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.)

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.

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.

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, 忍. 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.

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"