The Craftsman’s Forge

Psalm 91

1 Those who live in the shelter of the Most High
will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 This I declare about the Lord:
He alone is my refuge, my place of safety;
he is my God, and I trust him.
3 For he will rescue you from every trap
and protect you from deadly disease.
4 He will cover you with his feathers.
He will shelter you with his wings.
His faithful promises are your armor and protection.
5 Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night,
nor the arrow that flies in the day.
6 Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness,
nor the disaster that strikes at midday.
7 Though a thousand fall at your side,
though ten thousand are dying around you,
these evils will not touch you.
8 Just open your eyes,
and see how the wicked are punished.

9 If you make the Lord your refuge,
if you make the Most High your shelter,
10 no evil will conquer you;
no plague will come near your home.
11 For he will order his angels
to protect you wherever you go.
12 They will hold you up with their hands
so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.
13 You will trample upon lions and cobras;
you will crush fierce lions and serpents under your feet!

14 The Lord says, “I will rescue those who love me.
I will protect those who trust in my name.
15 When they call on me, I will answer;
I will be with them in trouble.
I will rescue and honor them.
16 I will reward them with a long life
and give them my salvation.”

10th October, 2008

I had a dream early this morning, and I believe its a significant dream. I can still remember the dream quite vividly, and is only the second dream in my entire christian lifetime.
My family and I were in our house, and they were all sleeping. It seemed to be in early morning, and I was looking out the living room windows to a scenery not unlike the mountainous Cameron Highlands view from our hotel room when we were in Cameron Highlands. The road is an “L” shaped road, with the long side of the “L” shape directly in front of me, and the shorter side of the “L” perpendicular from me, maybe about 50 metres to my right. The mountain was just behind this “L” road.

I was enjoying the quiet scene, when suddenly, I saw a huge trailer carrying sand tumbling down the mountain side and onto the “L” road. The scene was spectacular, with the trailer breaking up and tearing up everything in its path. When the trailer eventually came to rest, and I thought it was over, a huge boulder (about 3 times the size of the trailer cab) came rolling down the short “L” road. It hit the first house at the end of the “L” shape road, and the house came tumbling down, leaving a skeletal structure still standing. Then the boulder continued rolling down the road, and destroying the rest of the structures the trailer didn’t destroy. Throughout this carnage, our house was not touched or harmed.
I was just looking on in amazement, and I could feel our entire house shaking with the tremendous vibration of the destruction, and I remembered quite vividly that I was not afraid as I knew nothing would harm us. I saw my dad running towards me, and then… I suddenly realised that the kids were still sleeping. I quickly went to see if they were ok. They were all still ok. We gathered together as a family, and when the vibrations stilled, we walked cautiously out of the house to see what has happened.
Everything was now deathly quiet with dust filling the air. I glanced to my right, and saw that the skeletal structure of the first house was still standing, but before I could say anything, the remaining part of the first building came crashing down, and brought debris flying in all directions. I quickly shouted to everyone to close their eyes and turn away from the direction of the crashing house. We could feel the debris (small stones, concrete, etc) flying past us, and even pelting us on our bodies. When it was over, I opened my eyes and saw that we were all ok.

Interpretation
I believe this is an encouragement from God that all will be ok. We may be shaken by the things around us, but that we will be escape unharmed. I’m not sure though if the trailer and boulder each represent a calamity, or it should be taken as representative of “A” calamity.

I received a call from mum yesterday at about 11:30am, and she had a frantic voice about her. Dad and her were travelling back from Hougang Mall via the North East Line, and when they were in the station, dad got onto the train at the very last minute while mum didn’t! The doors closed after dad got on, and they were separated!!!!

When mum called, she was already at home, but had waited for 30 minutes at the Hougang station for dad to come back… but he didn’t. She finally made her way back home, and called us. By the time she did, dad had already been “missing” for more than 45 minutes.

I was in a panic, and could feel my blood pressure rise and my heart thumping….. Goodness! The worst thing was.. I couldn’t do a single thing to get dad back quickly. Only thing I could do was pray, and get my cell group mates to pray. I also called SBS transit’s customer service, where I spoke to a complete farce of a customer service girl. Not helpful at all, and irrelevant. If I’m the head of SBS Transit, I’d fire her. The same goes for SMRT. They really need to revamp their customer service hotlines. Its impossible to get someone on the line.

Dad had a stroke about more than a year back, and although he has recovered, and is of sound mind, he can’t speak coherently because of the stroke. So… I was understandably worried. I was already considering heading out to the stations to comb the area, but a voice in me told me to relax and breath easy…..

I called mum again at 11:45am, and to my BIG BIG BIG surprise, she told me that dad just reached home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

W A H L A O !!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank God that he’s safely back home…..

Goodness…. the number of things happening in the last couple of weeks is amazing…… All these after I accepted the call to serve as asst CG leader in church…… I don’t want to belabour the point too much, nor give the devil too much credit, but I can certainly sense heightened spiritual warfare…..

Last week was a bit of a blur…..

