mixed bag

My mind is in what recently has come to be its default mode which is basically chockful of scrambled thoughts so the following is just whatever is off the top of my head...

My house is almost empty for the week, with my parents being in KK (Sabah, not the hospital) for a provincial Anglican pastors' retreat thingy and my brother being away on reservist (which makes me shudder as to when my turn may come). Only ones left are my grandmother and Bingo. Nice to have things somewhat more quiet around here for a change - haven't been having enough quiet moments like this since i've been back...

Well bummer, the Tar Heels lost again, just when i thought we were on the upswing - it's complacency i tell you. Consolation however lies in the news that Duke lost too haha. But in any case, i'm quite amazed at how a couple of months over there can leave me now doing what last time i'd consider to be the unimaginable act of checking out the latest NCAA and NBA scores online on a very regular basis. Scary eh. And since i've become a basketball fan (and boy is it weird even just typing that), it stinks having won tickets to games but not being able to use them. At least i've friends there who can use my tics, but as selfless as i could be, i still would love to be able to catch the game...

Checked my frequent flyer miles - it turns out that i've suffered enough on United over the past few years to be eligible for a free round trip on SQ to as far as places like Istanbul, Cape Town, Cairo or Auckland. Probably will not have time to use them before some of them expire in July though, at least not to places that are so far away, so may settle for Manila or somewhere else nice in the region itself, and use the rest of the miles that still are not to expire for a while another time. Who wants to go somewhere before July? Need to find people to travel with...

I was quietly laughing to myself and grinning widely when i read the article in the papers about businesses not being able to play CNY cds without having first to pay loyalties. Apparently depending on the size of the business fees can reach four-figure sums! Hopefully this means that i'll be hearing far less tacky noise this time round...

Saturday saw me fall asleep from 7 till 11:30pm and again from around 1 till 8:30am, methinks due to accumulated lack of sleep over the week and a general tiredness on many levels. There's just been so much going on that i haven't really had time to sit back and take a breather i guess. Thank God for people He's brought round for me to talk about all this stuff with - things are slowly getting better for me partly as a result of this... However let me again emphasize the word "slowly", though i suppose it's on all counts better than not at all... The need for a better grasp of the concept of God's timing comes across so strongly in times like this...

Wish that self-recharging would come as easily as it does for my cellphone...