If everything goes according to plan by God's will, then by the end of this week, Joce and I will know 4 mothers with 4 newborn babies in 4 weeks. And if one can trust the absence of a willy in an ultrasound scan as proof of gender, then we will know 3 new baby girls and 1 new baby boy. Over dinner at last week's mid-week Bible study group, I made the mistake of saying (rather confidently too) that the average weight of a newborn baby is 4.5kg, when it's in fact 3.5kg. I think that taught me to shut up when it comes to matters I don't have the faintest idea about.

The first of the four is a boy born to a family which we visit every Sunday. His name, Nihal, means joy. I haven't seen him smile yet, since I've only ever seen him sleeping, but I'm sure he's brought his family a bundle of joy. He certainly put a smile on our faces when we went shopping for his present a few weeks ago. Baby clothes are so cute, especially those nice warm fluffy winter clothes which make babies look like mini teletubbies. We're attending his full moon celebration next week, which will be a new experience for us.

The second along the conveyor belt (if only it were that easy for the mothers) is a baby girl called Min Ern, which we've been told means God's mercy and God's grace. I'm guessing Min means mercy and Ern means grace, though I'm sure the parents know grace cannot be ern-ed (mind the lousy pun courtesy of Joce). The little girl also has an English name called Abigail, which means rejoice or gives joy. Is it just me or do I see a pattern going on here?

The third bun fresh out of the oven is a baby girl called Elizabeth, which could mean God's promise or God's oath. I like that name cos it fits in with God's covenant promises, which fits in with covenantal signs, which fits in with infant baptism, which I wrote about a few posts down. Always nice to have some coherence on this site. The thing with a name like Elizabeth is you can shorten it many ways, such as Elle, Eli, Eliza, Liz, Liza, Lizzie, Libby, and Beth. We've been told it's going to be Lizzie, though that's only one of many ways to spell it (be creative).

The next one due to arrive by courier this week hasn't been named yet. I have a sneaky feeling it's going to be something I've never heard of before, which is good because I like originality. Here's us wishing R & T the safe arrival of their newborn girl, though I'm secretly hoping for a boy because I like surprises.

Let me say it while I still can. Arsenal 2-1 Man United. Woohoo! If you missed the match, then you must see the highlights. The second goal was vintage Arsenal... a minute into the second half, a string of short passes, a through ball to Samir Nasri unmarked in the penalty box (what happened to the defence?!!!), and WHAM... 2-0 to the Arsenal. The drama really started towards the end of the match, when Man Utd pulled a goal back and the fourth official signaled 6 minutes of injury time! The experience of losing a 2-goal lead to Tottenham Hotspur in similar circumstances 10 days earlier paid off as the young Gunners held on and on and on until the final whistle. Phew! That made my weekend.

Anyway, it's been just under 2 months since I joined Facebook. My verdict: a load of junk. For all its virtues, which I can appreciate and understand, I'm not overly impressed. The whole application (if you can call it that) is badly designed. I could tell, just from looking at my browser's status bar, that a lot of nonsense was being preloaded in cache just to get the login page to load up. I also think it's ridiculous for a social networking site not to allow its users to personalise their pages, since the site has to employ a static layout to reserve prominent advertising space. Then after too many weeks of reading about people changing their statuses, changing their profile photos, changing their relationships, making friends via the people you may know tool, and writing on their walls, I began to wonder why I even talked myself into signing up.

Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised this evening to see photos of my old schools. They were posted in an album called "Memory Lane" and it filled me with a warm glow to see familiar faces (which probably look somewhat different now) in familiar backgrounds. There was my classroom in one of them. There was also the school hall. The school uniforms put a smile on my face. I think they've changed the colours now, which makes those photos all the more sentimental. To top it all off, there was a photo of my primary school when it was still made up of three bungalows, before the school relocated to some secluded place in a jungle somewhere.

