Hey everyone, it’s been a while (at least in other blog series, while I methodically and steadily work on Flashback Fridays every week!), so let’s dive back into these ‘dormant’ blogs. And what do I have this week, that is so momentous and significant that it requires me to write a post, with the subject matter being relevant to three blog categories?
I’ve been reflecting lately about the TV shows I watch, both now and in years gone before, and how that has affected who I am today. Not that I truly believe that what I watch really has an impact on who I am as a person, but I’ve often pondered, mostly on a Saturday when things are quiet, about my TV watching habits. And how often my favourite TV shows, if you’d rank them from 1-20, are mostly of TV shows that have ended rather than still currently running. Not that I enjoy most of the shows that I currently watch, it’s just that unfortunately (or fortunately whichever way you look at it), most of my favourite shows are currently not on TV anymore. So let’s just give this a stab, shall we? Without further ado, my top 20 TV shows (of all time), and how that further relates to this blog post about being sentimental when it comes to reflecting about our childhood and how our TV watching habits may indeed shape our worldview much more than we may think.
Continue reading TV Thursdays and Sentimental Saturdays: The Shows of Our Childhood
Every time when you hit the hay, you think about control. How the next day is going to pan out, how you want it to go, how you want events to proceed. Call it what you want, I see it as trying to control the next day as much as possible, trying to make the day go ‘as according to your plan’ as much as possible. And I don’t think that it is that terrible, I mean, God did make us as wanting to make sure that we’re concerned about our future. Thinking about our future can be beneficial in some senses, as it puts our present life into perspective and makes us realise that our everyday worries shouldn’t be that strenuous. God set on our hearts worries about starting up a family, buying a house, paying a deposit for a car or a business, raising your kids, taking care of your spouse, and looking after your parents during retirement so that we know that present day worries such as whether we receive a distinction, a credit or a pass in a certain subject is immaterial and regardless of whether we are successful in the long run, or whether we are going to be successful at all. Think about it, do you think that the people who live in the largest houses in the richest suburbs are well and truly happy? We’d like to think so, that the more money we have or the more control we have, or the more power we have, or the more friends you have, or the more wealth and degrees you have, the happier and more successful you will become.
It’s been a few months since my last Sentimental Saturdays post. In fact, the last time I posted was on January 9th, as I delved into 10 things that any family would consider to undertake on the weekends if given a chance. And then before that was in November, where I discussed about two songs that have impacted me of late, Newsboys’s “Guilty” and Rachel Platten’s “Stand By You”, and how both these songs have ministered to me in both a personal and interpersonal way as each of these artists have given the reminder to boldly stand firm in beliefs, even if others don’t stand alongside. So…2 Sentimental Saturdays blogs in 5 months. One may think there’s something wrong with my writing style, others may think I may be losing passion for these types of blog posts. Yet there is the other train of thought, realising that often, life just gets in, and sometimes, even if we want to write something of value, time just seems to not be on our side, and every time we sit and want to write a blog, or review an album, we realise that it’s time for bed, and then the cycle of work/eat/sleep repeats the following day. While I may not have planned for the gap between Sentimental Saturdays posts to be that humungous, it nevertheless was so.
The weekend. The precious two days where every family would love to fit in as many activities as possible, to either keep the children happy, or nevertheless undertake activities that the whole family enjoys. Since working full-time in a role that requires me to work on weekends on a regular basis, this post in particular is a reminiscent one, as I remember all the activities my family used to undertake during these precious 48 hours, and how having those chances may or may not come again. Here are 10 of my favourite past-times that I used to do on either Saturday/Sunday in the past.
