The Paper Chase

I didn't have much choice when I signed up to pursue a Masters in Science degree at UPM. The university college where I am teaching in requires all lecturers to upgrade their current qualifications. It was not a step I had wanted to take but it was a necessity in order to continue teaching; and teaching is my passion. So I reluctantly look at all the courses available in all the local universities and after much thought, signed up at Universiti Putra Malaysia, a renowned research university that is also highly respected in the education of educators. So on the first week of January 2011, I found myself seated amidst educators who are also pursuing their qualifications to teach. Most of my classmates are teachers and half the class of Research Methods consists of Iranians. This class had 66 students to begin with and it is the only RM class conducted in English, so naturally the Iranians swarmed into this class. But as the semester progressed many dropped the subject. Very significantly the number fell, especially after the first exam which was a "killer". I didn't expect to be sitting for exams, because I am a thesis student, opting for thesis writing as I was informed it would be advisable to go through the strenous exercise of writing a thesis than to mug for a comprehensive exam at the end only to find my memory had failed me! Age is catching up with me. I looked around my class and realized that I could easily be one of the oldest student in class. I suspect I am older than one of my lecturers! It was quite embarassing at first as ladies my age would be planning their early retirement and here I am, still in university! However, my classmates soon put all these behind me because they were very sweet and patient with matured students like me. It is encouraging to hear them say "I salute you for taking life long learning seriously" and " I cannot imagine how you juggle a fulltime career, a family and studies at the same time". These words really encouraged me to hang on especially on days when I feel awfully tired, physically and emotionally. There wasn't a day when I wake up and ask myself "What am I doing, at my age, pursuing a Masters degree?" Every day, I face the temptation to quit as the devil spit in my face and laugh at me. I had to tell him "Get thee behind me, satan! You have no part in this!" As days go on, the devil did seem to give up on me, as I felt better about this phase of my life. I am discovering a lot of new things from my classes, unlike my BA days where I felt i was just "producing artworks" to meet the requirements of a BA certificate. Now, I am learning something new about education each time I enter a class. You see, what is most difficult for me is the fact that I do not have a formal educational background, unlike my classmates who are mostly government school teachers, having graduated from a teacher's training college. I come from an art and design background and theories of education don't ring a bell. i had to start from scratch. I questioned my supervisor why she accepted me into the program even though I have no educational background and she replied "Because people with diverse background will bring with them diversified experiences that will enrich this program". You won't hear or read much from me these days as I am struggling with assignment deadlines. This morning, at 3am, I am proud to achieve my personal objective of completing my draft for a paper presentation, totalling 30 pages. Am I not tired? If I say "no", it will be the biggest lie. i am dead tired as I need to wake up at 8am and drive to work as usual. But God is a merciful God. I managed to catch some power naps while being driven in a school bus, on the way to the art galleries at Jalan Tun Razak and KLCC. And when tomorrow comes, it's another new day, with a another new challenge. I believe "Prayer changes things" and I ask that you pray for me.

A TRIBUTE TO IAN TAN, my beloved nephew and friend.

Born: 1966 Departed: 2011

The funeral wake last nite was packed with about 100 relatives, friends and the late Ian Tan's students who were there to pay their last respect. I went there meaning to comfort and encourage Magdalene Phua (his mom, my cousin), Tan Teck Hong (his dad) and Denise Tan (his sister) but was instead encouraged by Mag's words when she stood up to thank us for our presence. Such is this woman of God who thought of nothing but to take every given opportunity to glorify God. Mag and T.Hong was left with only one daughter when they infact had 3 children. She mentioned briefly about Joanna (I still remember the joy she brought her working mom and it was also due to Jo's death that the family came to accept Christ) who died of leukemia at the age 3+... and she now lost Ian at the age of 44+...

Sharing with us, she mentioned that Ian had not been well lately. Infact, he came back to M'sia after about 10 yrs in US, due to his poor health. We knew that Ian was asthmatic from a young age. Mag mentioned age 5. I remember he never could do strenous activities and he moved around with an inhaler in his pocket all his childhood and teenage life. I observed him gasping for breath too many times while we were in our teens.