Knowing the way social networking works, when one runs out of fashion, people move on to the next hype that comes along. Does Facebook have the sticky advantage (i.e. people sticking with them just because it would be too much of a hassle for everyone to migrate elsewhere)? It remains to be seen. Mind you, I expect there to be some kind of social networking standard soon, which would allow different social networks to communicate to each other through common specifications. For all you know, it might even be turned into a protocol, just as http is the protocol for the web and smtp/pop/imap are for email. When it does, remember you read it here first.

Not exactly the most appropriate of celebrations, but we're going to crawl the streets of Camden with the, quite literally, (in so many ways) living dead.

UPDATE: Joce dressed up as a Wicked Witch. I put on a Darth Maul mask. Among our guests were Amy Winehouse, Evil Magician, Countess Dracula, Sarah Palin, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and a scary looking Gnu. After lazing around in our flat, we tried to get a seat in Devonshire Arms, which is a haunt (mind the pun) for goths in Camden, but in the end settled for the newly reopened Hawley Arms, which Amy Winehouse frequents. Check out the album for photos (you need to double click the thumbnails to view the photos)

In a matter of weeks, two of the couples in our peer group at St Helen's will be first-time parents. This might sound strange, but I'm actually quite excited for them. I'm a sucker for new beginnings. One minute you see only husband and wife. The next minute you see a little baby pop out from no where. Obviously one of the things they will have to do is to name their babies. That got me thinking about how I came to get my name.

I have a Chinese name, which means that the family name (Tee) comes first, followed by the given names (Teik Wynn). I was searching tirelessly online just now to find the unicode representation of my name so that they display in a browser. Assuming you have the appropriate fonts, my name is 郑德荣 or if you're a native unicode speaker it's 郑德荣. If I romanized by name directly from Chinese, it would be appear as Zheng De Rong with appropriate accents on the vowels. If one takes this wikipage to be a reliable source of information, then I share the same surname as Zheng He (Cheng Ho) the famous Chinese admiral and explorer. But what does my name actually mean? I've been told it has something to do with morals and virtues. Now, if one takes this website to be a reliable source of information, then my name means integrity and honour.

However, the way my name has been romanized kind of suggests that I'm Welsh. That's because Wynn is actually a Welsh name meaning white... not exactly a very politically correct name to give someone who's yellow, but there you go. What's even more interesting is that Tecwyn is also a Welsh name. Why in the world was I given a Welsh-sounding name? Mum told me that if I were a girl she would have called me Teik Lynn. Just as well that I married someone who actually has the letters L-y-n-n in her name (as in Jocelynn if you can't follow the argument). I'm also bemused by the use of two n's. It's actually stated on my birth certificate that my name was changed from Wyn to Wynn. What's the deal with that? Mum once told me that there was a 1970s Hong Kong band called The Wynners. Maybe, just maybe, that's where she got the idea.

Anyway, when the time comes, I'm really going to struggle with naming our kids. I might have to do a fair deal of googling to come up with a Chinese name which hopefully means something Christian, like God's Gift for example. Then I would have to romanize the name in a non-Welsh way but keep it cool enough for school. There's also the question of whether or not to write the two given names as one monosyllable word, so that the poor kid won't end up with a weird-looking email address at university. There's also the final question of whether or not to include an English name, which is quite fashionable these days but could mess up the poor kid's life when trying to open a bank account overseas. So many decisions to make and we're not even the ones being first-time parents. Hope it all goes well, HY, B, and T.

Just last week, I attended a lecture on infant baptism; a doctrine which I grappled with for many weeks a few summers ago. Back then, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of baptising infants, having personally coming to faith in a Baptist church and receiving an adult believer's baptism. Nevertheless, it was something I came to understand to stem from a faithful reading of the Bible from cover to cover, rather than an ancient church practice which traditionalists insisted on keeping. The lecture revolved around John Owen's (the famous puritan theologian) writings on covenantal infant baptism, aptly titled "Of Infant Baptism". The interested reader can obtain a copy of the lecture from here, while I attempt to summarise Lee Gatiss' summary.

