1st Round of Goodbyes

Said my first goodbyes to my colleagues at Eli Lilly and to my classmates at French Class. Would love to post photos, but i never took any! Haha!

With the remaining sections of this chapter closing, I'm looking forward to the beginning of the next chapter. The feeling is tantamount to pining for the release of the next Harry Potter book (when the Deathly Hallows were not yet released).

Adventure beckons!


The mug shot of my cell group. =) Just a note to anyone of those who appear in the photo, that all the photos are already up. Click on photos at under links to go to my shutterfly site.

"the journey of a 1000 miles begins with a step" - a wise man

often used to encourage and motivate to take the first step towards a better tomorrow; we often place too much emphasis on the beginning of a journey. many of us are paralyzed whenever something goes wrong early on in the journey, and we think that the remaining steps will be doomed. we begin to equate "get a C" = "end of the world"

it is true that a small mistake early on will cause a large diversion later on in our lives. take for example the boy who made a small mistake and broke his leg jumping off the high wall, he may pretty well walk with a limp for the rest of his life. however, his life does not end with the broken leg, or limp. life goes on.

to me, the true beauty of a tree is shown by the process of growth it goes through. though it may go through numerous prunings, it is the way in which the tree grows after each pruning that, shows its strength.

therefore, "the journey of a 1000 miles will never be, unless a 1000 miles is walked". the beauty of that journey is shown by how the traveller withstands the trials and learn from mistakes he has made.

life is marked with difficulties, but never give up.

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of of crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Have you been asking God what He is going to do? He will never tell you. God does not tell you what He is going to do; He reveals to you Who He is. Do you believe in a miracle-working God, and will you go out in surrender to Him until you are not surprised an atom at anything He does?"

taken from Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest, Day 2

the core of the thoughts that are boggling my mind now.

1) self reliance and dependence

thought of this today while considering what should be done in view of my dire circumstances.

usually, people use the idiom "when push comes to shove" to express the concept of forcing one's way into or through something when the circumstances do not help him.

i think i have been "shoving" my way through life for too long and too much. it is time to PUSH instead. and that is to Pray Until Something Happens.

no more shoving and depending on my own strength .. but to PUSH with His strength.

2) covenents

some people have wondered why i have stayed single for so long. some even suspect that i'm gay. but the fact is that i'm in a covenent with my Lord. a covenent to set my life aside for Him to use me to the max before i get attached.

this is to remind me of this fact.

how will you respond if Jesus was to ask you this question?

" (insert your name here) , do you truly love me more than these?"

by "these" He is referring to the things that you find around you, the small comforts that you enjoy, the assured food on the table, and the security of life.

i still don't fully know how to answer this question before Him.

1) life.

sometimes we just label and brush off the troubles and pains that some people face in their daily lives with a comment that likens their lives to drama serials.

but sometimes we fear that our lives will turn out to be more complex than any other drama serial that has been written.

2) uncertainty.

because there is no pre-destination, life becomes uncertain.

uncertainty results from the lack of parameters that the consequences of our decisions must follow.

3) foolishness or just being a clown?

someone: human beings are funny people, even though they know that a relationship will never work out, they still get emotionally involved.

is this foolishness on our part or are we just being a clown?

1) on the road to recovery..

firstly thanks to all who are reading and have shown concern. it kept me sane for a bit during those sick days. =)

2) the journey to fight.

i think i got overly bored at home, and got depressed from staying at home too much. i need to go out to civilisation! but i'm going to move on. three more days to my release from this 'prison'.

but this time of illness has made me realise that there is a need to fight for joy in our lives. not just joy, but we need to fight for the things that we want. especially for me. i will love to explain more, but i just cannot put all the thoughts about this subject matter down. perhaps after i have consolidated all of them and organized them, then i'll blog about it.

but for now, it's time to FIGHT!

chicken pox day five and six

things are looking much better now. but i have been bored to the extreme. gonna try to start studying for my make-up quiz.

