I just cannot believe it. I'm reminded again why we constantly keep looking for new things when gems can be be found in what is already with us. I discovered what is perhaps the most exciting music since Blind Willie Johnson,



Washington Philips is a travelling gospel singer who left behind only 18 songs recorded between 1927 and 1929. It's like nothing I ever heard before. He played a rare instrument believed to be called a dolceola and his songs are unique, not in the mould of any other gospel singers of that era. It's been a long time since I was last so excited about gospel music, this one does it for me.

A real good tip if you want to download his music legally for free. Sign up for a 2 weeks trial at emusic (Emusic.com) and you'll get a free 50 songs download which is enough to download all his entire collection.
Check him out and check others like Blind Willie Johnson, Reverand Gary Davis and Mahalia Jackson if you want a change from the latest Hillsongs, Delirious or Steven Curtis Chapman...

And while you are at it, remember to look within before you start looking for what is the latest fanfare in the market. You maybe surprised by what you can find.

Be His always!

After our Christmas weekend, I went to Pulau Ubin after so many years with David, Lee, Say Ann and my family. It was a great time to wind down after all the hardwork the many weeks before. Also cleaned up my study room to make space for May Ann who’s starting Primary 1 next year . Later had a chance to sit down to listen to a CD I bought from a coffee shop owner in Chieng Mai early this year. He who used to be full time musician but then decided to settle down and lead a slower and more virtuous life. The CD burned on the CDR doesn't have a proper cover. I don’t even remember his name, but I have a photo of him and his artwork he did on the sleeve of the CD.



Because the songs are sung in Thai, I didn’t understand the words of the songs but having spoken to the man, met his family and our kids played and shared ice-cream with his, I thoroughly enjoyed the music and the music connected to me and meant something regardless of the short encounter we had.



A lot of what we do in Children Church is not understood. Sometimes we may not even communicate as clearly as we want to. As we work on those things, we have to know that if the children knows us and have a relationship with us, the work that we do, things that we say will have a special meaning. Christmas is not about a programme, it is about the special relationship God created us to have with the children in our ministry. God did not call us just to do a great programme for children but to disciple them and influence towards serving Christ and I don’t know any other way to disciple other than to talk to them, to know them and to show them what God has shown us. The best gift we can give them is our TIME. We believe God will do a good work in them as we are faithful in the ministry.

Anyway, I just want to say thank you to all the volunteers and helpers for making Christmas happen. We never believe that kids should have anything less, we give our best in the programming too. What a wonderful Christmas it was with so many kids turning up that we had to scramble to find more gifts to give to the children. In the end everything fell into place and the seeds have been sowed.

We hope and prayed that these children who were so eager to know & receive Christ, will come back next week for more. The last verse of our theme song, Sincat sings " ... so don't be a chicken, come on sail with me ! " ... and we hope the children will sail their life journey with us and with God too.

posted by Hiew Hong Teck  # 10:28 AM  0 Comments

Have you ever wondered what type of people go crazy ? Yeap its the type of people who takes themselves too seriously. Those who has a agenda not just for themselves and for others as well.

We live in a world where we cannot impose on others, we have to respect and influence. The best way to influence is not by what you try to do but who you are. If we work on who we are and then we don't have to sweat over trying to make an impact. Who we are would have been doing it. I believe that arts and expression has been watered down by the emphasis of economics and science. Poets, writers and musicians are not as highly esteemed and valued as scientists, doctors and managers. While the latter appeared more useful, they are the ones most likely to go insane. The former looks out to see the world as it can be seen (and marvel at it). The latter tries to disect it and make sense of it which is highly dangerous. Who can really make sense of this world we live in ?

I don't think we should be one or the other. We should be both. It is just that in the urban society, it is more skewed towards logic and reason. Work hard, serve God but don't take ourselves too seriously. Marvel at the world that God has created. It was G.K.Chesterton I believe who said that the reason why angels could fly is because they take themselves lightly. We should too.

Having said that on a lighter note..a group of people I stumbled upon who doesn't take themselves too seriously is the Dormitory Boys http://twochineseboys.blogspot.com Check them out and laugh your heads off if you haven't for a long time now.

Have tried to put up this new banner above for quite a while and never got to it until today. This new one has my 3 kids on it besides God's word and my Halena fountain pen. So that means I will have to put the old one here to rest and for archival here


Ever wonder about our new body in heaven if it's going to be 'V' or 'O' shaped ?

