Life, Travel, GRACE

Not long ago, we celebrated no. 1 son's birthday. He's 3 years old now. A big boy. Still there's a lot of things for him to learn. Time will tell.

Not long ago, there was a balloon festival in Putrajaya. The wasn't much spectacular for this time. Unlike previous year, they had Dark Vader and Doraemon shape balloon. This year it was quite boring. Not many international participation. Let's hope it will be better next year. This time, I snapped the photo from afar. A better location to take fireworks at the end of the event. A view from the bridge

We had a rally at the Nav office last weekend. Wency from the Philippines Nav shared on his community team setup and lesson learnt. He called it a missional community. In brief, a community should have three elements. The foremost is that a community should be relational. The members in the community should have a transformational life as well. That's the second element. In other words, one couple or family has the influence of transforming other member's life especially in spiritual life. Lastly, a community should be missional. Members need to relate to outsiders as part of their missional work. So one does not need to go out from his or her comfort zone to be a mission worker. How's your community life sound like?

Asakusa district is famous for its old temple. It is also a hang out area for the backpackers. A must-visit place in Tokyo for every tourist. At the temple area, it is like walking in Jonker's Street area except with much crowd. The most photographed site is undoubtedly the main gate - Kaminarimon, with its giant lantern hanging. Wait, not sure if it is a lantern. But it does look like a lantern, doesn't it? Inside the complex, you will find all sorts of souvenir shops and local delicacies. Further down the street are the theaters. While I was there, we (friends and I) bumped into few Malaysians. See, that's why it's a hot spot.

I must thank my Prof for selecting me to attend a workshop in Tokyo recently. The workshop was held in Tokyo Institute of Technology (TITech) - Ookayama campus. I would say the premise is very convenient. The train station is just across the street from the main gate. Nearby there are rows of shops and eateries. Not to mention McD is situated right opposite the main gate too. The campus is not big. You can cover the entire campus by foot. This makes the navigation easy; unlike our local public university. Some of the buildings are quite artistic (check out the library building). The main administration building is the most photographed building in the campus, I guess, as it's one of the earliest establishments. A decent place to study I would reckon. The main administration building Library building Library (closer view) Main road leading to cafeteria

 This book is an account of a four year old boy who claimed to have gone to heaven and back. Well, the book was written by his father who gathered all the information from him. It happened when the boy had a surgery. During the surgery, he claimed to have flown out from his body and went to heaven. Well, the interesting piece was how he described heaven, Jesus, his great grandfather whom he never met, his other sister whom did not make it to the world (and his parent never told him about this) and other heaven stuff. His parent always him asks how does Jesus look like. Because he can't fully describe the feature of Jesus' face (he was only four, remember), he can only answer if the portrait resembled Jesus. Most of the portraits do not match to what he's seen. Until one day when his father came across a news about another kid had a vision of heaven and able to paint it out. And here how Jesus looks like, according to two sources from what I've read. How do you ...

A year ago, the backyard of our condo started to show sign of collapsing. Well, it was not the main building that would be collapsed but the fence and the ground near the river. This was due to soil erosion on the river bank. Things got pretty messy after a few heavy downpours. Some people brought this issue to the press and assemblymen. Soon after, the restoration began. The restoration was completed last December. Today the structure is still intact. Below are the photos of the backyard based on timeline. April 23, 2011 April 30, 2011 May 16, 2011 May 24, 2011 June 30, 2011 July 14, 2011 August 12, 2011 November 15, 2011 December 26, 2011