bringing forth

Ever since I started working as a retail assistant for an organic food store, my appetite has gone out of whack. The busy-ness of the festive season - gift wrapping for last minute Christmas purchases and the endless kerrching! of the cash register, has all left me feeling a bit bleh when it comes to food.
Perhaps it is seeing food hour in, hour out? Don't get me wrong I absolutely believe in what I sell. The quality is top notch and you get renowned products from around the world without having to traverse seas and paying a bomb.
So how bad has it gotten? Buying a salmon rice bowl from Yoshinoya at 1115am and eating it at 1843pm. It got so bad that one day, after a lousy lunch, I simply slumped on the floor, exhausted and drained out, literally, of healthy blood. I dashed out of the store to the pharmacy nearby and started enquiring about multivitamins. I knew people take them to supplement weak diets and irregular meals; never did I think I would actually start eating them at 21 [I always thought it was an 'older' person phenomenon].
Here I am with a bottle of Centrum. Popping a vitamin and mineral packed tablet once a day, believing hidden miraculous stuff are happening in my body. As I eat this I wonder how people with eating disorders manage to keep their bodies going.
I love food too much to forgo anything. A recent revelation spoke firm words to me: honour this body which houses the Holy Spirit, serve Him with a healthy body that is able to walk the distance. I want to welcome the person I love the most in this world into an abode that is welcoming, hospitable, warm and filled with the best stuff as I can possibly afford.
Even with a multivitamin tablet, yes even with this.

I just returned from a weekend trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It is the third time in three years, in the same time of the year no less, and honestly speaking my enthusiasm for the capital city has deteriorated with each subsequent visit.
A sleep-deprived Lux immersed in an environment which is super polluted and dirty makes for a rather unpleasant, grouchy and unlovable Lux indeed. I am incredibly sorry to my family for having to put up with my foul mood on the last day. A disagreement over what I prioritise as compared to what my Mum prioritises is not exactly easy either.
My parents have done all to provide for so much - from good accommodation to food to transport to expenditure (and I was so willing to spend, and they to spend on me... even though the amount of purchases I made fails to reflect that); and for all these I am very very thankful indeed. But me being pampered me from Singapore where things are noticeably different from KL, finds it hard and trying to be happy when old engines sputter filthy exhaust into the air and people squash me on the trains...
And I wonder: there is a desire in me to go for at least ONE mission in my life, to serve others. But if I am so finicky with lifestyle conditions now (not least the air, to begin with) how am I going to find the capacity in my heart to reach out to others? I have conveniently forgotten that in the three days I was there by the grace of God I had no food poisoning, received clean water, lived in a comfortable room and was truly blessed by the company of loved ones who love me. So what is up Lux? You came back with a pair of Philips earphones and a pair of brown Samuel & Kevin three-quarter cargo pants and you are whining. No armed robbery, no snatch thievery and no rape or kidnapping done to you or your family.
Honestly speaking I was comparing the place I come from to the place I have arrived at. I knew I could never expect likewise but still I refused to let go of these expectations. O, Father forgive me! for being so stubborn, demanding, unloving and ignorant. You are Lord over Singapore, as You are over Malaysia, Australia, Southeast Asia, Hongkong, Europe as You are over - my life. Why should it be difficult to see and sense You in one place than another when You are the Creator of all peoples? Do I not see them pushed right up next to me on the monorail? Do I not see them hoarding into mosques? Do I not see them begging on the streets, limbs mutilated and blackened by gangrene? Lord I repent for allowing my heart to grow hard by pride, fear and a lack of compassion. What will You do in my position, Lord Jesus? As You are already doing right now that I, in all my spiritual and emotional blindness, have not prepared my heart to be part of Your much much much greater vision for this world.
If I cannot even soften my heart with compassion and empathy for a neighbour so close to me, how much more can I extend a loving person to those farther away? Lord teach me. Search my heart and try me. I want to set my heart right before You. No longer to live by the ways of the flesh and be pulled down by the ways of this world. But pure, not corrupted, not polluted, a lighthouse to all around. Father You know my heart and every thought and feeling. It cannot begin with me trying to set right my thoughts and feelings. The heart from which every thought and feeling ensues is also the place which needs to receive new seeds of change.
Lord I want to be changed, from within to without. Amen.

I love watching Veggie Tales! Okie a small spiel on the series - it is adorable, great for all who are in for fun, has great animation, is immensely colourful and action-packed, includes cutesy voices and and and....

