Saturday, December 31, 2005

rain, rain....

I wake up, early morning
To the alarm clock's groaning
Buzz (silence) buzz (silence)
Lulls me back to sleep

I wake again, much later
To happy pitter-patter of water
Lazily draw back the curtains
And I'm wide-eyed awake

Like the sun that rises everyday
You are so faithful, Lord, You are faithful
Like the rain that you bring and every breath that I take,
You are so faithful, O Lord.

It continued raining the whole of today! But the rain filled my heart with joy when I got up this morning, so I was glad for it to keep falling. Rain pelting against the window-panes as I sit on my cushiony,duvet-covered bed and watch and strum guitar strings; rain plonking into puddles in the uneven sidewalk, plinking on my umbrella, splashing droplets that soak my sneakers; rain trickling down the windows of the bus, blurring the light from the streetlamps, windows, headlights of cars, into bows, dandelions and other funny shapes; rain dripping from the Sainsbury's plastic-bags onto the wooden flooring of our doorway.

I think it's stopped raining, maybe it'll snow tonight!

Spent all of this morning thinking it was Thursday the 29th of December, until kahmei kindly enlightened me sometime after noon. That feeling when I realised it REALLY was Friday the 30th was terrible! As terrible as, well having a day disappear in a snap. But it is now properly Saturday the 31st by 9 mins and tomorrow is 2006 AD. I feel like I should be making a few GOOD resolutions to KEEP, maybe I will tomorrow morning.

Emails from my family always warm my heart. I always knew daddy knew how to make the babies and children laugh, but I never realised he had such a quirky sense of humour till I came here, his emails make me laugh out loud. (I'll bet mummy loved him for making her laugh. :) )

Off to hang out the laundry now. (part of my grand scheme to get into routines of doing these essential household things instead of leaving them till the very last.)

new year resolutions?

Your New Year's Resolutions

1) Get a pet monkey

2) Eat less tofu

3) Travel to Argentina

4) Study artificial intelligence

5) Get in shape with ballet

Sunday, December 25, 2005

it's christmas!

Merry Christmas everybody!

My room is so warm I had to turn off the heating altogether. Because the rays of warm warm sunshine are streaming in like it's summer! Yes, so no white christmas, but I'm not complaining.
Blesssings everywhere this Christmas, like wonderful dinner, laughs round the restaurant table on the other end of a phonecall, friend's mum coming to know Christ (!!), and love.

This Christmas actually felt quite festive. When I went to Sainsbury's yesterday, you could almost feel the excitement in the air amongst all the last minute grocery shoppers preparing for dinner, and trolleys all piled so high too. Maybe also because I'm now staying in an estate, and could smell wafts of other home's Christmas dinners, could hear the talking, laughter, music, could see the lights. :)

Anyway, I would like to share a Christmas carol we don't sing very much back home, (possibly because the idea of midwinter is foreign), but it's hardly winterish here now, and it's still beautiful. (And all the carol services I've been to or watched on TV had their choirs/congregations sing it!)

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, Whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, Whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

confirmed un-phlegmatic

There are days when this city is positively unlikeable, like today. These sort of days make me long for home and ask myself what is wrong with people? Or is there something wrong with me, you know, hormonal imbalances and the rest of it? I think it's both.

1. Bus drivers

I think I should dedicate a single entry to talking about bus stuff, seeing how often I take the bus nowadays and how confident I am that the randomness of events encountered on these bright red things will never cease to schock me.

BUT, today I had the horrid experience AGAIN of having the bus driver stop and refuse to drive the bus because of passengers. UGH. As far as I could make out:
someone was drinking alcohol aboard, refused to get off when asked to, started shouting at driver, driver says no get off, lady passenger no. 2 says he's stopped drinking just drive, driver refuses, passenger no.2 turns out to be not such a lady, and starts hurling the F and other words liberally at driver, who decides to voice his frustration over the PA system, "ladies and gentlemen now there are not one but two passengers on this bus arguing with me and I cannot drive till the station captain arrives""This bus will not move and I can and shall call the police".

I could not believe my ears!

Let me say first, this has happened before! And the last time it did, the stubborn driver, as a matter of principle, turned off the lights and shut the doors, and the busload of innocent bystanders to a ridiculous situation had to demand to be let out of the bus to catch another. The police actually DID arrive to talk to the offending passenger who, as a matter of principle, would not get off the bus to buy a ticket because he deemed his oyster card valid when it was not.

Both incidents happened at rush-hour, and what I do not understand is why both times, neither party felt the tiniest bit ashamed at having caused such inconvenience to all the other people squashed in that bus with all their stubborn shouting.

Thoroughly sickened by the whole thing, I could not possibly have waited for the bus and watch the police arrive and all the rest of the pointless commotion, and so decided walk the rest of the three or four bus stops home in the cold with my bags of groceries feeling quite miserable.

2. Bad customer service

It wouldn't have been as annoying if not for the fact that I had been snubbed earlier in the afternoon by the most unpleasant woman at hsbc. Entirely unhelpful, totally disinterested, downright rude, zero professionalism, shockingly slovenly...I could go on! It can't be that she had a bad day or something either because she's been consistently unpleasant each time I've been to the bank this year, and hey isn't it her JOB to be nice? Plus, not as if I wasn't more pleasant than I needed to be!

But I shall stop ranting because of the very friendly, efficient, willing-to-help lady at the russell square branch shujun accompanied me to after the horrid first woman. I feel like writing in to commend her simply because I'd rather commend than complain, and because I don't know the name of the unpleasant woman and have no wish to risk further irritation just to find out her name.

