interdependent


re-learning
February 1, 2010, 6:36 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

it’s exasperating to be re-learning something you used to have at your fingertips. chemistry and physics are two such subjects.

i think it’s even more difficult than learning something for the first time.



city harvest, citycare and sun were awesome in this haiti relief effort
January 31, 2010, 12:22 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , ,

i was trying to search out the report on straits times about our citycare teams in haiti. needless to say, there was tons of negative comments about our efforts there. lots of comments cutting down every good-willed efforts of the church/teams/sun/whoever-you-can-drag-into-the-conversation.

city harvest sent out a team and they asked why aren’t pastors being sent along (actually pastor kenneth was sent along with the first team). the teams were there for 10 days and people wondered why was it such a short trip and if it was just a to-make-them-feel-good-holiday. they even wondered if they were being chased out of the country for not contributing. sun went to encourage her teams and they had to say it was a PR stunt.

there are people who are injured. people who are sick. and we send in doctors and nurses. and so, which part of the equation doesn’t add up? maybe my brand of calculator is different.

from the description given by the church/tweets, the journey to haiti is indeed difficult and treacherous. they had to fly to jfk, then miami, then dominican republic before finally reaching haiti. so it might even be a 3 day journey just to reach there. but once they’re there, it’s most probably just crazy times. no time to eat. poor sanitation/hygiene. extremely long working hours. grief from the whole situation. continual scare from the aftershocks. the fact that they can do that continually for even three days is highly admirable. hence, to retort that it was holiday and it was too short of a journey is absolutely unfair and inappropriate to say to these heroes.

despite all the backlash, i am very proud of city harvest, very proud of the teams and very proud of sun. they are perfect examples of people who do not just talk, but actually walk it out. i know im personally too inconsistent to do that myself, which is what makes they even more awesome in my eyes.



swell
December 20, 2009, 10:00 am
Filed under: god

god, i’m so afraid that my head will swell so big that i’ll lose sight of you again. keep me in check. keep me focused on you. keep me in the right place, doing the right thing for you.



travels
December 14, 2009, 12:02 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

i was just reading qg’s lil cousin’s blog and she was kinda complaining about travelling times when travelling between cities/provinces/states. and she’s so right. that was one of the things that really really plagued me when i was in san diego. i had to take 2 hours up to LA, when it looked sooooo close on the map. and 6 hours across the whole country to reach new york. i mean, seriously, the country was THAT big. i guess that concept was really incomprehensible to me who grew up in singapore that’s hardly even the size of san diego county.

we are sooo small. and we soooo need to expand our horizons.



past me.
December 13, 2009, 3:48 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

today i met so many people from my “past” that it felt funny. and i actually managed to have at least one sentence of conversation with them. this is as opposed to my usual “glance-away-and-avoid” stance. it felt weirdly familiar yet strange. circumstances have changed. we have grown up. people have gotten/going to get married. started work. and stuff like that.

i hope ive the same feeling 5 years down the road. but not look at the past me and wondering wth happened. but glad that ive moved onto the next level.



obsessed about korean dramas
November 9, 2009, 4:17 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

in recently months/years, ive come to learn more about my obsessive nature. it’s probably the obsessive-compulsive disorder (ocd) that everyone talks about. but i seriously get addicted/sucked into one particular thing once i start on it. if it’s a korean drama, i HAVE to finish it, even if it means i dont get to sleep till 9am. the same goes for sudoku (and killer sudoku) and many other random stupid games. maybe it’s the recognition of this ocd that deters me from wanting to learn/know new things. but on the other hand, it might be just an excuse for being lazy.

i was hooked onto the korean drama “a star’s lover” just a while back. and by a while, i meant 5 days ago. it’s 20 episodes long and i’ve already watched it twice. albeit the second time was the fast forwarded version. i started on thursday night and watched 9 episodes till 8 in the morning. then i continued on friday night where i finished the remaining 12 episodes at 9am. sometimes i wonder if i’m the only crazy person who does this. but i hope not. dont wanna feel screwed alone.

but the show was really good!

