am more or less there. The difficult part is when people who matter to you, do not affirm or believe in you. That’s got to be hard. Or they are the ones battering your self-esteem and worth.

The final and most difficult test of self-assuredness is to not even care what your loved ones think of you, but only you and you are confident.

It’s impossible, really, unless you are a sociopath.

I guess that’s what people expect from their loved ones, to vbelieve in them and to support their ambitions and dreams.

Is that too much to ask for?

THE QUEST FOR CLARITY, TRUTH AND A GOOD LIFE

I have come to realize that I have to be on my guard all the time to prevent myself from believing claims easily, and I have decided that the way to live a good life is to be able to think well. This requires training though, so I have to discipline myself to be mentally sharp.

What I have done is to write a list of books I want to read, activities I want to do. When it comes to reading books, one has to be very selective, because you are what you read, really, and because you have limited amount of time, you need to decide what is valuable within your lifespan to read, and what can be compromised.

Of course, some dose of h0llywood gossip and trash news can be fun from time to time, but I have decided to acquire the following knowledge:

1. My starting point would be Copernicus, since he was the one who suggested that the Earth is moving around the sun, rather than blindly accept the geocentric view of the universe. Also because I like Galileo and I am very keen to know how the universe is really structured and the truth.

2. from what I have read, I will start from Copernicus, and then move on to Kepler (who discovered the elliptical orbit), then Galileo (whom I have read a fair amount of, but need to brush up on the technical bits), and then Newton. This means I need to brush up on my physics, revisit the fundamental questions of motion and matter.

3. The next thing is to be historically connected, so I need to go back to the pre-renaissance age, and I will resolve to read more about the history of philosophical thought, human though really.

4. The next thing to do is to read on biology, since that is about the human body and life, so before I die I would like to know what goes on. This also involves evolution and darwin – how can I miss him out.

5. Then, I should move on to read about the Big Bang and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

All this should in all, help me understand my existence and the universe.

6. The social sciences, history and literature would be next, followed by art and then other miscellaneous (but interesting though not what I would deem as fundamental for now).

By literature, I mean religious texts as well.

Phew. I hope I live longer.

Also, the quest for knowledge should be accompanied by the quest for a good life as we live it. I have come to feel that the way to love yourself is to really take care of your body, to keep it healthy and fit.

Hence, recently, I have done and still trying to do the following:

1. Reduce intake of white rice and refined flour and bad carbs.I do this by avoiding white bread totally now, buying rye bread instead. For white rice, it is a little difficult to avoid, since rice is a staple, so I have come to halve my serving everytime I buy food outside.

2. I cannot stop eating meat, since they are protein and are not actually bad, but because meat always comes with gravy and sauce, I need to try to reduce the amount of gravy. This is the difficult part I think, because I love gravy.

3. The key thing really is to increase fruits and vegetables. I now make it a habit to eat fruits during breakfast and lunch, and I have found it helps to reduce my appetite for junk food. Nice nice. Veg is a little difficult and also because they come with gravy, hehe.

4. I am bad at drinking water, so I need to be more disciplined when it comes to drinking 8 glasses a day.

5. As for smoking, I have totally quit it. Maybe when I go for a holiday and hang out at the beach, one cigarette might be good.

6. For exercise, I now exercise 3 times a week, quite intensively, but I am trying to aim for 5 days a week….but tired…

PASTOR PRINCE, RELIGION AND LIVING

What do you do on the weekends in Singapore? Honestly?

As much as our busy little city is touted to be so buzzing with activity, whenever I ask people what do they do during weekends, they shrug it off and mumble something like “shop la..then eat.”

In fact, a close friend of mine actually told me that on Saturdays when she meets her boyfriend, the highlight of the date is deciding where to eat for dinner.

Dar and I spend our weekends in the gym at Millenia Walk, followed by coffee at some cafe, usually TCC, and we will head back to her home, where she will do her laundry or whip up some dish for me. Then we watch DVD and fall asleep.

Sometimes, that feels peaceful. Over time, it feels stifling. What is there to do in Singapore?

Change question – What is there to do in Singapore that does not cost anything and where there are no crowds of people pushing you around?

