Roll Initiative

Built to Last

2008-01-21T19:18:00.001+08:00

"Cause this is real and this is good
It warms the inside just like it should
But most of all
Most of all it’s built to last
It’s built to last
It’s built to last"

Melee, Built to Last

I just love this song. Plus the music video is a pretty cute reenactment of every over the top romantic gesture we secretly loved in the movies. The jangly opening, the completely optimistic lyrics, the celebratory way the lead singer belts out that chorus - It just grabs me, makes me want to dance and puts a silly smile on my face. It's really nice to know that song writers in this age can still pen hopeful love songs that are so remarkably old-fashioned. After a slew of booty-callin', get down and dirty type of 'love songs', this one just stands out.

I first heard it at a wedding: it was played during one of those obligatory powerpoint presentations of the bride and groom's childhood pictures. Somehow that song stuck in many of the guests' heads. I guess everybody is looking for an old fashioned love song as well. :)

I ended 2007 and am starting 2008 thinking seriously about what it takes to fall in love, stay in love and have love last. How do you build the foundations of a relationship that can see two people through friendship, courtship and finally marriage? I never had to think about it seriously before because it just wasn't in my field of vision. I never thought I would have choices this way.

I have stayed single for 30 years - at first, not out of choice but over the years, I did come to realise I did have a choice and I was sticking to it. I made a promise to myself and to God: stay single until the right one and the right moment appears. There have been opportunities to start something romantic and completely unwise that would definitely have ended in hurt and loss. It has been incredibly tempting and it still is tempting to cross the line that has been drawn in the sand. And every time I tell a guy about that line in the sand, part of me feels how right it is, part of me wants to kick myself for basically cementing yet another year as a singleton.

Last year was a strange year. It was the year where I felt suddenly more sure and comfortable with what made me an attractive woman. It sounds odd - but it's just not something I was ever at ease about having spent much of my teens and university years wrestling with insecurity after insecurity. Then suddenly in my late 20s there was a turning point - I am not entirely sure how I got there, but I did by God's undending grace and unflinching truth.

In late 2006, when I was 29, I wrote this. Now when I look back at my friend's prophetic words to me, I understand them anew. Then, the words transacted through the cool medium of email still brought tears of hope smeared with a bit of fear and disbelief.

Now, I read these words and I am moved by how they gell with the truth I am living now.

"now, He's undoing… and He will fit it all back together again
… it wasn't a mistake, just that it's out grown it's present purpose, function, which is a great thing
… and piecing together with other parts to fit together into something new."

I have recognised the fruits that have been bourne from being unattached through all the crucial formative years of adulthood. I see the providence of lessons that I could only learn when I learnt to walk by myself with only God to hold onto. I find a strength, resilience, wisdom and discipline within me that is not of my own creation but seeded there by God's gospel.

And I am really grateful that he took me and transformed the person I was into who I am today. I am not the same woman I was when I first knew Him. And such deep change cannot happen by human will - not mine for sure, which was definitely weak and backbone-less.

Proverbs 31 sits in from of my computer, held by a little yellow binder clip. There are words in there, phrases that shed light to what kind of woman I want to be someday. I have always found the description in there of
"An Excellent Wife" profound, difficult but ultimately - moving.

I hoped but never used to actually believe with a whole heart that the womanly traits in there were traits that modern men would find beautiful. But last year, I found two who affirmed that for me. They encouraged me that those traits in Proverbs were traits men did find deeply attractive even amid all the noise. They were traits well worth fighting for, well worth preserving and aspiring to keep. They were old-fashioned traits that would never lose their lustre to those who knew what they were looking for.

When I was in my early 20s, like a fool, I thought I would be happy if I was prettier and skinnier.
It was such a fruitless and angst-filled struggle to achieve and I never did make it.

At the cusp of my 30s, I don't need to make it that way any more. It's like an old, tacky outfit I realise I never want to wear anymore.

There has been a new paradigm of womanly beauty that has been revealed to me that is far more worthy to try and achieve.

"Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue."
says Proverbs 31:25-25

From beginning to end, that will be something really worth trying a lifetime to achieve - single or married.

The future is not set in stone and things may change as the Lord gives and takes away.
I am secure in who I am by myself, with God always as my Saviour but I do look forward with joy and anticipation to the possibility of someday sharing my life with a good husband created, shaped and transformed just for me.

I want nothing less than a marriage worth waiting for.
Something real. Something good. Warms the inside like it should.
But most of all, most of all, Built to Last.

why criticism should sometimes be taken with a pinch of salt

2007-09-21T17:12:00.000+08:00

i love how brad bird inserts this interesting speech right at the end of a children's movie.
Ratatouille is not as flashy as The Incredibles or clever as Toy Story. But it certainly has a lot of adult charm.

Anton Ego: "In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more."

2007-09-01T13:32:00.000+08:00

this week, three of my staff in the cafe had birthdays on the same day so Y dressed up as a big old cow and delivered a cake to the cafe. We then took turns taking pictures with the enormous cow head. :)

it's nice to know silliness can still prevail, humour can still win the day and work can still be as enjoyable as it always has been for the past 6 years since the SOT enterprise began. New challenges - personal, spiritual, material - crop up all the time but it really is good to know God is in control and I still passionately believe, as long as you keep trying to stay on the striaght and narrow, He will help make things work on all levels.

this is perpetually in my mind these days: what does it mean to be a christian especially as a colleague to difficult colleagues, as an employer of staff that make mistakes, as a waitress to demanding customers, as a teacher to unresponsive students. as a daughter to sometimes rambunctious parents.

it's so tough applying what you know about grace and forgiveness when it comes to work - where demands on efficiency are high and less slack can be cut. I suspect if all of us in church or cell group were forced to work together in a office context, we would see a lot more of our true selves. Work sometimes can bring out the demanding beast in us. Simultaneously though, because you see each other in high stress situations and see the tough, less likable parts emerge - there are much more opportunities for grace to emerge and bless.

the difficult part of course is making the decision to actively - not passively - issue grace.

we don't need to dispense grace. Grace is a senseless choice in our world. You give grace to those who may not appreciate it or acknowledge it in any way and you are expected to be glad for it.

Grace is tough and it ain't meant to be cheap. Grace is costly and goes against your intellect and pride.

my constant prayer - when i remember to pray - is just to be able to allow grace to overflow and soothe my own self-righteous wrath away.

It is so humbling to be reminded in Proverbs to make every word of your tongue a word of HEALING and BLESSING. not cursing and undermining.

I really love the apostle Paul for voicing out the everyday struggle of Christians in Romans 7:14-25 (The Message)

"I can anticipate the response that is coming: "I know that all God's commands are spiritual, but I'm not. Isn't this also your experience?" Yes. I'm full of myself—after all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God's command is necessary.

But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different."

Every day is beautiful and joyful and hopeful - not because things are always beautiful, joyful and hopeful...because oh man, there are PROBLEMS all the time - but everyday is gorgeous because it is a wonderful thing to know that God is in charge.

Worrying and fearing just lead to evil. Trusting, hoping and doing what needs to be done again and again - no matter how many times you feel you could have done better - leads to glory.

little bits of providence

2007-08-19T01:08:00.000+08:00

to me friends who have been wondering what on earth i have been up to...

i think i have never worked this hard in my life.
but conversely, i think if this is what working super hard feels like - its not a bad feeling actually.
i feel excited thinking about how this year is going to end ( and yes...i am looking forward to year end and a slow down oof the madness). Its cool to know you can end the year having created really fantastic things that you believed in and still believe in.

have not been feeling stressed, overwhelmed or unhappy
mostly just severely tested - intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, and physically

my workdays are now classic: i get up at about 8 - 830am, reread the nearest trashy novel next to my messy bed, and then i am in the office by 10-11am. Once at work, its non-stop - no MSN, no trashy web-trawling any more and certainly there has been no blogging for a while. At work, I am either teaching, writing magazine articles, doing magazine layout, designing collateral for office or cafe OR doing waitressing shift downstairs in the cafe. After teaching at night and maybe helping out in cafe a bit more, its back upstairs again for more magazine work. By the time I reach home, its 2am usually.

And then wash, repeat, rinse. cycle has been going on for past month and probably will continue till end of year.

I secretly like waitressing I think. I have always gotten some kind of cheap thrill from being able to keep many table's demands in my head and get them out on time and still keep that smile going. I enjoy hearing the chefs go "pick up for table six" and i can call back as professionally as i can muster "picking up table six!". Its kinda therapeutic washing dishes, wiping tables, making small talk and what not after all the intellectual blah blahing i have to do at the school.

but multi-tasking does have its limits.

somedays i stumble back exhausted and wake up cranky: and that's usually when i know i have pushed my limits too far and need to step back and rest. like really really rest. not just physically but just to take quiet time to sit down and remember again who is Sovereign and who is in control.

Running a cafe is like asking for a big humbling - in my opinion. never go into it "for fun" or "because it looks cool". F&B makes running a school look like nothing.

It has been really really good though for me to remember and rest in God's promise that He is in control of everything. Worrying only leads to evil. And I tell you, that is really balm to the soul when you have to deal with uneasonable customers, cafe staffing problems, scary numbers and the freaky thing called the Internet where all sorts of people have no trouble at all telling you in your face if they don't like what you are doing.

Keeping perspective - a heavenly one centred on God's kingdom - has been the most, the most, the most sane thing I can do for myself.

So yeah, still essentially joyful - but damn, that's a lot of work we are doing this year. woah. still not sure how we are going to finish it all and finish it well...but I have learnt to just take each day as it comes and to remember He will provide.

Thank you, God.

and thank you, all my nice friends and lovely sister and mom, for continuously turning up at the cafe so that I can still imagine I have an outside life. i have been encouraged really. truly grateful for the support. and for God bringing people constantly into the cafe - dont know how it happens. just know that it does and i feel really it is a kind of miracle.

Perspective. perspective. perspective.

Kay....going home now. leaving the office - once more at 130am. ha.

hee hee

2007-07-21T01:13:00.000+08:00

SHOUT OUT from the blogosphere about food for thought. yay!

Where do we go from here?

2007-07-12T02:16:00.000+08:00

In my head, I call this picture "Where do we go from here?"

One of my favourite shots from Cinque Terre in Italy. There's something that gets to me about the picture - the emptiness of the platform, the serene stretch of ocean behind them, and the amiable yet pensive tension of a couple waiting for their train to arrive.

Why Gorday Ramsay (Minus Expletives) reminds me of God

2007-07-11T10:06:00.000+08:00

While re-reading Anthony Bourdain's "A Cook's Tour", this passage struck me:

"Finally, there’s England’s greatest chef, or England’s biggest bully, depending on which paper you’re reading at the time – the fearsome and prodigiously talented Gordon Ramsay. I’d been hearing about this guy for years. Ex-footballer. Formerly with Robuchon, Ducasse, Guy Savoy, Marco Pierre White. A legendary wordsmith in the kitchen – famed for excoriating his crew, ejecting food critics, speaking his mind bluntly and undiplomatically. Awhile back, I was told about the cinema verité Boiling Point series, in which the beleaguered Ramsay was said to behave monstrously to his staff. Intrigued, I managed to track down a copy of the videotape series. To my mind, Ramsay was sympathetic from beginning to end. I rooted for him as he sweated out the beginning of a service period for a massive banquet at Versailles, ill-equipped, with only a rent-a-staff of indolent bucket heads to help him. I cheered when he summarily dismissed a waiter for guzzling water in full view of the dining room. Pour décourager les autres, I’m guessing. I suffered as he suffered the interminable wait for his much-hoped-for third Michelin star and was heartbroken when he didn’t get it. (He since has.) Those who can’t understand why a chef operating at Ramsay’s level gets a little cranky, or who appears to be operating at a higher and more self-important pitch than their boss, simply don’t understand what it’s like to work in a professional kitchen. They certainly don’t understand what it takes to be the best in that world. It is not how well you can cook alone that makes a great chef, but your ability to cook brilliantly, day in and day out – in an environment where a thousand things can go wrong, with a crew that oftentimes would just as happily be sticking up convenience stores, in a fickle, cost-conscious, capricious world where everybody is hoping that you fail.

Is he really such a complete bastard? Let’s put it this way: On a recent visit to his restaurant in Chelsea, I recognized large numbers of staff – both front and back of the house – from Boiling Point. Years later and they’re still there. When Ramsay walked out of Aubergine, the entire staff, service staff included – an incredible forty-five people – chose to go with him. That’s really the most telling statistic. Does he still enjoy the loyalty of his crew? He does. No cook shows up every day in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen, works those kind of hours, offers themselves up daily to the rigors of a three-star service period, toiling in a small, hot space where at any moment they could get a painful and humiliating ass reaming because Gordon Ramsay is the biggest bastard or the biggest bully in England. They show up every day and work like Trojans because he’s the best."

When I read that, it made me think of how so many people perceive God as a complete bastard who should tone down. We like the soft parts about Love and Grace in the Bible but are embarrassed or unhappy about the much nastier bits about Judgment, God's intolerance for Sin and quest for Perfection in us snivelling never-do-wells.

Why do people stick with Ramsay and endure all that pain and suffering? For similar reasons why many sincere Christians sacrifice time, money and face to do things they pretty much did not need to do or would not have desired to do - like giving more money to the poor, lending an ear to friend after friend, serving in ministry after ministry etc.

We "show up every day and work like Trojans" because we know God is the best.

To paraphrase Bourdain, what's amazing is God's ability to manage the world brilliantly, day in and day out – in an environment where a thousand things can go wrong, with a bunch of human beings that oftentimes would just as happily be doing every bad or convenient thing under the sun, in a fickle, cost-conscious, capricious world where everybody is hoping that God will fail.

If I had to do God's job, I would find it mighty hard to be Mr Popular when I know I need to lay down some serious smack-down.

Invisible City 备忘录 by Tan Pin Pin, opens 22nd July 2007

2007-07-07T16:26:00.001+08:00

Loved Singapore GaGa.....who wants to watch Invisible City with me?

St Francis of Assisi is Da Man

2007-06-22T15:00:00.000+08:00

...because he came up with two of my favourite quotes

"Preach the Gospel at all times and if necessary, use words"

and

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

For a dude from many centuries ago, his quotes are still as refreshing and necessary in our silly modern age.

Food for Thought

2007-06-22T13:12:00.001+08:00

Some days, I still cannot believe we are actually doing this. But God willing, by mid July, there is gonna be a new cafe in town and it's gonna kick some copious amounts of butt.

P.S. for those of you who don't already know....School of Thought is setting up a cafe.
We are now officially in Phase 2.0 dubbed Make Trouble for Yourself, Rock da Cosy Boat and Set Up Another Enterprise. :)

Fear, Passion and Purity

2007-06-04T10:37:00.000+08:00

Last Saturday as my hairdresser set out to save my unkempt hairstyle from fashion doom, I read "Every Woman's Battle (Discovering God's Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment" by Shannon Ethridge in one intense sitting.

The book put me in a pretty sober even melancholy mood throughout the whole weekend. The book was not radical or thought provoking in terms of issues raised - it was the usual rehash of the need to stay pure and chaste. The difference was her frankness about how women had to continually fight to keep their purity throughout dating, courtship and in their marriage.

Ethridge was quite upfront - if we women thought it was appalling that men could not keep their eyes from straying even after they got married, we had to take a really close look at how often women let their hearts and minds stray. Many women are guilty of conducting virtual emotional and mental affairs - only some were unlucky enough to get caught when they acted upon the affairs in reality. Ethridge's warning was that if we never learnt to discipline our hearts in our singlehood, we might carry this habit even after marriage: thus allowing the roots of adulterous affairs to take place.

The book scared me. I sometimes laugh at how fast men's heads swivel around on the street at the sight of a pretty girl - but I find it far more serious when I see how fast my own heart can swivel around in the presence of an attractive man. I found myself wondering throughout the day: So why do we women do this? Why can't I get a grip on my heart and mind as much as I would like to? Why do a few choice words or sweet gestures make my resolve melt?

I know I should stay open to being touched by a man's sweet words and lovely gestures - as a single woman, if you put up too unrelenting, too judgmental a wall, you run the painful risk of never letting yourself be open to love and being loved by the right man.

But yet, I don't want to be so open to being touched by words and gestures that suddenly you cannot discern who the right man is any more. Your fickle heart just starts to fall for any man who pushes the right emotional and mental buttons. I don't want to be that undiscerning single woman. And for the future, I don't want to be that adulterous wife either.

I don't think I was ready to date in my early 20s - I was too fearful and insecure in my own identity. I used to say flippantly that I have no problems staying single for the rest of my life if need be because I was scared to hope, scared of disappointment and scared of being let down by God.

Approaching 30 this year, I can finally say quite confidently I know who I am, I know what I want in life, I know the kind of man I can last a lifetime with and I am no longer afraid to hope.

Still, I need to keep watch over my old fears - because it pays not to be overconfident and complacent. Old fears have deep roots and are remarkably resilient and ever-ready to grow again.

What am I scared of? What fears and lies tempt me away from being wise and beckon me towards the path of destruction?

In all honesty:
I have always been scared of not being physically attractive enough.
I have always been scared that good character does not make enough difference to men, even Christian men.
I get scared that God is not as faithful as I believe. That He could not be bothered with my petty desires
I get scared that That This is As Good As It Gets and You Should Just Take what the world has to offer for God does not have better plans for me.
I get scared that patience, faith and hopin God's plans are silly notions - better to be impatient, take things into your own hands and hope you yourself can force things to work.

The fears are very very real in their ability to knock me off course despite my knowing that the fears are very very false.

And so, only Truth sets me free.

So this is what I know is True:
God loves me - in Him, I have significance and security and no fear that I am without worth.
His love transforms me because I see the way He wants me to be and His love helps me believe I can be that way.
God loves the men and women of this world - they all have worth and significance in Him.
His love will transform them the same way that they transform me.

God Makes a Difference. People who have finally accepted that God loves them can be transformed. When you know you are loved, you suddenly feel you can do anything. You feel renewed and reborn - that somebody has looked past all your weaknesses and dirtiness and seen the gold within. You can be Good again because you finally found someone who believes you will be Good.

And God is faithful - His plans to remake us in His image, remake our relationships into purer kinder relationships will come to pass. And patience, faith and hope will see their reward not just in the unseen future but also in the present.

There is so much that is mysterious to me right now. So much unknown that should scare me.
I don't know who God has in store for me at the end of the day
But the patience for God's timing to unfold, and faith in the Goodness of His plans puts peace in my heart that helps me wait.

And this day at least, and prayerfully every other day to come,
I can believe that I will find the strength to stay patient and stay pure while I wait.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Help me God, not to be a Fool.

Thank you Mother Teresa

2007-06-03T18:09:00.000+08:00

"Do not think that love,
in order to be genuine,
has to be extraordinary.

What we need is to love
without getting tired. "

I love this quote from Mother Teresa. And I love it that she tried to live up to her own words.

How to Be Good

2007-06-01T17:11:00.000+08:00

Just read Nick Hornby's How to Be Good and was doing some thinking about stuff I want to improve on in my behaviour. It's not depressing stuff - completely understand how God's grace will see me through and help me be a better person. But I find it is always good once in a while to muse about one's shortcomings and force yourself to buck up.

Since I was a kid, I have always wanted to be the Good kid, the one that sits on the side of the angels - who is naturally polite to her parents, does all her homework, always has an intelligent answer, always has perfect manners, smiles alot, is never burdensome and always winsome.

Now as an adult, it is hard to look at the gulf between what you want to do and what you actually do. I feel even more like a louse when I have walking, talking specimens of humanity who live up to the ideals that I aspire to. Witnessing their lovely sides makes me wish I could be as Good as that.

Here is my current Wish List of Good Behaviour right now:

I want to be as consistently friendly to strangers as D - hospitality is such a gift and I realise while I have a little bit of that talent, it is no where near what I think hospitality ought to be. I want to be the type of person who leaves behind a trail of cheeriness everyday and sometimes back in taciturn Singapore, it's easy to slip back into the culture and put on the deadpan pedestrian face.

I want to be as inspiring as Y - who keeps tabs on all his students and knows all their names, silly fears and mundane thoughts. I want to live up to the ideal of what I think a teacher ought to be and some days, I let work and just selfish desire to retreat into personal space stop me from reaching out as much as I should.

I want to be as neat as L. My table is such a mess and my room has devolved back to its primal soup stage.

Current mood: musing, optimistic, hopeful, trying to keep the faith and impatient for things to happen
Current music in room: my students yakking about iPods while I cling onto the last few minutes before class starts

6 books i want to read and cannot find :(

2007-05-29T23:38:00.000+08:00

1: Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens
by Neil Cole

2: Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect
by Joseph R. Myers

3: The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out
by Mark Driscoll

4: The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical
by Shane Claiborne

5: Faith Works: How to Live Your Beliefs and Ignite Positive Social Change
by Jim Wallis

6: The Relevant Nation: 50 Activist, Artists And Innovators Who Are Changing Their World Through Faith
by Heather Zydek

A Man and a Woman

2007-05-24T12:37:00.000+08:00

True love never can be rent
But only true love can keep beauty innocent

I could never take a chance
Of losing love to find romance
In the mysterious distance
Between a man and a woman
No I could never take a chance
‘Cos I could never understand
The mysterious distance
Between a man and a woman

You can run from love
And if it’s really love it will find you
Catch you by the heel
But you can’t be numb for love
The only pain is to feel nothing at all
How can I hurt when I’m holding you?

The soul needs beauty for a soul mate
When the soul wants… the soul waits …

For love and faith and sex and fear
And all the things that keep us here
In the mysterious distance
Between a man and a woman

A Man and a Woman, U2

Alas, Oprah, I Loved Ye So Well

2007-05-24T11:36:00.000+08:00

Oh Oprah, Oprah, Oprah.

I once loved your crazy shows where you paid off bills for some lucky never-do-well, roused your audience to raise money for your Angel Network and gave beauty makeovers so dramatic that you made ugly ducklings weep. I used to be unashamed to say I watched the Oprah Winfrey show because - well - there was some good being done through her show. Plus, Oprah herself could be really charismatic and inspiring when she talked about the need to help others.

But now, I find the direction of your show difficult to comprehend and almost repulsive. First, the public skewering of James Frey. Then, the increasing propensity to talk over your guests. And now, the inexplicable throwing of your moral weight behind the most unbelivably pretentious self-help book I have seen in a long time - "The Secret"

"The Secret" is far more noxious than anything John Gray or Anthony Robbins has put out because at least those guys never crossed over to the realm of claiming their bag of postive thinking tricks were used by Einstein, Jesus, Moses and Leonardo da Vinci. They never claimed their theories were scientific or a spiritual truth. (Can I pause to scream into cyberspace right now: ARGH, HOW I LOATHE "THE SECRET"! And I loathe how people will fall for its clever tricks because of slick packaging and clever copywriting! How can people buy into this snake-oil rubbish!)

I think this Salon article pretty much sums up my disillusion with Oprah and her works. I loved that woman and I still love her crazy, "I want to help the world" attitude. But girl, you are so not helping the world right now with this "Secret" rubbish. Please, stop. the. insanity. ( rant over)

Excerpt from Oprah's Ugly Secret by Salon.Com's Peter Birkenhead

"The promises of Oprah culture can seem irresistible, and its hallmarks are becoming ubiquitous. Believers may be separated into tribes according to what they believe, but they do it in pretty much the same way, relying on a "Secret"-style conception of "intuition" --- which seems to amount to the sneaking suspicion that they're always right -- to arrive at their tenets. Instead of the world as it is, constantly changing and full of contradiction, they see a fixed and fantastical place, where good things come to those who believe, whether it's belief in a diet, a God, or a Habit of Successful People. These believers may believe in the healing power of homeopathy, or Scripture or organizational skills -- in intelligent design, astrology or privatization. They all trust that their devotion will be rewarded with money and boyfriends and job promotions, with hockey championships and apartments. And most of all they believe -- they really, really believe -- in themselves.

For these believers, self-knowledge is much less important than self-"love." But the question they never seem to ask themselves is: If you wouldn't tell another person you loved her before you got to know her, why would you do that to yourself? Skipping the getting-to-know-you part has given us what we deserve: the Oprah culture. It's a culture where superstition is "spirituality," illiteracy is "authenticity," and schoolmarm moralism is "character." It's a culture where people apologize by saying, "I'm sorry you took offense at what I said," and forgive by saying, "I'm not angry at you anymore, I'm grateful to you for teaching me not to trust shitheads like you." And that's the part that should bother us most: the diminishing, even implicit mocking, of genuine goodness, and of authentic spiritual concerns and practices. Engagement, curiosity and active awe are in short supply these days, and it's sickening to see them devalued and misrepresented."

Yet another reason to love Italy

2007-05-22T13:40:00.000+08:00

Where else in the world can you find a bunch of hot-blooded male cooks who have such an innate sense for the theatrical that they can stage an impromptu chorus (with all of them singing in parts!) without missing out a beat as they dish out freshly grilled meats to the public?

No, this is not a stage performance - thought it just might be a scene straight from Les Miserables' "Do You Hear the People Sing?", if the characters were not French revolutionaries but Italian cooks.

The cooks just happened to set up their table with a very dark alley as a backdrop. Coupled with the smoke from the multiple grills rising up as dramatic mists and blazing white-lights turned on them, and you had an instant street musical worthy of Broadway. And one had the comedic timing to cheekly interject in between harmonising, "No Photo. No Photo. No flash." although all their grins told you they were eating up all the attention.

Good song with good food. Bravissimi!

The Meet Cute

2007-05-22T13:14:00.000+08:00

"The Meet Cute"

I learnt this new phrase while watching that amazingly awful romantic comedy The Holiday en route to London three weeks ago. The Holiday reaches new depths of mediocrity with the scenes between Cameron Diaz and Jude Law (gorgeous people but ARGH, noxious plot!) but at least had a few charming bits during the Kate Winslet scenes. (But of course I also think Kate Winslet can do no wrong. hee.)

