Frayed

Well, so far the latest exam season has gone on pretty smoothly for me actually. Think the many free days available for studying this sem have made things much more flexible for me than any other exam period in nus as far as i can remember. This has been especially timely for me cos this sem, more than any other, i've felt the need to take (very) frequent (but relatively brief) breaks from studying to spend time away from everything but God (um, and also to pee, but that's another story altogether). And better many frequent breaks than one whole prolonged period retreating from civilization like last year methinks... Yup, which explains why i'm just as likely to be found out of my seat than in it if you're looking for me...

And in terms of the exams themselves, well, while initially i was somewhat apprehensive (first exams in this disgustingly rigid exam environment after a year) about getting used to how exam conditions here would be like (at UNC it was a breeze), at the end of the day things have worked out alright thankfully... Um, i do know that my name won't be appearing on any Dean's Lists anytime soon, but i also do know that the rest of the exams will go alright too =)

One regret i've had though, not having much time (or motivation) to exercise, given the fact that for the past two weeks, i've tended to eat two full dinners in a day, one at sixish in school, and the other at tenish at home...

In totally unrelated news, the latest chapter in the ongoing torture that i'm subjected to on an almost daily basis at the hands of tv mobile features reruns of pck, which i had previously mistakenly believed to have wisely been put out of its (and my) misery by mediacrap once and for all. To make matters worse, the reruns are not of the initial seasons (i.e. before the titular character had to go and take BEST English classes at the suggestion of none less than the now sm, this plot development basically killing whatever salvageable bits of the show there ever were), but of the latest season when the show was already at the tail end of its slow death.

Just to prove my point, the middle shelf of this trolley
features all the volumes that the bizzare xerox-crazy girl zapped in just ONE DAY...

The latest wildlife specimen i encountered at engin bridge,
a really big Atlas Moth, though it was dead by the time i took this pic...
The giant spider's still there, btw, if you'd want a look for yourself...

This song has been regularly playing in my mind for the past month or so methinks, and today during one of my contemplative walks it hit me - sometimes i feel like i'm living it first-hand. Ok, not all of it, maybe specifically the second verse more than the rest, yup but anyways it hit me all the same. Hope things won't come to the stuff in the chorus though...

awareness?

I was ruminating a bit upon the events of the past Monday and Tuesday and was somewhat troubled by that, and then we had prayer on Friday morning when Kumuthan brought up that very point that had been troubling me as he was praying. And think it bears mention here, so here goes (even if it's a couple of days late...)

Well, as you might have gathered, i felt rather affected by the VT shootings, which saw a total of 33 dead, on Mon; and more so than the average person here since i was, albeit only for a semester, a college student in the US myself. And then, i forget how, but anyways i came to hear about the series of bombings in Baghdad that happened soon after in which nearly 200 people lost their lives. And the very fact that i forgot how i learned about the latter incident suggests how relatively insignificant the news was compared to the VT massacre, at least as portrayed by the media. Also, the very fact that i'd to source for a link to the news of the bombings on wikipedia rather than on a news site suggests how quickly this tragedy has faded into the background, especially when compared to what happened at VT.

I definitely have no intention of taking anything away from what happened at Blacksburg - such a tragedy simply cannot be brushed over. Nor am i suggesting that comparing the number of fatalities should be a gauge of how 'serious' a tragedy is. No matter who and how many people die, the effect upon those concerned is still something no one would want to be put through. But why is it that we (myself included) pay so much attention to one event, when the other, which i'd argue deserves more than a mere mention, seems to have become a mere footnote in comparison to the former? The close to 200 people killed in Baghdad by Sunni extremists were no less deserving of a tribute to their tragic and unnecessary deaths than the 32 who lost their lives at the hands of a lone gunman. Is it because violence has become such a way of life in Iraq that the latest bombings serve as nothing more than an added chapter to the basket case that is what the 'American-liberated' Iraq has become, whereas in the states with such incidents being relatively few and far between any such occurrence deserves greater mention? Or is it because we can identify more closely with the victims of the VT massacre than we can with those in Iraq? Whatever it is, such reasonings really cannot hold water, and yet this is the sad reality that we are faced with.

Come to think of it, how much of the sufferings in the world are we aware of and are interceding over? The horrifying situation in Darfur comes to mind. I myself knew next-to-nothing about what has been going on over there until i was at UNC and there were some IV thingies going on to pray for what has been going on over there. In fact, at this point in time, i'll admit that i still know little about what has been going on. I'd like to attribute it solely to the lack of media coverage but it goes further than that - my own apathy. But just take a look - the estimated number who have died as a result of what has been going on over there ranges from 200000 to 450000. How can i, especially as a Christian who is constantly reminded of God's undeserving sacrificial love for all of us, and His call for us to love others as He has us, not bother about a situation of such magnitude at all?

