Beyond The Gates of Splendor

Kiasu. It has been quite a long time that I have used this word. Probably living in America, the general feeling is that most Westerners are rich and affluent so much so that they do not need to be kiasu. Haha... not like us Malaysians. But that is wrong especially the day after Thanksgiving, it marks the date every shoppaholic would never miss. All these avid fans of discounts, freebies, rebates will line up in the wee hours of the morning biting the cold until the store opens at 5am. Imagine the splendor of the ultimate must-have (limited X-BOX 360s, big screen plasma tvs) beyond the gates.

I for one is guilty of such idiosyncratic behavior. Getting a set of handsfree telephones for my family back in Malaysia is one of my priorities this year. Cheap recent DVDs at $4 (normal price is $15-20) is also one of my targets, even though that is much more expensive than those pirated DVDs back home. It is especially hard for me to buy some big heavy stuffs since my house is not ready yet and I would have to move it again from my 2nd floor apartment to my house when it is ready. I hate moving and carrying heavy stuffs. However the lure of a heavily discounted 32" lcd tv proved too hard to resist. The notion that it is the only one left fueled my inner gizmo lust which had dwindled long time ago. I had trouble deciding whether I should go for lcd, plasma, DLP, lcd projection, projector or LCOS or 20", 32", 37", 42", 50", 55", 60", whatever. There are just too many choices. Why can't things be simple? Without hesitating, I snapped up the last one and waited a total of 3 hours in line to pay for the tv and my other stuffs. The queue was so long but the good thing about buying stuffs in America is if you regret later, you can still return it and get back your money. Anyway, nowadays watching TV and DVD movies has never been the same again. Really, moving from my old 17" tv to this one certainly is worth it. Like the old saying, size does matter.

Whereas I was jostling beyond the gates of the store to get the things I want, actually there were a few who were eagerly awaiting to get beyond the gates of heaven. It was yesterday that the weather turned a few notches colder. It was church as usual and then we watched a touching and tears-inducing DVD documentary during adult sunday school called "Beyond The Gates of Splendor". The link to its website is attached in the Linkz list. It is a real life story about 5 missionaries in the 1950's who were martyred in Ecuador by the Auca Indians (also known as the Waodani tribe) whom they were bringing the gospel to. This tribe is famous for their brutality and homicide rate. If they don't like someone, they can just kill them and their family. Yeah, kinda like the Stone Age. The missionaries were all killed because of a lie and conflict within their tribe which has nothing to do with them. One of the 5 killed was Jim Elliot. He is someone whom I heard his name mentioned before but don't know what he did. Now I know. He had a famous quote, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose".

Most of the missionaries were around my age when they died. They were college educated, dedicated to do God's will, married, some with children, talented and it seems such a waste to have died like that. However good things can come out of bad because their deaths sowed the seeds of the gospel in that tribe. Elizabeth Elliot (Jim's wife) and one of the missionary's sister eventually went back to live with the tribe. Through God's power and forgiveness, the tribe was led to Christ. The murder rate dropped by 90% and even the murderers (and their offspring) became the elders and pastors of the church. Later, even one of the grandkids of the murdered missionary eventually embraced and called one of the murderer of his grandpa - Grandfather. This incident also spurred many American missionaries to go out in the '60s and a colleague's father was one of them who brought his whole family to Guatemala. One of the best quotes in the documentary was when a child asked his dad whether they will use their guns if attacked by the Indians. He replied, "We would never use it to kill them because they are not ready for heaven...we are." When the authorities flew in and recovered the 5 spear-ridden and machete-hacked bodies from the river, not one of the Indians were found hurt.

Seasons of Love

It was the year 1998 in London, the year I graduated and also that summer when I fell in love with the musical Rent. The musical came to London after the success in New York and 4 of the original Broadway cast were in the London version. I was a big fan of the show which they call a renthead. Rentheads are fans who lined up in the theater 3-4 hours before the show starts to sit in the first 2 rows, which other benefit was the price of the ticket is cheap (around 15 pounds compared to more than 30 pounds for good seats). I loved Rent so much that I watched it twice and also played the soundtrack all over and over again for a year until I knew all the songs by heart.

