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....

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.

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.

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.


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

--

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. :)

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)

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".