Ganbatte ガンバッテ !!

Saturday, 22 August 2009

Every Saturday, my whole family will visit my inlaws' home to have dinner there. The television will always be switched on to Channel 8. About six months ago, I happened to notice an interesting scene that was showing and so continued to watch on. Ever since then, I have been "hooked" onto what turns out to be a mega-episode Taiwanese serial called 爱. Whenever I buy 8Days on Mondays, the first page I would turn to is the synopsis of the upcoming episodes of that serial.

Anyway, starring in the show is this particular character called Song Yi Ting who has been diagnosed with bone cancer and confined to a wheelchair. Her good friend Luo An Ping buys her a brown poodle to keep her company and calls it Ganbatte (which is Japanese for "be encouraged, press on, keep it up, stay strong" etc). In Mandarin, it is being translated as 加油 or to "add oil".

Which brings me to the topic I want to blog about today and to give thanks to God for.

Exactly 3 months ago, I blogged about moving into the palace. I now sit at one end of the area while the Head of Marketing, Asia (let's call him W) sits at the other end. In other words, anyone who wants to enter the palace will either have to pass by my room or his room.

Why is this significant? I'll come to that in a moment...

When I first moved into the palace on 21 May 2009, there was this other guy (let's call him P) who moved into the room next to mine. My room tends to get a bit messy (to put it mildly) after a while and he was one of several that commented on its state of progressive untidiness.

And so, yesterday morning while I was on leave to play chauffeur to my son (who was sitting for his PSLE oral exams), my secretary took the opportunity to do a major spring cleaning. When I came back to work in the afternoon, the room was neat and tidy, and so I invited P in to come and take a look.

He was impressed but what caught his eye was the tiny little bottle of anointing oil that was being placed at the foot of the cross!!!

[Others would have noticed the "bread" and "wine" and that gives me the opportunity to explain to them why I have not taken medical leave for the longest time, of which I blogged about here.]

P mentioned that W has been applying the oil, and thus asked me what its significance was. You see, W is also from NewCre!!!

Anyway, I saw that as a divine appointment and I thus shared with P about how Christianity is not about rules and regulations but about enjoying life to the fullest as a result of being favoured by our Creator God.

I keep a set of Ps Prince's CD albums and DVDs in my room and I was led by the Lord to lend him Humorous Bible Illustrations (that's the one that I had given out during Xmas last year and the very same one that Rev Peter Koh has banned from my church because he considers the contents inappropriate). My reason for doing so is because the excerpts are bite-sized yet contain deep spiritual truths, and someone like P (who is a Catholic, by the way) will be able to appreciate the humour therein).

The first thing that P commented when he saw the back of the DVD is that Ps Prince looks like a rockstar. Well, my prayer is that after P starts watching the first clip, he will keep wanting to watch the next one and then the next one after that. The seed sown will cause him to also catch the grace message and he will start to borrow all the other CDs and DVDs to listen to and watch, just like my own spiritual journey experience in my previous company.

And so, please join me in declaring ganbatte! Let's press on! Let's add oil! Amen?