When I saw the movie trailers that the movie is opening the day before Thanksgiving Day, I was ecstatic. So on Thanksgiving morning, I went to watch the movie. I was waiting in anticipation for the first chords of the piano playing Seasons of Love. The movie is a rehash of Puccini's opera La Boheme with AIDS as the disease instead of TB. It is also almost similar to the stage version but now we get to see everything magnified on the big screen and also avoid the saliva from the singers showering me (they really sing very passionately on stage and you can see the tiny shiny saliva droplets falling when you sit on the 2nd row). The 4 actors whom I saw on stage has aged a bit, which makes me thinking that I did aged too as well. I realized that 7 years did changed me. At that time, I wanted to be like them, a bohemian and going against the norm - rebellious, unconventional, controversial and all those bad stuffs. Now as I am older and more mature (ahem ahem), I am wondering - what was I thinking then? The movie still had its moments which made my eyes well up though, probably those are nostalgic tears or perhaps I'm crying because I'm older by 7 years.


Since this is the season of love, this is also the season of gaining weight. We went to our young adult pastor's house last night for Thanksgiving dinner and today we held a Thanksgiving party for my colleagues at our apartment. I do need to keep my cholesterol level in check because it is a bit high and I need to have another checkup in another 4 months. If I was 7 years younger, I do not need to worry about this now... sigh... :)

A Love So Beautiful

As we are preparing to break for the Thanks giving holidays (4 day holiday weekend, Thursday to Sunday), I received an email titled "Wedding Invitation :-)" from an old friend from college. I had known her for slightly more than 10 years. I can still remember I was a pimply, blurry-eyed teenager then, trying to grow up and become a man. It was my first time leaving the comforts of home and fend for myself. Housemates, roommates and friends began to replace family. Coming from an all-boys school, it was also my first time being in class with girls, and also having girls for housemates. It was new and weird! She was one of the few girls in our male dominated engineering foundation class. It was also the first time that I went into a girl's room other than my sister's. Ahh... college days was one of the best years of my life!

Anyway, back to Miss D. We met her on our stop in Singapore during our honeymoon. It was nice to see her again together with another college friend Miss I. I can still remember what D mentioned to me over dinner. She has been a Christian for a long time and as she grew older, Mr Right hasn't come along yet. There were times when she felt that she felt desperate to just simply grab anybody but eventually she waited patiently. Finally one day she met her prince charming in the caregroup. It was so beautiful and I can feel the joy in their union and picture. I pray that they will have a wonderful marriage!

I have a few good single female Christian friends. They are attractive, intelligent, friendly, Godly and very eligible. Every church I attended even including the one in Chandler, this trend seems to continue. What does Christian women want? What does Christian men lack? Is Christian dating a taboo in church? I did ask a few female friends and their answer was just simply 3 words: good Christian man. That doesn't seem too hard but unfortunately in most churches there's a lot more "good Christian"s (but not man enough to lead/initiate) , "Christian man"s (but not good enough in his daily walk) and also "good man" (but not Christian) than the whole package - the "good Christian man"s.

To end, I do like to attend weddings especially Christian weddings. Probably that is why I have an inner desire to matchmake my Christian friends. This reminds me of my wedding 1.5 years ago which seems to be an eternity ago. Marriage brought out the best and worst of me and it opened up my eyes that our other half can look different if they know how to apply make-up to bring out the best of their features. Where's my personal make-up assistant?

Forget regret or Life is yours to miss

Since I have been blogging for 2 days, friends had been advising that the best way to go is to post more pictures as a picture is worth... about $0.17 at Costco. That shows how cheap our thousand words are.

One of the things I am looking forward nowadays is to one day move into my own house. A place where I can truly call home. Up till now, I feel like a nomadic leaf, travelling aimlessly wherever the wind blows. Ever since leaving Ipoh at the age of 17, I have never stayed put in a place for more than 2 years - KL, London, Kulim, Penang, Folsom (California) and Hillsboro (Oregon). Why did I choose to finally settle down in Arizona? Wife, job, cheaper housing, nice chinese church, nice weather 7 months of the year (not the 5 hot 120'F summer months), people our age, accessibility to malls/restaurants, night life and IKEA.


The picture above was taken 2 months ago whereas the one on the left was 2 weeks ago. The builders here are quite efficient and they can finish a house in less than a year. I just regret not buying the house earlier when I had the opportunity. I finally made the decision 3 weeks later and it cost me an extra $12000. The property market during the summer was crazy with huge waiting lists and lotteries. According to reports recently, houses in the Phoenix area increased 45% in value from last year. Unfortunately the property market now has kinda cooled off due to higher interest rates and more homes availability. I really really wish that my house price would continue to increase meteorically but anyway, I should be contented that it is $20000 higher now after 6 months.


