Quickly from Singapore ...

As if I were Dr Who in his Tardis, here I am in Singapore, jet-lagged and wide awake at 0530 local time, 2235 back home in Coventry. Travelling is so much easier on family life these days; I've just signed off from an internet chat with Catherine so I feel up-to-date in all the important ways - the day has gone well back home and everyone there is safe.

I'm here in Singapore for just 3 days - silly silly timing, but the only way I could squeeze the trip into a busy work schedule back home. Why so important to come to Singapore? because Louis Chen is turning 70, and the local Maths and Stats departments organized a special conference in his honour.

And we do that sort of thing in my job: we go to birthday conferences for old and dear friends, and we celebrate all they have achieved - in Louis' case a very great amount of achievement indeed - and we do business; we give talks (mine seemed to go well), we make new friends, we get new ideas (my list of things to think about has extended substantially).

I expect wedding parties in 1st century Palestine were like that too; the occasion itself mattering hugely, but all sorts of useful business and contacts and alliances being made on the sidelines.

Does it help or hinder the churchwarden side of my life? well it certainly makes life more complicated, and means I have to re-jig my participation on rotas in complicated ways, and rely on friends to cover for me. On the other hand - I've blogged on this before - church communities and academic research communities have some remarkable similarities, and that does help. In both cases, when you get really down to what matters, it's the people and their relationships. Not in a vacuous fuzzy warm-feeling kind of way - both kinds of communities have jobs to do, and hard edges, and discipline (indeed the church must have pretty much invented the idea of discipline - think "disciple"!) - but because when all is said and done it's people who are at the heart of things.

Which is where I came in, because when I woke up for this wakeful spell I found myself preparing my talk for Sunday week 0930 service. I think I've got the three or four main points sorted. Not only do they all start with the same letter, but they are actually all the same phrase. Well, here in Singapore at 0530 local time the passage seems to be saying just one thing to our people, just one thing very loud, very clear, very distinct. We'll see ...