It’s been a year

Mom sent me an SMS today, she reminds me that tomorrow is my dad’s death anniversary. Mom and some relatives are going to go to the sea and throw some flowers on the water. I am not sure on what I would do tomorrow, probably I would do nothing and just treat tomorrow as another day, any attempt of remembering the old days will be just too sad. It’s funny when I think about it, when he was alive, mom always reminded me of his birthday and now she reminds me of his death.

Truth is, I don’t know what to do, there’s nothing that I can do that will affect our relationship now, I can think about him, but what good that will bring? It will be just make me sad. I can just try not to think about him at all which I was doing the first few months, but part of me I am afraid that if I do so, I might forget him. I want to remember how he looks like, how he sounds and how he relates to me.

I am always amazed at how time seems to fly, it felt like it wasn’t that long ago when I talked to him. There were days that I just miss him so much, miss those awkard phone conversations, miss his thick Javanese accent. And at times when I am alone with Jet, I remember him somehow, wondering what did he do with me when I was a baby, did he spend time with me much, did he adore me as I adore my son, did he teach me how to walk. And sometimes I just can’t help imagining if he is still alive, how happy he’d be playing with Jet, he’d be asking me about my work whether my salary is enough to feed the family, he’d be asking about my uni and probably we’d be having conversations about buying a house. I’d probably take him for holidaying somewhere too.

I don’t know when I will be fully come to terms with his departure, I read in a book that it may take years. I do hope one day, when I remember him I would be smiling rather than crying.

I haven’t re-read my blog post on my father’s death. I just don’t want to remember that day when I got the news. By far it was the worst day of my life.

I wonder how mom is coping. She seems to be extremely busy lately, maybe by busying herself she doesn’t have to think about dad too much too. There will be other deaths in my life,.. I hope I can handle them better. Man, death sucks big time.

First step

After months of deliberating, I finally made the first step towards buying a property. I applied for an investment loan with Westpac few days ago. Westpac’s assessment of my borrowing power is pretty much in line with how much I want to borrow, so that’s all good. Once we got a loan pre-approval, then we can start to look around for property. Haven’t really looked around what other banks and lenders are offering, but their products probably don’t differ that much.

We have decided to go down the path of investment property ownership as opposed to the home ownership. This seems to be suited well in our situation, as currently we do have some benefits in staying to rent, like rental assistance from the government and our current unit has quite cheap rental. Of course there is the negative gearing benefit as well coming from investment, although frankly I am more comfortable with positively geared investment.

I closed my NAB credit card. Apparently the lower your credit card limit is, the happier the bank is to lend you money. I never maxed out any of my credit cards anyway, I have a few because of the discounts and rewards they have.

Another thing that I closed this week is my CFD account with IG Markets. I decided that I wasn’t really “investing” in the past few months, but in fact I was gambling. I am more inclined to invest for the long term nowadays rather than “trading”. Trading activity requires lots of time and effort, the two things that I can invest somewhere else for the time being.

This buying property thing might requires me to find another job as my current company’s financial situation is not that great.

On turning 28

I turned 28 last Thursday. I thought that I was turning 29 (tells you how bad I am at maths). I am wondering whether now it’s a good time to have my mid-life crisis.. My dad passed away at the age of 59 of heart attack, my grand father passed away even sooner on his 40’s I think, also because of heart attack. Looking at this history, there is a chance that I might not make it beyond 60, if so then this is a proper time to have that crisis, isn’t it..

Oh birthday, another reminder that you have one year less before you meet your maker. I think people should stop enjoying birthday after a certain age, I mean you are reminded that you are closer to death than ever before..

In terms of life goals, at the moment there is nothing clearer than seeing my mom, auntie, grandma and Jet receive Jesus as their Lord and Saviour as well as presenting Lina holy and blameless before the Lord. It’s funny that after my father’s death, financial freedom is not really that interesting anymore.. You can be financially free, but you’ll never free from death, so what’s the point.. You can also just live life to the fullest, but there is a God and you have to be accountable with what you’ve done.. then you’re screwed..

Amazon anyone?

Anyone interested in buying books from Amazon.com before the end of financial year? We can combine the shipping and save the postage. I’ll order before 30th June of course.

Another post on TRAIN 2007

I’m really glad being able to come to TRAIN today, I was a contemplating a bit on Sunday, thinking that I’d probably can use an extra day off since the last few weeks has been occupied with work deadlines, uni assignments and other commitments.

But then I realized after having Jet, I haven’t been able to attend many training events (Focus team, SUS Indo, PTC are all out of questions for me at least for this year 🙁 ) nor being able to spend time with the guys. So I decided to go and I purposedly declined a generous over to travel by car to TRAIN so that I might be able to talk to people who were going with bus.

I am not attempting to cover every talks and these points below are a bit disjointed as:

  1. I am not really good at summarizing maybe someone would do a better job 
  2. 11 chapters in one day, there bound to be lots to digest (was thinking of listening to MP3 recording once they are made available for download).

These are the points that I got out from the talks:

  • In studying Genesis, we must think of what questions does Genesis ask us rather than imposing our questions on it. An example of this is, whether or not we should support a theistic evolution view (God created the world using evolution). Phillip cleverly avoided giving us his opinion on this, instead he pointed out that this isn’t a question that Genesis to trying to address. Genesis isn’t interested about the mechanism of the creation but more on its meaningfulness. Some of the questions that Genesis is addressing are: who are human, what’s the purpose of human, who’s controlling the world?
  • Humanity is created in male and female. It is not 2 humanity but one. Humanity as a whole is the image of God, not so much of individuals. I would like Phillip to explore about singleness issue a bit as it’s easy to get the impression that marriage is the only proper expression of humanity (being created male and female) or maybe this isn’t the question that Genesis is addressing? Hm, I don’t know, anyone got a different conclusion?
  • Genesis 1:26-31: Our divine appointment by God to rule over the creation under Him is what define humanity. It’s not our ability to think that differentiate us from other created beings (although I used to think this way), if monkey can be trained to talk and think, it is still not human. Also I was thinking if someone has some sort of mental disability he is no less human than Einstein for instance, as both have the same appoinment from God. This I think, has the implications on where Christians should stand in issues like euthanasia, abortion, stem cell research and cloning. Phillip didn’t delve in any of these issues as understandably the time was short. Phillip reminded us to be aware of clever men who say cleverness is the essence of humanity.
  • Genealogy in Genesis 5 has a purpose (and indeed genealogies in the bible are purposeful), it shows the search of the promised serpent crusher (which of course will be found in Jesus hundreds of years down the track).
  • Being reminded of the consquences of atheism belief. I always thought that atheism is quite harmless, I mean frankly if one does not believe in God, it is his own business, but being reminded from history how such a belief can cause terrible things, Hitler was example of what an atheististic mindset is capable of doing.