So the Dar and I were sufficiently bored one weekend, despite having gymed like crazy and having read two books on Copernicus, and we decided that since we were around Suntec, we would go on an excursion to see Pastor Prince of New Creation Church.

It was interesting but only because I am a irreverent voyeur who secretly desires to tell people to stop being ridiculous. But nothing that surprised me really. Having gone to City Harvest Church (around my place) few years back – I was dragged by this JC friend of mine and I wanted to be polite and receptive – I realized that the repertoire of these…Sheesh I don’t even know what to call these gatherings, is pretty predictable.

When I went to CHC, I remember the first thing that greeted me was Sun Ho’s MTV that was playing as people were strolling in to the auditorium. So there she was, in her translucent tank top, in some vast field looking melancholic as the very un-melodious (and thus unmemorable) music droned on. The next thing I knew, the pastor was talking about how the construction of the building was due to God’s grace because it was so claimed to be difficult, having so many roads nearby and the plumbing system of the HDB flats around or something.

I wondered if there were any civil engineer there who should be cringing at such a statement.

Then people started waving their hands and blabbering and crying as they did so, and they all stopped in unison when the pastor said stop! It is one thing to be in a divine trance, but I find that it is not too divine when so many people can be activated to start and stop in unison.

All I knew after that session is, I wanted to get out of there and my mind simply cannot comprehend the claims being made.

I do not mind moral preaching or discussion about ethics, about community issues, or biblical history and meaning. But to make unsubstantiated and unscientific claims that were obviously flawed in logic was unacceptable to me.

Same thing. Few weeks ago, when I was at Suntec listening to Pastor Prince, I actually felt I was getting more stupid by the minute. No offense, but how does anyone believe in anything that was said there? There was absolutely no intellectual integrity or quality in there.

I was not even emotionally swayed. To me, I looked at the entire situation as a sociological phenomena. I take the view that to engage in the issue of religion, one needs to be able to engage in its history, in the organizational aspects of religion, and not simply compartmentalize and chuck it as “on its own”. I am willing to engage in debating the meaning and appreciating the beauty and meaning of words in holy texts like the bible or koran. In fact, I tried reading both, but I appreciate it at a literary level, as part of the make up of humanity’s intellectual and creative work.

But to take every word so uncritically is unacceptable to me.

So the Dar and I decided to get out of that session because we gave it a shot, but it was too anti-intellectual for us to bear. Honestly, I have had many wonderful debates at work regarding the education system, teaching practices, pedagogical principles, curriculum. Even in class, one of the most stimulating places for me intellectually to do socratic questioning with students, are far more enriching and satisfying.

We concluded that for some people, they derive satisfaction from going to a place where they simply get affirmed and go “Hell yeah! Woohoo! We are blessed! Wonderful!” They go home feeling great. Why not.

But for me, I gain satisfaction from knowledge and by that, I mean strictly in the philosophical “truth and beauty seeking” type of knowledge, as meant by Plato or Descartes. Reading about the universe, about how things work, about physics, biology, and so on gives me great satisfaction that this is what living is – to find out about ourselves, our existence, the world, in a systematic and rigorous manner.

I wish I were more cliche and would end by saying, to each his/her own. But such anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism frustrates me from time to time.

WE ALL NEED A BREAK

Finally, a two-week in between the very busy and hectic semester. I am going to go away to Malaysia to chill out and just sleep and relax. I promise to take better care of myself, and that means:

1. a new facial package as I am not getting any younger. I see funny lines appearing now..and dark eye circles.

2. Give myself a footbath when I get home, and do mask, and just relax.

3. Exercise more to keep my body in good condition and to make it look better.

4. More shopping and try out different hairstyles.

I suppose I should add volunteer work to the list but I think I need to hold that aside, as my work is getting out heavy and I want to refocus on things, to really look at how I contribute best and where are my strengths.

I also need to get out and enjoy more with friends. friends are so important, other than me-time. They can really be a source of support when you need it. But not all the time. Neediness is frustrating.

My beloved colleague P is leaving my organization soon. I am very sad because she has been someone whom I look forward to seeing everyday, she always talks to me and we joke and laugh together, even though she is a very fundamentalistic kind of Christian, and me, I am as irreligious as one can get sometimes.

