and as we shine, we give people permission to do so.

The period after my political science paper that was spent lazing around, without any sense of purpose, motivation of any kind was put to a stop today. A return to some quiet time with God, thanksgiving helped to sort myself in order. Sometimes it is just so easy to give in to the flesh; to sleep that few hours longer, to roll around and do nothing. I’ve been out of the exam system for too long. The willpower to get back into shape isn’t enough. And that is when the Spirit comes in again, and gently helps you to move on among all the troubling and throbbing of the mind. The sorrow that leads to repentance, the excel in the grace of giving. For the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, so that through his poverty I might become rich. I’m glad I sorted myself out. : )

Writing letters and postcards are therapeutic. I got a few postcards and letters from friends overseas with pictures of their hometowns and inviting me over. Writing teaches me that it is never impossible to spare some time for others, it reminds me of my own values and inspirations when I write to comfort a friend. Or simply to share about everyday life. One of the little ways to help me to love other people and not to forget what other people has done for me so easily. It helps.

By the way, thanks Jie for all the goodies from Tokyo. I’ll be wearing the shirt soon! & Mr Children is on my play list for the moment. : ) The fridge is well stocked with all those confectionaries. You should have seen what Mom ate for breakfast yesterday… There goes my free air ticket for next July. : (

On hindsight, losing my bible at the FOC camp has been a good thing. It taught me what are real memories, those that stays even after the bible is lost, and made me reread the Word of God in a new light, to see verses that I’ve never noticed despite reading them for umpteenth times before, and highlight and annotate many more new epiphanies.

“Rather, as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses; in beatings, imprisonments and riots; in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger; in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God”

-2 Corinthians 6:4-7

Don’t hide the shine my friends : ) jiayou people!

What is essential is always invisible to the eye.

Lately, I’ve spotted quite a number of lonely souls. People who don’t quite recognise that they are, who just filter around. Maybe it is just the exams. Sometimes I do get the feeling, in the few times when I look back, to see friends progressing, move on, and the children you used to mentor growing up, starting to find their own feet, and rely on you less.

You wonder if people forget. I think people are very forgetful. It is so easy to forget, and focus on yourself, your well-being, your own interests. I think prayers help me not to forget so easily, to sensitize myself to the care of others. To give me the will to reach out when I feel like sliding into the comforts that friends can provide, to know how to move on when people become independent.

There are friends that I love to meet up, but some don’t really seem to have the time. I love a good friend, but I hate to think that our friendship is of low maintenance not because it is really good in quality, but because simply, it is convenient.

Another milestone passed.

Utmost Clarity of Mind.

You learn so many things everyday. It is so overwhelming sometimes to see how everything fits together. Each day is a different journey bringing in different experiences, and I realised I don’t have to have everything figured it out; I don’t have to have the answers to everything right now.

There used to be a time when I wait for God. Growing tired of waiting for Him to find me, I went out to find myself, and in the process, I found Him.

Gospel Songs and Creed somehow have a very good calming effect when I struggle with the decaffeinating effect.  

Steady but with haste.

The weather has been so nice and dainty and I’ve been sleeping more often that I should. I thank God for those hours because I really had problems coping with the itch from the eczema, so to have that extra uninterrupted few hours of sleep makes life slightly better.

This means that I have to make those hours when I’m awake COUNT even more! 

Current status stands at 50% of sociology revision done, 25% of political science revision done, 20% of JLPT3 revision done, and 10% of philosophy revision done. Pol science is 5 days away, Soci and Jap are 9 and 10 days respectively, and Philosophy for 12 days.

Sixiang is right. We GOT to make out mid-terms count. We didn’t work so hard to get our As and B pluses so to throw everything away. Make up for those sleepless nights later!

Onward everybody!

Stakeholders of Our lives.

Di Song posted something that was very sweet of him on his blog. I received the postcard that both Weichao and him co-authored. Skyping with the both of them after a hiatus of nearly a month has been very therapeutic, as I could share my thoughts and be honest with them. I’m honest with my other friends too, including the very good ones; it is just that they understand the honestly more than others, making me feel alive by giving me the sense of heart to heart connection. Guys need heart to heart too! LOL! I don’t think any guy friends that I know write in such language…*grinz. 

That said, I’m still amused at the way we can communicate tough issues with humour, with Weichao starting the rational analysis process going after the laughter has died down. Thank God for them.