On Tuesday afternoon, I had quite a scare. Felt some discomfort in my chest area (or at least I thought was chest discomfort), and was panicky enough to rush myself to SGH’s A&E to quickly get checked up in case it was a heart attack. In the past 2 months alone, my cell group had 3 guys with heart issues. G1 had a heart attack and a bypass op. G2 had a genetic heart desease and had to get an op. Then… EW experienced some chest pains while exercising, and got himself checked up, and ended finding out he had a 95% blocked artery, and as a result went for an angioplasty surgery.

These were quite enough to spur me to be fairly jumpy last Tuesday. I ended up at A&E’s observation area for more than 9 hours, leaving only after 10:30pm, after having gone through 2 blood tests, an X-Ray and a bout of ECG tests. In the end, all tests were normal, that is.. the X-Ray didn’t show an enlargement of the heart (which is indicative of a heart attack), the blood tests didn’t show any abnormalities with the cardiac markers, and the ECG didn’t show any abnormality except for indication of RBBB which I already know I have.

So, they allowed me to head back home at 10:30pm, and arranging for a follow up consultation with the cardiologist in 2 weeks.

Regardless of the situation, it’s woken me up to how frail life is, and how we should take care of ourselves. I’ve tweaked my diet and begun exercising. Scary….

But, in all of these, I also recognise that there is a heightened sense of spiritual warfare on the church I go to, the cell group and also personally in recent months. The cell group is heading out for a mission trip in December to Thailand, and church has just moved into Woodlands. At the end of it all, I know that God is sovereign and in charge. We just have to keep ourselves stucked into God and praying.

Over the past few days, I’ve been reading up about caring for a guitar in our Singapore climate. I’m just completely blown away with the amount of information available on the Internet on this subject. I really feel ashamed and inadequate not having known about how to care for a guitar considering that I’ve own guitars for over 20 years.

Never really bothered me nor gave me any concern as I never really invested on any good guitar. But since I bought the Ayers, I became really interested in finding out the proper way to maintain the guitar.

What I read scared the socks off me! Didn’t realise our humidity (80% to 95%) can do so much damage to a guitar. The Ayers guitar, being an all solid wood guitar, is susceptible to warping as the wood is organic and reacts to the environment it is in. If there’s too much moisture in the air, the wood would swell, and this could spell problems for the bracing, glue and the warping of the neck, causing the neck to warp upwards and increasing the action.

So, I gathered through my research the last few days that a dehumidifier or a dry box is really something one cannot ignore if you really want to maintain your guitar at its best. The best ambient temperature and relative humidity needs 28 degrees Celsius and between 50% to 65% RH.

I found out that a 160L dry box (which would just fit my guitar snugly would cost S$500. Wow! this is crazy. I decided to build my own, and headed down to Home Fix this afternoon to get my tools. I also called Christine to tell her we’re going to Ikea tonight to get some pine wood planks for me to construct a guitar cabinet.

I had all the plans drawn out and the measurements done, and we all headed to Ikea after dinner. While at ikea, however, I decided to take a look at the ready made cabinets. They were all either too big, or too expensive. No choice lah… got to build my own.

At the very last minute, I thought I’d just take a look at the “As-Is” corner (An area for slightly defective goods which Ikea sells of at a significant discount) to see if there were any good stuff there. Lo and behold!!!!!!! I saw the perfect display cabinet for the guitar!!!

It had a couple of chips at the rear corner, which I didn’t feel was any cause for concern, especially since I’d be getting it at a really good 40% off! I paid $180 for the cabinet which originally cost S$300. Felt really good.

At home, I sealed up the cabinet, making it as air tight as possible, fixed up the hygrometer and this is how it looks like with the guitar inside. I still need to buy a couple of things, like the petite dehumidifier from Olee (I’m currently just using Silica Gel which I’ve thrown into a pair of socks) and a proper guitar stand.

Otherwise.. this is as good as it gets.

Wow.. this guy is really good…

Wow.. I bought myself a new guitar for my 36th birthday. Being an ardent admirer of Taylor guitars, but not willing to part with top dollar, I began my search for the guitar which features the rich full sound of the Taylors minus the cost.

You’d be amaze what Google can do.

I stumbled on an excellent website guitars4christ and just went through what others thought were good guitars. And… to cut the long story short, I found a list f guitars i should really take a look at, and I made my way to a couple of guitar shops this afternoon.

My goodness…. the last time I was in Swee Lee was eons ago with Andrew Wee! Ha ha ha ha… Anyways… I looked at and tried out Larivee, Corts, Gibson, Ibanez, Takamine, Martin, Taylor and Ayers in over 3 shops, and finally settled for an all solid wood Ayers guitar made from Vietnam. It has a solid sitka spruce (rated A+) top, solid mahogany sides and back.

I know.. i know.. it sounds lousy, but these guys in Vietnam are amazing! Magnum Opus and Baden Guitars outsource their guitar manufacturing to them. After trying out countless of guitars, playing the Ayers guitar was like a godsend! I’m not kidding. Go have a look at their website. Playing the guitar is like playing a Taylor. Rich baritone and full sounds.

Simply to die for. The action is incredible too! Extremely low without any distortion and fret buzz. very very happy with this buy. My most expensive guitar in 25 years! Got it for S$950. The playability and sound far outstrips guitars twice its price. I’m not kidding.

I’m really really happy.