Anyhow, Kate Winslet plays poor melancholy Iris, a magazine writer nursing her pummelled heart. Her ex-boyfriend is that kind of cad that still wants to remain friends but keeps things so fuzzy that you are always wondering hopefully if he still likes you and wants to get back together. So Iris flies all the way to California to escape her crummy life.

Anyhow in the Hollywood neighbourhood, Iris befriends Old Screenwriter because he has lost his way home and she decides to kindly offer him a ride. That's when he tells her about "The Meet Cute"

According to good old Wikipedia:
"In the film The Holiday (2006), Eli Wallach's character Arthur Abbott (a Hollywood screenwriter) described a meet-cute by saying "Say a man and a woman both need something to sleep in and both go to the same men's pajama department. The man says to the salesman, I just need bottoms, and the woman says, I just need a top. They look at each other and that's the meet-cute." "

In other words, it's one of the conventions of romantic comedy films where you have the contrived encounter of two potential romantic partners in unusual or comic circumstances. During a "meet-cute", scriptwriters often create a humorous sense of awkwardness between the two potential partners by depicting an initial clash of personalities or beliefs, an embarrassing situation, or by introducing a comical misunderstanding or mistaken identity situation.

So if screen mimicks reality to some extent, I wonder how many of the couples I know began with a Meet Cute in real life?

the end of the affair

2007-04-17T11:46:00.000+08:00

i did not mean to do it but i spent my entire morning sitting at a coffee shop trying to finish Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. It just got so engrossing I decidded to push aside thoughts of work.

I am floored by Greene's insight and his ability to put simple words to the tangled, complex struggle between wanting to do the right thing for God and wanting to run back to the security of the wrong things.

what an amazing work - deceiving in its brevity.

Think I shall pick up The Power and the Glory next. Wow.

The Art of Life

2007-04-16T22:47:00.000+08:00

Was musing with RBF over dinner about life choices and how they shape the person you become. It's amazing to consider how a million tiny choices that we make moment by moment seem to edge us towards a better or worse path. Only when you look back at all the decisions you have made thus far do you suddenly see clearly how you slowly but surely created the person that you are this moment. How strange and humbling to know your "Yes" and "No" to whatever comes your way leave indentations in our clay-like selves: what kind of life, what kind of self have we sculpted ourselves into?

I always liked the analogy that our lives were like a giant carpet being woven. On one side, you can only see a crazy criss crossing patchwork of threads that seem to make no sense even though you thought you swore you wove correctly. But when you turn it around, you suddenly see the pattern in full glory and all the stuff suddenly makes sense.

Sometimes I think if God left me completely alone to paint the picture of my life with my limited imagination and limited understanding of my character, I would have made one screwy mess of it.

I can totally see how "but for the grace of God, go I".

Without God making me wise up to my inner idiot, I would have turned into one of those girls I hate. I would have become one of those awful, fashionably left-wing, liberal jerks with a smart mouth full of empty diatribes about the unenlightened of society. I would have painted my opponents with broad stereotyping strokes. I would have loudly and intelligently backed all the "right" social causes without the humble wisdom to put in the tough work required in the face of unlovable human beings. I would be a terrible, affected windbag with words of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I would have been a pretentious awful, awful person.

Without God's merciful revelation of my insecurities and healing power of Love, I would have probably gotten myself into countless flings with the worst sorts of men. I would have given up everything for a cheap semblance of affection. I would not have understood what real love looked or felt like. Though I don't really know much of her life, (and I don't want to insult or oversimplify what she has gone through) somedays I think I would not have been that far off from taking the path Annabel Chong took. I read about her and I don't feel disgust for all that she has done. I just think how realistically speaking, it would have been entirely possible for me to have decided to do the things she did. I think of her and wonder what I would say if I had the chance to have coffee wih her.

For me, without God, my life would have been mud. A long wallow in the dark, shifting quicksand.

With God, though...

...My life is on solid rock and one sure footstep after another, I know I can navigate even the most precarious lands though I see no map in sight.

...and my days are sun-kissed where even the most melancholy and tear-filled days are edged with the gold of hope.

To my fellow traveller CL, its good to know yet another who understands the taste of a life sweetened by God's timely and kindly revelations.

How good it is to be Beloved.

And better to know that the good life is already a gift within everyone's grasp.

Oh, that more should reach out and taste it for what it is.

When You're Happy and You Know It

2007-04-11T22:47:00.000+08:00

"It won't do
to stir a deep desire,
to fan a hidden fire
that can never burn true.

I know your name,
I know your skin,
I know the way
these things begin;

But I don't know
how I would live with myself,
what I'd forgive of myself
if you don't go."

It's nearly midnight and I am clearing emails that have racked up while I was away in China. Am killing time before I can treat myself to a midnight cab ride home. Meanwhile, Suzanne Vega's Caramel is doing a honeyed, languid drift from my iTunes.

I liked Caramel the first time I heard it because Suzanne Vega's smoky voice makes it sound amazing. It's a bittersweet ode, a melancholy tribute to the cunning tangle that poor romantic choices weave around the human heart.

It would make an apt companion to Ha Jin's novel Waiting. Intrigued by how fast R and RBF had thumbed through the book in Xinjiang, I nabbed the well-thumbed copy and finished it during the hours spent in Beijing traffic.

Waiting is about frustrated romance - it's about the 18 years of waiting endured by officer Lin Kong's vibrant girlfriend Manna before he gets the divorce he has been craving for from his homely wife Shuyu. It's not a pretty tale and though nobody dies physically, they die emotionally. The realisation Lin Kong reaches about himself and his women is truly tragic. With restraint and reserve, Ha Jin paints a stark picture of how so many lives and budding romances come to be lived in quiet desperation.

In my 20s, I had throughly convinced myself I was in Love. I was too green to understand it was not Love but simply Desire. Desire can grip your heart so tightly that "having a crush" is no misnomer. Desire can crush your noblest thoughts and senses into nothingness if you let it. Desire can make such an incredible fool of you - you rejoice with crumbs; you weep in paranoia and fear; you loll around the dark mud of your insecurities; you shut your ears to truth and wrap yourself in a cocoon of martyrdom and lies.

With 30 round the corner, I think I have learned for myself how to tell Love from Desire. Love is about choice and commitment: an adult decision to give and receive both bittersweet truth and the merciful rain of kindness. Desire is simply not interested in all that. Love is Grace - a bit of heaven on earth that any of us can dispense if we humble ourselves enough.

I think I can say I have found firm ground. Somehow in the middle of a Good Friday solitary prayer in Kashgar - the kind of prayer which my 20something self would have happily let spiral into maudlin self-indulgence - I realised I have come to some strange restful place. I was pleasantly surprised to look for the usual tears and self-flagellation - and yet discover they simply were not there anymore.

It's a place between knowing - finally - exactly what I want in a man and yet trusting that it will be far better for God to keep me single than to settle for anything less. And being able to look beyond that to Love the world beyond.

It's the kind of thing you keep telling yourself in your 20s but are secretly unsure if you are not just deceiving yourself.

It's a completely different and liberating feeling to finally realise it's the truth. And that i understand and find pleasure and peace in it.

In Kashgar, I saw rows and rows of amazingly green grass crowned by apricot trees. It was still early Spring and the sharp bite of Winter was still in the air. Some of the branches were still dry and dead but oh - the promise! - the promise of Spring and Summer was pushing out in the sweetest hues of cream and pink. Those apricot trees set on grass so amazingly, vividly green have become the most beautiful thing in my mind's eye. It is a picture of Spring, and Hope and Promises Fulfilled.

The apostle Paul declared passionately "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Indeed, my dear dear God, my sweet Saviour Christ, the old has gone. And I believe, with a fresh heart, that the new has and will come for me.

I think I am happy.

And when you are happy and you know it, and you really want to show it -

- You clap your hands.

It's a rich man's world

2007-03-28T11:39:00.000+08:00

So our local ministers are getting yet another pay hike and as predicted, the masses are rumbling about the unfairness of the whole thing. How can you read about some guy in a suit getting $2.2 million a year without feeling all crappy that you will never see that amount in a lifetime? Hey, an entire village in Somalia would probably not see that in 10 lifetimes. To feel jealous, angry, contemptuous and yet completely covetous about our millionaire ministers is a completely human thing.

I personally think they should be paid high but a possible million dollar hike is just over the top. I personally like Low Thia Kiang's sneaky suggestion that they peg minister's salaries to the poorest 20% of Singapore so there is major incentive to push the agenda of the disenfranchised, but I think it will probably not work. Perhaps pegging it to the average income earners instead?

What I WOULD like to see from the government is better PR skills. I think it is useless for them to keep trotting out the same logical, rational, intellectual arguments about why ministers should be paid well. Financial renumeration is a topic that strikes people to the heart. Like it or not, many of us peg our pay to our self worth. I think this is a habit we would do well to exorcise from our systems. Meanwhile, it is not helpful to hear the rich and mighty pontificate in cool,intellectual arguments about why they deserve the pay - because the implication is "...and you deserve yours. (Perhaps you are not trying hard enough - it's a meritocracy after all?)"

Less logic, more heart. Less talk, more action. If I had my way, scaling up the minister's pay dramatically ought to go hand in hand with policies that scale up help to the nation's poorest with equal drama.

I think some of our ministers are Christians. I would LOVE to hear such a minister talk to the people with genuine honesty about what he feels about out-earning his people by such a high percentage, without retreating behind intellectual reasons. I want to hear him just talk about his thoughts on the social responsibility that comes along with earning that amount of money and what he does with the treasures he has been allotted. It's not about justifying himself to the people. It's about showing people that there seems to be some point or some good about that much money being given away from the taxpayer's pockets. Also, I am just plain curious about the thoughts and struggles of a Christian millionaire.

I had a pretty sober conversation with SB one night about our chosen profession and hence, chosen income level. He was talking about how saddening it was to listen to students who appreciated his contribution as a teacher to their lives, see nothing wrong in talking openly about liking the idea of teaching but never wanting to do it because "the money wasn't worth it." There seemed to be complete and utter unawareness of their indictment of their teacher's choice in life to choose sacrifice over financial reward.

It was like "thanks for teaching me and making those sacrifices. I won't be doing the same though. That was your choice, not mine. Someone has to do the crappy, underpaying, noble jobs. But it's not me. Thanks anyway. :)"

Being a good teacher - or a good pastor or social worker for that matter - does not automatically result in more pay. I assume this is unlike what happens in banking, sales and the civil service. Good teachers often commit to too many unpaid overtime hours of decent marking, planning, pastoring, prepping of own material. They understand that an overstretched school budget just cannot renumerate them - so they sacrifice their own money and time for the sake of making sure children turn out into half decent human beings. I am nothing like the best of these teachers - but I try to aspire to greatness that way.

We are raising a generation of youths - Singapore HAS been raising generations of youths - that do not see wealth as a responsibility. They see it as a goal, a prize and an affirmation of one's ability. Wealth is yours because you deserve it for all the work and all your choices. Go ahead and spend it on yourself. Oh, and throw in a piddlly amount into the charity tin that will hardly add up to the amount you spend on facials or lattes in a year. Wealth is not a daily gift from God, a grace extended to you for a higher purpose. Wealth is not something you consider soberly as something that ought to be distributed and shared.

I think I earn a decent amount of money. I like to keep in mind that compared to 80% of the world - I am considered a "Have", rather than a "Have Not", born into a developed nation of realtive luxury and choice. I think I am fairly renumerated - enough to save for vacations, buy nice Christmas presents for people, give money to my mom, tithe and keep myself fairly insured. However, I still calculate what it would cost me to buy a Starbucks latte, I still check out the cheapest thing on a fancy menu and I still check out Giordano and This Fashion.

I am always thankful for the opportunity to build something meaningful. I like knowing I do not have to slave away at something I do not believe in. I know even if I was paid tons of money but had to work in something I feel nothing for, I would be vastly unhappy. Rich but quite stressed and cynical. Often, I quite appreciate my lifestyle of being fairly paid, unstressed and have-the-time-and-energy-to-not-be-cynical.

But there is always that undercurrent of covetousness that lurks underneath the confidence. It jars me when I hear people talk about how many months bonus they get or how much CPF they have accumulated over the years. Fear and covetousness - the sly little tag-team - taunt," You fool, you poor poor fool, for thinking you have enough. You think you have a decent amount of savings and earn alot? HA! Please look at your peers. Give a few more years and you will be eating the dust in your face as they race away into a life of condos, cars and endless vacations."

When I dwell on those thoughts, I feel like scum. I feel like an idiot and someone who has been made a fool. Someone who has not "grown up" and started earning "grown up money". I fall into the self same trap all the time of thinking about wealth as something I am entitled to, that "I DESERVE MORE for being this smart/educated/ qualified/hardworking". I stop thinking about wealth as something that is given to me by God - whatever amount that I have been given, I should be thankful and thoughtful about the way I use it.

I don't think you can ask the world to be Communist - there will always be people who will out-earn you, just as there will always be people who you will out-earn. If Christ was telling the truth that this world is just a big bunch of brokenness, then unfairness and imbalance is going to be there. This world sucks - it's true. But it was not meant to be that way - and Christians ought to live in anticipation of the un-sucky, fairer world that IS TO COME.

Which means for me - I have to ignore what the world's ideas about wealth are and consider soberly Christ's ideas about wealth. I should not be concerned too much about the fairness of how much I earn or be bitter about my EXTREMELY RELATIVE "poverty" (big bunches of sarcasm)

It is a gift for me to earn whatever I am earning. There is responsibility and opportunity entailed in every dollar that I earn.
I need to remember that and focus on that. And keep praying for Christians and non-Christians alike to remember the same.

What small luxury can I deny myself today that would provide so much more relative happiness for someone else?

It's a really tough question that I cannot always answer well. It's the kind of question that makes me squirm because I know the answer humbles me. I cannot keep bitching about highly paid ministers who do not care about the poor if I find it hard to talk about how I spend money myself.

I am not a smarty pants economist and just an armchair critic. I do not have numbers to back up whether high pay or average pay is good enough for ministers. I just know the problems in this world do not get solved just by thinking about how other people should live - it really and truly begins with a lifetime commitment to thinking about how I live.

If that step never gets done, all talk is just dust.

Let the ministers earn their millions: which of them uses the millions for good purposes and which of them truly deserves the millions will be revealed on the same Day that my own intentions and actions are revealed.

wanna be a cult leader?

2007-03-16T17:07:00.001+08:00

quite a fabulous summary of how to tell if you are being brainwashed into having a religious experience :) the scary thing is the tactics probably work too well.

Life - a mystery to be lived

2007-03-14T22:03:00.000+08:00

"I met a woman afflicted with multiple sclerosis, shockingly young, who limped up to tell me she was learning all she could about prayer because the disease was progressing so fast that soon she would be able to do little else.

I heard of suicides, birth defects, children hit by trucks, and teenagers raped. One woman, now an ordained minister, spoke of a dark period after her son died when for 18 months she could not bring herself to pray. She cried out one day, "God, I don't want to die like this, with all communication cut off!" Even so, it took her 6 more months before she could pray again.

In one meeting, a 20-year-old came to the microphone and chided me for not taking literally the Bible's promise about faith that can move mountains. I agreed I needed a larger dose of such childlike faith, yet at the same time, I could not dishonor the pain of suffering people by telling them their faith is somehow defective.

From such souls, I learn that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. Prayer offers no ironclad guarantees, just the certain promise that we need not live that mystery alone."

Everytime, I leave Philip Yancey, I return to find another lovely turn of phrase. I like that last paragraph.

PoP! Goes My Heart

2007-03-14T21:45:00.001+08:00

oh 80s cheese, how i adore thee. its slightly scary how they managed to de-age hugh grant. its slightly scarier that the song is insiduously in my head. retro is evil

Ever wondered if guys think exposed bra straps are THAT big a deal?

2007-03-07T13:04:00.000+08:00

I must say this is quite a well done website with a pretty interesting survey on what men consider immodest - the questions go into a lot of detail about what men (from various age groups) find difficult to keep their eyes off. The two guys who conducted this survey have really done some impressive homework - questions range from exposure of the small of a back, to pulling off a sweater, to slinging a bag across the chest, wearing glitter lotion etc.

The results are pretty revealing (bad pun) and the comments are candid, funny and some even moving. I learnt a couple of things myself that I would NEVER have thought would feature as a potential stumbling block.

The really nice part about this survey I guess was to know how many men out there cared enough to answer this survey and put their comments out there to guard and encourge women.

It is genuinely moving and sweet to read the encouraging comments left by so many of the men - from 16 to 45 - to let women know they care about inner beauty and genuine modesty and are open and apologetic about the ways in which they discourage women from believing any less about them.

Rabbit Steeple Chase

2007-03-06T11:00:00.001+08:00

I had no idea there were rabbit jumping competitions. But my favourite part of this video is the in the 56 sec when this grown man is all serious, puts down his rabbit and shouts a loud "YES!" when his little cutie clears a major leap. priceless. :D

God like Jazz

2007-03-02T12:49:00.000+08:00

Just wanted to remember one of my favourite opening lines of a book.

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Baghdad Theatre one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.
It is as if they are showing you the way.

I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened."

Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

I am pretty fond of it because that's how I got lured into this whole God business as well - truthfully, it wasn't the intellectual arguments nor the precious words of some preacher.

I saw people in love with Him. And I fell for Him too.

The Politics of Food, Weight and Women

2007-02-26T23:23:00.000+08:00

Post CNY binging guilt, I found myself at the gym tonight and the whole place was PACKED to the brim - with lots more women than men. It got me thinking about how many of them were there because they were thinking of that last 10 pieces of bak kwa or pineapple tart that they were wishing desperately would leave their systems.

I swear the big difference between men and women is that men never feel the need to apologise or justify for what they eat. But women seem hardwired to feel some kind of compulsion to explain themselves when it comes to issues of food, weight and their appetite. Women with large appetites get the once-over from other women, "Wow. You can really eat a lot eh." (which can come with a loaded hint that a proper woman should not eat like a piggish man) Women with small appetites also get the once-over,"Eh, why you eat so little. You on a diet?" (of which, then comes an embarrassed revelation "Yes I am on a diet" akin to a confession of moral weakness)

Take the simple statement: "I don't want to eat carbs."
This is sometimes followed up with either a sheepish "I know I sound stupid and neurotic" look or a smug "yeah, cos carbs are BAD for you" or even a challenging "wanna make something out of it?" or perhaps a long explanation of why such an earth-shattering decision was made.

What's even more interesting is how women respond to such statements by other women.

Take the typical "I put on so much weight/I am fat" which will be instantly followed by either an encouraging chorus of "No, no, you are not fat." or a mini contest of ego-battery "No, please, look at MY THIGHS. I am fatter than you. No way you are fat cos what does that make me?" - It's like this strange tactic of affirmation by self-demolition.

Seriously, I wonder why men's heads don't explode from trying to navigate the female brain's complex wiring around the most seemingly mundane (to the men) issues.

The reason why questions like "Honey, do I look fat in this?" or statements like "I put on so much weight" sound so loaded is because it is loaded with a whole minefield of neuroses. The mundane statements touch on far more profound questions beneath the surface: about self-respect, fear of being mocked etc. It doesn't even seem to matter if you are skinny or fat, or put on a whole bunch of weight or lost a bunch of weight - every girl has had to deal with the politics of how to give or take in conversations revolving around food, weight and looks.

Of course, I am just as neurotic about all this as the next woman - thankfully a little less neurotic than I was in my nutjob teen years.

SB offered me a cream puff today, "Do you want a cream puff?"

Thinking of my post CNY guilt, I answered sheepishly,"Ya. But I don't think I can."

SB laughed," Don't be silly lah. Have a cream puff."

When I gave him another helpless shrug and said, "Cannot." He rolled his eyes, "Women. You are all crazy."

Yep, that we are. :)

Ah for the freedom of being a man, eating like a pig and then patting his belly proudly with his buddies. Seriously, there seems to be alot more jollies in a pack of men sharing the woeful beginnings of a pot belly. It's like a mutual "Buddy-boys, it's all down hill from here. Let's go get a prata."

It seems like in a guy's world, things are just more black and white and objective.
Pot belly = Pot belly

whereas in the girl's world, all things have strings attached.
Pot Belly = I have no self-control/I am not attractive/I am useless/I am not sexy/I am a loser/I am not as good as my friends.

Funny thing is - I suspect that when we are talking about issues of career, work and money-making, the roles might be reversed. as in girls will not take earning less than peers, or getting sacked as harshly as their male equivalents.

Hmmm....food for thought. :)

We Have a Wiener!

2007-02-16T12:21:00.001+08:00

We Have a Wiener!
Originally uploaded by thejacksons.

this is so hilarious.....what is it about plastic googly eyes that appeal to us? i mean stick a pair on practically anything and it will reduce even a grown man to giggles - okay , at least a smirk of repressed giggles.

Comedian and cook, Amy Sedaris organised this craft contest - i think that is SO brilliant. we should all have a googly plastic eye craft party. so cute.

Visit the rest of the competitors entries at
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sedariscraftchallenge/pool/

i will keeeeeees you

2007-02-14T12:44:00.000+08:00

happy valentine's day. :)
(courtesy of cuteoverload.com - my secret comfort food)

what did you do when you were young?

2007-02-12T12:13:00.000+08:00

2 weekends ago, some of us were making the last minutes of sunday stretch by swapping childhood memories. It was amazing how light-hearted and happy we got just by recalling past silliness. Nostalgia has a magic of its own. Somehow reminiscing about the past is such a human way of forming connections: it's always interesting to get the know what someone was like before you had ever met them.

We discovered surprising little links between the hijinks we got up in school to what we were ended up doing as careers. The irrepressible Redbeanfish was devising codes for her little Famous Five gang to communicate in; enterprising CL was once hauled up by her primary school teacher for being an illegal sticker seller: she had rubbed her mother's perfume on ordinary stickers to latch onto the then-popular "scratch-and-sniff" sticker craze' ; I was always creating stuff to share with my classmates: I cut bad albums with badly written lyrics superimposed on popular songs. I created magazines full of hand-drawn pictures of my childhood mates as celebrities exiting out of limos, hand in hand with hot guys. I had a flourishing little business where I made paper dolls for friends and regularly updated the dolls' wardrobes with new fashion lines of paper clothes.

We also discovered surprising propensity for mischief that lay behind mild mannered faces: A used to make flying leaps off her family balcony in defiance of her screaming mother; SpyMaster used to hide snails in unsuspecting provision shop owners' deep freezers, in between launching water bombs on innocent passerbys.

There were also anecdotes of how childhood shaped your ethical outlook: I will always remember how I cheated on my chinese exam in Primary Six. My chinese teacher had seen through my pathetic attempts to cover up and chose not to reprimand me during the exam. Instead, after all papers were handed up and all people had left, she took me aside to tell me she saw everything I did and told me never to cheat again. It was pure grace. I never expected it from a chinese teacher I had always associated with fiercely knitted brow, tightly pursed lips and a red pen of fury. I never cheated on a test ever again.

You gladly leave some things behind in childhood: your secret and ill-thought crush on Jordan Knight from NKOTB, your deep desire to go for a Richard Marx concert, your notion that Richard Clayderman was the classiest music on earth, your ill-fitting pinafores.

But some things you should just never let go: your irrepressible search for cheap fun, your belief that a good day is always just around the corner, the simple presumption that you were creative and the notion that all you needed was to make the most of today. Tomorrow would worry for itself.

As to all my friends: I raise a glass of ribena (or if you prefer, lukewarm banana-flavoured UHT milk in square little cartons sitting in the sun) to all our todays and tomorrows. Grow like a Champion, Grow.

How glad I am for such lovely company along the way. :)

A form adequate to its content

2007-02-05T18:29:00.000+08:00

I was following a trail of google crumbs when I found Jeffrey Overstreet's blog and his thoughts on Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book:

"Honest stories respect our freedom; they don't manipulate us, don't force us, don't distract us from life.
Not all stories, of course, are honest. There are sentimentalizing stories that seduce us into escaping from life; there are propagandistic stories that attempt to enlist us in a cause or bully us into a stereotyped response; there are trivializing stories that represent life as merely cute or diverting..."

The Peterson quote continues "...The Christian life requires a form adequate to its content, a form that is at home in the Christian revelation and that respects each person's dignity and freedom with plenty of room for all our quirks and particularities."

Overstreet muses quite aptly about the Peterson quote, "There's a whole discussion waiting to happen, just from that quote. "A form adequate to its content." He's talking about the Christian life, but let me tell you... if more Christian artists came to understand that the form of their work is as important as the content, we would have a new rennaissance of artmaking.

I don't know how many times I've received emails in which someone has protested my critique of a mediocre "Christian movie" or "Christian music" saying, "But Jeff, your focus is in the wrong place. It doesn't matter how good the art is so long as the message is good."

Wrong. If we package the message in mediocrity, we show it disrespect, and worse, we make it unappealing to those we would desire as an audience.

The form and structure of the Bible is awe-inspiring. The forms and structure of God's creation... from the ocean to the human body to a hummingbird... are awe-inspiring, excellent, beautiful, and meaningful. In the same way, great art lasts and speaks to us because of its excellence. And there is no art more lasting and powerful than great art inspired by, and reflecting back, God's Word. In fact, the meaning of great art and the excellence of great art are inseparable. They are very much the same thing."

On that note, Tim Jackson from relevant magazine weighs in with another quotable quote. He is comparing a Christian production called Facing the Giants and Stranger Than Fiction, "Facing the Giants doesn’t tell a story so much as it builds a case. Giants is an infomercial for a brand of Christianity. From the moment it starts to its never-in-doubt conclusion, it does what all advertising does: sells. The pitch is clear: Buy Jesus now and as a bonus He’ll fix everything broken in your life.
Art often begins with a question that propels us on a journey to discover the answer. Advertising begins with an answer—whether certain or dubious—and creates questions to lead us to that answer. Stranger Than Fiction is art, even if it’s fluffy pop art. No matter how well made or how sincere the intent, Facing the Giants is essentially a commercial.