Anyway, I now agree wholeheartedly with my flatmate on how bad customer service (yes with the agents, with the phone companies etcetc) acts like a negative multiplier on the horrid feeling of being in a foreign city.

Ok, I know I still like this city and there're still a million and one reasons why.. it just doesn't feel much like "lovely" now. Walking along both crowded streets and deserted ones, it struck me that it doesn't feel much like christmas either.

phlegmatic?!

This is too funny for me not to keep.

You Have a Phlegmatic Temperament

Mild mannered and laid back, you take life at a slow pace. You are very consistent - both in motions and actions. You tend to absorb set backs easily. You are cool and collected.
It is difficult to offend you. You can remain composed and unemotional. You are a great friend and lover. You don't demand much of others. While you are quiet, you have a subtle wit that your friends know well.
At your worst, you are lazy and unwilling to work at anything.You often get stuck in a rut, without aspirations or dreams. You can get too dependent on others, setting yourself up for abandonment.

Now let's look at dictionary.com definitions for

phlegm (flm) n.
  1. Thick, sticky, stringy mucus secreted by the mucous membrane of the respiratory tract, as during a cold or other respiratory infection.
  2. One of the four humors of ancient and medieval physiology, thought to cause sluggishness, apathy, and evenness of temper.
  3. Sluggishness of temperament.
  4. Calm self-possession; equanimity.
phleg·mat·ic (flg-mtk) or phleg·mat·i·cal (--kl) adj.
  1. Of or relating to phlegm.
  2. Having or suggesting a calm, sluggish temperament; unemotional.
And this whole thing is funny because one, I never knew what phlegmatic really meant after all these years! If I ever read a sentence describing "a phlegmatic man" I most certainly would have assumed him to be phlegmatic in the coughy phlegmy way. Ignorance!

Two, as far as I know I'm not and have never been a girl with a phlegmatic disposition. If anything I would say I'm rather the opposite, and the only way phlegm can be applied to me right now is in definition no.1's "thick, sticky, stringy mucus". Yuuuuck.

I still think phlegm is one of the grossest words ever. Sorry everyone for the horribly repetitive use of the word here.
p.s. temperament was spelt wrongly in the quiz results. ha! don't know how that makes my ignorance of 'phlegmatic' any less terrible, but it does ok.

Monday, December 19, 2005

ice-cream

I can see my holidays zooming past already, and am "counting up the calories" while "counting down to christmas" as the ad at the bus stop shouts. No thanks to sainsbury's and tesco's luring me with the offer of saving £3.85 each time I buy two tubs of ice-cream, when I could actually save £4 by not buying them at all. Consumer irrationality prevails.

It's nice that these winter days are so sunny and bright though it feels almost like some illusion, some trick being played on my eyes because the rays bring with them no heat or warmth.

Ice-cream, frozen grapes, frozen blueberries keep the winter blues at bay. Kind of like 以毒攻毒! And wonderful people provide the magical warmth, like Mr Tumnus and the Beavers did for the children in the midst of Jadis's winter. :)

at last

"Why, Mr Stevens, why, why, why do you always have to pretend?"
- Miss Kenton

"But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of "turning points", one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect. Naturally when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at that time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable."

"Moreover, as you might appreciate, their implications were such as to provoke a certain degree of sorrow within me. Indeed - why should I not admit it? - at that moment, my heart was breaking."

"Perhaps it is indeed time I began to look at this whole matter of bantering more enthusiastically. After all, when one thinks about it, it is not such a foolish thing to indulge in - particularly if it is the case that in bantering lies the key to human warmth."

-Stevens the butler

The Remains of the Day. Kazuo Ishiguro


***

Now, I want to watch the film based on this work of excellence. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Emily Thompson and is supposedly very acclaimed. I want to watch it!

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

chinese


也许就是要等 一百个世纪
我们才能够发现 真爱的美丽

龙舌兰的花朵 不代表绚丽
选择燃烧了自己 将真爱延续
就像刺鸟的宿命 悲剧却勇敢
用生命交换结局的灿烂

-刺鸟, FIR

I think my sudden spurts of love for the chinese language are partly weird romantic fancy, and partly due to the unfamiliarity with the chinese characters weaving some kind of beauty around them, yes, the way they can be strung together so.. beautifully. Not
good with words, not with familiar english nor unfamiliar chinese, I'm again unable to express why and the lyrics of this song captivate me so.

Or actually, maybe, it's just part of the sudden irrational liking I've taken to FIR. sigh. :)

Happy to play host to visiting friends, because London is a wonderful city. Happy that if feels like holidays already. Happy to be listening to music. Wishing I could start disciplining myself to sleep earlier though....

Sunday, December 11, 2005

pimplefied

It's already 0245 on Sunday morning, and I don't feel the least bit sleepy. Which means my body clock has adjusted unwisely to the terrible late nights I've been keeping over the past week. AND, I think those bad sleeping and eating habits are also a primary reason why a pimple has appeared on my left cheek! I haven't seen a pimple since summer in Singapore.

This was actually quite an irritating discovery, even the word pimple looked irritating, because it's like 'dimple' and created a horrid picture in my mind of some petulant cartoon animated pimple laughing half-innocently at me.

