Redditer: Christians of Singapore, how much do your pastors earn?

[Dongyi]

I have seen students hog the tables for an entire day at Coffee Bean and Starbucks with just one drink.

I cannot lah. After 2 hours I want to go to the loo. I wouldn't dare to leave my barang on the table.

 

[Dongyi]

Pastor Neville Tan is a former top S'porean gang leader and "10 Most Wanted" man who transformed from a violent criminal, involved in murder at age 17, into a pastor and evangelist. After a dramatic conversion in solitary confinement, he now leads prison ministries, helping at-risk youth and addicts.

I will listen to his sermons first before I comment.

 

[Dongyi]

Dongyi, the man who slaughters Christian hypocrites !

Ok, I will include Kungfu Cat in my short story.

 

[True Believer]

I cannot lah. After 2 hours I want to go to the loo. I wouldn't dare to leave my barang on the table.

You are afraid of leaving a packet of tissue and an almost empty cup of coffee on the table at Starbucks to go to the loo?

 

[Dongyi]

The bashing continues ...

Let There Be Light

The Changi Harvest Rehabilitation Centre stood on the eastern edge of Singapore, just shy of the sea. At night, the wind carried the faint tang of salt, and beyond the high fences the lights of the island shimmered endlessly—airplanes descending toward Changi Airport, cargo ships drifting across the dark horizon, and the restless pulse of a city that never truly slept. Yet inside the Centre, time behaved differently, moving slower, heavier, as if the world outside had been paused.

The man in charge was known as Superintendent Kong.

Before he started the Rehabilitation Centre, Kong had lived a quiet life as a carpenter. In his younger years he worked with wood—cutting, shaping, sanding, and fitting pieces together. Those who knew him said he had patient hands and a calm spirit. He built tables, doors, and cabinets for ordinary homes across Singapore. In his spare time, he would sit late into the night sipping China wine with African companions, listening to their stories of struggle, survival, and the choices that had led them astray. In those dimly lit evenings, surrounded by the scent of wine and the weight of human confessions, he began to understand the fragile, complicated threads that bound people to their habits—a knowledge that would later shape every life he tried to save within the Centre’s walls.

Then something changed.

When Kong turned 30, he left his carpentry trade and started a new ministry. Instead of building furniture, he began building something far harder: Lives.

That was the year he founded the Changi Harvest Rehabilitation Centre. From that day on, he devoted himself entirely to rescuing addicts from the city, shaping their broken patterns with the same precision and care he had once given to wood. In the abyss of darkness wrought by addiction, he laboured with the quiet conviction that Light could still be summoned.

And one thing about the Centre soon became widely known among the inmates: no one entered it by his own free will. Every inmate had been personally brought in by Kong himself, as if to say, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last” (John 15:16).

to be continued ...​

 

[Dongyi]

The Burning Bush

Among the inmates was a young man named Joe Prince. He was of German-Chinese heritage—rather like a German-engineered, Chinese-assembled Volkswagen. To some, he might politely be called a flibbertigibbet: a soul buffeted by the winds of circumstance, swayed by praise, and dazzled by status. His ambitions soared as high as the skyscrapers in Raffles Place, yet his discipline was as fragile as an elderly stretched hymen. He loved to drop the name of his alma mater, National University of Singapore, as though it were a VIP pass to life itself. But reality had other plans. His first job in the financial district was just a contract stint—a “temp” in office parlance, lingering on the sidelines while others got all the action and kopi breaks at the boss’s table.

Years passed. Joe hovered, like one of those invisible MRT commuters, unnoticed. Then he began to manoeuvre, slowly, carefully. His admiration for his boss—a formidable Senior Vice President—was an open secret. Every decision she made, he praised. Every small task she offered, he grabbed like it was the last prata at a hawker centre. In meetings, he echoed her words, a human mirror of loyalty and flattery.

Little by little, the effort found its mark. His contract became permanent. Joe felt quietly vindicated. Still, beneath the polished veneer, his life was anything but stable.

Drugs had wormed their way into the crevices of his life. They were companions to the long nights, the relentless stress and the gnawing fear of failure. But they were only a symptom. The deeper craving was for admiration, status, recognition—the intoxicating illusion that he mattered. Career, marriage, respect—he wanted it all, like a foreign labor in Mustafa Centre on a weekend spree.

Then came that night. After another binge at a pub in Clarke Quay, he wandered through Fort Canning Park, trembling from the excess and squirming in urgent need of a spot to pee. He stumbled into a secluded clearing, and there, among the shadows, a bush burned with quiet, otherworldly flames. Not consuming, not destroying—but glowing, alive, impossible to look away from. The fire cast dancing light on the surrounding trees, on his hands, on his face, and on the trembling man who had nowhere else to turn. Joe looked up, heart hammering. A middle-aged man stood there, unhurried, commanding without raising a hand.

“Who are you?” Joe asked, voice thin and trembling.

“I AM WHO I AM,” the man said.