If its going to be glorious, it ought to be 'V'. But if by then, our social standard would have been redeemed as well, it won't really matter if its 'O' either. I rather be 'O' and be accepted by Him than be a 'V' and still have to fight for it from others. It's the same in heaven as well as here on earth.

I just attempted to download a 10 Mbyte DirectX runtime component from the internet using my 56K dialup modem and it took 1.5 hours to download up til 5 more minutes to go. And then the connection broke. I stared at the screen in total amazement, I could almost see the screen like a mirror with my face & thick smoke coming out of my ears. It is moments like these it makes me wonder if I should just take the plunge and go broadband. I also thought about what my other options are. Well besides fixing the source of the problem which is the bandwidth, I can fix the real source of the problem which is my inability to not get affected by digital data which consists of bits and bytes.

It's 5 more days to our Christmas Service in the children's church and its time I stop thinking about the children programme and start thinking about the significance of the season, you know what does it all really mean.. We have done our best to plan out the best programme our mind can conceive for the kids and its now best for us to step back and think about it in a deeper manner. Kids are not just an audience for us to practice our new communication tools on but precious lives to sensitively teach and nurture. We have to be accountable for each of these little ones who cross our path. Infact we have to be accountable for everything that cross our path, our talent, money, food, time.... and internet bandwidth! If i have broadband, would it make me work more and spend less time with people ? Would it make me dependent on strange things like efficiency and hinders me to be what God really called me for.

Lately people has blessed me with cool things that amazed me but I've little need for ... a second hand blackberry phone, a USB biometric password manager and some food vouchers. I'm totally grateful for the people who has given me these, more because they thought of me than anything else. Their friendship and love will be remembered long after these gifts are gone. I'm blessed with thoughtfulness of these generous and unpretentious people in my life. I'm thankful this weekend I'll surely get to meet many more little ones who are perhaps the most unpretentious people in the whole world. I'm really looking forward to meeting new kids in our 2 Christmas children services. They give us more than they realise they could give.

Last week after my message, a 11 year old asked me if I was Jesus. I laughed and said no but that He is in my heart. Must then then that he decided to accept Jesus in his too I thought Jesus is such a heavy burden for me to bear but later realised that I was wrong; Jesus is infact directly the opposite, he ain't heavy in my heart. He is light and just right for me. It is a great great joy to be carrying His name.
I'm so proud to be Christian. It's 1:35am and I'm listening to Mahler Symphony Number 2 or the "Ressurection" symphony conducted by Otto Klemperer while writing this blog and it fills me with the greatest pleasure to be serving the resurrected King this Christmas. Merry Christmas everybody and hope you will have the best one yet this year.

After 4 nights of trying to salvage parts of my old PC to build a new one, I finally got it all together. I upgraded my motherboard (ASRock), CPU (AMD) and RAM (1 Gigabyte). Of the 2 old harddisks I managed to retrieve files from one of them. Most of the photographs and music on the other one is gone. It was sad ... so you can imagine how thrilled it was for me to find a solitary MP3 file lying in the harddisk that was okay and it was MY FIRST RECORDED SONG.. "Sunset" Of all the music, this one survived!!




Sunset (hi-fi | lo-fi )is one of the very first songs I've written and the first ever recorded in my old PC of my little Home Studio. Anyway I opened an account in SoundClick.com, uploaded it and you can listen to it there... if you promise not to laugh too much and just tell me what you think. Actually I don't mind cos I suppose when you like something and knowing life is imperfect, you don't mind doing it though you don't do it too well.

This new PC will be my digital audio workstation for making the soundtrack to our Christmas Musical Sincat's Rough Sea Journey This time I'm getting someone who actually knows what she's doing, play the piano and sing. I thought if God has given me wisdom that I should use it. :-)

My life has gone so complicated that I now hold a handphone. The Nokia 2100 was passed down to me by my wife and I remember the last time I owned one was 6 over years ago. It was a testing of self control when every month I was paying 60 to 80 over dollars.

Now I'm older and wiser. I'm using a pre-paid plan. My self imposed allowance is $18 for 1.5 months. If I fail, I'll dig up my old pager and write to the Telco to reconsider phasing back pagers again. I think it has become extinct much too early than it should.

How often should a person change plans last minute and how often should one be late for appointments ? Not often I hope, but with a handphone it can be so possible. Oh look at the time, its 6pm now, I'll be running late, wait while I SMS my friend that I'll be 15 minutes late.