Anyway so I had to search high and low for the tube of "quick clear treatment gel" which I've not seen in a long long while, and use it. Am now considerably happy though, having read the little plastic box it comes in, and found out that it contains a "combination of effective natural ingredients" including "cedarwood, cinnamon oil and moss rose" all of which sound very nice. :)

Going to TRY to sleep now.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

stuffy saturday

Not feeling well meant staying home the whole day, which I thought might be good. You know, to catch up on chores, tidy things up, read a bit. But I spent way too much of it online! There are endless things to do once you’re sucked into and stuck to the sticky threads of the world wide web. Let’s see, reading ST online (because it’s my homepage) reading all the various newspapers and magazines, reading and replying to emails (something I’m so bad at though I really mean to keep in touch better with all these people I love)….What else? Downloading sound clips to learn the various tones of Cantonese, and Teochew phrases, searching for lyrics, ebay-ing, amazon-ing, msn-ing.

I’ve just come from a minutes of such tension and unbelievable excitement frozen to sofa staring at the television screen waiting to know that… Zoe & Ian are through to the finals of Strictly Come Dancing (!!).. The Saturday’s really flown past. And now I’m back in front of my laptop screen again.

Being at home also meant, a lot of silence to think about recent events and other things. After all, it’s the end of term already, good to reflect a bit.

I still think that feeling of being ignored or rejected or just being treated with indifference as someone of little consequence is one of the worst – possibly worse than loneliness. Not really a very enlightening comparison since I think I quite enjoy being alone. Anyway.

I think the number of broken relationships littered around makes the world a tough place to live in. I wish to love and pour out my heart into the lives of as many as I possibly can. But I can’t do that with him because I still struggle with the concept/idea of who he is to me now, and I think he does too though he’d never admit it. Why should a concept/idea matter so much anyway when what we’re talking about here is the very concrete problem of two lives that need to be set apart, but are too intertwined to be disentangled neatly? Or is that just the way I fancy it to be? I don’t know I don’t know.

And actually it’s not just him, how do you find the balance between opening your heart to others, and knowing what to guard and not keep secret? Secrets are such annoying things. Ok, sometimes I must confess they can be secretly delightful, but mostly they’re just whirring generators of distrust and more questions and hurt and disbelief etc etc etc.

A year ago, I might have simply decided that the winter gloom is too much and I deserve to cry. (I learnt last night that this is medically known as seasonal something disorder, I forgot!) So I would let myself cry to the tunes of impossibly sad music under my duvet. This year, I’m not so prone to tears. (yes, apart from when lectures are cancelled ;P)

Rather strange and foreign actually, this girl who sits at my messy desk with so much going on in her mind and heart that she’s unable and unwilling to express properly in words and who insists on playing FIR on repeat ad nauseum only she doesn’t ever get sick of it and is in fact on her way to memorising all the lyrics!

Maybe it's, and in fact I think it really is, because I now have a special group of people more nearby than ever, who constantly drill into me the fact that it’s nothing about how I do, how I handle things, but what the state of my heart is, do I look to God, does my soul cling to Him? (see, why being alone isn’t necessarily best much as I think I like it)

Yes, realising that that it’s all about grace, which doesn’t exclude the presence of despair, or dryness, or niggling insecurities, but grace, which sweeps in onto the shore of my everyday life like a tide of love that fills all holes, the deep and the shallow. And yes the sandcastles I built for me, they may crumble under the wave and loss hurts, but then the rocks are so much more obvious for being the only ones left standing. I struggle to put it in words, but there is peace, and it’s only because of grace amazing, unconditional love.

So if I need to cry today, I know better than to cry to some stranger’s voice, no matter how good it is, I’ll cry to my one Best Friend, because I know He hears.


Wow, that was one long entry.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

argh

what am I doing?? one hour to the usual thursday noon deadline, a whole question left on my b201 undone, and i'll need half of that hour to get to school, probably another ten of the remaining half to get dressed very very quickly. sigh. my FIR smart playlist is playing non-stop. i've no idea why i suddenly like them so much.

christmas angel
You are the Christmas Angel.


What Christmas Ornament are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

---

穿越千年的伤痛 只为求一个结果
你留下的轮廓指引我 黑夜中不寂寞

穿越千年的哀愁 是你在尽头等我
最美丽的感动 会值得 用一生守候

--

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

if You want me to

The pathway is broken
And the signs are unclear
And I dont know the reason why you brought me here
But just because You love me the way that You do
I will go through the valley
If You want me to

Now I'm not who I was
When I took my first step
And I'm clinging to the promise
You're not through with me yet
So if all of these trials bring me closer to You
I will go through the fire
If You want me to

It may not be the way I would have chosen
When you lead me through a world that's not my own
But You never said it would be easy
You only said I'll never go alone

So when the whole world turns against me
And I'm all by myself
And I can't hear You answer my cries for help
I'll remember the suffering Your love put You through
And I will go through the valley
If You want me to

If You want me to, Ginny Owens

***

The highs: ocf christmas on saturday, all the singing and eating and listening.
sunday morning in all souls
The lows: sore throat, bad voice, gross phlegm (which has to be one of the ugliest looking words in the world itself), throbbing head, and other things too hard to talk about.

Reading: The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro; What's so Amazing about Grace, Philip Yancey; The True Vine, Andrew Murray; The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova; ------ Labor Economics (yes spelt labor instead of labour so irritating), GJ Borjas; Wendy Carlin's yet to be published book; Microeconomic Theory, Nicholson; etcetcetc.