I hope to get out of Singapore for a teaching stint, or for some kind of experience.

SHALLOW THOUGHTS

Work has been quite stressful lately, not due to the workload necessarily, but just the managing of people, expectations and my own uncertainty about what is the next step.

On a shallower note, I need to get out tonight and run, and make sure my butt doesn’t turn jelly-like, or if my tummy starts to be quite obviously ‘there’. I need abs. I need heavier weights to do my conditioning. I need discipline. Lots of it.

I look forward to the day where I can stand in front of the mirror and see my abs, and a defined contour.

Tonight. It will just be me, music, my work, and hopefully, definitely, a run.

FRESH WOUNDS EVERYDAY

Pain is a thousand stabs, unrelenting, it does not stop to ask you if you are okay, or how do you feel. Pain is blind, it comes from even the most simplest word, the most trivial gesture. Pain can be the most insignificant event for one person, but a blizzard of terror for another.

Pain is fresh wounds every day, fresh wounds every day.

NO WORDS LEFT

It’s strange how people always perceive me to be quite confident. Maybe it’s because I am not so girly, so they feel that I am “strong”.

In fact, I am not. I just pretend to be.

This weekend, everything that could possibly go bad, has gone bad. I was not strong. I feel stupid. I feel useless.

I think I need some time to get back on my feet and feel ok. For now, I just want the weekend to be over.

RIHANNA AND CHRIS BROWN

Students recently introduced me to the issue of Rihanna being assaulted by Chris Brown. It is interesting to note that Chris Brown himself grew up in a family where his mother was abused.

Should you forgive your partner when they hit you?

Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. It is not a one-way process. It takes a lot for forgiveness to happen, and it takes both sides for forgiveness to happen.

I can understand it is hard to walk away from the relationship because you get confused – does this person love me or not? He says he loves me he is sorry it will never happen again, but it will.

From what I read, psychologists have said that in a case of hitting, it will usually happen more than once. So if you are hoping that the hitting will stop, chances are it won’t. Unless effort is put in to control the rage.

I guess it helps to be prepared for warning signals. In one article I read, it talks about toxic relationships:

“Every toxic relationship goes through a cycle. The cycle follows the following pattern: There is an initial “honeymoon” phase where the new partner seems wonderful and anticipates your every need and want. This is followed by a cycle of escalating behavior where the new partner becomes increasingly critical of you and exhibits extreme paranoia surrounding your every move. This phase can, and often does, even culminate in physical abuse. After the toxic behavior reaches a peak, a reconciliation phase begins where the toxic partner acts contrite and apologizes for their behavior, promising it won’t happen again. Unfortunately, it will happen again, as toxic relationships consistently display this pattern of honeymoon, escalation, abuse and reconciliation over and over again.”

How to get out, like this?

Anyway, I feel really sorry for Rihanna, saw the pictures of her split lip, bashed eye, contusions. I hope Chris Brown if he really loves her, does his best to respect her. If not, it’s better to not be together anymore. But good luck to his next gf…

INSECURITIES

Everyone has their own insecurities, and we all have different ways of dealing with them.

Some feel they are not slim enough, not intelligent enough, not beautiful enough, not good enough. I blame evolution and gene-competition for our insecurities, because I think if there weren’t competition which results in comparison, each would be quite contented with whatever he or she is/has.

Oftentimes, your insecurities get the better of you. That’s when your perspective gets all out of whack and you do silly things that bring back to you, a heightened sense of insecurity. Sometimes you reach out to others to affirm you, but instead of doing so, they make you feel worse.

That’s why we have good friends, BFFs and what not. They are people who will affirm you no matter what. They can see your flaws and they accept them. They love your flaws even cos that’s what makes you who you are.

For every individual, it is important to have that network of support, people who can affirm you. But ultimately, people are hard to trust. If you depend too heavily on others to affirm you, you’ll end up being disappointed.

Life is just a process of learning how to love yourself, and that comes at a price – a lot of heartaches, hurt, disappointment. But if you can get there one day, loving yourself without having others to affirm you. You have lived a good life.