choi ji won was the lead actress and she was really pretty and elegant. she had quite a bit of act cute scenes that sometimes made me cringe, but i can absolutely forgive them. and since im a sucker for sappy-ness, her tears make her even more endearing to me. and her character’s persistence in pursuing the man of her dreams is so attractive.

and the lead actor was yoo ji tae. he was kinda the reason i even searched out this drama. well kinda. i actually have ABSOLUTELY no idea who he is before this drama. and the real reason i searched out for this drama was that i thought the lead guy in dae jang geum (his name is actually ji jin hee). and yoo ji tae actually looked a lil ugly at some times. but like most korean actors, he started to grow on me. and the aloofness, intellect and sporadic episodes of passion just swept me off my feet. and did i mention he wears this pair of really ah pek specs that makes him so smart and hot? totally fulfills my fetish for hot guys in glasses.

the chemistry between the two leads was just phenomenal. they didnt feel distant and unfamiliar with each other. instead, they really felt like a couple. the way they laughed at random stuff. the way their eyes expressed a desperate desire for each other. and the way she’s so not shy when he’s so shy. i told my boyfriend that it totally reminded me of when we started dating.

damn. just writing this makes me wanna watch it again.

the show wasnt all that good too though. it had a magical start. got really really really dragging in the middle. but ended really nicely. it has one of the best endings ive seen in a long while. at least it’s an ending that left me satisfied and ugly.

and ive a qualms against the child actors dramas like to use. the child actors used to depict the lead characters are always so cute/pretty! but the offsprings of the lead characters are always so UGLY!

okie. when i start rambling about random stuff like these i really dont know how to end the post. so i shall just abruptly end it now.

-abrupt end-



snip snip
November 3, 2009, 3:10 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

i just had a haircut today and im absolutely pleased about it. not because it looks super awesome (even though it is pretty nice). it’s just that i finally did it after procrastinating since july (and yes im a fervent fan of procrastination). and short hair is so awesome to manage as compared to a head of thick hair that takes forever to dry. woohoo. and i think i look less sian and more spunky now. as my hairstylist of 8 years who charged me exorbitant prices said: 你好刳喔!haha.

i used to love cutting my hair quite a lot. i remembered how i had a major haircut just before the release of my O levels and after my A levels. i leave it long and messy when im just bored/lazy/too poor to cut my hair. maybe it’s really time that i move onto a new hairstylist who charges less.

but the way the scissors goes “SNIP!” and your hair just falls is pretty cool. the snipping just sounds nice. and of course, it’s therapeutic only if the hairstyle turns out nice. additional stress if you look horrible after that.

 



ranting
October 25, 2009, 1:50 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

i must be one of the most unfaithful at updating my blog. but then, i think ive an innate gift for giving up on things. so im kinda excused isnt it? haha. chris mentioned that i hardly update, so i shall update just to prove him wrong :)

life had been kinda mundane. inertia filled life again. i hate these feelings of lethargy and sianness. but im getting more and more prone to it. it feels like an endless slippery slope unless i decide to change direction and head upwards.

speaking of slippery slope, i had an inspiration (i dont really like to use revelation in this case cos i tend to associate it more with godly epiphanies) about how it really is like. when people say/think they are going down a slippery slope, i doubt they really think much about it. they probably thought they are in control in the beginning and think they could hopefully reach the bottom safely and still upright. but the amazing thing about slippery slopes is that, it is SLIPPERY. so somehow, you’ll lose control of your steadiness and just tumble down at an exponential rate.

and i do think i am on such a slippery slope where i am about to officially lose control of my life soon. unless of course, i reiterate, i decide to change direction.

i have a lot of things on my mind now. there is my nonexistent spiritual life complicated by being torn between my spirit and flesh. and then there is studying for my graduate school. and of course, my absolute lack of references for these applications.

after writing that, i realized how self-centered i am. maybe i should get out and give back to the society. i should. stupid selfish michelle. rah.



names
September 22, 2009, 5:06 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized

i recently experienced and heard a few comments that inspired me to write up a post on names. just thinking about the various names already cracked me up.

now, there are different types of names or nicknames that are pretty funny.