Listening: 十一月的蕭邦, 周杰倫;Stefanie Sun various; 張學友 various; David Tao, F.I.R. , Vienna Teng, Ginny Owens, Katie Melua, Corrine May, Stacey Kent, Nichole Nordeman etcetcetc oh christmas carols! - from the squalor of a borrowed stable (Immanuel), i cannot tell

Thinking and Feeling: like I want to go home (home- singapore home) , sleep and talk to no one and do absolutely nothing for a long long long long time. I think that tendency for self-centredness and self-reproach everything to come crashing down over everything looms right round the corner. keep at bay!! otherwise, nothing much else to say except that God is ever so faithful, so good.

Christmas is coming: check this out: Oxfam Unwrapped Brilliant stuff.

Also, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is coming! there's something to smile about. :)

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

advent

Anyway, last Sunday was also Advent Sunday. And I have to admit that I never knew actually knew what Advent was till last Sunday. Advent observance just sounded like alot of rituals in observance of an old boring liturgical season I know next to nothing about.

But if, as I found out during Sunday's service, Advent is about looking towards the glorious second coming of Christ as much as it is a season of preparation to remember Jesus' birthday.. then how can that not be relevant? If you like, read more about Advent
here.

And so November, my month (how dare I lay claim to such a month but I can't help it!), has passed by again. Tomorrow I shall open the first little door on the advent calendar I bought in that supermarket in Vienna. It's time to start carolling.

O come, O come, Emmanuel

and ransom captive Israel

who mourns in lonely exile here

until the son of God draws near.


Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.


O come bright Daybreak, come and cheer
our spirits by your advent here;

dispel the long night's lingering gloom

and pierce the shadows of the tomb.


Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.

____

(It is no coincidence that so many of my entries here are on Wednesdays i.e. day before all economics coursework is due week after week. :P)

Monday, November 28, 2005

birthday

I'm twenty. :)
It's 00:00 as I start typing this, so my birthday's officially come and gone. I can't say that I feel any older or wiser, but I do feel that with new realisations and resolutions made in the weeks leading up to today, this girl is now starting a new chapter of her life. (a new decade in fact! horrors...)

I'm inexpressibly grateful for all the phone calls from home, cards and immensely thoughtful gifts (all of which will keep me very warm through cold winter nights ahead :P) and the most lovingly planned surprise ever. This whole week, I've been feeling like the luckiest little girl, yes little girl, in the whole wide world. (Despite the cold, which bothers me no longer because of my happy presents!) Extremely spoilt as well, and so undeservingly loved. I would go into details but shall spare you and anyway it's all firmly printed in memory so there's no need to go on about it. Except to say again how thankful I am for my special and deeply adored friends and family. :)

Some say, what's the big deal about a birthday? But it meant alot, each and every single birthday greeting I've received. (So yes I really must start remembering other people's birthdays too!)

***

Twenty is significant, more significant than twenty one I think. My Japanese friend tells me that back home, a huge party is thrown regionally for all twenty-year-olds, kind of like prom, only it's a huge birthday celebration for everyone, and a huge reunion of sorts with all the people in your year at school. All the girls put on their best kimonos and the guys their suits for a night of celebration, leaving their teenage years behind.

So, calls for some quieter introspection?

I think what I heard in church this morning was very apt- about the danger of "ministry without room for vulnerability, spirituality without room for weakness". And it just hit home, what the rector said about how the world's success culture seeps into spirituality so that we feel like we must always put up an 'i-can-handle-everything' front to the world, when we can't. The staggering amounts of passion and agonising in the example of Paul while he "boasted" not of triumphs but of persecution and suffering, made clear to me what had already struck me during retreat. Pride keeps me wanting to put up a facade of "humble" superiority in all sorts of ways, when all I will ever be is another broken vessel slowly being pieced back together by a loving Father, needing grace, needing Christ.

"I present what I have before the messenger, the angel of the covenant, the Lord Jesus; and through him my prayers find acceptance wrapped up in his prayers; my praises become sweet as they are bound up with bundles of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia from Christ’s own garden. If I can bring him nothing but my tears, he will put them with his own tears in his own bottle for he once wept; if I can bring him nothing but my groans and sighs, he will accept these as an acceptable sacrifice, for he once was broken in heart, and sighed heavily in spirit. I myself, standing in him, am accepted in the Beloved; and all my polluted works, though in themselves only objects of divine abhorrence, are so received, that God smelleth a sweet savour. He is content and I am blessed." - Spurgeon (morning devotion 27th November)

I cannot but be amazed at God's faithfulness. He never gave up on me these twenty years, so as the lyrics of that song go, "I'll simply live, I simply live for You".

Saturday, November 26, 2005

ill

I'm ill, and I haven't been ill in a long time. So much for a weekend of happy rest and relaxation.

What do I do when I'm ill? I sleep till noon, eat and read and wash clothes and blow my nose and sleep and then come online. haha. I haven't been ill in a long time, and there's sort of a secret glee in being ill and knowing you have the excuse to not do anything purposeful/work-related.

Reminds me vaguely of that Plath poem we did back in jc, on bright red tulips and her lying in a hospital bed surrounded by white walls and hating the tulips because they seemed to her to be forcing her back into healthy life and away from the peacefulness of just lying in the hospital bed being a body. Well, something like that at least, I hope I'm not misrepresenting her horrendously.

I don't hate my red duvet covet, and I do hate being sick, but at the same time in a unwilling way I appreciate the rest it forces on me. Like my mummy always says, see your body is telling you something! So I'm going back to sleep in awhile.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

fight between two wolves

An elder Cherokee American was teaching his grandchildren about life.
He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight and
it is between two wolves.

"One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance,
selfpity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego."

"The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth,
compassion and faith.

"This same fight is going on inside you, and inside
every other person, too."

