ety...

if you consider the etymology of the word, you might come to the conclusion that disillusionment is actually a good thing. :)

temporal...

i've never been one for gifts like soft toys. wasn't particularly fond of them, neither is my gf. the excuse was the impracticality. i try hard to be a practical person. i got an "A" for experimental physics. ;D

but i guess i realise that those gifts which i deride, which give pleasure for a short time before fading, are exactly like every other gift which we imagine to be more practical. from the perspective of eternity, a gift of a house or a car or a kidney is every bit as temporal as flowers and candy.

i guess we have to get round the idea that some gifts are intrinsically more valuable than others, just because they appear to last longer. or perhaps we just have to get used to the idea that some gifts are meant to be short-lived, or purely sentimental in nature, and accept those gifts for what they are, instead of mocking them for what they are not.

and then perhaps i'll be able to fully defeat the lie that says that some people are intrinsically more valuable than others, just because they appear more capable. to fully accept that different people have different gifts that bloom at different times, and accept them for who they are, instead of getting angry for what they are not.
has anyone realised how emo i've been these few months?

Newsweek Epic Fail

someone made a small editing error in this article on newsweek


middle paragraph, first line, near the right side. i'll zoom in a little for you...

EPIC FAIL!! Pictures taken from http://www.newsweek.com/id/170965

oh yeah, and half my exams are over today. woo!

*drool*

it is extremely rare that i see a product that gives me heart palpitations.

actually, this is the only time i ever recall it happening.
http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/rule-brittania#/uk/videos-by-category?VideoCategory=Challenges&Page=9

60's era Jaguar Series 1, but with modernised insides. 50K UK Sterling before modding, and notwithstanding Singapore's atrocious taxes.

*drool*

Hello Moto....

She loves me
She loves my eyes
She loves me
She loves my thighs
She loves me
She loves my lips
She loves me
She loves my hips

(he hasn't shaved in awhile either!)

if attacked by afore-mentioned nuts...

some time ago i concluded that the best way to avoid a speeding car coming straight at you is to jump straight upwards and tuck your legs in.

this is assuming it's coming really fast at you, and you've only got about a quarter of a second to react. going left or right is a bad idea, because the car is probably going left or right too, so you've got a 50% chance of getting hit anyway.

besides, it takes longer to dive off to one side, because the act of diving leaves your legs in the way of the onrushing vehicle. conversely, jumping straight up and tucking your legs in takes half the time. you'll get hit by the sloped windshield instead of the flat bumper, and will hopefully end up rolling over the roof instead of getting flung through the air.

and if you're feeling particularly kung-fuey, you can try kicking off the hood of the car as it reaches you, executing a forward flip mid-air as the car barrels underneath, and landing gracefully on the ground as the car morphs into a flaming fireball behind you. signing your hollywood contract should take place within a day or two.


i only mention this now, because it seems that Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear implied something very similar when describing the latest lamborghini on Top Gear Season 12 Episode 1. i love it when my ideas get independent corroboration. :)

remembering the driving

someone has finally started driving lessons.

i remember when i finally started driving lessons. it was one of the biggest challenges i had ever faced, in terms of personal struggle. i was scared of driving. my naturally cautious nature reeled at the idea of putting my life in the hand of random road users - my experience of a car accident that was not my dad's fault in any way merely amplified that. the logic was simple: there are nuts on the road, and there's not much you can do about it.

besides, i have remarkably little faith in my hand-eye coordination.

i literally quaked with fear everytime i walked that covered passageway from the train station to the driving centre. that path has been hallowed with much prayer. my driving instructor was quite amused at the way my knees shook. it's quite difficult to maintain half-clutch when your knee is shuddering.

on April 9th this year, by the grace of God, and also by the skin of my teeth, i passed my driving test. an exact borderline passing mark, and my tester conveniently ignored an "automatic failure" infringement. the date is seared into memory.
i want to be able to point out your faults knowing that you're strong enough to take it
i still don't like driving. but it's ok now.

study plan

ok, study plan.

today till next monday - chiong semiconductor physics, and glance at google earth module along the way. from next tuesday till following wednesday, chiong solid state physics, and glance at religion module along the way.

