Be salt, not salty

My aunt has returned from Australia and to make up for the loss of CNY steamboat, she held Cap Go Meh steamboat instead. Honestly I felt lazy to go because I preferred sleeping in on Sunday but she took care of me when I was covid-ed :( So I could not that be that ungrateful. I decided to come earlier rather than going home first after morning Mass and my gym. I tried to delay my arrival buy getting a cup of yuan yang at Hougang Mall which only gave me only half an hour. Not worth breaking my promise to start cutting down on such drinks. Oh well, the price ($2.30) was 'just nice' for me to spend my 30 cents coins. Anyway I felt like an idiot because the drink stall was very advance that the staff did not handle the money and I was supposed to put it into a cash deposit machine which I did not see. The staff was not clear with her instruction and the cash deposit machine position was very low that I did not see it until the customer behind me told me.

I planned to have lunch and then quickly go home. Unfortunately, one of my cousins only arrived past 2pm. After that, we 'played' Black Jack until 630pm. With a blink of an eye, I ended up with having steamboat for both lunch and dinner. I ran out of my luck because I spent $2.50 for the Black Jack. Haha.. It was gambling for fun and I was the worst loser. The funny thing was that every time I wanted to give up playing by betting all that I had remaining, I ended up winning again and the game continued on dragging. At one point I was down to 20 cents before reaching $1.40 somehow. So yeah, that's why I do not gamble, I do not buy 4D or toto etc because usually I don't have the luck for this kind of thing. Just gambling my luck with my gacha games is enough for me lol.

Now I do not regret buying my blue Bugs Bunny shirt from Cotton On which I thought was not CNY-enough. Blue represents water nicely and this year is the year of water rabbit. The shirt received good comments from some colleagues during the CNY lunch and some people during the steamboat just now.

Today's gospel provides me a lot of comfort and gives me a good perspective to the cliche 'Be salt of the earth... Be light of the world...'. One part of the homily which caught my interest is that the being salt and being light also mean not to draw the attention to ourselves. Salt is present to give flavour or to preserve the food. Light is present so that we can see things around us. I agree and expand it to the fact that if people can notice salt in the food, that means the food is too salty and the salt basically ruins the food, rather than enhancing it. Similarly if a light is too bright, it ends up blinding or even burning. That is exactly what I want to shove down to the people serving in church but forget if they are doing God's work or they are just doing things for the sake of themselves.

Time to wander again

I had another random dream which made me wonder if it was a continuation of  my prayer to ask for direction in life. Unlike the previous one, it was very short. I was in a fair of various religious congregations and that was it. I was not approaching any booth and no actual religious congregation names caught my attention. I suppose it was clear that I was not directed to any.

Ironically, this very week I decided to stop going to my Landings weekly sessions at least for the next 2-3 months. After my bitter experience with my friend in secondary school about the hostel chapel, I decided to avoid any church ministry. I gave it a second chance and this second time proves the same thing: working with (some) church people sucks.

Some may become over-zealous in pleasing God until they forget that they are putting their own ego first and think that their contribution is their achievement. That really turns me off. Basically one person replied to me sarcastically because I disagreed with her. It was just over one sheet of paper and I thought her response was simply over-the-top. I was not surprised since I knew from her reflection from the previous Run, serving is her joy and pride. I am just here to help out so it is better for me to get out. There is no point doing church stuff if it makes me even further from God.

If I were to follow my emotion, I would reply with sarcasm on the spot and left the group chat immediately. I decided to hold on and think of a more graceful way to exit because I do not want to create unnecessary drama and headache to the rest. I think God also agrees that I should leave since I encountered a random Youtube video which let me know that it is okay to retreat and hide first when facing troubles or difficulties in carrying out God's work: just like how David hid from Saul when the latter tried to kill him, instead of fighting him head's on. That gives me the assurance that yeah, I have to leave for now. Perhaps I am also burned out but have been forcing myself to come every Monday just to show face for the new people from my previous group. If I stray too far, I believe that just like Jonah, God will send me the whale to swallow and vomit me back to where I should be.

Initially my plan was to wait after 2 weeks as evident that I am not able to come for the past 2 weeks and I will be busy for the next few weeks with work and going home etc so I shall leave the group first. I get an idea from my office to advance my plan. At the end of February, my boss is inviting some people from other countries to come here for discussion. Since we are the HQ and the host, we will bring them out for dinner on a Monday. Hehe.. I use that as a reason that different teams from different countries will take turns every week that every Monday I will have office dinner to attend to.

I think the coordinator is not so gullible and will suspect something, especially since I refuse his offer to be added back to the group even if I am not expected to reply when I am not around. Hehe but I am not planning to ruin everything and will just leave that as my reason. I don't know if anyone else will sense something after I exited. I don't care but I hope so hahaha... If it causes some drama, then I have exacted my revenge. If it does not, I still meet my goal to excuse myself from the team.

I normally do not have the luck to win in lucky draws so I was surprised when I won again yesterday during my office's CNY lunch. This is the second streak after the Christmas party at where I am volunteering. I don't know if I am lucky or unlucky because I think I won the 13th prize today lol. It is $30 and adding the $10 door prize, I got $40 angpau in total. 4 is not a good number in Chinese culture. So yeah. Haha..

I wonder if my luck would continue for 12 million TOTO. I don't mind trying my luck but I am only willing to buy online. No way I will be queueing lol. It seems that my luck already runs out because to open a Singapore Pools online, it takes up to 2 working days for verification. I was so determined that I even did the video call verification when the automatic facial verification kept failing. It is very rare for me to turn on my laptop camera so I really went the distance to even do the video call to do the verification. The draw will be over in 1.5 hours time and my online account is still unverified now. Oh well.