For Want of a Blog

I decided to pop by my dear old blog (i.e. this fella here) and found it in such a derelict state. Out-dated links to friends blogs, the decorations all expired (I think I didn't maintain my villagephoto.com acct) and an altogther sorry mess. So, here comes a nice new template (courtesy of blogger, no less) and new post and...

No more. Haha. I have better things to do than to maintain a public blog XD

If you have nothing better to do than to scour the web for my presence, I propose alternatives! :

- add me on facebook. I promise to be as reclusive and grumpy as ever :) but i'll try to say hello from time to time because I like feeling popular.
- if you're half-serious about talking to me, use kai's blog as a proxy to talk to me via her tagboard (she'll kill me for this)
- if you're really serious about talking to me, drop me an email (gmail acct please!) and I won't be as hermit-like, I assure you.
- if you really have nothing else to do, search for my blog :D it actually exists!

Heart of my own heart whatever befall
Still be my vision oh Ruler of all

here goes the last post on my blog!

i don't presume i'll see too many shocked, alarmed faces since not a lot of people read this in any case. which is possibly one reason why i'll shut this place down [but if i made that my only reason i suppose i'm an attention-seeking bugger :p]

been thinking abt it for a while. i just don't see the need to blog anymore. to express my feelings, i can easily turn to my Bible journal [which i should be doing more often]. i love writing there, without having to worry if it'll interest anybody or if i'm being coherent. i read it, God sees what i write and kai has the occasional glance at it. and that's all that's impt. there's no need to blog to say smth.

second, and imptly, i'm in love. other than God, kai sees me near-perfectly. i've never had to hide anything from her. she makes my heart race everytime i see her, even after all these months, after all those embarrassing moments. don't ask me why this is going to make me close my blog, but i find it a major factor *shrug* it's just that feeling when love songs are playing or i sing with my guitar or dream of dancing away with her that i cling that to what is impt to me and change my perspective on everything.

also, i'd rather keep in contact with the people i love personally rather than through such a murky medium as this is. kai, obviously. precious schoolmates like vernie, saif, the groopeas and all, i'd love to talk to personally, email or sms. kimkangsmife somehow warrant more than just a blog entry to know abt the going-ons in my life. churchmates, needless to say, Sundays and all are great times to talk. dearest corrie is overseas, will email her instead. since no-one reads my blog to find out much, i'd rather spend my blogging time more productively.

finally, i'm just bored of blogging. i resisted it for so long. now i find it's lost its novelty. i only started because i was going through the whole teeny-emo thing: lost, needing to vent, fallen head-over-heels in a crush and simply wanting to be part of the crowd. i've finally [re-]found direction; my journal and prayer are my outlets for venting; my crush is a great friend and i've discovered what real love is; God has shown me that i'm special for Him.

may revert back to my mysterious pseudo-selfblog that noone actually knows abt and not really a blog in the first place. i'll see. for any stray friend seeing this, can just strike me off your plugs/friends/etc list :) for those i don't meet often, just drop me an SMS to keep in contact or an email; both will be much appreciated. erm. what else? yah, just love all my friends, God bless and remember to smile because God loves you, believer or not, and is a great God, amen? XD

"...of a scarlet rose among the lilies"

had another spectacular date with kai last night. yay! i used the voucher i got with my samsung hp to have a dinner for two in a cable car [of course i would. $88 you know! save a lot of money ;)] before the voucher expired. my parents were supposed to use it but they weren't free and it expires at the end of aug, so my parents, being the cheapskate economically-savvy people that they are, insisted i take kai out with it :D

after finding our way to the cable car station at harbourfront [not too difficult, just look up] and hanging around mt. faber for a bit, we finally got started at around 650. kai and i were marvelling at how the waiters there masterfully slide the table, soup, cutlery and all, into the cable car. similarly, i swear they go through some course where they pour just enough water/soup/coffee/tea such that when the cable car rocks, it reaches the rim but never spills. amazing! and much appreciated too, because the tomato soup in particular was very, very special *yumyumyum*

the sky dining worked like this: they stick you into the car with the table and soup on the first round, go all the way to sentosa via harbourfront and back, then they take out your soup bowls, give you your main course and send you back on your way to sentosa and back. then they finally give you your dessert. it's all very efficient and lovely, except for when they get your order wrong and the cable car zips off into oblivion before they can get it right [which happened to some poor couple behind us] :X

of course, the obvious drawback of sky dining is that the cable cars don't have lights and they give you a nice glowy red latern but that's it. so kai and i couldn't see what the heck we were eating :P in faith, we plunged out fork into the sauced slab on our triangular plates and trusted that it was edible chicken, fish or the like. then we would wait until we reached a cable car tower and, for those brief moments, analyse our food before being sucked into darkness again. nonetheless, the food tasted very good, esp kai's cajun fish :D

the dessert was a delicious apple crumble that, for once, gave generously both apple and crumble, not lots of crumble and small cubes of apple. oh, and the strawberry in chocolate sauce. which i subsequently toyed with and made an embarrassment of myself with :S the coffee they gave was so-so, but that's the only blip on the night's menu [apparently kai's tea was good stuff].