It has been a restless night. I slept for a few hours just now and deciding that I couldn’t sleep anymore, I went to follow-up on my revision on the sociology of family to the sociology of religion. In-between, I found time to stumble upon this website: http://www.jalankayutrail.edu.sg, which made me realised that I know very little about the place where my church is situated, and its wonderful closeness to nature. All I know is the food and the Lower Seletar Reservoir that is nearby. I have in mind a few of those small roads around the church that I plan to explore when my exams are over.

Since I’m reading on sociology of religion, I’m going to talk a bit about something that I have read. The Brym and Lie textbook mentioned that the secularisation of the modern world has led to a decline in religion, where we can use laws, science and technology to fulfil our daily needs. Instead of the original purpose of religion in providing the needs of a person in its entirety, people increasingly view religion as able to take care only of spiritual needs. In other words, people has religion so that it can take care of selective needs, and fulfilling part of what is required of them as followers as a result of compensators (a detailed indication of the process needed to achieve certain rewards).

To put it as a real life example, take the idea of education for example. We know that most of the high quality and reputable education institutions will give our children the maximum opportunities to fulfil their potential in life. As stakeholders their lives, wouldn’t it be irresponsible to leave the chance of entering such a reputable institution by luck, or in this case through God? Isn’t it wiser to make use of contacts, or other caveats (like living within 1km of the school radius) to get a place in the school? And if our children go in, do we give thanks to God for putting our children in such schools, perhaps at the expense of another deserving child who tries to pursue a place in the school through normal and perhaps more legitimate channels (but who says donating money to school isn’t legitimate right?).

I feel quite strongly about this in a way because both my sister and I managed to be where we are not because our parents pulled any contacts, or were in any position to give us the benefit of biasness in decision making, other than the fact that we have comfortable lifestyles that helps us to take advantage of any opportunities that come our way. Our parents were determined to let our achievements be of sole merit. But that said, is it wrong to pull out ‘all stops’ to give the best to your child?

In my ideal world, I will leave such matters to God. But as what Brym and Lie has illustrated, that is not the case in the world. Whatever that is within our control that could be achieved through science, technology and human-made laws, we should expend our efforts on them. Only matters that are beyond our control, on the spiritual side, that we leave it to religion to settle. Thinking about it, the sayings of most Christians that ‘let’s do our best and leave the rest to God’ seems to take on another meaning: ‘let’s achieve the things that we can by the methods of these world and leave those that we can’t to God’.

I recognise the benefits of a good secondary and pre-university education in one of the best schooling institutions. I would not want my children in the future to miss out on being a student in any of these schools if the most remotest of chances to make it happen exist. That said, we know that life isn’t such a straight-forward thing. Being in a certain school doesn’t make you into a certain type of person. The complexities of the human nature will ensure the uniqueness of each human individual.

It is just that I don’t want to delegate only parts of my life to God, but to give Him my all. But I’m afraid that the very essence of human nature may just make this lofty goal near impossible. I’ve seen enough things in my life to know it is possible too. Hopefully at the end of day, there are more than enough grace and mercy to let me know that whatever it is, I have not live a life that is not lived by God’s standards.

Every cloud engenders not a storm.

I went back to my hide-out today. The last time I was there was with Disong and Jenny. There were strong memories with great pals that were spent there. And Grace got her induction into this hall of fame today.

There was this old man selling ice-cream and I bought two cones from him. We had a friendly chat on ‘addressing people’ before he suddenly said 我结婚到没有结婚. Aw… I hoped that I did not rake up any of his 伤心事 even though he laughed it off in the end. I guess every man on the street has his own story to tell. It is just that we don’t have time to listen, and perhaps we never will until we will ourselves not to look without seeing.

I had a good tuition session with my younger kid Brian today. He is really a pleasure to teach. Whenever I arrived for our session, he will immediately plonked down his Amaths questions in front of me and ask me to teach him. Sigh! I really want to stop tutoring at the end of this year. But I sort of grown quite fond of him already. 师母 also asked me to take good care of them. Brian will be transferring from his international school to a government school at the start of next year… So will see what transpires at the end of the year.

The previous session with the older brother, Abel, earlier in the week didn’t went off as well. We were talking about English and the importance of general knowledge and I was trying to convince that world news are indirectly important to him, so that he will read the newspapers and improve his grasp of the English language in progress.

So I asked him:

Me: After the examples that I’ve raised, don’t you think general knowledge and thus reading the newspapers are important to your growth?

Abel: I don’t think so. I don’t find them very relevant to me. They are beyond my scope.

