Learning about Christian love at 13

Over the past 50 years, I have seen at least 50 different musicals on stage, some more than once. And one thing I can attest: big is definitely not always better. Starting this week, I shall rank the musicals I have seen (first seen, not subsequent) according to merit of the production. And the top spot goes to:

GODSPELL.

It is ironic indeed that despite having seen over my entire life dozens of musicals on stage, many of them spectacular, my favorite remains the very first one which also happened to be the very simplest one. I still remember like it was just yesterday.

It was 1973, I was in secondary one, and one day out of the blue, the whole school was ushered into the auditorium for a show. That show turned out to be Godspell, performed by a group from overseas. There was no prop other than a bench and maybe some items like flowers. Yet, I was mesmerized. Despite never having heard the songs, they stuck with me long after. And the message of Christian love was more effectively conveyed by the two-hour show than all the years of chapel service.

Two decades later, a Singapore theater company put on a big-budget production at the grand Victoria Theater. I was eager and excited for it, as I have been listening to the show’s song numbers over the years since 1973. Yet somehow, this production which boasted more pizzazz and better sound system failed to deliver the same charm and magic as the simple one in the school auditorium. I left disappointed.

Thanks to the earlier experience, I learned that great shows don’t necessarily need a big budget and spectacle. It’s more about connecting with the audience.

Preserving Your Own Legacy

By Stephen Ng

Books are the best form of preserving one's legacy.

Books written a few thousand years ago are still available to us today.  In fact, much of our written history come from the scrolls that were preserved for many generations.

While digital technology can be obsoleted or get corrupted, books will never disappear if preserved properly.

To my Christian friends, you know that the Bible is one of the best preserved books through over 4500 years of history. This is because the entire Old and New Testament had been meticulously copied by the scribes and passed on from one generation to another.

The tombstones of these great men and women of the past may no longer be discovered, but their legacy lives on till today. It's is because their stories are preserved in the form of books.

Books Compared to Tombstones

Yet, many of us spend so much money on a tombstone. A plot of land at one of the more established burial grounds in Malaysia, for example, costs at least RM20,000.

Yet, to be frank, I am not sure how many generations thereafter will visit the graveyard. At the most, it is probably just once a year, but for how many generations?

Is that a legacy to be preserved for posterity?

To be honest, since my father died in 1998, I hardly visited his grave at Nirvana, but the fact that I still have the book I wrote, even my teenagers who never met their grandfather are still be able to read about him. In the future, they can even pass the book to their children and grandchildren. Isn't that wonderful?

Value for Your Money

These days, it is not expensive to have your book written. Because we are a team of writers, editors and graphic artists who operate on low overheads, we can do your book at a cost not more than RM25,000. Of course, it depends on how massive a project it is.

There are tycoons who paid over RM100,000 for their books. I have in recent years been commissioned to write a book where the business entrepreneur paid me handsomely for my writing fees.

I find it hard to understand when the rich can afford RM120,000 for a car that will last them only 20 years at the most, but they would not fork out RM30,000, especially when it can be paid progressively. At the end of the day, it is the value that you place for your own legacy.

Scope of Work

The most tedious part is in the writing itself. The cost will depend on a lot of factors:

• How thick a book you are looking at;

• How fast you want the book done. It is cheaper if you have a shorter time frame than one that drags on for years;

• How much material you able to provide to us;

• How many interview sessions would be required, and whether it can be done on Zoom or it must be physical meetings.

After the writing is done, you will also need to decide:

• How many photographs? This will affect the number of pages;

• How many copies of the book you would like to print;

• An editor and a few proofreaders who can further enhance the writing.

Every major publisher in the world would have a team of professionals who handle different stages of the work. Even the cover design is decided by a team of people who are involved in the marketing of the book. They meet several rounds just to discuss how to further enhance the cover design before a decision is made.

This is why these publishers have to print a few hundred thousand copies of the book to drive down the cost of each book. And their mark-up is a few hundred percent of their production overheads. After they have sold a certain number of copies and made the targeted profits, the remaining books will be sold in bulk to wholesalers like Big Bad Wolf for a pittance.

Please write to me or Whatsapp/call Stephen Ng 012-3347880 to discuss if you are interested to have a biography or autobiography written for a family member. Even the biography of a deceased can be written by interviewing the siblings.

National Food Security: Kickstart Your Horticulture

By Stephen Ng

When politicians talk about National Food Security, there is often more talk than action.

To show that we walk the talk, I believe it is time for us Malaysians to start doing something about food security in the country.

In the event of a war or a pandemic like what we had experienced recently, food cannot travel across the borders. If we are already in the habit of planting our own greens, we will be more prepared for the tough times.

To kickstart this, my daughter took the initiative to grow her first batch of bean sprouts. A packet of mung (or green beans) costs about RM3, but we only used a third of it to grow the bean sprouts.

This was, after all, at the experimental stage after I taught the children in my creative writing class about national food security.

For one week, my girl had to water the beans twice a day. That was all that she had to do. Her first harvest was on Day 5. Since then, we have been having a regular harvest of bean sprouts that we use for our dishes.

Because the beans grow at different rates, for just one ringgit, we were literally able to harvest our home grown bean sprouts daily for an entire week.

Here is a video that will help kickstart your own venture to grow your bean sprouts at home:

Another easy plant to grow is the papaya tree. If you happen to find a papaya that is very sweet, make sure that you keep the seeds.

As you would do with the mung beans, soak the papaya seeds in water for 24 hours to allow the roots to sprout.

Then, plant the seeds in your house compound. You will be ready to harvest your papaya after slightly over six months. In front of our home, we have two Hawaiian (dwarf) papaya trees which have been bearing fruits.

The first batch of fruits were distributed to neighbours, and the rest of it, we have been enjoying for the past two months.

I am pretty sure that there are many other types of vegetables that can be grown easily in the backyard. The seeds can be easily available these days in small packets.

For a few years, we have discarded nearly zero food wastes as these wastes are great composting materials which can be used to fertilise the soil.

We have, in the past, tried several composting methods including bokashi (which can be rather expensive), but finally we decided to just dump the food wastes into a pail to allow the insects to act on the materials.

Once the pail is covered tightly to keep the pests away, it becomes a natural habitat of its own with plenty of food for the insects to digest on. After a few months, it is time to feed the compost to the plants.

With this, I wish to encourage all of you to do something about our food security in the country. When you are already in the habit of planting your own greens, you will feel a sense of accomplishment.