crashing

Thinking about it, i really sucked for organic chemistry. sucked, as in probably failing the paper, if thats even possible. did i study for it? i did. i did the questions from the textbook, i did questions from elsewhere. there was a question in the exam that i recognised but just couldn't remember. what did it mean? did i just not prepare enough? did i not work hard enough? was there more i could do?

there was probably everything and nothing that i could do. everything - that maybe i should have looked at the concepts harder, maybe i should have thought harder about this. maybe i should have looked at the specifics more.

all the maybes and what-ifs.

but maybe there was just nothing i could do. maybe there was nothing left to be done. maybe i did try my best.

more speculations.

but there really is nothing left to be done.

there really is this niggling uncertainty left to deal with. but then life draws us towards so many directions that we can never be certain whether to have taken that path or the other one. as i exit chemistry, i'm thinking, did i really try my best? i can never say for sure. maybe i just suck at this kind of 'here, you have 4 months to chew on this topic'... maybe i'm not suitable for university education at all. maybe i should just go off tangent and do my own stuff that i can chew on at my own pace.

too many 'maybes'.

i need to move on.

But Lord, i've already given the module unto You. i made some awful mistakes, but You have a way in all of these. so thats my resolution, or the one i already made in handing the semester into our hands. but do i just suck?

i know that its really out of my hands, and into Yours. Lord i pray that the decision to change faculty is the right one. into Your hands i commit the remaining whatever-years of university education.

joy of a weird kind

today i finished another module from science. i might not have done very well but thats not the issue at all. i just seemed to have felt this sense of peace and joy from finishing the paper alone.

another chapter closes. another one can begin. soon.

some (more) realisations

It just occurred to me that there has been something quite longstanding that I'm only now beginning to resolve (hopefully). The 'it' is the 'being' of insecurity that has plagued over... many years of my life, and it is only now in NUS/USP that I'm beginning to find the resolution to it. The insecurity comes from the feeling of not being in the right place, of finding my own way in life, of fidning the people to relate to, to talk to. I guess this insecurity has been the elephant in the room, the disease that manifests itself in different forms, and now it seems to me that I've only been treating the symptons, not the cause of the disease itself. But gradually I'm beginning to find it, and maybe changing of the faculty is one part of the cure, having found USP, which is another part of the cure. And at the same time, I am beginning to find the friends whom I can talk to, relate to, some more so than others, but finding friends all the same - friends whom I can really trust in, wholly share my life with, though others might find it uncomfortable with. But thats also how I process my insecurity, by sharing my life with others. oh well.

but then, the real cure needs to come from Him, for the peace that comes with knowing what He wants me to do through me. I guess when that alignment comes, there the real cure is too.

amen.

fluff vs non-fluff

In this semester, i've encountered the question: what is fluff, and what is not fluff, but real substance?

I guess to me right now, 'fluff' means having the ideas, but having no sense of reality, and no idea of concretizing these plans. General comments such as 'i want to save the world' fall into this category of fluffiness.

on the other hand, to have real substance, the subject must have been thought through in a very detailed manner, seeing both sides of the argument, and justifying reasons for one side or posing your own unique, synthesis of the problem. But more than that, there is also the sense that the person knows how to approach the problem in a tangible manner, in being aware of the concrete steps that can be taken to resolve whatever issue at hand.

In other hands, having real substance is really about having the depth to have gone through a problem - and thats something that takes time, effort and energy to go through...

and i guess that the difference between fluff and non-fluff...

and now, a break from studies

having revised stuff for the entire day, i want to move on to something that wil definitely cheer me up!

-what my holiday plans are-

As usual, it involves a lot of writing, but this time...

1. participate in the creative writing programme!

2. help dr ryan do some black pac stuff. and talk to her about the change of faculty.

3. meet rajen about NLB/library science stuff

4. do the mock-ups for the tiered-friendship social network, information management framework. - involves meeting shaun after he comes back from yet another UNCSD.

