The Rainbow

I saw the most beautiful rainbow today outside my window. It arched across the sky from the river inlet right below Millenia Tower all the way across the Nicoll Highway and ended in the forest at the golf course nearby.

Apart from its breathtaking beauty and myth-like qualities, rainbows are special because they represent the goodness and the promise of God. In the Bible, after the Great Flood, God made a commitment with Man through Noah: “Never again, Noah. Never again”. And he sealed this covenant with a rainbow.

Genesis 9:12-16: And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth."

You know, this reminds me of the goodness of God. Not goodness because He created something beautiful and fluffy and cute (although a rainbow would probably belong in that category). Goodness because of the unsurpassable standard of God that he had to smite his creation because he was unable to tolerate any hint of sin. And this sin can range from your impure thoughts, your homosexual tendencies, your dishonouring of your parents. This does not exclude your kleptomania, or your habit of lying, or your hurtful speech. Yes, this means you, you, you, and you. And me.

But he considers all this, and the God of Wonder reaches down to us. He stands up from his throne, removes his mantle of light, clothes himself in humanity and deigns to enter the womb of a mortal woman. All this for the love of you. Whenever we come to a point when we disregard God; when we think He’s an old man who is too weak, or too busy, or too impotent, or even too important to care, remember that God loves you, and this love is all but encapsulated in these few words: “Never again, my child. Never again.”

Supplementary post

So after some "whining" about me not being in any of the pictures, here you go. Supplementary shots swiped from my colleagues who shared it on the company server.

That's me right there on the boat... As you can see, there's a half-naked white dude sitting at the back. He's not related to us. Just hitching a ride.


THat's me again, posing for a picture.


Me with Minette the HR lady (of the pseudo-scandal I told you about), and Winnie, my room mate for the trip behind us.


I hope you had your fill of pictures with me in it. I kinda find posed-for pictures a bit meaningless.. Haha. But that's just me.


That's me with Winnie and the head of Risk at Jimbaran Bay.

So no more X-files lah.

Bali trip: 1st-3rd Dec

I guess this is the way overdue Bali pictures that you guys wanna see.

We'll start off with my hotel, Club Med. It's got this whole rustic feel to it that I like very much. Sweet, huh? (Please excuse the rubbish strewn all over the floor)

On the first day, I went with some of the colleagues to Kuta. It's a beachfront area with lots of shopping. I hated the shopping, but couldn't leave my colleagues becauase I didn't have a mobile, and didn't wanna get lost in Bali! The shopping's pretty much like your regular Bangkok shopping trips, except the people here are exceedingly poor, a little more desperate. So I was nonchalantly standing on the side while my colleagues were bargaining till their faces were black and blue. And the slightly evil thing is that they were comparing who was able to slash the prices down more. I mean, it's only $1 to us. Does it make a difference if you pay $2 or $3 for a shirt? It's a steal both ways.

Here's the pictures of my bored male colleagues with 2 tourist police (whatever that means) who were stuck in Kuta with the shopping girls.

And here's the real Kuta beach. Isn't it amazing? I haven't seen anything like this since Europe. I think if you walk a little further, you'd see a nudist beach. That would have been fun to see, not that I'm a perv or anything.

On the morning of the next day, a couple of us were scheduled to see dolphins. Since it was a 3 hour ride to the north-west corner of the island (and you should only see dolphins at the break of dawn), we were supposed to leave Club Med at 3am.

Let me show you the bay that we went to, where we saw NO dolphins. But it was still pretty amazing, innit?


Those are my colleagues in the other boat. We sat on a similar one, but there aren't any pictures to be had...


Subsequently, we went to Bedugul Temple. It's a Hindu temple, but it's nothing like the Hindu temples we see in Singapore. These guys are more into nature and mystical things, so there isn't much of deities and scary-looking statues, but there's a lot of the nature stuff.







Isn't that really really pretty? Of course my photography skills have something to do with it too! ;)

These are the areas that I managed to snap very quickly as the bus was flying past on its way to Tanah Lot. The one here, this is the paddy fields we passed by. They grow them on terraces because Bali is a very hilly area, and rice needs to be grown on level ground, so the cut off bits of the mountain to create the terraces required to hold the water and make sure it doesn't run off the side of the mountain (all this from my Secondary School geography lesson - I still remember!). Right behind there is a rather obscured image of a volcano. Didn't catch the name.. But it's a dormant volcano for several years now.

And we passed a village area, and as you can see, these people lived along the path cut through the mountains, possibly because there's not much level ground on the island. You can see that we're on a slight incline. The native tour guide says that on the mountains, electricity and heating (not that they needed heating! It was 35'C!) were erratic and unreliable.


The unique thing about Tanah Lot temple is that it's situated atop a lake, so you need to ferry yourself across to pray. It was a pity that we went at low tide, so the strip of land was exposed and we couldn't see the coolness of the ferrying. These are pictures of and surrounding the Tanah Lot region.





This is the temple at Tanah Lot that is supposed to be *in* a lake. It's obviously not lah, because it's low tide. The structure is quite interesting - It's caves at the bottom, and the worship area is at the top, where you can see some partially visible gazebos.

And you take these steps to reach the worship area. Not many people can go to the worship area; it's jealously guarded, and you need to be decently dressed and wearing proper clothes to go in. So needless to say, us slipper-wearing, camera-toting tourists are not allowed.

Anyways, we went to Ubud, yet another shopping area. I didn't take any photos, for obvious reasons (I hate shopping - and there really isn't much to see except cramped little lanes of over-zealous peddlars), then it's off to Jimbaran Bay.

Jimbaran Bay is, admittedly, a bit touristy. I was half expecting to see some bearded guy strapped with half a ton of C4 strolling past us. Lucky for me and the 50 or so other tourists there, it didn't exactly happen. The seafood was amazing, as was the view. Didn't manage to get any pictures beyond sunset, because the CFO's son kept pestering me to play a nonsensical game the Director of Investor Relations taught him. Thanks a lot, Rosanna!



The sunset signalled the last night of our trip there, and I guess this picture represents a storehouse of memories to keep for the coming years. Even with the burden of the exams at the back of my mind, I was able to thoroughly enjoy the trip.

Bali is a lovely place, you should go there sometime.