Me: But you don’t you want to grow in knowledge and perspectives so that you can lead the house one day the way your father does?

Abel: I think I can do a better job than my dad right now. He places too much importance and time on his job.

Sigh. And I dropped the matter after that because that was not the direction that I expected the conversation to be progressing. It is a matter of not getting too involved because I am just a tutor, yet knowing that perhaps you can make a difference.

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Last CG of the semester was spent at West Coast Park. I’m going to miss going for the same tutorial as Florence! Being year4, she is supposed to be the ‘veteran’ guiding the ‘freshie’. Haha! She makes studying Vietnamese so much more fun and enjoyable. Regardless of the grade that I am going to get, I really got much out of this module, and I cannot wait to use it when I head off to Vietnam mid December. : )

The classic ’Flo look’. Brightens up anybody’s day when you see her laugh. *tremors in the classroom.

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Had my Vietnamese oral test together with Jeremy last week. We were partners and we spent hours at Sheares hall and PGP over 2 days perfecting our conversations. We managed to pick the one that we had painstakingly prepared. : )

My friendly neighbour, Trung. He studies as he eats and his mean grade of 4.45 is a good reflection of his dedication… Ah! He makes me look lazier than I actually am.

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Me & Danielle @ the Deck. She said that we have some form of sibling likeness… so I call her my いもとちゃん。Jiayou for your coming exams and especially the modules we are taking together!

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Shall end it off with this picture taken near my tutee’s house. Everyday can be beautiful with our Lord.

Hungry to Escape.

My initial feelings of upset at receiving my results for both my political science essay today even though it is a good grade to most is reflective of how much I’ve changed and progressed from a person that used to procrastinate and have genuine doubts on my own abilities. What used to be a sense of dread on the days when results are returned is replaced by a sense of eager anticipation, driven in part by the expectation of reaping the rewards of the hard work and sacrifices that I’ve put the preparation, but mostly because of this ever growing sense of purpose and urgency to want to put up my best for the Lord, including academics. And academics is the special key to my emancipation in this Christian student life of mine, not for the final grade itself, but for the belief in the purpose, values and principles that characterise my journey from the beginning till the end.

Grace reminded me about something today without intending to: that we compete with ourselves and not others. This bit of wisdom has never sank in as it should in the past because we marked our progress according to other people. For example, the value of an ’A grade’  will be diminished in our eyes with the higher the number of people who achieved it, with respect to other conditions like the difficulty of the paper, the type of lecturers etc… Our value is intricately linked with many other conditional factors to the fact that an ‘A grade’ is not just about itself anymore.

But that little bit of wisdom sort of unravel itself when Grace said that to me. It just dawned on me the real wisdom of competing with yourself, regardless of the outside conditions. Competing with myself provides a more tangible way of measuring my own improvement, be more focus in tackling my own weakness while paying tribute to my strengths, and recognise the uniqueness of every single situation to not want to be in total control of everything, and to leave everything else to the Lord. It allows me to focus on achieving success for the Lord, without being consumed by success itself, because of the dedication of the process to Him and the acknowledgement of the fallibility of the human nature.

Sort of deepened my desire and determination not to be an underachiever for God any longer. Looking for God to satisfy this hunger of mine, that has been left unfulfilled for too long.

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林牧师和牧师娘 left for Taiwan today. I’m really thankful for the many many things that they have taught me, and the refining of the foundations of many schools of thoughts that I held. It was their last day in AGPC yesterday, and we had a farewell for them. I wished I could have learnt more from them before they left, but I’m glad I took my chances when they were still around. They help to redefine the way I look at God, the ways I harness His power, the desire to expand and quench my thirst for knowledge, defined my role as a student and helped to make Godly sense in the pursuit of a partner that God has intended. Anyway, I made a promise to 牧师娘, and I hope it is in God’s plan that I will be able to help her fulfil it in the near future.

The more I look around the developments of our world, the more I realise we are all in need of emancipation. There are so many people living in pain and denial without knowing that they are. Emancipation is more than just the granting of liberty rights, it is the gift of being able to live in the truth and revel in the healing that the loving and righteous Lord can give to the broken heart, many many times over, in exchange for us coming to Him only with faith.

Lord, do it Your way.

