It’s been sometime since I’ve blogged. 

Partly because I was preoccupied with a major work project which saw me travelling in and out of Vietnam and India, and which finally (sort of) ended in December. 

The other reason is the PC which died and which was only recently replaced in late December, after a long period of disciplined waiting on my part for Windows 7 to be launched, and for the December PC fair in Singapore.

Hopefully I’ll get round to writing more now that things are a little more settled.

Report to colleagues and the boss on all the fun I had on my recent trip in New Delhi :

Having braved imnumerable tribulations, including a case of massive food poisoning and an extremely foul-tempered government official, I am happy to report that I have returned from my Journey to the West (ie. India) alive and with nothing less than an original copy of the [ ... ] sutra of India, also known as [ law textbook ] authored by the learned Dr [ X ].

Dr [ X ] also happens to be the case officer of the ongoing [ case involving the company ]. I had bought a copy of the book for my meeting with Dr [ X ] in the hope of getting him to autograph it. Regrettably, Dr [ X ] was not in the mood to indulge my attempt at sincere flattery that day, and preferred to engage Rakesh in intellectual banter in (mostly) Hindi instead.

A copy of Dr [ X ]’s book (unmolested by his signature) now lies on my desk. Please feel free to borrow the book should you be in need of some intellectual stimulation. (No, it is not printed on paper which is good enough to use as toilet paper).

I had travelled to India last week to attend a public hearing in which my company was involved.  On the day of the public hearing, I received an urgent call from our lawyers.

"The director’s father has been fired.  The hearing is cancelled."

Stunned silence from me at the other end of the phone.

"Yes, you heard me correctly.  The hearing is cancelled because the director’s father has been fired."

I thought that, perhaps it was a cultural practice to grieve over the loss of a job in India, no differently from the way that we grieve when a family member dies.  But I wasn’t feeling amused at that time, having travelled over 2000 kilometres, nearly having died from the Delhi Belly, and still suffering from the effects of the Delhi Belly somewhat.

I told the lawyer that I would call him back on the hotel phone as I could not hear him clearly on my mobile.

After hearing our lawyer speak for a while, my Indian colleague who was with me explained, "the meeting is cancelled because the director’s father has expired".

On my most recent and fourth Journey to the West (ie. New Delhi, India), I finally succumbed to the infamous "Delhi Belly" (the term fondly given to diarrhea contracted from consuming food or water from India).

Which was quite a disappointment (and also very painful).  I had expected myself to be impervious to bullets and food poisoning, the previous three trips to India having been without issue.

Anyway, early Monday morning a week ago started off with six visits to the toilet.  Then, while stuck in an hour-long traffic congestion on the way to the office, I felt increasingly nauseous.  Finally, as my two hour presentation progressed, I felt increasingly weaker and my sentences became garbled.  At the end of the presentation, I could only muster enough strength to crawl onto the office couch and sleep while my colleagues kindly arranged to send me to the company doctor.

I thought at first that I might need to go to the hospital, or that I might need evacuation to Singapore.  I wasn’t sure if I would survive the former.

I slept for 13 straight hours that night, after bravely attending another afternoon meeting in my semi-conscious state.

Amazingly, two days and 16 billion CFUs (8 capsules x 2 billion colony forming units every 6 hours) of probiotics later, I made a full recovery.

I will exercise a little more paranoia during mealtimes on my next journey to the west.

Does God condemn a person for rejecting Him ?  Or does an already damned person remain condemned when he rejects God ?

I believe it is the latter.  Unfortunately, the partly inaccurate and truncated message that people often hear is that they will go to hell for rejecting God.

This is what John 3 : 17 - 18 actually says –

For God did not send His Son [ Jesus ] to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.  Whoever believes in Him [ ie. Jesus ] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe already stands condemned because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Paraphrased –

A drug is invented not to kill a patient, but to cure him.  A patient who takes his medicine gets better, but a patient who refuses to take his medicine is as good as dead, because he has not taken the only thing which can cure his otherwise terminal illness.

Josh has reached an age where he can play with his older brother, Jed.  Unfortunately, boys are hardly gentle at play and they still require quite a bit of supervision to make sure they don’t inadvertantly maul each other.

I haven’t been writing lately because (i) the PC is out of order and we’re waiting for PCs to start shipping with Windows 7 before buying a new one (but we’re getting tired of waiting) and (ii) I’ve been awfully, awfully busy trying to seal a deal which I’m negotiating on at work.

The deal which I’m working on was intended to be closed months ago.  Unfortunately, new issues arise every other week resulting in the parties having to get fresh approvals from their management and signing postponed.  More recently, we thought we might be able to ink the agreement last Saturday, which was postponed to Sunday, then Monday — all over the Hari Raya long weekend — then Tuesday and, well, I don’t know whether we’ll sign today. 

I’m told my colleagues that this process is like going into labour but being unable to give birth.  Or less elegantly, going to the toilet and being unable to discharge.

And I feel like the toilet bowl.  Or more elegantly, the grass which gets trampled on between the two fighting elephants negotiating the deal.

Although I’m (sort of) complaining, there has been good in all this.  To begin with, if the parties did manage to reach agreement in July or August as originally planned, it would be almost impossible for me to find the time to do the work.  Especially August when I was out of the country for about three quarters of the time.

In the past few days, I’ve also managed to help the parties reach agreement on issues which were potential dealbreakers, without any particularly clever drafting on my part.  There were also several instances when the lead negotiater requested that I meet up with my counterpart over the long weekend — something that neither of us were particuarly keen on; as it was I felt bad for interrupting his meals on several ocassions by calling him on the phone — when I received his e-mail agreement to my proposal.  I imagine the chief negotiator must have been impressed, though I did nothing much.

So while I have been pretty miserable these couple of months / days, I see the hand of God intervening at critical moments to help me work through difficult situations, and to appear better than I actually am at work.

"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." (Psalms 16:6)

On the same day that the media reports that Iran intends to Islamise the humanities in Iran, because it is too "Western", also comes news that an Iranian couple was fined by the Thai police for having sex on a beach in Pattaya.

In all of India and I’ve noticed in particular Mumbai, there is a tremendous gap between the rich and poor.  The latter live in the most squalid conditions imaginable.  Or to put it another way, it is quite unimaginable that anyone could live like this.  But it is there, in your face, on almost every other street, in Mumbai.

On the second last day of my recent trip to India, a local colleague was kind enough to take me around Mumbai and out for dinner.

Over dinner she told me that when she first brought her son to Singapore for a visit, he asked her "Mummy, are there no poor people in Singapore ?".

Nothing, I told her, like in Mumbai.