Imaginary Friend, Real Conversation
I was just having a conversation with an imaginary friend today. He's well-accomplished, distinguished, well-known, respected and well-acknowledged. He's everything I'm not.
My imaginary friend has everything I don't - public recognition, external affirmation, positive strokes (well, we never have enough of these anyway). He is thus assured of his worth.
I must tell you, I don't like him. But since it was my day of rest, I decided to entertain him for a bit. Just to see what he might say to put me down. (You see why I don't like him.)
He spent hours on end telling me how successful he is in life, how he has become everything I'm not. And he told me how I'll never be like him, that my life is a dead end being where I am now.
Out of courtesy, I listened painfully to the thousand and one things he had to say. I felt myself shrinking as the minutes passed.
But finally, it was my turn to say something, so I answered:
Everything you are now, you will lose someday. Everything you have become, you won't be anymore someday. You'll be forgotten, you'll be ignored, you'll be unappreciated.
The only difference between you and me is that I never had it to lose, so I'll never have to cling on to what I don't have to lose.
And whatever has happened to me will happen to you someday, except that it has happened earlier to me. That way, I have a longer time in life to work it out and die being comfortable with myself.
Something in me wonders if he's really imaginary.

Once in a blue moon, I have the privilege of coming across a person who hasn’t had things going his way in life, but who will not allow unfavourable circumstances in life to knock him down. I have recently been in conversation with one such person. And I’m awed at his resilience.
When the story told seems to have happened all too long ago, we forget. We forget how we fit into that story and how we are somehow heirs – continuations – of that story which has now been relegated to the realm of legend. One day, the legend will become myth. And soon enough after that, it will be heard of no more.
Knowledge must never be imparted out of insecurity or anxiety.
I have just completed what I think is the final editing of my doctoral dissertation entitled The New Asia, and will be handing it in this weekend. 



It is the eve of Lunar New Year for the people of the Chinese race all over the world. Tonight, families will cluster in the homes, wherein people from two or three generations will celebrate their reunion over an annual feast whilst catching up from where they last left off.
Friend: How was 2007 for you?
When I tried to understand all this,
It feels rather strange when a well-respected man who once told you in private to never compromise what you believe in now compromises you.
The eagle appears in the standards of many organisations, schools, and nations as a guardian of freedom and truth.
That’s a bed. It consists of an old wooden platform and a really black and badly torn mattress, covered by piece of mat with holes all over it.
I couldn't be less bothered about what colour you are, what positions you hold, what titles accompany your name, or how much money you have.
A friend of mine commented some time ago that the politics in the organisation with which he works is ugly. And then he went on to say that he has noticed that the politics in Christian organisations seems to be even worse.
“What Lord, after this phase of physical and intellectual growth and raging hormones? What? An intolerable stability in life? A calm of stagnation?
Some things, once done, cannot be undone.
While driving yesterday, I caught sight of a rainbow before me. It was quite a distance away, and rather faint. Nevertheless, it was a rainbow.
Have you ever realised that you've just wronged somebody, and then gone back to the person to offer a sincere apology? Have you ever gone back to a person to offer a sincere apology, only to receive an earful of lectures from the person you're saying sorry to just before he says, "Anyway, apology accepted"?