27th Thu 9.00am: Intro to World Religions
27th Thu 1.00pm: Solid State Physics
29th Sat 9.00am: Semiconductor Processing
1st Mon 9.00am: Remote Sensing for Earth Observation

i remember that the verse which i was given said, "Take heart, and be strong."

successfully solved rubik's cube twice today. whoo! Google earth module exam takes place in a computer lab - we're apparently allowed to bring in one CD-ROM full of stuff.

not-blind faith

the most blatantly supernatural thing that i have ever personally experienced is having two separate scripture references come to me in a dream. they were not passages i was familiar with, and they both had one particular phrase repeated word-for-word which was relevant to an issue i was facing at the time. this was last december.

thus i know that the God i believe in is real, alive and active, although i may not see it at this particular moment.


what Jesus said was, "even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles." miracles are not crucial to faith, but they help.

pedometer

my sisters bought my dad a pedometer some days ago. its a cute little device that you're supposed to put in your pocket, and it counts how many steps you've taken with it in your pocket.

it's a cool concept, except that i managed to 'walk' a few hundred steps for my dad by bouncing it on my knee. plus, after he dropped it a few times, it seems prone to going walking all by itself.

as i was bouncing it on my knee, i could feel a weighted spring inside oscillating, so i guess that's how it works. but the question that popped into my mind as i fiddled around with the device it this: is someone who loves to walk alot called a pedophile? :D

side note: IIRC, the Brits spell it with a letter 'a' near the front. Americans can't spell. :)

on an utterly unrelated note, this is something else that was bouncing around my head this morning.

Q: Give one example of a cardinal sin.

A: Pooping in the birdbath.

(in case you didn't get it, click here)

experimenting

this is what the blog looked like for a few minutes today. was experimenting with blogger. woo.

recovering from election fever.

i debated whether to spend time following the election news today, considering that i have one test and one lab report due tomorrow, and a presentation on monday.

i eventually decided that it was a historic moment not to be missed.

so i spent approximately 4 hours this morning refreshing various news websites, and a further one-and-a-half hours tonight reading post-mortems. (my fave article so far)

that's approximately 3 times as much time as i spent studying. :)

toast for breakfast

actually i had prata.

but then i found this online.

hahaha.

i wonder if i post bits of my essay on my blog, whether NUS' plagiarism detectors will pick it up. hmm...

"what? you mean i must go library?"

i have found my official worst project mate ever.

doing a research project together. i've been working mainly on this since middle of last week. urban development of Singapore over the last 50 years, using old photos superimposed onto Google Earth.


On the day that I asked everyone to have their first draft out, he hasn't written a word. When I leave lab early so i can actually get lunch before my next class, he exclaims, "What?!? then who can i ask if i dunno what to do??"

the day after the first draft was supposed to be out, he messages me. "Oi, I dunno wad to do for (sub-topic X which is half of his entire part)." I head over to LINC, type three words into the search function, then send him two links by MSN. He says, "You mean you got these books?" I tell him no, that he needs to go to the library. He says, "What?! you mean i must go library??"

research project... but doesn't see a need to go to the library. i'd like to take a moment here to quote from the project instructions.

Be warned that most information you can get by Googling is sketchy. You should also use the library, and read reference books.

despite the project scope being from the 1950s to the present, half his section is talking about the Raffles Town plan. Apparently he had done a project on that, so was eager to show off his knowledge.

he writes in Singlish. "Another conflict in the past was that Singapore was ethnically fractured, so no one is interested in funding a free (entrance) and open (to all races) park."

he writes with the finesse and sensitivity of a wrecking ball. "This has alarmed our neighboring countries as the boundary has to be redrawn, causing disputes, momentarily displaying our long history of not so good foreign relationship with our jealous, yet bigger neighbors." i got totally blasted by a teacher in P5 for doing something similar in an essay. apparently it's not nice to create international tension.

i later find out that of the two links i sent to him, he only used one. the other one was in closed stacks, and he didn't want to wait an hour for it.