When he went on a singing tour with a group in Europe before his return to M'sia, he didn't even realised he had contracted TB which left him with only 40% (Mag wasn't sure of the %) of his lungs functioning. I think she mentioned that he only realised this after his return to M'sia, when Dr James Koh (his bro-in-law who is currently based in Melbourne, Australia) performed a chest x-ray on him.

During his last days, he had sore throat and was not feeling well but still performed a Christmas presentation with Pst Alvin Tan's church (High Praise, Subang) despite his condition. The performance went well despite his sore throat. There were details of his weak health here and there and Mag said, Ian argued with them that he doesn't want to go to hospital. Knowing his stubborn nature, he tried to put off seeing the doctor. On the day he passed on, he actually went to church, returned home and rested. That afternoon, while he rested at home, Mag received a call from him from his mobile. He called from his room and told his mom to come into his room. Mag & T.Hong found Ian on the floor with a pillow below his head and his favourite tea cup broken on the floor. He had lost consciousness and found himself on the floor but couldn't explain how the pillow got under his head. Mag said it was an act of God to protect Ian's head from any injury.

When his parents advised him to see a doctor, he refused but just asked for a change of clothes and to clean up the mess on the floor. Then he continued to take a nap for the rest of the afternoon. Mag cooked dinner that evening. When she was done, she told T.Hong to wake Ian up so he could eat something (although he hadn't had an appetite for days). Mag proceeded to take a shower after cooking. While she was in the shower, T.Hong knocked on the bathroom door & told her that "Ian was gone". She responded with "call the ambulance". The ambulance came and pronounce Ian's death. When discovered, Ian's body was already "cold".

Mag shared that she once said a prayer. She asked God to allow her to go before Ian does because she could sense that God will take Ian away before she dies. She could not bear to lose another child. But later, she realized that she had uttered a very selfish prayer because she would rather see Ian suffer than to "let him go". She asked God for forgiveness.

I personally concluded that his death was due to complications from his weak lungs. His parents never mentioned the cause of death. The miracle of it was, here was a man who had only 40% of his lungs functioning and he could sing "his lungs out" for the Lord in churches everywhere in Malaysia, the US and in Europe. Here was a man so dedicated to God that he chose to remain single so he could commit his time fully on spreading the gospel through his singing. Ian was very musically inclined. He had a powerful voice. He took music lessons in his late teens because he knew it was God's calling on his life. He spent a year under the mentorship of Pst Michael and Margaret Yap in PJ before pursuing his studies in Theology, majoring in Music Ministry, in Texas, USA.

This is the power of God revealed in Ian's life as he presented his body as a living sacrifice to God. See what the Lord can do with an imperfect body, if we are willing vessels. Here was a man who touched so many lives while teaching them to sing at ICOM and also as a private tutor at his home, not only using their voices but also their hearts. The students who stood up to say a few words about their lecturer, Ian, was evidence that he had been instrumental in moulding their young lives. When old friends from Kuantan stood and testified of the impact that Ian had in each of their lives, I cannot help but felt touched. When a god-bro named his new-born son after Ian, it was because of the gratefulness he felt for Ian for bringing him to Christ.

Yesterday evening, memories of the time I spent with Ian flooded my mind, as I recalled the wonderful times we spent in his kitchen making doughnuts (he was a good cook) and the gorgeous, mouth-watering shepherd's pie he made for us when we were starving teenagers (Secret Recipes' SP failed in comparison). Ian had a great sense of humour. He could be annoyingly funny sometimes and his laughter was infectious. I marvelled at the way he got along great with aunts and uncles triple his age, always with something sweet to say to the elderly, and the love he had for dogs was something worth mentioning! He would annoy me with the white mice James Koh (now his bro-in-law) and he had to bring to the school lab to dissect, knowing that I am fearful of rodents. He made the effort to drop-by my house, on his way to school, just to show me the white mice!

This morning as I bade farewell to my beloved nephew (who is one year older than me) who was cremated at the Kampung Tunku crematorium, I want to salute this man who had dedicated almost his entire life to serving God with his voice and his talent. His job on earth is done. While the rest of us continue to fulfil our calling on earth, I can hear God say to Ian, "well done, good and faithful servant"... "you have run the race, you have kept the faith..."

