Espresso for a Woman's spirit

Just came back from the Woman's Katoomba Convention. It was great, a weekend of worship and learning and just people getting together. 2000 women together and totally committed to God. I think it's great. It's great that we can still get great teaching when a group of women come together. Many times, when women come together, it's to learn to cook or knit or watch crazy videos or even worse - to gossip. So it's refreshing that we can learn from God's word together effectively without the men! Relaxing in the lovely blue mountain air and sunshine and enjoying His creation.

Just needed to get out of the house even though i couldn't find anyone to come along with me. It was a great drive. Just basking in the beauty of God's creation, listening to christian songs on the CD player. Carrington Falls Kiama by the south coast The view of the southern coast and the highlands

I have heard so much about hillsongs that when i heard that they were having a conference this month, i decided that i should go and experience it. Since i couldn't take leave to go for the whole conference, i decided to go for the evening talks. There were 2 times 4.30 and 7.30pm. There were a whole series of different song leaders and speakers at each of the slots. The first one was on tuesday where chris tomlin was song leading and louie giglio was speaking. He was talking about how great God was and was giving an example of the universe. And talking about how small earth was compared to the rest of the universe yet God was interested in each of our lives. It was a very good reminder. the next 2 nights were not as good as the first night. However it was interesting to listen to Joseph Prince speaking. I have heard so much about his speaking but haven't heard it myself. The talk was not too controvesial and nothing of the asking for tithing ( though there was enough about tha

This was a long weekend and like many sydneysiders, i was planning a trip out to Dubbo with friends. However, there was torrential rainfall and storms in NSW this weekend too, destroying many people's plans to go out of town. It was quite scary - as we speak, the death toll is up to 9 and there are still floodings going on in parts of NSW. There was a section of highway that collapsed and sent a family of 5 down into the river and they all died. Watch this video. Someone said that this showed the wrath of God. http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/scp_v3/viewer/index.php?pid=16471&rn=248153&cl=2957725&ch=885604 So what did i do in the end? We had hotpot at April and Kenneth's place. with a little alcohol - or a lot depending on who you were. Just the right food for the weather.

Was in town on satuday when i chanced upon a roadshow for TVB in sydney. They were recruiting new customers for satellite TV broadcasting TVB programmes. As part of the performance, they had singers singing. The first one i heard sounded like Guo Mei Mei. I said sounded cos i couldn't see - there was a huge crowd of pp! There was another singer after that but i couldn't see him and i didn't recognise the song. Was tempted to sign up for the package. Then on sunday, Pastor preached about idolatory and about how some of us spend so much time in front of the TV worshipping it instead of reading the bible or a christian book. Then i thought, maybe i should give this some thought and prayer!

I spent the weekend with friends. It is amazing that when one is away and alone, we form new bonds with friends whom you may not be with otherwise when back home. The sense of bonding together when you are away from family and friends is just great. Saturday was spent in hunter's valley. There is a festival there called lovedale long lunch. 7 vineyards come together to organise a day of wine and dine. You buy a wineglass and then you can taste wine at all 7 vineyards and $20 for a main meal and $8 for dessert. You can hop from one vineyard to another either eating a main or desert or just tasting wine. There are bands outside playing and a whole group of people sitting under the sun eating and dancing. The atmospher is just great. I went with a friend from singapore and her 2 friends from college. After that we proceeded home where we had laksa and bah ku teh, all done by ourselves! And we ate with relish. Sunday was newcomers lunch at a elders' house. It was a great time of fe

I am very excited about this new machine. I think it will add many hours of great coffee enjoyment. The metallic thing in the background is a milk/foam maker. and the little bottle is a chocolate shaker giving..... The end product.

It's been a busy weekend and i am feeling it now! Friday night was spent with friend in Chatswood. Having dinner and kangaroo meat which my friend picked up at the nearby supermarket. Then explored chatswood supermarket - miracle - a chain of chinese supermarkets here. but the largest i have seen so far. And i found kaya toast from Glory! and Qoo drinks. HM - you really can find everything here if you look hard enough. Sat- i attended a children's ministry workshop at sydney mission and bible college. It was an enlightening experience with many new ideas. A good take home point was that children's ministry should not be relegated to the most junior pastors but all church workers should take a strong interest in children's ministry and they should be treated as members of the congregation and not future members. It was an enriching day. I ended off the day with dinner at my friends'. Sunday morning was another good day for learning. We had a guest pastor at church pr

Internet buying/postal buying is a big thing in Australia. You can get practically anything on the internet as long as you have a credit card (which i actually only have a singaporean one so it's a little tricky but i am working on an assie credit card). The first week i arrived, i bought a magazine which had this book sale thing in it. Where you could buy good book like - Cooking with Jamie Oliver, Neil Perry- the food i like, Kylie Kwong and another cooking book which i forget now for the very ridiculous price of 38. And you get a free luggage set. Sounds great right? and can return if you don't like it. Then the books came - in the mail some more(which you have to pick up from the post office cos of course it can't fit into the post box) And i find out - you actually have to buy 6 more books over 1 year if not they charge you the cost price of the books; which actually is not very bad but of course they didn't tell you when you first bought it. Then I recently went t