Here is da 'hood where our new house will be. It is in a community called Maricopa Meadows in a small sleepy hollow town called Maricopa. This city was incorporated in 2003 and population was around 1000 then. Not sure what the number it is now, probably around 5000 people I guess. Yeah, to put it Malaysian perspective - Maricopa is much smaller than Kulim. It is around 20 miles (20 minutes to Chandler) so we do get a mixture of small town and big city living. Ahh... then I do get to spend some private time alone driving to work with my second wife, my Toyota Camry. :)

The picture here is how our house will look like when it is completed (Snapped a neighboring house to give you an idea). Our color will be a coconut husk color and will have 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with 3212 square feet of space. It will always be open for visitors who wants to stay with us. It is such a blessing that next Feb/March we will be able to move in. Ever since I was a child, I had stayed in small rented homes and also in a small house. So this is a dream come true, thanks to God.



In the meantime, I'll just be contented staying in our rented apartment with our IKEA furniture... and with my wife. (She has been such a blessing to me, cooking and cleaning and doing all the things wives are supposed to do ;) )

Hey you Ernest, I'm the real Ernest here

My quest to have the real "Ernest Cheah" (me, of course) searchable through google or yahoo ended in futility. The somewhat goal of this blog was to achieve that dream but somehow that doesn't seem to work. Just like in real life, it should work theoretically but most of the time it doesn't. Anyway as a certain popular American Idol cast-off said, "I already gave my best and I have no regrets at all."

Seems like there are 2 other Ernest Cheahs in this world, making it 3 overall. One seems to be a 18 year old guy in KL and another seems to have put his name in a guest book in a Langkawi hotel while the last one is you know who. Ernest is a not so common name and I could never have imagine another Cheah would name his son Ernest. Personally, I do know a nice Ernest from my hometown Ipoh but thankfully his last name is different. That is so surreal. One time I was in the elevator at work and I was so surprised to see "Ernest" printed across a chinese guy's employee badge. I was so tempted to say, "Hi Ernest, I'm Ernest. Nice to meet you."

Imagine in the Book of Life, a few Christians across history with the name of Ernest Cheah and a few other very sinful Ernest Cheahs. Since it was mentioned in the bible that our names will be written in the Book of Life, then I do wonder whether the Book of Life has other information to differentiate all these Ernest Cheahs? Birth cert #, IC #, Social Security #, date of birth, pictures, thumb prints. Imagine the population of earth to be billions and not counting those who had died long time ago. What is the possibility of a 0.00000000000000001% error? A mix-up between a holy Ernest Cheah and sinful Ernest Cheah would be preposterous - the good one would be sent to hell and the bad one to heaven. Imagine a cunning Ernest Cheah might also steal the identity of a holy Ernest Cheah during judgement day. Haha... When we stand judged by God for a sin we might have forgot or refuse to admit, we can reply, "God, errr... I did not do it. Errr... is there any possibility that it was done by the other Ernest Cheah?" At least for those destined for hell, there's a possibility of the judgement being delayed since God has to search the big database and gather additional witnesses for a re-trial. Ahhh, it might also be a good idea for churches now to have a very profitable business and even increase attendance by selling after-life identity theft protection.

OK, the last paragraph is just some vivid imagination and written in a joking way. Our God is all-knowing and we can't even fathom His greatness and majesty. Amen?

Genesis

I have been reading my friends' blogs and I have been amazed by the writings. I would say that it is like reading someone's diary but with permission. Perhaps times have changed and blogs are the in-thing and diaries are just oh-so 5 minutes ago. I do journal in the past but now I do not anymore. Lazy, tired and no time seems to be my answer nowadays. My wife always asks me to exercise with her or even clean up the apartment. All my answers are always "I'm tired".

Anyway, back to this blogging. Since this is the first time I'm blogging, I guess I need to write a catchy introduction or at least an interesting epilogue to signal my entrance to the digital writersphere. But I guess I won't today because I'm tired. Ahh, that phrase again. By the way, it is almost 11pm now and I had a tiring day walking, jogging, window-shopping and watching tv. Actually I'm just interested to see whether I could google "ernest cheah" and see my name in the search results and also see a website with ernestcheah.blogspot.com. At least I can have my own domain without paying for it or spending numerous tiring man-hours working on my own website. I do hope that some long lost friend might google my name, find out about me and then send me and email. Hopefully someone from my primary school, secondary school, college or even university. That's my dream... :)