Grace

"And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."

1 Corinthians 11:13

Had dinner with Bianche today. It was much needed, so that I could tell her all about it, and she could tell me all about it, and after that we both felt happy. We're so blessed to have found each other.

Things are so much clearer now that I've thought them through. I don't want to carry any excess baggage into the new year. I'm glad I can put it all down by God's grace and find a form of closure once and for all.

Happy new year in advance :)

Spectacle

I feel like a spectator looking on from the watch stands. Not being a part of this - what should I call it - this performance. I'm merely observing, wondering, sometimes longing to be part of it but catching myself in time to know that this isn't where I should stay.

If I could use an analogy, albeit a bad one, you would be a small cake and everyone seems to want a slice of you so that there's nothing left for me, which is, well, good.

In fact I find it highly ironic that what I wished for when I was sixteen is happening now when I cannot want it anymore. Evidently, the things you want when you're eighteen and sixteen are vastly different, though some may remain the same. Yet this is the thing that has to change. In a way, I'm strangely glad it did, although to be truthful, the feelings are always mixed with that familiar tinge of well, sadness.

This post is for Cat, since she asked :)

It's Christmas :D It doesn't feel very Christmasy this year since I was away only until Christmas Eve, and the build-up of the Christmas mood didn't really catch up to me.

Anyway I just came back from a two-week holiday in Europe and Dubai. It's incredible just thinking that I was in Dubai just yesterday. Just two nights ago I was in the desert in Dubai, riding a camel. It sounds like a joke but it's true. The desert had the perfect temperature I must say, because it was winter and when I was there it was in the evening, and the temperature was falling to a nice below 20s I think. We had the bumpy four-wheel drive through the sand dunes, it was the most thrilling part of the trip because all of us, including the guys, were screaming and laughing as we plunged down from high sand dunes and watched cars dropping downwards in front of us, since some of the slopes were pretty steep. Only my mum didn't enjoy it because it was rather frightening for her.

Then there was the pretty cool dinner after wards, also in the desert, in the open, where we set on cushions on the sand and ate Middle Eastern food. The food wasn't spectacular, but the ambience was extremely cool. I'll upload the photos on facebook when I've developed them.

Europe and Switzerland were not bad as well. Although the cold was insufferable and terrible. It was especially so in Switzerland when we were on the mountain-top in Jungfrau, and it was negative twenty-something degrees. It was crazy. My toes hurt so much I teared, I felt like they were going to fall off even though they were supposed to be warmed by my woolen socks and my boots. However, I then got pleasantly distracted by this poor baby in the pram who was crying from the cold as well. I started making ridiculous faces at her, and when she smiled I smiled and I didn't feel cold anymore :) I was however, very short of oxygen and felt suffocated, while some people suffered from altitude sickness. I went there two years ago and felt the same thing. It felt worse this time when I went up the mountain though.

In Rome and Paris we looked at many buildings and churches, and it can get rather boring when you keep going to so many. There was the pretty Eiffel Tower in Paris though, which always makes one's heart leap a little since it's rather breathtaking. Venice was one of the best, I love it! The scenary and everything. It was amazing. The only sad thing was that it was really apparent that it was sinking, because there are huge puddles of water even on the dry land. The houses are mostly vacant, since I guess most people have evacuated. We went to Milan as well, and I actually thought of The Tempest and the references to the real world like Milan and Naples. -.- It felt rather cool though, that I was actually going to the places in my Lit text.

There are plenty, plenty of photos which I will upload one day and I'm excited to see them developed. There are so many more details of the trip that I have not mentioned, because I think I would be writing a mini book if I did pen it all down. I'll end with a favourite line from the book I'm reading now, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which contain some of the most poignant lines which will tug at your heartstrings and unlock your tear ducts in an instant. In fact, I was so overwhelmed when I was reading it on the plane that I had to put the book down, breathe and take a break. Seriously.

Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could - a look, a whisper, a moan - to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't in the end, save it all.

It's five minutes before 2 am now.

There are many things that I find incredible right now. One, I have never stayed up so late because I'd like to have enough energy to study the next day, and I tend to feel sleepy very quickly when I'm studying because it is incredibly boring. Two, it has been half a year since I last blogged. Three, I am actually blogging, and you have no idea how many times I've envisioned this in my head : Blogging about how A-levels have been, because it's over. (Okay not yet technically, but I count it as it has)

"...Maybe because I've made a resolution to study hard, and I want to keep to it. I will succeed in becoming a studious nerd this year. "

20 January 2009

I've actually stuck to my resolution for almost a year, I've never been so determined about something for so long. It's been a most torturous year, especially the second half of it when I stopped blogging. I have never studied so much in my life, read the same notes over and over, regurgitated the same old things so many times. I hope I will never have to study like this anymore. I hate studying to its very core. You cannot imagine the immense hatred I have for it now. It is perhaps okay when you do it once, with new information, but after repeatedly studying the same boring, meaningless things over and over you get extremely sick of it. I feel like this has been the year where I've pushed myself to my limits, at times beyond, and this was made possible because God freely gave me wisdom, just like how He promised He would if I asked.

There are so many things that I want to say right now. For example, I do not have to drink coffee anymore. I've been relying on it quite abit, drinking it like it's a necessity if not I cannot seem to study.