I amuse myself sometimes with the ability and ease of being able to talk to strangers. Today I was in the lift with this super mother overloaded with bags of colourful shapes and sizes, and two young kids in tow. She also just happened to be my new neighbour. All it took was the time spent in the lift plus the short walk along the corridor to establish a friendship. I think travelling has helped me hone and refine much of my communication skills on top of social work, church and school. You become more sensitive to the capture of ‘moments’ and also know how to use relevant experience to strike up a conversation. That said, travelling did helped me in the sense that it brought me newer and wider perspectives on human life and to appreciate the beauty in the ambiguity of the human spirit.

I owe Amir a post! : ) I guess now is the time to write about it, especially since I have more or less sorted out my thoughts on it.

Before Amir last week, I was walking back to PGP with Grace and we had a long talk on the majors we are studying (or at least I was doing most of the talking and she was so nice and sweet to listen to me). We were sharing on the thoughts of the life paths we are trying to pursue, and how confident we are in that this is part of His plan. We shared about our confidence and fears, or at least I did. : P. I guess the topic was timing in the sense that it was like a check and balance on the endurance of my conviction in what I’m doing that is both my passion and my wish that Christ has for me.

Amir and I had a good chat the same week after I talked to Grace. Amir’s a friend that I met through Gabriel, and we caught up during one of the evenings at the waffles shop @ PGP. We talked about the ideas of fulfilling functionalism versus passion. We both chose our modules based on passion rather than on the possibility of scoring. We chose our majors gearing towards passion believing that over our entire lifetime it will be highly rewarding rather than those that we can still do well and has a fixed high economic value.

Tuning out to the standards of the world is difficult because it excludes one from the styles, news, gossip and entertainment most people depend on to grease the wheels of social interaction. Few people want to be cultural misfits. It made me think of the good friends that I could have easily catch up with, and understand better if we had taken the conventional route of high functionality. 

You will be part of their lives’ rather than ‘catching up’ with their lives.

Having come from similar education backgrounds, we battle the same struggles and understand the labeling that society has put on ‘deviants’ like us. But I got out of the conversation with absolute clarity that I’ve made the right choice, and for Amir too, he finally got a friend who understands what he is going through. Haha! On a lighter note, this friendship sounds a bit shotgun. : ) Oh well! We have 4 years to go together at the very least huh? *grinz

Visited Xiulian @ Trinity Paya Lebar today for afternoon tea and service. It was really good to catch up with my mentor who gave me my foundation in Christ. We caught up quite a bit over the short 1 and half hours that we spent together. Shared with Xiulian much of the happenings in my life. She left me with some valuable words of advice, not the least that the blueprint for somebody’s else life is NOT the blueprint for your life. You should not look at a ’successful’ person and try to emulate his blueprint, but rather discern what does it mean to be happy and contented in your own right, with your own definitions, and your own way of doing it.

I have an original blueprint given to me by God.

Higher by Creed. Shall end with this song, dedicate to all people out there who chose to follow your calling! : ) Not least you Amir! : )

PGP guide. Deepavali Special!

The new canteen @ PGP. Now we have two canteens, a supermarket and a cafe. : ) With its conducive studying environment, close proximity to school and the nice neighbours that I have, NUS! please make me an honorary citizen here please.

My Spicy Chicken Spaghetti from Aston’s Grill. This Western store has a restaurant in Serangoon Gardens and other outlets in Tanjong Katong, Holland V… We have Chong Pang nasi lemak here too. It is beautifully crazy. : )

 

Elroy’s Chargrill Chicken. It tasted very good! And he chose the Corn Cob and Salad as his two side-dishes. I had to ask him repeatedly what did he choose as his side-dish, because I can’t believe he refused the mashed potato and the fries on offer…

After lunch, we took a walk around the place. I discovered that although the configurations in a block are supposed to be the same, they have different sized windows and absolutely devoid any form of symmetry. Thank God I have one of those medium sized windows and two of the smaller ones in my room, courtesy of it being a corner room. : )

We walked out through a backdoor of the estate. We found ourselves at a small road! This is where we can take bus 183 or bus 10 and walk in if we miss the shuttle buses. : ) And there is this standalone pillbox used during world war two by the Malay Regiment in the fight for Pasir Panjang. Part of the Kent Ridge Park trail. One day I must complete the trail. It seems that there are quite a few gems along the way.

Haven’t done such discovery trails for quite some time.

Reason and Persuasion.

What goes beyond reason does not go against reason. This is a point that I made on my philo tutorial blog which I’m supposed to elaborate on. For those people whom I have asked for their opinion on this statement, you may like to read on to see how I reply to this. : ) Below is the original comment and the elaboration comment. Happy Reading!