Going south...

Attending a one week course at Richmond, Virginia... and the whole family comes along.

Setting off. Charis with her personal luggage... filled with her goodies and snacks...


Dinner on the first night was at Pho So 1....

The food wasn't too bad. Shin Tho (or is it Shin To?) was on the menu, but it looked different from what we had in Vietnam. Brought back lots of memories of Hanoi.


Walked around after dinner. One of the historical places at Virginia - Byrd Theater:



Charis, after one hard training session at the pool with her new personal swimming coach...


... on a mega bed.... we could have hidden Josiah somewhere there....


... but we didn't... He has his own bed.



Oh, and this is Charis' personal swimming coach... Highly recommended. (Sorry, Coach... this is the best photo that I've got....)

talk show

For those who loves hymns....

I seldom give recommendations, so when I do, they must be good stuff. So listen now and listen good....

Joel Rosenberger plays beautiful hymns on the piano, and he shares them through his blog at http://joelcast.blogspot.com/. If you enjoy hymns, take a look. Many of his pieces are really wonderful. You can also download the hymns to your iTunes and iPod, etc.

I have placed a widget on the sidebar of this blog - now you can listen to beautiful hymns while reading this blog! Isn't this fantastic! Not that the content of this blog goes well with the hymns.... but it is nevertheless still a fantastic combination. I think.

While I'm at the business of making recommendations, the wanton mee at East Coast Park Food Center has my 2 thumbs up.

arrrrwhoooommmm

canceled visit

The swine flu is going around in this part of the world. The Yam family has to cancel their plans to visit us (early May). Just to be safe and responsible. Kind of sad for them and us, as we were looking forward to catching up and having a good fellowship with one another. We have been anticipating their visit for the last few months... We had some plans for meals (chick-fil-A, krispy kreme) and outings (Strip District, Squirrel Hill, Grove City...). But well, man proposes but God disposes.

Thankfully we are able to cancel the hotel reservations at Mystic and Cape Cod Bay. But we are stuck with some snacks that we have loaded up - 2 bags of beef jerky, 1 bag of dried mango, 1 box of sun chips, 1 bag of M&Ms. All from Costco, so all are of mega sizes. Too much hassle to return them... guess the best alternative is to just consume them (not that I mind).

Thankfully, too, we have not made the car rental arrangements.



But we did get a mini-van.

God willing, we hope to make a trip back to Singapore at the end of the year. Just a few more months to go. A few more months.

Through it all

After lots of prayers, Elaine and I invited some friends from school and their spouses over to our place for a time of fellowship last week. It was a blessed time to gather and worship God and share His Word.

One of the songs that we sang was Through It All. A song that we used to sing during fellowship and prayer meetings in Nazareth. Brought back lots of nostalgia.

Chicago, here we come....

My 1st summer research paper (which I started working on in July last year) has been accepted for presentation at a conference in August 2009 in Chicago. An added bonus is that the paper has been judged "to be one of the best accepted papers" in the program. Not too bad for a 1st year summer paper, I think. And to think that there were lots of uncertainty about whether the project would take off in May and June last year, we feel pretty good about what has been achieved with this paper thus far.

Furthermore, July last year was when I was diagnosed with some genetic eye condition - muscular dystrophy. Possibly vitelliform dystrophy. Basically I lost much of the central vision in my right eye. I had lots of difficulties with reading and doing the programming for the research project. (Praise God that now the vision is much better!) Given all these challenges, there is no doubt that what we accomplished with this research are but by God's wonderful grace. We learnt what faith and trust in God really is, and how faithful and trustworthy our Almighty God was, is and will continue to be.