Gone are the days when you can appreciate music for what it really is- a song to be savoured, a song to be listened to again and again, with every listen a new meaning is imparted to whomever listens. With the advent of Spotify, youtube, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora and every other musical service at your fingertips, skipping songs seems to be the norm nowadays. Listening to a song to death, until another track comes along, seems to be all the rage, when in fact sometimes we are called to just sit and mull over a song more than usual. Often, we may be so hasty to move onto the next new song, that we may skip over things that God may even want to say to us. We may be in fact rushing so fast from one thing to the next (music is a clear example) that we may miss what God may have in store entirely. Which is why this new post for Sentimental Saturdays is about lament, lamenting that how we have listened to music in the past (really listening to the tracks, because without the ease of access of music, we are forced to focus on what the lyrics really mean for us as people) is sadly how listeners of music don’t listen to music now. We live in a now-centred (and me-centred) society, that any hint of anything taking longer than expected is shafted, for the new, quick and convenient.
Continue reading Sentimental Saturdays and Message Mondays (How Fast do we Consume Music?)
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What has been your earliest memory of your life? It may be of when you were a baby, or maybe a bit older. Maybe you were playing with your siblings, or maybe it was of a traumatic event. Whatever your earliest memory is, what is important about memories and the necessity of us all having and keeping them is in fact that at the end of our lives, our experiences will be just that- memories. We cannot contain our experiences in a box, and relive them again and again if we want to feel a happy moment. Nor can we erase the memories we long to forget. What we remember is placed there, and whether it is good or bad, hurting or healing, whatever our memories about our childhood and adulthood is at this moment, one thing is true of our memories- that what we experience, or rather, what we remember about the events we live through, will deeply shape how we are today, and shape the relationships we have, with our friends, family and even God Himself. Whether our memories of events are way different than the events themselves, memory is a powerful thing. Here in this combined Sentimental Saturdays/Message Mondays post, we’ll delve into memory, and how it is always important to affirm that whatever memory and belief we have, about our past, ought not to hold us back in our future journey and discoveries we embark upon.
Continue reading Sentimental Saturdays and Message Mondays (Fight Song)
TV shows can teach us a lot, you know. From entertainment to education, from comedy to drama, factual to documentary, it can evoke many emotions within whenever we as a family unit sit down every so often each week to watch our ritualistic TV show that everyone in the family is eager to watch from week to week. While it is always different from person to person, and from family to family, what the family unit can all agree on is the fond memories the TV show will impact upon whomever watches it. In this case, and in relation to the title of this blog, the cooking shows that we watch can inspire us all, not necessarily to cook like Curtis Stone, Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver or even Heston Blumenthal, but hopefully to cook, to be creative in the kitchen, and to maybe express a hidden talent or two, in a way that could be as beneficial to the family as it would probably be to the person cooking.
Continue reading TV Thursdays, Food Fridays and Sentimental Saturdays – Creative in the Kitchen
It’s been a while since I’ve actually seen a movie. The last movie I saw was the remake of Annie, and the last movie I watched at the cinema was Guardians of the Galaxy. Since starting working full-time, I haven’t really been doing much of anything outside of work, as well as maintaining this site. Not that that is a bad thing, I really enjoy my work, yet it is on some of these days on the weekends when I become sentimental, and remember life as it once was. Rewind to ten years ago and I and my family were heavily invested in movies- often we’d travel to our local cinema a few times a year. While watching a movie as a family consisted more of watching and less of conversing and actually interacting, our times together watching a movie we all enjoyed is something that I cannot take for granted, especially now since movie-going is more of a luxury than ever.
Isn’t it great to think about nostalgia for a moment? To ponder about what once was, to remember once upon a time when life was simpler and technology, the advent of it, and the ease of digital communication at the expense of face-to-face time wasn’t so much of a reality as it is now? Sometimes I do, I still do. I sometimes catch myself wondering what it would be like if the VHS never went out of fashion, or if the millennium bug did indeed hit way back in 1999 and it was in fact an apocalyptic age we’re living in now. Sometimes I even catch myself missing simple things- like how times were less complicated during primary and high school, and how now, in this moment, life can seem a lot more interesting, hard, difficult, enjoyable, daunting and rewarding, sometimes all at once.