I will miss you, IAN TAN SUI PENG!

Ian's last performance at High Praise Ministries on Christmas Day 2010,

Persembahan Puji Tuhan

Mari kita puji TUHAN!

Mark and Susan's 17th Wedding Anniversary in Bandung

Every year, we celebrate our wedding anniversary on June 19 and we try to have "couple time", away from the kids and the hustle and bustle of daily city living as often as we can. Our last trip was to Korea 2 years ago. This year, Mark and I decided to go on a shopping spree to Bandung, The Paris of Java, in Indonesia.

It was supposed to be the best time of the year to travel to Bandung but it rained every afternoon for the 4 days we were there. The people of Bandung were warm, accommodating and friendly. We had the most pleasant stay at Sensa Hotel which was celebrating it's soft launch with a promotion. It was a spick and span hotel, very minimalist (like this writer) and not at all crowded. Returning to the hotel every evening was akin to retreating into your sanctuary of peace and quiet. There were no kids to fuss with; it was really "my time".

Apart from the endless shopping one might find in Bandung, there were also the sprawling hills to visit where air was crisp and cool. The visit to Tangkuban Prahu was an eye-opening experience even for one as old as I. Never seen a volcano crater before? We were so near to it, we could smell sulphur in the air!

On the way down from the volcano crater, we stopped for lunch at Kampung Daun, a lovely restaurant/cultural gallery built within a jungle. It started to drizzle soon after our arrival but we were perfectly sheltered and dry within the quaint hut where lunch was served. Every hut was beautiful designed and comfortably furnished with flimsy curtains and cuddly cushions to sit on.
The couple at Kampung Daun

The next stop was the Saung Udjo Angklung performance where we actually played a few songs, conducted by the Principal of the performance school. It was amazing how he managed to teach us to play the angklung within a few minutes! We wondered whether he meant it when he said we were the best students he had ever had. Someone seated behind us muttered whether he says the same to every audience. Whatever it is, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience there.

Next destination?

Starting an Advertising Campaign

Let's face it. Every industry loves it's own proprietary language and the world of marketing communications is no different. Today, marketing and advertising is all about branding, but in its early days it was known as positioning and a key element in the effort to establish a marketing identity - regardless of what you call it - is something called continuity. What exactly is that? It's the strategy and process of coordinating all the elements of a marketing message to achieve a consistent, memorable, overall look and feel for a company, service, or product.

Sounds impressive, doesn't it? It's really all about making sure that everything you do as a company has a coordinated look and feel about it. Graphically, that means creating a standard logo, selecting a corporate color (or colors), a particular typeface, even a photo or illustration style. Content-wise, it means determining key points for your marketing messages that clearly, concisely, and compellingly elucidate your unique selling proposition (there's another one of those industry terms that falls in and out of fashion on a regular basis).

This is not as simple as it sounds. It requires an unfaltering, dedicated effort up and down your marketing chain to avoid going "off message". Time and time again I have seen engineering departments grab logos and typestyles and use them with haphazard abandon on everything from data sheets to PowerPoint presentations. I've seen sales people ignore mandates from the home office and routinely put out their own marketing pieces with not a shred of semblance to the carefully crafted look painstakingly created by their own marketing department. The result is always the same - a dilution of the company's identity and often a related drop in market share in response to the lack of an effective, unified marketing message. That, in turn, requires a needless squandering of precious marketing resources to reestablish the company's former brand awareness in the marketplace.

It doesn't have to be that way. A little discipline and a lot of vigilance can head off these potential image drainers and nip them in the bud before they become a real problem. By paying attention to continuity, your company can reap a multitude of benefits - heightened market visibility, enviable awareness among potential customers, and a more effective use of your marketing budget, yielding the biggest bang for your buck. Overall, a keen eye toward continuity helps you achieve levels of image and branding efficiency unavailable to practitioners of hit-or-miss marketing with little or no image consistency between messages and media.