It's a struggle, i'll give you that. I still struggle too. But i guess the point i'm getting at is that, no matter how hard the struggle is, we need to be more aware of the things that have been going on in this fallen world, and actively intercede for them. God has put us here for a reason - i'm always reminded and remind people of that. May we never become so cosy with where we are that we forget of those around us, be they nearer or further away, and the fact that we all are equally in need of His grace and mercy.

SMC - Some Minor Confusion

Mugging at smc recently has thrown up some interesting and confusing thingies:

1. Dummy Bell


I can't figure out why the library would want to spend good money to install a dummy bell, unless it's for those dummy fire alarms that they seemed to have ever so often (like once a week) last year when the thing would go off for minutes on end before finally being switched off, only to be followed by an announcement accrediting the false alarm to some technical fault - think if and when an actual fire comes, no one would actually heed it...

2. Who was raising the raisins?


That small yellow box you see on that whatever-you-call-it is a box of raisins that inexplicably found its way up there, which is virtually impossible unless someone threw it up from below since the only windows above this thingy are sealed shut and so no one can throw anything from them... Just found that rather intriguing...

3. The bizarre xerox-crazy girl

Ok not very nice to secretly take a picture of her to post here, so needless to say, in the two weeks or so that i've been hanging at the rear of smc, right by the copiers, i (and others) have noticed the same girl appear everyday to zap books (and i mean books) worth of newspaper clippings for some strange reason. She must spend at least three or more (today it was six) hours a day doing this, and i really can't figure out why. I'm tempted to ask, but think i'd better not eh - she might hit me with one of her stacks of papers...

Hokies...

I heard about the Virginia Tech campus shootings last night, but that was still when news just came in, so details were still rather sketchy, and eventually i fell asleep before finding out what actually went on.

Then this morning i heard over the news how bad things were, and it really troubled me for some reason. I don't know anyone from there, and neither have i visited their campus before. In fact my knowledge of VTech is limited to watching the UNC-VTech football game at Kenan Stadium and gathering that their marching band performs the hokey pokey (cos that's their nickname, the hokies) at half-time; and concluding that they must have a pretty good bball team cos they frustratingly swept the season series against us. If i'm not wrong they're relatively near (by American standards - maybe a couple of hours away Northwest) to UNC as well, since they're just in the next state up near the Appalachians.

My views on gun control aside, it's a real unfortunate incident, to put it very lightly, and i can't imagine what the students there must be going through. Maybe it strikes closer to home than the average S'porean cos i've experienced American college life in a school quite like theirs (good state school located outside of any big built-up urban area, good sports teams - and both in the ACC to boot, tremendous school spirit etc) and so i can identify somewhat, i dunno... The thought that a gunman, and a fellow student at that, can just come along and cause so much carnage among his peers and teachers is so surreal, so hard to grasp; and yet this did happen, and there are thousands upon thousands directly affected as a result. Gosh. So anyways, even though none of you will read this, my prayers go out to you Hokies...

veto power

Just caught my brother who was surreptitiously dashing up the stairs in order to play his computer game on the family desktop which so happens to be in my room. While when he first started to do this i was more or less begrudging him the right to do this, for the simple fact that this intrudes on my privacy much more than i'd like; i've tried to be more accommodating to his requests as of late, since it is the family computer after all, and i guess he's the right to use it once in a while. So to that extent i've come home after school to find the lights on in my room and him inside using the com and largely ignored it - even though i'm the kind of person who treasures his privacy enough to be alarmed every time i see this happening - so i'll just hang around downstairs until he finishes (and bug him a bit in between).

Ah but i dunno, just now when i saw him trying to play again (for the second time in the day) i shouted a loud "NOOOOO!!!!!!!" and to his audible dismay forbade him from playing again tonight (and the folks were there to help to chase him away as well). Ah well, all i can say is that this incident only goes to show that i need my own room, and the days when i did share a room with him (which are all of just over three short years ago) must have been simpler times...

(And just for the record, my brother is five-and-a-half years older than me...)

Today's work progressed little more than locating stray notes and organizing them into more distinct groups. Hardly as much as i wanted to get done, but then again, Sundays are always i-don't-feel-like-doing-any-work days so... Hope the study week ahead will go well though - realized that especially when compared with some others i've been blessed with quite a bit of time for exam prep so think i ought to make the best use of it as i can...

Well, today's church service was more of the same old same old save for the fact that i only found out today that Pheobe goes to the same service as i do - i had no clue before this... Once again though, i nearly was late cos i woke up late and i'm still not used to not staying right next to church and hence not used to the fact that i've now to travel to church. Think that put me a little off today cos i was not able to have my qt till later, and i tend to not be very spiritually alert before qt. So guess must try and revamp my Sun schedule so that i can find ample time to do qt beforehand...

