Waynetopia - Start of a new world: May 2006

I suppose ministry is a life-long thing. It follows you like a shadow wherever you go, and to some extent, you never really outgrow it.

When I packed up my bass guitar and look one last look at it, I thought it would be the last time I touch a bass at least for the next year. It was the last week of 2005, one of the craziest weeks of my life. Prior to that, I had been playing every week for FCBC. Even my Christmas "break" from ministry could barely qualify as a vacation. Due to my strong ties with the people in Muar, I ended up playing for two churches - the church I grew up in and my parent's church of which the senior pastor is a close friend of mine. Once Christmas was over, packed my bags, crossed the causeway and straight to Singapore Expo Hall 10 for the New Year bash. That was on top of all my packing preparation.

My first church service in the US was also the first time in a long while I got to sit in the congregation instead of standing on stage. Hmmm....the band lacked a drummer and a bassist. Never mind, ignore that. Just worship in peace. By the third week, I got to know some of the people, especially the pastors and they mentioned they needed a bassist. "No way! This is physically impossible. I simply don't have the time!" I was playing by the fourth week.

Yeah, I can take a hint. Some things just stick to you. Whether it's breaking keyboard keys in Cambodia, playing in front of 100 people in Malaysia or a 5000 people in Singapore, the music ministry is one of the things I carry with me wherever I go - with or without my instruments.

The Lancaster team soon got bored and decided on another road trip; a longer one this time. The Boston trip was easily one of the most consuming trips I had. The drive alone was 8 hours. We dropped by a couple of hotspots within the vicinity.

Cape Cod
It's interesting to see so many shops still "Closed for the Season". When we were there, it was the first day of operation for almost a quarter of the shops there. Cape Cod is basically a small and somehwhat sleepy fishery town. I suppose the highlight of this place was the lobster meal we had for lunch.

Nice view of the cape

A local church

Nike commercial wannabe

the sky, the sea and the sand

the gang

Salem

Now this is the interesting one. In the eve of the 16th century, the Witch Hysteria outbreak disrupted an otherwise peaceful town. It started with a few teenage girls hallucinating and behaving crazily. Before long, these girls started accusing some townsfolks for bewitching them, which started the hyteria. Innocents were hanged. Those who pleaded guilty were set free if they name someone else who practice witchcraft. It was a period of distrust and backstabbing in Salem. By the time the hysteria was over, 19 have been sentenced to death.

Many years later, the girls who started the hysteria admitted that it was all a hoax. But what motivated them to play such a deadly prank? One of the most likely theories said the unusually high humidity during that period caused a certain fungus "Ergot of Rye" to grow on the townspeople break. This fungus is the origin of our modern day drug, LSD.

Cat and Weijia on the softtoys

Salem graveyard

names of the dead

official mascot of Salem

mirror mirror on the wall

the Hogsworth's graduating class of 2006

trinkets outside the Witch Museum

the gallows, the executioner and the prisoners

Pickering Wharf

Took a short drive to Pickering Wharf. Since it was pretty much rainy, we couldn't do much except taking a few photos beside the ship "Friendship of Salem".

the historical ship

Adrain on board the ship

By the time the rain actually stopped, most of the shops had closed. Disappointed, we headed back.

Being the photographer, I was the permanently the one walking furthest behind. Just after I took the above shot, I turned back for one last look....

....lo and behold, I saw one of the most beautiful rainbows I had ever seen in my entire life. Everyone stopped short and ran back to the river. It was a full semi-circle, completely surrounding the ship, and there were 2 of them - one rainbow on top of each other. Because we were so near to it, we couldn't capture the entire thing within one camera shot. In the end we took 7-8 shots hoping to capture parts of it. After spending one entire night, I managed to stich the shots we had, and it looked something like this.

One of the most beautiful moments of my life. Too bad the second rainbow was not really captured.

Salem II

This is definitely one of the stories I would tell my grandchildren next time - going on a ghost trail. The was a resident certified ghost hunter who put together a special program to trace all the underworld activity going on in Salem. Apparently we were in the right place at the right time, since the solar eclipse that happened 2 days ago was supposed to stir up electromagnetic activites around the area (ghosts are explained as a scientific phenomena here).

These "activities" appear in 3 forms.

Orbs (bright perfectly-shaped spheres)
Ectomorphs (semi-solid shapes)
Apparation (takes on a tangible figures, like a face or object)

Since you probably won't see much with a naked eye, we were asked to let our cameras do the "seeing". To capture a "ghost photo" you need to set your camera to:

Maximum exposure
Maximum ISO setting
Maximum shutter / aperture setting to get a decent non-blurred photo

So off we went to ghost hunting.

Apparently some nasty spiritual activities were capture on this spot by the guide himself

Another alley with lots of "activities"

The spot that used to be the old prison for accused witches

The tour ended with the tour guide showing us some photos he took.

Boston
Finally, the place where this trip was named after. Typical of an American city - lots of
skyscrapers and bustling with people.

Stopped by a church to have a look at the pre-service preparation. Interestingly, this church had a long history, a huge pipe organ and a full-fledge gospel choir with services in 6 different languages; but the total membership was still smaller than FCBC.

Gospel choir rehearsal

lots of sky-scrapers

After we got bored of all the city sight, we went to the the harbour. It was a perfect sunny day at the pier with seagulls soaring, private yatches sailing, people having coffee beside the sea...this is life.