ciao

chicken pox day four

temp: 37.5
number of poxes: like the trees in the amazon forest. (a lot of them, but there are signs that they are depleting like the forest)

i'm almost halfway through the journey of the "killing-me-not-so-softly" chicken pox phase. got to go for a review on day six, which is this wednesday. traces of pus have been spotted in some poxes.

today's devotional thought (or otherwise devotion with a chicken-poxed paul):

during day one of my adventure, my sis was still willing to walk into my room to chat with me and ask me how i am doing. but today, my sis was only willing to talk to me from outside of my room, though she has already went through chicken pox and shingles, the more advanced form of chicken pox. i'm not trying to pick on her; i try to avoid contact with my family members at home, even though most of them have gotten chicken pox before. so what is my point?

i was thinking about those lepers when Jesus was conducting His ministry. having to shout "unclean, unclean" as they moved around where people are seen, they part the crowd like how God parted the red sea for the Israelites. i bet family members will avoid close proximity with the lepers, for fear of their own life, as leporsy could be cured. but yet Jesus did not run away from them.

the one that accepted and healed those lepers, will embrace you and heal you, if only you will accept and ask Him.

chicken pox day three

temp: 37.8
number of pox: as many as the stars in the sky (countless in other words)

i gave up hope of staying awake to do something more useful. the chicken pox is just darn irritating. don't know why my temp is up again. it was alright this morning till i took a nap just now.

gonna wait till 8 plus to take the last round of medication for today and head to bed.

i guess the agony that Apostle Paul had in his physical body is way much more than me right now. but still, he continued to find joy in preaching the gospel. how can a person find such joy in the midst of such great physical suffering?

a friend asked me what is a christian's purpose in life. we all can say living for God's glory is our purpose, but how many of us are living such a life? but we see that there are some people who are able to do it - why can they do so, and why can't we do so? as i was pondering, i guess this is the only answer that i have: God is not as real to us, as compared to people like Apostle Paul.

it is the real-ness of a girlfriend or boyfriend that makes it easy to transmit our affections and love towards that person. we can give a gift, a hug, or a kiss, to communicate the different affections to that person. not just that, we can receive in tangible ways the affections that the other person gives to us.

then comes the argument whereby, if God is not real to a person, then why did he or she become a christian? i guess God can be real to us at specific points of time in our life, but as the days go by, so of us are wooed by the things of the world, that we begin to lose sight of the real-ness of God. not just that, sin also hinders us from experiencing the real-ness of God, for He is Holy, and hate sin.

my aim is not to try to provide infallible answers to the deep questions of our faith; i am the same as everyone, human: man can never ever comprehend God's ways. but consider this dear reader, a relationship is built by spending time with another person. i consider a relationship with God the main aim of my life right now. but this cannot be built just by knowing the answers to the many questions that we have. we may fall into the trap of being like Job's friends, who talked a lot about God, but they never knew really knew Him. or the Pharisees, who blabber on day and night about the law, but were blind to the presence of the Messiah.

i'm not suggesting that we don't read the bible or christian books. let us not read the bible for the sake of knowledge, but let us read the bible for the sake of intimacy; like how a husband (or wife) flips through the old photos of his wife (or her husband), to discover more about who the other person really is.

chicken pox day two (part b)

Temp: 38.0 degrees
Number of pox: 166 (yes, i counted all of them)

it is just amazing how this chicken pox can take over my body in like one day. before i napped, there weren't so many. but when i woke up, lo and behold! so many of them appeared!

sheesh.

eating now is also a chore. there are at least 7 of those poxes in my mouth. swallowing water is both a relief and torturous moment.

i guess this will be a good time for me to do more reflection being cooped up at home. will write more later on.

chicken pox day two (part a)

temp: 38.1 degrees
number of pox: 29

tried to sleep as much as i could in the morning, but it did not ease the pain. the one thing that i hate most about having chicken pox, is the application of the cream on the different pox(es). never have i spent so much time in front of a mirror, twisting my body to discover all the different locations of the pox(es). so yeah .. that is why i can state that i have 29 pox(es) on my body.