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather:
"Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Monday, November 21, 2005

walking walking walking

Walking back from christmas choir practice, I decided to do the "add a little more exercise to your daily schedule" thing and walk to the further bus stop outside British Library instead of the one at Euston. And it was so cold! 1degreeC in November is way too cold for me ): But cold aside, it was a pretty pleasant walk, the cold prompts you to think. Here are some things I thought:

I need a hat (to keep my head warm without making it look like an egg.)
I need warmer socks, leggings, thermal underwear too by the look of things.
I need footwear that is more insulating than my trainers (and waterproof).
I need a fan heater (joy of having huge windows dampened by the chill).
I need a carpet or rug for my wooden floor.
I need warm (and hopefully soft and fluffy) bedroom slippers.
I need a scarf, gloves, and a wooly sweater.
Don't I already have a scarf, gloves and a sweater?

All that made me warm enough to think less-shallow thoughts like these:

The cold's making me miserable, but joy burns in my soul still - and such gratitude.

My heart is too fickle and too deceitful, as are the feelings and emotions that send me soaring and falling, and I shall VOW never to trust my heart and co fully.

Humming sad songs can sometimes make me feel incredibly high (example of emotions being crazy unreliable things, which I love as part of me but shall not trust.)

Even though I might have lost my sense of home physically, geographically,earthly, I'll remain secure in the knowledge that I'm walking walking walking towards the warmth that awaits in that eternal home where my King sits upon the throne above all thrones.

***

I love you Lord
And I lift my voice
To worship You
All my soul rejoice
Take joy my King
In what You hear
May it be a sweet sweet sound
In Your ear

***

Friday, November 18, 2005

forever i'll pursue

We sang this hymn in church last Sunday (also Remembrance Sunday). It captures a lot of what I'd like to "shout to the north and the south, the east and the west!" Beautiful hymn. To listen to the one it was adapted from, an English patriotic hymn, - here.

I vow to you, my Saviour, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love:
The love that asks no questions, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon his altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that knows the price,
The love that stands indebted before your sacrifice.

And there’s a royal country, I’ve heard of long ago,
It speaks of grace and heaven, a place that all may know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her emblem on a hilltop – the Cross of suffering,
And soul by soul and silently, her citizens increase,
Her ways are ways of gentleness and all her paths are peace.

O tell me of the Kingdom, that stands the test of time,
O lead me to its gateway, and speak the word sublime
That tells me I’m forgiven, my name is in the Book,
The Cross of Jesus holds me, as heavenward I look;
Baptised into a living hope, I’ll walk the path that’s new;
The prize of God in Jesus, for ever I’ll pursue

So light the fire within me, and let me fan the flame.
And fill me with the Spirit, that I may bear your Name;
In season and in hardship, to run my given race
O keep me ever-burning until I see your face.
I vow to you, my Saviour, that where your feet have trod,
I’ll serve and always follow my Master and my God.

After Sir Cecil Spring-Rice. Revised and adapted by RT Bewes

off to OCF retreat in a few hours now... :)

the girl in the cafe

I've just watched what's possibly the most moving film I've seen in a long while. Lovely, almost bittersweet comedy, but with such a strong message.

I'm still not sure how the writer Richard Curtis (Love Actually) and director David Yates (Harry Potter (I think)) managed to do it, how they managed to just blend the two, love and politics, together so naturally it didn't seem the least bit contrived or false.

And the pacing, the script, the acting, the acting! Bill Nighy and Kelly Macdonald, really amazing. So, if you haven't already, please go watch The Girl in The Cafe.

Admittedly, a huge part of why I found it charming was the Britishness of it all. The reticence (taken to a new level haha), awkward humour. A great show, really. Read more about it, and BBC's Africa Lives programmes this year here.

Though plenty controversial, loads here of what may be accused of being an oversimplification of things in the sphere of global politics and economics. But really, when it comes to this: poverty, life, death, perhaps alot needs to be simplified simplified simplified and put in the light of human reality, the sort where love and compassion for fellow human being supercedes "bigger picture" concerns.

Easily said huh? When I'm sitting in front of my laptop, in relative warmth and comfort, plain chocolate digestives to soothe nothing nearing hunger, more an irritating craving, with access to the internet and too many creature comforts of life.

"Sometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation" - Nelson Mandela

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

london london

Ok, I know I'm really going abit overboard with this whole blogging when I've got tons of work to do thing, but was tired, frustrated and bored, and because it's too cold to go for a walk outside, I had to appease self with wandering around online, AND then when I got this result... really made me smile!! :)

You Belong in London

A little old fashioned, and a little modern.
A little traditional, and a little bit punk rock.
A unique woman like you needs a city that offers everything.
No wonder you and London will get along so well.


Ok all ready to dive back into work now!

boredom and brilliance

Why do I always find myself unable to keep myself from blogging just when I have three pieces of coursework due noon the next day?? Argh. I think if I collected sufficient data (not too hard at all) and ran a regression of blogging (B) on the explanatory variables that come to mind right now, including work-left-undone (W), time-at-home (T), thoughts-to-pen (P), interesting happenings (I), the resulting coefficients would demonstrate terribly high correlations of W and T to B, instead of stronger correlations with P and I. Sigh.

Well, actually time-at-home is not directly correlated to blogging frequency because when I am free and unburdened by the need to work, I spend time doing other things like watching TV and strumming the guitar, washing clothes/dishes and tidying up my room (which perpetually needs tidying), or reading (aha- see, profitable use of time). SO, it's only when I need to do work that I compulsively turn to blogging! Terrible terrible.