Owen began by making it clear that the question was NOT whether adult believers should be baptised (they should), or whether they should have repented and believed before being baptised (they should), or whether all infants should be baptised (they should NOT). Instead, the question was whether infants of specifically baptised adult believers should be baptised. Owen went on to argue that the Bible does not forbid infant baptism, just as much as it does not command infant baptism directly. Instead, the debate should involve a reading of the Bible as a whole, rather than a few isolated verses here and there.

Owen then went on to argue that spiritual priveleges in God's unfolding plan have always enlarged with time. For example, God's covenant was sealed with the Jews, then extended to the Gentiles. God's dwelling was based in the tabernacle, then the Temple, and finally the hearts of believers. God's revelation was made through the Law, then the judges, then the kings, then the prophets, then the Christ, and finally the Spirit. Therefore, why would God make things worse for the children of believers after Christ, by denying them the sign of the covenant, when all along in redemptive history children were included in the covenant family. This argument sort of makes sense, though its dependence on a continuity of Biblical pattern is potentially weak, as a sovereign God can choose to break that pattern if He sees fit.

Owen moved on to what I think is the weakest of his arguments; infant salvation. The general belief in Owen's time was that all children of believers who died in their infancy were saved. Leveraging on this assumption, Owen argued that it would be wrong to deny them the sign of the covenant. I really wouldn't bring this argument to the debating chamber anytime soon.

Owen finally argued that children of believers share the same covenant as their parents. This follows from creation, Isaiah 44:3, Romans 5:14, 1 Corinthians 7:14, and not to mention the implication of the sign of circumcision. Furthermore, Christ came to fulfil the covenant with Abraham, which included Abraham's children, so to deny the children of believers a part in the same covenant as their parents would be denying Jesus' accomplishments at the cross. Hence, the children of believers have every right to the same sign of the covenant as their parents. Owen also caveated that without eventual faith in the baptised infant, all the priveleges and benefits of baptism would be lost.

It's unlikely that I've done a good enough job at summarising a summary of John Owen's writings, but I hope it would interest curious minds to look further and come to a firmer conclusion on this particular doctrine, regardless whether they agree or disagree with it.

Joce and I watched all 6 Rocky Balboa movies quite a while ago. If you've watched the movies, then you would know that it's not all about boxing. In fact, it's hardly about boxing. Come to think of it, they called the movies Rocky, not Boxing, for a reason. Boxing just serves as a backdrop to the rags-to-riches story of a simple working class American in the slums of Philadelphia. Here's one of my favourite lines from the last movie where Rocky told his loser son, "The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows... It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward." Don't tell me that didn't stir up your testosterones.

Anyway, ever since we completed the boxset, I've been itching to take up boxing. No, not the kind you see in local boxing clubs, where the neighbourhood kids go to keep themselves off the streets. No, not even the kind you see in Fight Club, where white-collared professionals ditch their neck ties for bare-knuckled fist fights after five. I was thinking of the kind you do for fitness, like Taekwondo or Judo or Pilates or Yoga (?!). After googling in vain for a convenient local boxing class, I turned my attention to kickboxing instead. Afterall, God gave us fists and feet, so we might as well use both.

I stumbled upon some really silly looking ones like this Zen-Do nonsense, where one of the instructors, apart from looking like he's going to grab your moobs (yes it's actually a word), believes that "people who train in Zen-Do should be incorporating martial arts as a symbiotic part of daily life". Eventually, I settled on one held in a local dance studio just 10 minutes from our flat. The instructor is this really big guy called Klaus. I've checked and can confirm that he's not in any way related to Santa. Each lesson begins with a 15-minute warm up, which literally leaves you with a pain in the ass! Among the many things you're made to do is to rest one hand on the wall, stand on one leg, lift the other to waist level, and do 20 to 30 kicking motions, all the while keeping your leg in the air. After 5 minutes into my first lesson, I actually wanted to call it quit and go home to my beautiful wife who would never be as much of a pain.

Needless to say, I returned for more. I absolutely love the actual kickboxing. I'm very familiar with most of the kicks, thanks to my mum's insistence on Taekwondo lessons when we were younger. I'm more intrigued by the punches, though being placed with the beginners means I'm stuck with a lot of left jab and right cross. I've also done left hook and a lame attempt at right upper-cut, but I was paired up with a reluctant sparring partner that day, so I didn't get to land any fists. On that note, if you're reading this mum, don't worry cos we use padded boxing gloves (those are mine in the photo) and we use each others' gloves as targets.

Joce is thinking of taking up ballet lessons, though her busy working hours and active social life will probably rule that out for the foreseeable future. And no, I don't think she was inspired to do ballet from watching Billy Elliot.

It's officially autumn now. I know not from the leaves on the ground, cos I can hardly see any at the moment, but from the chill in the air and the fact that both Joce and I have just recovered from the autumn flu - I'm actually still on the mend.

Quite a few people have come and gone like lightning in the last few weeks. First up was Tse Wen on a volatile week in the stock markets, kicked off when Lehman Bros collapsed. Funnily enough that week ended almost flat... a lesson in tolerating short-term volatility. Then Wen Tak stopped by on one of his whistle-stop tours of the world. I think you can count on one hand the number of countries he hasn't visited. I promised not to tell Angela that he wrote their "save the date" card the wrong way round. Tomorrow an aunty is stopping by enroute to Montreal. I'm not sure if there will be time to meet up as she's in a group on a business trip, so I have to be on standby just in case. I was actually hoping to get some mooncakes off her, but I don't think she's bringing any due to custom checks. If any family members whether in-laws or out-laws (???) are reading this, then please be nice and send us poor souls some nice yummy mooncakes with nice orange egg yolks inside. We especially like the pandan flavoured ones.

On another note, Joce hasn't had to stay too late at work compared to when she first qualified. I guess that first week was a taste of things to come, except that things just haven't come. In case you don't already know, the real effects of the credit crunch are being felt here in London, where the economy depends chiefly on the financial services industry. Banks aren't lending any money. People are losing their jobs. Consumer inflation is high. All is not good. Who said life overseas is better?

The new academic year has also started, which means that mid-week Bible Studies begin again. This year, we're studying John 1-10, with a special introductory session on John 20:30-31 last Wednesday. I was just trying to prepare for John 1:1-18 this afternoon, and have to admit it's more difficult than usual. The first 3 verses of John are some of the greatest verses in the New Testament. Sermons have been preached on them (not that I've heard any). Books have been written on them (not that I've read any). So to dissect them in a 45-minute study isn't going to do much justice, but I guess it's more important that we get the point across - the Word made flesh and dwelt among us.

A few weeks ago I wasn't so sure what to make of the coming autumn. Only winter, spring, and summer to go before the sun stays shining. More on that when the sun shines more brightly.

You know the feeling you get when you step into a familiar surrounding? The warmth which fills you with a sense of excitement when you return to a home away from home? That's how we felt the moment we stepped off the 0851 train from London Paddington to Oxford yesterday morning. We went with the intention of visiting the alma mater for old time's sake. The chance to admire the grandeur of an ancient city. To finally be tourists for a day.

We spent a good part of the day taking photos of old haunts as well as discovering new "sights" in the city that supposedly never changes. There's a new Italian restaurant on George Street opened by Jamie Oliver himself. Once A Tree at Gloucester Green is now once a shop. Bonn Square is flat. And of all things, Northern Rock opened a branch on High Street.

We stopped by the Covered Market for breakfast, taking a photo of Ben's Cookies (the first and original shop) along the way. We also took a snap of the shop which Joce and I bought our milkshakes from the day I popped the question. Then, it was off to Exeter College for photos of the usual chapel, hall, and most importantly, staircase 11 room 1 - which once used to be a cool hangout joint for Oxford Malaysians. After that, it was over to Brasenose College for photos of the (many) memories Joce has of her college, namely the staircase leading to the library and the door of the library itself. Along the way, we walked along Brasenose Lane, which immediately reminded me of the scene from The Golden Compass.

