Committee:

Curtin

Nursing:

Pharmacy:

Physiotherapy:

Occupational Thereapy:

UWA

Medicine:

Dentistry:

SOLOMON ONG

Sol, Sollie Wollie, Big-nose boy, The Wise One,

Blockhead, Ongga, Solo-man, Solomon Grundy

Mr. President

Singing and composing,

Talking and laughing,

Running around like a psycho,

Talking and laughing loudly,

Attracting as much attention as possible;

by talking and laughing really really loudly.

Embarrassing moments are blocked out of

consciousness for the sake of more extroverted

talking-laughing-attention-seeking.

What I love most about SMA is the God of SMA! Next would have to be the uniqueness of SMA. Run by students for students. More importantly, run by God for GOD!

SMA provides a refuge for Christians and non-Christians, a place for accountability, love and joy. It gives you a foundation at university when life is swirling all around you. 

 Jesus has changed EVERY aspect of my life. There is not enough time or space here to explain so I'll give you just one aspect.

God has challenged me to be holy in every respect. One example is holiness in the family. I feel that the family is often the most difficult battleground you have to fight in. Apologising to parents, obeying your parents, and putting your family first with time, money and care are all challenges the average son fails at. I know I used to fail all the time. Since Jesus has begun being Lord of everything, I find that this is one area I am beginning (just!) to be holy in.

Apart from that, Jesus has given me hope, joy, righteousness and peace!

Hence having your future in mind is very wise when you are living your life, thinking, making decisions and finally putting things into action.

Thinking about your future can be from an ultra-short term to an eternal perspective. I will use the word "vision" defined as "the future you want to see occur in your life"

Examples: (future vision) --> thinking --> decision --> action --> future

Ultra short term --> I'm hungry --> I will eat --> I eat --> I'm not hungry.

Short term --> Must get to uni --> I will go to uni --> I get in car --> I get to uni

Long term --> Must get money to live --> I will go to uni --> I get in car --> I get to uni.

Eternal perspective --> Must understand eternity --> I will go to bible study --> I get in car --> I get to bible study.

As you can see, every vision, short or long, will ultimately affect your immediate action. Different visions may end up with the same immediate action. However, different visions will never end up in the same future. (unless you're really not in control)

Longer term visions require greater insight. They lead to actions that don't necessarily make sense if all you thought of was ultra-short visions. For example, if you wanted to lose weight, you may not eat when you are hungry. Obvious, but worth thinking about.

I believe that the longer term vision you have, the better. Thinking about your ultimate goal is usually better than thinking about your short-term goal. You may end up in the wrong place!

For example, if I'm driving to uni., my vision is to be at uni. All decisions and actions at the wheel must correlate with that vision. Alternatively, if I had less insight into life and say I wanted to drive, but did not know where I was going, but knew that I wanted to go somewhere else, my decisions and actions would be based on road rules and impulsive decisions (eg. I'll turn left now because that red car just turned left).

That sounds stupid, but isn't life like that a lot of the time? Don't we often get into the "car " of life and go for a drive without knowing where we're heading? How many people go into a university course not thinking about the job they'll be doing? Then when they realise that they weren't thinking very long-term, they change courses.

Hence, again I stress, the longer term the vision, the better. Now I ask you, what's longer term that eternity?

Even if you know where you want to be in 50 years (that would be a very well motivated individual), do you know where you'll be in say 80 years? what about 100? or 100 000 years?

For you who are thinking, well, I just won't be around. I want to challenge you… are you sure about that? Yes?

Well, can you understand how the ras5 gene in adipose tissue cells transmits messages to the adjacent cell releasing regestrogens?

"That's unfair!", you say, "I need to look it up, and that's not relevant".

It sure is relevant. How do you know that you're not going to exist and that there is no other "realm" so to speak, if you've never looked it up? Furthermore, there is no ras5 gene and there are no such things as regestrogens!

How can you know that the spiritual realm does not exist if you've only ever studied the scientific realm? It's similar to the example above… if you've never studied biology, you have no clue whether or not ras5 exists or even what it could be!