Though it could be explained simply and intuitively by the fact that after I have spent a considerable amount of time typing, I become extremely aware that I have wasted this amount of time, and then morph into super-focused mode and become alot more productive without feeling drained at the end of it from spending too much time in un-focused mode. So, because I have subconsciously processed this knowledge, everytime I have to work, my body tells me to blog blog blog so I'll be more efficient later! Ha. WHO am I kidding. :P

***

Two shows I watched recently: one a play the other a film. Well not really recently, more like many weeks back. And I loved both!

Death of a Salesman

I haven't really watched many plays, but even from our slightly restricted-viewing circle seats, it was a brilliant show. Really emotionally and mentally and physically draining though. The acting was so intense I think I kind of forgot I was watching a play in the middle of it. It's like a drama of lives unfolding in a very real very believable space before your eyes, and the humanness of it was so piercing. Human fragility, frailty showing through the self-delusions of grandeur and success and endless secrets. Will remember this performance for quite awhile to come I think.. but, they talk about it better than I do.

"He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine"


Pride and Prejudice

One of those books I've read and reread (mostly cos it's fun and easy reading I think) And I haven't watched the BBC production with Colin Firth, but I thought the movie was pretty good!
Maybe it was just loving a story you're so familiar with being played out, and being glad that Keira Knightley was so similar to the Elizabeth of my imagination. :)

Read in the Independent yesterday the whole controversy over in the U.S. about the prolonged Liz-Darcy kiss at the end, which I thought was quite hilarious! BUT, if I had to choose a version to watch, I think I'll stick to the British release I saw, simply because I thought the most beautiful scene was of them, standing together at last in the sunset in perfect bliss and even then, lips don't touch! Haha, it's like deliberately not letting the audience fully in on the private intimacy of their love. Which I like. :)

***
Ok that's it, back to work. And I shall take JOY in doing work too!

sunset

sunset as seen atop citadella, budapest

Let the sun set, why hold on to the passing of old? Come back home now, it's getting cold. And the sun will rise again... And His mercies are new every morning.

Friday, November 11, 2005

fruit fly invasion


Our beautiful Maiden Lane house has been invaded by tiny icky super fast fruit flies! So in case anyone's in this similar horrid predicament of having fruit flies flying in their face wherever they walk in their own home, here are some diy fruitfly traps I got off the net.

1. Put apple cider vinegar in a jar, cover in cling film, poke a few holes and hope the fruitflies fly in and drown.

2. Put a piece of banana in a jar, cover in cling flim, poke a few holes, and hope the fruitflies that fly in will stay in. (the person who wrote this claims they won't find their way back out through the holes)

3. Use hairspray (to kill rather than to trap)

4. Use sticky fly tape

5. Rub some Vicks vaporub on a lid and leave it out (more to chase them away then to trap)

There must be more, but for now, I shall make fruitfly trap number 1. heh.

i wanna go home


[mrt train speeds off into the sunset and towards my stop boon lay:
one evening after work, standing underneath the tracks at Lakeside mrt station]

reading week trip

Just got back from what was possibly the most amazing trip I've been on yet. Vienna and Budapest- beautiful places, buildings, sights; wonderful company whom I really love, Angela, Shujun, Alex, Bryan, Chin Siong- were really the best travelling companions anyone could ask for. Plus I don't think I'm just saying this out of post-trip euphoria, (there were definitely the low points like diarrhoea yucks) but I'm really truly sad that it had to end so soon. There was so much laughter and self-entertainment, plenty of interesting conversations of the 为什么 trivia variety... and "highly curious" debates about religion- which sometimes left me feeling quite drained, simply because it required so much energy and sustained concentration, so when I came back and found this on peiyong's blog, I thought I'd put it up. Pictures and stories and quotable quotes from this reading week trip shall come later, after I've actually done some reading. :)

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not shouting, "I've been saved!"
I'm whispering, "I get lost! That's why I chose this way"

When I say, "I am a Christian," I don't speak with human pride
I'm confessing that I stumble- needing God to be my guide

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not trying to be strong
I'm professing that I'm weak and pray for strength to carry on

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not bragging of success
I'm admitting that I've failed and cannot ever pay the debt

When I say, "I am a Christian," I don't think I know it all
I submit to my confusion asking humbly to be taught

When I say, "I am a Christian," I'm not claiming to be perfect
My flaws are far too visible but God believes I'm worth it

When I say, "I am a Christian," I still feel the sting of pain
I have my share of heartache which is why I seek His name

When I say, "I am a Christian," I do not wish to judge
I have no authority--I only know I'm loved

Copyright 1988 Carol Wimmer

For some inexplicable reason though, I've arrived back to a home (which really feels like a home away from home) missing my family and Singapore quite a bit more. Wish I could be with them, or that they could be here with me now.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

they can only end well.

So the most dramatic traumatic relational episode I've ever witnessed has come to a sudden and fitting end. I feel like shouting a warning to every single girl out there, in relation to what I've recently watched her go through, but don't know how to, don't know what to say! So useless. At least I know better too now. Live and learn don't we....

I've been feeling busy and started to wonder why? It's only too easy to live life for the moment, you know, by the dates, events marked out on your calendar, planner, organiser; by the next class on your timetable; by the next birthday... far harder to live each moment for eternity. It's enjoyable, being busy... though I've been longing for ages now to just wrap myself up in bed one afternoon with a storybook (I've at least five crisp new novels on my bookshelf waiting to be read).