perhaps i'm over spiritualising stuff that is happening to me again, but God reminded me that He knows how many pox(es) i have on my body. and a passage from Psalms came to memory, where God knows our going in and coming out, He watches over us each day, and even before we were being formed in our mother's womb, He already knew us.

temperature has been fluctuating like the stock market (imo), so i gotta sponge myself now. it is during times like this where you wished you had someone to care for you 24/7. but that will be too selfish. =)

chicken pox day one.

never would i have imagined that i will fall to this diesease at this point of time. was reading up on the diesease, and i realised that most probably i caught it from a friend's dad. and i did not even go near to him!

so yes, here i am blogging about my illness. i was reflecting on the implications of chicken pox, 1) it will cause me to have a lot of backlog in my work 2) if my profs do not allow me to re-take the quizzes that are happening this week, there goes my magna.

the stupid little dots will burst one day, and they will turn into sores, so said the website. and immediately, God reminded me of Job. Job had everything that a man could want in his days. wealth, and a good family (through inferring of course). but when Satan tested him, everything was gone in short moment, and subsequently he was covered with sores. if ever my results come up bad at the end of this sem, it will be like losing all my hard work for the past 3 years. chicken pox sores and Job's sores can be vastly different, but they are still called sores. thus can you see the almost similar predicament that i am in? though it is of much less intensity.

and at this moment, these words made so much more meaning to me. "The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." - Job 1:21b .

if one day you find that everything you hold dear is gone suddenly, how will you react? i was upset at first, but subsequently, i gave thanks for whatever that i am going through. i thank Him for all that He has done for me, and what He will do for me.

God is not absent when bad things happen to you or around you. personally, i think He is calling out for your dependency on Him. i think He is calling out to you to lay down everything, and wait for Him.

1) words

"the six inch tongue can kill a six foot man"

the internet has allowed us to express our feelings and thoughts in ways that were never possible in the past. words that were spoken in the past, only fell upon the ears of those that heard it. word of mouth may spread it, but it loses its credibilty and effectiveness as the chain goes on. however, with the internet, we can just type away, post it somewhere, and the impact of that "spoken" word is huge. think i might have wrote some "not very good stuff" today. but this is the power of the internet. you can write something bad about someone, people reading it are getting first hand info from you.

not just that, in front of a computer, we just vent our fustrations and type non-stop. not thinking if we really mean what we are typing. this is a call to myself to not just be slow to speak and anger .. but to be slow to type. but while i try to speak encouraging words instead, i begin to receive not so encouraging words. i think internet lingo has caused some of us to lose our tact in our conversations with people. personally, i think CMI - cannot make it, when used on someone is very degrading, and has the power to tear a person down. but hey, i've used it on other people too. i guess we might never really know the full extent of the lingo, until someone else has used it on us.

2) loneliness and solitude

someone defined loneliness to be one where a person finds no inner fulfillment, whereas solitude is getting away from the crowd, or distancing oneself from the crowd. often ask myself while walking in a large crowd, if i'm lonely or i'm in solitude.

3) acceptance

i think deep inside everyone, they are crying out for acceptance. acceptance regardless of who they are, what they wear, what they do, and where they live. sometimes i think, people do the things they do, for the sake of acceptance. one simple example, why do models diet so hard? just because they want to find acceptance for the next job, and the acceptance of the people around her. why do smu students mug so hard? so that they can find a company that will accept them, and that they can find acceptance by their friends as someone who is diligent or hardworking. perhaps i'm over-generalizing; do forgive me on this.

but as i contemplated about the role of the church in today's context, are we called as a church to accept people who are hurting? did a search, and i did not find much on the topic of acceptance in the bible. however, the verse of the day stood out:

"[Love one another] This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another."- 1 John 3:11

the word love in this verse is not of agape love, but rather a phileo love; a brotherly love. i believe that this is the second most important thing that the church should be doing today. loving people both inside and outside of the church. however, i think singaporean culture today has turned to be more inward looking. yes, we still love others by giving them money, but when asked to spend our precious time to love someone else, we run away. but loving someone is not defined by any specific action. it takes a true investment of our heart into that person's life.

