much apologizes for not updating

i haven't been updating my blog because been really occupied. sister isn't well, and she has baby, so been helping out at home, taking care of the baby and all. then there's learning to help out more at the house, especially with mum in the kitchen, learning how to cook, and cooking is fun... hahaha... now i remember that a chemist runs a very famous restaurant called the Fat Duck and its really successful, and i'm going to study chemistry! weee!

and i'm finally very close to deciding that i'm going to buy a laptop! an apple macbook! wee! its so fun. yeah! and then sharing the costs of upgrading the desktop with my brother! wee! now just going to wait for the IT show for better offers! PATIENCE!

recent times, the church has been going through this time of reflection and growing the bond between God and us. so... its also kinda intensive, and i'm doing things like never before.

been through many experiences actually, discussing ideas with shaun and bernise, understanding more about our place in Singapore and sharing with others about ideas. and there was interesthink, but i think i covered that already... interesthink is just going to be start to all of these wonderful things that will all be happening in the future, man! and Thank God, i'm right here, in the thick of its beginning.

one thing that really got me affirmed and encouraged was my definition of patriotism and nationalism - that nationalism says my country right or wrong, and patriotism that says, i know there are deficiencies with my country, but i'm just gonna do what i can. thats an important that i want people to know, and let this culture of patriotic dissent flourish, because we will all be needing it and doing it in time to come. so we might as well get started.

i mean, this rant about singapore and the socio-political culture would belong to ELE, so i'm going to limit myself here.

anyhow, worlds are crashing into each other, and sometimes, it really hurts to be at the place where everything crashes into one another. God, hear my cry for help. Come be with me! Thank You Lord!

i know its been a while

i know that i haven't been updating the posts recently, well, thats because i've been usually running around places doing crazy things. so... the only excuse i can offer is that i'm simply occupied...

i've been busy running around for church stuff, and things are certainly moving, though in which direction i'm not entirely sure. I can where i'm going i can really tell like after a while, when i look back and can really tell that i've come a long way since then. i guess i can only say that i've definitely been moving forward in the direction of coming to God, and moving forward in anything else is just moving backward in that. so yeah.

haven't really done much of my really own stuff. so... articles are rolling out at about one in 3 days, which isn't that good, and certainly things can move if not for some unfortunate events. so thats that...

aww shucks

hit the wall again. stuck on ideas. i dunno why whats driving my obsession for writing about singapore's future, and all of it mostly revolves around this stupid word called innovation. ironic. now i'm failing to innovate. AAAARRRHHHHH!!!

not quite a valentine's day post

yes, today is the 14th of february, and while there must people out there already thinking about the best place to smooch their special other, i'm here just blogging about the things that people don't normally care about...

I was at my alma mater earlier in the day, at my secondary school, with some friends and cool people, and met my teachers. It was all nice, heartwarming, and even as I'm writing about my recent experiences, found myself on the verge of tearing, heart seems to sink a little...

and then slowly, a lesson emerges from all these experiences, about the reasons why i want to do the things i do, of the emotional motivations that drive me to do thing about social change.

just a few things...

The basis for social change is HOPE and HOPE alone. That God gave us hope to believe, hoping in HIM, and similarly, in the hope that things can happen if we HOPE in it enough to do something about. The reason I'm doing what I'm doing is not really about enabling Singapore to move on to the next phase of the future or whatever. My deep desire is to give people the hope that they can do things for themselves, and they can do it to the best of themselves, that they should always be striving for that. And through this process, coming to know Christ - at least for me...

Social change is not just change for the sake of change. Social change, is again, the hope that there is something better out there, that we can work towards a better place to live in. This is the main driving force behind the people that do these, that we may not be Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi, but with enough dedication and a community, we might be able to achieve something that improves the lives of many. Another possible theme might even be: People Deserve Better! Or something like that.

We want to live in a place where people believe that they can do something more, something greater than themselves, something great in itself. But we aren't. And this gap between expectation and reality is really one of the core reasons why people find life in Singapore unsatisfying, always having half a mind to emigrate if not for the costs involve. So what if our friends and family are here? There's always Skype and Facebook to keep track. If not just fly back every now and then and spend some time together. Lots of people do that already. Or maybe it could be just the lack of guts. But whatever it is, I'm beginning to see myself not just as part of another social change project that promises nothing in terms of action, but just another dude trying to make living more bearable in Singapore...

eating up the food chain

Haha. this post is not what it sounds like. Its not about the food chain or ecology. Its really just about how our food habits change as we grow up.

When we were kids, when going out was a treat, we would have fastfood, mac and kfc and all. and then there was the food in our neighbourhoods, the hawker centres and the kopitiam. So we gradually grew up. In our teens, we hung around fastfood places even more...

then we went on to our polys of jcs and then we discovered places like pastamania or pepper lunch, and the cafes of starbucks and tcc.

and then we go to unis and start to check out the cheaper restaurants that still have amazing decent food. and on and on, we move up the hierachy of food places until we become execs and eating at posh restaurants at several hundred per dish or something like that...

just for fun

innovative worship??? in church?

had this little of a brainwave fad recently about innovation. and thenwas listening to this christian song by this band and it had quite a bit of reggae feel inside, and i was thinking...

now, wouldn't it be great if we could just try to experience how other cultures worship? If we could learn about how they worship, what makes their worship unique to themselves? Infuse them with elements of other cultures... wouldn't that be... special?

yes, i know, that worship isn't about the songs, its about the heart, so... if the songs don't really matter, why can't we try worship like how other cultures worship? celebrating the diversity of other cultures...?

its a far-off idea, but hey, why not?

its just these.

i had a chance to be quiet on the bus, and my mind started drifting...

