.

in the office where i work, there are several persons who are universally, or close to it anyway, despised. to use english (as opposed to hokkien), they are labelled skivers. though treated with civility by the general populace, behind their backs they are slammed and generally made fun of, in bitter and somewhat resentful tones.


i had come to realise after awhile that joining in with the discontent rumblings constituted something akin to gossip, i.e. saying bad things about people who aren't present, and so i sought to understand the foundations of this ill-will and negative feeling about these particular people. you know of such people. answer this question with the first person that comes to mind: who do you hate?


it took me quite awhile to understand the dynamics at work. at a cursory glance, these people are conscientious enough, doing what work is assigned to them with vigour and verve. They complete the tasks which are appointed to them, and somehow still manage to leave the office on time everyday. i toyed with the idea that these people might simply be efficient.

then i realised what distinguished these people from others, from my personal experience. these guys were the ones who would come to me and ask me to help them complete tasks. simple menial tasks, such as faxing documents, photocopying, pasting, stapling etc. time-consuming, but menial tasks. they make these requests under the guise of friendship, YET WHEN YOU REQUEST THE SAME OF THEM.... they'll be busy. they'll be doing their own work. things to do, people to see, whatever it is, a thousand apologies but they CAN'T possibly help you at this particular moment, maybe tomorrow or next year or next millenium.

i realised eventually that there was a more fundamental problem there... its kind of like selfishness, in a sense. these people have a very clearly defined scope of what is THEIR work, and what is SOMEONE ELSE'S work. and they have absolutely no incentive to do anyone else's work. their own work will always take priority, and when they ARE free, they'll ask you to get someone else to do it cos the other guy does it better/has too few responsibilities anyway.

i realise i react best to the people who immediately try to help me/understand my problem better. it doesn't take a genius to understand that, everyone loves a helpful person. i don't expect that reaction all the time, of course, since people have their own work to attend to, but if i get a helpful response occasionally it's enough to convince me that they're good people in general.

these buggers who annoy me... never lift a finger to help me when i ask. or do so only when it suits their own purposes. they finish their work, and make themselves scarce. if i only did the work that my job scope entails, i'd have half the amount of work to do.

it is a struggle for me to love this person. i spent all of lunchtime silently telling him off in my head, blowing off a head of steam. but i recall one pearl of wisdom that got lodged in my clamshell head some time ago...

you can't blame people for the way they are. if you do, you'll begin to hate. remember that all the bad in each person is a manifestation of that deception Satan introduced on earth all those thousands of years ago.

who can take credit for his own character? the unique ways in which each of us act is a product of a potpourri of factors. so the guy acts like a complete asshole. perhaps his parents didnt bring him up too well, or there were family problems, or he fell into bad company. either which way, he is a person to be pitied simply because HE DOESN'T KNOW ANY BETTER. He doesn't know what it means to be loved, and to love people whole-heartedly. He doesn't have a focus in his life, or it might just be a lousy focus that will end up as nothing. being a complete asshole is in itself pitiable - he'll have no true friends, he has no joy in life, life is futile, meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

We, as Christians, we have a choice. To love mercy, to do justly, and to walk humbly before our God. What more does the Lord require of us?


i cannot, and i struggle to remember this, i cannot take credit for all that people admire me for. i had good parents, maybe not great, but they taught me what was important. i had natural ability, but that comes from God, and i had no part to play there. good teachers, a church to grow up in, i have had more than most. even things like self-discipline and determination - you cannot take credit for them, they are determined by nature and nurture.

so what reason have we to boast? Praise be to God, from whom all blessings flow, from whom all good things come down to us.

.

it was with no great amount of hope, and no small amount of weariness, that i trudged my lonesome self into camp today. grey clouds cast a pallor over what is usually an idyllic stroll from home to camp, replete with cooing doves and fluttering butterflies at no extra charge. and then i discovered, INTERNET IS WORKING!!!


having valorously resisted the temptations of the information superhighway, along with being snowed under by drifting stacks of paperwork, and general busyness in general, i have finally been overtaken by the Quark side, and have been sucked through the local i'net terminal into the collective consciousness of the World Wide Web.

to mark this monumentally momentous occasion, i shall hereby make a proclamation that shall resound about the known world, that shall make grown men weep and whirl their shirts around their head and act like 3-year-olds in general: LIVERPOOL HAVE WON THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!!

it is not yet lunchtime, and i have been awake for ten hours. the sweet siren song of somnabulity, in cahoots with the usual post-prandial stuporification should have the desired effect momentarily.




*zonk*

roots

Discipleship has the same root word as discipline.


I want to learn more, to grow in knowledge and wisdom, but i need that daily discipline of studying and meditating upon the word.