It's probably inevitable, that every person will wake up some mornings and no matter how fulfilling, exciting, happening their lives are at that point, let out a huge sigh at the utter vanity of it all. yes? no? I don't know. Well usually then I can only gain assurance from heart knowledge that yes 'all is vanity under the sun' but there are things beyond the sun. :)

Where am I going with this rambling? I'm getting on a plane in a few hours, but any excitement is dulled by the knowledge that I really should be spending reading week READING and getting work done. But there'll be great company, and beautiful scenery (I hope), so I'm off to pack! :)

Friday, November 04, 2005

when things get so bad...

The tumultuous journeys taken by those near and dear to me in the name of that thing called love are leaving me so exhausted! There's been too much weeping, too much agnonising, too much irrationality, yet I cannot bear to just mind my own business walk away, (how to turn in contempt?) because her pain is obvious, and I see how she aches, how she's torn apart within by all the "ifs", by love and loathing in turn, because unlike what I told her, I do empathise, even if only in fragile plys of tissues.

In any case, I found myself at a police station this evening, and if I do not type that down, I shall remain incredulous. As it is it feels fairly surreal still! The stories I heard there were sad but so real. I was not in trouble, don't worry. No I was there to provide a strange useless kind of support while she made a missing persons report. A missing persons report can you believe that? I cannot. It sounds like something from the movies, from the 7 o'clock, 9 o'clock shows on channel 8, and not something from college life in London.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

googlism

Googlism is so ridiculous! Anyway, here are some of the results for: shining.
Unsurprisingly, alot of references to that horror movie.. so I took most of them out.

shining is academician of the chinese academy
shining is scary
shining is directly tied to duality
shining is influential in a great many ways
shining is more than fast talking and sharp one
shining is an unforgettable
shining is truly a masterpiece
shining is about jesus
shining is also certainly not deficient in other areas either
shining is ace
shining is very deliberate and slow
shining is great
shining is a work of genius
shining is a good example of this
shining is the one
shining is also known as the shining
shining is active
shining is like a fine book

well well. :)

Monday, October 24, 2005

sunday morning sky


This is the beautiful, magnificent sky I woke up to this Sunday morning- the joy of having huge windows!

It's been such a busy week, and too many silly things have happened to name them all but an underlying principle was: get some lose some. This week I got my chair and wardrobe so that my room's now completely furnished, BUT our washing machine broke down yesterday, and we still can't turn the heating on.

All in all though, a challenging week, great promises- I really don't deserve the much that I have. (And, Death of a Salesman deserves every bit of praise it's ever been awarded, but it was thoroughly exhausting emotionally to take all that hopelessness in, and that's the depth of feeling that went into the players' performances.)

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

it's a beautiful autumn

My heart is full of adoration
for you my Lord, my God and King;
your excellence, my inspiration,
your words of grace
have made my spirit sing.

All the glory, honour and power
belong to you, belong to you;
Jesus, Saviour, anointed One,
I worship you, I worship you

:)


[jiaozi making when back home in singapore]

"We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." Isaiah 64:8

It's hard, with work and things piling up and trying to tackle it all by myself, to remember that I can't be both potter and clay (or dough kneader and dough). Fact is, I'm not the potter of my life! And that's especially worth being thankful for at the moment.

Friday, October 14, 2005

everything's gonna be alright

Internet connection is back up miraculously! After spending hours (literally) on the phone (mostly not talking and listening to silly music) with the various parties involved in our very complicated internet setup package, yayyaygirls (haha!) is finally up again, and for reasons unknown to all mankind- unhelpful experts included. In the meantime, of course, I've learnt once again what a time-sucker the WWW can be. But I'm glad it's back.

I'm even glad-er that our agent has finally managed to get the whole wardrobe thing sorted out (albeit very slimily) I really hope the landlady doesn't think we're nasty, because he certainly made us out to be.

I've had to make too many too many phonecalls to helplines, hotlines over the past few days- I really hate having to force myself to be rude (admittedly sometimes I really just wanted to be but..) in order to get customer service personnel to be helpful. One thing, yes it seems to be the only way to solve the problem short-term, but it could just make them less willing to please (rude, demanding, not unreasonable but still bothersome) customers right?

Ahhhh, don't know what to do, what to do? Must learn full dependency on my Lord.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Things

Happy things

1. My amazing macroecons lecturer, whom I adore! Because he’s so brilliant, eloquent, hardworking, sincere, has got a wonderful British accent, terribly charming, not at all arrogant, not preachy or uptight, well-dressed, knows how to grab and hold the attention of all of us (irritating rowdy paper-plane throwing ones included)…. My admiration is really not baseless or foolish ok. I really am very very grateful to have such a fantastic lecturer! (And I hope my daddy is as great a lecturer back home.) J

2. Frisbee, which I adore as well! Ok, I cannot play, do not know the rules of Ultimate, and have never even watched a proper game played out. What I do know, is that I have no flair for it, as is the case with me and most other sporting activities, but still really enjoy it, so there must be something worth hanging in there for! When I say enjoy ‘it’ of course, that really just refers to picking up the frisbee, tossing it only to watch it wobble through the air, and then staring open-mouthed at how others manage to make their Frisbees slice the air, before realising too late that there’s a frisbee headed right for my stomach or the ground near me, thus failing to stretch my hands out in time for any catch either. But yes, though it’s autumn, Hyde Park was beautiful, the weather glorious, and I just might go back to play again. We’ll see.

3. Work: I think I’m actually enjoying economics this year, even though it looks like it’s going to be much harder this year. Readings are interesting, textbooks are interesting, lecturers are alright (and one of them amazing!). And I’m really glad I chose not to take the math module in the end, not least because I don’t have as many 9am lectures!

