dad

Love each other as I have loved you

by

wesley church sibu

It has been a while since I last attended a church service. By “a while” I actually mean 18 years (!!!). I stopped going when I was 13 – it used to be a family affair before that. We’ll all go for the 7:30 am English worship service followed by brunch.

I’ve been meaning to find a church that I’m comfortable with in KL and made a promise to myself that I’ll start looking last Sunday but since I was in Indonesia, today was the first day I stepped foot inside one.

wesley church

Wesley Methodist Church is a relatively small assembly in Sibu that my family goes to. It can best be described as a conservative Methodist church with strong fundamentalist teachings. The service is very orderly, quiet and steeped in tradition.

I told my dad of my intention to join them for the morning service – my dad is very involved in the church, he’s one of the ushers today so we had to go earlier. I wolfed down a huge chunk of chocolate generously spread with peanut butter (buried would be a better word, I scooped up a good quarter of the contents of the jar) and we all arrived well before the service started.

I was surprised that a lot of the older members of the congregation still recognize me. I didn’t see a lot of new faces, it doesn’t attract a lot of young people due to the reserved and orthodox nature of the church.

church sarawak

Don’t expect loud music and fervent singing, it’s all about solemn hymns with subdued piano music here. I don’t think the church believes in any music written after 1900. smirk

I did enjoy the service though. I sat beside my mom while my dad was performing his duties as an usher. I remember as a kid, we always looked forward to eating at our favorite places right after Sunday service but I quit going to church when I went to high school.

I went for brunch with my parents at my dad’s favorite kampua place after that. The kampua is quite different from Sibu’s normal kampua. It’s somewhere in between kampua and kolo mee. This is the part I miss the most, spending quality time with my parents!

church brunch

I got my mom and dad batik from Jakarta and we’re going to have a nice sit-down dinner later to celebrate Father’s Day.

It’s good to be back! 🙂

You shouldn’t do that

by

me dad

My dad is the person that I admire the most. This is not the first time I have written about him – as I grow older, I get closer and understand him even more. As a kid, especially during my pubescent years where I made it my personal crusade to be the most rebellious little shit in the world, he stood by me.

I never understood why.

He believed in me when I went into a period of an intense hedonistic lifestyle of drugs, alcohol and indiscriminate sex. My dad never supported my choices though – I remember the first time I was arrested – I expected him to bail me out of jail, but he didn’t. I was in there for the standard 14 day remand until a friend bailed me out.

…now some of you might think that means he doesn’t love me. No, that isn’t true. It means he loves me so much he wants me to learn. I didn’t at that time but he kept on believing in me and encouraging me to sort out my life.

He would just tell me his personal take on things and advice me on life. I have always hated his advice – advice being the worse kind of vice and all that – but as I grew older, I started to appreciate it.

Now that I’m turning 31 I find myself looking to him for counsel for all the difficult decisions in life.

I wish I had more time to tap into his wisdom and life experience. Sure, there’s a huge generation gap between us but some things in life will always be true. I have learned love from him – and I believe I will be able to provide the same kind of unconditional love – agape – to my future children.

dad me

I really hope he’ll be there to see that and experience raising my kids with me.

I’m trying to live a healthier life and doing what I can to prolong the time we have together. There is a Wellness Profiling Tool which I’m using to find out about the little bad habits that I’ve never really thought about. It’s on the Great Eastern website and they have a motto that really tugs at my heartstrings – We believe that only you can be there for the ones you love.

There’s also an iOS and Android app called Great Eastern 21 days which you can use to break the bad habits that you have. Research suggests that it takes exactly that amount of time to truly stop a bad habit or start a new (good) one.

Surfing through the site made me realize that I’ve never taken a lot of photos with my dad – there is just a couple of snapshots over the Chinese New Year period and I really want to change that. There’s a Facebook contest where you can win a priceless photo shoot by celebrity photographer Russel Wong by uploading a photo and writing about how much that person means to you.

Your photo will join a gallery of Malaysia’s most irreplaceable people. The contest is called There Will Never Be Another You.

That’s exactly how I feel about you, dad. I’m sorry I was such a hard kid to raise up and I hope I’m doing enough to make up for it now, although as you always say, you don’t want any of that…all you hope to see is for me to be a good person. I’m trying every single day. I love you dad.

O HAI! I IZ AN UNCLE!

by

o hai uncle

I love this pic taken while I was in my sister’s place in Auckland, NZ a few weeks ago. I was carrying my niece and kissing her while my dad looks on. My sister is a bit of a private person (she is my polar opposite) so I am applying mosaic on her daughter (though to what purpose I do not know since all babies look alike).

She smells nice. She has a milky scent and it still puts a smile on my face when I think about her. 🙂

Have a great one dad!

by

bdadbday.jpg

The thing I will always remember about being with my dad is buffets
at hotels. An appropriate photo, even though it wasn’t taken on one of
our family vacations, the imagery is not lost. Happy birthday dad!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...