I love it when people put words to my thoughts. Saves me hours of pondering and keyboard pounding. Plus usually they do such a spiffy job of summing it up. :)

I will kill to see a well-made film that is sensitive, truthful and balanced about Christ/Christians that does not see the need to hit people with a mighty sledgehammer.

The best theatre productions, films, artwork or books that I have seen about Christians/Christ have very strangely been done by non-Christians. The Christian produced ones just seem so...overloaded/overdone/overwrought....with agenda.

Well sure there is The Passion of the Christ - which I admit I did cry but that was more because of my vested sentiment as a christian and just the sheer brutality of the torture scenes. I did not think Passion was great for pretty much the same reasons why I cannot say Babel was great: well-shot, well-acted but ham-fisted and a little too political for my liking. The audience is pushed into a conclusion by vivid cinematography and a plot driven by the director's intentions more than the story's intentions : The audience is left with no room to discuss or ponder or choose to think any less than what the director has already pre-judged worthy of thought.

Resolution Revolution aka 2007 Resolutions - Sort of

2007-01-03T22:02:00.000+08:00

Most people I know have given up on making New Year resolutions because they just seem so futile and ego-deflating after a while. Another year, another bunch of failures. How can anyone look forward to the new year when come January 2nd, you have already blown your precious list of resolutions by a mile?

I mean just check out this site called 43 things which keeps an updated list of top new year resolutions for 2007. Pretty keen but some rather intimidating stuff!

I was checking out my list of resolutions from a year agoand was pleasantly surprised to find out I had more or less managed to do all of them. I called the list "2006 Resolutions...Sort of" because some of them did not sound like resolutions at all to me at that point of time. It was sort of a half joking, half serious kind of list. I think the main reason why this list was one of my more successful lists was precisely because it was more of a fun than a serious list.

>>1. Get a new Powerbook once and for all. Yay!
Bought me a G5 computer! love it love it love it. Glad I waited so long before getting a new Mac. The Intel chip was worth the wait. ah, sweet hybrid bliss.

>>2. Be a humbler listener and curb instinct to be a holyschmoly smartypants!
Yeah I made a more concerted effort at that, especially with one particular friend. haha. you know who you are. :D

>>3. Actually use my PDA to organise the chaos I call my mind. Got plans? Execute, execute! and use that PDA to help!
YUP. My little PDA is pretty indispensable to me these days. And I used to call myself a non-PDA type of person!

>>4. Spend more time with my family. House not equal as hotel you know.
Yeah I improved in that in 2006. The remodelling kitchen project in December was quite reflective of that. Plus I started coming home at more regular hours nearing the end of year. :)

>>5. Get back in gym rat mode. Last year of gym membership- diedie must chao kuan use to the fullest!
OK this one was in major deprovement in 2006 given the shiploads of work and horrijible MMPORG I got introduced to. But towards late December I was slowly moving back to my 3 times a week habit again. SLOWLY.

>>6. Clean up 1/4 of the chaos I call my room (1/4 is realistic estimation I think)
1/4 was indeed cleaned up. 3/4 is still a hurricane. I think it was severe mark of improvement that I kicked of 1 Jan 2007 by cleaning up my overflowing pile of art materials and bags. The corner looks so INCREDIBLY clean and neat now that I just stare at it and block out the rest of my mess. The clean corner is SO therapeutic to look at. :)

>>7. Adopt a hamster to channel all my lack-of-a-rabbit-affections to.
I have a hamster - HAMHAM - and TWO(!) bunnie wunnie hunnies - Flopsy and Mopsy!

>>8. Share and admit to my weaknesses more often to curb instinct to play holyschmoly smartypants!
Oh yeah baby, I did this too! and learnt some super interesting things about my psychological makeup. Which deserves a whole other blog entry by itself. haha.

>>9. Stop drinking teh si like its the last drink on earth. Must...try....other....drinks.
eh failure. I think its addiction. Although this year, I did add Yuan Yang to my list but not counting it cos it is nothing more than teh si WITH coffee.

>>10. Go on One Good Date. Mwa ha ha. Insert archi insider joke.
well actually, I did kind of go on one pretty nice non-date. Date pretext was not a romantic one at all but it had all the nice ingredients of one: dinner with a cute well-dressed guy; fancy restaurant which I did not have to go dutch for; intelligent, enjoyable conversation sprinkled with good manners and compliments. So even if it was NOT A DATE, I am gonna construe it as one any way so I can rack up another resolution done. heh.

>>11. Love God. Love Neighbour. Feed Sheep.
as usual, a tough one to accomplish. getting there. more on this later.

So I have a theory about New Year's Resolutions.There should always be two lists:

-The perennial one that rarely changes, being full of big-picture, hard-to-achieve goals (like my 2006 #11 Love God, Love Neighbour, Feed Sheep").

- and the fun one that is redolent with easier-to-achieve, light-hearted goals (like my 2006 #7 Adopt a hamster")

The former list is neccessary because it reminds you year after year about what your life's goals are essentially about. It determines whether you are still heading towards the right direction. Although nobody can say with a straight face that they succeeded in living their neighbour perfectly by the end of the year, it does not mean "Love your Neighbour" should not deserve a hallowed place in anyone's list of things to accomplish. As that annoyingly twee little quote goes - "Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky."

But the latter list is just as vital because it reflects the little steps it takes to accomplish the former. For instance, my trivial resolution to buy a Powerbook was silly on the surface. But it did reflect a deeper change that I was hoping to make in myself by year end. You see, I have terrible hangups about money and spending. I used to be fairly neurotic about penny-pinching but over the years I have been learning to spend more on creature comforts and discerning what are areas worth spending money on.

The point is - we should keep the serious former list in our heads for life but every new year we should just draft the fun one and get people to draft theirs just for kicks.

The fun list of resolutions works in its fluffy little way: It is light-hearted, sincere and easy for one to look forward to accomplishing.And some how along the way you accidentally accomplish other resolutions you did not pen down but were still major milestones.

SO, this year, I am drafting yet another fun list of "2007 Resolutions - Sort of"

1. Get in touch with my inner art student again and paint one picture on a big canvas.

2. Do a Martha Stewart and refurnish the yard for my mother so it becomes a cosy ironing/laundry/storage corner.

3. Visit Italy again - Cinque Terre - and revist travelling Europe with that kick-ass hamster girl I have not made enough effort to hang out with more often over the past few years! :P

4. Enjoy my 30th birthday by throwing a semi-big shebang and finding a way to honour everyone that made me who I am 3 decades on.

5. Buy sensible flat shoes for my insensible flat feet. Stop buying pretty but nasty-to-feet shoes. (Cringe)

6. Break bread more often with acquaintances I find hard to get along with. :)

7. Go on mission trip #2: India? Ethiopia? Philipines?

8. Learn to bowl properly. Don't know what a decent average is for a raving amateur like moi, but I will settle for having a consistent rate of 5 closed frames, 5 open frames.

9. Work out 3 times a week, 1 hour each. Build up muscle tone and flexibility again.

10. Read 50 books (graphic nnovels do not count) - actually I have always wanted to know exactly how much I read. Maybe it would be fun this year to actually do a tally. :)

11. Attempt writing some fiction in new notebook with inspiring pictures friend bought me.

12. Publish magazine successfully.

13. Keep better records of how much am spending.

Wish me luck and to kick it off...i shall launch this new signature line in me blog. ha
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Now reading book #1 of 50 books for 2007:
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco
Verdict so far: cool concept. My first Eco. :)

Thoughts on Cambodia

2006-11-29T14:18:00.000+08:00

Before I ventured into Cambodia, it was hard for me to conceive of it being anything beyond the images left behind by the Killing Fields.

To me, Cambodia was a country forever shadowed by the Pol Pot years of famine, torture, cruelty and unbelievable political stupidity. It was difficult to see the face of the country beyond its history and its problems.

Seeing a country and its people face to face speaks volumes beyond what you read on paper. While people want sympathy in their brokenness, nobody wants to be remembered solely for their mistakes, their tragedies, their dark times. Similarly for countries. Cambodians want to move on. They do not want to just be remembered as the tragic playground for Pol Pot's egotism.

Everywhere I went in Cambodia, it was getting progressively harder to see the fingerprints of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The poverty was still there. The many landmine victims were still there. Toul Sleng was still there. The pyramids of Cambodian skulls were still there.

But the real Cambodia seemed to call out to me to be heard. She did not want to be stereotyped as just another case study of political horror. She whispered, "Look at me. Look. At. Me. Know who I am. Not who you want me to be."

In Toul Sleng - the infamous school turned interrogation and torture centre of the Khmer Rouge, I walk past panel after panel of mugshots of the thousands who passed through the gates and never emerged again. In a room full of discarded rusting leg irons, I suddenly find a crumbling plaster bust of Pol Pot. It is moulding away, defaced and ignored by most of the tourists. I stand over it and stare at it. The feeling of helpless anger over all that Pol Pot did is overwhelming. I find that I am crying as I take photos of it. I curse it. Bastard - I think - you bastard.

In Phnom Penh, a new painfully white NOKIA shop mushroomed in the midst of a dirty street, screamed crassily, "Capitalism is here!" Fresh new billboards advertising luxury goods and dainty cafes in ubiquitous dark wood and cream leather agreed. The many street stall vendors offering fresh steamed corn, Vietnamese noodles, voluptuous milkfruit agreed.

A lovely Cambodian woman tells me in impeccable English that she works as a maid in Malaysia. She dishes out her delicately flavoured coconut fish stew for all people - me, the awkward Singaporean tourist, the sweet-faced Chinese student, the sullen decorated military officer, the construction workers. A Khmer Literature teacher sits next to me and tells me about how difficult it is to teach teenagers these days. I look at him in wonder: 20 years ago, this man would never have been able to declare aloud his affection for Literature. The Khmer Rouge would have bludgeoned him to death for that.

In the rural area of Kratie, giggling Cambodian village children ran freely in the mud - their clothes and bags are obviously donations from the First World. I count at least three shiny F4 schoolbags on my trip. Jerry Yen's beaming white mug is disconcerting in this place. Do these children know that thousands of Chinese girls swoon and scream before the feet of those four pretty boys? They do not. And they don't care. They run barefoot and bare-bodied, next to the swollen pigs and sulking cows. Their feet are fleet, their dirty teeth break out into easy grins, their eyes have not learnt the light of cynicism or boredom. Older children naturally lead the younger, admonishing them to say thank you for the little gifts we give out. These village children know riches of childhood that I suspect their wealthier counterparts have forgotten in their sterile, clean, perfumed cocoons.

A Cambodian orphan boy with the gentle eyes motions to me to make him a balloon sculpture cross. I motion to him to wait as I make balloon dogs for his friends. He waits in patience and quietly watches me twist the balloons clumsily as I pore over the instructions. The boy gracefully picks up a stray balloon and tries to mould his own cross. He fails and tries again. Fails and tries again. And succeeds, displaying his cross to me with a sweet smile. With deft, agile little movements, he shows me how to sculpt it. Then in silent partnership, he joins me and starts making balloon crosses and balloon crowns for all his little friends.

I take him aside to give him a little toy and tell the translator to praise him - that he of all the children will get this special prize because he knows how to be generous and give instead of take all the time. The boy smiles quietly and shyly wanders downstairs. The next time I see him, the little angel has given away his crown, his cross AND the little toy to the other gleeful children. I look at him in wonder, marvel at his charity and think of how Christ loved the poor old woman who gave away her copper coins.

All along he has not said a single word, but he has given me volumes to think about.

Cambodia is not Pol Pot. It is not Toul Sleng. It is not S21 or the Khmer Rouge or the Killing Fields.
It is not poverty. It is not famine.

It is all that but it is much much more.

Something of the real Cambodia is in the smile of that young boy - serene, quiet, trusting, at peace.
Something in his smile says Blessed. It is for such as him that Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount.

I think of Psalm 37:

"For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.
A little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look for them, they will not be found.
But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace.
The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them;
but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming."

Somewhere I romanticise. I dream, I hope - Cambodian children are laughing because the Lord has taught them to laugh in defiance at the wicked.

Evil men might have held Cambodia ransom for four bloody years. But they shall never inherit the land.

I Heart Daniel Craig

2006-11-18T13:31:00.000+08:00

Watched Casino Royale last night.

How incredibly SEXY is Daniel Craig as the new Bond?

Daniel Craig + white short sleeve shirt + wry smile = RWWWWWWWOOOOARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Happiness Looks Like This

2006-11-16T01:28:00.000+08:00

I can't begin to tell you how goofily happy I get when I look at this picture. Love. At. First. Aw.

Love Actually?

2006-11-01T17:55:00.000+08:00

Last night, we were wondering about what was the last romantic movie we enjoyed. There was some bantering about Love Actually, Pride and Prejudice, When Harry Met Sally.

Curiously, I never realized how few of those romance movies I actually love. I liked some of them not because I found them particularly romantic. In fact, my favourite scenes were those with that hard-edge of realism. Maybe it’s my inner cynic – heh.

My favourite story in Love Actually was the morose one about near-adultery - where Alan Rickman reduces Kristen Scott-Thompson to wrenching sobs over a Joni Mitchell CD. I loved Before Sunrise and Before Sunset not because I thought the relationship in there was cool – but because I liked Julie Delpy’s awkward burst of anger as she confronts Ethan Hawke about how he had left her behind when he got married. I liked 2046 for the way it painted the ugliness of secret longings and selfish love – it was fitting to see the Tony Leung character alone and morose at the end of the whole show.

Okay the exceptions - I liked High Fidelity because it was …charming. Or rather John Cusack is charming, haha. I also liked Roman Holiday because it was just sweet, old-fashioned and cute. Who can say no to Audrey on a Vespa and Gregory Peck in a suit? Gregory Peck. 1950s Man in 1950s suit, Sigh.

The one fairly recent serious romantic movie I like is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought the ending was quite genuinely romantic. It was a screen relationship that I actually thought was worth rooting for. The whole movie cleverly used the metaphor of a memory-erasing technology to show how a beautiful, realistic love story has to be built upon remembering the good and the bad about each other. It was quite sweet to see the two leads tentatively agree to fall in love with each other again after reliving all the best and worst memories of their relationship.

I guess I am generally picky about films- especially when I have to shell out $8 for them. J Films that have managed to grab me successfully over the past few years all had to be pure fun (X-men, Batman Begins), clever or at least brutally realistic (Hotel Rwanda. The Constant Gardener).

On a tangent – I realize all my favourite “clever” films used a fantastical device to make a strangely grounded, frank observation about the things that we do to each other and to ourselves: American Beauty, Unbreakable, Eternal Sunshine, Memento, 2046, The Matrix (only the first) and now The Prestige. It is quite funny how appropriate analogies and metaphors are in talking about the human condition!

Currently reading: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Thinking of reading: John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener, Persepolis 2

the prestige: vengeance and the death of self

2006-11-01T17:33:00.000+08:00

I watched The Prestige last week for director Chris Nolan and writer Jon Nolan. The Nolan brothers’ Memento is one of my fave movies of all time. Christopher and Jon Nolan must be an interesting pair of brothers: their work shows a Gothic fixation with Man’s inherent unreliability and propensity for the darkest kind of self-deception, obsession and egoistic self-deception.

Although I kind of saw the twist in the Prestige coming, I still was taken aback by the clever playing out of the Nolan brothers’ favourite Gothic theme. It’s one of the most genuinely disturbing endings I have seen in a while. I don’t think you can watch The Prestige for its ‘twist’ alone because the twist is fairly obvious after a while and can be unsatisfying if you don’t appreciate the odd mix of old-fashioned story-telling and sudden introduction of science-fiction that traditionally requires suspension of reality.

Memento was a tribute to the fickleness of memory: how it colours the way we perceive our grievances, moulds our selves and defines the lives we end up living. Memento succeeded at two levels: it was an old-fashioned Gothic story about the dark horror of Man’s capability for self-deception and murderous; it was also an intelligent noir detective thriller. Likewise, The Prestige is both a Gothic study of Man’s dark heart as well as a sci-fi/thriller/drama.

Once you get past the sci-fi device, The Prestige is a film that really gets you thinking about the horror of vengeance and how far we are willing to kill our Selves to get there. Although the ending would have us believe Angiers (Jackman) to be worse, I don’t think Fallon/Borden (Bale) is supposed to be any better.

Angiers kills himself literally and figuratively in his desperate search to be the best magician, to earn the adoring of the crowd. He sacrifices his human identity, his love for his wife and the possibility of love with a new woman. Worse, he knows what he is doing: he chooses blind stage hands backstage so that they cannot see the horror of his sin. Borden/Fallon kill themselves figuratively – they never experience true love for they sacrificed honesty in their relationships with family, friend and lover. They too have blended two lives so well that they lose their identity and no longer know who they actually are anymore.

The recurring questions in the show centre around “Are you willing to dirty your hands?”, “Do you know what sacrifice means?”. After all the clever pyrotechnics of this film have faded away, these questions I think remain far more outstanding. At the bottom of all their self-justification and pain, both Angiers and Borden/Fallon are essentially the same - impulsive, self-destructive, self-mutilating and willing to cheat on their nearest and dearest to get exactly what they want. Even the ‘happy’ ending where Borden/Fallon gets his daughter back is tainted. His daughter – like his wife/mistress - never had him and apparently never will truly have him as long as the wall of deception never drops.

7 Up

2006-10-20T11:09:00.000+08:00

Have been wondering, if the 7 UP documentary people made a story about my life, what would it sound like?

7 Up
was a: shy, colour-pencil toting, paper doll loving Primary One kid
dreamt of being: a kickass magic-using superspy
fell in love with: Bob the Pianist on Sesame Street
coveted: Barbie dolls from Toys R'Us Katong

14 Up
was a: awkward, nerdy Secondary Two girl with perfunctory ugly 80s specs and bad haircut
dreamt of being: Singapore's youngest comic book creator
fell in love with: Han Solo and Indiana Jones
coveted: more Xmen comics

21 Up
was a: wannabe fresh graduate from architecture swinging between idealism and angsty cynicism
dreamt of being: anything but an architect
fell in love with: the boy next door and the not-so boy next door
coveted: a cool job, an uber babe body and a dreamy boyfriend

28 UP
was a: gal with a pretty cool job
dreamt of being: a better person
fell in love with: God again and again
coveted: a kinder mouth and a more honest heart ( a classy funky wardrobe and a swinging singleton appartment of my own. lol. )

I wonder what's gonna happen in
35 UP, 42 UP and 49 UP? :)

Isn't it scary to imagine how your life would look like on film? I hope mine makes for a good indie movie at least - haha. I want it to have a cool-indiesque score like High Fidelity. Plus injections of classical music for the more tear-jerking moments.haha.

perhaps 70 UP will be
was a : mischievious, classy old woman with cute rabbits
dreamt of being: nothing but her own strange self
fell in love with: God again and again (and the old man next door)
coveted: a good, peaceful death (and a fabulous jacket)

I Heart Men In Suits

2006-10-18T15:58:00.000+08:00

...which is why I find the The Sartorialist i SUCH a sexy little blog!
It's a very cool blog by a guy in New York who takes street pictures of well-dressed, funky people that he spots in cities. I love his blog because it's not bitchy (like Go Fug Yourself. heh) and quite genuine in its love for people dressing beautifully.

I love his eye for colour, texture, lines and shapes! PLUS I love it that his choices are sometimes a little unconventional
AND he has tons of examples of well-dressed guys! I swear I never knew menswear had so many delicious looking options - there are several old, bald, portly guys in his image collection who look pretty dapper.

Every guy - I SWEAR - looks gorgeous in a well-cut suit. Mmmmm. Suits.
And every guy NEEDS an amazing looking white shirt - a short sleeve white linen/cotton that associates ya with summer sunlight aas well as a long sleeve, snazzy collared one that says crisp, professional and 'bring me home to your mama'

I think I secretly want to shop for guys.

singapore has a similar street fashion blog but its unfortunately just focused on teenagers - The Clothes Project

I am not a true blue fashionista, seeing as to how I am:
1) too stingy to buy the uber quality stuff
2) too inconsistent to dress up all the time
3) too hands-on muck-about to have manicures/pedicures/high maintenance hairdos

but I do LOVE staring at pretty pictures of people who really know how to work a look and style an outfit that says who they are. Thanks to the weather and the general bo-chap culture of Singapore, not many people care to dress up. But oh I get such a KICK (!) when I spot well-dressed people.

Okay - shall go back to reality of classroom now.

Still fantasising about my $167 Mango 1950s jacket and $119 Zara silk dress that I spotted with redbeanfish. :_(
I want. I want. I want. I need to get a more exciting life to justify those buys. haha.

Documentaries I wanna watch!

2006-10-13T11:46:00.000+08:00

1) Deliver Us From Evil
a pedophile ex-priest talks about the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholoc Church

2)Fast Food Nation
an insight into the modern fast food industry

3)So Goes the Nation
a look at how America's electoral process can be manipulated. Case Study: Kerry vs Bush elections

4)49 Up
The seventh film in a series of landmark documentaries that began 42 years ago when UK-based Granada’s WORLD IN ACTION team, inspired by the Jesuit maxim “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man,” interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-old children from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future.

5)Jesus Camp
A look at the increasingly militant Evangelical Christian movement in America.

Two Nudes in Repose

2006-10-12T16:26:00.000+08:00

I have caved in and gave my bunnies official names.
Light brown one is called Flopsy aka Flopflop, Flops, flooooooopy, flopita, boy-boy, pui-pui
Dark brown one is called Mopsy aka Mopmop, mopey, girl-girl, kiki

Flops lurves to lollop around and flop around the room like the diva-leader that he is.
Mops is developing quite a personality: she seems like a quiet follower at first, happy to cuddle up to Flops and follow him around as he takes the lead in recce-ing any new space.

But when left to her own devices, Mops is a far more insidious invader of space - no corner is left pellet-less. And she has found new hidey holes i never thought existed in my room.

Privately, I think Mops is the more intelligent though morose of the two.
Flops is the happy go lucky, brash little stud.

heh heh.

Dont you just love how Mops lies down like a human being? So cute.

Birthday Bunny Bonanzaaaaa!

2006-10-02T22:57:00.000+08:00

Signs that the week is off to a pretty cute start.....
i walk into office and get what i always wanted for YEARS.

my own BUNNY RABBITS!!!!!! :)

they are dwarf lops - courtesy of my long-suffering partners in crime who have decided that it is ok for the office to have furry things lollop around.

they have no names yet. Although Pui Pui is becoming a hot favourite for the light brown cutie.

Any ideas? :)

yay. bunnies forever.

Signs that people are truly bored :)

2006-09-28T01:17:00.000+08:00

1) there actually is a website dedicated to people who are zhng-ing their favourite snacks.....into MEGA BIG versions. ha

PIMP THAT SNACK!

2) here's another gem with a nasty name that says it all:
GO FUG YOURSELF

dedicated to running down the ugly dresses that Paris Hilton and all other celebs inflict on us poor mortals.

i confess: i read them! guilty pleasure! bolded, underlined, italicised guilty pleasure. lol.

sigh. i am so easy.

Through the Barricades

2006-09-27T12:21:00.000+08:00

I have been doing a lot of mulling over what makes human relationships deep and meaningful. It's crazy how many walls - conscious and unconscious - that we erect around our precious selves. When I look deep within my own self, with the revealing light of God's truth looming before me, I see an internal labyrinth of twists and turns. I am guilty of much of what I am gonna talk about for sure.

The psychologist Larry Crabb talks about how deeply hurtful the sin of self-protection is - and yet not many of us are unaware of the fact that it is a sin. We claim we have the right to "protect ourselves" or say with total sensibility "we cannot expect to be best friends with everybody". It sounds absolutely logical and looks absolutely logical to keep people at arm's length. It sounds almost too convenient.

Sometimes I think being nice and polite can be insufferable and frustrating. Being nice and polite, we sometimes refrain from saying what is always on our minds. It does not mean that we should be aggressive, rude or in-your-face. Nice and polite has a place and time.

BUT sometimes our being 'nice and polite' and 'sensitive' can be convenient excuses to stay indifferent to another person. We don't want to create trouble. And God FORBID, we get involved!

We don't want to go into the uncharted scary territory of offence and in doing so, we create opportunities for ourselves to become hypocrites.

Some of us are scared of OFFENDING another person. So we keep our mouth shut and keep our grouses within in the name of 'niceness'. Yet, we get disdainful and arrogant about how 'touchy' and 'closed up' the person is. Or worse, we gossip with others about why he/she is so touchy.

The question here to answer honestly is : Why don't we attempt to push past the person's barricades and find out how they are and what they think?

Some of us are scared of BEING OFFENDED by another person. So we keep our mouth shut around the type of people who aggravate us the most in the name of 'niceness'. Yet, deep within, we fester with resentment about being forced into a closeted, constrained kind of life by such 'nasty, insensitive' people - we grumble ironically about a closet we actually created for ourselves.

The question here to answer honestly is: Why don't we let down our barriers and let others see our thoughts - ugly as they are?

It is funny how often we deliberately choose not to engage deeply with people. And be driven to despair with the lack of deep engagement. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, a tragic comedy of sorts. The one thing we demand of people, we are not willing to give of ourselves to make it happen.

So many of us hunger so deeply for real, genuine heart-to-heart, deep-calls-out-to-deep relationships. We read up books and hear sermons telling us how to do so but nothing penetrates - especially when the books and sermons sound like meaningfullly offered but flat instructions.