he writes without citations. he doesn't seem to think they're important. "The reclaimed land has caused damage to our environment in more ways than we have expected. Habitat destruction is reported when land is drained during reclamation. Habitat destruction is the process when the natural habitat is not able to support the species that are living there; usually they are either displaced or destroyed in the process." This was the sum of his writing about the environmental effect of land reclamation. Chains of generic and sweeping statements, devoid of references or actual examples for that matter. This is AFTER he asked me for help, and I sent him a link to an NUS website about coral reefs.

so i basically rewrote his entire section. i've left about 150 words untouched, as a memorial.

on the day that the project is due, at 5pm, he asks me if i've sent him any updates. i ask him to check his email (i had just sent it out). he tells me that he's checked it this morning. i tell him to check his email!!

i spent over $120 on clothes today. like, wow. i spent over half an hour popping in and out of one changing room trying on an endless procession of items in varying sizes. i can hardly believe myself...

in mitigation, $120 was spread across 5 pieces. :D

unreasonably well

doing unreasonably well for school so far this sem. just got back a term paper with an 'A'. no comments, no feedback, just a pencil scrawl saying 'good point', and an 'A'.

it was the religion module. the term paper question i picked was this: "One's sexuality/sexual orientation should have nothing to do with one's religiosity. Discuss with reference to at least two major religions."

I had alot of difficulty understanding this question, and my tutor was not helpful in this area. not intentionally unhelpful, but we didn't seem to be speaking the same language. the problem was that i interpreted the question very literally, as i always do. firstly, the phrase "nothing to do with" is all-inclusive, which makes a 'yes' answer difficult to support. secondly, the phrase "nothing to do with" carries no connotation of value judgements, right or wrong, but is more of a statement regarding the scope which religions have over the adherent's life. thirdly, the word "should" carries value judgement with it, implying that there is a right and a wrong as to whether religion should affect one's sexuality. fourthly, the wording of the question "sexuality/sexual orientation" is very open to being defined as broadly or as narrowly as i like.

i guess it was the third point that troubled me the most, and the one which me and my tutor couldn't seem to agree upon. the problem, as always, is that right and wrong are contingent upon one's own set of beliefs. in the end i ignored the point, choosing the convenient position that religion will have as much authority in a man's life as he allows it to, and that i should focus my study on how much authority it tends to get.

i also took umbrage with the "at least two major religions" bit. from what we've learnt in our course so far, the only thing which has really proven true for all religions is that none of them are monolithic, none of them consistently practise and believe exactly the same thing, and that the variation within each major religion is almost as great as that between different religions. therefore, it made no sense to me whatsoever to pick examples from any religion, since you could probably find contradictory statements everywhere.

i had quite alot of fun writing it, since i took what i considered an utterly outlandish stand. i basically said that everyone has some sort of religion, whether or not they consider themselves religious. atheists and agnostics have clearly defined statements of belief. americans treat their Consitution like a sacred text. Vegans treat animals as 'sacred', by certain textbook definitions. furthermore, i posited that all the conventional religious labels are entirely useless in defining a person's belief systems, since one's beliefs are affected not only by religious organisations, but by personal experience, what we hear in the media etc. Simple statements such as "Milk is good for your bones" are statements of belief, ingrained in us through the media and the education system. Each individual's belief system is a potpourri of different influences, a hodgepodge mix of aphorisms and catchphrases, and this constitutes a personal 'religion'.

spending two-thirds of the essay defining terms, i finally embark on my argument, which is basically a one-liner. it is impossible to perform any action or make any decision without reference to certain beliefs, and hence nothing can be considered fully independent of religiosity. and since the essay clearly wasn't long enough, i arbitrarily added in examples from Christianity and Buddhism to support my points in various locations, to hit the minimum word length.

and of course, all my arguments are well-supported with the writings of various sociologists and authors, most significantly a guy called mircea eliade, who basically made the same argument - he called man homo religiosus, and said that no man is truly irreligious. also thomas luckmann, who coined the term 'invisible religion', which is basically all the other things like individualism and familialism and stuff which takes the place of religion nowadays.

