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April 08, 2007
Easter!
When I was small I had always thought Easter Day is some sort of celebration for the inhabitants of Easter Island, where, I would childishly imagine, white fluffy bunnies hide beautifully colored eggs under the weird stone head figures littered around the coast of the island, all of which some UFO fanatics claim to be the figurines of our green friends from the neighbouring planet Mars.
I had Easter program at church today. And at the age of 20, I think this is my first time celebrating Easter Day. Everyone seemed to be consciously aware of the approaching celebration for the past week and prepared themselves to commemorate our Saviour's death and rise. A sister even fasted for a week for the event. We had more singings than usual today, and I must say I like all the praise songs, especially "Seperti yang Kau Ingini".
Bukan dengan barang fana
Kau membayar dosaku
Dengan darah yang mahal
Tiada noda dan cela
Bukan dengan emas perak
Kau menebus diriku
Oleh segenap kasih
dan pengorbananMu
Ku telah mati dan tinggalkan
Cara hidupku yang lama
Semuanya sia-sia dan tak bererti lagi
Hidup ini kuletakkan
Pada mezbahMu ya Tuhan
Jadilah padaku seperti yang kau ingini
After sharing/service by a senior, we had an exciting egg hunt competition. My group received the first clue which sounds like this:
Dewey decimal classification
No food and no drinks
Parchment and papyrus
Be a missionary
It was clear that the clue refers to the library in the church, and we went there and found the second clue in the shelf labeled 'missionary'. It sounded like this:
"For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free--and have all been made to drink into one Spirit."
We thought, oh no, maybe they want us to quote where the sentence can be found in the Bible. Luckily we had a diligent/ardent Bible reader and found the verse straight away (Christians out there, take this challenge to and quote the source). We went to our supervisor for the next clue, but he said our answer was wrong! We need to think out of the box, he said. So after some wild guesses, we finally hit the point: orange, the color in which the verse is printed, was the answer. And we had to find as many orange plastic eggs as possible littered in the church in one hour and a half.
The supervisors were so creative in hiding the eggs: in kitchen mittens, in between metal poles of the heater, in between chairs stacked on top of another, behind a television set, inside the piano seat (the one with a compartment to keep music books), on high shelves, under a pile of toys etc etc. In the end we found 15 of them. But the game did not end there. Inside the eggs were questions of various sorts (arithmetic, general knowledge, Bible trivia and Bible verses) which we must answer in a certain time limit to gain points.
The arithmetic ones were easy. The Bible verses were hilarious; we were supposed to find a certain word in the Bible and show the actual object to the supervisor. One group found 'Oil' in the greasy leftover plate in the kitchen, and another took off their shoes and threw them at the supervisors. The general knowledge and bible trivia were the hardest, but at least I learned that the shortest book in the Bible is 3 John, Vontrap is the last name of the family in the 'Sound of Music', the first ruler of Hawaii is King Kamehameha (!) etc etc..
Some questions which we got it right:
Who is the manga artist for Doraemon?
Who is the famous Communist leader in Russia?
Where is the painting 'Madonna of the Rocks' exhibited (not to be confused with 'Virgin of the Rocks')?
In the end we received 131 points and ranked 2nd. $30 gift voucher yayy!!
Only today I truly appreciate the meaning of Easter Day. It is not about bunnies, not about a basketful of colored eggs, and certainly not about Easter Island. It is about Jesus Christ who died for us and rose from the grave. And thrilling egg hunts.
Posted by peixin at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2007
Art[s]cience
Okay, this may sound like bragging, but i think i'm good at doing handicrafts. This realization assumption came to me today when i taught people how to weave ketupat shells. The unbelievably amazing thing is i just learnt how to do it a day ago! Perhaps I should be in arts stream and become the future Picasso a batik/songket/ketupat/bak zhang manufacturer. With enough luck i might even made it into Fortune's list big by 20. So what am i doing in a university and experimenting with flies, E coli etc instead?
The argument of arts vs science: which one is a better field should have been flung out of my mind a long time ago after 5 years of pursuing science. somehow i feel like i'm leaving out a big possibility of changing my lifestyle in a totally different way when i chose science. Had i ever given arts a chance? I did learn how to draw, how to use crayons and water color, how to draw perspective views (i loved that a long time ago actually) etc.. If the arts class in school back then included making straw stars and origami, or weaving ketupat and bak zhang, i think i would go for arts without a doubt. Haw haw haw...
Maybe i like to do those stuffs because it fills up my leisure time.. and i think it's a sort of intangible skill which has to be passed down from generation to generation.. it would be sad if no one in the newer generation knows how to make bak zhang or ketupat just because they don't know how to weave them anymore (if you are thinking that plastic bags can replace the woven bamboo and coconut leaves in cooking those savoury food, you are sick don't know what real deal food is)
Science can be an art also, in some sort of sense. Like burning flies after you are done with them (sounds cruel right.. i'm evil) ethanol can be a handy liquid. just joking haha.. now the serious part: the sense of art in science came to me as the design in drugs to combat diseases; as the deciphered mechanisms and pathways in which DNA, RNA, proteins etc mesh together to form an intricate web of life which function perfectly, in ways beyond how a Picasso impressionism can ever be appreciated. This art is beyond Mankind. This art is the work of God.
Posted by peixin at 11:27 AM | Comments (1)