It's like handing our recipies to starving people - they don't want to know the instructions of how to make a meal, they want the meal itself. There is something very wrong and very sad when all people have heard the preaching about Love THY Neighbour and yet not all people can testify that they have felt that Love.

Jesus tells us to Feed our sheep. Not tell them how to feed themselves. Or hope that other people will feed them.

Why are we so scared of crossing the barricades we erect around ourselves?
Why do we erect so many barricades around us?
Why do so many of our words and conversations rotate around and around the desire for genuine relationships and genuine love and yet we never dare to do anything about it?
Why do so many of us pin an obsessive hope for a soulmate to come along as if the perfect husband or wife will solve our deep hunger for real relationships?

Why are we so scared to lose the life that we have? The peaceful, feel good life of non-confrontation?
Why do we cling on so tightly to our privacy?
Our life without fights, difficult conversations and awful truths?

Could it be that deep relationships only happen if we let go of 'polite niceness', speak words of truth IN LOVE - embrace the possibility of fights, difficult conversations and awful truths which may actually open doors for deeper relating?

Luke 9:24 records for us Christ's intoxicating words:
"For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it."

Christ demanded that we give up all earthly things in our life. I don't think he meant just the surface tangible stuff. I think he meant the difficult parts as well - ego, esteem, privacy, vulnerability.

It does not mean we should bare our souls like modern Pharisees, proclaiming loudly in the streets "Look how brave and vulnerable I am!!!! Oh so godly!!!! and honest!!" That's repulsive and reeks of showmanship.

I mean we should have a disarmament. We should lay down our defenses and surrender our need to protect our lives. And say the honest thing, even if that lays everything vulnerable before another.

The writer Frederick Buechner felt this keenly as he struggled through his father's suicide. He wrote a book that quotes King Lear in its title, "Speak What We Feel (Not What We Ought To Say): Reflections on Literature and Faith."

Like all Shakespearen tragedies, King Lear involves miscommunication of epic proportions. Lear has his daughters compete for their inheritance by judging who can proclaim their love for him in the grandest possible fashion. Cordelia finds that she is unable to show her love with mere words. While her elder sisters posture and preen about their love to their happy father, Cordelia says in a famous quiet aside that goes on to start the tragedy going:

"What shall Cordelia speak?
Love, and be silent."

Though traditionally seen as the epitome of goodness in the play, Cordelia is not as innocent as we think. Her general silence - dare we say 'wimpiness - about how she feels about such mistreatment and injustice really does contribute somewhat to how much her wicked sisters get away with.

At the end of the play, among the dead bodies of both the heroes and villains, the Duke of Albany says with great regret:

"The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say."

In short : the truth of our dark times must be told, whether or not it is what others want to hear.

Buechner himself ends off his poignant book with this encouragement:
"Fear not. Be alive. Be merciful. Be human.
And most unlikely of all:
Even when you can't believe,
even if you don't believe at all,
even if you shy away at the sound of his name,
be Christ."

Christ was able to talk to everyone with BOTH truth and love.

He never feared vulnerability or testing other people's pretence at invulnerability.

Surely, we who know and love Christ, and claim to be his disciples - should try to do the same?

How much of our own life do we still want to keep for ourselves? And for what purpose honestly?
How much are we willing to pour out at the feet of others irregardless of whether they trample upon them or not?

I want to see real change in relationships.
But first, it starts off with taking a real good look at how to change ME.

I am serious about this: If you know me personally, and if you have things you want to make me aware of - like how I frustrate you, or how I am insensitive to you - please let me know. :)

I am truly willing to disarm and learn. And die die humble myself. So call me out if I get defensive.

And if it gets ugly, it gets ugly. Love and Truth will deal with it.

God will make sure I am ready to hear about my inner ugliness. :)

"He takes us as we are but does not leave us as we are"

2006-09-16T00:13:00.000+08:00

I just wanted to blog. primarily to remember that line in the conversation.

++++

Under the light fall of stray raindrops, with the bright glare of a spotlight from a corner window
over bowls of over-sweet Rochor bean curd, we talked about what it means to follow Christ.

B was worried that he would never be sincere enough to become a Christian. Earnestly worried and deeply troubled by how hard God was pursuing him, he wondered, "How can I ever be genuine enough to pray to God? I have no face to meet him."

I groped for words adequate to express how I felt about it and said,"It's true and that's the sincerest thing we can tell God - I am sorry. I have no face to meet you. I am an awful piece of crap. and I need you."

R piped up with her sweet voice,"God takes us as we are."

I followed with,"God takes us as we are....but He does not leave us as we are. That is His grace to us."

B sat thoughtfully and mused,"I don't know how to pray though."

Glad that Jesus himself taught us how to pray then in Matthew 6, we shared the Lord's Prayer with B.

It's a beautiful prayer that says everything that matters to a tired heart, weary with longing for perfection.

"Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one."

No matter how lousy I feel about myself, I can rest knowing that He gives me daily strength and deliverance.

God, thank you for taking me as I am. Thank you more for not leaving me as I am.

I need to remember tonight's words more often. :)

Confessions of a Brother of the Prodigal Son

2006-09-15T16:20:00.000+08:00

When I was 22 and living out on my own, I was obsessed with the idea of going out to make One Big Mistake.

It was a really perverse thought - I rationally, logically decided that life would not be complete without making that One Big Mistake that would teach you big things. It did not help that there were some friends around me then who had that same concept - that to learn from life, you gotta go out and make mistakes. True to some extent - but it can be a really insidious way of justifying many wrong things that you want to do with your life.

By some grace, I did NOT get to make my One Big Mistake. My life on paper looks pretty vanilla in some aspects.

But from time to time, I do get bitter thoughts about how much more "fun" other people had - making mistakes before turning over a new life. I sometimes -perversely - wonder why I could not have been one of those "lucky" few. Objectively, I know its a stupid thought. Emotionally, its a thought that still makes me wonder.

Sometimes when I read the story of the Prodigal Son, I see myself empathising with the angsty elder brother. God (the Father in the story) is quick to show a tremendous outpouring of grace upon people who have done a great deal of wrong. And sometimes I look at the Prodigal Sons around me - richly blessed after a life of Big Mistakes - and wonder, "So what was the whole point in me being good and all for, God?! I mean, why don't I get rewarded for staying good?!"

And that's the whole reason why C.S. Lewis said Pride is arguably the biggest sin.

What's even uglier than Pride in one's sinfulness is Pride in one's 'goodness' - "Look at me! I am Good! Yeah Baby! Check out how GOOOOOD I AM! I am gooder than you'll ever be, punk."

In Luke 15, the angsty goody goody brother of the Prodigal Son yells," 'Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!'"

But the father (God) replies "My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.' "

I admit - I am jealous of the Prodigal Sons around me. I wish I had a taste of life on the Bad side even if I rationally know that's the last thing I want to wish on myself. I wish I could get double the gifts from God for "being in God's good books" I want to get "paid" for being good.

But God doesn't work that way. God's Kingdom is not a meritocracy. Just because you extra good, you don't get extra goodies. God is fair. Every one who comes to Him gets richly paid - whether they came early or came late into His Kingdom. And I must NEVER begrudge anyone that!

Celebrate and be glad for how richly God chooses to bless even the most Prodigal of Prodigals.
And just find delight in living for God's sake rather than my own sake.

That's the lesson I am still learning.

sigh - I've got a Martha Martyr complex! Gag - I am a pissy goody-goody.

Boo.

My So-Called Life

2006-09-14T18:54:00.000+08:00

In the virtual world of Stormreach, you get to run around with a whoopin' flaming longsword and wear pretty silver armour. How can ya not love that? Yes, I am vain enough to be indecently pleased that I found armour that actually matches my hair. *end bimbo moment* This is why I cannot be a legit power gamer - I make dumb girl choices like refusing to wear ugly helmets which make my character look like some rugby player. :D

Ashara is finally a Level 10 cleric! (Whoo! goes all 4 of my gaming friends and "...." goes the rest of the world.)

Meanwhile, my poor halfling paladin is still stuck at Level 5 and unlikely to advance with the A level Exam Onslaught on the horizon.

Ugh.....can't wait till November. No. More. Lesson Prep!

In the Eye of the Beholder

2006-09-11T11:19:00.000+08:00

I just read this funny bit of info:

"Some researchers also found that men judge the female figure they found most attractive as heavier than women's ratings of the ideal body shape. In contrast, most women, including overweight women, desire men with a very low percentage of body fat, whether they be thin or muscular. This suggests that, contrary to the media focus, men are far more likely to be attracted to larger women than women are to be attracted to larger men. Additionally, men are also more likely to be unsatisfied with their height, due to a perceived preference in women for men above average height.

Men, on the other hand, don't tend to factor height in when choosing a mate; they're attracted to short, tall, and everything in between. According to a study "Gender Differences in Body Dysmorphic Disorder" by Katharine A. Phillips and S. Diaz (1997), the most common body areas that cause the most distress among men with body image disorders include skin (58%), head hair (57%), nose (38%), body build (25%), eyes (18%), genitals (15%), legs (14%), chest (12%), and stomach/abs (11%)."

Seriously....'skin'? I didn't know guys freaked out that much about their skin or nose for that matter.Wonder how true that is in Asian context.

Isn't it so odd that the sexes are seriously miscommunicating about what each other finds attractive? I would not really care if a guy had bad skin, was balding or had a big ol' nose or no rippling six-pack. I really don't give a darn if he drives a sexy lil' Porsche or cycles to work, plays high money stocks or plays Counterstrike. And if one more guy rolls his eyes and tells me "Oh you don't understand. Girls say that but they actually want it.", I will smack him. I mean it. But then again, I suppose that's why some guys get offended when a girl insists that guys just like girls for looks.

The only thing that counts for me is : If a guy has no heart or no head for anything outside of himself, he's a goner.
So is it that hard to believe that there are guys out there who do think the same way? That they can separate between fantasy figures and who they want in real life? If I can totally luuuuuuuuurve Hugh Jackman and Pierce Brosnan (supersigh) on screen and yet very objectively know that they are not the kind of guys I want in real-life, I am sure there are guys who think the same.

But what is funny - of course - is how many guys refuse to believe that there are quite a few girls who don't care about their bods, wallets or jobs. It is similar to how many of us girls find it hard to believe that there are quite a few decent guys who think countercultural.

That's awful ain't it? I admit sometimes I like to believe guys are really as shallow as FHM makes them out to be. But that makes me a FSP - Female Sexist Pig. And FSP is just as condescending and awful as an MCP.

I asked NCM up front about whether looks mattered to guys as much as conventional wisdom would have us believe.
NCM thought for a while and said, "Yeah, its a fact...guys will always look at a gorgeous girl. But after a while, most guys grow up and look beyond looks. Wisdom becomes really attractive. It matters more."

Well, maybe NCM was humouring me.

Or maybe it was a genuine reflection of what goes on in guys' heads once they have tasted the 30s and dated around a bit.

Well, I guess me, my chubchub bod and my eye-baggage shall take comfort in knowing that if there is one guy who thinks like NCM, there must be more of them out there.

Yeah, yeah go on and sue me for being a Pollyanna.

how can a lump of cotton be sooooo cute?

2006-09-04T17:41:00.000+08:00

I HEART these ridiculously useless but OH SO CUTE dollies.
Come on, doesn't the lil stuffed tofu and lil stuffed jiaozi make you go awwwwwww?
SO cute. SO uselessly cute.
even if i bought them i would not know what the heck to do with them.

If you are taken by these lil cuties, go check out
http://www.etsy.com/shop_sold.php?user_id=268

Conversations with Psycho Cabby

2006-08-31T12:48:00.000+08:00

Was taking yet another 1am cab ride home and I flagged down an innocuous looking red taxi. The cabby was a 40 something year old chinese man with pale-as-a-fish kind of skin. The whole cab smelled of baby powder which should have signalled to be his innate psycho-ness......(cue scary music) We drove past Suntec City where a lot of spring cleaning has been taking place in anticipation of the big IMF meeting coming up in Singapore.

Me: (attempting to be friendly) Wow, they are really putting up a lot of new plants on the road for the IMF people ah?

Cabby: Ya, every night they are paving the roads. Very inconvenient. Cause traffic jam.

Me: Aiyah, must make things look nice for the important people what.

Cabby: (slowly working up a steam to turn into Mr Hyde) Ha! Important people? You know the cab company send me letter telling me I must be nice to the IMF people who get into my taxi?

Me: Is it?

Cabby: (starting to sound really pissy) Yah! The IMF people ah - get this taxi gift certificates that they can use like money like that. Then the company say must be like tour guide to them you know? If they want electronics, must bring them to Sim Lim. If they want good food, can go Newton....WHAT!!!!!?? Like They so BIG SHOT is it?

PSYCHO CABBY: (his other personality is out!!!!)
If they tell me they want girls, I give them GEYLANG ah! Like all the tourists come ask for girl, I say GEYLANG ah!
The taxi company is so BLARDY big shot is it?? WAHHHHHH! THOSE F****ING BASTARDS!!!!!! You think I got a lot of money bring BIGSHOT to go out is it?? WAH WAH, Lee Hsien Loong very big deal is it???

WAH IF I GET THAT IMF GUY IN MY CABBY, I TEEEELLLLLLLL HIM EVVVVVEEEEERRRRRYTHING BAD ABOUT SINGAPORE AH!!!!

Me:........(thinking 'just get me home, just get me home')

(brief awkward silence in cab while I keep quiet and cabby deflates)

Cabby: ...So Miss, you work very late ah?

Me: No lah. Its ok.

Cabby: Ha. Last time I work for other people, I also work very late. Now I am cabby, I am much happier.

Me:.......!!!!!????!!!!!!!......

Geez. IF this is him much happier, i don't really wanna see him in his last job. LOL.

Theories about Training

2006-08-30T15:04:00.000+08:00

Teacher's Day is coming and I have been reading all these blogs by teachers to get an insight into what they are thinking.
Came across two pretty funny articles about the uselessness of training. :)

entertaining reading for anyone who has despised going for corporate training or recall what it felt like to be in a boring classroom. For that matter...for anyone who has fallen asleep in a sermon or bible study which is kinda like a form of training as well...ha.

Let the Teacher/Trainer/Pastor who has watched his audience snooze beware! I also scared ah.

Harry Potter and the Trainer of Dire
http://trainingdoctor.typepad.com/salty/2006/03/harry_potter_an.html

and Why Training Is Useless
http://davidmaister.com/blog/37/

I love my new G5

2006-08-25T11:11:00.000+08:00

Last week I finally caved in on 2 years of waiting and bought a new Mac - I am now typing this on my disgustingly beautiful, hedonistic-looking 20 inch G5 desktop. Ahhhhhhh so satisfying. :) I have been masochistically walking in to AppleCentre everytime a new Mac is released, thinking to myself, "This time I will buy it. This time I will buy it."The last Mac I bought was was beloved, second-hand, war-battered G4 Powerbook in 2001 (which I bought for a ridiculously cheap price). It has been hanging on to its last legs together with its elder brother, my G4 PowerMac desktop I got in 2000.

I swore to myself that 2006 would be the year of reckoning: if the school was doing better than I expected, and if I worked hard, I deserved to get a new Mac for Christmas. By March, it looked like a shoe-in. My partner in school rolled her eyes when I mentioned this, and said, "If you already know you are going to buy one at the end of the year, then why don't you just buy it now?"

So here I am, staring with great pleasure at something I have waited so long for. I think its the story of my life.
I think I just like that concept: Good things come to those who wait.
Somehow it makes the thing so much sweeter.

btw, the fact that the new Macs have Intel chips that allow them to reboot as Windows XP? SaAHHHHHHH-WEET.
It feels a little wrong to see Gates' software on Jobs' machine but if it allows me to play Tomb Raider, all power to the Gates!

A Good Book I am Reading Now (courtesy of pretty Photobooth function on G5):
God Talk - Cautions For Those Who Hear God's Voice by Ruth Tucker
very interesting read on how so many of us in Church misunderstand or abuse the term "God spoke to me", "God wants me to..."
I have not reached the conclusion yet but I think it's a pretty honest look at a phenomenon not many of us address in church.
I like it that she specifies the potential stumbling blocks for both the 'Spirit-led' Pentecostals and the 'Word-led' Evangelicals.

Imperfect Past Makes Present Tense

2006-08-15T00:41:00.000+08:00

Watched Wildrice's JBJ play on Saturday with my dad. While it was not as flawed as the Straits Times made it out to be, it was definitely uneven and a little disjointed. Act 1 and Act 2 felt like 2 separate plays, each successful but when put together...it just seemed strange. It started as a light-hearted satire, almost like a romp. It ended as a melancholic, sober drama without much sign of the earlier half's breeziness. The distinct drop in tone was a little jarring.

BUT I still liked it. :)

1) for the quote "imperfect past makes present tense". nice line and I see on technorati that many other singaporeans thought so. ha. eleanor wong's got good lines as ever!

2) for the police man scene - easily rodney o's 2nd best scene. quite good, considering he was pretty weak in the first act.

3) for the amazing amazing Pam Oei - I swear the girl can really out-act any one. Every persona switch she did was spot on, pitch perfect and funny. Anything she acts in is just gold i bet. :)

4) for the pretty intense and well-acted lunch scene between "clara tang" - the up and coming civil servant - and the idealistic journalist she can never leave behind. the undercurrent of tension in that scene - sexual, political and otherwise! - was pretty well-done.

5) the strange ending - I don't fully understand it but there was something quite poetic about watching "clara" - the new cynical Singapore - drop her guardedness, her sadness and just dance in grim abandon with the ghost of an idealistic Singapore - "david" - under the momentary flare of national day fireworks. the scene had a little magic i think. :)

Origami Girl

2006-08-08T18:20:00.000+08:00

origami
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

I got an email sometime back from a very sweet woman from a women's prayer group I visited sometime in January. Reading that email till this day still touches me deeply to tears.

I suppose one big reason why I am touched is that F - the good woman - is almost a complete stranger to me but she had apparently been faithfully praying for my concerns and petitions.

The other big reason why I am touched is how poignant the images and words are to me this year. It amazes me how God shows people
the right words and visuals to minister right into the core of someone else's secret pain. F said while praying for me, the images just flooded her mind:

"You are a box, come undone. Opened up. Outdoor plain coloured.
Inside, many patterns, designs… fascinating
… but have to open up. Don't be afraid… May even have to pry a bit, pull… stretch, undo the glue, the "comfortability" on some sides

… but to see inside. What lies inside... astounding…

Then you see the real beauty. Already nice as it is, function and place,
but He wants to unravel… and then reform…

Last time, you were flat paper
- die-cut and fitted together to become a box,
Now, He's undoing… and He will fit it all back together again
… it wasn't a mistake, just that it's out grown it's present purpose, function, which is a great thing
… and piecing together with other parts to fit together into something new."

This year has been many moments of reassessment of who I am. It's so scary to be told to take apart the You that you have been so comfortable living in - all the saftey nets, all the protective shields, all the defences all nicely in place.

But to be told to change it...?
...to reconstruct the You that served its purpose in years that required more silent endurance and quiet soldiering on...
......and unfold and refold it to a You that is more open and vulnerable, more confrontational and starkly honest?

It is such a scary thought.

I am genuinely paranoid that people would shy away if they really knew what was on my mind in all its intensity. I guess sometimes I just don't trust people enough to be able to take what I think or feel and still look at me still with grace, love and yes...genuine friendship.

I have had people tell me before that I am too emotional and too intense for ordinary conversation - so I fall back to making conversation all about the other party. I find it difficult to introduce in my own raw thoughts and instead I give most conversations my processed, pasteurised, homogenised thoughts. Some now feedback to me that I can be so mild-mannered, contained and diplomatic that nobody knows when I am feeling hopelessly down, angry or what.

Some people have told me I am a good listener. I think it is one of my strengths. But something I have realised over time is that listening is not enough. Conversation is a kind of giving - two-way, charitable sharing of each other's thoughts. I am not always capable of doing that - I feel guilty talking about myself and my problems. I feel like a limelight hog so instead I sometimes turn into a cipher. I just morph into a gigantic Listening Ear. And sometimes that's not what people need.

God, what you up to? What do you want to fold and unfold me into?

lost in translation

2006-07-31T12:32:00.000+08:00

surrealkitty
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

been reading a book about understanding conversations between mothers and daughters and why they are always so fraught with tension and misunderstanding.

The title of the book says it all - "Are You Wearing That?!" heh. Was immediately amused because my mother has said that to me a few times before and that naturally led to a crossfire exchange. I remember I hated wearing skirts and dresses before university and my mother would always give me despairing looks if I walked out of the house in yet another pair of pants.

There was once in JC when I was rushing out to catch a play and just at the door, my mother yells, "GO WEAR A SKIRT!" My 17 year old smart mouth answers back, "FOR WHAT?! I AM LATE!" Then, she delivers the clincher," You want people to think you are LESBIAN is it?!" Of course, that did not go down too well with my 17 year old ego. :) Argument naturally ensues and to save time, I grouchily leave house with dress on and think nasty thoughts of Mother Nazi being 1) evil and always looking down on me 2) anti-homosexual.

At 29, I quarrel a lot less with my mother. It comes with growing up and understanding how human everybody is. I think that's the first marker of being grown-up - realising your parents are not superhuman and perfect, and learning to be more gracious towards them.

I think like the author of the book, I start to see that the stuff that comes out of a person's mouth may be a poor reflection of the stuff that WANTS to come out of a person's mouth.

In other words, there is the Message and then, there is the Meta-Message. Apparently, this is key to understanding women-to-women conversation: one must listen hard to the Message and even harder for the Meta Message.

"Are you coming home to eat?!" , "You think this house is a hotel?!", "You think you grow big now got wings to fly is it?!" and assorted nuggets of typical furious chinese mother-daughter exchanges can be translated as a sadder "I miss you. I am scared you don't like me or care for me anymore. Why are you so cold to me?"

Learning to concentrate on the Meta Message - the unspoken volumes of thought that get lost in translation - really helps cover a multitude of harsh exchanges.

If anything, it has stopped me from reverting to my 17 year old self that sees my mother as the Moral Police, the Weight/Dressing Nazi, Incessant Nag. :) It has helped me concentrate on seeing her as a human being hoping to communicate to another human being - one that she helped bring to life by a strange twist of fate.

Christians and Politics

2006-07-20T12:44:00.000+08:00

We have been studying 1 Samuel these few weeks in bible study. Honestly, Old Testament studies always freak me out a little because of all the historical references. I can never remember the names, places or one gagillion Levitical laws. Sometimes the OT feels so out of my depth. But everytime we actually study it, I am reminded that OT is not so much about history and factoids. It's about understanding God and His view of the world, the status quo and - as always - the state of our hearts.

This is a great little article about the inherent ickiness of Politicised religions.

I am uncomfortable when politicians talk about God as their ultimate supporter. I don't really like the way American politics is shaping up into a trash-talking, brow-beating fight between the Christian Democrats and the Christian Republicans - each wanting Jesus to be their Homeboy, so to speak. It seems as pointless to debate about whether Jesus is Right wing or Left wing as it is to debate about whether God is a Man or a Woman. The answer is THAT'S NOT THE POINT! geez. Jesus' concerns go beyond our political parties. God is a Self beyond the notion of gender. When we try to compartmentalise Jesus or God to fit our social and political agendas, something crucial is lost along the way.

This is not to say that Christians should be apolitical and not care a bit about what is happening in the world. In fact, I think Christians ought to do their best to take some serious interest in what's happening in global politics, economics and cultures. For anyone who lives in an information-rich developed nation, there should be some rudimentary grasp of world affairs at least.

I understand if Christians are clueless about stuff happening around the world - but really, if we know we are ignorant, we can do two things...

a) we can start educating ourselves since if we profess to care about the world, it helps to put money where your mouth is and take some teensy first steps towards understanding how it REALLY works

b) we can stop shooting our mouth off like we know alot when we don't! nobody expects you to be a know-it-all. Its better to humbly admit we are not that well read in a certain world or societal issue instead of making our minuscle knowledge sound like a PHd Thesis.

I went to a service where I heard a pastor say quite benignly, "The Middle East is the product of Abraham's mistake with Hagar. All those problems we have there now - terrorists, Muslim fundamentalists, bombing - are all one man's mistake. So let's be careful in our lives....etc etc"

My dad - a non Christian - also told me how pissed off he was when he went to a church and heard some Christians chitter on about the Middle East being all violent because they were non-belivers. Before I became Christian, I remember being brought to a church where the minister declared the Kobe Earthquake killed off so many Japanese because they did not believe in Jesus. I was in my early teens - a bit of a navel-gazing ninny - and even then, I thought, "what the $*?#$????"

GAH! oh don't even get me started on listening to some Christians talk/write about poverty, homosexuality, economics etc. Don't pontificate when you don't know that much. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The more we read about what serious academics - both secular and Christian - have to say , the less likely we are to offer quick-mix, instant-pour answers that offend anyone with some discernment. We become acutely aware of how big the issue is, and how much work there is to be done in human hearts, minds and hands. We see why God needs to convert the very nature of a Man, in order to stop the vicious cycles we see in our civilisations.

The kind of problems we have in the world today warrant some genuine attention and respectful study. No matter what station we have in life, we owe our fellow human beings basic respect of the depth of what they are going through. It is only proper and humble to do so. Nobody expects easy answers. Nobody expects us to be PhDs. But definitely, few can tolerate a PhD wannabe with a Big Fat Know-It-All Answer. Least of all, the people going through the difficult issues - the poor, the homosexuals, the AIDS victims, the divorcees, the states struggling with terrorism or the victims of natural and man-made disasters.

k. getting off soap box now.

Kids say the darndest things...

2006-07-17T10:56:00.000+08:00

had the funniest conversation with this 2 year old girl last night - who is REMARKABLY articulate for her age. I love talking to kids. They can make the most rubbish of topics sound cool. Best of all, they have not started to develop any form of self-censorship, layers or impressive airs. Its just therapeutic and pretty relaxing talking to them....you need almost no effort to engage or draw them out. They are just dying to talk.