Glancing through this months National Geographic special report on overfishing - "Saving the Sea's Bounty", along with bearing in mind some of what i''ve picked up from my Global Environmental Issues class has made me even less enthusiastic about seafood - any sea creature that is not a fish is already a no-no for me, but i may add at least certain kinds of fish to that list depending on whether they are fished sustainably. Oh, and whether they stink too =p

It finally didn't rain today, but no point cos i didn't end up doing anything outdoorsy. Not enough motivation to do so. Did however have a good catching-up/sharing session instead, which was very timely for me cos i've had rather a drought of that as of late, and think am the kind of person who requires to bleah things out regularly to the relevant people. Yup so that was much needed =)

I'll miss the east...

this and that

In the mood for randomness so do bear with me...

Firstly, here's a couple of pics:


This was taken at last week's rooftop cg. We had a time of reflection on the sem past and then sharing with one another on those reflections. This is coming in very delayed, but well it took that reflection time for me to realize what a great blessing the cg has been for me not only this past sem, but ever since year one. Especially since i came back though. I guess that the fact that my sorta unique church situation has translated into a lack of any real permanence and rootedness for me with regards to church min at least up till this point has meant that the community that i've in cf and especially so in thursday cg becomes all the more important for me. Yup and if i've ever needed such a community before, i sure needed (and still need) it when i came back cos i was (and still am) rather disorientated and disjointed from S'pore and all the stuff that came along with it, and the cg has given back in ways that i never had fully appreciated (and perhaps still don't)... God's faithfulness to me through the cg has just been so wonderful - it's so humbling and tear-inducing come to think of it...


Um, ok so this is on a totally different subject - was just walking along engin bridge (btw engin bridge seems to be some kind of biodiverse hotspot by nus standards since on top of these cats i also found the giant spider - which is still there btw - over there) the other day when i came across this cat and its three kittens - and it was so cool cos although these are probably just common stray/feral cats it at that moment felt as though i was on some Serengeti expedition and before me was some rare species of small wild feline. So of course out came my camera and voila... Reminded me a bit of my UNC days when the mere sight of a squirrel would coax my camera out before i could say, erm well, "squirrel!". That of course was until i realized that there were squirrels everywhere over in the US, compared to S'pore when i spot one like once a year or so high up some tree... Not enough nuts in S'pore maybe...

As each day goes by, i've become more and more keen on staying on campus next year. It's a combination methinks of being spoilt last sem at UNC when both classes and downtown were a two-minute walk away from my room; honours year coming up which promises to be really busy, and tv mobile getting increasingly on my nerves by the second. Things should work out eventually i hope - nearly screwed up my application cos i keyed in an invalid email address - maybe it's a freudian slip that i attached my nus userid to the usual UNC email. Thankfully the relevant people got back to me so was able to rectify that...

I don't recall having started on revision proper more than a week before my first paper ever before. Somehow i ended up choosing classes that have their deadlines rather early, so actually had nothing else school-related to do but revise from as early as Wed (which i did, and am doing, but very slowly - but hey it's a start right...) That being said, as i've expressed to some random people, i'm prepared to see my grades drop somewhat this sem owing to various complicated reasons, but i know that whatever happens the Lord has been ever-faithful - and i'm thankful no matter what lah (Job 1:21 - "Blessed be Your Name" - comes to mind but i'd hardly think that in Job's situation i'd be as unflinching - was already sad when i lost my old nalgene...)

Will it stop raining here everyday already?

It seems that facebook is starting to catch on here eh - seems really different though from the good old days, so to speak, when i was still over there. And it makes me more sentimental for how things were like last time in a way - for me the primary reason why i have fb (and aim too, for that matter) when i eschew just about everything else is that it helps me to keep in touch with friends outside of S'pore, especially those back at Carolina... But, still i suppose that at the end of the day; plus ça change, c’est la même chose, n'est ce pas?

processing

Hmm after having been rather overwhelmed by work for much of the sem that has gone by, i now find myself in the enviable and strange position of having nothing really to do apart from prepare for the exams. It reached the stage whereby on Thursday morning it took me around fifteen minutes methinks to find appropriate study stuff to bring to school so that i wouldn't waste the day.

But that being said, i'm really glad for the break, cos it's long overdue, and i really really could use one now - as has been the norm for this sem, i've had a lot of things on my mind, and now procides a perfect opportunity to finally devote more time to clearing all the backlog.

So to that extent just now after dinner since i've no work to do i decided to go for a walk at ecp. Even though it was like super humid and it felt really sticky, i figured that a walk would help me to process a lot of stuff and talk to God more clearly as well.