5. USP1101 guidebook, tentatively titled 'eudaemonia' (definitely must do and will do, since I'm not in charge of it...)

6. my own various writing projects - making sense of knowledge...; restorative sciences? molecular architecture?; higher education and integrating with local community

7. email usp admin about curitiba as a global programme.

8. work with charmaine/jon about TED for USS tutorial.

...

I know... so many things to do, but making these lists always excites me! I might not get around to do all of these things, but doing the lists provides for a sense focus. I will probably update this post every now and then for every item thats been done (with a strikethrough)...

and also, more importantly, these are just things that i'm doing on the outside. there are things that i have to do inside as well, and not included here is the focus on God all the time. the holidays will certainly be a time for fasting and prayer... as i commit to God again and again. what i'm realising is that there isn't a one time commitment, its a repeated, re-dedication, and a re-commitment - the daily battle to seek after Him. and so the holidays will be that.

i can look back at the semesters and think about the things that i've tried - the many things that have failed, and maybe one or two things that could be developed further. TED for USS tutorial is one, curitiba might be another... but its the entire process, i guess, the excitement that comes with experimentation, but all the time, the peace that comes with the realisation that i can truly do nothing, if not for the grace of God, and its really, really true. and it is that grace that has led me here thus far, at this place, ending one chapter, and starting another.

The holidays will be a time of energizing and re-energizing the spirit, the mind and flesh, to get ready again, the battles and trials to come.

change of heart

I've been thinking over things for a while, and I've decided that I'll need to change major to get on with the rest of my life...

One of the more important reason that led me to the decision was simply that: i lost the interest in had in chemistry. and again there are reasons, and of them being the realisation that NUS isn't the best place to do pure research in chemistry. perhaps i might have held on had there been some kind of interest in developing inorganic stuff, but that reason just fell away. another reason was simply that i couldn't stand the thought of doing similar stuff over and over again over the next few years. and i couldn't do environmental stuff either. after a while, a lot of these things just didn't matter anymore, and i thought best if i just switched major.

the other reason was that i caught sight of a scholarship by NLB to do library science. from there, i think i can do a whole bunch of things, i hope, and move on from there to do something else. maybe write software, learn to do advanced knowledge management, and from there, do something else. i dunno. but there's just this entire possibility that i can enter into, and i want to take it.

and from the looks of things now, it looks like sociology and geography, but then i know that these things probably won't matter as much as it seems now. so yeah.

been feeling really at peace, and giving me a lot of joy as i study the remaining chemistry papers. hee.

something about the NLB

Recently I came across the fact that NLB offered post-graduate scholarships for people to do Masters in Library and Information Sciences (LIS). Which makes me think of taking up that scholarship. At the same time, I've realised that I feel really, really tired about chemistry.

I had thought that I might have the guts to go on to do more advanced chemistry, especially inorganic synthesis, but as I realised what it takes to get there, I'm having serious doubts. Serious enough to make me change to FASS and do sociology/geography.

I was interested in inorganic synthesis, looking at the wonderful arrangement of atoms, especially non-carbon ones. Was thinking of catalysts, self-organising structures... I was hoping that through chemistry, I could segue into environmental and sustainable development stuff, was hoping that inorganic chemistry might be somehow related to it, but the connections are only tenuous, and NUS isn't the best place to pursue them.

So I'm thinking about my other interests, of sharing information, connecting people to information, seeing connections between ideas... I'm thinking thats really what I want to do... the things about sustainable development and all the upcoming exciting technologies - people still have to relate/connect with these information, and I think thats where the bits about information science comes in.

So yeap. Push-pull. Pushed away from chemistry - plain fatigue. Pulled towards NLB, and doing the fun stuff, learning about societies and geographies...

Been feeling quite peaceful actually, after the realisation...

peace for the moment

I guess I now come to the day when there are no more emails to send, the rest before the essays and the practises to do and write, and just sit there and appreciate the peace of the Lord in my heart and life.

By the grace of God, I've been feeling a passion in my heart, a really deep passion in my heart, that makes me want to feel more, love more, study more... This passion is a passion in its sacrificial sense - it is something that I take up daily to endure as much as I enjoy, to push on...