this leads me to my first point once again. being called to love each other, both within the church body, and outside the church body, we should watch our tongues and not let unwholesome talk come out from our mouth. for love builds up; it never tears down a person.

acceptance is superficial; love takes action and effort.

took cab home on 2 occassions this week. the taxi-drivers coloured my life this week.

taxi-driver 1

he was commenting on how expensive are the durians along geylang road are during the weekends, while on weekdays, the prices are so much lower. hmm .. think yield management by the durian uncles - they really know how to make money.

subsequently, he began talking about how some people are willing to spend up to 30 to 40 bucks just for one durian, and he compared this consumer behavior to patrons of prostitutes. some people are willing to spend up to 100 bucks just to touch a young girl, while others are satisfied with a 30 buck affair with some old lady.

well .. i was quite shocked at the passion that he ranted about this topic. it is almost as if he was complaining about the high prices of the "young meat" that is too ex for his pocket. anyway .. i left the taxi with more grief than amusement or shock. the perverseness of man has made women into objects likened to commodities, where i think if i were to do my pricing project on the prostitutes, i think i will arrive at a much more complexed system of pricing than the average retailer.

taxi-driver 2

for one, i feared for my life while in this taxi. he was turning at the junctions with really close on-coming traffic, tackling the turn at 70km/h, with the taxi on the verge of losing control. mind you, i have sat in a car that tackled a carpark corner at 80km/h, but this taxi ride was nothing like that at all. the former was on the verge of losing control, but the latter was very much in control.

to make things worse, the taxi-driver was cursing and swearing under his breath, when i could not see any vehicles that are obstructing him. he seemed like a troubled man to me.

but at the same time, i was really glad that i got home in 8 minutes from school. well, at least i'm still able to blog about this. =)

1) cliques - small, exclusive group of people

on the subject of friendship - i think everyone desires to have a group of close friends, who are exclusive in some sense, where their secrets are being kept, and lives are being shared. some people look at cliques with a negative tint, where they find that due to the exclusiveness of the group, other people feel excluded. i prefer to look at cliques with a positive light, where friends are able to support each other through times of trouble; having a friend who will miss clinching that all important business deal just to be at your valley moments is priceless.

after saying all that, it is not that i have just been through a valley moment in life; in fact i thank God for the relatively simple life that i have. but i do not officially belong to any clique. i may have a close friend here and there, people whom i am able to share some thoughts to, but never was i part of a clique. don't ask me why. maybe i just haven't found that group of friends yet.

2) strangers

then consider the position of people who you don't even know. strangers whom you walk past everyday, some you would not even want to cast your eyes on them, while some, you cannot help but stare at them. can you ever imagine making small talk about the intimate details of a person's life, someone whom you have just met? well, Jesus did just that. while He teaches in parables, He also speaks directly to the hearts of the people He encountered while He was ministering. even today, He is speaking directly to our hearts.

Here i am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.
Rev 3:20

3) timeless-ness

was trying to put some words together, and here it goes:

my whole life is played through at the blink of Your eyes,
my longest days are just mere seconds to You.

nations rise and fall in between the blinks of Your eyes,
long civil wars are over at the snap of Your fingers.

the wonders were created in between Your breaths,
they can never outlast You.

seasons come and seasons go, but You Lord,
will be the same for all eternity.

1) of resumes

re-doing my resume is one of the activities that i dislike most. perhaps it has to do with the fact that i have to put myself to be such an excellent person whom, everyone wants to employ. while some people have so many things to put in their resume, i struggle with it for more than 3 hours, trying to hit the 2 page recommendation.

2) journey

however, in the process of doing the resume, i cannot but thank God for all the things that He has brought me through. from my secondary school education to smu, i know that His hand has always been there to guide me from point to point, even though at times when i truly desired to go to another institution, He always had the best for me.