the first type are those who are just called ah boy, ah girl or meimei, simply because of their gender or seniority in the family. i saw so many of such examples when swarms of my relatives came to visit over the weekend. when they introduced themselves to my gramps, many of them just said “ah gong, i am ah boy” or “ah gong, i am mei mei” (this was  for my youngest sister who is only called mei mei in my family simply because her real english name was too long for the older folks to remember/pronounce. and this was despite that fact that tons of my cousins were younger than her). in families where there are more than one boy, they simply called themselves 大boy and 小boy. my gramps must have heard so many people claiming to be ah boys, 大boys and 小boys to totally not remember who they actually were. just when i thought this phenomenon was restricted to only nicknames, i was proven so wrong when my eldest uncle and eldest aunt’s names were “ah di” and “ah mei” respectively.  for the absolutely  uncultured, that obviously translates to ah boy and ah girl.

another type is when nicknames are formed by absurd distortions of their formal name. im one such example. thanks to the elderly folks in my household again, i am not called michelle in my family. as a matter of fact, im sure no one will know who the hell you’re talking about if you pronounced my name the proper way. no no. im affectionately called mee-xiao. hell knows how that happened and im still pretty uncomfortable if i had to address myself with that name. but it’s still hilarious to see how people reacted to it. other examples of such distortion are the unfortunate other-halves of my cousin and mine. ive absolutely no idea what my cousin’s girlfriend’s real name is, but i do know that she’s called “orh-nee” (yes, it’s that oily yam paste dessert). hey, maybe it’s her high-caloric nature that attracted my cousin to her. HAHA. okie. mean joke. on the other hand, my poor boyfriend is hilariously called 酒鬼 in my family. of course they’re always nice and courteously and calling him qiugui before him. but man, i never knew that my family could come up with so many alcoholic related jokes till i met him. but then, in my auntie’s word, such nicknames made this two “outsiders” feel more friendly and relatable.

one last type (of the countless types) are names that run in the family. it’s like primus, secundus, tertius, quartus, quintus, sextus and septimus in stardust. or jennifer, julianne and jessica in julz’s family. it’s as if you immediately knew they were from the family just by looking at their names. of course, you prob wont figure out that me, jo and evan are of the same family purely by looking at our english names. you might not even notice if you saw us in real life since one is sooo fat, the other is sooo skinny and the last is sooo averagely sized (no. im not the fat one, jo is not the skinny one. and evan is not the average sized one). but look at our chinese name and you’ll realize. we all start with 思. my dad is his siblings name starts with 承 while my mum’s side starts with 慕. i think the chinese version of naming your kids with the same word seems so much cooler. though i hafta admit the stardust version of naming kids is pretty awesome too. but it shouldnt be translated into chinese cos they’ll probably just be called 老大, 老二, 老三, 老四, 老五, 老六, 老幺.

and thus i conclude my random entry at 1.06am. im just crazy. i need sleep.



my god. my city harvest. my loves.
August 4, 2009, 12:44 am
Filed under: god, heart

i’ve been feeling really emo recently, especially after 20th anniversary. it’s a complex mixture of guilt, self-pity, amazement and inexplicable awe of what God has done.

 

like what pastor kong and the founders have repeatedly said, they never expected 27,000 members when they first started 20 years ago. remembering their countless stories of how fervent and passionate they were about God and His matters was so inspirational and yet always delivers a sense of guilt into my heart.

 

i continually asked myself “what the hell have you been doing with your life?!” especially after i got together with qg, ive nearly thrown away all sense of motivation and destiny. it aches me everytime i think about how far i am from a God-ordained wonderful and yet there isn’t a drive to do anything. as they said, ignorance IS a bliss. and im not ignorant, so im not blissed in this situation. and hence the cycle of guilt and self-pity just goes on and on.

 

nevertheless, God is a great God and he’s amazing enough to place me in one of the most awesome churches in the world. i knew that when i first came 9 years ago. i realized that again when i was in san diego for 6 months. i might be biased but who cares. who else is so contemporary yet so fervent. so worldly yet so holy. so trendy yet so hungry.

 

im proud of city harvest and will always be. i’ll try to love God with all i have with all my life. i might fall a thousand times, but i’ll still cling on tight.