That turned out rather well. I didn't like get immediate answers/solutions to the stuff i was bringing before God and actively considering, but it certainly helped me to organize my thoughts and get some new insights onto some stuff. Rather bizarrely as well, ideas for a song (both music n lyrics) somewhat spontaneously came to mind, which has never happened before (Love Compels was a so-called commissioned work which took a lot of deliberate attempts at conceptualizing, and i never had ideas for the music). Will try and piece the ideas together and complete the thought cos it's a useful outlet i feel...

Oh, and when i say walk, i really mean walk - as in walk from my house all the way to that place past Bedok Jetty where there used to be a coconut grove which would be perfect for filming Indian movies but which now has some fancy white garden structures, and then crossed the road to the Bayshore area where i took a bus back home - the total walk lasted around 100 min.

Oh anyways today's Good Friday service was interesting - certainly the longest service i've ever attended - it was supposed to be 3 hours long (to signify the recognition of the darkness following Jesus' death from the 6th to the 9th hour, and anyways i've sat through at least one of those before), but the seventh and last meditation extended quite a bit, such that it lasted a total of more than three and a half hours. The length meant that while initially i took in a lot of what was said in the earlier meditations, by the time number five came (ironically that was my father's one =p) and on from there my mind semi-switched off so i couldn't process a lot of it... But it was a good experience and i did manage to take back some of the stuff that was preached...

Some FAQs and then some...

FAQ #1: So did you really write in Chinese or use a translation program for your chinese post?

A: Well i won't lie - i used a translation program - haha you think my hua yu so good one ah? =p Anyways i dun even have any chinese writing software... That was just mid-project me being boliao. Anyways, just for fun, i retranslated what i posted back to English using the same program, and look what it turned up (the following is strictly cut-n-pasted from the program, didn't change it in any way...):

Heritage last week, I spent a lot of time to thinking of a lot of things. Part of the reason is many of the past week, I was not around. Many of these things anyway I went to what I thought, very disgusted with almost all things Chinese. I figured that Although I have a very bad words all this, I hate this way, when I started to learn from. This really should not do nothing to say. Therefore, I am determined to learn the language. The new part of the plan, Mine will be involved in this blog. From now on, every term of this blog will be written in Chinese. it is not easy, it is in the affirmative, But I think this is what I am doing. So I am sorry for all those who are unable to read. I do not like you were reading the blog. Well, if you have not realized this, however, This blog after the inspection date. Yes, today is April 1. happy fool's day! (by the way, I believe a lot of what is written on the no meaning here, For all-what it is to spend a whole week of work you have done tons) Goodbye, the pro -

So - my chinese name means 'the pro'? Seriously? Haha as you can see, the program isn't exactly state-of-the-art - which explains the confusing chinese post i ended up with that day (although in my defense, i did change it as best i could to make it more correct...)

FAQ #2: Why you wear so nice (on ft day)?

A: Cos ft was at lt29 and Ade Fam told us to wear warm clothes cos it would be freezing. No seriously, i had a group debate for hist tutorial. So there.

Anyways apologies to anyone who may have seen me last week and i like totally dao-ed them - wasn't in the best of moods - kind of an amalgamation of i-feel-like-being-alone, i've-lots-of-work-to-do, i-need-sleep-badly and i-need-to-spend-time-alone-with-God moods all rolled up into one - which made for a matt as friendly to people as Hugo Chavez would be to George W. Bush.

How sweet (literally too) of the graduating batch =)

But look what i had to do to prevent ants from finding and attacking my card...
Varnish junkies...

Along the same lines of nonsensical signs...

Huge spider i came across at engin bridge...
(Like the size of my palm huge - though i didn't dare bring it too close to compare =p)

Thank you FASS for inspiring such confidence in your 'humanitites' department...

On the way to school...

Heh Dan the similarity between your shots and mine is strictly coincidental =p
Anyways this is me waiting for debate group to arrive...

文物

过去一周,我花了很多时间思考很多事. 部分原因是我不在身边的许多过去一周.

反正 其中的许多事情是我是怎样思考我往,几乎都非常反感 跟中国的东西. 我计算过,我虽然有了一个很坏的言语 这一切,我讨厌这种方式,我是从什么时候开始学, 这真是不应该这样无话可说.

因此,我有决心学好华语. 这项新计划的一部分,将涉及本博客矿井. 从现在起,每一任本博客将写中文. 实在不容易,这是肯定的,但我觉得这是我做的. 所以对不起所有那些无法阅读, 仿佛你不会让我的博客被阅读了.

那好,如果你没有意识到这可是,这博客后检查日期.

不错,今天是四月一日. 快乐愚人节!

(由程,我相信有很多这里写了什么没有意义, 如有可言 - 这是什么花了整整一周的工作是否给你做吨)

再见, 亲光