3) future

many a times we want to know what is in store for us for the next 1, 3 or 5 years. we cannot help but think because those career consultants will make us feel so guilty about not planning for our future that we start to dream big dreams for ourselves. sometimes we get pressured by the people around us and we start to read self-help books like the 7 habits of highly effective people. yes it is true that beginning with the end in mind is something that is important. we then try to plan to do lots of work and toil, finding our glory in our work. but have you ever considered that the day that hard work was created was when God cursed the ground so that Adam had to work hard in order to get produce from the ground to feed himself and Eve?

direction has never been clearer to me whenever God reminds me of Matt 16:33. seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. (MOV)

1) restraint

it often amazes me how difficult it is to understand some people. i wish i could enter into their minds and figure out what they are thinking about. on the other hand, a friend of mine mentioned that i am a difficult person to comprehend too. most probably because i'm too quiet and seldom express my feelings. while i would like to beg to differ, i cannot help but agree together with a pinch of denial. i try not to talk too much because i know if i rattle on without any restraint, my too direct speech will hurt someone, or offend someone that i do care about. it is definitely hard to balance restraint on my tongue.

2) overcoming distance

sometimes one begins to wonder if God is truly there when you need Him. but it is indeed amazing that when He reassures you, all doubts fade away. until we begin to open up cracks for doubts to creep in, His peace is so real that you can peel it off your heart.

3) His work

prayed for a dear friend at the altar today. did not want to pray for him at first, but could not push away the prompting of the Holy Spirit. i have great respect for this friend of mine, because i acknowledge his maturity. thus it also gives me great fear to pray for such a man of God. however, it is always God who is doing the work and not man. being His mouthpiece brought joy, as God reassured him through the unworthy lips of mine. it is human to say this, but you know God is indeed moving when you see a tear roll down my friend's face.

4) my heart

back to the point of talking about myself where people find it hard to know me. i think that i'm a relatively simple person, just wonder what is so hard to understand about a simple guy like me. but one thing i know is that my Father knows my heart so well that if you asked Him what the true desires of my heart is, He can put it in words much better than i can ever try to explain why 1 + 1 = 2.

as i mentioned to a friend that i have not written a long post for a long time. perhaps it is time to write a bit more today.

walking about vivo city after dinner at sushi tei, one notices people walking to and fro either with their family or that special someone. some struggling with hyper active kids, running to and fro, touching every thing on display, worrying the parents about brokerage or injury. some bearing the load of a sleepy child, wanting to get away before the weekend slips away and before work overtakes them during the week. some couples hold their hands tightly, not wanting to be seperated by the crowd of people rushing at them; they can't bear to leave each other even one second on this scared day of rest. some couples walk with a distance between them, the lady dressed up real fine, while the gent is in a "can't-be-bothered-to-dress" mood.

for some people, sunday is the only time where they can begin to find themselves; the man who stood alone in the empty carpark, holding on to a super-sized remote control, toying with a huge remote controlled car, or the lady who darts into various shops, trying on different items, and rejoices when she has done her fair share of purchases in that day.

but as the sun light dims from the earth, the people slowly trickle home, gasping for one last chance of getting some time away from thinking about the politics at work, or the pressing presentation due on tuesday. and the whole cycle continues on.

as the years go by, and the times change, a once healthy man who is now breathing his last will begin to think back on the significance of his life. Ah, all those fun times at the club, where he danced the whole night away. how sweet were those moments of fun and joy spent with his friends. how about the time where his first child was born? it was definitely one of the greatest moments of his life! his child, the only 'thing' that the world will remember him by, will carry on his legacy on this earth.

but what was his life worth? what did he accomplish at the end of the day? the treasures of the earth cannot follow him through death, and all he can do is to leave it in the hands of his only son, with hopes that whatever he spent his life working for, will be treasured and multiplied. but if he had a window to look into the future, he will see that the little scratch he made on history will be worn away by the times of change.

consider then my friend, what is the significance of your life. have you lived a good life? what is a good life? my answer to you is, one life and soon it will pass, but only what is done for Christ will last. will you leave more than a scratch on the tablet of history? it is for you to decide.