A Pilgrim's Progress

Friday, 23rd February 2007

Having been on "spiritual adrenaline" for the past few weeks with an average of one blog entry per day, I thought I would blog on something which people would consider more "secular" in nature for a change. :-)

When I was still part of 3L2 last year, we were asked during one of our cell meetings to share about how we would live our lives if we knew that Jesus would come the very next day. Most of us gave very "worldly" answers. A couple of cell members said that they would pamper themselves at a spa or by getting a massage, while yet others said they would go to the karaoke to sing to their hearts' content. When it came to my turn, I confessed that I was a big Aston Villa fan (ya ya, go ahead and laugh) since I was 10 years old, and would like to make a "pilgrimage" to Villa Park, which is located in Birmingham in the West Midlands of England.

The closest I had ever been to Villa Park was back in 1993 when my wife and I were on our honeymoon. We had toured Europe with Ken Air, and extended our stay in England for another week or so. Whilst in England, my dad's sister Helen allowed us to use her place in Harrow as a "base", so we went on a 4-day tour that took us up to Edinburgh, Scotland.

On the round trip back down to London, the coach made a stop at Coventry (Shakespeare's county), which is about 40km to the southeast of where Villa Park is located.

Well, I thank the Lord that I do not need to wait till He comes again to embark on this "pilgrimage". A week ago, I was informed by my boss that I would be attending an International Finance Workshop at my company's headquarters in Munich from 21 to 23 March. I quickly did some research and discovered that Lufthansa flies direcly between Munich and Birmingham, and the two cities are only 2 hours apart by plane!

I called Chen Meng, a good friend of mine, who is also a Villa supporter and has been to the stadium 3 times already. (Oh ya, must remind me to tell you how I met Chen Meng via my son Mark in another blog entry.)

Chen Meng encouraged me to take it one step further, and that is to watch an actual game, rather than be merely brought on a guided tour of an empty stadium. (By the way, that's us on the left after our appearance on Football Crazy on 31 Aug 06)

I looked at the fixtures list and saw that Aston Villa will be playing at home to Liverpool on Sun 18 Mar. The first thought that crossed my mind was that even if I had wanted to watch that game, the tickets would probably have already been sold out.

Well, I went to Villa's official website, and am thankful to the Lord that not only were tickets still available, it was going at only £30 (as compared to the £100 pounds charged by Arsenal and £75 pounds charged by Man U). I quickly placed an order for a ticket, and it arrrived in the mail yesterday :-)

Three days ago, when we were having lunch at our Cluster Leaders' place, RevBarnz remarked that his MSN motto is "One Phone: Sony Ericcson, One Computer: Mac, One Car - Honda, One God -- Jesus".

That has inspired me to come up with a similar motto for myself, which is Y-M-C-A:

One Yardstick -- to assess what really matters in life, ie. my Saviour and Lord, Jesus
One Marriage -- to my covenant-partner Sock Pin
One Club -- Aston Villa rox!
One Automobile -- Mitsubishi