4. Precocious, talkative, funny little boys and girls at C-zone explorers. That’s like Sunday school for the 7-11 year olds at All Souls, which I hope to go help out with regularly from now on. They really made my Sunday.

5. The great 20p student deal on newspapers, and the freebies that come with Guardian or Independent, like chocolates, dvds and even books! And, the little sudoku grid on the back to keep myself awake between taking notes in lectures.

6. The huge amount of chocolate in our house. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate truffles, chocolate digestives, chocolate Nutella spread, chocolate covered jaffa cakes, the list goes on…Actually, the jury’s still out as to whether this is a good or bad thing. The £3.99 Argos weighing scale in my bedroom tells me I’ve gained weight. Already! Hm.

7. Strawberries!!

Crazy things (or rather thing)

1. Last night, I dropped an envelope into one of those classic big red post-boxes. No that’s not the crazy part, the crazy part is that it was the sign up form for the London Marathon 2006. Yes, that’s right, I’m going to start running and hopefully someday run 42km!!! The thing is, I might not actually get in, 80% of applicants get rejected! Plus my having never applied before probably puts me near the bottom of the pile right away. And running for charity, which means looking for sponsorship, would be too insurmountable a task. Ha. Like running a marathon is not?!?! But I figure, after much persuasion from angela, that hey I have six months to train, it gives me a goal to run towards, something else to put into my schedule and force out some discipline…If anything, I will at least have a healthier lifestyle, and a fitter heart right? So, yes I know, horrible things have happened, people have died running the marathon. But, I’m going to start running and running and running and hopefully keep running and running and running so that I won’t. Remember that this is coming from me, who hated running the 2.4 for PE: Crazy crazy crazy.

Irritating nagging things

1. Internet has been down for over a week in our house now: It wasn’t AOL’s fault (this time) so the BT guy just came today, but couldn’t fix it, apparently they’ll have to pass it over to BT exchange, whatever that really means, so more waiting waiting and sitting around and wishing and hoping. Sigh.

2. AOL’s refusal to honour their promises! Promised a really good broadband deal, now have gone back on their word and are asking us to pay more. Grr.

3. Wardrobe still hasn’t arrived, thanks to most incompetent agent, who caused all this trouble (we think deliberately) in the first place, telling the landlady one thing and us another.

4. My labour economics textbook: which because of it being American spells labour l-a-b-o-r so that all these ‘labOr’s keep leaping out at me from the page, thus distracting me from actually reading and understanding it. The labOr thing was also the reason why I spent so long searching the UCLid catalogue for another book. (ok, that IS really trivial, but irritating all the same)

5. My application for a Student Oyster photocard got rejected! Their reason: my form wasn’t signed and stamped, BUT IT WAS! I am absolutely flummoxed (sorry I just like the sound of it) by the ridiculousness of this.

6. HSBC is still sending things back home to Singapore when I’ve personally gone down to the branch to make sure all the settings are right twice! And if I add to this the irritation over how rude I had to force myself to be to get the staff to explain why (they just didn’t know) I could not apply for a credit card, I might just swell up, puffer fish style.


So: patience, understanding, self-control,
. I wonder if my parents have to face as many instances of bureaucratic inefficiency, incompetence and plain untrustworthiness in settling such matters back home. Anyway, looks like there are more points under happy things than irritating things, and the happy ones are all not as trivial. (: Ok, back to readings and more readings.

Sunday, October 02, 2005

To love



Today was just one of those 倒霉 days when all natural clumsiness in me conspires to break out and turn my day upside down. I tripped over myself and fell in a most undignified manner on the sidewalk of Oxford Street on my way to church, and that was just one among a whole series of embarassing little accidents.

Thankfully, there were many bright spots! Such as church, both worship and the sermon, the overwhelming kindness of total strangers, tanny's lullaby dance exhibition and playing with chairs.

(I'll put up the link to the sermon "strength in weakness" when it gets uploaded, but just wanted to note this bit that struck me.)

Paul Williams reminded me this morning of something C.S. Lewis once wrote:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one - not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket or the coffin of your selfishness. But, in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, unredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love, is hell. ~ The Four Loves
In 2 Corinthians 6:13, Paul exhorted the Corinthians to "open wide your hearts also." I have decided, to open wide my heart then, to as many people as possible! Even if that means looking vulnerability in the face.

And with an open heart, I endeavour also to live out a life of endurance, purity, and contentment as well. Lectures finally start tomorrow (at 9am!). Remind me dear Lord.

a promise


rainbow
Originally uploaded by incandescere.
A new chapter has started without me again! Always feel like I'm playing catchup.. been back here in London for about two weeks now, and lectures start tomorrow.

So busy! And too many things to think about. Why are some people so shamelessly incompetent and rude? Argh. And why does love so often mess sensibilities up? Because humans love so imperfectly?

So I return again to the day I touched down. On my way to ucl on the big red 390, I saw the most beautiful rainbow.

I haven't seen one in a long while, the last one must have been back home in Singapore before I ever stepped foot in London years ago. It was not a half rainbow like in the picture above, it was a perfect arch, almost tracing a semicircle midair.

I saw that rainbow with my heart and mind in tatters. To me, those few seconds as the bus droe past, that glimpse of those colours said "Welcome back to London, my child, I'm here with you still"

Yep, I'll take that rainbow as a covenant, a promise. This year, as every year should have been, will be for my Lord.

And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth." - Genesis 9:12-13

"Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember"