Mengapa Mereka Meninggalkan Pelayanan

A translation from English "Why People Leave Ministry"
...exercising my Malay writing skills again... (guess who wrote the English one?)

Mengapa Mereka Meninggalkan Pelayanan

Ketika mengenangkan sebilangan pemuda pemudi yang seketika dahulu berkobar-kobar untuk Tuhan (sewaktu saya sendiri masih belasan tahun, masih ragu-ragu akan pegangan rohani peribadi) – kenangan akan mereka yang lebih “senior” daripada saya pada masa itu – saya memikirkan kembali mengapa api semarak rohani itu beransur-ansur mati. Telah banyak berlaku situasi pemimpin (rohani) muda-mudi yang jatuh daripada pelayanan gereja, dan para penatua dan pastor gereja sering mengingatkan kita, golongan muda, akan kejadian mengecewakan yang sedemikian. Saya menegaskan bahawa dalam dunia lampau-moden yang kini kita diami, sebab mereka meninggalkan pelayanan ialah...


Try guessing what comes next?

And tell me if you want to read the full article. It's about 2 pages long (1,000 words).

Pix Uploaded

Thanks to Ipin, Budok and Zaini for letting me use their Internet connection.

This is where PlanetShakers City Church meets every Sunday,
3.00 pm and 5.15pm

Trinity College, University of Melbourne

That's a moving fire engine
In Copland Theatre,
Economics and Commerce Building
(Principles of Biomedical Science lecture 2.7 by Graham Parslow)
In front of the (T-shaped) medical building
The streets of Melbourne CBD on a Friday night
On Lygon Street. Windy.
The window-facing study desk in College Square. Self-made breakfast.
South Lawn, University of Melbourne
(I've never seen anything similar in Malaysia)
On the desk again. This is dinner.
Carillo Gantner Theatre,
Sidney Myer Asia Centre
(or, another lecture hall)
Four Malaysians in Brunswick

Why I got a C+ in FM

FM = STPM (Malaysia HSC) Further Mathematics T
...a post to release my weird mixture of feelings: sadness, and disappointment, and gratefulness, and fresh inspiration!

I've expected it (I sensed it coming). And it really did come. FM Paper 1 really pawned me; there's no way I could answer questions I've never practised on before. I do not yet know my grade for the single first paper, but of course it's much lower than C+. And it must be Paper 2 which pulled my grade up a little.

I had to teach myself about three quarter (75%) of the subject material, as I've learned only the other one quarter (Statistics, half of Paper 2). All in under 4 months' time (Aug-Nov).

I had no teacher.

I had no friends taking the same hurdle.

There isn't any comprehensive book on FM. Unlike Bio, Chem, Math and all the other subjects which each has a Pre-University / STPM reference text, which is practically an all-in-one book. There's none for FM. Maybe there aren't many potential buyers, hence no interested authors and publishers. But even if there are buyers (students), there might still be not enough teachers. I bet most secondary-school Math teachers wouldn't want to take the responsibility of teaching FM.

It's freakin' hard.

And yet I managed a C+ (GP 2.33).

I think I deserved it. My Math skill deserves that sort of achievement level. It's not bad for someone who's self-taught. And it's a principal pass (as opposed to sub-fail and fail).

You know what do I tend to overlook? The bright side of life: I've got a solid A in Mathematics T (GP 4.00). Flawless. Praise God!

M@+H3mÅ+!c5

Academic Craze Project
STPM (HSC) | 2 subjects | 4 papers | 4 days | 12 hours | 48 questions | 400 marks

• Mathematics T
• Further Mathematics T

Here's one reflection on the last academic thing I undertook, before the official results are out next month.

Pic 1: Hyperbolic Functions (Calculus hardcover book)
I enjoyed Math T P1. I missed the last 3 marks though, mainly due to over-careful writing of answers - I was literally explaining the rationale for each step in each solution for each of the 12 questions in the paper.




Pic 2: Burning the midnight oil?
Once, the lights went out and I had to use our battery-powered "emergency/camp light". That candle is really just for show.
In a little over 3 months, some 200+ pages of examination pad papers were filled with mathematical solutions.




Pic 3: University books

• Modern Algebra
• Elementary Linear Algebra
• Elementary Statistics
• Calculus (& Analytic Geometry)
  

Other sources include Wikipedia, MathWorld, and ArsDigita University lecture videos. When you're on your own (there's no teacher around), you gotta be creative. Very creative.


Pic 4: Sample papers (Majlis Peperiksaan Malaysia)
The real deal. 2005 and 2006. Bad news is, there's no markscheme for Further Math. I had to rely on hunches. So some questions took days to solve.
My "confidence feeling" for each paper:

• Math 1 - 90-97% [A breeze. Done lots of practice.]
  
• Math 2 - 70-80% [Not really a breeze. Geometry pawns me.]
  
• F. Math 1 - 45-55% [Most cruel-est paper ever...]
• F. Math 2 - 70-90% [I didn't expect it to be this easy.]

Pic 5: Exam day!
The evening after F. Math 1, I immediately poured my rants in a Word document. Here's a snippet:

I can’t believe that 3 hours went by so quickly. My heart was racing several minutes before the examination started, and I said my prayers to God as I tried to calm down. And as I did the first few questions, I was speeding. Definitely speeding, since I realized that (while doing practice exercises on past year questions) not speeding elongates my solving time to around 6 hours. And that’s double the prescribed exam time. In the middle of the exam, I looked at the front page of the examination paper: Answer all questions. (To quote Kael the Blood Elf) This is preposterous! Probably even an undergraduate math student wouldn’t be able to finish all questions (12 of them) accurately in such a time frame.

And in the last paragraph: "Now I wish that my Second Paper mark would leverage my overall mark into a much better grade. I wish for at least a pass."

It was that bad. The next Tuesday afternoon, I was rather surprised to be finished with F. Math Paper 2 at around 4.30+pm, which gives me about 30 spare minutes. I attempted the questions I skipped, and I was still left with about 10 minutes.

My respect goes with both the Mathematics T and Further Mathematics T papers (they would have good discriminating power/a high ceiling). I took it for fun, and I got kind of a serious beating while doing so.