We purposely resisted any shots of the Radcliffe Camera, Sheldonian Theatre, and the Bridge of Sighs, as even we couldn't possibly stoop to the level of the average tourist. We did have time to have a quick look at the Science Musuem on Turl Street, where there was an exhibition on (something along the lines of) Missionaries in Beijing in the 17th Century. The most interesting thing in that musuem, which had nothing to do with the exhibition that was going on, was a blackboard supposedly used by Albert Einstein when he gave a lecture at Oxford in 1931, with supposedly his handwriting. I guess the janitors then weren't paid that well, or perhaps someone had great enough foresight to pay them NOT to clean the blackboard.

After that it was all people, people, and more people. Philip and Louise for lunch at Makan La, Brian and Siew Ching for tea at St Mary's Cathedral, and Kon Yew and the Glyns for catch up at Starbucks. It was Kon Yew's last Saturday before he leaves Oxford (and England) for good after 10 years. When I used to be teased for staying too long in Oxford, I always had the excuse that Kon Yew stayed longer. Before we knew it, it was dinner time - Thai at Chiang Mai Kitchen. We managed to squeeze in a quick visit to St Ebbe's Church, where Joce and I grew up spiritually, before finally heading back to busy London on the 2006 train.

We have lots of fond memories of the place, and could have done with visiting lots more places and people, but we didn't really have the time. How can you revisit 7 years in 1 day? Anyway, if you're planning to visit Oxford as a tourist some day, then I suggest going sometime in the first two weeks of September, which is just after when the language students have left and just before the university students return. Any other time is usually too busy with actual tourists and/or students.

As usual, photos in the Photo Album. Just in case you didn't know, you need to DOUBLE CLICK the thumbnails to enlarge the photo.

It's the climb that was. So close yet so far. I spent the weekend in the Lake District on a hiking trip to climb Scafell Pike, which is the highest mountain in England. At 978 metres tall, it's a midget compared to Mount Kinabalu at 4095 metres, but as it turned out, much more difficult to conquer. To be fair, we were too late in starting our ascent (at 10.45am), took too many breaks before we even got to our first landmark (Styhead Tarn), got lost at a cross roads looking for our route (Corridor Route), and simply had to turn back to get to our car in time before it turned dark. I'm quite disappointed at failing to achieve what we set out there for, but still enjoyed spending time with an old friend and getting to know some new ones. I don't know if there will be a next time, but I'm certainly not satisfied with this last attempt. Anyway, photos in the Photo Album as usual.

I know it's only September, but it feels like a brand new year in the office. With lots of people back from their long summer holidays, I can't help but feel a sense of excitement and renewed vigour. What better way to celebrate all that wonderful joy than to get away from it all! Joce and I will be visiting Oxford this coming weekend. We haven't made any plans just yet, so if you're reading this from your cosy armchair in the City of Dreaming Spires, then expect to be dragged out of your little hole on Saturday for tea, coffee, lunch, G&D's ice cream, Ben's cookies, or the like.

On a completely unrelated matter, Google just released their brand new web browser called Chrome. I haven't had a go at it yet, but from what I've read online, it's meant to complement their many web applications. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how more and more offline desktop applications are moving online, and expressed my thoughts about starting an application of my own. Well, Google's Chrome might just be the final blow for desktop applications as we know it today.

Saturday morning. A very sunny day at Regent's Park. As I sit down under a tree to write this, a beautiful black dog comes running towards me. What does she want, I wonder. She drops a saliva covered ball in front of me. I stop. I stare at the ball, then her owners say she just wants to play football. Did I hear right? Football? I think they meant ball. I throw the ball, off goes the dog. And a few seconds later she comes and expects me to throw it again. I do. Off she goes, then, looking around for her, she's nowhere to be seen. I worry a little about where she's disappeared to. Even her owners seem to be looking. Then they start walking away. Presumably towards that lovely black dog of theirs.

Wynn is jogging around the park, and I am supposed to meet him where we started, near the water fountain. I'd like to explore bits of the park I don't often go (like the pond) before I think I have to head towards Wynn. I am by the water fountain now. I think I missed Wynn by a few seconds. I saw him sitting on this very bench, and then he was off - presumably to look for me. I couldn't catch up. He thinks I got lost looking for the pond and couldn't find my way back. I hope he's not cross with me!

He's not cross.