However, there are more pressing matters at hand like sleep. So I shall continue another time. :)

I hate to know how life is so fragile, but at the same time, the way God works always surprises me. I truly freaked out when I heard about Aloysius, I was so scared. Then again, in my fear and panic, I neglected how God was there protecting him and seeing him through all of that. It's like God cares about him so much more than any of us does, I don't know why I couldn't see it at that point. Actually I know why, I was too blinded by fear and worry (and I imagined the worst that could happen). I cannot imagine if the person getting hit was Angmian, Catherine, Bianche, or Vivian or anyone else for that matter. When I say I couldn't imagine, I really mean it. I can't even describe what my reactions would be.

Then when I went to the hospital to see him, all those fears dissipated instantly.

I'm so glad our God is so, so good. I cannot even put His goodness in words!

It's been almost two months since I last blogged, it's incredible. I'm only doing this for the sake of Angmian and Vivian Choy, if not they may skin me alive tomorrow.

I tend to lose interest in things rather quickly. Blogging has been something that I continued for quite a long time, and then I decided not to do it anymore. It's as if in many aspects of my life there needs to be variety and change if not I'll get tired of it. And this trait has stuck with me since I was very young?

I know I'm playing cheat but, see I updated! I'm going to sleep now :D

I know I should be sleeping now, considering that I've to be in church by eight tomorrow morning and I've to perform twice. But I need to blog, it's been (almost literally) eons since I've indulged in this. Can you believe, that I even consider blogging an indulgence? I'm quite amazed.

March common tests are over. I needed to say that. The Chinese Lit paper was the most awful thing ever, it's like drinking spoilt milk - okay forget it, I wanted to think of a proper metaphor for it but it's too late at night to bother. I will not waste my time writing about the exams and on using literary devices to describe the torture we've been through.

I need to add though, that God's goodness truly saw me through the whole week. I could feel His presence during the papers, that He was there with me. It made things alot better, because it took away my fears. There were many times during the week that I just went into a tyrate like, God, I CANNOT FREAKING DO THIS. It's beyond me, please take control instead. He always did, and things would be much better after that.

Anyway, I went to Yum Cha for breakfast with Mummy and Daddy today! :D It was awesome, the food. What a breather it was after the dreaded week. Oh and, I watched Confessions of a Shopaholic last night. (as you can see my thoughts are very disorganized and they have no sense of chronology) IT WAS TERRIFIC! It was so hilarious I couldn't stop laughing, and again it was the whole fairytale ending that gave it its appeal.

I'm very attracted to fairytale endings.

During cell group today, I laughed so hard that my cheek muscles ached. It was extremely amusing hearing Xiang read out all our strange poems. IT WAS SO FUNNY. I cannot use any other adjective to describe it.

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy,

I have too many thoughts that I don't want to pen them down so I'll forget it. I'm so strange.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow :) It'll be an awesome day with great company :)

I'm very upset. :(

Tracy, my turtle pouch is missing, perhaps trampled on by various people in a muddy area or abused and neglected by a horrible person. :( To make things worse, my ez-link card and my IC are both in the pouch.

I'm feeling more unsettled with every day that passes, I need to report the loss soon. I'm thinking of going to ICA tomorrow morning and get it done and over with, because if not the only time I can go would be next monday. I don't want to drag it anymore. :(

And Tracy, I'm really sorry for not bothering to bathe you when you were still with me, always assuming that there will always be another day, another chance. I know this sounds juvenile, but she has been with me for a long time.

:(

"You're my exception."

He's Just Not That Into You

I melted in my seat there and then. I'm such an idealist and romantic when it comes to love that my mum warned me not to allow my notion of love to become bigger than the person in the future. I'm in danger of doing that, I know. Then again it's a pact I've made with myself to not settle for anything less than head-over-heels-in-love, love. Isn't every girl allowed to dream? Then again, I'm so stubbornly idealistic that I'm very insistent on making my dreams materialize.

She was rather shocked when I explained to her my whole notion of love, when I say things like, "Mummy, I'm sure when you meet the love of your life you just know it. You never want to spend the rest of your life with anyone else except him, and growing old together is the best thing that will ever happen to you."

She tried to tell me again not to blow up my notion too much, but then I was too horrified by her realism that I didn't really take it in. It happens to me sometimes. I automatically reject realism.

Anyway, I'm very upset. My dad's arm is injured and out of my horror and anger at his carelessness, I slapped his other arm while he narrated to me what happened. He was rather amused and surprised at the same time. I hate to see him hurt! It's just like how he hates to see me sick. I couldn't help it and reprimanded him.

It will be a long time again before I blog. Oh well, bye :)

I've not been blogging for an unusually long time. Right now I feel like I have tons of thoughts in my head that I need to pen down.

If I ever get to where I want to be in the future, I hope I won't forget I once thought it very daunting to reach there. I don't want to brush the hard work off and say it was a piece of cake, and then take it forgranted. But that is if I ever get there, and if that is where God wants me to be. Strangely, I haven't asked Him about it yet. Perhaps it's because I'm half-afraid it is not what He has in store for me. That the truth would be I'm actually not cut out for it and I won't be happy. I really don't know.

Will I deviate sometime next year, and decide on another course and faculty? That will disappoint me, perhaps not the me then but now. I'm not making sense am i?

This is a fraction of what is on my mind, and I'll go off now.

Argh road run on Friday, when I felt it was all good to have lunch with my sister then catch Benjamin Button. I can't help but cringe at the thought of having to spend my late afternoon running when I don't want to. :(