since we were done around 840, we MRTed to clarke quay and lounged about at Jazz@SB. i finally got to try baileys, and realised why my dad kept asking me to give it a shot. it's like a melted frappe, nicely creamy and sweet :) after musing about how we would ask the waiter to give us "Sex on the Beach" and a "Blow Job", kai finally got a margarita. sour-salty stuff, which the bitter kick of alcohol. the music, as usual, was exceptional, with the added bonus of some lovely latin numbers. kai and i swapped drinks after a while since her stomach was going in circles. the baileys actually made kai feel better! proof that alcohol is good for you! we left at 1030 since kai had to be home. we'll sit through the whole night on prom night :)

there ends the most important event since i last blogged. oh yah, there was GP exam. it was fine :)

an epiphany in a day is enough to bamboozle a tired mind, but compound multiple epiphanies with startling revelations and one can only sit and stare in the feeling of complete realisation, and the acknowlegement of God's divine plan and hand at work.

for a moment, i felt a surge of anger because i couldn't bear to tolerate the hurt that's been caused. but i'm a historian, and the past is past. it'd be so much more productive to love the ones that have been hurt even more, and with that love, recompense somewhat the gaping wounds still healing.

the most crucial jigsaw piece in the conundrum of evelyn has finally been released from God's enclosed hand. strangely enough, it has nothing to do with evelyn yet everything to do with her all at once. yet again, the mysteries of God's plan seem to go in circuitous routes, but finally end up in a destination more beautiful than when we had first begun.

God has broken one of the shackles that has so tormented my spiritual walk to no end. the familiar of feeling of guilt and shame have been washed away by the blood of Jesus. Amen! by God's grace, i've been forgiven so easily the one whom i thought would find most difficulty in forgiving me; i've finally been able to forgive myself and accept my weakness, presenting it to God. with that, i can finally embrace myself the knowledge of God's forgiveness, without the devil casting more doubt and self-hatred on my life. i'm free!!!

i often make so much of my long, torturous road of relationships, but now that i've reached the final lap, all the struggles, the regret and the mistakes made seem completely worth it for this one chance: the chance to learn from all that i've gone through to make it good with kai. my folly has been to create a hero out of my love-life while neglecting why God had allowed it to happen to me in the first place. no more. for the first time in my life, i have a relationship that stands firmly on Christ the cornerstone, no more the stumbling block, and i will tell anyone who cares to ask that YES! it's worth it to suffer the refining process to come out with precious gold. we work on that long, winding but God-led road to marriage, kai and i, and in faith.

if anyone ever asks me why i spend 90min watching a pixellated screen with 22 men chasing a ball on a grassy field, watch this video, feel your jaw slacken and go running delirious around my room clutching your head going "holy crap! how the heck did he do that? holy crap!"

enjoy.

//edit i realised that this covers my tagboard quite a bit. i'll shift it down :) and my favourite is the clarence seedorf goal. unbeliveable!!!!!




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an entry to step aside from the perils of my emotional well-being to delve into some other stuff that i found interesting this week:

I.
corrie's leaving! so fast! time passes horribly quickly when your guard isn't up. i've hardly kept in contact of late, or even through the year. maybe it's one of those friendships that God makes to explode upon your life and make an irreversible change, then lets it peter off into memory. whatever it is, thank you for everything last year. God bless, and i hope to make it to see you off. have a good flight and enjoy the dream that God's carried you to.

II.
TSD has made me look at moments as 'theatre moments' and see the beauty in those little flashes of life that disappear as soon as they surface. ok, those aren't quite 'theatre moments', more like 'life moments'. before duos yesterday, there was a 'silent' duo preview with harris and imran. more like a duel really. harris taking the run up, bowling a lovely ball and imran hammering it away from the wicket with startling accuracy and force. against the wall, TSDians and albert watching slack-jawed, lining the stairs were students taking photos, videos, and equally in awe. that duel ingrained itself upon my mind as a vivd memory, though i don't quite know why yet. it was beautiful though :)

III.
we're an interesting country, Singapore. i was watching the numerous excavators unearth grass and soil alike with impunity along marina bay and wondering how we're numb to change. tell me a day that you don't see road works on a stretch of road that you distinctly remember being road-worked a year ago. or crane and vehicles tearing into virgin ground, pouring cement and piling metal to build yet another skyscraper, tunnel yet another MRT line. it's not a judgment, merely an observation. perhaps that creates our societal mindset, that everything should be fast, changing and now. perhaps that's why we're never a satisfied lot.

IV.
again, Singapore: why i don't like Singapore history. no, change that; i'm proud of our history as a nation. what i don't like is the spin that national education puts on it and how they drill into us. unknowingly, while everyone laughs NE off cynically, they don't realise how deeply the education has actually worked. we are taught to pride ourselves on our resilience - we bounced back from the japanese occupation, survived the rationing years, pulled through the 1997 economic crisis. we are a resilient nation., we are taught that efficiency is key - we are a small nation, our only resource is our people. we are taught the virtues of meritocracy - it is right to give our best the best, reward those with results. NE teaches us to rely on ourselves, that we can make history, that we create our own destiny. we are gods of our lives, and only by making ourselves tough and strong can we win the rat race that is in every part of life.

rubbish. no nation has crafted its own destiny, and unless Singapore can do that with a lasting impact of centuries, Singapore, too, will fail to do so. history teaches many things. one school of thought is that it is Great Men [and Women] who change the course of history. or maybe, like Marx, history is the result of class change and developments. whatever it is, we are in the hands of forces beyond our control, and relying on ourselves alone is merely going to lead to destruction. of course, i'm going to insist that it is the hand of God that guides this nation, but whether you're religious or not, it's reality, and i'm quite sure i can prove it to you. ok, i've gone roundabout with this thought. it just occured to me today anyway.

V.
"charity starts at home" - those words keep ringing in my ears. that's what this retired teacher at ngee ann primary's student care told me when i told her i wanted to help people. hm. i'll keep with that thought.