Exchange one:
Kid: Yesterday I go zoo.
Me: REALLY?! I love the zoo. What did you see there?
Kid: Monkey.
Me: What did monkey do?
Kid: He fall down. He say ooh ooh ah ah.
Me: Wow. DId you see birds?
Kid: Ya.
Me: and what sound did bird make?
Kid: Ooh ooh ah ah.
Me: That's the monkey sound lah. Birds sound like this.
(I start to make ah-beng chirping sounds from side of mouth. Kid stares in astonishment)
Me: (in conspiratorial whisper) Shhh. Don't tell anyone. I am a bird. Do you believe I am a bird?
(Kid nods and stares in wonder, grinning like mad)
Me: I am not a human. I am (pause for dramatic stage whisper) BIG BIRD. GASP! you believe?
Kid: Ya.

Exchange two:
Me: So what school do you go to?
KId: Yakult School.
Me: Yakult school? You mean they give you Yakult to drink there?
Kid: (nods happily)
Me: Wow. you are lucky. You really like yakult huh.....Do yoooooou like Yakult better than......hamsters?
Kid: Ya.
Me: Shall I give you a Yakult...or a RABBIT?
Kid: Yakult.
Me: Yakult.....or ELEPHANT?
Kid: Yakult
Me: Yakult.....or GIRAFFE?
Kid Yakult
Me: Yakult or......CAT?
Kid: Yakult
Me: Is there ANYTHING you possibly want more than Yakult?
Kid: (thinks seriously for a while) Sugar.

heh. the sugar industry has successfully indoctrinated this kid. What is it about yakult that obsesses every kid?

where were you in 1984?

2006-07-16T18:01:00.000+08:00

80s
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

I was in front of the computer screen and television a lot. :)

Just did a random cut and paste up job from google images based on the theme "STUFF I WATCHED/PLAYED IN THE 80S/90S".

how many do you recognise? :)

a house divided

2006-07-12T15:36:00.000+08:00

twins
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

Talking to a few people about their Bad Moments and Experiences with some local churches/cell groups made me reflect on my own feelings about the matter.

Sometimes the stories are horrible. It makes you stop and say, "How could a Christian say that to you?!" You know, the kind who would tell you at your beloved grandfather's funeral that it was your lack of faith that caused him to die painfully.

Although Christians have been changed by Jesus' love, all of us are very much works in progress. Becoming a Christian is really about a first step of admitting we need God. Christians then spend their entire lives letting God in to rework their inner heart, to substitute all the rotteness within for something more beautiful.

We need God's wisdom to illuminate how badly we need Him to reshape our ethics, our choices and our lives.

...Which is why realistically speaking, Church can still sometimes be a depressing place. Christians can still sometimes be depressing to hang out with. We are all not made perfect yet and only will be when He returns.

I am sure I must have depressed someone out there. By neglect, by compacency or by conscious avoidance.

Pride teaches us to cocoon ourselves in the lovely warmth of self-righteousness. There is this incessant -sinful- need to prove ourselves better, cleverer, more generous than another.

I am at my worst behaviour when I get so wrapped up in my own needs and agendas that I block off all desire to empathise. There are seasons where I consciously distance myself and wallow, and refuse to think outside of my own self.

Every year I learn more about how sophisticated and tough Love is. I am taught again and again why Love takes a lifetime to learn.

Its not something we learn by theory or mugging a bunch of verses. We only see how incredibly difficult Love is when we attempt to apply it consistently and realise how intrinsically inconsistent we are.

We are so rotten in places we have never conceived.

When I was not a christian, I did think of myself fairly highly - nice, generous, good, kind etc. When I became a christian, all those pretty lies were shattered by God's standards of holiness. Of course, God is the ultimate expression of Love - after He shatters your lies with the Truth, He proceeds to build you up, this time on firmer foundations.

The Christian walk is about God moving within us, lighting up the dark twists and turns of our very souls, showing us evil where we never thought could exist. No Christian can say with a straight face that he is a good person - God inspires us to recognise how bad we are and how much we need to be good.

If I had one wish about the Church, I wish I could help make Church a safer place for people to be honest about their badness. I wish I could take away that idea that in Church, you must put up a front of "I am good", "Everything is fine", "I got it going right."

I do wear that front at times because it seems so much easier and safer too. Its safe because when you feel like you are screwing up your life and feeling lousy about your sinful behaviour, I find it hard to trust that another party will listen without prejudice.

At times, I find it difficult to believe I will not be judged. So you keep things within. You don't share or talk until you sorted everything out. 'Cos you don't want to even let yourself be slighted by some guy offering you his Big Fat Thesis about Why You are Wrong and Do Not Realise It, and Let Me Tell You Why I am Right. It's incredibly painful to listen to because it is so unhelpful.

You just wanna say: Look, pal, God has already done a pretty good job showing me exactly what a rotter I am. That's not your job okay? Just let Him be my Judge. You just keep encouraging me on to turn back to Him.

Its not that I don't want people to tell me what I am doing wrong. Its that its not what I need at that time to drive me towards goodness, repentance and God. I just need a reminder that God is there, God is just and God is good. That reminder is enough to make me want to repent and try to change.

I just need grace. I need love. I need a friend.
Not a sermon. Nor an apologetic. Nor a judgment.

And its awful, depressing and sad to feel that way sometimes among Christians.

If you cannot confess your sins and wrongs in Church, where else can you go?

Putting the argument to myself - what have I done that makes it safe for others to talk to me about their own wrongs? How do I make my presence, my cell group a safe place for confession? A safe place to unload a burden?

Church should be a safe place for bad people to come home.

Maybe that just means listening without prejudice, being honest without being rude. Maybe it means not being too quick on the trigger with an easy answer. Maybe it just means being quiet, holding someone's hand, watching over them and just saying, "I don't really understand what you are going through. Help me understand. I want to help."

Maybe it just means knowing when to just be still and know that He is God. Together.

In the Book of Job, when Job experienced a horrible bout of suffering and crossed dangerously into the territory of questioning God, his four friends gave him 20 odd chapters of 'godly' sounding advice and pontification. The message was "Job, you are an IDIOT. you are UNGODLY. Repent."

I am always struck by the surprising turnaround when God appeared on the scene. God was greatly displeased with Job's talkative, Scripture thumping friends. I don't think God thought Job was pure and perfect in his response. God held Job into account for his presumption to question God. But its always humbling to remember God came down very hard on Job's unwitting friends for not supporting Job and judging him.

Sometimes it might be good to remember we could very well turn into one of those guys.

At least that's gonna be something I want to stick in my stubborn ass head anytime I feel the urge to sermonise someone in need.

Let God judge. It is not our place. It is not my place.

Bella Italia!

2006-07-10T12:03:00.000+08:00

italianman
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

ITALY WON THE WORLD CUP! WHOO! :)

I admit I am not much of a soccer fan but I do love watching people watch soccer. Have always tried to make it a point to catch the final match for World Cup.

Avidly gaming to stay awake, at 2am I met up with L at the National Library to watch Italy go up against France on a BIGBIGBIG Sony sponsored screen. :) It was pretty cool - hundreds of Singaporeans were there (including many school age kids...me thinks there will be many absentees today on scholl registers). Hans stayed open all night and the library threw open its toilet doors. Best public screening EVER.

How fabulous was those final penalty kicks? Everybody was screaming away at the library. Couple of German tourists were waving a big German flag for kicks. :)

Me loves Italy even more after the match. I luuuuuurve Buffon. That's one hot goalkeeper. And i dont mean his looks, k. (Although tis quite true that I find the dark, swarthy Italian look much hotter than the blond Gaellic look - In fact, P and I were musing this afternoon about the merits of Luke Skywalker vs Han Solo, Legolas vs Aragon, Cyclops vs Wolvie - I always ended up picking the swarthier, darker eyed of the two. LOL.)

Poor Zidane. That headbutt will go down in football history. and he was so cool in the first half too. :_(

Meanwhile, whoohoo! Italy rocks! So looking forward to Italy trip part 2.

And now for a cute break...

2006-07-06T14:37:00.000+08:00

why, hello you
Originally uploaded by waterside.

Am lazy to find photos to load into flickr. But I think blog is in bad need of a cute picture break. Thought I should blog first cute (non fluffy animal) pic I could find in archives. AND well....who can say no to a cutie wutie coochie coo like Baby Naylor? :)

awwwwwww....me likes the little heartbreaker.

Babies are God's way of telling us He doesn't think we are that screwed up yet. Apparently its still worth it to keep that human baby factory going. :)

Cutie Cutie cUTIE! Pinch yer chubby cheeks then you know!

Hard lessons

2006-07-05T22:26:00.000+08:00

avatar3
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

TissueAunty's saga has taken on a new twist. I got a call from her son saying they had trouble paying the rent and they were going to get evicted if they did not pay by 7pm that night. I thought if I could speak to the housing agent directly I could find out more about the situation and reason it out.

It turns out the agent herself sympathised with the family but the owner of the flat was quite no-nonsense and unsympathetic because in her view, the TissueFamily (TF) was nothing but trouble - messy, late in their payments and unreliable in their word. They had apparently promised to pay by a certain time but kept delaying and delaying and hence had broken trust with the owner. The rent and PUB bill for the month was up and that was that.

I offered to bail the family out by paying the rent first. The TF was grateful and I made them promise to pay the PUB bill at least on the alloted date. I stressed to them how they could not give the landlord any reason to mistrust them anymore. TF repeated that they would be getting their pay on that day and could definitely pay.

So anyhow, today was the alloted date. TF had actually called me in the day quite happily telling me they got their salary and were going to pay. But at 9pm, I got a distraught call from the harrassed agent wailing that she did not want to take charge of their account anymore because TF kept delaying the appointed time to meet and deliver the money. She was frustrated and fed up with being the middle man between an unreliable tenant and an unreasonable landlord. I think she was appealing to me once more to take up the bill.

I admit - I feel really frustrated and irritated now with the TF - I don't like the thought that now that I am involved, I cannot ignore their plight. I have to help them as my neighbour. But how do I do this for the long haul? I find myself thinking the same thoughts as the agent - What if next month and the month after that is the same thing? I cant keep bailing them out, I cant keep paying their rent for them. That cant be the solution - can it?

Her problems have now become my problems. The agent now has me on speed dial. And I had to talk with nasty landlord as well. I am officially INVOLVED. ha. Precisely what I asked God for - great. Now what?

Beyond the idealistic fervour of prayer after moving sermons about "love your neighbour", when given a chance to do so and having to confront that said neighbour may not consistently uplifting and fun to love - what do we do? what would Jesus do?

I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt that something happened and thus they have not been able to meet the agent. But I am sorely tempted with the thought of getting angry at them, bailing out, telling them I cannot do this any more, drawing the boundaries etc. But I am haunted by a constant question - is it right? I know it is practical...but is it right? is it right? is it God's way or mine? What's wrong with the picture? Is it me? I am shocked too by my own anger, impatience and irritation - it is there, at the edges, waiting. If I dont figure out the godly answer to this little conundrum, I am gonna breed some self-righteous hullabooloo within.

This whole 'get-personally-involved-with-the-poor' mission I have taken on is really teaching me some super hard lessons in the cost of grace and hands-on love thy neighbour. Making me solidify my theories. So so so so much harder when you apply ideals to real life!

Its a real education - a regular PhD in theology of sorts! ha.

I have to confront some awful truths about my own attachment to money and my own ideas about personal responsibility and fairness.
Am more and more aware I can never deceive myself that I am "nice". NO, I am certainly not "nice" - I have many more lessons to learn about
true humility, integrity and patience. I am sure there is something I must learn and change - but what?

I dont have my thoughts straight yet. But off the cuff - yeah, it is damnably frustrating. MIssionaries to the poor have my greatest respect.

Gonna read a new book I got about missions to the poor - hopefully it is less airy fairy theory and more on practical application. Post more when I sort out my thoughts.

Meanwhile....ARGH! >:( and GAH!

adultery exposed - a guy's take

2006-07-02T17:41:00.000+08:00

neonangel
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

i got an interesting forwarded email lately and have been musing about how many responses it got from guys who agreed with what it said. It offers a pretty interesting look at how men get seduced. AND it also deals with that age old debate among us ARPC gals about whether you should just settle for any "godly" guy or be more stringent. heh.

Any male (or female of course) blurkers wanna offer their take?
btw, am changing some of his comments to protect his identity. :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Here's a surprising fact I discovered - In the many divorce cases I have seen, the women responsible for breaking up marriages and families were not as physically attractive as the wives. I used to be a big fan of a marriage counseling book on the different needs of men and women but this threw the theories of that book out the window.

What I found was this. Men have two very deep, very primal emotional needs. Women who choose to meet these needs become irresistible to men. The needs are:

1) to feel happy with who they truly are when they are with a woman
2) to know that this woman is truly happy when she is with them.

But what usually happens after marriage?

The dude comes home after a hard day's work. The first words out of his wife's mouth are a torrent of complaints. And when it comes to Sunday morning, it usually gets worse. The wife is usually the first one up. She'll lovingly prepare breakfast, help pack the kid's stuff and all that.Then barge into the bedrooms of the rest of the family yelling at them that they're gonna be late for church. And after that the wife feels so frustrated and pissed off at why everyone else in the family is grumpier than her even though they got more sleep than she did.

To the dude, married life is a series of minor catastrophies. He is fighting fires day-by-day and he gets tired.

This, ladies, is a dangerous situation. But it's even more dangerous if there are issues that need to be worked out. If the wife is unhappy with the dude over his job, or his pay, or his hobby. And she regularly makes it known by complaining or nagging at him about it. And he gets even more tired.

'Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.' (Pro 21:9) "Better to live in a desert than with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife." (Pro 21:19)

When we dudes look at you and decide that we wanna have a dating/courtship relationship with you, we usually are looking out for red-flags, warning signs that tell us the future problems we're gonna have with you when we get married.

And if we actually propose to you, we do so knowing your problems and hang-ups. We look at them and say "Hey, I can live with them." And we foolishly shrug our shoulders and assume that you ladies look at our problems and hang-ups in the same way too, that if you agree to marry us you're cool with who we really are, warts and all.

That's why, sisters, nagging and complaining about us hits us so badly. It hits us at our core emotional need for acceptance. If the woman I love and choose to spend the rest of my life with is so dissatisfied with me, there must be something really wrong with me. How then can I be happy with being who I really am?

It's kinda like rejection from parents - if the people who brought me into this world think I'm lousy, I must be lousy.

And at this point, any woman who can meet our core needs is gonna affect us powerfully. Hey, it may not even grow to the point of adultery. But doesn't it offend your very sensibilities that it's another woman who makes your husband feel good about being himself, and not YOU?

And if this other woman is genuinely happy when she's with your husband, he's gonna look at her seriously. Even if he's still loyal to you, if he's gotta choose between spending time with you (and hearing you nag) or spending time with her (watching her smile and laugh) who do you think he's gonna choose?

And don't let the marriage vow deceive you into thinking you can get away with emotionally abusing your husband. I had to confront this woman who discovered that her husband, a serious believer, loving father and a husband with a heart of servanthood, fell in love with another woman. It was only his love for God and his children that kept him from actually committing adultery with her.

I had to be the one who told her "If you've been threatening him with divorce at every quarrel (from within the first 3 months of marriage) and constantly telling him how marrying him has totally ruined your future, your hopes, your dreams and your life, how do you think he's gonna feel about anyone who's happy when she's with him?"

I plead with you, don't ever let your marriage go there. Because you know after every quarrel he's wondering why he married you instead of her. He'll be wondering how much longer he can put up with this. And he's gonna be praying "God, deliver me from this marriage!"

Guys, please recognize the power of the two needs I mentioned. You need a woman who makes you happy to be who you really are. And who is truly happy when she's with you. This is the type of woman you WILL love as you love yourself.

On your side the responsibility is this: NEVER commit yourself to a woman who doesn't fulfill these needs, or even worse, is dragging you down in this two areas.

I don't care if she's a pastor, super-model or worship-leader, I don't care how many church meetings, prayer meetings or bible-studies she goes to each week, I don't care how much she's "improved" (God, that word makes me cringe to the very core of my being!) since you first got to know her.

If she makes you unhappy about being you, or you can't see regular evidence that she's happy when she's with you (and don't lie to yourself guys), leave her.

Now.

Because it may be that this woman is unable to fulfill your core needs because of who she is as a person. And if you put her in a position where she HAS to fulfill them even though she can't, you are not being fair to her, putting on her a burden she can't carry.

And if you meet a woman fulfills all these needs for you, recognize this: she's like water to a thirst you may never realized you had. So before you totally lose all ability for rational thought, get a couple of good brothers-in-Christ to check her out and look out for danger signs that you're most probably gonna miss, because you're too deeply in love.

And sisters, when you look for a husband, I plead with you, don't just look for a godly man. Seriously, they abound. Look for a man for whom you fulfill these needs just by being you.

Because if you can fulfill those needs, you WILL respect your husband, as God commands. Effortlessly. It takes genuine respect for who your husband truly is as a person to make him happy to be himself when he's with you. And to be happy when you're with him.

Junk the angmo-nised cookie cutter approach to relationships and marriage that you'll get by browsing the Christian bookshops. The books that get sold there make you believe that marriage is meant to be hard work, and you need to learn 5 love languages, 5 needs of men and women and go through one year of devotionals on becoming soul mates.

After all the experiences I've been through and all the relationships and marriages I've seen, I can honestly tell you from the depths of my heart, if you're not soul mates to begin with, you won't be even after going through all those books, seminars and message CDs.

Finally, brothers and sisters, spend lots of time in God's presence. Because through the blood of Christ he's given you a darn good reason to be happy with who you truly are as a person and he's overjoyed whenever you're with him. And when you get used to having those two needs met by God, you'll recognize it when you meet that special someone who'll meet those needs for you."

The Ministry of Reconciliation: for Richer and for Poorer

2006-06-08T10:49:00.000+08:00

Just came back from church camp and it was as usual, a really really pleasant break.

Paul's second letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:7-12) popped up as I was preparing for the lessons. I am amazed at how stark and clear Paul is in his writings. Though these thoughts must have been conceived centuries ago, they are so sharp in their observation of what every Christian ought to be concerned with in the myriad large and small tragedies of human living.

I think so far, this has to be one of my most favourite expressions of what being a real Christian means.

"...We live by faith, not by sight...
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men.
What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience.

For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.
And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves
but for him who died for them and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.

Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them.
And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us,
so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

A Ministry of Reconciliation: how beautiful is that? We must tell people that in repentance, there is a place for them where all sadness can be put to rest, all mistakes can be forgiven and all hopes can find a firm foundation. We are refugees born in a world that was never meant to be this frustrating. The promise of heaven is not a promise of Care Bear clouds and Hallmark cherubs. The promise of heaven is a promise of Home.

Being a Christian means simply passing on the message you have already heard - Come Home. Be reconciled to all the things you used to hope for, all the goodness that you ever tasted before and wanted more of. Because that's who and what God is - a very real Person, a sum of all the things that Humanity has known instinctively as Good.

At some point, all of us will feel like the Prodigal Son - the proverbial never-do-well who reached a point in his life where he suddenly sees how badly he screwed up and does not think anyone could possibly want him back. God is the Father who waits with maddening patience at the door of the house, watching for his son to come back at last.

Reconciliation is a message of life for prostitutes, swindlers, liars, murderers, cheats, adulterers, the mean, the promiscious, the greedy, the lazy, the selfish, the idiot. In other words, every last one of us wretched little human beings. The lowest criminals are the first to have seen how clearly deadened they are. Those of us who have more happy, padded, entertained, manicured lives are just more naive and will take longer to see how far we have strayed from the home of our Ideals.

On the topic of reconciliation, I wondered too at camp about the whole idea of the Rich should help the Poor. I think we are all rich in many aspects - and we fail to understand the challenge of rich giving to the poor as long as we always simplify it into financial giving or even time giving. Sure we can give money and time - they are still valuable commodities - but there seems to be more to this giving of riches thing.

For instance: I know I have a wealth of smiling patience to listen to anyone. That is my riches in terms of personality. It's the way I was built, and it really is no great sacrifice for me to give a listening ear to anyone who needs it. An hour of listening to someone talk is probably what $1000 is to Bill Gates - small change. The true twist is when I think conversely of who the Poor that I should be reaching out to. My poor are the people who have no patience, no smiles to give, no social graces, no ease of communication. When I think of that, I get more scared and more sober about what it means to be giving.

My room-mate at church camp is one of the friendliest, sunshiney, beamy, high energy personality types I have ever met. She has just given up her banking career to go into Special Education Needs. She will be teaching autistic kids, kids with all sorts of learning disorders - she will give her riches of intelligence and ready smiles to students who may potentially never learn to smile back or think coherently their whole life.

Others who are not rich in social energy may be rich in the ability to organise and structure systems in a flick of an eye. Their Poor can be those who are an absolute mess and need someone strong to guide them through - be they a chronically distracted unemployed guy or a floundering badly run charitable organisation.

Provocative thoughts...I got to take them seriously. Hmmm....

getfuzzy

2006-05-25T16:39:00.000+08:00

getfuzzy
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

looks like I am not the only one living vicariously in Stormreach.
I lurve Get Fuzzy. How cool is it that I might have run by the artist before in the virtual world? Gonna check out every dude swinging a two-handed axe now. ha!

as a rude gamer t-shirt I saw online declare "Sleep is for the WEAK!"

LOL.

Why I Won't Watch Da Vinci Code

2006-05-23T18:59:00.000+08:00

1) Tom Hanks' mullet
2) Tom Hanks' mullet
3) Tom Hanks' mullet
4) Tom Hanks' mullet
5) Tom Hanks' mullet

Ye gads! Hair-style Liberals beware!
I am an anti-mullet facist-conservative-extremist-fundamentalist!
nyeah nyeah ni boo boo
His hair offends my belief system.
Quelle horreur!

hee.

Thoughts on TissueAunty's birthday

2006-05-21T23:21:00.000+08:00

It was TissueAunty's birthday today - I broke my promise to celebrate it with her over dinner(she insisted on treating) as I was in a meeting and prioritised that as more "important". I am kinda grateful that I got a second chance on my way home. Apparently after her birthday dinner, she went straight back to the little Bugis island, selling her tissue paper. She insisted on treating me to a drink and I sat with her for a while to make up for missing her birthday. Teasing her about her new haircut, I asked her what she wanted as a present. In an embarrassed whisper, she requested for a Singtel Hi Card and perhaps a little pushcart trolley to ferry her multiple bags of tissuepaper, knickknacks and all that she peddled. She also asked for prayer for her and her family.

I thought it was sweet of her to actually want to buy me birthday dinner. And sweeter still that her requests were so simple and asked for with so little bile or greed. She has so little and yet she wants to cheerfully share her wealth still. Since meeting her and being challenged by God on a personal level to be more participative in the life of the needy, I must say she has taught me some things about faith and perseverance in terrible circumstances. She has also shown me that God truly looks after the weakest and neediest in profound ways when we people neglect them. (Update: She found a flat that costs significantly less to rent and an easier-going $1200/month job manning a toilet at Bugis Village! Her son also secured a jib pushing a drink cart near Rochor. That's amazing considering her circumstances when we first met)

_________________

This made me muse a bit about something. On my DISC profile, with my high S and I, I am classified as a Counsellor/Adviser. It seems to tally with my experiences with random strangers. I am an uncanny magnet for strangers with the oddest hard luck stories on the streets. I think I send out a broadband signal - "easy target. will listen. likes oddballs. please approach. will find it hard to say no to request for conversation."

Everytime I meet a stranger with a hardluck story, I am challenged to put my beliefs about helping the poor to the test. I am fairly absolute in my statements to my students about the need to challenge the status quo and bridging the rich/ poor divide at an individual level as well as societal and international level. With each strange 'kook', I meet I am forced to readdress my values, "Are you gonna help or are you gonna walk away?"

It's really really tough and I can feel how easy it is to walk away. It is a temptation to help out in as fast, simple, "in and out" way as possible. Far tougher to make the decision to commit long-term to helping another person. It already is tough to dig out the wallet and dispense out the cash to a needy person. It is far far far tougher to go an extra mile and say you are willing to be involved beyond the chance encounter.

I know all the routine arguments because heaven knows, I have made them before in my lifetime ---- Yes, it is impossible to be involved personally with every single poor person that we meet, yes we can never insure that the money we give does not go to ciggies-drugs-alcohol, yes we are too culturally different to be of real use to them, Yes, I know we can just buy them food because that's what they need most.....so far the nagging feeling that will not leave my mind anytime I hear these arguments is - are those answers tripping just a little too quickly and conveniently off my tongue? Do my clever words disguise mere excuses? Do I want to buy food because I dont want to commit to giving real money and time to find out where exactly the person needs help in?

$5 for a pack of chicken rice is a cheap price to pay for assuaging guilty naggy feelings of "you ought to help the poor" and gaining the high of"wow,i am a generous person." We buy the drink and food for the homeless, feel warm inside with the chance to play benefactor and walk away from them for the rest of our life. We go back to our riches, they go back to an everyday reality of poverty. I just don't buy short-term charity. Real charitable work is a life-time commitment- a hard core decision to invest one's life in another's life. Cursory donations are useful but just don't cut it in terms of long-term solutions.

It's a challenge - and one that I am still wondering how I will fare in in my maiden effort/experiment with TissueAunty. Its tough...there have been so many encounters that I had where I was not sure how to go on further.