But wait this isn't the reason this was written.

I just had a revelation! Woah Veggie Tales - leads to - revelation, biggie stuff. I realised that the cartoon I've nursed a soft spot for has a cucumber and tomato for leads.
Shock horror shock tremendous horror indeed for me! For all who know me, they also know that there is a long list of veggies and fruits I dislike eating [that's how you know you know me]. This includes sweet potatoes, zucchinis, brinjals, eggplants, bananas, soggy apples, pears, pomegranates, lychees, rambutans, longans.... etc etc etc.
and CUCUMBERS and TOMATOES.

The irony, the irony. I probably would have wept if I was 10 years younger. But I have just been lawfully classified adult, and being classified as such, I will only allow myself to ponder the elision of the boundaries separating the real and the fictive, the animate and the inanimate.

Maybe if I've been weaned on Veggie Tales from a younger age, I might have cultivated a passionate love for them.

Why not a Bak Choy and a Bittergourd may I hasten to ask?

There is a new phenomenon and it is concentrated amongst the:
working class to the aristocrat
consumerist
certain (economically stable) parts of the world

and it is used/practiced by those who are:
trained to believe that a certain mould of 'good looking' exists
vain
prone to assume that a blotch in the picture is to the detriment of everyone else featured in it, and therefore must be immediately corrected
even if no one else is featured, posterity warrants certain degrees of 'perfection'
used to posing in a manner deemed most flattering to them

Welcome to the era of the Photo Whore! A prime feature in this age of digital cameras, when bad shots can be instanteneously removed, bad poses corrected with two clicks of the finger [one to delete shot with bad pose, and another to capture improved pose which does not look too dissimilar from former bad pose]; leaving people looking marginally more photogenic and feeling a hundred times more assured of their physical appearance on screen.
The generous amount of storage space on digi-cams (abbreviation) has allowed consumers the world over the privilege of snapping and deleting and printing, snapping deleting printing pictures till they are satisfied. But! as we all know full well already, satisfaction is never fully attained in this consumerist age. Maxed out a memory card? Insert a new one! No new ones? delete old pictures where you looked a tad chubbier, with smile and eyes less brilliant. Perfectionists can be vicious.
Just like movie stars, we all presume, practise their smiles and poses privately to prepare for public display; the Photo Whore respects the need to set aside time to put into action this movie-star work ethic. I have noticed this one female who got someone [or was it herself? Note the Photo Whore tends to have longer arms as he/she takes shots of him/herself in private (and gosh! sometimes even when there are others around)] to take a picture of her. The shocking thing was how in two totally different settings, she adopts the Exact Same Pose, from tilt of the head to corners of her smile to how wide her eyes were open. Being able to do the Exact Same Pose is rather damning evidence of being a Photo Whore [for when does nature see beauty in replicas alone?].
Another characteristic of the Whore is his/her insistence on taking photos whenever, wherever even if other parties are not that enthusiastic on taking photos. The prime focus of the picture, is not beautiful scenery or cute animals hanging around; it is rather the Photo Whore. His/her presence and domination of the picture landscape has negated most of the significance of what lies in the background to the point that the latter becomes merely a backdrop, a mere incidence. You only realise what the background means when you scroll through the inventory of pictures and see the pictures without humans in them. Conversation may sound like this:
'Ohhhh, I see, you went to the Great Ocean Road... that's one of the Apostles. And look! You're standing next to it. I almost thought it was your uncle you were posing with.'
For all we know, Anonymous' uncle may simply be apologetically un-photogenic and in need of tips from some Photo Whores as to how he may improve his appearance in pictures. When he has perfected the skill, he can join the group of Photo Whores and take endless pictures with them, snapping and deleting at will.
But note the hesitation to stereotype females as being the sole perpetrators of this crime. There are Closet Photo Whores which includes any and everyone who has ever used the digital camera to forward his/her agenda to look and feel better [even if and especially when it comes at the expense of others].
In addition, people from certain parts of the world has grown increasingly more photogenic. And this is all that truly matters because when it comes to preserving objects for the sake of posterity, it is important that grandchildren and great-grandchildren understand that they have inherited great genes.
Of course there are those who are photogenic even without practise in front of the lens. However this is no excuse for the less photogenic of the very photogenic to be lax or take a back seat. Better work on it otherwise all will be lost to the Whore who works hard at achieving the fruits of pixelated perfection.
Resolute? Resolution =)