My first event photography outside gakkai: Aug-18

I had been doing event photography only for Gakkai activities.  This time, Hong asked me to help out in one of his drama performance in a big charity show.  Thus, giving me the opportunity to try out an event photography outside Gakkai events.  This experience was quite similar, except because
of the size of the event, I need to use my fisheye lens to capture the audiences along with the performance.

Leading Up to the Youth Summit : Aug-2018

When I first heard of the upcoming youth summit, I was a lil’ excited.. and a lil’ determined.. that all my 3 girls must participate in it by hook or by crook. From experience, I had thought it should not be too difficult, but that didn’t seem the case! Now that Qi and Xuan are older and have more activities of their own, time became a scarce resource.. and I had to get them to commit their precious resource, ie their time! Which may be a lil’ challenging..😅 Anyway, i started to pray for Qi, Xuan and En to have a most joyful and victorious youth summit experience!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

As I hear from faith buddies how they reached out to their district youths, and even their ex lion cubs to participate in the youth summit, I also wanted to do more and began to explore which youths in my life can I invite.. Faces of nieces and nephews began to pop up in my mind and in my prayers. As someone who has always been very passive in keeping in touch with relatives, I think they must have been a lil’ shocked to receive my WA messages!!😬 After a couple of attempts, I realized I wasn’t going to succeed. Hence I changed my approach and prayers — I began to pray that Qi and Xuan would be able to invite their friends to watch their performance instead. However that wasn’t easy too. I was soon informed by my ywd leader that my girls were not inviting anyone and our district has more tickets available for distribution! 😔 I continued with my prayers and even embarked on a 2-hours-a-day daimoku campaign! But the fact is, there was hardly 2 consecutive days which I managed to chant my 2-hourly daimoku.. Nonetheless, I plough on and continue my daily attempt towards my goal.

Time passed very quickly. And before long, July was over and August was whizzing away in front of my eyes too.

Much as I wanted it to be otherwise, Youth Summit really wasn’t My Youth Summit. Despite vested interest in having 3 daughters, as well as 3 other district youths as participants, it’s still not my youth summit. However bcoz SNCO has been tasked to take on a performance at a book launch at SMU one day after the youth summit, and I was one of the 4 performers for the flute quartet.. I was able to chant for focused and personal daimoku for the total victory of that youth summit weekend, including our performance at the book launch! In fact, after the flautists met for a rehearsal one week before performance, I was downright flustered and at a loss.. despite practising by myself, my skills were really not up to par and I may even spoil the show!!

At the eleventh hour, there really wasn’t much I could do but chant. Hence I set a personal target to chant 10 hours of daimoku that weekend, the absolute victory of the youth summit, as well as the absolute victory of our flute performance. Also for my youths’ joyous and victorious youth summit journey. And also that my girls would invite their friends to join the youth summit as spectators.❤️🙏🏼

Of course this wasn’t the first time I gave myself an impromptu daimoku target, but this was surely one of the very few times I actually challenged myself hard and achieved it!! I fought hard against the Zzz monster and won some lost some battles.. Ultimately, I accomplished my 10 hours!! ✌🏻✌🏻

A new toy, folk guitar! : Aug-18

After going to Sungha Jung concert with Ling, I couldn't tahan anymore and went to buy a folk guitar  the next day and inspired to play like him, would be very happy if I could achieve his 20%. :-)

My new folk guitar

Xuan’s Birthday : Aug-18

It's sweet 17th birthday for Xuan! Celebration was simple as everyone was so busy and with a packed schedule, there were youth summit rehearsals, discussion meetings, dragon dance competition practice, tuition, school events, shape run, etc etc.  Just us, we had dinner at Jack's Place, followed with our usual cake cutting at home with papa and mama after they returned from mana’s discussion meeting.  Just to be fair, Ling also bought a pendant for Xuan like she did for Qi on her 17th birthday. So fast, my little 'angmo' looking girl has grown into a pretty lady now.

En’en had a ‘fierce’ wound : Jul-18

When En’en got a slight fever and bad flu in mid July, we took her to the nearby GP where the doctor had the same conclusion.  However after a few days, we also noticed En’en’s legs started to develop small reddish spots and rashes and her flu did not get better.  We thought it could be chicken pox or maybe HFMD, so we brought her back to the GP again.  It was another young doctor, Dr Lee, who was also puzzled after looking at En’en rashes and could not confirm his diagnosis. After he ‘consulted’ uncle google, he told us that En’en symptoms were very similar to HSP (Henoch-Schonlein Purpura), an immune system virus which usually happened in children, with symptoms like purple rashes and severe stomachache.  And, it would take 4 to 6 weeks to recover!  

En’en was given antibiotics to fight the virus, on top of that, she also got ONE very bad and fierce rash which later got inflamed and became very ‘ugly’.  En’en was lucky to recover much faster from her HSP, but this bad wound took her more than 3 weeks to heal, and had to repeatedly visit the doctor to dress the would every other day.

It was a scary experience for us, but we were also very grateful that we had the good fortune to have a doctor who could quickly identify and treat the illness correctly.  And also grateful that En’en did not suffer any severe stomachache and was able to recover faster than expected.  We later came to know that HSP was uncommon in Singapore and even some patients in KK were unable to be diagnosed accurately in their early stages.  We could not imagine how things would turn out if we discovered it later. NMHRGK

QQ’s Birthday : Aug-18

Our beloved QQ turned 61 this year and we celebrated with durian feast + cake, surrounded with many grand-nieces and a grand-nephew!