Joe felt a cold wave of fear surge through him. Not the ordinary fear of being alone in a dark park, but something deeper—primal, overwhelming, like standing at the edge of something vast and incomprehensible. His body locked in terror, every muscle trembling as his mind struggled to grasp what he was seeing. A sudden warmth spread through his trousers as his bladder gave way under the sheer force of panic. The urine soaked through the fabric, running down his legs and darkening the cloth as it pooled at his feet in the grass.

The next morning, Joe found himself behind the gates of Changi Harvest, a place that promised an end—or perhaps a beginning.

to be continued ...​

 

[Flibbertigibbet]

The Burning Bush

Among the inmates was a young man named Joe Prince. He was of German-Chinese heritage—rather like a German-engineered, Chinese-assembled Volkswagen. To some, he might politely be called a flibbertigibbet: a soul buffeted by the winds of circumstance, swayed by praise, and dazzled by status. His ambitions soared as high as the skyscrapers in Raffles Place, yet his discipline was as fragile as an elderly stretched hymen. He loved to drop the name of his alma mater, National University of Singapore, as though it were a VIP pass to life itself. But reality had other plans. His first job in the financial district was just a contract stint—a “temp” in office parlance, lingering on the sidelines while others got all the action and kopi breaks at the boss’s table.

Years passed. Joe hovered, like one of those invisible MRT commuters, unnoticed. Then he began to manoeuvre, slowly, carefully. His admiration for his boss—a formidable Senior Vice President—was an open secret. Every decision she made, he praised. Every small task she offered, he grabbed like it was the last prata at a hawker centre. In meetings, he echoed her words, a human mirror of loyalty and flattery.

Little by little, the effort found its mark. His contract became permanent. Joe felt quietly vindicated. Still, beneath the polished veneer, his life was anything but stable.

Drugs had wormed their way into the crevices of his life. They were companions to the long nights, the relentless stress and the gnawing fear of failure. But they were only a symptom. The deeper craving was for admiration, status, recognition—the intoxicating illusion that he mattered. Career, marriage, respect—he wanted it all, like a foreign labor in Mustafa Centre on a weekend spree.

Then came that night. After another binge at a pub in Clarke Quay, he wandered through Fort Canning Park, trembling from the excess and squirming in urgent need of a spot to pee. He stumbled into a secluded clearing, and there, among the shadows, a bush burned with quiet, otherworldly flames. Not consuming, not destroying—but glowing, alive, impossible to look away from. The fire cast dancing light on the surrounding trees, on his hands, on his face, and on the trembling man who had nowhere else to turn. Joe looked up, heart hammering. A middle-aged man stood there, unhurried, commanding without raising a hand.

“Who are you?” Joe asked, voice thin and trembling.

“I AM WHO I AM,” the man said.

Joe felt a cold wave of fear surge through him. Not the ordinary fear of being alone in a dark park, but something deeper—primal, overwhelming, like standing at the edge of something vast and incomprehensible. His body locked in terror, every muscle trembling as his mind struggled to grasp what he was seeing. A sudden warmth spread through his trousers as his bladder gave way under the sheer force of panic. The urine soaked through the fabric, running down his legs and darkening the cloth as it pooled at his feet in the grass.

The next morning, Joe found himself behind the gates of Changi Harvest, a place that promised an end—or perhaps a beginning.

to be continued ...​

Please continue!!!!
Sounds damn juicy from first 2 parts!

 

[Dongyi]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest

For the first time in a long while, the reflection in the glass of his cell was more than a mimicry of ambition. It was a man confronted with himself. He was no longer the princely Casanova he imagined himself to be; he sat strapped in a straitjacket, rough canvas binding his arms across his chest—a stark reminder that he was now a siaolang.

Joe stared at the padded walls of the cell, his chest rising and falling in ragged bursts. The room swallowed sound, but he shouted anyway.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

His voice came back to him dull and flattened by the padding. Panic rose again in his throat.

“Hey! Open this fucking door!”

For a while there was nothing—only the slow whirring of the ceiling fan and the heavy silence pressing against him. Then, at last, he heard it.

Footsteps.

A metallic click.

The unmistakable sound of a lock turning.

The door opened slowly.

A woman stepped inside, calm and composed. She wore blue scrubs, the fabric neat and unwrinkled, her expression steady in a way that made the room feel quieter than before.

She gave him a small, professional nod.

“My name is 伊稀恩黛,” she said.

Joe stared at her, still breathing hard, the canvas of the straitjacket tight across his chest.

“What?” he muttered. “Eat, shit, and die?”

A faint smile touched the corner of her lips.

“No, sir,” she replied patiently. “It’s pronounced Yi Xi En Dai. I’m a Japanese-American. I graduated in Clinical Mental Health Counselling from UCLA in California.”

She paused, meeting his bewildered gaze.

“I’m your assigned counsellor. Now get up! I’ll take you to meet Superintendent Kong for your inmate orientation.”

“In this straitjacket?” Joe asked, incredulous.

“Yes!” she said firmly. “You’re still a siaolang. Until you’re cleared, this is how it has to be.”

Joe swallowed, the canvas tight across his chest reminding him just how powerless he was. For the first time since waking up in the padded room, the reality of his situation began to settle in.

He wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

to be continued ...​