As I look back on the last week, I notice that from my first bad joke of last Sunday the whole week has been dark and negative. The end of the week was an unprecedented culmination of increasingly worse to terrible news until Saturday night when I decided to just crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head and just sleep. It was only 2300, far from my usual beddy-byes time but I couldn't take much more. Even the Big Dumb Guy had the fates conspire against him -- I had completed "Half-Blood" by then so that was also last week's news to me.

As we begin a new week, I sincerely hope the cloud has passed and summer is bright and full of promise again, as it should be. As far as I know, there's only 1 major crisis to forsee disaster in but, hey, that's par for the course for me.

Perhaps I began this week on the right foot. Morning service brought in a special guest, Mrs E Choy. She spoke to us about the dark and terrible days she had to endure with the "Secret Police" during WW2. As I understand from her story, they really worked her over with some nasty torments, from beatings to exerting excruciating pressure on her knees to electrical current (in the presence of her beloved spouse who was likewise tortured in front of her) in a vain attempt to extract information which the couple never had in the first place. But what was probably worse for her was her simply being locked in a cell with 15 other prisoners day and night for 193 days not being allowed to move or communicate with anyone. The boredom would have driven anyone completely nuts; I know I can't sit still for long myself.

Ok, that doesn't sound very positive, but the fact is, she survived and is still hale and hearty and sound of mind till today, a ripe old 95 years of age. And what preserved her during those dark days and beyond was her simple, dogged faith in God; even to the extent of freely granting forgiveness to her torturers when they faced the War Crimes Tribunal at the war's end. She blamed the war, not the men themselves for what happened to her. A most positive, possibly most healthy outlook, I suppose, though not everyone can be that strong.

We begin Sunday with a note of hope, so here's looking to a much brighter week ahead. May it be so for everyone!