Why social change, why Singapore?

I think its time that I finally begin to state my entire stand from as a Christian. I believe that God is going to use Singapore in an amazing way, beyond what our minds can conceive. and i believe that the things that I'm doing even now are going to contribue to that. So why that? In doing so would be bringing glory to God.

Its all... kinda hard to say out in words... but just that in the end, its not about me, not about the eventual outcome. Its about how every individual, being His creation, respond to His love for us on the Cross. Its just that.

ORD LOH!

Yeah! Its a no-brainer. I got my pink IC on the 5th, and officially left the army the day after.

And despite that, they still had time to give us one final surprise. A security breach had happened and it required us to all stay in camp for some checks. So we duly did, despite the fact that it was the eve of Chinese New Year, and we all had to be home rather soon. And despite the fact that the actual incident had happened many months before. Which added to our... frustration and anger. Why is why we are glad to be out of there.

Anyhow, so mnstr and I sat outside on the concrete pavement. To our platoonmates and other close friends, we shook hands and even hugged a few. I saw them as they boarded the bus to Jurong Point. I waved back.

And then it came.

The wave of emotions and feeling that makes your heart feel heavy. It's just.. difficult to put into words. Even as I looked back at the camp which I couldn't wait to get out of it, I still felt this sense of loss, that somehow I had left something behind even though my cupboard was already empty. What did I leave behind? The people. The people who made my NS experience, who defined it, who shared it with me. Without the wonderful bunch of people NS wouldn't be what it is. Yes, we might not be united, but at the very least we were together. And even more so, we became like a family - and even in a family, siblings do their own things. So I guess, a family is an apt term in more than one way.

And to remember the drama of getting the pink IC. haha. The last-day race to get all the important people's signatures, and to think that we almost couldn't get our pink ICs because we didn't do some survey thingy. haha

drama and saikang, all the way to the very end.

And even as I leave the army and having received a pink IC, it gives me a deep sense of joy - almost sacred, something that I can't express just by laughing. It's also like a sense of responsibility - that from here on, REAL life begins - the start of life that means that I now become fully, my own man, that the responsibility for my life is mine and mine alone, and no one else's. The buck ends here, for my own life.

Father, I thank You for bringing me through these 22 months of military training. You've brought me through every single moment, You have protected me, guided me and togethre, You have borne my burdens and saved me, forgiven me for all the unrighteousness and injustices that I have committed. You have, healed my hurts ,by grace, cleansed me from all my sins and my wrongdoings and through everything, You have been with me, and even blessed me so much!

Rejoice, Rejoice!

Thank You Lord!

Lord You have heard and answered my prayers. You have been faithful to me always - the grace, unmerited, undeserved, yet still You have given to me - because of Your love.

Lord I rededicate the rest of my life to You, knowing that hereon, as always, You will be with me. Thank You Lord!

Lord I pray for wisdom.

I want to seek You. I want to find You, and be near to You. I don't want to chase any other thing but You. I need You.

...

The farewells that we bade each other for now will not last long. We will almost see each other again, at our universities, along the road, as we meet again and again to reminisce for old time's sake.

We will see each other again. ORD is not the end, it is only the start of a beginning.

I'm feeling this burden of a mission, of something but not sure what.

Goodbye, halcyon days...

the last days of our youth unfolding and ended... from here on, its no more fun and games, no more unrestrained boyish fun. Its really something. We here in NS, supposed to believe that we have to be like grown, mature men, worthy of the weapon we wield, and for each other. yet we haven't had so much childish boyish fun since primary school! haha. and so these days have come to an end... no more innocence, all seriousness from here on...

Goodbye, halcyon days...

2nd february 2008

i'm not sure what i was doing 2 years ago today. guess i was at the petrol kiosk standing attending to some customer. And last year? I would have had a lesson at citi, and i would be back home at this hour, if i wasn't at cell. so yeah. life's cool. way cool.

today was suppose to have a tuition, but too bad, the fella called to say that he had something on and asked to change on monday, which i duly obliged, since he's paying me. now, if only he called me like a few hours earlier and i would have been at a not-too-bad discusion at yeong's house discussing program for syinc. which might feel constipated and time-wasting a bit, but that's how meetings work.

oh well.

but i spent a glorious day typing... and i did a quick calculation, and i might just need to write 60k words... to have a book out. which i will try... hee...

meetings and meetings

The past few days have been many meetings, all useful, some more exciting than others. And managed to catch sight of some friends, and made new ones too. so things have been, bubbling, i suppose. not staying still, but not quite explosive either, so bubbling. kinda drained, a bit tired, but there are always others more tired and more deserving of sleep.

not much else to talk about other than i finally got me paycheck from writing that small article. hope to write more articles, and hope to get more tuition - then can get more money to cushion the costs of buying a laptop. and continue to provide for my own expenses.

thats all for now, i think... chia lat. running low on ideas again...