See-Saw Week

The see-saw holds mixed memories for me. On one hand, there was the thrill of going up and down, and on the other hand, there was the rear end pain when I came down too quickly and the see-saw struck the ground. One particular bad memory sticks out. It was back in 1988 when I attended a church camp at Fraser's Hill in Malaysia. There was a see-saw in the playground and I was playing on it along with some others, including some of the older youths. I thought I would play the see-saw trick, where once you come down, you quickly get off the see-saw. Your end jumps into the air as the other end crashes to the ground. It's a silly trick, even sillier when the person sitting on the other end is almost twice as heavy as you. Anyway, when I jumped off, my end of the see-saw jumped into the air, only faster than I had expected. I failed to get clear of the see-saw and my end struck me under my chin. That really hurt.

Anyway, you know what a see-saw week is. It has its ups and downs, just like in life. The week began reasonably well with BSF resuming after a break. It was good to see the leaders again at the leaders' meeting. A new leader named See Leng joined us at the meeting. It was even better to see my group again, though 3 didn't manage to turn up. This is a ministry I really love to be part of. Afterwards, it was time for the lecture. We're doing the book of Colossians this time, and it looks like it will be harder than the previous two books we've done. Anyway, I sat at the first row near some of my guys. Incidentally See Leng was there too and I sat next to her.

Sitting at the front takes some getting used to as there is nowhere to put your things except the floor and there is nowhere to rest your feet. Anyway, as I was listening to the lecture, I noticed something in the corner of my eye. It was the notebook which See Leng was using to take notes. Each page of the notebook had a printed design on it. The design was a plant which looked like the old Adidas logo. It sort of resembled the marijuana plant, but it had three leaves and not five. There were some words below the plant, and I saw they read "British American Tobacco". I was kind of shocked and the shock must have registered on face as afterwards, when I started to ask See Leng about the notebook, she knew straight away what I was going to ask. Anyway she got the notebook at a career fair and was just using it since she had it. To be fair, she wrapped the book up so that the cover design cannot be seen. We laughed about it.

I noticed Serene wears ear rings. Studs actually. I think I must have noticed before but back then it didn't register. Anyway as she was leaving after the lecture, I said to her, "I see you do wear ear rings." She was quite puzzled and so I told her that I had sent her diamond ear rings on Facebook but that I didn't know for sure at the time whether she did wear ear rings. Ha.

Drove Christine home instead of dropping her at my church as I normally do. Had a good time talking with her along the way about her studies and work.

CG on Wednesday was pretty good. We're doing a Bible study on the book of Hosea. It's quite a thought provoking, with many personal applications and challenges. We celebrated Philip's birthday with a small cake with plastic toys on it. Then we had lots of fruit; kiwi, oranges, and pomelo.

I didn't quite feel right today. My mood wasn't helped with some information I received. Anyhow I went to remedial training at Maju Camp. During the training, I had just completed three sprints of nearly 300 meters each. I ran each of them under 70 seconds as required. However I noticed that my pulse was racing. You see, we now wear a heart rate monitor around our chest which is linked wirelessly to a watch which we are also issued with. Anyway my pulse was well over the safe limit and I was absolutely exhausted. Nevertheless I pressed on with another lap of the square, and carried on with the mass PT exercises. My pulse was still racing and it was with much difficulty that I forced myself through two sets of exercises. We were about to start a 3rd set when I felt really lousy. Nausea had set in and I felt like I was on the point of fainting. I decided to fall out to the side to rest. I rested for more than an hour yet my pulse still hovered around 100. It's only just gotten back to normal.

What else will my see-saw week bring?