I need your discipline,
I'm calling out, light the fire again.

clogs.

what with my endless expanse of free time that represents this sunday spent in camp, i've been surfing blogs aimlessly, or, as one blogger vehemently put it, "i refuse to grant these sites the same status as my *some complimentary stuff here* website. hence i will call them clogs." cant remember the exact words, but quite an interesting new buzzword to play with. those things REALLY clog up the internet.



somehow, from our little red dot of 4 million people, we manage to generate about a tenth of the blogs on blogspot. this was deduced from using the "next blog" function at the top of most blogspot pages which, presumably, transport you to a random blog. and the VAST majority of these Singaporean blogs are... ugh.

like, "Scanning... no sigh of intelligent life-forms." Not intending to be mean or anything, just a commentary on our social landscape.

I guess i shouldn't expect to much from them. The typical Singaporean blogger is 13/14 years of age, almost always female, and almost always gushing over a certain guy in their life, with many xxx's and ooo's. most of them also seem incapable of rendering thoughts in standard english, or indeed in the standard 26-character cipher which comprise our english alphabet. it boggles the mind to decipher the mass of exclamations, amphersams, and other symbols cluttering up their sentences... not to mention the seemingly ubiquitous trend of typing each letter in triplicate... o wait, i mean tttrrriiipppllliiicccaaattteee. something like that. makes for rather hard reading.


like i said, i shouldn't expect too much. i probably wasn't thinking highly mature thoughts back then either. but i guess its the endless gushing over guys that leaves me a little scared as to what their idea of luurve as they put it, is. "eii willch luurve eeuu 4evuur" seems to be the refrain, and while i admire the sentiment, relationships are built on a whole lot more than just sentiment. they display emotion, but not too much in the way of EQ, and that's worrying. setting up for a fall so it seems.


plus, it makes the whole world think that singaporean girls are bimbotic airheads. and that's just sad. i guess its just that when i went blog-hopping, i was looking for something else... different perspectives on life, about how people think, about living life in some other country.... things to widen my horizons yeah? have been rethinking my decision to further my studies in sunny singapore....

i6uuaq has been placed on your ignore list

just attempted chatting with a couple of people on MSN. saddened that neither of them see fit to reply to my queries. sigh... rather depressing.

i'd love to think that its not deliberate, and, judging by what i know of them, i don't think they'd ignore me, but still....

i would never ignore someone who started a chat with me... even if i'm in a rush and have but time to exchange a few pleasantries. if anyone reading this has done this before, please don't. it's not pleasant. 'twould be rude doing that in RL, and i see no reason why it should be different online.

actually, this happens so often to me, i'm beginning to think i see a real trend here. and the conclusions i draw from that are downright depressing. these are people i would normally consider "friends". being ignored simply compromises my already-fragile self-worth.

this song touched me once, long ago.
Oh yes, I'm the great Pretender.
Pretending my life's going well.
My need is such,
I pretend too much.
I'm lonely, but no one can tell...





to be ignored by people i consider friends. i choose to believe it wasn't deliberate. off to find solace.

intellect inside

and somehow i find solace in intellectual musings. i always do. its a whole lot easier to use the brain than the heart.

**note to self: write about conversation with miss cheah and the crippled singaporean mentality**

actually, too drained to work the brain now. could force it, but lazy. later perhaps.

i can't be bothered to think up a title so there.

reading a friend's blog a few minutes ago. struck by the beauty and the poetry inherent in those words. i envy those people, who weave pictures into their words, whose minds dream of things outside my humdrum world, whose imaginations take them to places exotic and beautiful, even on such a dreary day as this. but i am not that person.

i have picked out a path in life. my journey is set, mapped, planned, or so i think. i used to be sad for those people who haven't a clue what they want in their future, who lack a vision and a direction, but today i envy them. without the shackles of a set path in life, they are free to dream dreams that bestride the narrow world, that send the mind aloft with the innumerable possibilities that are offered to us lucky cretins who live in a prosperous and free society.

O to live the life of the idle rich. To have the freedom and wherewithal to live in the lap of luxury, to wander and to wonder at the mysteries of this earth, to have the freedom and the capacity to indulge all my curiosities and my wanderlust. where am i going?

the phrase "dwell in the tents of the wicked" jumps to mind. psalm 84, somewhere. because i know that idle hands do the devil's work, as i know only too well. because living a life that serves only one's own desires is meaningless and empty, and that one cannot live such a life without descending into depression and depravity.

"and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

so i dwell here momentarily, in the carefree dreams of a child, in full knowledge that i have moved on to adulthood. i am now weighed with the cares and burdens of this world, as Atlas of old, and can no longer indulge in the fantasies of youth. such is my lot, to spend my life in service, in accordance to my calling, and i am already weary. i am weeping, inside and out. (in an army camp, good grief. i need to hide somewhere)

somehow i am supposed to find joy and peace in this. it takes greater maturity than i can find now.






two night's ago, listening to a message about a life of service, i was struck by an analogy. it was about parasites. not in the mood to carry on now, say more later.