One time after working late at school, I was accousted by a drugged out looking chinese man asking for ten bucks. Not wanting to antagonise him, I listened politely to his ravings for a good thirty minutes - the conversation went from how his family betrayed him, to how he jumped off a building once and hurt his 'lum-par' (he gestured at his crotch violently to emphasise his point) but not one of his family looked after him, While talking to me, he would creepily talk at a space behind me, as if there was someone behind me. The nuttiest part was when he declared he had gone to prison before and was angry all the time and wanted to kill people. He stressed that sometimes he wondered if people walking on the street knew that he wanted to kill them. (At this point, I said, 'Oh no, I don't think they do and you should not kill people') He agreed and mentioned that in prison he met a Malay man who was always patient even though he insulted Malay guy's mom ('I call her C-B also he never angry!') From then, he wanted to be just like the guy. I nodded very very approvingly ('ya its good, learn to be like him'), gave him money and walked off as soon as it seemed like he was content he got stuff off his chest and was not gonna kill me.

Then there was the Eurasian man with one of those annoying survey forms who approached me in Raffles MRT, asking me questions about whether I liked my job and whether I was keen on switching careers to the sales company he was surveying for. I was trying to explain to him how I loved teaching and would never consider a career switch - he could not understand at all why anyone would not even try to find out how to get extra income. Conversation became a philosophical one about the nature of work and money with him trying to convince me about his stance - anyhow, turned out he was a slightly mentally unhinged unemployed man, sacked from his management post, and not taking it too well. He was a philosophy major and repeatedly made sure I understood that. Conversation lasted an hour. Anyhow, a few months later, I meet the same guy, doing the same survey at Bugis MRT. When he approaches me, I tell him straight away that he asked me before and we had a really long talk about why I was not keen. He goes on to reveal to me that he is angry the PAP wont subsidise his brain surgery and the government should watch out for how all the unemployed - "the walking dead" he called them - would rise up and overthrow it. He also names for me all the nasty civil servants he met at the CDC distributing social welfare. He also reiterates for me that he is not stupid, he came from a prestigious school and it was not his fault he was like that. (He spoke quite poshily actually, good enunciation)

And the most recent encounter: A woman with long greying hair, watery eyes and a mouth full of the smelliest, broken up , blackened teeth I had ever seen came up to me and claimed she had been praying for God to send her someone to help her pay her rent. The smell from her mouth was the foulest thing ever - she kept covering her mouth and apologising, saying she had cancer. She explains to me how her husband had died, and she was broke, and several times in conversation, she breaks off to pray one-liners to God. During entire conversation, she keeps reaching out to touch me on my hand and my stomach/waist when she wanted to emphasise "I am not a cheat. I got cheated before by a friend, I know what it is to be cheated. Please dont think I am one." We arranged to meet at City Hall the next day so I could give her some cash. She kept asking me to pray for her and how important it was because she had more vital spiritual needs than the material ones.
________

I wondered in every one of those cases, how could I offer long term commitment to help? When do I hand over the responsibilities to other people? It's a really tough call to follow. Need so much grace for it to happen! Still exploring....:)

Snipers

2006-05-13T10:07:00.000+08:00

According to the DISC personality test, because I am a super "S" type - I have learnt to cope with my environment by learning to be more objective and rational over people. I swear - that is a big challenge in the face of sniper-type personalities - you know, the kind who cannot resist giving you all their snipey little barbed, bullets of the day. Never fails to bring a good mood down to earth.

Is it a uniquely Singaporean social greeting to make comments about one's appearance? Like "You look very tired/haggard/fat/wierd etc." Whatever happened to just courteously asking after someone's general well-being or family?

The response that always runs in my head is - Oh gee, thanks for pointing it out! I wouldn't have been able to guess. I mean hello, if the person looks tired, he probably knows that he looks it and does not need you to unceremoniously point out how big his eyebags are, or how paunchy he is looking etc.

Of course, the silly part is, I know I have done that to people myself. Its like this horrible mechanism that pops into play - before you know it, you have said the dreaded words, "Oh wow....you look (Fill in the uncomplimentary blank)" ARGH. You have crossed over to the dark side before you know it.

Ok, must repent from planks of primary forest in my eye.

Must consciously say in head, whenever feel tempted to make 'evil comments' about someone's appearance, must replace with 'more encouraging comment' or better yet, just not comment at all.

The tongue! It is such a little monster!

The Measure of a Man

2006-05-11T14:41:00.000+08:00

Have been preparing for the Prejudice & Discrimination lecture this weekend by watching this PBS documentary - "Ghosts of Rwanda". Its a stunning piece of work - full of astoundingly frank interviews with witnesses from all levels of the 1994 genocide and their reflections on what they did to help or harm. From the big movers and shakers who basically waffled and did too little too late - like Kofi Annan, Madeline Albright, Clinton - to the NGO workers, reporters,UN soldiers and victims on the ground who were face to face with monstrosity. There was even an interview with one of the Tutsi extremist murderers who had eventually converted and repented of his actions.

There were several parts of the documentary that made me so incredibly angry. We can be such stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid evil creatures.

Watching the clip of the then-Hutu extremist leader Bagassora proclaiming with absolute righteousness that every Tutsi deserved to be destroyed made me so damnably frustrated that I actually hit the table with my fist. I just wanted to punch the *#$@!. It was a stupid, meaningless act but the only one I was capable of as a distant viewer, watching atrocities in the haven of a ridiculously privileged little Asian nation, through the pixels of a TV screen, immortalised in the shiny rainbow surface of a pretty shrink-wrapped DVD.

And then there were all those amazing unsung heroes who rejected the chance to flee for sanctuary, stood their ground and refused to turn away from mass murder: Un-named,unarmed UN officers who had nothing but wooden chairs, staunch moral conviction and bare hands to push away murderers who wanted to enter a church to kill the 1000s of Tutsis hiding within; Carl, the lone church worker - the only American expatriate to chose to stay in Rwanda when the whole expat community fled - who managed to save more people than his ENTIRE GOVERNMENT could by confronting Bagassora himself in a chance meeting. Mbaye, the Senegalese UN captain who ignored instructions to stay neutral and herded 1000 Tutsis to safe zones on his own initiative.

An Irish BBC reporter is shown in the documentary walking past 5000 bleached, shrunken corpses lain out in a church courtyard, piled there by their murderers. There is no mistaking the pain in his voice as he remembers seeing a pristine white statue of Jesus Christ with arms extended in welcome while below him, draped on the steps of the church is a rotting corpse, with arms similarly spread out. He said,"I was raised an Irish Catholic but I had drifted far far away from my religion. But that day, I looked at Jesus and I prayed for His Kingdom Come."

When I watched the political giants stumble over their words, shift their eyes away and twitch the corners of their mouths as they tried to explain how they could have turned away from such Evil, I realised one thing more powerfully than ever.

The measure of a man is not his earthly power - his riches, his power suit, his military might, his political position, his number of MBAs and glittering portfolio of experiences. All those countless stupid ads for luxury watches and diamonds that proclaim otherwise can bite me - not one of those silly trinkets defines who I truly am.

The measure of a man is the moral choice he makes in the face of Injustice and Evil.

When everybody else flees and everything turns mad, what kind of person you are behind all the gloss then becomes starkly apparent.

The documentary made me really realise:
I have no love for cowards and hand-twisting naysayers.
I have no love for smarmy, empty political rhetoric.
I hate too clever-by-half, snotty little soundbite answers for terrible problems.
I hate complacency and the excuse, "It's not my problem." or "I did not know".

The anger that came out of me while watching the documentary makes me seriously wonder what kind of person I will be in any ethical storm - as large as a national genocide or as small as a classroom decision.

Will I take my stand and take heart, seek refuge in the fact that I did what God demands? To save the wretched, the helpless, the child, the widow?

Or will I flee and seek refuge in nice-sounding euphemistic explanations? And worse, bleat God's name in vain to justify my inaction and complacency?

The measure of a man surely is in whether he chooses the narrow RIGHT WAY that is less trodden or whether he chooses the wide, crowded SAFE WAY to destruction.

When my kids watch the clip this Saturday, I hope and pray that something sensible will sit inside them and help them see that.

As for me and my bile against the murderous thugs of this world - I jsut hope I will remember "But for the grace of God, there go I!"

Confessions of Ashara Stormborn, 4th level Cleric of Stormreach

2006-05-01T16:57:00.000+08:00

Over the weekend, I was reminded that I had not been updating my blog for the longest time. Its kinda flattering to know people are reading your scribblings, so easily flattered goof that I am, I shall be suckered into trying to update again.

Anyhow: The reason why I have been offline on Blogger is pretty prosaic - I have been disgustingly obsessively playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, which launched in in April. It's my very first MMPORG - Massive Multi-player Online Role-playing Game. Within 30 days, I have racked up a shameful amount of gameplay into the wee hours of morning. But hey, anything to pry that +1 Flameburst Morningstar from the cold virtual hands of the evil Minotaur Priest right?

So in a short bunch of weeks, I have become one of the subculture of gaming nerds that sit in the LAN gaming centres at 3am, yelling, "RUN! THE SPIDER IS BEHIND!! WAH LAUUUUUUUUUUU." I have become well-acquainted with the bursts of virtual gunfire from Counterstrike ("Lock and Lode!" "Terrorists Win!") as well as the grunts of hard-working orcs from World of Warcraft ("workwork").

Apart from fulfilling my persistent need for gaming, it's a really fascinating phenomenon to dissect psychologically and sociologically. Ok, ok - so it sounds like yaya papaya justification for an insidiously time-consuming teenage-boy hobby but REALLY, I think the applications of MMPORG technology and thinking in other fields would be interesting to explore.

Darling Wikipedia informs us:
"MMORPGs have existed since the early 1990s. However, they have a history that extends back into the late 1970s. Over 25 years ago, players would connect to an entirely text-based world (no graphics) called a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) which was usually hosted at a University, sometimes without the knowledge of the system's administrators. The gameplay and community of these games was similar to the MMORPGs of today. MMORPGs have begun to attract significant academic attention, notably in the fields of economics and psychology that study relationships between real world economies and societies vs. synthetic economies and societies...."

What I think is interesting is how we take our real life personalities and ethics into the virtual world as well. Gaming - like sports - presents insights into people's motivations and character. I read somewhere that the cleric class tends to attract certain types of people - either the person wants to be really independent and self sufficient (able to fight and heal himself at the same time) or he does not mind using his own resources to help other people (spending spell points on healing other people instead of conserving for himself) Sounds more or less like why I keep playing the class.

Now based on that little tidbit of human psychology, we tested it out in real gameplay. My friend played a wizard and she got herself cursed and blinded - essentially useless to the party. I was too low level a cleric to have the spell Remove Curse/Blindness. So we sent her to a tavern in the game where other players from all over the world hang out and had her send a virtual shout-out, "Alms for the blind? Help the blind and needy". In-game, when you are cursed it is obvious to everybody as there is a gigantic ugly red and black light above your head. Sure enough, a total stranger helped out.

She, being Christian, could not resist sending out another virtual shout-out, "I was blind but now I see! Thnx."

Heh. Ok, Shall go find more serious topics to write about soon.

Meanwhile, I am officially a geek.

But you know....even The Geek shall inherit. haha

Miracles large and small

2006-03-05T23:14:00.000+08:00

A friend who went through much in life penned her thoughts on miracles to a group of us through email.
I thought it was quite poignant. Decided to doctor it a little, change the structure to disguise its writer.
But essentially this is it. Wanted to blog it, to share and remember it.

I think sometimes its just sweet to savour the miracle of being loved across the universe
- To know that Someone thought you worth the time and effort to befriend and behold.

The same sweet Someone who takes our inner desert of death and dryness,
digs and dwelves out a spectacular, gushing, flowing fountain of Life
and grows a Kingdom,

Amazing grace indeed :)

And now from J herself:

"There are times when my soul craves for the spectacular.

I cry out, like a child to the Father,
for mountains to crumble, clouds to burn, oceans to part, the dead to walk.

But of course, He knows better.

In the past, the children of Israel did not have God inside them.
He was outside.
So God needed to shout with the spectacular to get their attention.

Today, God is in us. Remain in him. He remains in you.

When He moves, we know.
We don't need to rely on the spectacular.

Today's miracles are just as spectacular.
But we don't see them outside because it is all INSIDE.

What we read about and gaped at in the old, is but a reflection of the greater in the new:
The spectacular within.

Today, walls still come tumbling down. Not of bricks and motar which we read about.
But of bitterness made sweet, unforgiveness turned mercy, fear turned to courage

Seas still part. Inside us.
Walls still fall. Inside us.
Darkness blazes into light. Inside us.
What was dead comes to life. Inside us.
Stone becomes flesh. Inside us.

One glorious day, these things will all happen in the Land of the Living once more in even fuller glory than ever.
Till then, we take heart, and wait on Him..the One who brings all things to pass.

It was so easy for me to miss the miracles that happen today.

I was looking outside."

thoughts on teaching

2006-03-02T00:50:00.000+08:00

this year i started teaching at a church run non-profit school for dropouts preparing for O level exams. The first thing that struck me when I walked into class on the first day was the collective visual impact they made.

The fact that all of them came in their own crazy piercings, coloured hair, ripped outfits, tattoos and make-up was jarring. My first thought was "Wow. I better know what I am saying. These guys are in their full on tribal regalia." It was massively cool in a "Dangerous Minds" sort of way but also fairly intimidating in much the same fashion. The first row of kids that faced me were Neo-goth punk boys. Two wore mascara, one had tattoos all over - including his girlfriend's name across his fingers and one massive neck tattoo of a pair of praying hands. He also had two gloriously huge, 50 cent size holes in his ear lobes.

I never gave much thought to the whole "wear uniform or dont wear uniform" debate. After all, I was used to putting on my little boring pinafore all the way till JC. I do understand now why they say putting students in school uniforms really does have a disempowering effect - all the students are made to look like carbon copies while you, the teacher, are in the position of power by virtue of your difference in outfit. It's akin to how soldiers, servants and factory workers all dress one way and generals, bosses and masters dress another.

Its been four weeks so far and already I see they are truly a tribe of their own, quite separate from the pristine mainstream. I have a sweet, lovely young librarian-looking girl next door who is already married with a little kid. When she waits outside the school with her Far East kid of a husband, I have to remind myself they are parents, not kids. I have a Young and Dangerous lookalike who can tell me he had not been turning up for class because he was clearing up a case at the police station.

But beneath the bizarro external side lies fascinating little stories. My mascara boy who togs himself up in skinny Britband ties and big punk pants shared with me that he loves designing Perenakan jewellery. My bouncer-looking, stocky mat-rocker biker boy reveals quite happily to the rest of the class that he is proud to be virgin and says his ambition is to be a good husband and provider to his future wife and kids.

Just this year, a fellow teacher shared with me some wise advice - "We teach who we are."

A good teacher prepares his students for exams. A great teacher prepares his students for life.

And of course, life is that funny slippery thing that can never be taught via text book...it can only be demonstrated, modelled, lived and shared. It is passed on through the ether, between the lines.

It's something I have grown very conscious of with my new discerning, tough as nails audience. I obviously come from a culture vastly different from theirs. They know it, I know it. Thankfully, they are sweet enough at heart not to hold it against me as long as I do the same for them.

How should I speak and teach such that they do not feel the difference between us, but the commonality that we actually share? How do I translate principles into lingo and images they understand?

Blogging is a funny thing - In an odd way, it is easier for me to be vulnerable through the medium of written words. You have the armour of weighed out thought and you don't directly face your audience and witness the immediate twitches people make in reaction to your words. It really is quite another dimension to learn how to be vulnerable on the fly, on the spot, at the moment when someone asks a cutting question or makes a shrewd personal remark.

The most powerful thing we can share with another person is the Truth of who we were, who we are and what we will be.
Yet it is the most frightening thing in the world to be truly vulnerable. It requires inhuman humility that only God can teach.

I guess to be a truly great teacher, you got to start and always continue to be a truly great learner. I need God to show me I can never think of myself more highly or lowly than I should. That's so tricky!

Anyhoo.....that appears to be one of my lessons for the year. Let's see how many decades I will take to ingest that!

tagged :)

2006-02-27T00:42:00.000+08:00

have been so offline that i did not realise i got tagged by Miz C all the way from Beijing. Ok, just for you, babe. :)

Seven Dreams Before Death:
1. See Italy again
2. Kiss a guy that I love
3. Publish a School of Thought book
4. Visit Auschwitz
5. Start a youth ministry
6. Have the perfect hostess' kitchen
7. Start and finish my own graphic novel

Seven Things I Can't Do In This Lifetime
1. Be perfect
2. Kiss a guy that I don't love
3. Give up dreaming
4. Give up carbs
5. Drive
6. Look anything like Stephanie Sun
7. Understand accountancy and the theory of relativity. (i tried many times and failed)

Seven Things that Attract Me
1. a man who has learnt to be grateful for all that he has
2. humbleness in any company
3. wisdom to listen
4. an ability to laugh out loud
5. ability to both offer honest criticism and honest praise
6. an open, generous, kind heart
7. Self-awareness

Seven Things I Say
1. "Okaaay, can you rephrase that in another way?" (classroom)
2. "Think...don't just wait for my answer....think!" (classroom)
3. "Wah lau...."
4. "orrrr?! Win already lor!"
5. "Oooh...!" (for good food, nice clothes, smarmy attempt to make fun of people etc)
6. "...(random made-up tune)..."
7. "I don't THINK so...!"

Seven Books I Love (guilty pleasures included)
1. The Song of Ice and Fire series (George RR Martin)
2. The Dragonlance series - Chronicles and Legends only
3. Donald Miller's Looking for God Knows What
4. CS Lewis' Mere Christianity
5. The Bible - especially the Book of John
6. Philip Yancey's What's So Amazing about Grace / Soul Survivor
7. Doestevsky's Brothers Karamazov

Seven Movies I Love (guilty pleasures included)
1. Memento - too clever by half
2. Defending Your Life - nerd full of fears and too many words gets the smart girl.
3. Can't Buy Me Love - i love me a nerd gets the girl tale. this is classic
4. Pretty Woman - honestly, it's a heckuva trashy movie that I can watch again and again.
5. LOTR trilogy - especially Two Towers, come on, its Helm's Deep!!!!
6. Before Sunrise/ Before Sunset - killer chemistry. realistic characters.
7. 2046 - did not love the show as much as i loved the train of thought it was able to spark off. would never watch it again.

all the people i could tag have been tagged....although if you are reading, SkinUp, HKGirl..I would love to see your list!:)

h@te!

2006-02-06T12:09:00.000+08:00

I REALLY REALLY REALLY h@te the overuse of "@".

I get severe heartburn (akin to when I hear timmy thomas' Dying Inside To Hold You, but that's a rant for another day) when I see it! So was superduper amused when I found someone had already written a diatribe on it. I particularly love his analogy about the 50 year old man - it really really hits the spot! :)

BadBranding@Singapore by Imagethief

"I keep thinking that the brand developers of Singapore will outgrow "@", and they keep disappointing me. I was scandalized five years ago when the glamorous, new office tower at Dhoby Ghaut was named "Atrium@Orchard". In 2006 using "@" in a brand is beyond unforgivable. It's the branding equivalent of a fifty-year old man with a pot-belly and severe male-pattern baldness growing a pony tail and getting his ears pierced in a futile attempt to stay youthfully hip. It reveals a failure to grasp contemporary style that is so final and absolute that it obliterates by definition the very sensibility that it was meant to create."

The Meme of Four

2006-02-01T00:29:00.000+08:00

4 jobs you have had in your life (discounting current job)
1: Waitress
2: Burger Flipper
3: Editor
4: Designer / Illustrator

4 movies you have willingly watched more than once
1: Defending Your Life
2: The Breakfast Club
3: Can't Buy Me Love
4: Dirty Dancing

4 interesting places you have slept in:
1: 6 months in a Spanish inspired appartment in Westwood, California
2: 3 years on a mattress under my studio table in the School of Architecture, Singapore
3: 1 sleepless night at the hostel Carlito's Way, Rome
4: 1 prayerful night on a roughspun bunk in a Monastery of Silence, France

4 T.V. heroes you loved as a kid
1: Bob, the pianist on Sesame Street
2: Jem, the pink haired superstar (truly truly outrageous!)
3: Tony Hart, the artist on TV whose pet was Morph, the plasticine man
4: the guys on the Curiosity Show

literary memes?

2006-01-31T23:26:00.000+08:00

Literary Meme #1: Stray Thoughts
"1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences (#5,6,7) on your blog, along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it. Just grab what is closest. No cheating."

My nearest book was in my bag "Soul Survivor - How 13 Unlikely Mentors Helped Me Survive The Church" by Philip Yancey. The sentences come from the chapter about Leo Tolstoy and Feodor Dostoevsky. Two authors I keep feeling inspired to read but never actually getting down to it.

"As I look back now on the cloister of Southern fundamentalism in which I grew up, I wonder if perhaps I suffered from a narcissitic disorder. I saw the world through the shuttered windows of church and family, with no ability to project out of myself and comprehend the viewpoint of, say, a sharecropper in rural Alabama or a Polish immigrant in the Bronx, much less a member of the aristocracy or a peasant in 19th century Russia. Tolstoy threw open the curtains, beckoning me into a world I knew nothing about."

Great book! The opening chapter about pastor turned controversial civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. and the closing chapter about Catholic priest Henri Nouwen are truly moving. The last paragraph in the Nouwen chapter is just....phwoar.

Literary Meme #2: 6 Writers who Shaped Your Thinking (and their book that meant the most to you so far)

1) Louisa M Alcott - the Little Women quartet (Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men and Jo's Boys)
2) Anita Roddick - Business as Unusual
3) Paul of Tarsus - First Letter to the Corinthians
4) John Zebedee- The Gospel of John
5) Philip Yancey - What's So Amazing About Grace?
6) C S Lewis - Mere Christianity

Faking Church

2006-01-28T10:58:00.000+08:00

just thought i would plug a pretty good book I finished this week. It's called FAKING CHURCH by Dan Schaeffer. It addresses the phenomenon of how even the most well-intentioned Christian can be faking his way through his relationships with other people. Gently written as much as possible, this book is still a real jolting reminder that christians need to constantly take an honest look at why we serve and how we do so. I like that Schaeffer keeps everything very real, grounded in his own mistakes in ministry and in the cases he sees in his own church.

When I read it, I felt compelled to ask myself a lot of hard questions behind the things that I do or say. It's pretty humbling, sobering stuff and not for the faint of faith. But it is well worth a read whether you are serving in a ministry or not. :)
___________________

on the other side, I stumbled across a superduperly ODIOUS website full of self-righteous Christians mocking the works and ministries of other churches. Not gonna post their website address.

I was quite taken aback by their snide, easy judgementalism, all backed by dozens of Scriptural references. ARGH!!!!!!!! How can you look at God's words and not see? Worse of all, in the Comments section, you can read how they all pat each other on the back for being the faithful servants of God keeping the sinful world at bay. It's like "oh congratulations, you so rightfully pointed out that XXXXXXX looks exactly like a sluttish whore of Babylon on her book cover. Her eyes look exactly like a witch's. tsk tsk, she's going to hell."

ARGH ARGH ARGH. This is why 'conservative christians' has become an insult. No no no no. Why are you people doing this?! Have you not seen? Have you not heard? How many times did Jesus tell you he (not you!) will come to judge? You hard-hearted, blind .....gah! (end of rant)

dream dream dream

2006-01-28T10:25:00.000+08:00

this post is triggered off by Orangeclouds' posting about her strange angry dream. Suddenly made me recall that i had the oddest dream last night - one more to add to my collection of strange movie-dreams.
________________________________________________

I am hustling through a dark neighbourhood filled with confusing side-streets and poorly marked signposts. I am obviously hurrying "home" - wherever home is in the dream. A group of strangers run past me at one point carrying parangs. I am momentarily freaked but glad that they ignored me. Feeling tense and scared, I finally find the compound I am looking for.

In front of the compound, a guard says, "Quick, get in , get in, they are looking for people." He resumes sitting on his wooden stool, pretending to slump casually so he does not alert anyone of the tension going within the compound.

I fumble at the crusty old wooden gate, wondering where the latch is. When I finally find it and step in to the courtyard, I see a man being tended to by a woman. He sees me and says, "They chopped off my fingers."

I look at his hands - indeed, they are a mangled jigsaw of flesh. Some fingers are foreshortened, some have been crudely sewn back. His hands are an angry red colour.

I wake up.
___________________________________________________

bizarro. This goes down in the books, right next to my "Conversations with Hitler", "Japanese Samurai Household Dies in Symbolic Glory and "Attack of the KIller Cartoon Shark" dreams. They are just so way out there beyond comprehension.

My recurring dreams are simpler to understand - "Going To Europe And Discovering I did not Pack" is about fear of not being prepared. "Chinese Exam Day And Discovering I did not Study" is about fear of not being prepared (again!) and old chinese exam anxiety (yes, it still haunts me), "My Room Turns into the Temple of Doom!" is about my childhood paranoia about snakes.
I have yet to figure out what those dreams about losing all your teeth mean.

Best recurring dreams I have had would be "Travelling in Europe for a month and only waking up when plane touches down" (desire to go on more holidays) and "Cute Guy Shares Umbrella With Me in the Rain" (desire for cute guy to share umbrella with me in the rain? cheeeeem.)

Someday, it would be nice if God could tell us why he gave us strange dreams. Freud's answers just cannot make it ah!

mental games

2006-01-25T11:46:00.000+08:00

was looking at article about how Constance (the former VJC girl, ex air stewardess who fell in love with a karang guni man)finally got convicted for killing little Sindee Neo. The photo they had of Constance was so normal looking and sweet-faced. The psychologist's take was that Constance had spiralled into where she was now because her schizophrenia went unchecked.

I wonder what was going through her head from her fresh faced JC days all the way to her standing before the judge, getting her sentence.

here's one ridiculous conundrum i find myself on some moody days:

sometimes i will start by wishing people were easier to understand or easier to talk to.
Then I start wondering how easy I am for someone else to understand.
Then I worry that though I may think I am easy to get to know, I may be deceiving myself in actuality.
Then I start worrying about whether I am a hypocrite.
rinse. repeat. angst.
kick self in backside.
return to living normal life.

