Familylane: 10/01/2007

Family Reunions on Hari Raya, the Muslim celebration!

It's the celebration of the Muslim New Year and a time for family renuions over great food. We're not Muslims but we enjoy the festivity and it turned out that we had a nice family reunion ourselves as the photos below depict :

Special stalls are found selling all kinds of delicious Malay cuisine

Oldest Sister from Penang happens to be in KL to see her niece from Australia and her son

A mixed Aussie boy trying a Chinese hat for size

There is delicious food on the table as in all family renuions!

Here's wishing all our Muslim friends a very happy reunion and 'Selamat Hari Raya'

Family Reunions on happy occasions like Weddings

This couple of months seems to be a season of reunions for families. Besides the Hari Raya Muslim celebration, wedding bells seem to be ringing for several families as pictured below :

Eddie and Lillian Tan's second son's marriage gathered together many other friends and families to join them on this auspicious day in a grand wedding dinner at the Sunway Hotel Ballroom.

Here is Gavin Tan, once a primary child in the Church, now a full grown adult with his new bride

Several families from the Church were present to enjoy the food and entertainment planned for the evening

Here are the Ee boys with their mother

Fang Mei and her children
Wedding bells for Yih Chwin, the daughter of Koay Poon Hock and Eng Huey
The grand dinner was held at the Palace of Golden Horses, East Garden. After the groom kissed the bride in a cake cutting ceremony, the night sky was filled with fireworks!

Members of the Church from PJ filled several tables for the dinner

Anthony Lim with his grand daugher Jazlynn, dressed as a future bride!

Musicians filled the air with beautiful music as the dinner progressed through the evening

Family Reunions on a less happy occasion

After the last wedding dinner, I had a good night's sleep to hit the highway at pre-dawn for Singapore

DAY 1 - By the time it was bright morning, I was close to reach Singapore! The object was to bring Geok Lee to the hospital for her second operation for breast cancer. The account for her first operation is found here

It's Sunday morning and it was mainly preparation time for the operation on Monday morning.

Even before the operation, friends from Church dropped by to offer prayers. Bishop Jon Lim and his wife Doreen is seen in the above photo.

DAY 2 - On Monday morning, she is finally ready to be rolled to the operation theatre.

She went into the theatre about 11am

Only at about 9pm the same day was she returned back to the ward.

Still quite weak and drowsy, family members could only stand in quietness to see her without much communication from her.

DAY 4 - After a full day's rest, she was more alert and refreshed on the fourth day

More family members came by to visit, mainly Geok Lee's two brothers in Singapore and their wives. She had another full day of rest with more visitors from church visiting.

DAY 6 - It's Friday October 19 and Han turns 17! We brought a cake to the hospital so Mom could join in the celebration with Fei Min joining us on the phone in Beijing

We couldn't leave out the nurses that have been taking good care of mom!

DAY 7 - She finally got discharged from hospital and Woon Pin, Dad's nephew who is working in Singapore came by for a visit at the home.

To continue her journey of treatments in the hospital, it is best to click here.

How Dad spends his Birthday

With meetings starting in the morning and more in the afternoon and night, a quiet dinner was only possible at 10pm. Now it's almost midnite and my day is about over so I will take some time to reflect on my special day!

In case anyone is curious to know of my age, you can visit a recent webpage I created at http://fastlane.info/sji where you will find my old school friends of the same age and what we're doing next year.

This birthday, I'm launching the long predicted website that shares my Heart and Mind where the opening page is just posted at http://familylane.info/personal. It's still in draft form and so I'll take time now to continue to work on it.

Thanks to all the family members and friends who remembered and conveyed their wishes to me. My heart and mind after all these years can be discovered in the new website and may be a revelation to many as I may not have been an easy person to understand due to my fast movements and busy involvement in many different areas of life.

My last meeting today ended at 10pm and is about my involvement in the building management of the apartment I have moved into recently. I was elected to be a council member of the management corporation recently to help solve some sticky problems of divided camps and hard headed former council members still struggling to hold on to their positions to the extent that they locked up the management office. Thank goodness there is the Strata Title's act to ensure there is law and order. With the City Council and Police on our side, we met tonight to firm our course of action and will soon have a breakthrough.

I'm surprised every now and then that someone in the community knows me from somewhere in the past and living in the apartment is no exception. I was in the midst of pacifying the maintenance workers for not getting any salary yet because of the dispute and another resident walks up and recognizes me from the past!! Guess the KL City Kid is still making waves wherever he goes to get noticed! hahaha. I couldn't imagine the other day that even a security guard noticed my motorcycle in the car park and remarked that he had seen it in another building that I've been working at. I wonder why he is another stranger that asks me the common question, are you local??? I'm waiting for the day someone will ask me are you human!! hahaha

With half a million dollars or ringgits in the building fund, I guess too may people have a vested interest to be in the council. The fight gets dirty! Even Simba my good friend was threatened when the opposition party remarked that dogs should not be in the apartment.... grief! Truly, it's a dog eat dog world out there sometimes and may the best dog win! lol I'm appreciative of the experience as I am able to continue to test all the theories I've been researching on with regards to the interplay of our Hearts and Minds for Optimal results. It's been a good birthday for me as I can talk to everyone with clarity and ease despite a tense atmosphere of the residents in conflict. So wish me well for the rest of the days as I believe they will be long!

Happy 22nd Birthday Su Min

It's her birthday today but we already wished her by email on Monday earlier this week as she only gets to check her emails on her P(preparation) day on Mondays. As she cannot surf the net to read our family blogs, a CD compilation of all our family blogs were sent to her by snail mail as part of her birthday package.

Her mission journal can be found in her blog and her mission call can be read here

The following are some photos taken on her mission in Oakland California with her own comments :