I have not frequently cooked when i was at home. but here, food is so expensive that it makes logical sense to cook. For example, a plate of hokkein noodles cost $10 and probably doesn't taste anything like hokkein noodles. But cooking for 1 is tricky. cos i need to ration the amount of food cos if i cook too much, i'll overeat. also i need to think about things that i can keep for lunch the next day. cos lunch in the hospital is really quite crappy. But i think i'm getting there. I cooked for friends recently who came to visit me in sydney and they finished everything off! So i'm not bad! Will attempt some dinner parties next time. only problem is no tableware and no chairs! Here are some examples of what i've cooked. rice with fried egg and chye sim with mixed seafood fish porridge with fried beef and chives yummy? Another useful tip. lee kum kee black bean sauce and char siew sauce and oyster sauce taste good with anything!

Finally got my broadband set up. Learning to do things that seemed so simple and convenient in singapore - was really difficult. Even getting a phone line has it's share of problems. Point of note. communications in sydney is really expensive. For a mobile phone, there is a connection charge for both sides and calls are charged per 30 seconds. Then for landlines, there's a rental charge for the phoneline and charges per call. Hence, the thrifty person i am, went around shpping for the best deals, which definitely was not the main providers ie telstra and optus. and chose this provider called AAPT. which took a few days to connect my initial line then 3 days after it was connected the phone line went flat again. it took another few days to investigate the problem. and since it was over the weekend, it took another few days. and then they realised that there was some problem with the telephone line in the building and had to reconnect the line again and had to wait another few da

I am really leaving. It's D-4 days to Sydney. I have been spending the past week meeting up with people. Some are new acquitances that i have just started getting comfortable with. Others are old friends who go back years and we are like history... Whatever it is, it is sad to leave them. I wonder if things were ever be the same after the break in communication. Of course, the world is smaller now with internet connection, skype, gchat, yahoo messenger etc.... still i feel that nothing beats face to face contact and communication. To my friends, See you'll again soon

Had a rough weekend. Had difficulty getting out of the house to go to church for the first time. I prayed very hard for strength. Feeling that i would probably make the children cry when they saw me, i decided against going to teach. Yet, God once again showed his mercy and grace for me. the sermon was great... especially JT's illustration of how the gospel was powerful enough without adding or subtracting from it. He used the illustration of blackjack. 21 was the magic no in blackjack. More than 21, you bust the bank. Less than 21, you can lose. The gospel is like 21. just enough.... Then God gave me friends. Loads and loads of people to speak to, to distract me, to encourage me. some didn't even know that they were actually encouraging me. Thanks for hanging out with me. I know that when things get tough, all i need to do is to depend on God and take the first step. Like a physiotherapist, even though we think we can't walk on that broken leg, God is there to support up a

Today i have been reflecting on broken relationships. Yes, actually i have been reflecting for a long time already. only today it's more objective rather than subjective. I visited a friend who just had an operation. We had lunch with her and her husband and the topic of divorce came up. Apparently during their courtship, they had broken up for a month. During which period of time she had been unable to accept it and kept calling him and was told "i don't love u anymore" (sounds familiar??) He says, " you can still remember it after so long?" (they have been married for 5 years) She says " it hurt so bad that i can't forget it. " which struck me cos even though they are happily married with 2 kids now, she still can't forget the hurt so how much more the hurt when a relationship with someone you love is broken. i sometimes feel the hurt too much to bear, but when i think about it logically, i have replaced that relationship with the love of

a friend introduced me to jigsaw puzzles a while back. it's a rather expensive habit cos apart from the costs of the jigsaw puzzle, the frame also cost quite a bit. recently though i've discovered that the ikea frames are cheap and although they don't fit exactly, it stil looks quite good. so i have started again. i just completed one yesterday. 500 pieces. this one took me longer than i expected cos of the very complex blue sky, in jigsaw puzzle terms, the more homogenous the picture is the more difficult the puzzle cos you are just trying to match puzzle shapes. anyhow i finished it. it got me thinking though about how we are like jigsaw puzzles, we can't see the big picture, sometimes when we try to fit the pieces in, we just can't get them to fit and sometimes the pieces that seem to fit so well are actually the wrong ones. it also takes lots of patience to piece the pieces together; but the reward in the end is worth it. i pray that God is fixing a beautiful pi

I think i started a blog a long long time ago however the last time i had 1 entry and have since completely forgotten about it. I hope this blog lasts longer. I feel that the last 4 months have been one long sabbatical even though i officially only stopped work for the last few weeks. since my great spiritual upheaval, i have not been doing very much serious work actually. Hehe.... I am looking towards going to sydney in apprehension. Not very excited but looking forward to a change of atmosphere for a while. I have discussed this with a few post 30 people. When you go past 30, any change is not welcomed. when i was younger, i would have been so so excited about going to stay in a new country away from my parents but now much older, i don't really want to leave....Most of us post 30s have similar feelings. suddenly your roots grow and pulling them up is painful. I can only pray that God will get me through this as he has always and that he will show me a new perspective on life ( h