It starts with your corporate identity.I never cease to be amazed at how casually some companies treat their identity. There's no shortage of firms that use two, three, even four versions of their logo on a regular basis, with no particular rhyme or reason. The same goes for corporate colors - often a victim of one or more employee's personal taste ("I HATE that color, I'm going to use green instead...I think it looks better"). This dilution of image is made even easier by the proliferation of PowerPoint and other tools used by more and more employees. If this is happening to your company, I have three words of advice: STOP IT. NOW.
The longer this practice is allowed to continue, the more it will cost your company. In time, money, image awareness and, ultimately, in market share.

How do you combat this insidious problem? By establishing company-wide standards and maintaining them. Issue a simple style sheet that everyone can understand and follow and then enforce it. That means establishing a corporate color (or colors), a particular typestyle (especially one that is duplicated in computer fonts) and creating a logo that works well in 4-color (the process colors used by printers to print in full color), 2-color (usually black and a particular shade of a color from the Pantone Matching System, identified by a PMS number), and black and white printing. If you create high and low resolution files in these three versions and make them available to the people most likely to need them, you will go a long way toward unifying your image out in the marketplace.

And follows through in your message.Now that you've got your company look under control, it's time to work on your message. This often starts with a mission - or for the more esoteric entrepreneur, a vision - statement. Sure, many of these typically contain a lot of over-heated rhetoric designed to make the board of directors warm and fuzzy, but they CAN be valuable. While others may be long on hyperbolic language and short on real meaning, work to make yours meaningful, concise, actionable, and unique. Be ruthless. Is this who we really are? Is this what we really want to be? Does this really set us apart? Once you've honed your statement to accurately reflect what your company is and what it stands for, it will enable you to create a meaningful slogan or tagline to be used in your marketing messages. Avoid the trite and contrived. "The Leader in (blank)" has been done before. Trust me.

A good tagline will inform every message that follows. It will help flavor copy written for your sales literature, web site, advertising, even internal messaging. It will make generating consistent, focused text easier because it will help set the tone and form the basis of the message. And that message, aided by the consistent visual combination of logo, color, and typestyle - wielded with ruthless discipline -- all combine to create a powerful, memorable marketing impression.

That, my friends, is the power of continuity. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." He was wrong. Consistency, otherwise known as continuity, is the most potent weapon of great marketing minds.

FRIM Visit

FRIM (Forest Reserve Institute Malaysia). We were there (17th April 2010) with our children church "Kids Vision Club" Here are some of the photo taken during the natual walk.

EASTER DAY 2010 - On the Darkest Day of All

The melodic voices of a mini choir echoes in the morning of 4 April 2010 in Puchong Tabernacle in Bandar Puteri, Puchong. The song was entitled "On the Darkest Day of All" and it carries the message of Easter Day, depicting the story from the tomb to Christ's resurrection. Adults and children celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ on this day which marks the victory of the Son over sin.

It was an eleventh hour request to present an item and a testimony of the reality of Christ in one's life; and as time is so limited, the Bandar Kinrara cell group decided over a week's comtemplation, to present a song. What started as a "simple solution" to "hard-pressed-for-time" members of the cell, became more complicated as members started to compare other cell group's presentation. Initially, some members suggested a skit to go with the song. But in the end, there were no actors or actresses who were willing to come together at such short notice, to practice for the skit. Eventually we settled for just a song which will impact the congregation on that Easter Day. My task was to choose a suitable song and there were plenty of songs we could have chosen. But I was led to an online song ministry called "Resound" and the result of scanning through the songs there was a particular song aptly named "On the Darkest Day of all".

This is a solemn song, depicting Christ's death on the cross, His victory over death and the "Alleluias" that resounded on that first Easter Day. The beauty of this song was that it enabled us, the singers to express our conviction that Christ has indeed risen. It might be a simple song presentation but everybody, young and old, was anointed to be a "vessel" for God's message to be conveyed to the congregation that morning. It was a simple willingness of each individual in the choir to use his or her voice for God's glory.

Indeed, the presentation reminded me again of God's promise that "...Through God all things are possible.."

Truly, if there's one thing that the Bandar Kinrara cell members cannot do well, it is to sing! Most are tone deaf, have no sense of rhythm nor appreciation for the finer details of singing. But on that Easter morning, the voices were alike angels singing praises to our Almighty God!