Jumping to conclusions

It's Friday again. Another week gone. Today's lesson on philology was focussed on the analysis of Acts 20 (that's "Acts of the Apostles chapter 20"). It was very detailed. And though I could follow everything, I found it hard to concentrate. I still have this terrible headache since yesterday evening. Took aspirins but no effect. Now I'm skipping lunch as I feel nauseous. Reminds me of Chris Chua taking the minibus up to our HK place - giddy, vomit. Well I hardly slept last night because of this headache.

Read yesterday about a local tree (local meaning you guys in SE Asia) called "Indian almond tree" (Terminalia Catappa) which has leaves that soften hard water. Want to try it. Our water here is very hard. Apparently people in the Indian subcontinent use it to soften their drinking water; purify it also. So if you guys come across this leaf (I think they sell it in the shops that also sell other fresh herbs like jintan, anise etc..), buy a couple and send them up to me. It's in a dried form; not fresh. And apparently the tree grows profusely throughout S'pore, M'sia etc. I think its called ketapang in malay.

Anyway yesterday after dinner, Fr Cignelli said he wanted to see me. Scared. He's our retired Greek professor and when he says something like that - it usually means we did something wrong. Well how different my expectations! He wanted to give me a New Testament translated in ancient Hebrew (not modern Hebrew - that kind you can find anywhere here in Israel). He told me to read a passage everyday to brush up on my hebrew (now who told him about my poor hebrew?!). It was a nice gesture - and I appreciate it because I read the first chapter of Mark's Gospel and found it easy to understand because I already know the greek contents (Mark's Gospel as we have it exists only in greek). So Fr Cignelli was right - it is easier to brush up on my hebrew with texts that i already know rather than doing some OT texts (as in Old Testament) that I do not know. So lesson for the day? Don't jump to conclusions. Things may not be what you expect!