I wonder what other unproductive mental cycles of silliness we all have within us? Those private, bizarro self-defeating mental routines that are triggered by goodness knows what? What little madness-es do we have within us and hide?

sometimes when i see 'mad people' or extremely socially awkward people, i wonder exactly how disimilar i am actually from them.

hmm.

boob tube

2006-01-24T00:54:00.000+08:00

So on the 1030pm bus ride home, I lug myself up the double deck. Sit down and lo and behold, TV mobile is beaming the Victoria Secret show. The wonders of technology - Free Boob-Show across hundreds of buses across Singapore! LIVE! In Technicolour!

I am not exaggerating to say almost every single male on the upper floor could not keep their eyes from wandering towards the flickering images of boobsy supermodels struttin' their stuff in the flimsiest of bra and panty combos. Even I had a hard time stopping myself from giving the models the once over. After all, those ubiquitous angel wings and bling-blings Tyra Banks and Heidi Klum were sporting weren't exactly doing a great job at providing cover.

Quite funny to see how the Victoria Secret show tried to 'intelligent' up their show by having industry experts comment on how talented Miz Banks was, how she brought 'a certain something' to the poses and runway strut. Okaaaay.

Anyhow, its definitely a mildly disturbing experience to sit among a whole floor of guys - young teens and old uncles - so obviously hypnotised by the boob tube. Ack. It parallels the time I went to a comic convention and saw a whole ARMY of guys camcordering this girl dressed up as Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider. You could tell from their expressions what they were trying to capture. Ew ew ew!

hello, TV Mobile! what's up with the boob parade!?

super belated christmas pic

2006-01-18T02:01:00.000+08:00

xmas2005
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

Kudos to Alto for the trigger happiness. Kudos to all for the game participation in Mission:Carol To Your Folks.

People displayed love in many ways on christmas 2005. Let's keep that up and see what christmas 2006 will usher.

An Insight into God's Love

2006-01-17T23:26:00.000+08:00

Today's bible study was still on the 1st chapter of the Book of John. I had read through it in the afternoon and I was kind of dry of any major insights. Basically, nothing leapt out to me as particularly striking or memorable. So it was really encouraging to find that studying the Word together with the group at night brought a fresh look at what seemed like a pretty innocuous little episode in the dramatic Book of John. I must have breezed past these 5 verses so many times without catching how... profoundly... moving it is:
_____________________________________________________________________

John 1:44-50

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph."

"Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked. "Come and see," said Philip.

When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, "Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false."

"How do you know me?" Nathanael asked.

Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you."

Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel."

Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that." He then added, "I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
_____________________________________________________________________

You have to ask yourself, why on earth did John the Apostle think this little exchange between Jesus and Nat so worthy of recording? Nat is hardly an iconic figure versus Doubting Thomas or Peter the Rock. Nat hardly gets featured much beyond this little exchange. Up to now, I don't think I remembered there was even a Nat in the gospels. Jesus did, though, and I think that's the point.

Picture this: Nat walks up to Jesus without expectations. He thinks he is just checking out what Philip is making such a fuss about. He had just mused aloud to Philip about the impossibility of Jesus, the supposed heavenly Son of God, coming from a rundown backwater town like Nazareth.

Jesus looks at this guy, sums him up in a glance and makes this absolutely way-out compliment,"Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false." I mean, seriously...if someone came up to you and told you that you were 100% True Quality, you would gently remind the person, "Please! I am still human! I am not perfect."

Is Nat the True Israelite? If so, why aren't we writing books about him and calling him a saint? How could we have overlooked this paragon of virtue in history, certified by Jesus Christ himself? Surely, Nat must be a normal bloke. Nothing else in history - aside from this exchange - renders him otherwise (as normal as the rest of the disciples at least).

How about Nat's reply - "How do you know me?" Either Nat is being outrageously audacious in agreeing with Christ's assessment of him as Israel's Boy Wonder. OR he is being earnest, a little awed and doubting. I would go for the second option as I think it makes more sense.

If someone told me I was 100% True Quality, and if that someone was really quite perfect himself, I would respond that way. I would not be able to believe the compliment without hesitation. I would filter that compliment through my own glasses of self-introspection. I would like to know how it is that this guy Knows me in a way I don't Know myself.

No doubt this must be running through Nat's normal bloke-like head. That's what makes Jesus' reply so profoundly moving and enigmatic - "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you."

With one simple sweet sentence, he strikes right at Nat's heart, through every fear and every doubt. He just tells him I AM the God beyond all time and all space. I knew you even before it was your time to come to me. I saw you for what you were before I met you. And now that you stand before me, understand this - I Know. I Know.

That's all that Nat needs to realise the compliment is no less than God in human form Himself. His breath crushed out from him as he tries to grasp the bigness of what he has just heard, he declares in awe, '"Rabbi...you are the Son of God...you....are the King of Israel."

Convinced by the emotional power of the moment, he lays his first promise of faith before Jesus. Yet, his new Lord looks at him and Knows this as well. Jesus offers this very sharp insight in surprising gentleness and grace - "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that. I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man"

What amazing grace is this? Jesus knew Nat believed at this point only because of the sheer power and emotion of the moment. Yet he kindly promises him signs of greater things that will help his belief take deeper root and find larger form. Jesus saw/sees who Nat is/will become as long as he abides in Him - a true Israelite, without blemish or falsehood.

Nat may not be able to see himself as clearly as Jesus sees himself but One Day - One Final Day - he will. Till then, let him rest in the assurance that Some One loves him enough to see all that he will be, not what he presently is.

We are exactly like Nat - ordinary in a sense, not cosmically heroic, full of little doubts and fears. And for us Christians, we all have had that one day, where despite our silly remarks and general ignorance, Jesus met us in an unforgettable encounter. He blew our minds away with the depth, height and breadth of his Love for us. So many of the writers of Psalms breathe endlessly about the love they feel from the wonder of having a God know who you were as your little atoms were being slowly knit together in the womb.

I think its hard for human beings to find someone they can trust enough to know them and still love and forgive them. I don't think any of us can find another being of that calibre. Even our best friend or spouse cannot unflinchingly access the deepest, most personal, most shameful, darkest, smallest parts of You.

But God sees and Knows and does not turn away. I think that's why so many of us Christians fell in Love with him. You can't help it when you are faced with that kind of Love.

Like Nat, we must wonder - how can you love me so much? How can you, the Perfect God, pay me such a compliment that I too am Perfect? Jesus answers - Have faith and remain in me. I Know already what you were, what you are and what you shall be. I shall make you clean. I shall make you real. True. Perfect. Because I am real, true, perfect. You don't see clearly. I do. Trust how I see you and how I see things. And have the faith to live accordingly.

I think being a Christian gets much easier and much more beautiful when we grasp more and more of that truth. His Love is enough. Understand the full depth of that grace we have been extended and you can run through life with feet fleet as a deer. You will scale new heights. Not by your work. By His grace.

When we are deeply loved, joy and genuine living is simply a natural outcome. We love because we have been loved and known first.

We are a living work of art. Artists Know fully the perfect vision of their work in their heads. They understand the process of perfecting can be a painful, funny, messy, beautiful, terrible thing. If a process sketch looked at himself, he would see scribbles and scratches and a faint concept of perfection. It would be terribly difficult for a 2-Dimensional sketch to imagine what the 3-Dimensional Artist must be visualising. He may not understand that he is Fully Known already despite his scribbly state. But he does not need to understand at this moment...as long as he knows in part for now, and keeps faith, he will see that Perfection come one day. Just as the Artist has always Known.

No wonder Paul the Apostle writes so breathlessly in 1 Cor 13:12-13:
"Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Indeed. We are already creatures that are fully Known. It is the fully Known version of our little selves that God sees and welcomes into his Heaven. Fully Known only through being fully loved. And Christians only know this because we too made the same simple faithful response Nat had so many years ago when faced with Jesus himself - "You are...the Son of God."

Just a response. Nothing more. Nothing less.

That's all it takes to understand the secret of the KIngdom of God.

Let's spend a moment to just bask in the tremendous-ness of that fact.

2006 Resolutions...sort of

2006-01-12T01:04:00.000+08:00

In no particular order.....

1. Get a new Powerbook once and for all. Yay!

2. Be a humbler listener and curb instinct to be a holyschmoly smartypants!

3. Actually use my PDA to organise the chaos I call my mind. Got plans? Execute, execute, execute! and use that PDA to help!

4. Spend more time with my family. House not equal as hotel you know.

5. Get back in gym rat mode. Last year of gym membership- diedie must chao kuan use to the fullest!

6. Clean up 1/4 of the chaos I call my room (1/4 is realistic estimation I think)

7. Adopt a hamster to channel all my lack-of-a-rabbit-affections to.

8. Share and admit to my weaknesses more often to curb instinct to play holyschmoly smartypants!

9. Stop drinking teh si like its the last drink on earth. Must...try....other....drinks.

10. Go on One Good Date. Mwa ha ha. Insert archi insider joke.

11. Love God. Love Neighbour. Feed Sheep.

An afternoon with Samo

2006-01-11T23:40:00.000+08:00

I have not been blogging because I have not been particularly inspired. It wasn't that life was boring or bad - the past two months actually have been pretty great. But nothing moved me enough to set aside time to blog. Musing about whether my blog had breathed its last, inspiration literally walk in through my door.

The lights in my office always do a major short circuit when the stormy season sets in. Old buildings and slack management may make for great rental rates but poor maintenance.
So I made an appointment with the in-house electrician to get my lights up and going again.

My management has a knack for hiring the funkiest looking electricians - the supervisor is a 40 something Phua Chu Kang clone, from fluffy Afro to long fingernail; his junior is also in his 40s, resembling a slightly skinnier Samo Hung complete with bowl-shaped haircut and teeny old man whiskers. They are truly old-school, honest-to-goodness blue collar to the bone types - their PDAs come in the form of mamak shop bought 30 cents spiral bound notebooks; their skin uncompromisingly tough and pockmarked; their accessories only come in towkay-gold.

PCK was away so Samo turned up, all apologetic for missing several appointments he had made earlier on with me. I left him to fiddle with the electrical wiring while I went into the next room to tidy up files. Feeling whimsical, I played an old Hillsongs CD and wondered what God had in store to show me for the year ahead. 2005 was full of encouraging random encounters and I asked Him in my head when would be my next. Turns out it was going to be in a couple of minutes and iut was gonna be good ole Samo himself.

Samo walked in and mused, "Eh, miss, you Catholic ah?"

"No, I am Christian. Why? You are, ah?"

"Eh Miss, you tell me, don't mind me asking, why my uncle can become so powerful?"

"Emm...did your uncle become a Christian?"

"Ya ya. Aiyohhh he was very naughty,miss, last time, so naughty that he went to jail you know? Smoke, gamble, drink. Very naughty ah! But then he ah...go church. Then now, very good already! I cannot believe. How come he got power ah?" He looked at me earnestly.

At this point, I could not stop smiling at him. He really looked very perplexed.

"Emmm....it's not magic power like bomoh or taoist priest that kind. Different power. Your uncle became Christian. He knew he had no more power to change himself so he let God change him. You know what we always want to do good but diedie also end up doing some bad thing. Can be very frustrating and feel very sad. We have no power."

"Ah miss, I am not Christian. Then I try to run away from my uncle because he always bother me to go church go church. So I go to give him face then he stand on stage and talk you know? I don't believe he so naughty last time, can stand up there so neat, wear tie, comb hair, like good like that! Wah I really cannot believe."

"Heh."

"Some more, miss, I tell you, I never tell anyone before....er am I wasting your time ah miss?"

"No, no , it's ok."

"Goodgood....you know when I went to the church ah, I dunno why you know! I don't understand what they are saying, what plihplahplihplah but you know miss, I CRY you know? Dunno why also! I dunno why I cry! And when I ask my uncle he also say he dunno why. But he say he believe I will become Christian one day. But you Christian too right? Maybe you can tell me why it happen?"

I could not believe my ears. That was exactly my conversion experience. Dragged to church by a friend, God pierced through all my unbelief and ignorance with a bout of inexplicable tears from nowhere as well.

"That happened to me too." It was such a cool moment, to meet another person whom God reached out to in the same way.

Just then, his handphone went off - a crazy caophony. It was another tenant bugging him about another appointment.

"Oh sorry miss, sorry I must go fix another light. Eh you don't mind, I talk to you about this Christian thing another day ok? Sorry I waste your time ah."

I told him anytime was good for me. And he had definitely not wasted my time.

_______________________________________________________________________
Postscript - For some strange reason God keeps sending people who are far more proficient in dialects and chinese down my path. Maybe he is telling me its about time to reclaim my mother tongue. ha!

silly conversation

2005-12-16T00:06:00.000+08:00

guy: Eh you want to eat cake? W just passed this to me. He got it for me while he was on holiday with a friend.

Me: Oh that's so sweet that he thought of you while he was overseas!

guy: Sweet? Wah lao, that's what you girls would say lah. We men don't need that kind of thing.

Me: So what did you meet up with him just now for?

guy: oh he wanted to pass it to me and just chit chat.

Me: Aw. That's nice of him. He wants to be your friend!

guy: Ah talktalktalk that's all you girls are interested in. Everything also wanna talk. We men just meet up, don't need to talk, just do things. Like that friend friend enough what. W must be gay lah. always want to Talk talktalk.eh how come you girls can be total strangers but meet up then can talk talk already?

Me: dunno. wired like dat lor. we like the company. anyway you guys will play basketball with strangers also what.

Guy: That's different. No talking involved. Just game.

Me: Then after game, if the stranger guy tries to start conversation or asks you to go out with the rest of them to eat dinner, will you go?

Guy: That depends. If I won the game, then yeah I will go. If I lost, no way.

Me: Hah?! This is why you men die earlier, right? You drive yourselves crazy. You guys are crazy.

(Note: No guys were harmed in the making of this blog. Also this conversation was totally tongue in cheek.)

mambo revisited

2005-12-15T09:28:00.000+08:00

Last week I had agreed to accompany these 2 kids to Zouk's infamous Mambo Night. They thought it would be good to get 'exposed to the happening things'. Ha. So standing in the uber long queue to get in, surrounded by gaggles of teenyboppers, I wondered if I had made a mistake. I was obviously in a whole other age bracket from the rest of the crowd. :)

People-watching at Mambo Night as an Old Fogey yields great fruit. Unlike a regular club with people my age, you can go really invisible here. Nobody wants to check out or chat up the Lao Aunty after all right?

Things to note:

#1: Many Mambogirls like to wear that hip-bone shearing, low-cut denim skirt as popularised by Mischa Barton of the O.C.
Team it with long straight hair and lashings of plastic beaded jewellery. A popular runner up look - the evergreen lowcut cami and low-slung jeans combo. Sure-fire combo to get people staring at you especially when one has drunk too much, passed out on Jiak Kim Street itself and Zao-geng for the whole world. Nice.

And SCENE - "SAndra! Do NOT Slide down on me! Get up. Come on STAND up!" Girl trying to hoist up friend who had slithered off a bench and onto the road, said-low slung jeans sliding dangerously half-down her bum. Her valiant friends
had to struggle with simultaneously hoisting her as well as her jeans back up the bench. She thanked them by throwing up. Friends loyally held her hair back and rubbed her back. Ah....undergraduate friendship! Those were the days.

#2: Mamboguys are a lot better dressed and dance way better than mamboguys from my era. Gelled up Japanese street hair is de rigeur, teamed with polo tee with collar turned up (preppie look), or t-shirt with some nutty graphic (street look). Adventurous ones added on a funky jacket.

#3: Mass Dance is in. Gone is the one-finger in the air, shake your booty like you just don't care male undergrad dance.
Apparently everybody has studied the same library of dance moves and do it together like some kind of Dance Dance Revolution or Para Para thing. And they do it with frightening intensity! You ain't seen nothing yet till you have seen the moves to Sqaure Rooms. The action for the chorus is reminiscent of the moves I used to make with my fingers for Itsy Bitsy Spider. Brrrr.

#4: Zouk is like the new Church for the kids. When Michael Jackson's Heal the World came on, this wierd hush came over the crowd, everyone sang in unison as if it was some great hymnal. They did it for Black Eyed Peas "Where Is The Love as well". It was kind of bizarre. I still hate the MJ song I realise - "There are people dying! If you care enough for the living, make a better world for you and for me!" Come on....Gah the sugariness! the empty goody-goody lyrics!

#5: They play some one-kind of bizarre songs - techno Dancing Queen anyone? GhostBusters?
Oh and they played Timmy Thomas 'Dying Inside to Hold You". Ten years has not been enough to kill my hate for that song. Gah!

All in all, had a pretty good time actually. But like the Old Fogey that I am, the nicest part was the post Mambo, go Geylang for cold soya bean drink bit.

"So would you go back again? Did you have fun?"

"Ya maybe. Did not recognise many of the songs. I don't get out much. Swakoo."

"It's ok, lah. Not important to fit in to the culture. You got a lot going for you already. It's fun, just go with a bunch of good friends you can trust but don't need to keep going back. Enjoy the fun parts but don't go looking for the darker side of it."

"Got darker side meh?"

"Ya....its stuff you only notice when you get older lah. It was all happening right in front of you but you were too busy looking at the ParaPara platform dancers."

"Ya you know like that horrijible Pussycats Dolls song? Dontcha wish ya girlfriend was HOT like me? Dontcha wish your girlfriend was WRONG like me? DONTCHA! All those girls trying too hard to be sexy to get the attention of the guys."

"Gross. Mmmm soya bean."

:)

The Game of Life

2005-12-11T00:18:00.000+08:00

Warning: meandering post

In between working on school proposals for 2006 and doing much copious gaming as a mind-reliever. Right now, am playing a Gestalt version Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) campaign with two of my ex-students. It's movie-worthy stuff: 3 clerics, each from a different faith, take on a dangerous fact-gathering mission in a Dark Tower to stop a war between the Living and the Dead. I built a (very cool) elven 6th level monk/6th level cleric, a Whirling Dervish from the Order of the Phoenix.

I often get polite smiles when I mention I am a gamer to people over the age of 20. The polite would good-heartedly show some interest. Less polite audiences would a) proclaim gaming was something they 'outgrew' (insert pompous look before shifting conversation to more 'adult' topics) b) laugh off with embarrassment for me c) ignore what I said. Hence, I pick my audiences for revealing my pet hobby.

Among some people, it seems more kosher for a girl approaching the big 30 to announce she is into shopping and fine dining than it is to announce you like occasionally roughing up a bunch of no-good orcs. Is it so unbelievable that a girl can get as much kick out of finding a cute cropped cardi as much as finding a non-existent +5 Cloak of Improved Invisibility?

Traditional table-top D&D gaming is more fun than its flashier computerised versions. Of course if you are a simple Hack & Slash type of Power Gamer, who only plays to rack up bajillions of points or for an ego rush of kicking some one else's ass, you would definitely disagree. If you love spontaneity , social aspect and creative story-telling, nothing beats good ol' table-top gaming.

The smartest game software written cannot replace the unpredictability from playing with real-life people, making choices for their characters based on existing values and ideas.

While I loved Neverwinter Nights and Tomb Raider, in computer gaming....
1) your character's ethical choices are not a real make or break factor.
2) victory is a pre-programmed, sure-thing thanks to the button "SAVE GAME" and the plethora of cheat codes
3) you don't get face-to-face, humour-to-humour, idea-to-idea interaction
4) you get less of a chance at building up real-time relationships from gaming relationships

vs. table-top D&D roleplaying where....
1) your character's ethical choices would really have a discernable consequence on the rest of your gaming team.
e.g. If you created a lawful good righteous paladin but thought there was nothing hypocritical about using him to torture enemies into confession or cheating on taxes, your little misdeeds would cause you to lose your faith and powers.

2) victory is a lot more open-ended and unsure where a lot depends on the rationality and wisdom of choices made by your team-mates. There is no "SAVE GAME" - death is death especially if your game master decides to rule out the availability of character resurrection. There are no cheat codes that you can download. You wanna cheat, it's up for debate among your team and your game master to approve and allow.

3) you get to know the inner quirks, beliefs and ideals of people thanks to their being put in outrageously, unreal situations.
Designed well, table-top gaming can be a smart, social game with in-built capabilities for challenging people about their pre-conceived notions and beliefs about Cause and Effect. An example of in-game conversations:
"Oy, Why your stupid barbarian go and chop off the man's head for? He already begged for mercy!"
"He got money what. KIll him then can take lor. His +5 longsword very nice."
"You supposed to play a GOOD character man! Some more your barbarian wisdom supposed to be high. Eh must think through your next decision ok..."

Occasionally I get bouts of wondering what is a Christian way to game. Or whether Christians should game in the first place.

I thought this article put it quite well.."What Game is the Devil's Game?"
http://www.geocities.com/christian_gamers_guild/chaplain/faga015.html
"Faith and Gaming: Devil's Game: The question is often asked as to whether there are any games Christians should not play. Series author M. Joseph Young names one that would surprise most people, and in so doing sheds some light on the question itself..."

Of course I don't believe D&D, Harry Potter, Buffy, golf, tennis, photography, pop music etc are without their pitfalls of course. Take gaming - I get exceedingly tempted to turn down invites to socials and talks because of the allure of a D&D game. When I start to prioritise chopping up virtual monster spiders and collecting virtual gold over talking to flesh and blood people, I know I need to stop. When I start wasting too much time, money and brain-space on gaming, I know I am in trouble.

Fpr myself, I actually think I am in far more danger when I watch a trashy Hollywood romance or read some rubbishy "chick-lit" than when I read Harry Potter or play D&D. I realised that when I was channel-surfing the other day and found myself watching the whole of America's Sweethearts. It was a total candy-floss of a movie where Julia Roberts ends up canoodling with John Cusack after losing 65 pounds and conditioning her hair. Catherine Zeta Jones also whines, pouts and purrs her way out of adultery and general brattish behaviour. My thoughts after the movie were a mix of "yeah yeah life is easy if you are as gorgeous as those two women", "I want that room" and "I wish I could find a guy like John Cusack".

They were frivolous passing thoughts but I was struck by how they registered so clearly in my head. I can objectively recognise the silliness of the thoughts but nevertheless they surface unasked for. And the thoughts speak to my personal doubts, chinks in my Christian armour. I am sure enough of Christ's work in me to not be stumbled totally but nevertheless, I would not want to tempt myself with a marathon trashy romance movie marathon if I can help it. Conversely, another person might be able to turn his brain off in the face of a romance movie, but finds himself thinking "I wish I really had magic powers. Life would be easy" when he plays D&D.

So should a Christian play D&D, go Zouk, play mahjong, watch RA movies? My layman understanding - We all face the same problem of Sin. But Different people have different strongholds or weak spot, different ways to go astray. We cannot ban everything for the sake of not stumbling another because it is near impossible. There is always something in this fallen world to stumble someone. Instead we really have to just tailor our responses and choices to every unique relationship, every unique context and always always go back to seeking God's Will.

If we think the most evil game in the world is Pokemon, Golf, Gin rummy, Monopoly, Harry Potter or D&D...we have failed to remember what the Game of Life is really about. There is a more real and terribly insiduous form of Evil out there. To simplistically equate the work of the devil with games and Harry Potter movies would show we don't really understand how terrible Real Evil is. If we make Evil into a straw man, we reduce the Christian fight into a simple list of "Do" and "Don't Do", "Do Read" and "Don't Read".

Evil looks a lot easier to understand and conquer when we reduce it to a bits and pieces of pop culture to avoid.
God and The Devil seem a lot less real and less intimidating when we cariacature them.

While a file uploads...

2005-11-22T12:32:00.000+08:00

am stuck in an internet cafe while the rain is pouring outside. I have got two 2.7MB files to send out and yahoo mail is taking centuries to attach my files to the email. Oh the wonders of the Internet age. Takes me less than a minute to access my email but almost much more than that to get the mail sent out. grrr. At least the damage is minimum - $1.50 for 30 minutes of use. Cannot complain.

Shall write List while waiting....(love lists...another reason why I love High Fidelity)

4 Sites that I just surfed while waiting for Yahoo to do its work:

1) Bioware.com: To see progress on Neverwinter Nights 2.

2) my own school of thought mail server - which apparently is doing a much faster job uploading my fat files.

3) Rottentomatoes.com: to check out reviews for Harry Potter. Loved Goblet of Fire!That has to be the best cinematic dragon I have seen so far. Also, those kids are really really growing up fast. Those are man muscles on Harry and Ron..scary.

4) TuxedoDiplomat's recommendation: a nice little animation about love lost and gained again on
http://www.cube-creative.fr/site/html/nt/nt_lc/akoa_hd.html

Okay Down to my last minute of time before I have to pay more than $1.50. Logging off now like the miser that I am. :)

back from the dead

2005-11-13T00:36:00.000+08:00

i have not been blogging in a while because of exam boot camp with kids and sudden attraction to bed and trashy tv. After teaching, the last thing you want to face is more words.

Post LAN gaming with ZhangZiyi, I thought I would at least attempt an entry to jumpstart the blog again. So to make things simple, I thought I would just make a list of ...

5 would-be blog entries I might have written in the past month if I had the energy to

#1: Musings on the notorious BBC brain-sex quiz
(go take it if you have not! www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/)
- So apparently like most of the ARPC gals, I have a male-ish or androgynous brain
- I scored way above average (8/10) for ability to empathise through reading body language and way below average (4/10) for ability to systemise and compartmentalise. Now I understand even more why I am a dunce at planning and organising. Tables, graphs and charts send me shivers in a bad way.
- the "pick which face you are attracted to" test was mighty disturbing. Felt like was looking through mugshots. All the faces looked like potential psychopaths to me. I think I consistently picked 'only just prefer' as options.