someone pointed out to me that in most argumentative essays, one should present both sides of the argument, and say which one you prefer. the problem is, with the way i defined the terms, no counter-argument exists! my definitions were all-inclusive, and i took advantage of a narrowly-defined question until there was nothing else to be said. so i was really rather nervous about that, and i thank God for an 'A'. but truth be told, this is one of the things that annoy me about Christianity sometimes... sometimes it seems to me like the doctrines have been structured such that there's no way to logically disprove it, no way to argue that it is flawed. beyond a certain point, the 'perfect God' trump-card eliminates all basis for argument... but i guess that's just me exalting logic higher than it should be. and i guess that's why faith is a pre-requisite.

i'm just rambling here 'cos i can't seem to sleep tonight.

LFC

a friend's interpretation of LFC.



truly not walking alone. :) thanks bro!
friends remind you of what you've been doing right when all you can see are your faults.

Recce trip to Ubin

Ubin was nice. Sky threatened rain for awhile, but then the clouds decided to move away and bother the mainland instead.

Between me, Guanyou, and David, we managed to bring one camera with no memory card, one camera with no batt, and one camera that has poorer resolution than my cameraphone. Many thanks to Guan You for loaning me a SD card temporarily.

saw hornbill. it made my day. :D



also managed to get as close to a sunburn as i've ever been. not really red, but skin abit tender. but everyone else pretty much turned red. thank God for good genes.

i managed to totally stumble upon 3 different surprises planned for me this week. oops.

geeky and proud of it

this thought came to me when i was thinking about the kind of stuff people write on their t-shirts.

i saw a girl wearing a shirt saying something like, "I wanted it, I threw a tantrum, I got it." and in my head i was going "poor girl, you've never known anyone with the courage to stand up to you and discipline you."

i started thinking about the kind of shirts i like... they usually involve horrendously bad puns, or in-jokes which not everyone will understand. example of the former: "Christians have the best sects" example of the latter: "There are only 10 kinds of people in the world; those who understand binary, and those who don't."

i suppose it's part of geek culture to be proud of the fact that you have accrued ostentatious amounts of obscure information, and also to show off your vocabulary every now and then. :D
i am beginning to understand that this is a bad thing. i do like to show off what i know at the expense of loving others. praying for change.
i mean, seriously! i even read webcomics! how geeky is that?

i live dangerously...

twice this week i have left my entire set of keys hanging outside my hostel room door. once, this was overnight - approximately 9 hours.

i thank God that i still have my keys.

hooray for double standards *sarcasm*

so i was attempting to find library space to work on a presentation with a friend today. it is well-nigh impossible to get library space (with table, and power-point) anytime after 10am, and i was there at 4pm.

so i backed up into one of those "for cell-phone users only" rooms - i figured that since i needed to discuss the presentation, it was as good an alibi as any.

but nope, a librarian comes along after about 5 minutes and politely asks us to move. i argue abit, but he refuses to give in. so i move.

and then i notice that he hasn't bothered even approaching the other people in all the other cell-phone rooms to ask them to move. he just walked off!

irksome.


and my latest VIVA was horrible. and i've just found an online comic strip that i like, and i've gone through about 600 back strips. only halfway through the archives, but that's still alot for a day when i was supposed to be working.

*edit: reached 1200 before sleeping. whoops*

Zion for whom...

Jer 32:17b

"...Zion for whom no one cares."

when the words you want to say get choked up in your throat.

i discovered a wound today.

if there's one thing i've been learning of late, it is this: the heart is central.

*weeps*

midnight adventure

in cell yesterday we were talking abit about how it was important to rid ourselves of the lies that have been placed in our hearts from our past. i guess it was in this context that i had abit of an adventure...

i sprained my knee mildly while playing soccer with the guys - the usual knee gave way again, but it wasn't a bad sprain, because i could walk without too much difficulty after a short rest. but since more soccer was obviously not an option, i decided to head back to hostel. it was then about 11:15pm - i figured i might just about catch the last 151 from clementi area into school. although i missed a 74 just as i arrived at the bus-stop, another one arrived within about 3 minutes.

i was looking anxiously out the back of the bus to see if any 151 was overhauling my bus - if there was, i would need to take emergency action. but i didn't see any other bus my whole journey to clementi, and as i got off at the last bus stop on clementi road, my watch read 11:48pm.

