Friday, 20 July 2007

Pastoral Group BBQ - Another Sense of Humour of the Almighty?

Of late, I have begun to notice that "strange and mysterious things" do actually happen in STM, especially when they are somehow connected to the students (for my earlier posts on this, click here and here). Yesterday, it was no exception.


Since it was a public holiday for Negeri Sembilan, two pastoral groups decided that we should get together by having a BBQ at my place, which is just round the corner from the campus. We had a good time, no doubt. We had loads of food, and the "sin of gluttony" was rather prevalent (hmmm...how does one interpret the photo to the right?).


But something rather strange happened yesterday. This time, the water supply was cut off (hmmm...wondering whether is this supposed to be an answered prayer for someone in the group?? Will the guilty party please stand up???). Call it a coincidence when STM students get together. Previously, it was rain and power cut - and now water cut (and all these happened in the span of a few weeks in this semester. I wonder what would be next???)


I had a funny feeling that the water cut was not without a reason. As a result, we could not do the washing up of all the plates and utensils at my place - so we had to do it at the dining hall of STM. The students were near ecstatic when they saw me standing together with them in the washing up - they finally had a lecturer standing in line with them in doing the washing up, which was a very unusual sight. For those of you who may not be familiar with STM's dining etiquette, all the students take turn doing the washing up after every meal while all the lecturers are spared.


No wonder there was water cut! Perhaps some of the students have been praying hard for the water cut, so they could "punish" me by having me stood in solidarity with them in washing the dishes at the dining hall. One of them quipped, "Now you know how we feel after every meal!" The photo above says it all....


Another sense of humour of the Almighty?

9 comments:

rccnlj said...

*grin.. Well written.. Love the post.. :D Going to link it to my blog!

Rev. Silvester L.M. David said...

Bravo....finally lecturer(s) are journeying together with students...at least in washing of dishes. Enjoy your journey LKY….there are lot more areas and struggles to venture through (with ‘poor’ student.)

pearlie said...

haha ... reminds me of Die Hard 4.0's Fire Sale (3 stages of infrastructure shutdown).
Okay la here ... ended up in dish washing oni :) :)

Alex Tang said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Alex Tang said...

are the dishes clean? no Pauline sediments?

How does a Biblical Scholar wash dishes?

Kar Yong said...

Alex,

Good thing in STM we do require that every plate is rinsed...so my good pastoral group leader was the quality controller (or the "rinser") - he made sure that every plate was clean when he rinsed it - if not it would be rejected. Actually, there were a few rejects - and as such, you can be assured that there were no Pauline sediments, at least according to the controller...(well, as far as I know, there is no food poisoning reported today...phew!)

Hmmm....how does a biblical scholar wash dishes - the "traditional perspective" of making the students guilty if they don't wash dishes is just way too complicated...I think the "new perspective" is rather attractive in this context - let there be grace in the context of keeping the law in which the dishes can still be washed without the students being involved...so the Pauline scholar is thinking of raising funds for a new dishwasher...hahaha...

Any takers??

Kar Yong said...

Rccnlj & Silvester,
Thanks!

Pearlie,
Dishing washing is a rather serious punishment...for a lecturer by the students...

Dan said...

Goodness, what have I missed out? Free flow of comments coming in ha. Falsely accuse me of being glutton ha!!

Anyway, it is a wishful dream of all STM students that one day the lecturers will 'suffer' together with the students, and not watch from a distance. So I guess we are not seeing the last of you in the kitchen, right?

Kar Yong said...

Dan,

Aiyoh..not falsely mah...just read your blog...aiyoh...out of your 8 random facts, 4 are related to food (that's 50%)!!