#2: My love-affair with "SnowWhite", my little Nano
How cool is it to orchestrate your personal soundtrack to the movie of your life? Would you be a hero in a Hollywood popcorn summer flick or a gritty independent film? How the function 'SHUFFLE SONGS' becomes a fun way of playing roulette with your reality. A mundane bus-ride home can suddenly turn into an indie-worthy moment when the theme from Eternal Sunshine comes seeping through the earphones.

#3: How I am the world's crappiest liar
Apparently I just cannot keep a poker face when it comes to keeping significant secrets. I can lie perfectly well if its for the sake of keeping your surprise party a surprise. But if you ask me to be your secret-keeper for big, bad things....I won't divulge a word but my face apparently betrays everything. I have no future in espionage.

#4: The marathon of things I want to do in November-December, my mild panic at my ability to do them and God's answer via one crazy ex-insurance agent who has made himself my personal Cheerleader/PseudoManager. The man actually gets a kick out of writing To Do lists.

#5 The coolness of the Oestrogen Brigade
An ode to female friendships and the art of bonding over Re-Bonding. How an afternoon at the hair-salon with the gals can be a great reminder of why I will always want to be a girl and not a guy.

Boot Camp

2005-10-20T00:18:00.000+08:00

talked and talked and talked for the whole of today. A level Boot Camp is no joke man. My day as a long running gabfest would look like this:

Don'tWriteAboutBigEvilMedia!
BalanceWithIdeaOfMediaAsPossibleInitiatorofSocioPoliticalChangeYa?
HeardoftheZapatistaRebels?ReformationandRenaissanceandGutenbergBible?
Glasnost?CensorshipIsNecessary.WhatAboutThatVoltaireGuy.
RememberGuyRightsCannotBeDivorcedFromResponsibility!
HowDoesMediaProgrammingTodayLinkToViolence?
Passivity?AgressiveTendencies?BeholdenToPoliticalAgendas?
IsTVCompletelyUseless?WestWingAsCleverCommentryOnAmericanForeignPolicy!
YouDon'tKnowWhatIsSesameStreet?WahLauBertandErnie?
YesBananaTradeWarIsGoodExampleofCorporatePressureOnMedia
OhDon'tForgetWatergateScandaletcetcetcetcetcetc..........

sometimes when I end the day I am just completely talked out. My words come out tongue twisted and garbled. Towards the end of the day, I start repeating my words to kids because I keep stumbling on my tongue. Its a fun job but honestly, sometimes I wonder how scary it is that they are taking down every single word I say.

I try to warn them jokingly,"Oy, I am making this up as I go along. Don't assume everything I say is grammatically correct!" I get mildly worried when they remind me I never completed one of my sentences. I have to remind them why I dropped the sentence half way was because the syntax got screwed up. They jot jot jot jot down everything any way and look all giggly when I tell them like some whacko Pai Mei-esque sensei,"Don't just COPY! Understand! See The Point! See The Link. Understand and Apply!" I need me some bushy white eyebrows.

It's so cute to look at them and remember what it was like to be 18 and panicky. I still get the rare recurring nightmare about A level Chinese exam paper that I failed to study for. haha.

Other things I tell them irreverently:
"Fail A levels neh mind. Can sell chicken rice. I tell you go find a nice old famous hawker who has ungrateful sons who don't want to study his art. Go bai him as shi fu. Then even if you have F for GP, you can still drive Mercedes and be in Makansutra."

"Don't do well for A level also still got hope. Look at David Gan, he is practically illiterate and he lives in the penthouse at Paterson Edge and sits on Versace furniture. Elim Chew, Jean Yip all these people, they don't have grades but they have guts. That makes the difference ok. Don't play play. Not doing well may end up being the best thing that happened to you."

"Aiyah, just do your best. I swear everything will work out some how. Can one. Any way, even if you don't do well, think about how amazingly fortunate you still are in Singapore - all the multiple opportunities. Sleep on the street also can depend on the policeman to pick you up and put you in a home for vagrants. You could have been born in Rwanda. If those guys can hope in something, you can too. A levels is SO not the end of the world."

But as we all can testify, at that age when an adult says things like that, you don't really believe them anyway. Some things just need perspective and the enlightenment of Been There Done That.

Ended day at 11pm drowning in blissful brainless trashiness of girly magazines, toasted sandwiches frm Hans, re-reading Revelation 21 and 22 and praying with a friend. Now working on design project. probably end at 3am.

But it was a busy but nice productive day.

And tiny flash of existential angst from night before has simmered down. Amazing what a night's sleep will do.

Now thinking : Little steps, little steps. God knows what He is doing. Don't fret too much about things beyond your control or understanding. Just overcome. Just stay true. Don't be cowardly. Just stay faithful.

In a little while, you say? Okay Boss. I believe ya.

A LIttle Less Conversation. A Little More Action

2005-10-19T01:55:00.000+08:00

...so sayeth Elvis the King.

Mildly depressed by thoughts in head: If the Kingdom Come is the most important hope of Christians, then why don't more of us behave as if it is? If we are supposed to hope for Christ to come back like the apostle John prayed at the end of the the Book of Revelation, then why do we act as if He is not real?

I don't know what's more depressing some times:
a) the lucky who have already seen the truth of Christ and yet remain unmoved, lukewarm or deliberately contrary.
b) the large numbers of people who have not seen the truth of Christ.

Its moments like this where you realise its all about faith, hope and love.
The greatest of which is love. No sense getting angsty or angry at people or at God. Just trust His plan and keep loving people and honouring the Truth.

Should my walk be just talk talk talk
Should my praise be yadayadayada
Should my worship be just blahblahblah
If I start acting like a KnowItAll Holier Than Thou jerk
Just kick me hard, ok?
I mean just KICK me.

'Cause that's gonna be nothing compared to the colossal Kingdom-sized kick in the ass I will get when Christ returns.

Wonder how God puts up with our jerky behaviour sometimes. No wonder they say Love is Patient.

Sigh.

If you are wondering, nobody was a jerk today to me. I was not a jerk to anyone today (but if I was please tell me, because I could have been blissfully ignorant). Just having a mild fling with Christian existentialist angst in between working at 2am on things that will all fade away. ha.

_______________________________________________________________________
U2's Yahweh lyrics to flavour a snotty, not so cheery blog

"Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes
And make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt
And make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul
And make it sing...

...Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break."

A Long-awaited Conversation: thoughts on friendship

2005-10-16T23:20:00.000+08:00

In the gorgeous dark woodiness of Mezza9, I met L. for a long anticipated good conversation. Scrooge McDuck that I am, I normally shy away from expensive places. This time though, it seemed fitting to celebrate this moment properly.

After all, this conversation has been 4 years in the making. Heaven conspired to make it happen.

L has always been floating in my peripheral vision. We had been through a series of bizarre events together. Though there have been one or two attempts on both ends to get to know each other better as a consequence of bizarre events, no real friendship ever took root. We both were not ready for it. Our hearts were closed and the intentions too shallow, the fears too many to found anything solid on. Christ had not readied either of us for the moment yet.

Genuine friendship seems to require as much of a miracle as a genuine romantic relationship. Both parties need to be open, interested and willing to give it a go. I suppose next time, if I am ever tempted to think of why I have not been abundantly blessed in the romance department, I must give thanks for the extensive way I have been blessed in the friendship department. Real friends - encouraging, heart-to-heart, walk-me-through-Damascus friends - are true miracles as well.

Back to L : I have prayed for her to know God from time to time, always hoping that she would find Him in an unshakeable, healing way. I prayed sporadically, without any real expectations beyond a vague hope that something would change. God held more true than I did, thank goodness.

When I found out two weeks ago that God had dragged her into His Kingdom in a mighty big zap-from-the-sky way, I was literally dumbfounded. I sent her an SMS to gush out my congratulations and that led to many emotional SMS exchanges gushing about the amazing, fabulous, cunning, humourous, no holds barred God that we were now sharing at long last.

I love it when I can gush with a fellow believer about God - it makes me feel for the Paul-like ideal of Christian community. Paul was the original gusher - he really poured out his heart before the brethren he wrote to. Just check out the abandonment of his greetings, encouragements and grievings. I want to feel as passionately as he felt for the godliness of his fellow believers.

When L and I met today, we talked for three and a half hours straight - exchanging our salvation stories, summing up the past four years, musing through the life-changing revelations God led us to and urging each other on in our newfound desire to be humble and love our parents more meaningfully. "What's keeping you in your comfort zone?" she challenged me about my reluctance to be more consistent in relating to my mother. I was grateful for the fortrightness. She after all was taking a big step of her own with her mother. It gladdened me because she was the last person in the world whom I would expect to hear that from and want to be held accountable to. God has a great sense of timing and humour.

We talked about coming to realise that in Christianity, one's commitment to anyone and everyone was for life. Our relationships - friends, family, husbands to be - once committed to Christ, were meant to last through thick and thin, till His Kingdom Come. I think we are mistaken to believe that marriage is the only major, no-holds-barred commitment we can make in our lives. When Christ called us to be living sacrifices and be a Body to each other, I think He was that serious. Marriage just happens to be the most obvious, visible manifestation of sacrificial commitment. It does have the extra element of literal cleaving onto each other of course which makes it a unique commitment. But I think we need to seriously reconsider our unconscious devaluation of Christian relationships as lesser things compared to Christian marriages.

She handed me my birthday present. It was brilliant - throughly unexpected and genuine in its effort to find something I would want but never get for myself. I told her by SMS later that the conversation we shared and her present were one of the best birthday presents I had ever gotten in my life.

I was gladdened by our newfound friendship. I also thought about how I never had this chance to welcome somebody into God's fold before. It made me think I want to have more chances like this - where I can literally celebrate your turning point from "dead in sin" to "alive in Christ". We should celebrate this momentous occasion with great fanfare - after all the angels are rocking up a storm for us up in heaven as well! (Off tangent: I think we need to celebrate each other more in general. For instance, birthdays should be celebrated as rejoicing in your growing another year in Christ. We should not dread aging, disdain or brush aside birthdays as nothing. They are a momentous occasion for celebrating Christ's gift of life! We should not see it as a time to wheel out a perfunctory cake and card.)

730pm : It was a lovely conversation as we both hoped in our earlier SMSes. We searched for Christian books in Borders for a while and decided to part at the junction of Scotts and Orchard.

"Hey," I said, "Welcome to the kingdom." I gave her an embrace.

She returned it with the firmness that comes from sincerity.

She smiled and said,"We will keep talking." She later sent an SMS musing that she had a feeling we would be in each other's lives for a long time. I believe her.

We both left for home. I crossed a street. It glittered with rain, headlights and possibility.

God is good. His ways are high ways.

I Heart Les Miserables

2005-10-15T01:00:00.000+08:00

For nostalgia's sake brought on by previous post.
The Epilogue rocks like nobody's business. So Revelation.

CHORUS
Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light
For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.
They will live again in freedom
In the garden of the Lord
They will walk behind the plough-share
They will put away the sword
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward!
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!
Tomorrow comes!
Tomorrow comes!

[The curtain falls.]

Charming Schmarming

2005-10-15T00:50:00.000+08:00

E.B.'s piece about the sleaziness of fairytale princes and Marx's musings about what modern day princes need to do to win princesses had me thinking too about where I got my ideas about romance and What Maketh a Real Prince from....so, here goes.

Age 4 - 7: Guy as One and Only Saviour. Ew.
I never liked the fairytale romance set-up. The Prince Charming archetype seemed as insipid and interesting as a Ken doll. I privately thought (overly precocious kid that I was) that Charming did not deserve such luck with the ladies of LaLa Land. Let's see: Charming had looks, money, a kingdom that dear King Papa gave to him. Snow White endured an abusive mother, was a great housekeeper to seven boys and was kind enough to inspire the huntsman to feel great guilt. Cinderella patiently put up with an abusive family and was a great housekeeper (coincidence?) and caretaker of little animals. Briar Rose aka Sleeping Beauty ummmm....had it pretty good, except for having parents that offended the Evil Witch Next Door. Bah. Charming Sucks.

Age 8 -10 Guy as Nice Symbolic Accessory. Eww.
The next Romance Typology I was exposed to was in Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, 3 Investigators type books. I hated Ned Nickerson, Nancy's useless boyfriend who seemed useful only as a decoy or a conveniently-just-in-time rescuer. I always wanted her to date Frank Hardy, the more steady, intelligent and manly of the Hardy brothers. (Joe was just a frat boy. ewww. and the 3 Investigators were basically fun but asexual.)

Signs of alternative concepts to come : Came across the abridged version of Dickens' Tale of Two Cities and was kinda taken by how Sidney Carton secretly loved Lucie Manette so much that he took the place of her fiance in the guillotine to preserve her happiness. When he sees the guillotine and thinks "This is a far far better thing than I have ever done", I was like - whoooo, you the man. Also discovered Little Women series, got terribly charmed by the sweet old-fashioned and chaste take on marriage and courtship there. Alcott's Protestant values were all over the book. Loved Jo's clumsy little romance with Professor Behr best. But then again, every girl loves Jo.

Age 11 - 13 Guy as Sacrificial, Grown-up Partner. Mmm.
From that Sidney Carton thread, I went on being more inspired by the romances I saw in my Dragonlance fantasy novels and X-Men comics. These were written for older audiences, so this was my first exposure to more adult ideas on romance. The Dragonlance novels were written by Mormons so some Christian-like elements were insinuated into the character's romantic choices. I liked how Tanis Half-Elven had to learn through multiple losses to appreciate that his childhod infatuation for Laurana needed to grow up into a more enduring, steadfast love that could survive a dark, suffering world. I liked how Laurana was inspired to mature her own whiny crush on Tanis when she witnessed how the sacrificial patient bond between Riverwind and Goldmoon brought hope and faith into the land. I was moved by how the tortured knight Sturm Brightblade gave up a chance at romance with his soul mate so that he could meet his final destiny, to fight in faith and die heroically in a pivotal battle. All of them so noble, can die. My teenage heart goes truly gaga.

Age 14 - 19 The Possibility of No Guy. Woah.
I discovered Les Miserables as well as the longsuffering Eponine in Les MIserables and her soliloquy "On My Own", destined to be the classic torch-song of all single women of the world with secret crushes on unattainable men. :) I had no sympathies for Cosette (her unwitting rival) who got all she wanted with little effort. I developed great admiration for Jean Valjean - the single Christian martyr of a man who devoted his entire life to Loving others. I was really taken at the final scene when Valjean lies dying and he sees a ghostly vision of Eponine and Fantine, women devastated by earthly romances, calling him to find the rest he deserved in the Kingdom to a greater glory and a greater Love. Phwaor.

When you think about it - It is a mindblowing thing to witness as a young, non Christian. It was an extraordinary, inspirational alternative message to the usual 'Everybody Gets Married/Falls in Love/Escapes With Their Soulmate' ending of musicals like Sound of Music, Fiddler on the Roof, Phantom etc. The promise of a Bigger, Profound Love versus earthly romance was a tremendously moving concept.

Age 20 -28 Christ enters picture. Win Already lor.
My take on romance today? If I can find the great equation of Guy Who Loves God + Who Tries To Love Others + Who Incidentally Kinda Loves Me too, I think that's a pretty cool foundation for romance to start. No more. No less.

What would I totally go for? If I see the guy constantly thinking about God, looking out for needs to care for and people to reach out to, and if I see all that brings a genuine smile to his face, lightness to his step and infectious confidence and passion to his voice - whoo!!

Chocolates, flowers, charming demeanor, moonlit dates, witchkilling, dragonslaying kinda cute, maybe sweet, slightly gimmicky BUT eh, completely and utterly negotiable.

Postscript - writing this blog kinda makes me realise how impactful undercover-Christian books, film and television are. I never knew all that stuff shaped my thinking on romance so much. We need more Christian artists, musicians, writers and filmmakers out there to produce subtle, insightful cultural goods!

thoughts on a 28th year of life

2005-10-09T23:11:00.000+08:00

It has been a sweet birthday week - not a dramatic one - but one which I find particularly endearing. It has been a birthday week of small gatherings and gentle words, old friends and new ones, old hopes and new dreams, excited promises and godly encouragement. And so my birthday week comes to an end. It's near midnight, and I am wondering how I can capture what I am feeling and thinking in words. What have I learnt by 28? Have I aged with grace? Am I happy? Do I like where I am going?

I love growing old. I like watching myself change internally and externally with the passage of time. I love the taste of being another year wiser and I love knowing how it is God who has made all the difference.

When I was younger, I thought great birthdays had to be ones involving melodramatic presents, frantic partying plans or some secret surprise from a guy crazy for you. Of course, I still love a well-orchestrated surprise - increasingly harder these days because I am such a wily, nosy sniffer out-er of surprises that I spoil my own fun.

But at 28, I realise I have acquired a taste for the romance of the seemingly everyday and ordinary. I have learnt to seek the beauty of 'the simple life' - being as kind and gracious to as many as possible, being glad in heart for all of God's blessings, being ever watchful for opportunities to serve. I realise I don't want anything more. I don't want a life anything less than that. I don't need that car, that appartment, that lifestyle, that dream man. If I get them, I will be glad and thankful for the luxury. Meanwhile, I find an alternative list of things I need and want.

I realise I do need to know I have been courageous in the way I loved.
I want to know I have been kind.
I want to die with peace in my heart that I fought a good fight.
I want to die knowing with all my heart, that I tried.

Today, at church I prayed for God to break my heart for Him. I prayed that too as I blew out the candle of my cake a few nights ago.

I think that's all I really want. I have seen how much more pours out of my heart when He breaks it compared to how little comes out when He leaves it alone, whole but complacent, un-Touched, un-Moved. I don't want anything more than to have this life spent and spilled as an offering for His cause - Love Him and in turn, Love My Neighbour. Left to my own devices, I would not live my life so vulnerably.

Where I used to aspire to impossible and dramatic dreams of making the world a better place, I have learnt to focus on making my small corner a better place. God has portioned for me a home, a school, a disciple ship group, a circle of friends, a local church. What is the best way to steward these gifts? How can I truly love the person next to me in a way that is deeply meaningful? These small, simple questions are the foundation to large, complex, purposeful living.

On my 28th, I am grateful for miracles...

...for how faithfully God takes this lump of selfish complacent clay, sees the best in it and shapes a useful life out of it.

...for how God broke my heart the first time to show me how that was in His plans to bring three struggling souls - including mine - to a far, far better place. I am awed and humbled by how much more imaginative He is that I am. In all my imagined scenarios, I would never have seen things come to the point it has. I have rediscovered an old friend and uncovered a new one.

...for how through that, God shed my facade of contentment and grew the urgency to learn how to give more of myself, to care for others in more sacrificial ways.

...for how God is slowly but surely cracking my cynicism and hardheartedness about caring for my parents.

...for how in my discouragement, He taught me the need to encourage

... for how faithfully He has provided over the whole span of my disparate self-run career. If you know my lack of money-mindedness, you will know it is a miracle of Five Fishes, Two Loaves. I still cannot believe it sometimes.

... for how many friends and strangers He has brought my way, each a mirror of a greater Picture of Heaven. How beautiful it is to see stony hearts transmute into flesh. Every changing life in front of me is a blessed assurance of a Perfect future to come.

...for the opportunities I have been blessed with to serve and minister. I am honoured and thankful to those who have welcomed me to share in their burdens. The sharing of your burdens, sorrows and joys has been a privilege I will try not to abuse or forget.

So what did I get this birthday week?

...bags blue as the summer sky and red as sun-warmed brick,
...a new wallet to replace a stolen one,
...flowers chosen for being both hardy and enduring as they were beautiful
...a nice morning of peaceful grocery shopping with my mother
...an empty museum to draw in
...an SMS promise of one long, good conversation and many more to come
...the sweet shared joy of friends coming back find the Promised Land after years of wandering in the Desert
...a truly surprising gift with a hefty price tag and a gently offered compliment "You are always worth it"

In my 28th year of life, my 8th year of Christian life, I am happy.
Happier still to say - I owe it all to Christ.

He made all the difference.
Nothing can I boast in.
May I never admit to anything else.

I can't wait to be 29.

Laugh Lines

2005-09-30T09:59:00.000+08:00

avatar2
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

I have been musing about what I have accomplished before the next birthday arrives.

Lately, I have been noticing that when I smile, deep lines appear at the corners of my eyes more prominently then before. When I stop smiling, they disappear. Time would eventually make them more visible and permenant. They call those lines crow's feet or laugh lines I think.

I read somewhere that the face you get when you get old and wrinkled is the face that you really deserve. I think what the guy meant was that if you spent your lifetime smiling or frowning, it would show. The regularity of what you used your face for would carve itself inevitably on your flesh.

So yeah, accomplishment #1 -I got laugh lines now. I earned them. Cool. Hope they deepen.

But meanwhile moisturise, moisturise, moisturise. :)

Snippets from studies

2005-09-30T09:49:00.000+08:00

neonangel
Originally uploaded by neonangel.

Snippet #1: Paul, Is that you?!

Have been moved by 2 Corinthians this week. Larry Crabb's exposition on how to encourage people in a godly manner drove me to check out Paul's letters with new eyes. I never really thought of Paul the Apostle as a real flesh and blood man. He always seemed like Superman. But now when I look at Corinthians and see how human he let himself be, I am even more amazed by this man of God. I never realised how emotionally available and intellectually honest he was with those he ministered to.

As the hiphoppers would say - Respect, Paul. Respect.

Snippet #2: Revelations Is Cool
At bible study, we realised that the great Exodus of the Jews from Egypt was a shadow of the great Exodus we can expect to go through on Judgement Day. We too will be freed from the chains of slavery - not to Pharoahs but our fallen state. We too will march into a Promised Land, far more perfect than Canaan.

It kind of puts everything that is said in Exodus in a more poignant light.

This particular verse caught my eye:
Exodus 14:13 "Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still."

Be still. Quiet that fearful heart as you face the desert before you.

the paradox of being encouraging

2005-09-23T01:26:00.000+08:00

Have been fascinated by the concept of encouragement ever since I read a book on teenage education reminding us to "Encourage" not "Exasperate". Pour courage and strength into those in need. Do not take the wind from their sails, remove the breath from their bodies. Pretty profound stuff in terms of the implications on our relationships.

Been reading Larry Crabb's Encouragement (from the 30% Tecman sale!) It's an interesting book on how to build a culture of meaningful encouragement in church.

Interestingly, what stood out straight away in the book was his matter-of-fact observations in the chapter labelled "The Character of an Encourager".

Paradox 1:
"We all resist being dependable. We would rather be dependent. Yet becoming dependable is precisely what christianly ministry requires."

Paradox 2:
"The more determined I am to minister, the more painfully aware I become of my desire to have someone look after me. If I am committed to helping another, then I am never free to abandon myself to another. Yet this is what my soul cries out for."

woah. You are hitting it on the head, Crabb.

"People who take seriously the goal of ministry, and who are careful to prevent their desires for receiving ministry from becoming their goals, will inevitably encounter a profound loneliness. An awareness develops that although we may share with others, we can never fully depend on others....Even if he were to scrap the purpose of ministry and actively seek to end his loneliness through others' ministry to him, he would find no real satisfaction. The best of friends will inevitably fail us, because of self-preoccupation or imperfect understanding....The human condition in its fallen state is a lonely one, and a commitment to minsiter compounds the problem."

Ouch....very honest stuff Crabb but awfully depressing. When you gonna kick in the godly way out of this paradox?

"Here's the surprising virtue of loneliness...Godly character requires knowing God firsthand. The route to knowing God eventually passes directly through the valley of profound loneliness. It is in the times when there is no one but God that we learn to know HIm most fully. Those times...come only from emptying our lives into the lives of others.

When we depend on no one to minister to us, when we thankfully accept the little encouragement coming our way from others, then the soul will feel its deepest longing - to abandon itself to someone perfectly reliable and strong.....when the loneliness is greatest, we turn in desperate dependency to God. His love penetrates most deeply when we feel unloved."

"The character of an encourager must be strong. It must be molded and hardened in the fires of loneliness when no one but God is there. And loneliness - that surprising opportunity to know God - comes as we so throughly commit ourselves to ministering to others that we depend on God alone to minister to us. His ministry draws us into HIs very presence so that we can speak to others from holy ground. Then our words have power for good."

okay, before you think Crabb is a masochist who advocates leaders getting all maniacally depressed and stoically lonely, he does write an incisive follow-up chapter called 'When Do We Tell Somebody Else How We Feel?". Fabulous stuff in there and other chapters as well - must read for every Christian but especially those in teaching or leading positions.

..but yeah, Wow. I felt so challenged and so encouraged at the same time reading that chapter.

I want to be a better encourager. It's really good that Crabb pointed out the pitfall of "profound loneliness" to come that awaits. It allows me to prepare my heart and mind before hand to blunt the impact a little.

I have tasted a teeny slice of that kind of loneliness in my maiden foray into playing at being a real encourager. It's a little scary to know I may not even have experienced the full extent of that type of loneliness yet. Am sure many pastors and missionaries have been there and done that. It certainly is a revelation to me about how much MORE we need to pray and guard our church leaders' emotional and spiritual health.

If I feel pangs of loneliness doing my small scale ministry, what on earth must be going through our pastors' or song leaders' heads when they stare out at stony faces in the congregation?

Now I know why Pastor C has been reminding us to turn up on time for church with the mindset of encouraging each other every opportunity we can - in parking properly, in waking up on time, in genuine friendship breaks, in the way we sing, in the way we listen to sermon, in the way we talk to our neighbour after sermon.

We must do so partly to encourage each other. But in between the lines... I think just as importantly, we need to do so to encourage Pastor C himself.

woah. okay. Got the message.
Am on it, Pastor C. Thanks for the heads up, Crabb. I owe ya one.