I took a moment to glance at the information board - Service 151, weekdays, last bus at 11:48pm. "Hmm", I thought, "the last bus is usually abit slow. Guess I made it in time." Just about then I received an sms. And by Murphy's law, while I was checking it, 151 zoomed by.

So I thought, "Sigh. Why does this always happen to me." Having missed my last bus, I figured there wasn't much point hanging around, so i started walking towards school. About 3 minutes later, another 151 went past me while I was crossing a traffic light. Sigh... Brilliant decision-making there. Had i just stopped to think for a moment, I would have caught that bus.

So I started asking God why. It's too coincidental not to be pre-arranged. I'm trying o hard to catch the last bus after blowing $7 on a 3-min cab ride last week, I make it there with 30 seconds to spare, my friend smses me at exactly the right moment, I end up walking with a sore knee, and the last bus mysteriously becomes the 2nd last bus. So in the context of what I was talking about earlier, I started identifying the belief statements that I had been spouting. 1) Bad stuff always happens to me. 2) My decision-making is poor.

Both statements are unbiblical. The second one especially hinders me in many things. Fear of making the wrong decision has often crippled me. So awareness is good.

yup, plenty more drama after that. Reached my room at 12:30am. 40 mins of talking to God is nice.

Octopus

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I’d call me Us.
-Ogden Nash

gratitude

was emo-ing badly today during service. i suppose i was just grouchy. was demanding of God what i could expect from Him, what promises i could claim, or whether the whole Christian life was service and suffering...

the scriptures seem to back me up here. Jesus told his disciples this: that if they had a servant who had spent the whole day working in the fields, and came back in the evening, would they not tell the servant to prepare dinner and serve them first before eating his own dinner? and would they thank the servant for doing what he had been told to do? so must we be, having done all that has been asked of us, say only that we are unworthy servants... in another passage, Jesus tells his disciples that anyone who puts his hand to the plow and turns to look back is not fit for the kingdom of God...

was flipping through the gospels during service... sermon was about parenting, so not immediately applicable to me. i stumbled upon a familiar passage, talking about the kingdom of God... it says that the kingdom of God is like a man who discovered a treasure in a field, who then went and sold everything he had and bought the field. and so i was reminded that all our life and all our service has already been bought and paid for, and that it was God who gave us the great gift of salvation first, such that we now give Him our whole life in gratitude.

It reminded me of a song:

It's the great gift of Your salvation
Working in me, working in me
It's the life giving taste of heaven
Your kindness revealed, your kindness revealed to me

I went for a seminar thing yesterday, dozed through bits of it. But one bit which I do remember was when the speaker reminded us that the only acceptable motivation for obeying God is our gratitude. Never should we think that we are somehow doing God a favour, or gaining brownie points with God. Nor should we even work merely out of a sense of duty, lest we should make an idol out of our sense of duty.

I've always insisted that everything I do must have a reason. But it seems to me now that this is another form of pride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waYUzxK8TYA

a hypothetical question

one of the questions i've posed to certain wise people i know is this: why should people get married?

the only answer that seems true is because they want to. so that they can enjoy the greater intimacy that can only come from marriage and actually living together and committing to each other for this lifetime. but something about this answer gave me disquiet.

i guess that i have this mindset where wanting to do something isn't a good enough reason to go and do it. and as i think about it more, i guess this is a reaction from my past, where every thing that i wanted was something that was bad for me, and the bible verse which made the most sense to me was Jer 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things."

it also doesn't really jive with the idea that my life is no longer my own, and that everything i do is in service of a higher calling. and yet, as the seminar i went to today touched on, service is the wrong concept.

it's abit of a paradigm shift to think that some of the things i want are actually good things, and that i should just go ahead and strive for them. and i guess marriage falls into this category.