I'm really anxious about church, about FCBC. I really need the grace from God to believe in the church, to follow the the senior pastor's call of faith.

I really question my faith in God, and the direction that I'm being led to. It seems that for now, the call at USP is leading me to one direction, and the messages from church are leading me to a different direction. And yes, every now and then I'm entertaining the thought to leave the church... But I know that the chances are that I'll come up against the same things, about directions and spirituality.

So Lord, I really dunno. I'm abstaining from normal lunches now, and learning to be really serious about prayer and QT. I rededicate my life to You everyday, knowing that there is actually no 'Eddie Choo Shiqin', but there really is just God acting through me. Where I try to exert my own strength alone, I fail. It is only when I totally depend on Him that I can actually do anything at all.

So Lord, this is my spiritual life: It is a wasteland, not even in ruins, because there was nothing there in the first place.

Isaiah 41:17-20

¹⁷ "The poor and needy search for water,
but there is none;
their tongues are parched with thirst.
But I the LORD will answer them;
I, the God of Israel, will not forsake them.

¹⁸ I will make rivers flow on barren heights,
and springs within the valleys.
I will turn the desert into pools of water,
and the parched ground into springs.

¹⁹ I will put in the desert
the cedar and the acacia, the myrtle and the olive.
I will set pines in the wasteland,
the fir and the cypress together,

²⁰ so that people may see and know,
may consider and understand,
that the hand of the LORD has done this,
that the Holy One of Israel has created it.

The latter half of Isaiah has just that special place in my heart...

So Lord, I dedicate my life to You once again. Everything that I have, that I am, I lay them down at Your feet, at the foot of the cross.

Lead me in faith, hope and love.

amen

total reliance

I'll just blurb this, before doing something more extended.

We fall and stumble along, and I've come to the realisation that there is nothing for us to manage - in the sense that 'we' as individuals can't manage anything. Anything that we can do, everything that we can ever do comes solely and only from God alone.

The work that I do, the sins that I confess to, the grace that I receive - all of these comes from God alone.

feeling more brokenness today. and a renewal too!

Good things have happened, and not-so-good things have happened too, but no matter, to Him all Glory and Praise.

Anyway, experienced an emo episode. I'm learning again, I can't put friendships as the main thing that defines my worth. It something like this: heart poured out, and there's nothing left. Or even negative. I really felt I poured out my entire life on the people around me. And I just don't know how far it goes. And at times, its so empty, so dry, that I come to realise that only God can fill me up again.

And in the midst of this horrible episode, I felt this powerful impulse to write. In other words, I'll be writing again, in the holidays! But more importantly, I would have to do a graduate course in writing - not just journalistic style writing, but writing that informs and challenges. But I'll do chemistry first for now.

"Undergrad's Diary" I guess. Something like that.

among other things

I must have said this a million other times: in our present age, the context and the connections, in other words, the meta-information matters as much as the information themselves.

And one realisation. Singapore PAP is forced between the need to free up socio-political sapces to foster innovation, but refuses to do so - forced between the economic determinism and the monopoly on power. Dilemma... meanwhile, the world moves on...

maturing...

Met up with my cell leader not too long ago. Talked about my time in university. Has been a learning process. Continuing with growth.

Learning to be maturing in righteousness:
-> how to meld justice with love, and maturing in unity,

and then...
-> bringing people together for the purposes of Christ, whether directly or indirectly.

Courage, and conviction for both, and then humility for it all.

Thank You Father, for the community of people.

Bridges and friends

Lord, help me to build bridges between the hearts of peoples, between my closer friends.

Lord, it is You who have brought them all together in their lives, and i pray, that You come and meld our hearts together, as You seek to join our hearts with the Father's.

I know there will be differences and tensions, and conflicts, but help us all to see beyond that, and to see the desire in our spirit to want to know You, Lord. Father, i ask that you help me build links with one another, so that we can all grow together in Christ.

Thank You Lord, for the friends that I have.

In Jesus' name. Amen